Low White Blood Count - Really Low?

I recently got a blood test and I have a low white blood count. Here's the line from the test:

WBC . . . . . . . 3.2 L (3.6-10.6)

So, apparently the healthy range is 3.6-10.6, but I only have a 3.2. The doctor noted that this would leave me "susceptible to infection and colds". Well, since I haven't had a random infection or cold in... almost two years, this connection does not seem to be accurate. Yes, admittedly I've been mildly sick a couple times in the past couple years, but I know exactly why it happened. And even so, it wasn't anything like how I used to get sick, which was more often and much worse. Things just don't add up to doc's observation.

So, I'm not an expert on what tests like these mean, but here's my thinking. This "normal" range of 3.6-10.6 is based an averages collected from the general population. Not the healthy population only (people who live a long time and don't get sick), but everyone. So, what if the general population is not healthy? What if the general population actually gets sick a lot and depends on many drugs, stimulants, and fortified "foods" to keep them feeling ok? (Hint: this is the case)

Let's compare an athlete to a lethargic person. An athletic person who works out and trains consistently has a stronger body, and thus a stronger heart. Because of the heart's additional strength, it is much easier for it to pump blood during rest, and consequently it has a lower heart rate. In other words, the heart is able to move more blood on each pump, and so it doesn't need to pump as often. Also, the blood cells are able to carry more oxygen and so on. So this lower heart rate is actually a good thing. It means that the athlete's heart doesn't have to work as hard during rest time.

So, consider a hypothetical population entirely of lethargic and lazy people only. Their high heart rate would be considered "normal". And if one of these lethargic people had a lower heart rate than that standard, it would not be a good thing like in the case of an athlete. Indeed, for a sloth that lower heart rate would probably mean that something was wrong.

Then, lets say one tiny percentage of this previously lethargic population becomes active. The active people would become healthier and develop a lower heart rate, and the doctor would probably tell them that it is dangerously low! So what should they do? Either 1) take some drugs, or 2) go back to being lethargic. Both of these actions would get their numbers back to "normal", but neither of which is a necessary or correct solution!!

That's how I feel about my low WBC. I'm being compared to Joe Shmoe who eats a Standard American Diet (SAD), stressing his body on a regular basis and forcing it to react with in a defensive manner. However my body is clean, what does it need a bunch of extra white blood cells for? That's why I'm not getting sick, contrary to doc's prediction.

I could very well be wrong in this logic, since I don't really know much about human biology other than the simple cause-and-effect relationships of my actions and how those actions make me feel. But I do know that I'm not getting sick and I feel great. If you know something that I don't, leave a comment.

Authority of nutritional advice

Many people seek nutrional advice for many reasons - healing, weight loss, looking and feeling younger, etc. The problem is that people put way too much faith in "professional" advice, without putting it through any sort of critical analysis.

I think the best way to verify if someone is giving sound advice in this area is to observe how they live. Do they look healthy? Are they vibrant? Would you like to look and feel like they do?

Doctors are not nutritionists. They did not go to school for nutrition. They went to school to administer drugs or perform surgery, that's it. And all of these "studys" on nutritonal facts change all the time, and we can't see the scientists who work on them anyway.

Its like following directions on a map just by looking at the directions, and not also looking at the road. You have to move the steering wheel according to the road. The directions just make sure you take the right turns.

If you propose to a doctor that you might be healed by a change of diet and fasting, they will say "No no no, impossible. But here - eat these pills!"

People need more faith in their own instincts when it comes to health. If you sense that something works for you and makes you feel good, its probably on the right track, despite if a "professional" tells you otherwise.

Where do you get YOUR protein?

When people hear that I cut meat out of my diet, the question I most often hear first is "So, where do you get your protein?"

No I don't get it from meat (or soy either, for that matter). However, here is not to explain my source, but rather to question yours - Where do you get YOUR protein?

In his 900 cat experiment, Francis M. Pottenger fed three groups of cats accordingly:

1. All raw meat


2. 2/3 raw meat


3. 2/3 cooked meat

Read the article. But basically the cats eating all raw meat were the healthiest while the cats on the cooked meat begain to develop many degenerative diseases, including weakness, shortened life span, and even blindness early in life.

More intriguing than the results, however, is the discovered cause: the cooked meat became deficient of Taurine, which was destroyed during the cooking process. Today, they add the taurine back into the cooked cat foods and the cats (seemingly) do just fine. (Note: Iams skirts around the real issue of cooking).

So who suppliments "fresh" amino acids back into your meat?

Our society preaches a religously close relationship between our protein needs as human beings and eating meat. We are taught this from birth and it is reinforced by school system, media, and the government all our lives. However many people, including myself, would argue that this association is not a coincidence.

We can reason that we do not actually get all the protein we need from the meat that we eat. Not only is much of it destroyed during the cooking process, but the remaining amino acids (if any) are bound together and made extremely difficult for the consumer to digest, and thus actually use.

Believing that eating cooked meat will fulfill your protein needs is ridiculous, and if the industry ever becomes less profitable, or enough people die from cancer and other diseases, then people will wake up and add this notion to the list of old wives tales.

Check it out for real.

Don't Blame CVS

Yesterday I signed a petition in Philadelphia against CVS selling expired baby food.

Now, I think this is an atrocity and that's why I signed the petition. However I also believe that we can do much better. Why limit our demands to "non-expired" food? How about demanding higher quality food? How about demanding the best? Isn't that what our children deserve?

News flash: you're not going to get the best at CVS. You're not going to get it in little single-serving packages that have been sitting on the shelf for three weeks with a picture of someone else's baby on the front. No one out there can deliver the highest quality food for your baby in this manner. When it comes to feeding our kids (and parenting in general), we can't throw up our hands and point to someone else in a white coat who claims to know best.

Take responsibility. If we don't, then who will? Not CVS, or anyone.

We should at least take responsibiliy for our precious children. How hard is it to blend up some real fresh fruit? Make a baby-sized bottle of real juice? Feed our children real food? Hey, you could even go the extra mile and buy organic. Why feed your kid any amount of poison?

We all have a choice, and that's fine. However, we shouldn't inculcate our children with choices that we have already made, especially the ones we know are wrong. We shouldn't ruin their body before they even have a chance to decide what they want to do with it. We should teach them to choose - so if you want to make chemical additives and disgusting processed foods part of your regular diet, that's fine - but don't ruin it for your kids.

Parents: take some initiative and stop being so pathetically lazy.

High metabolism is not the answer!

What is the right metabolism? Is there a best for everyone, or is it different for each person?

There are weight loss techniques which advocate the consumption of many "small" meals, six to eight, per day. The goal being to provide the metabolism with constant stimulation, which consequently speeds it up and forces the body to work much harder all the time. This work causes weight loss. And indeed, doing this could give someone some success, and fast. It makes sense.

This is the opposite approach that sumo wrestlers take to their diet, in which they try to gain as much weight as possible. Check out an interesting article Here.

I would guess that most Americans are on the Sumo Wrestler diet, especially the aspect of eating late at night. I personally used to consume one or two huge meals every night, one immediately before going to bed. However while it was at the expense of my energy levels next day (though I didn't realize it at the time), I never gained any weight from it. My metabolism was too high.

I was like many youths, the ones who can frequently be seen eating huge meals many times a day, maybe eight times or more. And it isn't even all good food, a lot of it is junk. I used to eat 1800 to 2500 calories of Tasty Kakes every day during lunch, and then later in the day go run six miles during cross country practice. People like this are the envy of today's society, the ones who can eat all they want and not gain any weight from it. There are countless obese people who would love to have this problem. Despite my athletic build, I probably ate more than many obese people.

However, despite the fact that this trait is praised because of its enabling of guiltless, though costly, gluttony, striving for or keeping a high metabolism is absolutely not good. And I care about you so I will tell you why.


Imagine your body is a car. Purposefully speeding up your metabolism is like placing a pile of bricks on the gas pedal and letting your car go speeding away. The engine of your car will wear out very quickly, and likewise your body will out wear if you make it work too hard.

You see, a "high metabolism" isn't a magical black hole in your body that makes you fit and trim. It is your body working too hard. And while it might be convenient and without immediate consequence at first, eventually it will catch up with you.

Whether you are a person trying to lose weight, or someone who enjoys being able to eat whatever they want and remain skinny, or someone who is underweight - whoever you are, this applies to you.

The sumo wrestlers are actually on the right track - low metabolism is key. However, they abuse it for purposes of gaining enourmous amounts of weight.

The healthiest long-term goal is to achieve a very low metabolism. Think about it - which is better for your heart, having a high or low blood pressure? We do not want our body to have to work hard. We want to make it as easy as possible for our body do carry out all of its functions.


There are mainly two problems in regard to this topic. The first occurs when people achieve, or are simply born with, a low metabolism, but then eat a very high number of calories every day. That is to say, they overeat. The consequense to this is weight gain and lack of energy. Long term, it could take some years off your life span and make the aging process much more extreme then it has to be. The second problem is equally damaging, though it isn't as visually obvious. It is when a person has a very high metabolism and overeats. They are still overeating, their body is just working it off. In many ways, an obese person and an underweight person have exactly the same problem.

There is no way to get around it - in order to achieve the best health, you will have to eat in moderation. And moderate portions are nothing like we often see today, let me tell you. It might be something that each person must learn for himself, but I think we can all agree that as a society we eat too much, and without stating an exact amount, most of us would do very well to eat a good deal less overall, and much much less processed junk foods.

It doesn't matter if you are an athlete running marathons or a sedentary couch potato. The ultimate goal is to have a very low metabolism and eat very little (or rather, the goal is to get your body to a place where it requires very little and then abstain from overeating). The paths for each of us to get there will certainly be different, however we must all realize what is best and make sure that the path we choose ends up taking us as close to that as possible.

Like I said, I used to eat a ton of food every day. A ton. During high school I would eat two lunches every day (not including the Tastykakes from the vending machine). I would actually be late to class from eating so much. But I was very athletic and in great shape. At 6 feet tall, I weighed about 160 pounds. Then during college I got into the weight lifting thing, and gained about 15 pounds of muscle. During this time I still had an outrageously high metabolism and ate many times a day. At year two of college I converted my diet to raw vegan. Over the course of about six months I lost about twenty pounds. That's a drop from 175 to 155. Looking back I can guess that this was because I was eating more easily digestible food but still had a high metabolism, so everything that I ate was quickly burned up. At first I didn't even lower calories that much, if at all. However, now it has been a year and my weight is back up to 170. I eat two to three meals a day, which aren't exactly small but are much smaller than they used to be. And they are raw foods, so its much MUCH easier to digest.

Why did I gain the weight back? Though I am not a professional, my insight tells me that my metabolism has slowed way down. Indeed, I actually have a little stomach fat again, and from eating mostly fruit only! So for a while I had to act on faith, but now my body seems to be finishing its chemical adjustment to the new diet - what I believed and hoped would happen finally has.

This serves merely as an example. With this article I do not wish push the raw vegan diet exactly, however it is important for us to realize three things about diet:

1) Moderation is always necessary. No diet can be healthy long-term if it advocates gluttony (eating whatever you want, whenever you want, however much you want). You cannot avoid it, some self-discipline will be involved. But let me assure you that developing this discipline will be much more rewarding and meaningful in the end, and it won't be hard forever.

2) The best diet will allow you to develop a slow metabolism and thrive on very little food. It might be a long process for you to discover what this diet is. I have discovered it to be raw foods, but that is the ultimate of diets. One can still achieve great success from a diet on a different place on the transitional scale. It all depends on how good you want to feel and what your personal views and experiences tell you.

3) The healthiest methods to improve one's physical condition take time and faith. It took me a whole year to readjust and recover from the miserable way I used to eat, and even now I don't think I'm fully adjusted. There might be "quick fixes", but if your goal is long term health and happiness, then no quick fix will be as satisfying and successful as a meaningful lifestyle change based on temperance and openness to the truth.

The Fallacy of Counting Calories

I'll begin by saying that counting calories can be a great method to begin a transition into a healthy state. It could help someone who tends to overeat to ease back, or some who undereats to pick it up.

However, there is a huge misconception regarding calories and nutrition. There are those who believe that they can calculate their caloric requirements based on their own physical body, i.e. gender, weight, amount of exercise and this is exactly how much they need. Worse yet, there are those that believe that they need 2,000 calories per day, only a guideline given to use by the government.

Logically, we can reason why this is false. The ideal is to be able to tell how much food to eat based on feeling, once we have detoxified and learned to read our body correctly.

Someone who counts calories is totally disregarding the quality of food that they are eating. For example, one could get 2,000 calories in a single sitting just by eating a box of donuts. Does that mean that that they are good to go nutritionally?

That is extreme and obvious example, but then consider if one day you get most of your calories from grains and pasta. Cereal for breakfast, bagels and a salad for lunch, spaghetti for dinner. Is that the same as eating fruit for every meal? Which is easier to digest and assimilate, fruit or pasta? (a small bit of research will give you an obvious answer)

There are two more factors that affect how much food we need to eat:
1) The quality of the food.
2) Our ability to assimilate nutrients from that food.

You could even be eating the best food in the world, but if your digestive system is so messed up that you can't get all the nutrients out, then you still won't see great results. You might still have to eat much more to compensate for the waste. On the contrary, if you have begun the journey to health and healing, you might find that you require less food because of your body's growing efficiency in extracting the nutrients.

If you eat pizza for every meal one day and then fruit and salad for every meal the next day, do you really think that you will be getting all the nutrients out of the fruit? No! Your system is still in shock from all that toxic food the day before. And for that matter, most of it is probably still inside of you. Now consider a lifetime of poor and unnatural eating habits. How much are you really getting from the occasional "healthy" meal? Chances are that your ability to assimilate nutrients is so bad that yes, you might need a ton of calories every day.

The goal is to not eat too little or too much. Eat too little and you might not feel the best. However, overeating is equally bad if not worse, because then your body has to process all of that extra food, and that processing requires a great amount of energy! Some people think the more they eat the more energy they have. I used to think this, and it is just simply not true. It doesn't matter how high quality the food is. If you are filling your car up with gas, then it has a limit. Well, we have a limit too! Unfortunately, while the car will simply overflow, we MUST process that extra food.

If you are a healthy person then you do not need to eat that much. Human beings might be able to survive on large quantities of unnatural food, but we thrive on much smaller portions of fresh living foods. This doesn't mean that anyone can begin to cut down their portions and start feeling better. First you have to increase the quality of your diet by REMOVING the harmful foods and replacing them with fresh living foods. Then it might be a gradual process while your body heals and rebuilds its facility to efficiently process the food you eat.

Theory on Thirst and Our Natural Diet

I propose that the human being's natural diet (the diet that will enable him or her to achieve the greatest health and vitality) consists of uncooked fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens. This is one piece of evidence for that.

Consider thirst. We have learned growing up that feeling "thirsty" is the first sign of dehydration. In other words, if you are afflicted by thirst then is is too late - your body is not saying "now's the time to drink water", its saying "you should have been drinking more water before".

Now consider hunger. Our understanding of hunger has been denatured if not destroyed by an indulgent culture and an unnatural environment, but we can all basically concede that feeling "hungry" indicates the need to consume food. However, it is not a sign of starvation. Contrary to the need to drink before becoming thirsty, there is no need to eat before we feel hungry. Indeed, it is actually hurtful to eat unless hungry.

So our body tells us when we need to eat, but it does not tell us when we need to drink. This is extremely curious when considering that we will die after about 40 days without food, but only 3 days without water.

Begging question: If water is so critical, then why doesn't our body tell us when we need it? Why does the body prioritize food instead of water?

My conclusion is this: eating our natural diet should satisfy both hunger and thirst. Our food should contain a lot of water so that eating is also hydrating. We have no way to percieve the need for water because our hunger should effectively take care of it.

After transitioning to the raw food diet, I noticed that my water consumption decreased dramatically. I no longer drank glasses of water at a time. I didn't wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning feeling extremely thirsty. I generally do not have any extra water with meals.

When we cook or bake foods, water is being removed. This, along with much other logic, tells us that cooking is not a natural way to consume food, and any food that requires cooking in order for consumption is not part of our natural diet. These types of foods include grains. We do not posses the salivary glands in order to eat grains in its unprocessed form. Imagine trying to swallow a mouthful of flour - you would choke on it! Even eating it in its cooked form, such as bread and pasta, requires a lot of extra water to go with it. Also, the inclusion of meat in our natural diet is not disproved by this logic alone, however raw meat is very risky and even more unhealthy for us to consume. Since we know that cooking meat is not natural, we can perhaps conclude that the consumption of raw meat would only occur naturally in cases of famine, as can be observed with chimpanzees.