It is unfortunate that simply saying the above headline to a person of color is now considered RACIST. Unfortunate because in the pursuit of health, it is helpful to understand a person's genetic makeup. You learn a person's genetic makeup by exploring their deep history. "Where did your people come from?" is a question I have used for years to begin to understand this. I get very interesting answers and stories.

It would be so much easier if everyone would do genetic testing like to assess their origins. If someone were to ask me "Where are you REALLY from" I would answer "I am a Euro-mutt."  If they pressed me further, I'd say I'm from "Northern and Western Europe, plus a trace of Polynesian islander". In spite of family lore and my blood type, I know that I am not descended from the native tribes of North America--unless 23 and Me (the gene testing I used) has mistaken Native American genes for Polynesian. I have no way to assess that.

Discussing people's origins and genetics is important in medicine. To really understand a person's evolutionary predispositions and needs, we need to know where (or better, WHO) they are "from".

I understand that people of color have long been harassed by repeated questions along these lines. I know that recently a British royal employee apologized and resigned after questioning an Australian official this way. The social ramifications are playing out as they must in this time of high sensitivity. As medical professional, I maintain that we need to be allowed to talk about our evolution and genetics, because if we cannot, we are deprived of a huge and growing resource.

Genetics and epigenetics will be part of the Future of Medicine. There is no avoiding it. Learning about a person's evolutionary origins is not racist in this setting, it is humanist. It is an attempt to understand, and to help.

Please be kind to each other. Regardless of variations in genetics and in appearance, we are all human. It is my opinion that all humans deserve a certain base level of respect and dignity. Give it. Without question. Work to recognize and deprogram your biases. Accept that not all words that hit your buttons are "racist" or sexist. Your buttons are YOUR biases, your programming, and only you have the ability to do something about them.

Image below: Skin with low melanin, and its layers.

Walking.  We figure out how to do it after crawling for a while.  We do it for decades without a second thought.  We skip and run, we carry loads and climb ladders and live life on two feet.  Walking is effortless.  

When an injury happens, suddenly walking isn't so easy.  We must learn how to walk again, step by wobbly step, using crutches, rails and the strong arm of a friend. Over the years our injuries accumulate.  It isn't many few decades after we stop crawling that we begin to stiffen up and slow down.  Arthritis brings persistent pain into our paces.  

Healing is spontaneous most of the time, and sometimes we get knees repaired or joints replaced.  When walking isn't so easy, we appreciate just how important it is.  Our ability to walk is part and parcel with our lives.

Walking speed correlates directly with life expectancy in our later years.  Fast walkers live longer.  Overall, not in every specific case.  When congestive heart failure (CHF) strikes and we are confined to our beds, walking can save us or kill us.  Research has shown that most people with CHF get better when they begin a program of walking.  A few individuals have worse outcomes, early, the rest of have better outcomes, period.

Walking is a test and if you pass, you live.

The irony is rich. The term "snake oil" has come to mean everything that is fraudulent. The reference is to the infamous "snake oil salesman" who pitched and sold his wares out of the back of a wagon to the unsuspecting villagers of the American west.

Snake oil has real medicinal value. It was used as medicine before the North American continent was on the map. Centuries ago the Chinese used an oil made from a cold water snake called Enhydris chinensis to treat joint pain and bursitis. It was introduced to the US by Chinese laborers who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad in the mid 1800's. There's evidence that the ancient Egyptians used it too. In the early 1700's the English had a patent medicine made from snake oil. Snake oil was sold here as a panacea in the early 1900's, but the products sold were probably more filler and adulterant than they were actual snake oil.

So what's in it that's good for you? Snake oil, depending on the snakes used to derive it, can be a rich source of an fatty acid known as EPA, eicosapentanoic acid. EPA is used by the body to synthesize series 3 prostaglandins, which are anti-inflammatory and pain relieving. You can know EPA is important because it's in human breast milk.  EPA is effective for treating depression, improving cognitive function, autoimmune diseases including rheumatism, high cholesterol, hypertension, and more. 

EPA can be derived in the body from other fatty acids, but it's much easier to eat in your food. The richest sources are fish: herring, mackerel, salmon, trout, pilchards, menhaden and sardines. Fish do not make their own EPA. They get it from eating algae like spirulina, which we also can eat. Plant foods don't contain any EPA at all.

Part of the reason it's easier to eat EPA than to make it in your body has to do with human genetics. Some people have the gene to make the enzyme which lets them convert ALA (alpha linolenic acid) into EPA. Other people have mutations in their genes that limit their ability to do the conversion. Diabetes and some allergies also limit a person's ability to convert ALA to EPA. ALA is an essential fatty acid, meaning that no humans can make it; we have to get it from the diet.

If we don't make it very well, and we don't eat much fish, we need to get our EPA some other way to keep our cell membranes happy.  Many healthcare professionals recommend that we take fish oil.  Fish oil contains 12-18% EPA.  Salmon oil tops the list at ~18%.  Chinese water snake oil contains ~ 20% EPA, whereas rattlesnake oil is said to contain 8.5%. Cod liver oil has more DHA than EPA and is best reserved for specific uses, like building baby brains or healing brain injuries.

The reason why some snakes have more EPA than others has to do with the temperatures that they live in. Snakes and fish are both cold blooded, so they have to function with their bodies at the same temperature as their environments. Omega 3 fats like EPA don't harden in cold temperatures like omega 6s do. They help keep cell membranes flexible. Flexible membranes don't get injured as easily, and are able to function better. Cold water fish, or cold water snakes, will have more EPA than those that live in warm sunshine, like rattlesnakes.

The next time someone tells you that a treatment is "snake oil", remember this. Public attitudes and language reflect our history, not our future. Science continues to give us reason to revise belief systems, erase myths, and sometimes to welcome old treatments back into the fold.

We humans are part of the web of life in a way that is somewhat unpleasant to consider.  We think of parasites as those things that grow on trees and use the tree's sap for fuel, like mistletoe. We know about the parasites that you can get in your gut from traveling. But we don't like to think about the millions of microbes that live in our guts, on our skin, in our noses, and unfortunately, inside every cell in our bodies.  In fact, at least of quarter of us have Staphylococcus aureus living inside our noses.  This is the microbe that is called MRSA when it has become resistant to the antibiotic methycillin.

Sometimes the things that live on and in us are actually useful.  At that point it is no longer a parasitic relationship, it is more of a synbiosis or eubiosis.  There are bugs (microbes) in our guts that help digest our food, and also that make vitamins that we need.  Mitochondria are organelles inside our cells that were probably parasites at one time, but they were so useful that we came to depend on them.  They make ATP, the cash of energy currency in the body.  We know that mitochondria were most likely independent organisms because they have their own DNA.

Relatively recently in human history, a bold man drank a potion of Helicobacter pylori bacteria, and gave himself gastric ulcers.  Before that we didn't know that particular bug had much to do with ulcer formation.  But now we know.  And most of us have at least a few of this bug in us.  In fact, pretty much all of us have a few of lots of different kinds of bugs that could be dangerous if they overgrew.

We get some microbes from our parents, and gain new ones throughout life. Babies who are born the normal way, through their mother's vagina, get their mother's vaginal flora in their mouths and swallow it.  That sets up the kind of biota that lives in their guts for life.  Usually a child's gut biota is fairly stable by age 3. A lot of our gut biota depends on what we eat.  A sugary diet sets up a whole different community than a vegetable and fiber-rich diet. You can guess at which one is better for you. A stable community in your gut is protective because it stops other kinds from getting established. People with very stable healthy populations of bugs in their guts can eat anything and never get sick from it.


Stomach acid is the other normal way that we prevent new or bad bugs from setting up house inside us.  Infants don't have much acid, so they are especially susceptible to whatever they eat.  Adults normally have such strong acid that not much survives the stomach and gets to the intestines. But if we block our stomach acid with anti-acids, we are at risk for getting the wrong kinds of bugs in our guts.


The fastest way to mess up your microbial communities is to take antibiotics. The more high powered the drugs, the more imbalanced your biota will be as a result. The more often you take antibiotics, the more the remaining community will be antibiotic resistant.  The bug that really hits hard on people who've taken a lot of antibiotics is called Clostridium difficile.  It is on the CDC's list of extremely dangerous antibiotic resistant bugs.


In naturopathic-speak we call your body the "terrain".  It is the ground upon which things grow. The list of possible infections is endless, and the number of bugs on and in you this very moment is also endless. As long as we are strong and relaxed and young enough, we don't get sick.  When we get run down and weak the microbes can get the better of us.  Stress from life events raises our cortisol and decreases our immune response, and the microbial populations start booming.  We feed them sugary junk, and don't exercise enough, and don't keep our bowel movements regular, and they start running the show.  It is possible to end up sick from the same bugs that you've been carrying around for 40 years or more.

There's new research that shows that depression, anxiety, and obesity are linked to particular sets of gut bugs.  Experiments in mice and humans have shown that taking the microbes from an anxious person's gut and putting them in a calm person will make change what we thought was their personality.  And switching gut bugs in mice can make a fat mouse skinny and vice versa.  The wrong gut bugs are linked to all kinds of diseases of the gut, from ulcerative colitis and crohn's disease to IBS.  There's a lot more information coming down the pipe about this.  Supplement companies are trying to figure out how to introduce the right microbes into people's guts to help them heal from various diseases and mental states.

There's not much you can do about the fact that you will be exposed to microbes.  No amount of antibacterial soap will protect you.  The thing that will is keeping yourself healthy and calm enough to mount a good immune response.  That way you keep the populations down to reasonable levels, where they may even help you somehow.  Oh, and garlic will help.  Garlic turns out to be the very simplest way to keep your gut biota in line.  If you can stand it, some raw garlic every day kills the baddies and keeps the goodies.  If you can't stand it, you might need some more advanced help.

In this day and age, it is necessary to second guess every information source.  So much "information" goes by that it becomes difficult to sort out what is advertising and what is not.  Even reporting about scientific research can completely skew the issue.  It doesn't pay to be gullible.

The problem is that we are wired to be gullible.  We humans would much rather trust in some comfortable authority figure and believe what they say, than to do all that research and work ourselves.  Figuring out the truth takes time...and sometimes the truth is elusive.  We just don't know everything yet.  We'd rather just believe.

Modern first-world culture is divisive and argumentative.  People agree to disagree more often than agreeing in substance.  As in other parts of our public arena, in the healthcare debate the shouting overwhelms reasonable conversation. Conventional treatments espoused by governments and establishment medical business may not be supported by the research. The policy came about when someone had to make a decision by a deadline using the best information available. We all do it.  We have to go on what we know, even if it is incomplete or incorrect. More information comes along, but established policy stays the same.  This is the downside of bureaucracy. Proponents of established methods will say that this must work because it is the rule, and don't worry about finding out the truth.

Alternative treatments are espoused by a wide range of practitioners and patients.  Often alternative treatments have little or no science backing them up.  Proponents say this works because they have seen it work, and maybe it did.  Just because there is no science doesn't mean it isn't true. Proponents also commonly claim that the science backs them up when it does not.

The Skeptic doesn't believe anything just because an authority said so.  The Skeptic asks questions, and studies the important questions, so as to be able to know if someone is speaking from a position of knowledge and perspective, or blowing a lot of hot air.  The Skeptic realizes that real information or falsehoods can come from any side, and runs every morsel through an internal fact-checker.  The truth is a moving target, and the skeptic is ever on the hunt.

This link goes to a Ted Talk by Jon Ronson, journalist from London, speaking about the research he did for a book on psychopathy.  He pegs the relevant issue which is the fact that all of us display some characteristics of various mental disorders, including psychopathy.  All of us, you say?  Yes, all of us.  Madness is inherent in the human condition.  We have the capacity for rationality, but we also all have moments of unconsciousness.  We have moments in which we are not as kind as we could be.  We have moments of every description, but these moments do not condemn us.  We can still be decent people.  

In the Bible, Matthew 7:5 reminds us that we are not perfect.  "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."  Before we accuse anyone else of madness, it is in our best interests to recognize that we are human too, with requisite portions of inexplicable wildness.