The Two Are Inextricably Intertwined Over the Medium Term
When I was younger, about eight years ago, when I had first gotten out of college and was on the road organizing all over the South, I used to read pop nutrition books in my spare time. I got hooked on lowfat vegetarian stuff, and practically memorized Dean Ornish's _Reversing Heart Disease_. I can still quote very large portions of it.
And in those dark days, when I was driving around in the middle of nowhere looking for workers' houses where they would invariably slam the door in my face when I tried to talk to them about the union, I developed a rather elaborate fantasy of what I wanted to do with my life.
It went something like this:
Half the year, I'd travel around the country, speaking to large groups of people suffering with heart disease or obesity, showing them the light about the lowfat vegan diet. I'd write books, appear on talk shows, wear fabulous size zero suits, etc. I'd convince insurance companies to give lower rates to lowfat vegans with cholesterol below 150. I'd convince McDonald's to start offering lowfat veggie burgers. No mayo.
The other half of the year, I'd work in hospitals teaching heart patients and their families how to cook lowfat vegan and save their lives, with minimal stress, possible to cook easy, tasty food, even if you're a mom with two full time jobs, etc. I'd be the kind of woman other women like -- down to earth, focused on taking care of family, helping other women cook food for their men that would both make them happy and not kill them.
Somewhere in all this fantasy world was a very cute vegan cardiologist who liked cats and loved my cooking. I never met the guy, but I was tempted at some points to put an ad in the local university papers that went something like this,
"Thin, beautiful, Ivy League educated social justice professional seeks vegan cardiologist for lowfat dining, conversation, and changing the world."
I never did put the ad in the paper because in typical American woman fashion, I thought I wasn't thin enough. Now I was about 115 at the time, quite thin and cute (I was 22 for goodness sakes!) but still thought I wasn't quite good enough.
At 30 and 104, this seems very silly.
When I look at my DWIDP P:F:C ratios and realize that I am now so far from being a lowfat vegan that I don't even recognize myself, it seems sillier.
[Actually, what would be really funny would be if said vegan cardiologist was actually out there, read this, and tried to win me back to the High Carb Darkness. If you won't turn to the dark side, then perhaps...]
My work got better, I started organizing nurses, which fed my need to reform the broken American health care system while allowing me to help workers stand up for themselves on their jobs. Tons of career success, more than I could have ever hoped for. Lots of lowfat vegan cooking. I even lived with a vegan for two years... we met shortly after the Republican National Convention at a legal defense meeting for the 420 protesters who were arrested. I had brought vegan cookies. He said he liked the cookies, and asked if I was vegan. I said I was. He said, "Me too." I thought, it's the first boy vegan I've ever seen. Two years later, he was still living in my apartment. That was right around the time that MR was writing "Rant: Moderate CR" from which the title of this post was taken... Sept. 2002.
It's all better now... I live alone, I was saved from high carb hell, I love my work and am more dedicated to it than ever. But the vision of changing the world through food has never entirely faded.
So when a large group of us got rather lost on the walk back from dinner in downtown Charleston on Thursday night, and I wound up in conversation with Brian Delaney, it was no big surprise that the topic turned to how to change the world.
He was horrified by the election results. He lives in Sweeden, remember, though he is American. I was also horrified by the results, but as a union organizer, I live with the horror of people acting against their own interests every day... after nine years, it stings a little less.
He wants to write a book about it... he's a writer, basically... but he also has a second CR book in the works. We discussed what would be the right thing to do.
I told him about how my mother, who knows everything, once said to me, after listening to me rattle on about CR for hours on end, "This is how you'll change the world."
By this time we had located and returned to the hotel. We were standing in the hallway finishing our conversation in whispers so as not to wake the other hotel guests.
"The public health system in this country is on the verge of collapse. The nursing shortage is only the tip of the iceberg. We have to stop people from getting sick," I said.
He told me about the calculations he had once made that even 15% CR could so dramatically improve people's health that it would solve the very problem of the baby boomers getting old and sick and destroying the economy with health care costs.
"We can convince people to do this. We can convince governments to buy into this if they think it will save the public health infrastructure." That was me, absolutely ecstatic to find someone who thought my crazy ideas weren't so crazy after all.
"What are you doing with the rest of your life?" he asked me.
"I told you before, I'm up for anything."
We shook hands and parted company, him returning to his room with three roommates, me to my little insomniac palace (I know better than to inflict my insomina on roommates, so I spring for my own room) to listen to Duran Duran for hours before finally being able to sleep.
The next day at dinner I cornered Michael Rae at the salad bar. One great thing about people who weigh all of their food is that they really can't escape if you're trying to talk to them while they're trying to make a salad. I convinced him to sit down at my table and I rapidly outed myself as a serious Michael Rae groupie. I asked him so many questions that at one point, Dean, who was sitting across the table, barked in rather un-Deanlike fashion, "Let him eat!"
After a long conversation in which I try to convince him that "Rant: Moderate CR" is the most beautiful thing ever written (try to envision the scene: MR trying to eat a salad, me dramatically quoting that line about prevention of paraplegia through the non-jumping off of cliffs not being a victory for neurosurgery), Brian appears and apologizes for attempting to pull Michael away from me but points out that they need to have a meeting about the medical study. I reluctantly relinquish my grip on Michael (who is still eating his salad and is now being accosted by other fans who want to ask him questions) and sadly resolve to wait somewhere until the boys are done with their meeting and ready to go out resveratrol hopping. Then it occurs to Brian that I should just sit in on the meeting, and I happily promise not to say anything. (Chanelling the fly on the wall technique of the Black Moth there.)
That's how I ended up in that meeting I told you about, where Brian articulated a way to get the masses involved in moderate CR, make lots of people be healthier, and hopefully fund the research that will find the true cure for aging in the meantime.
But there was Michael, arguing that we can't get distracted by disease prevention. That we should fund the Methuselah Mouse Prize and get the rodent study done. Michael, whose work I've memorized, who changed my life without having any idea he was doing it, all the while happily formulating whey powder and writing beautiful articles in some extremely cold place in Canada.
Well, what's a blogger girl to do? I'm an organizer, I'm not a scientist. I don't understand the science... I know that eating the right things and eating less and less makes me feel good. I believe what Brian is saying: that moving large portions of the population to "moderate" CR would not only save them from horrible disease, it would save the public health system.
What de Grey is saying (that aging can be cured) makes sense to me too, and as an organizer, I live every day with the idea that the way most people see the world is just dead wrong.
First and foremost in my mind was the thought that I have to live forever so that I can spend as much time as possible in the presence of Brian Delaney and Michael Rae. At the risk of being overly dramatic (as though that ship had not already sailed), I was beginning to feel a lot of kinship with those folks who just left their fishing boats on the shore and ran off to follow Jesus.
Second, I am trying to figure out what to do. For three weeks I had been carrying a blog entry about the MM Prize in my head. (I write a lot of things in my head in advance, and I sometimes set goals that I have to achieve before I allow myself to write them. It's a clever little motivational game.) But there is Brian, disagreeing with the very premise of the MM Prize.
In the end, I did what any sensible girl would do in the situation: I got a glass of wine. I tried to convince Michael to go out with us but he said he needed to sleep (by this time I had been looking up at him for two hours while we stood next to each other and I was starting to think that he must be taller than the six feet that is quoted in the press) but Brian and CR Hacker Boy were up for resveratrol hopping, so we went to downtown Charleston, split a bottle of Pinot Noir, and talked about high school, ex-girlfriends, politics, and the weather. I disappeared to the ladies room and called my mother on my cell phone, attempting to communicate the wonder of this entire experience in a short enough time that the men might just assume that I was putting a lot of attention into re-applying my makeup.
I spent the next two days seeking resolution to the questions that were exploding in my head. The scientists talked a lot about preventing disease and how CR'd folks are healthier. But according to Luigi Fontana's presentation, so are raw food vegans who aren't CR'd... sorta like my old diet. What he didn't talk about (and I understand that we have no reliable biomarkers for it, only dead rats) was whether or not the raw food vegan non-CR'd were going to age and die like their neighbors, just without an early heart attack.
What does this mean to me? I'm not going back to being a non-CR'd vegan. (Luigi didn't seem amused when I said that if there's no difference between CR and being a non-CR'd vegan, I'd run screaming out of the room to go find some rice and beans.) I am going to keep dropping my calories until I no longer like it. See previous ten or so entries for more detail than you ever could have wanted on that.
The question I kept asking myself is: do I believe that we should try to convert people to CR, make it more accessible, encourage people to practice "moderate" CR, much like my 22 year old vision of changing the world?
Or will that just add fuel to those who say "You can't really cure aging, but look, you can feel better longer without sacrificing too much."
I asked both Brian and Michael at separate times what they thought was the advantage to spreading the word about CR. I mean, we always talk as though getting more people involved, making it more "accessible" is a good in and of itself, but I wanted to know why.
Brian said simply, "Because it's bad for people to die." Michael didn't get a chance to give me much of an answer because I just passed him a note during a meeting.
The premise of the blog (other than as an exercise in self-indulgence on my part) is that an example of someone easing into CR, with all the silly mistakes and exciting discoveries, will make it easier for others to do CR. So it would seem that I believe that we should recruit others. I am an organizer... my orientation on the world is to convince people to do things that I have found to be good.
But what if I should be recruiting others to fund the development of the immortality pill?
What about the unnecessary suffering of those who age and get sick in the meantime?
I know, I know, I should just organize nurses and stop whining about my existential crisis over whether or not I should publish the blog entry entitled "Chloe, the World's Longest Living Mouse."
But one of the principles by which I have always lived my life is that what an individual does matters. If I believe in something, I act accordingly, to the best of my ability, even when it's hard. Or even when my contributions are so small that it would seem that they couldn't possibly matter.
Chloe is still riding around in my head, complete with a pink bow in her little mouse fur. She'd really like to tell you all about it, but she can't, cause her translator (that's me) is having this silly existential crisis.
Don't worry, I won't let the cat eat her.
And in those dark days, when I was driving around in the middle of nowhere looking for workers' houses where they would invariably slam the door in my face when I tried to talk to them about the union, I developed a rather elaborate fantasy of what I wanted to do with my life.
It went something like this:
Half the year, I'd travel around the country, speaking to large groups of people suffering with heart disease or obesity, showing them the light about the lowfat vegan diet. I'd write books, appear on talk shows, wear fabulous size zero suits, etc. I'd convince insurance companies to give lower rates to lowfat vegans with cholesterol below 150. I'd convince McDonald's to start offering lowfat veggie burgers. No mayo.
The other half of the year, I'd work in hospitals teaching heart patients and their families how to cook lowfat vegan and save their lives, with minimal stress, possible to cook easy, tasty food, even if you're a mom with two full time jobs, etc. I'd be the kind of woman other women like -- down to earth, focused on taking care of family, helping other women cook food for their men that would both make them happy and not kill them.
Somewhere in all this fantasy world was a very cute vegan cardiologist who liked cats and loved my cooking. I never met the guy, but I was tempted at some points to put an ad in the local university papers that went something like this,
"Thin, beautiful, Ivy League educated social justice professional seeks vegan cardiologist for lowfat dining, conversation, and changing the world."
I never did put the ad in the paper because in typical American woman fashion, I thought I wasn't thin enough. Now I was about 115 at the time, quite thin and cute (I was 22 for goodness sakes!) but still thought I wasn't quite good enough.
At 30 and 104, this seems very silly.
When I look at my DWIDP P:F:C ratios and realize that I am now so far from being a lowfat vegan that I don't even recognize myself, it seems sillier.
[Actually, what would be really funny would be if said vegan cardiologist was actually out there, read this, and tried to win me back to the High Carb Darkness. If you won't turn to the dark side, then perhaps...]
My work got better, I started organizing nurses, which fed my need to reform the broken American health care system while allowing me to help workers stand up for themselves on their jobs. Tons of career success, more than I could have ever hoped for. Lots of lowfat vegan cooking. I even lived with a vegan for two years... we met shortly after the Republican National Convention at a legal defense meeting for the 420 protesters who were arrested. I had brought vegan cookies. He said he liked the cookies, and asked if I was vegan. I said I was. He said, "Me too." I thought, it's the first boy vegan I've ever seen. Two years later, he was still living in my apartment. That was right around the time that MR was writing "Rant: Moderate CR" from which the title of this post was taken... Sept. 2002.
It's all better now... I live alone, I was saved from high carb hell, I love my work and am more dedicated to it than ever. But the vision of changing the world through food has never entirely faded.
So when a large group of us got rather lost on the walk back from dinner in downtown Charleston on Thursday night, and I wound up in conversation with Brian Delaney, it was no big surprise that the topic turned to how to change the world.
He was horrified by the election results. He lives in Sweeden, remember, though he is American. I was also horrified by the results, but as a union organizer, I live with the horror of people acting against their own interests every day... after nine years, it stings a little less.
He wants to write a book about it... he's a writer, basically... but he also has a second CR book in the works. We discussed what would be the right thing to do.
I told him about how my mother, who knows everything, once said to me, after listening to me rattle on about CR for hours on end, "This is how you'll change the world."
By this time we had located and returned to the hotel. We were standing in the hallway finishing our conversation in whispers so as not to wake the other hotel guests.
"The public health system in this country is on the verge of collapse. The nursing shortage is only the tip of the iceberg. We have to stop people from getting sick," I said.
He told me about the calculations he had once made that even 15% CR could so dramatically improve people's health that it would solve the very problem of the baby boomers getting old and sick and destroying the economy with health care costs.
"We can convince people to do this. We can convince governments to buy into this if they think it will save the public health infrastructure." That was me, absolutely ecstatic to find someone who thought my crazy ideas weren't so crazy after all.
"What are you doing with the rest of your life?" he asked me.
"I told you before, I'm up for anything."
We shook hands and parted company, him returning to his room with three roommates, me to my little insomniac palace (I know better than to inflict my insomina on roommates, so I spring for my own room) to listen to Duran Duran for hours before finally being able to sleep.
The next day at dinner I cornered Michael Rae at the salad bar. One great thing about people who weigh all of their food is that they really can't escape if you're trying to talk to them while they're trying to make a salad. I convinced him to sit down at my table and I rapidly outed myself as a serious Michael Rae groupie. I asked him so many questions that at one point, Dean, who was sitting across the table, barked in rather un-Deanlike fashion, "Let him eat!"
After a long conversation in which I try to convince him that "Rant: Moderate CR" is the most beautiful thing ever written (try to envision the scene: MR trying to eat a salad, me dramatically quoting that line about prevention of paraplegia through the non-jumping off of cliffs not being a victory for neurosurgery), Brian appears and apologizes for attempting to pull Michael away from me but points out that they need to have a meeting about the medical study. I reluctantly relinquish my grip on Michael (who is still eating his salad and is now being accosted by other fans who want to ask him questions) and sadly resolve to wait somewhere until the boys are done with their meeting and ready to go out resveratrol hopping. Then it occurs to Brian that I should just sit in on the meeting, and I happily promise not to say anything. (Chanelling the fly on the wall technique of the Black Moth there.)
That's how I ended up in that meeting I told you about, where Brian articulated a way to get the masses involved in moderate CR, make lots of people be healthier, and hopefully fund the research that will find the true cure for aging in the meantime.
But there was Michael, arguing that we can't get distracted by disease prevention. That we should fund the Methuselah Mouse Prize and get the rodent study done. Michael, whose work I've memorized, who changed my life without having any idea he was doing it, all the while happily formulating whey powder and writing beautiful articles in some extremely cold place in Canada.
Well, what's a blogger girl to do? I'm an organizer, I'm not a scientist. I don't understand the science... I know that eating the right things and eating less and less makes me feel good. I believe what Brian is saying: that moving large portions of the population to "moderate" CR would not only save them from horrible disease, it would save the public health system.
What de Grey is saying (that aging can be cured) makes sense to me too, and as an organizer, I live every day with the idea that the way most people see the world is just dead wrong.
First and foremost in my mind was the thought that I have to live forever so that I can spend as much time as possible in the presence of Brian Delaney and Michael Rae. At the risk of being overly dramatic (as though that ship had not already sailed), I was beginning to feel a lot of kinship with those folks who just left their fishing boats on the shore and ran off to follow Jesus.
Second, I am trying to figure out what to do. For three weeks I had been carrying a blog entry about the MM Prize in my head. (I write a lot of things in my head in advance, and I sometimes set goals that I have to achieve before I allow myself to write them. It's a clever little motivational game.) But there is Brian, disagreeing with the very premise of the MM Prize.
In the end, I did what any sensible girl would do in the situation: I got a glass of wine. I tried to convince Michael to go out with us but he said he needed to sleep (by this time I had been looking up at him for two hours while we stood next to each other and I was starting to think that he must be taller than the six feet that is quoted in the press) but Brian and CR Hacker Boy were up for resveratrol hopping, so we went to downtown Charleston, split a bottle of Pinot Noir, and talked about high school, ex-girlfriends, politics, and the weather. I disappeared to the ladies room and called my mother on my cell phone, attempting to communicate the wonder of this entire experience in a short enough time that the men might just assume that I was putting a lot of attention into re-applying my makeup.
I spent the next two days seeking resolution to the questions that were exploding in my head. The scientists talked a lot about preventing disease and how CR'd folks are healthier. But according to Luigi Fontana's presentation, so are raw food vegans who aren't CR'd... sorta like my old diet. What he didn't talk about (and I understand that we have no reliable biomarkers for it, only dead rats) was whether or not the raw food vegan non-CR'd were going to age and die like their neighbors, just without an early heart attack.
What does this mean to me? I'm not going back to being a non-CR'd vegan. (Luigi didn't seem amused when I said that if there's no difference between CR and being a non-CR'd vegan, I'd run screaming out of the room to go find some rice and beans.) I am going to keep dropping my calories until I no longer like it. See previous ten or so entries for more detail than you ever could have wanted on that.
The question I kept asking myself is: do I believe that we should try to convert people to CR, make it more accessible, encourage people to practice "moderate" CR, much like my 22 year old vision of changing the world?
Or will that just add fuel to those who say "You can't really cure aging, but look, you can feel better longer without sacrificing too much."
I asked both Brian and Michael at separate times what they thought was the advantage to spreading the word about CR. I mean, we always talk as though getting more people involved, making it more "accessible" is a good in and of itself, but I wanted to know why.
Brian said simply, "Because it's bad for people to die." Michael didn't get a chance to give me much of an answer because I just passed him a note during a meeting.
The premise of the blog (other than as an exercise in self-indulgence on my part) is that an example of someone easing into CR, with all the silly mistakes and exciting discoveries, will make it easier for others to do CR. So it would seem that I believe that we should recruit others. I am an organizer... my orientation on the world is to convince people to do things that I have found to be good.
But what if I should be recruiting others to fund the development of the immortality pill?
What about the unnecessary suffering of those who age and get sick in the meantime?
I know, I know, I should just organize nurses and stop whining about my existential crisis over whether or not I should publish the blog entry entitled "Chloe, the World's Longest Living Mouse."
But one of the principles by which I have always lived my life is that what an individual does matters. If I believe in something, I act accordingly, to the best of my ability, even when it's hard. Or even when my contributions are so small that it would seem that they couldn't possibly matter.
Chloe is still riding around in my head, complete with a pink bow in her little mouse fur. She'd really like to tell you all about it, but she can't, cause her translator (that's me) is having this silly existential crisis.
Don't worry, I won't let the cat eat her.
posted by April @ 7:13 AM
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