Your Body: Instructions for Life: Lose Weight; Get Fit & Feel Great the Organic Way

By MD Michael Haas

A family physician for more than thirty years and creator of multiple groundbreaking medical devices, Dr. Michael Haas unveils the real principles behind radiant health and emotional wellbeing. Cutting through the fads and often-contradictory advice so prevalent in the field of health, he explains in clear terms how to r

• Language: English
• Publisher: Physicians Laser Institute, LLC
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780997307917

MD Michael Haas

A family physician since 1983, Michael J. Haas, M.D., earned a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering. He holds patents and FDA approvals for several medical devices. Dr. Haas is a Registered Yoga Instructor.

Book preview

BRIEF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Imagine

CHAPTER 2 Slash and Burn (Food)

CHAPTER 3 Exercise / Activity

CHAPTER 4 Emotional / Mental Instructions for Use

CHAPTER 5 Social Activities

CHAPTER 6 Balance

CHAPTER 7 Feel Better—the How-To

CHAPTER 8 Conclusion

APPENDIX

NOTES

ADDITIONAL READING

INDEX

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: Imagine

          1.1 Organic Eating

          1.2 Evolution

          1.3 Our Selfish Genes

          1.4 Bacteria and Genes

          1.5 Human Genes

          1.6 Organic Human

          1.7 Feedback Loops

          1.8 Too Much of a Good Thing

          1.9 Pain and Pleasure

          1.10 Ten Percent

          1.11 CUST Syndrome

          1.12 Emotional and Mental

          1.13 Social

          1.14 Balance

          1.15 You Are the Magic Fix-It Pill!

CHAPTER 2: Slash and Burn (Food)

PART I

          2.1 Golden Diet

          2.2 Vegetarian or Not?

          2.3 By the Numbers

          2.4 What Are We Slashing and Burning?

          2.5 Thin Folks in China, Cuba, and Yogaville

          2.6 So What’s the Common Theme?

PART II

          2.7 Organic Foods

          2.8 Close to the Earth

          2.9 Meats

          2.10 Vegetables

          2.11 Fruits

          2.12 Greens

          2.13 Timing

          2.14 Liquids

PART III

          2.15 Wheat

          2.16 Sweeteners

          2.17 Processed Carbs

          2.18 High-Energy Foods

          2.19 Genetically Modified Foods

          2.20 Non-Spoiling Food

          2.21 Vitamin Supplements

PART IV

          2.22 Glucose, Protein, Fat

PART V

          2.23 Food Pyramids

          2.24 Why We Get the Urge to Snack

          2.25 Cake Addiction

          2.26 Gas Gauge

          2.27 Food Labels

          2.28 But John and Shirley Eat Everything and They’re Skinny!

          2.29 Counting Calories

          2.30 Fewer Calories

          2.31 Diets (Low Calorie, Low Carb, Low Fat, etc.)

          2.32 Body Fat Content

          2.33 When We Eat

          2.34 Willpower

          2.35 Empowerment

PART VI

          2.36 How to Slash and Burn

CHAPTER 3: Exercise / Activity

          3.1 Use It or Lose It

          3.2 What Defines Exercise

          3.3 Work / Exercise: Endurance, Strength and Flexibility

          3.4 What Happens to Our Body When We Exercise?

          3.5 What Did People Do for Exercise Thousands of Years Ago?

          3.6 Exercise Goals

          3.7 Fit for Daily Life

          3.8 Types of Exercise

          3.9 Yoga

          3.10 Work All the Muscles

          3.11 Don’t Overdo It!

          3.12 Muscle Memory Alertness

          3.13 Air

CHAPTER 4: Emotional / Mental Instructions for Use

          Breath

          Face-to-Face

          4.1 The Bear

          4.2 Gauging Our Mental and Emotional Health

          4.3 So Why Does Worrying about the Mental and Emotional State of Our Lives Become Important to Us?

          4.4 Distraction

          4.5 Emotional Intoxication

          4.6 Centering

          4.7 Meditation

          4.8 Human Touch

          4.9 Yoga, Part II

CHAPTER 5: Social Activities

          5.1 Intimate Relationships

          5.2 Sexual Benefits

          5.3 Social Groups

          5.4 Social Variety Needs

          5.5 Face-to-Face

          5.6 Escape

CHAPTER 6: Balance

          6.1 Excess

          6.2 Use It or Lose It, Part II

          6.3 Signs of a Happy Body

          6.4 How to Balance

          6.5 Modern Western Medicine and Balance

CHAPTER 7: Feel Better—the How-To

          7.1 Be Realistic

          7.2 Holistic

          7.3 Evaluate

          7.4 Act

CHAPTER 8: Conclusion

APPENDIX

NOTES

ADDITIONAL READING

INDEX

PREFACE

IN MY PROFESSION, the FDA regulates medicine, including all prescription medications and medical devices. One of the FDA requirements for these medications and devices is that they come with Instructions for Use (IFU). The Instructions for Use are the FDA’s way of allowing products to be used by the medical profession. They spend much time and painstaking effort guiding what is written in the IFUs. If we follow FDA guidelines for IFUs, we can expect certain outcomes on a statistical basis. Devices, drugs and, hence, our bodies all fall under the laws of time, space, and physics. So by following these important documents, when we use medical devices or prescription drugs, we expect certain outcomes. Unfortunately, the most important medical device—the human body—does not come with a manual or Instructions for Use.

In my educational roots of physics, engineering, medicine, and research, solutions to problems are undertaken by many different methods. The process of solving problems by the concept of first principles (the fundamental concepts, laws, and assumptions that apply) permeates this book. By using first principles, direct observation, the physiologic functions of the body, research facts, and a holistic approach to medicine, I hope to offer a fresh view of how to take care of your body.

to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.

—Edward Livingston Trudeau (Circa 1800)

INTRODUCTION

I’M GLAD YOU ARE CONCERNED ENOUGH about your health and well-being to pick up this book. It has the tools and information to help you lose weight, get fit, and feel great, for the long haul, without gimmicks or fads. This book outlines how and why our bodies respond to the food, stresses, and activities of our modern world. For me, the why has always been so very important. Because once we understand the why, we can then formulate and create our own plans and activities that will lead us to a more fulfilling life—and a sustainable way of healthy living. Long before entering medical school, I had this burning desire to understand the why of illness, happiness, and health. During the years of my medical education, my academic studies left many questions unanswered; this led me to seek my own answers, reading and learning from many other sources. Now, after years of accumulating and assimilating all of this information, I have compiled my knowledge here, in Your Body: Instructions for Use.

Before we get to the specifics of these instructions, here are a couple of basic examples of what I’m referring to. When it comes to exercise, many different options exist. Trying to determine what is good or bad for you personally becomes confusing and overwhelming quickly. Eating is the same way; just try to sort through the food pyramid that the US government puts out, the vegetarian diet your neighbor swears by, the fad diets constantly making headlines, organic food and the many confusing labels and parameters that go with it, not to mention counting calories (which I cannot do!) and—whew. Where to begin? For many years I worked to understand what was good or healthy, but this conflict always left me mired in confusion. Today this problem is compounded by the pervasiveness of social media—we are always connected via e-mail, texting, Twitter, Facebook, etc. How can our mental and emotional well-being survive this onslaught? But help is here. Your Body: Instructions for Use helps to unify our existence into one simplified concept, an idea that allows all of us to live better and healthier. This is the way I live my life and how I encourage my patients and family to live theirs. This book is just the shortened version of a lifelong health learning experience. It consists of analogies, discussions, examples and even a few rants and raves. Like most people, I’ve never been very good at following a structured diet, exercise prescription, or rigid directions, so I don’t expect you to either. Rather, this book is a way to gain understanding (the why) of our body and work with it for a better, more pleasant life experience. I will show you how to gradually work your current lifestyle into a system for losing weight, getting fit, and feeling great.

So what is Your Body: Instructions for Use all about? It’s a guideline of recommendations to help us make choices in life that work with our human condition. Our modern world and way of life create a lot of confusion when it comes to understanding what is good or bad for us. This book cuts through all that and addresses our true holistic nature with specific guidelines (instructions) that allow us to be the best we can be without falling prey to the suppression of modern life. Even though each chapter addresses a different aspect of our existence and gives specific recommendations, we cannot separate the various components of our life. How drastic your results will be is up to you, but if your life is only 1 percent better for this book I will have accomplished my goal.

Yours in good health,

Michael Haas, BSBME, M.D., RYT200

CHAPTER ONE:

Imagine

IMAGINE A POWERFUL AND EFFECTIVE PILL for weight loss and fitness that has only one side effect: it makes you feel great. Now imagine that wondrous pill, that powerful medicine, is already within each of us. But the catch is there is no instruction manual, no available guidance on how to release it. So how do we access this marvelous medicine? That’s a question I’ve asked myself for many years, throughout medical school and my years of private practice. The question struck me again immediately after I finished running my first marathon. At that moment, I realized, What I am experiencing is an incredibly powerful drug; if it were in pill form, it would be illegal. So what was that drug? It was an endorphin and enkephalin high that I got from running twenty-six miles. That mind-blowing high came from within myself: my body showered itself with chemicals to allow me to tolerate the minor and major pains associated with the twenty-six–mile race.

Many things we do lead to wonderful experiences. Then again, many things we do lead to very bad experiences. So how do we know the difference, and how do we promote our health so we can feel good all (or, at least most) of the time? Well, that’s what Your Body: Instructions for Use is all about. What do I mean? I mean taking care of ourselves the way we were naturally meant to so we might survive and prosper. Let’s visit some core concepts of this book before going into more detail on how to become naturally healthy.

Your Body: Instructions for Use (Summary)

Understanding how our bodies thrive

Slash and Burn—how to eat the foods we were designed to process

Exercise daily for life

Don’t let the bear eat you!—escape to the space between your thoughts

Face-to-face social encounters

Balance modern life

Fit all this into our busy schedules

1.1  ORGANIC EATING

LET’S CONSIDER THE ORGANIC WAY OF EATING in today’s society. We go to the store, or we go to a market or we go to a restaurant and we buy organic food. But what does that mean? What is that organic food? Organic food is grown without chemicals or pesticides, without anything unnatural. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has certifications that companies can aspire to, which vary a lot in what they signify. Although this frequently leads to more confusion and stress about food, a lot of care and attention is still put into developing these organic foods. So why do we create and eat organic foods?

Well, we believe that organic foods grown from the earth in a natural way, with compost or other natural fertilizers as opposed to synthetic chemicals, will be better for us. Just as we believe that eating free-range chickens rather than caged chickens will be better. Or that fish caught in the wild are better for us than farmed. These are examples of what we call organic foods. But why don’t we take it a step further: What about people? How come we don’t take care of ourselves as well as we do some of the foods we grow? Why is so much emphasis put on growing organic foods, but rarely do we discuss growing an organic person? Does eating organic foods make you an organic person?

1.2  EVOLUTION

WHAT WOULD AN ORGANIC PERSON BE LIKE? Let’s go back thousands of years to when our ancestors didn’t have grocery stores, fast food, pre-packaged or chemically treated foods. Considering an evolutionary time frame, in approximately ten thousand years, we have only changed our genetic makeup and our genetic code (the blueprint of our existence) less than one-tenth of one percent. Yet while our genetic makeup has barely changed, the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the activities we do have all changed drastically. And not only in the last ten thousand years; our foods have changed in the last few months, weeks, and days.

But wait—why are we talking about evolution? What does that have to do with losing weight, getting fit, and feeling great? Well, because one of the most important points to consider as we strive for a healthy lifestyle is that human evolutionary change is significantly slower than the development of the world around us. Our collective brains and society can create and develop new foods, new waters, new air, and new activities quicker than our bodies are able to absorb, and adjust and adapt to them. Re-read that line again—it is the essence of Your Body: Instructions for Use. This book will describe from the prospective of genetic change why we should eat and move more like our ancestors of ten to twenty thousand years ago. This is not a caveman diet, focused mainly on meats. It is about realistic foods our ancestors ate many years ago. Our ancestors would have had no more tools at their disposal than something sharp, a rock, and fire. That also applies to our total existence (our holistic selves). Our mental, emotional, social, and physical balances need to be addressed in the context of this fast-paced modern world and our evolutionary limits.

1.3  OUR SELFISH GENES

OUR BODIES ARE PROGRAMMED BY OUR SELFISH GENES: they dictate what to eat, what to drink, how to act, how to grow, how to develop and how to change. These selfish genes, and this concept of the selfish genes, have been well described in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. The concept of selfish genes is at the core of evolutionary biology. In a nutshell, it says that everything we do is ultimately dictated by the need for our genes (DNA) to propagate into the future. Every living biologic entity has the same drive to propagate its offspring into the future. Simply put: survival. The idea of selfish genes goes back to Charles Darwin, whose study of evolution and survival of the species was the beginning of the