The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [226]
There will be similar mistakes and discoveries in years to come.
In cases where I can find an indigenous population that has lived without a food group for hundreds of years (fruit, for example, which is easy), I don’t worry much about excluding it. If I can’t find such a group, I’d suggest that our science hasn’t caught up with Darwinism.
Eater beware.
My general guideline, what I refer to as “Darwin’s Rule,” is simple: eat for optimal fertility and everything else falls into place.
Moreover, if you eat for optimal fertility, you will have high-level athletic performance and what most define as optimal health. No matter which diet you choose, I encourage you to have the following tests, as a minimum, every six months. If you are eliminating animal products entirely, I suggest every three months.
All of these tests are common enough that your general practitioner or primary care doctor should, in theory, be able to order them. In many cases, insurance will cover them, but be willing to ante up in cash if needed. If you chose to be vegan, this is not the place to cut costs. Some primary care doctors will not feel comfortable administering the fancier gynecological tests and will refer you to an ob/gyn specialist. That’s fine: just get them done.
You don’t need to know what all of these mean; you just need to photocopy them and have a conversation with your doctor.17
If male, have these tests:
Semen analysis (includes volume, which should be >1.5 ml; concentration/count > 20 million/ml; motility > 40%; morphology > 30% normal by WHO criteria)
Testosterone (both total and free)
Estradiol
Luteinizing hormone (LH)
Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) (tests hypothalamus functioning)
Prolactin (pituitary level)
Total cholesterol (160–200)
AST (20–30)
ALT (20–30)
If female, have these tests:
Estradiol
Luteinizing hormone (LH)
Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) (tests hypothalamus functioning)
Prolactin (pituitary level)
Total cholesterol (160–200)
AST (20–30)
ALT (20–30)
Day 3 FSH and E2 (estradiol) blood tests (looks at ovarian reserve; the doctor can also do an antral follicular count by ultrasound and/or check anti-muellerian hormone by blood)
Those are the basics. For women, it can pay to take a slightly more detailed look at things:
1) It may seem obvious, but a woman first needs to have periods to see if she is ovulating. It is important to be off of oral contraceptives to determine this. Unfortunately, some doctors prescribe “the pill” to vegetarians to initiate menstruation, which simply masks symptoms instead of addressing root causes. Do an over-the-counter urine LH test, starting at approximately day 9 (most women have LH peak and subsequent ovulation 24–36 hours later during days 12–15). Using urine LH test strips is much easier than doing basal body temperatures and looking for a rise in temperature after ovulation.
2) To check the uterus and fallopian tubes: do a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) (dye shot into cervix and imaging) and/or saline sonohystogram (the former is a better test)
3) To check the luteal phase, do a “pooled” progesterone test in the luteal phase—five to nine days after the LH surge, on three days in the second half of the cycle. Determine average progesterone.
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The upshot of all this:
There is no sin in considering consuming animal products once per week if you are currently a vegan, if it means you will be healthier and better able to convert others to a similar mode of eating. The ideal is, of course, to find a mode that is farsighted on both a personal and a global level. The mistake is to pursue the latter and ignore the former.
Even Dave “The Man” Scott, six-time winner of the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon and famed vegetarian athlete, returned to eating meat after competing for years on a 99% PPBD. Though he hasn’t eaten red meat in 33 years, he now consumes fish, chicken, and turkey.
“The irony of the whole