Laptop passes, picture found, travellin' man, my mother, blog rating discovered

My trusty sidekick 7 year old (210 human years) world beater Asus laptop passed suddenly on Saturday night.  It was quite ill, had recently lost its memory which I replaced and was still syncopal suddenly shutting down, going blank.  Fortunately .... I had enough warning to save everything on a thumb drive.  With Ben and Rachel's advice, I jumped the chasm to a MacBook and am having the usual startup blues.  It connects to the last paragraph below.

As I was combing through pictures for Ben, I came across this picture of two Queens' College alums at a John Kerry fundraiser in Madison in 2003.  I blogged previously about seeing 'Beautiful:  The Carole King Story' musical in NYC in 2015 and the musical connection through my singing her 'You've got a friend' at our wedding back in 1972.  And, here is the picture of Teri with the songwriter herself.

I just returned from a work-and-play trip to the West Coast.   Instead of the past go-attend meeting-return routine, I try to add extra days to connect and meander and that is just what I did.  I began in LA to attend the national APAMSA conference at UCLA's brand new Geffen Center.  As usual I gave two talks (Pitfalls for Asian American medical students:  Educational profiling [as passive] and Bone marrow transplant:  An intimate story).  Interestingly, the students still honor an old fart and labeled my name tag with 'Founder'.  As usual, I spoke with and informally advised many, many medical students, still feeling somewhat relevant and useful.  Took a medical student leader to dinner, met her parents.  And as unplanned, learned of on the spot and attended a world class symposium on the hot area of the microbiome (intestinal bacteria) and as planned wandered off to the mega LACMA to view the Chinese, Japanese and contemporary art on display.  Then flew to up to SF to stay in Palo Alto with a former national APAMSA president and spouse, Sean and Joy, whom I first met in 1995.  From the airport they whisked me off to La Traviata at the SF Opera. and over the next three days we spent many evening hours free ranging from their research endeavors, their faculty development, diversity and gender in academic medicine, work-life balance to raising children - an incredibly stimulating reunion.  Giving hope for the future of academic medicine, both are MD-PhD NIH-funded physician-scientists, yet the nicest and grounded of individuals, as well as a couple, and as the parents of two teenage daughters.  My main purpose was to discuss writing a paper with Sean on Asian American medical students.  Always multitasking, I gave my standard APAMSA talk to the local chapter and then made my rounds of Stanford faculty and administrators in pediatric GI, neurosciences, Dean for Faculty Diversity, head of Asian Liver Center (eradication of Hep B/liver cancer) and Asian American history (although I couldn't connect with an author on how to design a career) - and came away brimming with new ideas.  After, I wandered by the SF Asian Art Museum, met with Li, the curator of Chinese Art and my father's former graduate student, and focused on Shang dynasty Chinese bronzes (related to my auditing) and SE Asian art (related to my upcoming trip).  My last was a day and a half stop in Walnut Creek to visit with nonagenerian Ruth, a very close friend of my parents.  Had lunch with nephew Peter.  The fires in Sonoma and Napa sullied the Bay air and affected/destroyed houses for three friends.

I visited Ruth because she remains one of the last known links to my mother as a child.  Ruth was my mother's classmate and best friend in Pui Do girls school in Guangzhou.  From her, I learned not only a great deal about my mother's youthful character but also of Ruth's early life as well.  Both Ruth (father and mother by age 8) and my mother lost parents at a young age and the mutual losses bonded them.  My mother's mother died when she was only six from tuberculosis contracted from a patient.  I know that loss affected her sense of security throughout her life.  My maternal grandmother was apparently one of the first female graduates of Lingnam Medical School.  Both my mother and Ruth boarded and ate together nearly every day.  Both were energetic and rebellious adolescents and created havoc, some having to do with the kitchen staff.  It is just fun to imagine these two tiny strong-willed Chinese women, 5' at the most, stirring up big 'trouble' at school.  My mother was apparently an accomplished pianist and singer which I caught glimpses of occasionally.  Although she apparently aspired to become a physician like her mother, apparently falling in love with my father diverted her from that path.  Ruth invited us to her nephew Nick's upscale, wine-walled, 'modernized' Chinese restaurant with farm-to-table and Kobe ingredients.  Ruth remains remarkably sharp, ambulatory, healthy, indomitable and at peace.  Someone to aspire to be like as I age.  I'm so happy I got to spend time with her (and my mother).

Ruth standing by her daughter's art work

A reconnecting, life-affirming, mind-expanding and art-appreciating trip!

To close what began as a remembrance of my lapdogtop, during the transition from PC to Apple I discovered an email from Google that noted that the blog was one of the top 50 leukemia blogs.  Whoa.  What?  Wow.  I no longer think of this as a Teri's leukemia story but a paean to Teri's mindful life, my gradual restoration and return to life, and miscellaneous observations on healthy living.  And I don't really know any longer who's reading it.  But perhaps what began with disease and demise now has a healthy life of its own ...  

Sabbatical in … Milwaukee to Vancouver to …

After Teri died in 2011, several close friends suggested that I take a sabbatical to grieve and recover.  What a rejuvenating suggestion at the time!  Alas, one impossible to pursue as I became the conscripted 22/7 caretaker for my 91 year old father, beginning his long march into aging dementia.  Then after he passed, I organized his memorials and stewarded his academic papers, remaining books and art as he wanted.  Another added effort on top of work.   

So, my sabbatical began this year, known otherwise as retirement.  People asked often how it was going.  I couldn’t respond as it was too early to know and I had no established routines.  Now I do.  I sleep in and awaken environmentally to traffic rhythms outside my window, no longer the alarm!  I begin with 8 Qi Gong exercises gleaned from Margaret an artist friend of my parents, the Ba Duan Jin that addresses specific health issues including hypertension.  I drink cocoa bean tea an superdrink steeped in antioxidants.  (Harvard/NIH invited me to be a 7 year participant to study its anticancer and antiheart disease effects.)  I remain on the Portfolio diet with more plant based proteins (oatmeal, almonds), little dairy, meat and red and white, less refined sugar.  I drink P’u er (fermented in Yunnan Province) tea for its digestive benefits.  I continue to exercise 7 days a week, Chen Tai Chi, biking or spinning, running, restarted swimming this year, yoga.  More on Tai Chi later.

I read the disheartening real news but try to maintain a precarious equanimity as events devolve.  I answer e-mails, the personal ones with delight.  A moving letter arrived from a former patient who survived a liver transplant at age one and invited me to her wedding.  Made my month!  Although I don’t see patients, I still do academic work.  This year, I have given a surprising number of invited talks including ones at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Beijing Children’s Hospital.  And several to APAMSA groups at Stanford, UCLA, UW-Madison and here.  This will certainly decline so I enjoy it, while it continues.  I review manuscripts, write letters for promotion and edit for UpToDate the most used online clinical reference textbook.  I’m about to launch a part-time 2^nd opinion teleconsultation for long distance patients with cyclic vomiting syndrome.  However, without a trusted assistant, I am:  secretary, transcriptionist, travel agent, telephone interface and bottle washer.  I appear to have an unquenchable thirst for words despite 36 books so far including tomes on Alexander Hamilton, the Beatles, and The Gene.  With the assistance of a Chinese art historian and a Chinese reading friend from Taiwan, I just completed reviewing and shipping 13 large boxes of my father's academic papers and slides to Taiwan National University and three boxes of his books to Arizona State University.  With further help, I am getting his art cataloged, organized, stored, insured.  And I see Rachel, John, Jack and Naomi, Ben and Theresa, Steve, Memee … with regularity. 

Ah, Vancouver (Oh, Canada) for two months!

It has become an essential, healing haven for me.  It began with Teri and I visiting my parents during summers, then accompanying my father after my mother passed, then three times my father and I, and finally the last three years by myself.  I switched from Yang-style (soft) Tai Chi studied in Milwaukee to Chen (original form, more martial) Tai Chi there.  The Sifu (master) Paul Tam (a national champion of Southern Fist) is a student of the highest rated Tai Chi expert in China Chen Zhenglai also a direct descendent of the founder of Tai Chi.  What I began as a hobbyist five years ago, has progressed to aficionado and now dedicated pupil.  This summer I trained two hours every day – my boot camp –and just completed learning the core 74 form old frame I (Lao Jia Yi Lu).  This year I really noticed the benefits.  Lost weight, built muscle.  Improved balance, increased energy, enhanced flexibility.  But some costs.  Due to the crouch (horse stance), my quads are continually sore.  Last year an overuse injury of knees and this year torn right hip adductors. 

Life in Vancouver with its temperate dry sunny days, screenless (bugless) windows, scenic sea and mountains in a single view (with a touch of retained snow caps) and endless excellent Asian cuisine – is otherwise simple for me.  I don’t have to cook as Chinese comfort food (dumplings, bing zi) abound.  Sans car, I bike everywhere.  I study Mandarin with a tutor for four hours a week.  I go out to museums, openings and eat with friends.  For the first time, I participated in a Tai Chi performance at the Taiwan festival.  The grand kids came to tear around an indoor water park, an indoor kids city and an outdoor park with zip line and 30 foot tower slide.  Steve my best buddy transformed me into a Vancouver tourist and ferried us to Victoria and Butchart Gardens.  For the first time, I put up paintings on the barren walls, converting it from temporary abode to colorful pied-à-terre.  And, I made a decision to expand my father’s contemporary abstract ink theme and purchased some new paintings this year.  A serendipitous encounter lead me to an editor of a contemporary Chinese art magazine who will advise me.

Now returned to Milwaukee just in time to resume my annual fall meeting journeys.  I am auditing a graduate seminar on Neolithic development and early Chinese bronzes at UW-Milwaukee.  I am teaching/practicing Chen Tai Chi to/with a Chinese American trainer. 

So how am I doing?

Brimming with stimulation, words, exercise, travel and even work … on slow time, no longer frenetic.  I notice that I don’t get upset – as I used to overreact and catastrophize – when traffic builds up, can’t find parking, and things don’t unfold as I meticulously planned …  Still improving this self, body and mind.  I’ve maintained my new weight (11% lower) for 22 months and feel quite empowered at this ripe age that I can remold and rejuvenate my somatic self.  I’m establishing new physical skills and muscle memory.  I’m listening to my body.  I’m learning about Chinese art and many other miscellany while keeping active in my pediatric gastroenterology field.  So bottom line, more energy, more positivity, more peace, more mindfulness and openness to new experiences.  So yes, after six years, I’ve finally come up for air and the sabbatical is rejuvenating.

As James Brown belted out “I feel good”.

Food for thought - you are what you eat and when you don't

Ben asked me recently about how to eat healthier.  I was delighted with his question as it is a topic I have been digesting ever since I began to deal with my inherited hypercholesterolemia in my 30’s and practicing the intermittent low-calorie fasting over the past 17 months. 

I will try to summarize several complex themes after which you’ll wonder if you should be eating twigs and leaves which are full of fiber, low calorie, gluten-free, plant-based …  I will say that, as a gastroenterologist, you do want your poop to look like twigs and leaves …  If you want to cut to the chase, you can skip to the recommendations at the end of the blog although I’m not sure they will make sense without the background below.

Four background themes
-  fast intermittently
-  reduce refined sugar intake
-  reduce total protein intake to daily requirements
- increase plant-based proteins (reduce animal proteins)

Mosley (reviewed a few blogs back) makes a strong case that many ethnic groups practice intermittent fasting as part of their normal cultural routine.  It also has been known for 70 years that if you reduce calories in a rat, they live longer.  Now we know why.  Recent animal studies indicate that fasting turns on several life sustaining processes:  1) increases insulin sensitivity (reversed insulin resistance which is the physiologic driver of metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes), 2) increases stem cell production and autophagy (cellular renewal and cleanup), 3) it increases cancer immunity, and 4) remodels hippocampus (improves memory) ... and you don’t lose physical or cognitive abilities while fasting.  Mosley’s major contribution is to translate this concept into a diet plan that most can tolerate.  I have gotten many friends, spouses, their fathers, their mothers who have had success with this as well.  And, it doesn’t cost anything (except new clothes).

Taubes reviews the physiology, epidemiology and politics of refined sugar, especially sucrose (a double sugar with exactly 50% fructose and 50% glucose), fructose (a fruit sugar) and high fructose corn syrup (55% fructose and 45% glucose).  To make a long story short in the U.S. we are now consuming 114 lbs/year = 17,214 teaspoons of sugar per person per year.  How sweet we are!  This geometrical rise over the past 75 years parallels the mushrooming obesity epidemic.  Further, the excess dietary sucrose and fructose induces constant hyperinsulinism (the fulcrum) that causally links to metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes, fatty (marbling) liver of obesity, hypertension, disease, and to my surprise, also gout, cancer and Alzheimer.  Wow, all the ‘Western’ diseases placed under one saccharine umbrella!  Of course, because the definitive long-term study is impossible, we don’t know if reducing sugar this will reverse these unhealthy trends. Nevertheless, the epidemiological and biochemical evidence is compelling.

Campbell reviews his animal research and his largest ever study of diet, lifestyle and cancer performed in China.  He has found that excess casein (animal-based in milk) protein (20% of calories) promotes cancer in rats exposed to a carcinogen (aflatoxin) where as 5% (normal for body) content does not.  It appears that protein intake in excess of needs – Americans ingest about 3X what they need – leads to higher risk of cancer.  However, if one uses plant based protein even at the higher dose, the cancers don’t grow.  It is both the protein’s quantity and origin.  In populations around the world that eat plant-based diets, cancer is a true rarity.  However, when these same people, e.g. Asians who move to the U.S. and westernize their diet, their cancer rates soar and become ‘Americanized’ within 2 generations.   Campbell directed a huge study in China where they eat less protein and less animal protein than in the U.S.  Even so the findings still confirmed those of his animal studies.  Since only 2-3% of the cause of cancer is due to genetic factors, the majority is due to lifestyle – diet, exercise, environmental exposure.  As I was taught in medical school, we are constantly ‘living in a sea of carcinogens’ and have to maintain our immune defenses.  He suggests that a switch to plant proteins, will stop the second step (promotion) in cancer progression. 

One window into plant-based diets pertains to an amino acid-like compound I used to study in the lab, called carnitine.  One of the scientists at Cleveland Clinic was looking for the causative factor in red meat that hardens the arteries since it is no longer simply cholesterol and saturated fat.  He identified trimethylamine oxide, a degradation product of carnitine produced by colonic bacteria, that causes atherosclerosis in rats.  Does it apply to humans?  When he measured levels in humans and compared it to their degree of coronary heart disease, there was a significant correlation.  Because carnitine is a natural bodily substance, why is a toxic heart-damaging substance produced from it?  It turns out the intestinal bacteria do the dirty job … but only if you are a meat eater!  If you are vegan, you don’t carry the toxin-producing bacteria!  That’s one reason why vegans have less heart disease than meat eaters. 

So what are the principles … and most important what do I eat?  I will address the first but leave you to your own devices to individualize to your palates, to compromise with your desires, to mediate with your significant other … to arrive at your own menu.

1.  Intermittent fasting is an effective way to lose your abdominal fat storage and then maintain a lower weight.  It also reverses insulin resistance (diabetic tendencies), boosts cancer immunity, and improves memory. There are two ways to do it, intermittent 1-2X/week at 500-600 kcal/day divided in two small meals, OR, daily eating two regular sized meals such as brunch at 11 and dinner at 7 and nothing in between.  Despite my antecedent fear of fasting, I find I longer fear fasting or hunger, and its works to burn my abdominal padding.

2.  Limiting your overall protein to your actual needs reduces cancerous cell growth.  The average American is eating 50+% more than needed.  For example, the RDA protein goal is now recommended at 10% of total calories = 50-60 g protein and a 5 oz steak would give you 54 g protein, but they typically come as 8, 12, even 24, and 36 oz supersizes.    

3.  Switching from predominantly animal to predominantly plant protein, as Dr. Campbell and author Michael Pollan (Omnivores Dilemma) suggest, gives you further leeway as you could eat 20% of calories as plant protein (120 grams) and not encourage those cancer cells to proliferate. 

4. Sugar (sucrose/table sugar and fructose/corn syrup) appears to be a very bad player today through its constant stimulation of insulin secretion.  Reducing intake of refined sugars has the potential to arrest the development of metabolic syndrome, diabetes type 2, obesity, hypertension, gout, cancer and Alzheimer.  Whoa, cancer and dementia?  Yes.  The FDA is suggesting a 42 lb limit down 2/3rds from our current intake from 114 lbs/year.  It would mean adjusting taste buds that have been cranked to the sugary max and using artificial sweeteners to help satisfy those jazzed taste buds.  Fructose in fruits is fine. 

5.  Fat used to be the dietary villain.  A lot of this stemmed from bad press from the sugar industry that led us down the wrong path for years.  Once again it is not how much fat, but it rather depends upon the origin with plant-derived being much better than that from animals.  So coconut oil doesn’t turn out to be so bad, at least compared to lard.

6. I think antioxidants may turn out to be very helpful in the long run through its anti-aging and anti-cancer effects.  Many antioxidants are contained in vegetable and fruit skins (phytochemicals and lycophenes).  But to hedge my bet, I’m using one supplement that is naturally found throughout the body, Coenzyme Q10.  I use either ubiquinone or ubiquinol (more expensive) forms at 200-400 mg/day.

7.  I’m personally on a modified Portfolio diet to reduce my hypercholesterolemia.  In a study published in JAMA in the 1990s, it is equivalent to taking Lipitor!  Again, it employs plant-based soy protein instead of beef and milk, plus steel cut oatmeal and psyllium seed (Metamucil) to bind cholesterol and facilitate its passage out the rear.  This strategy reduced my cholesterol by 60 points without medication.

So a lot of food thoughts to ruminate and digest, pardon my cud.  These ongoing research findings have certainly given me pause to think in depth about my diet.  For myself, beyond the Portfolio diet and intermittent low-calorie fasting, I’ve further modified my diet along the principles above.  For protein, I eat mostly soy, fish, and eggs, with occasional chicken and beef.  I eat Chinese style stir fry, mostly vegetables and dofu with small amounts of meat.  I eat many salads with kale, nuts, and butternut squash.  I ingest brown rice with a lower glycemic index (less like refined sugar with a high glycemic index).  And I’m trying to avoid refined sugars which are ubiquitous.  This amounts to less protein, less animal protein, less animal fat, less refined sugar and more plant-based protein.  But as you can guess, I crave a steak once in a while, I like my scoop of gelato … and indulge.  But I feel good, can see my toes, and feel better about what I’m eating, for myself and the planet.

Key books:

1)   Fast life by Michael Mosley MD (physician and journalist for the BBC)

2) The case against sugar by Gary Taubes (award winning science journalist)

3) The China study by T. Colin Campbell PhD (animal and human researcher from Cornell) 

Three life changing books for me (and possibly the grand kids) this year.

Fast Life by Michael Mosley (British physician-journalist for the BBC) – book given by Kari Gunderson.

Dr. Mosley recounts his search for the best longevity/health advice from top animal researchers and refashions their findings into a feasible human approach that involves low calorie (500-600 kcal/day) fast twice a week for 12 weeks then once weekly thereafter.  Indeed fasting, performed by many cultures for eons, we now know biochemically reverses insulin resistance (my problem) of type II diabetes, renews the body through stem cell production and autophagy (cleanup process), promotes anticancer immunity and remodels the hippocampus (improves memory).  And of course for those more visually inclined induces significant weight loss and waist loss (loss of visceral or abdominal fat that drives metabolic syndrome, obesity …).  Now each time we snack every 2 hours or overeat we push the insulin pedal to the floor – store, store, store – in the tummy fat depot.  Fasting is the only way to reverse and break down your abdominal fat!  And, it’s cheap! The personal impact has been remarkable, rejuvenating, empowering: normalized my fasting glucose, lowered my cholesterol by 50 points, reduced my weight by 10% and waistline by 2¼“, changes I would not have thought possible at my age.  More energy, more spring in my step, more conscious of what I eat ... and all new pants.

Grit:  Power of passion and perseverance by Angela Duckworth (a Chinese-American McArthur winner and psychologist at U. Penn – before that teacher, McKinsey consultant, neuroscientist)

Dr. Duckworth (née Lee) is searching for the holy grail of success.  She studies populations as disparate as West Pointers tried to survive the mental and physical rigors of the Beast challenge, grade and middle schoolers trying to win the National Spelling Bee and highly successful business (Jamie Dimon), academic, puzzle (Will Shortz), sports (Rowdy Gaines, Pete Carroll) figures.  In fact, she finds that her grit scale predicts the outcome better than any objective measure such as grades, standardized scores etc.  That is, the not-so secret special sauce to success is perseverance and passion.  And she argues with data that grit can be developed from the inside out in oneself (interest, practice, purpose, hope) and from the outside in inculcated by parents, teachers, coaches, mentors … culture.  It made me think a lot about how our family including Rachel, John, Ben, Theresa and myself developed grit … and how we can help Jack and Naomi find their inner gristle to survive and thrive in the rigors ahead. 

Hammy Naomi & Jack waiting for the Skytrain, Vancouver

Reading about Nanette's baguettes (from Steve & Mary) X-mas

Waiting for the school bus this morning

The gift of failure by Jessica Lahey (teacher, educator and lawyer – talk heard by Rachel)

Parenting is hard.  In a similar vein to Grit, Ms. Lahey decries the current trend for overprotected, failure-avoidance overparenting (a mouthful) where parents challenge teachers regarding their child’s poor grade …  instead of allowing the teaching moment of facing failure and finding the solution and a pathway forward between the teacher and child.  This over promotion of self esteem can result in concomitant loss of ability to overcome adversity as a child and more worrisome even as an adult.  She provides examples including from her own child rearing where parenting “to the rescue” leads to ineffective transition to college and adulthood.  The latter is corroborated by administrators at Stanford and Harvard.  She provides a road map of autonomous activities and parental approaches by school age.  Not:  “You’re so smart …” leads to a fixed mindset  But:  “That was a great effort” leads to an open mindset.  In controlled studies, either praising innate intelligence rather than effort or paying for good grades diminishes intrinsic long term engagement and motivation!  Again, this can be countered by appropriate parental behavior, modeling and language.  As our Rachel and Ben’s first pediatrician and my mentor/friend at UW Dr. Memee Chun who constantly told Teri and I (even as 60+ year olds) when dealing with Ben and Rachel “Zip your lip”.  

Ms. Lahey's schema - Rachel has it posted next to her mirror