first radio interview done

I just got off the phone with Stan Milam, a radio host from WCLO in Janesville Wisconsin. He interviewed me for 18 minutes on the air about "The Asian Diet". It was fun and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to spread the word about how adopting some of the principles of the diet can prevent disease and promote wellness. I will soon post a link to the podcast.

Today is Monday and I am at the Tiffani Kim Institute, performing acupuncture. I work half-days on Mondays. This afternoon my wife and I will take our daughter to the pediatrician. We are considering going to China this summer and want to discuss the health risks to a 6-month old. We don't want her to need too many vaccinations while she's still so young. The powers that be state that vaccines are effecive and safe, but I'm not so convinced. I worked in mental health for many years, and am very afraid of autism.

The CDC says they are safe and effective. The way they define "safe for vaccines is different that how they define "safe" for drugs. Drugs have to be compared to placebo, or no drug. Vaccines are compared to existing vaccines. So if we have an approved vaccine that is causing adverse effects in 16 out of 1000 people, and then the new one causes advers effects in 18 out of 1000, that difference is not statisically significant and then 18/1000 becomes the bar. As far as effective goes, there are a lot of people who still get the diseases for which they have been vaccinated. Now, I don't want to get all anti-vaccine here. It is a choice for the parents. Vaccines have saved lives. But I don't like the administration of multiple diseases at the same time, and I don't like vaccines being administered before they could be necessary. At birth, they want to give every child a hepatitis vaccine. My little girl would only be exposed to the Hep if my wife had it (which she does not), or through sexual contact or IV drug use. My newborn was not going to be engaging in these behaviours, so I think we can wait a few years for that. A generation before us, most people got the measles and did not die. It's not like the plague where no one can survive it.

There are some things that can kill babies, like menenigitis. So we are vaccinating for that. Not that you all need to know what we are choosing for our daughters medical care. This is a tangent- back on track. . .

I may be going to china to study some more this summer. Check out the newest reviews of my book on amazon. or go to theasiandiet.com and read more about the asian diet.

First Radio Interview coming up,.

So, there is more excitement to report. My publicist just called to tell me that I have been booked on a talk radio show on WCLO in Janesville, Wisconsin. This Monday, June 8th at 10 A.M. I don't know if they will have a podcast of it available after the show, (in case you are part of that small percentage of the world who do not live in Janesville).

My book is very down on dairy. So I imagine that is what they will want to talk about (being in the heart of dairy country). If I can get the US dairy council to try to discredit me, then I will know that my book has become successful. They can discredit me all they want, but you can't argue with 3000 years of tried-and-true culture. The Asians have far less dairy, and they have far less diet-related disease, and far less cancer.

Dairy turns to phlegm in an adult body. Phlegm can manifest in many different ways; one of which is as an abnormal growth such as a cyst, fibroid, or tumor. The Chinese understand these abnormal growths to be basically phlegmballs. They noticed more in the populations that had more dairy. So the lesson was learned that dairy is not best for adults. We can have it in moderation, but there has been a real concerted campaign to convince us that Milk is a healthy food; and it is not.

Dairy is appropriate for infants, or individuals who are emaciated. It is designed by nature to grow tissue (including fat). Most Americans are not looking to put on more mass, but are rather trying to lose or at least maintain their weight. It is best to eat a lot of vegetables, mostly cooked, simple grains, and a little of everything else.

The Asian Diet featured on AOL

An interview with me was just posted to AOL.com's "That's Fit" site. Check it out at http://www.thatsfit.com/2009/05/14/asian-diet-for-weight-loss

I am grateful to be very busy lately and have not had as much time to post. Everyone go to www.theasiandiet.com and www.acfom.com for more information about my book and practice.

I have my first book signing on Monday the 18th at The Book Stall in Winnetka, IL at 7pm. This will be after eight hours of teaching, so my voice may be a little fried. A bunch of people have RSVP'd that they are going to attend though, so I am happy.

Then in June I have a signing at the Border's books and music in Wilmette, and July has me at the Barnes and Noble in Old Orchard shopping center in Skokie, IL And then in August I am giving a lecture and book signing at the Evanston library in Evanston IL. I am looking for more groups to present to, so if you know of any, please let me know at jason@theasiandiet.com.

The Asian Diet, preface

This is the preface to my book, The Asian Diet: Simple secrets for eating right, losing weight, and being well. After you read it, please visit the website, www.theasiandiet.com Then you can visit my office website www.acfom.com which does not talk about diet, but is rather about acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.


Chapter one: Preface

Welcome to the book. I hope you enjoy it; and I hope you learn things that will help you for the rest of your life.

Have you ever noticed the shape of the average American compared to that of the average Asian? America is the most obese nation and the problem is growing rapidly. This trend is the result of poor diet and lifestyles. We are finally waking up to what the Asian cultures can teach us in terms of health care (acupuncture, herbology, tai chi); now it is time to learn what they have discovered about eating and living in balance.

The pieces of material that comprise this book are the combined lessons I try to impart to all of my patients. At the onset of treatment, I give them all a talk about adjusting their diet, lifestyle, and attitudes to improve their health, mood, and longevity. Many of my patients asked where they could get this information in a written form and I was not able to find it. So I wrote it this book.

About Me

I am an acupuncturist and herbalist. I trained in the states and completed advanced training and an internship in China. I am the President of the Illinois Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and have a private practice with my wife in Wilmette, Illinois. Many astute people have noticed that I am not Asian. What is a white guy doing in Oriental Medicine?

I earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and worked in psychiatric hospitals for several years before returning to school to study pre-med. As I was applying to med schools, I was dismayed at how unhappy the doctors with whom I worked were. I kept hearing "Don't go into medicine. Do anything else. The money is not there, the autonomy's not there, the respect's not there, and even the patient contact isn't there anymore. There's no good reason to be a doctor." The first 20 times I heard it, I shrugged it off. But I kept hearing it and it got to me. Then a nurse with whom I worked told me about the acupuncture program in town. I had been interested in Eastern philosophy since taking a course in high school, but never had considered Oriental Medicine as a career.

I read some books about OM and found the whole paradigm pretty suspect. I come from a family of physicians and was pre-med myself. I understand things like bacteria and viruses; the Chinese talk about things like "wind-cold invading the lung". It was all so foreign and different that I didn't know if I would ever believe in the system. I figured I could make a living at it because enough other people would believe. My skepticism was very short-lived, though, once I saw how effective this medicine is and how much sense the philosophy makes. Now I love what I do. I get to spend a lot of time with my patients, and I get to help them. In psychiatry, I worked pretty much with a chronic population where very few people ever improved. With Oriental Medicine, I am able to help almost all of my patients safely. Oriental Medicine is the acquired wisdom of thousands of years of experimentation, observation and documentation. They have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. I am a grateful recipient of these lessons. Now I want to share this knowledge with everyone to help them take better care of themselves and live longer and happier lives.

I have presented this information to enough groups and patients to know that this system will be difficult for many people to work with at first. This book presents guidelines and suggestions; but it does not tell you what to do. You have to decide how to implement the suggestions and create your diet. The South Beach Diet was so successful partly because it told people exactly what to do. Many of us like being given a strict structure to follow . . .for a while. But after about 60 days we get tired of having no freedom and break from the prescribed regimen. So I am just planting seeds. How they germinate is up to you. And it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. If you have a bad day, don't give up; start again. We just want to be good on more days.

The opinions expressed in this book are just that – opinions. This book makes no claims of being definitive or authoritative. The principles are written as I understand them from my years of study of Oriental Medicine and Asian culture. The ideas come from many different authors, speakers, researchers, and teachers, folk teachings, and my own ideas of what makes sense. Other authors and disciplines may disagree with some or many of the tenets I will present in these pages. It is up to you, the reader, to decide whether or not this makes sense to you. As far as I know, the Chinese have been studying nutritional therapy longer than anyone else, so I tend to believe that they have figured some things out in the past 4,000 years. The principles are simple:

• Balance and Moderation
• Cooked foods are better than raw
• Vegetables are better than fruit
• White rice is better than brown, but a variety is best
• Diet should be mostly plant-based, with grains and a little of everything else
• Simple foods are better than processed food
• Dairy is not necessary and can be harmful
• Do not over-fill your stomach
• Don't stress too much
• Exercise every day, but not too much
• Keep a Wide perspective and don't sweat the small stuff

All of these will be explained in the book.

What this book is and what it is not.

This is not a weight loss book. This is about getting into balance by eating appropriately. Some of my patients do not need to lose weight but are still very much out of balance. If you have too much weight on you, that is itself an imbalance. By getting into balance, you will naturally shed the excess pounds and become more fit. But even those who do not need to lose weight still need this information. Eating right will prevent or correct all types of disease and disorders. Our daily diet choices are the most important and influential thing we can do to affect our daily, and long term, functioning.

Chinese Dietary Therapy is a highly developed science. There are people who spend their whole lives studying and practicing this. There are food cures for all types of ailments, but that is not what this book is about. If you want to learn how to address a certain ailment with diet therapy, please consult Chinese Nutrition Therapy by Joerg Kastner or Chinese System of Food Cures by Henry Lu (out of print). There is also a lot of information about the foods that we commonly eat and how terrible they are for us. There are many studies that could be cited, but that is not what this book is about either. This book presents the basic guidelines for eating right. Most of us could greatly benefit from these simple changes. If you want to learn what foods to eat to treat a particular disease, or if you want to know everything there is to know about a particular food, read "Healing with Whole Foods" by Paul Pitchford. To learn how we have been misinformed about diet and read all the studies on how harmful our standard food choices are, read "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell. To learn the basics of eating right and being well, however, read the book in your hands right now.

I am having an interesting experience with the Amazon discussion boards. I posted some of the ideas about eating healthy according to the principles of The Asian Diet and received a lot of criticism and skepticism. "Unless it was ascertained in a lab, it is invalid" (forget about the billions of people benefiting from the Asian diet, and the millions more who are getting obese following the recommendations of "science"). Another woman posts about eating fat-free chocolate every day to lose weight and the responses are all glowing. No one asks for the science behind that suggestion. I see what people want- to eat what they want to eat and not have to think.

There is no shortcut to health. It just entails doing the right things on a consistent basis.

In other news, I have started a facebook cause to get the word out about the Asian diet. Health care costs are going to bury this country if we don't pull up from this nose dive of health. The health of a nation can be a great asset, but our ailing health is a huge liability. Too many people have been manipulated to put money in the hands of the food manufacturers and the health care system. We cannot continue getting less healthy. And the Asian Diet is a great way to start. If you have a facebook account, please search for the cause "get healthy with the asian diet", join it, and tell your friends.

addressing controversies

It seems that I am stirring up some controversy with my assertions that A)Calories don't matter; and B)White rice is better than brown. This is good. I wanted to challenge the ideas that have been thrust upon us by the food industry scientists. These ideas are all explained fully in my book "The Asian Diet: simple secrets for eating right, losing weight, and being well. htp://www.theasiandiet.com . Let's start with A.

As I posted before, no one measures the calories that we excrete. Not all the food we put in our bodies is absorbed. Only that part which we absorb will turn into energy or become stared as fat; and that amount will vary from person to person. Just because a muffin gives off 200 calories of energy when set on fire (that's how they measure calories), that tells us very little about how many of those calories any particular person will absorb.

They used to think the same thing about vitamins. That the form didn't matter, it was just the amount. Now we understand that vitamins are absorbed differently depending on the form in which they are ingested. The same is true for calories. One the blogs, I see a lot of people assert (as they have been taught) that "A Calorie is a Calorie". This is not true and is an idea put forward by those who's products tend to give off less heat when set on fire (ergo assigned less caloric value). Calories from natural sources will be easier to absorb nutrients, deliver a more steady release of energy to the body, and will be eliminated more efficiently.

and for B. White rice is brown rice with a thick hull around it. It is kind of like eating a walnut and not taking off the shell. Of course, nature had to put some nutrients into making that shell, but those are not for us. They have a poor bio-aviliabilty and will slow the metabolism because they are more difficult to digest. White rice is the best, most hypo-allergenic, easily assimilated, and energetically neutral of the grains (all foods and herbs have properties- warming, cooling, moistening, drying, etc... white rice is completely neutral).

Brown rice was popularized in the macrobiotic movement which started with studies in Japan. Brown rice in Japan in partially milled, which is to say that they've knocked about 3/4 of the hull off. The stuff we get here is completely unshucked. So unless you're going to mill it yourself, it's a tall order for our digestive systems to process.

But what about the vitamins? You should get all the vitamins you need from the vegetables; and veggies should constitute the bulk of your diet. The Japanese armada was feeding its soldiers white rice and they started getting a disease called beriberi that comes from a lack of vitamin b12. They switched to brown rice and the beriberi went away. The thing is: That's all they were feeding the soldiers. B12 is found in virtually every fruit and vegetable. So as long as you are eating produce, you won't have to worry about beriberi.

The Asian Diet is now available and in stock at Amazon.com . Still waiting for Borders to post it, but everyone can now order it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble

This book is taking off, get your copy before they run out. It will change the way you understand food and empower you to take charge of your health. It's an easy read, but full of important information.

The Asian Diet is now available at barnesandnoble.com

They have finally updated their server and have my book "The Asian Diet: simple secrets for eating right. losing weight, and being well is available for purchase from Barnesandnoble.com. Amazon and borders are taking longer to get it into their system, but it is now available from a major retailer. Yea!

So there was a little bit of controversy with this first printing of the book. theasiandiet.com The book is, and should be, titled "The Asian Diet: Simple secrets for eating right, losing weight, and being well." A long time ago, the publisher and I were coming together on the subtitle and someone suggested "how the ancient principles of moderation and balance will help you eat right, lose weight, and live longer". Well, that's the cover that made it to the printer for the first run. They only printed 2000 at first, so it was not too bad, but if you get one of them, they will be the collectors' edition and I promise that I will autograph it for you.

Another thing I have been working on is creating a radio show on blogtalkradio. I have not yet decided on the time, length, or frequency, but I may start hosting a call-in show for questions about health, acupuncture, and the Asian Diet. I will keep people posted.

Today was a great example of how people are misinformed about food. I have a friend who has been slowly putting on weight. We got to talking and she revealed that she eats very healthy. She has yogurt, cereal, microwave diet meals, fat-free and sugar-free baked goods, and cottage cheese. The Asian Diet will tell you that none of these things are healthy. For one thing, diary is designed to make things grow. Overweight people do not want to grow. Secondly, they are cold. Cold food steals your energy in order to heat it. This slows your metabolism. Diet microwave meals have a lot of preservatives and chemical additives. Keep it simple and eat simple foods. Just because it says "lean" or "fat-free" or "sugar-free" does not mean it's good. I've got some great Arsenic that is low-calorie, no saturated fat, caffeine free, lactose-free, etc. That doesn't mean it's good for you.

Somehow we have been convinced that foods are nothing more than the sum of their parts. This is how medicine used to see the body, but now they recognize the interactions between the different systems. The same is true for foods. They are immensely complex, and so are our bodies. To simplify an orange to equaling vitamin c is like saying that people have value because of their livers and for all that their livers can do. There is a lot more to us than our livers, and there's a lot more to an orange than vitamin C. We did not evolve by seeking out and eating sources of vitamin C. We evolved by eating food. Plain and simple. As Michael Pollan wrote in his book "In defense of food: an eater's manifesto" we should "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants". It's a good book and I suggest everyone read it. And if you would like to read more about chinese medicine check out acfom.com

They tell me that I should keep these posts short, so

The Asian Diet is in!

I just received my copies of my book The Asian Diet: Simple secrets for eating right, losing weight, and being well although this first run is a misprint (collectors item) in that they printed an incorrect subtitle How the ancient principles of moderation and balance will help you eat right, lose weight, and live longer. This was the subtitle that the publisher first suggested and it was a mix-up that the printer thought that it was the one to use. They caught the error after the first 2000 were printed, but those are the ones that are being sent out first. Since I got mine today, and since they all went out together, I assume Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and the other bookstores will be getting theirs today or this week. I don't know how long it takes them to unpack them, but please ask at your local bookstore about it. For sure it is available at my office, A Center for Oriental Medicine at 415 1/2 Fourth St. in Wilmette.

Today I leave you with one of the truisms presented in the book. The way the things are outside the body is the way things are inside the body. Think about foods that are heavy, dense, and sticky. Is that how you want to be? So you don't want to have too much of those things (cheese, sweets, ice cream, etc). But don't start evaluating all the foods you eat and discard any that you consider to be dense. I'm sure someone may hear this notion, decide that rice cakes are the lightest food, eat only rice cakes, and think that they are being healthy. Other truisms in the book are "you should have a little of most foods", and "you should eat a wide variety of foods".
That's all for now.

Probiotics

I have received questions about this topic, so I will summarize what I discuss in The Asian Diet: Simple secrets for eating right, losing weight, and being well about probiotics.

Bacteria has gotten a bad name and is regarded by many as an enemy of good health. This is not always true. There are certain bacteria that we need for proper functioning and protection. For example, women's vaginas need a certain amount of bacteria to prevent the growth of yeast which leads to yeast infections. Our intestines harbor bacteria that help digest our food. When we take antibiotics, these intestinal bacteria get wiped out and can often cause intestinal problems such as diarrhea.

Probiotics are supplements that restore the good bacteria in our gut. Some people think that we should always be on this supplement. I disagree. I think that probiotics make sense when you are taking antibiotics. When your troops are under attack and being killed off, you need to supplement the troops. When there is no war, you don't have to keep sending in more brigades. Too much or too little of anything is not a good thing. I also worry that artificially regulating your bacteria levels too much can impair the body's ability to self-regulate.

So you might think "I am not taking antibiotics so I don't need probiotics". I hope that this is true, but antibiotics have infiltrated much of our food supply. Dairy, beef, pork, and poultry are often tainted with antibiotics because commercial over-production keeps the animals in disgustingly crowded pens which encourage the spread of disease. It is just like when people have been confined in Ghetto's in the past. Overcrowding breeds disease. So what do the industrial farms do? Do they recognize that overcrowding is damaging and provide the livestock with more space? No, the keep them in this unhygenic environment and shoot them up with antibiotics.

This is why is it so important to buy free-range, antiobiotic-free, dairy and meat products. Most of us have been ingesting probiotics unknowingly on a daily basis, so most of us could benefit from a course of probiotic supplementation. But I don't want people to be on these supplements too long. Fix the problem, then avoid the problem in the future. Though beware, that butter you put on your bread in the restaurant is probably not antibiotic-free. Nor are much of the dairy and animal products that you will be served in a restaurant. So periodic courses of probiotics may be necessary.

Eat well, be well. That is the lesson of The Asian Diet. To learn more about Asian wisdom and medicine, check out the website for my office, A Center for Oriental Medicine