RANS Xstream review: Pretty fast for a slow guy.

The RANS Xstream is a bike with a pedigree. Designed by one of recumbent cycling's pioneers, Randy Schlitter, the Xstream was a bicycle born, I suspect, with a single purpose: To, for once and for all, bury the myth that long wheelbase (LWB) recumbents are heavy, slow, and poor climbers.

I can state with a fair degree of certainty that Mr. Schlitter achieved his objectives.

Before I get into the meat of this review, however, permit me to note a few things. Though I knew of the Xstream through reputation, and had actually taken one out for a spin at Basically Bicycles prior to purchasing mine, there were few cogent reviews of this recumbent bicycle to be found on the internet. There is one review at bentrideronline.com, and a couple of "happy new buyer" notes on the cycling fora, but thorough reviews were notably absent.

I feel somewhat justified in taking on the task, as I have been riding recumbents almost exclusively since the mid-1980s, and in fact, my first recumbent bicycle was the first one designed and produced by RANS -- the RANS Stratus Model A. Though I'm no racer, I commute and tour on bikes, and have been known to complete a couple of 200k randos. I pretty much live on my bikes and I do my own wrenching. So, yes, I feel very comfortable around bikes in general, and recumbent bikes in particular.

My interest was drawn to the Xstream during the 2009 Ride Across America (RAAM). RAAM is a grueling, non-stop race beginning in southern California and grinding on, shedding the weak like Darwin on steroids, until the riders that are left reach Annapolis, MD. With many other recumbent bike riders, I watched with pleasure as the 4-man recumbent team, all riding the Xstream, crushed the competition and won their division by more than four hours, taking their steeds across the continent at an average speed exceeding 20 mph. Mr. Schlitter himself said that "The Xstream was designed for this race."

Unsurprisingly, the RAAM win pumped sales of this bike. Oddly, though, after the initial buzz, talk about the Xstream died down considerably.  Though I was favorably impressed by my brief test ride at the time, the performance of this bike was matched by the price tag, and I never could justify the expense. And so the thing sat, at least until this spring, when, with a nudge from a friend, I stumbled on a great deal from a rider who couldn't make the Xstream work for him after his back surgery. He had only ridden the bike around the block a few times, so for all intents and purposes, it was a brand-new bike at a garage sale price. I jumped at the chance.

My Xstream sports a cool gray aluminum frame. Handlebar and stem were stock RANS. Up front is a  RANS Apex 165mm compact double (50/34) and Ultegra derailleur. A SRAM 970 chain drives a SRAM 971 cassette (11-34) through an X-9 rear derailleur. That gives a gearing range of approx. 26-118 gear inches. On the bars are SRAM X-9 twist shifters and Avid 7 Speed Dial brake levers. Wheels are Avid XM317 (559) turning on Deore hubs. Continental Sport Contact tires complete the package. Brakes are Avid 7 Single Digit linear-pull  and the cables and housings are by Alligator.

The front brake is worthy of comment as brake interference with the crankset is a chronic problem with the Xstream. The front calipers are specced with KwickStop low profile pads. These allow the calipers to run in a slightly more closed position. Using a Travel Agent instead of a noodle narrowed the profile more.

I was initially concerned with the gearing. For starters, I have never had a recumbent with less than triple chainrings, and I was worried that the slightly higher low end of the compact double would be insufficient for this slow old guy who lives in the foothills of the Berkshire mountain range. I was also concerned about the slightly higher bottom bracket than what I am used to. I'm at the short end of normal height, and the leg drop required by a high racer recumbent is thoroughly out of my league. With fingers crossed, I hoped I would adapt.

After 300 miles on the Xstream, including the omnipresent hills as well as rolling terrain and flats, and with a couple of metric centuries under my belt, I think I have a handle on this bike. It's worthy to note that during this 300 miles, I set two personal bests, not an easy feat for a man who has been riding for 38 years.

Set-up

Getting the Xstream dialed in is not a task for the impatient. Seat angle affects longitudinal seat position, which in turn affects handlebar height and stem distance, as well as handlebar  angle...you get the idea. That, coupled with the fact that knee interference with cornering is a very real consequence of poor setup on the Xstream had me riding with bloodied left knee and allen wrench gripped tightly in the right hand for the first 50 miles or so. Interestingly, it was at about mile 100 that I finally hit the sweet spot. I popped over a friendly New England pothole, which torqued the handlebars down ever so slightly, and voilà, it all clicked into place. I tightened up the nuts a squidge and let it be.

Though the frame accommodates a wide range of heights and X-seams, I'm a touch shorter than average height. I found that to keep the handlebars correctly place for my north-of-normal seat position, I had to cut away a good 3 inches of stem.

The Xstream also suffers from the RANS shifting seat clamp problem, so that the seat imperceptibly slides backwards under heavy pedal pressure until, after 30 miles or so, you realize that you are stretching a bit too much to reach the pedals. This is a well-known problem with the RANS clamp, and there are various ways to fix it -- the easiest being a piece of innertube situated between clamp and frame.

Surprisingly, I found that I was very comfortable with a fairly extreme reclined position on the Hoagie seat. On my other recumbents, with more standard mesh seats, a highly reclined position makes my neck very sore after 10 or so miles. It was nice to find that the intersection of aero and comfort exists.

Handling

That long wheelbase builds in a lot of suspension, so even with the fairly tight Conti tires, the Xstream runs sweetly on the chipseal and over the potholes of my riding range. Not once did I feel my teeth chattering as it has on other bikes. The LWB design also makes for very stable high-speed handling, and for the first time on a 'bent, I really felt like I was carving the curves at 60 kph.

At the other end of the scale, like any other LWB, the Xstream is not a fan of low speeds. Keeping a line at 9 kph is dicey, though it can be done, and I didn't really feel that I would be easily toppled until I dropped below 7 kph. I had read about people's complaints of the Xstream's low speed handling, but frankly, this is pretty typical for a LWB. If you want to go that slow up the hills, get a trike.

At any speed, though, the Xstream requires your attention. This is a thoroughbred you're riding here, not your typical stable nag, and it's not going to let you get away with sloppy handling. And there's no chance of a low-speed sharp turn. This bike is designed for the open road, not city traffic.

The best way to handle the Xstream, I found, is with a combination of attention and relaxation. Actually, 38 Special put it better than I.

http://youtu.be/vJtf7R_oVaw

Speed

What the Xstream gives in spades, however, is speed. This bike simply leaps at the hills, begging me with its efficient power transfer to bound up them. Once I learned to respond to the Xstream's clarion call, my concern for the lack of an extra-strength granny gear disappeared. Because, quite frankly, it won't let me go slow up the hills, and I don't need the lower gear inches.

This is really the first bike that I found I could appreciably accelerate up hills. It has been a unique experience for me, passing other riders like they were standing still in the middle of a climb. More often than not, in my experience, it has been the other way around, but the Xstream puts the power to the wheel very expeditiously, even when I am deeply reclined, a position traditionally weak for climbing.

The Xstream also wants its own head on the downhills. Because of the extremely aero position I can achieve, my downhill runs have increased by several kph, without me even trying. Since the bicycle feels like its running on rails, I can also corner with greater assurance, and I can lean into a curve at 57+ kph. On rolling hills this is a killer combination, allowing me to outdistance far stronger engines, because I don't even feel the hill until I'm halfway up it, and can relatively easily maintain speed over the crests. On the flats, I've found that I can maintain an average speed of 30 kph comfortably. Let's face it, that's pretty fast for a slow guy.

The brakes work as you would expect from a pair of reasonable Avid V-brakes. They have more than sufficient stopping power, and I've experienced no fade on longer descents.

The Whole Package

What all of this translates into is the perfect long-distance bike. Both centuries I've ridden on the Xstream have been fast pleasures, in one case setting a long-distance personal best. I can hop on the bike with the intent of rolling for miles and not be dissatisfied.

At the same time, I think I understand better the more recent silence on the part of Xstream owners. The Xstream is a demanding ride. It's not a commuter, it's not an around-town bike, it's not a mosey-down-the-bike-path bike. It is a get on, go fast and go far bike, which isn't everybody's cup of tea.  You aren't going to get away with napping in the saddle on an Xstream, and that makes for a lively and fun ride.

Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that riding the Xstream is like riding a stallion. You have to pay attention and realize that while your steed will demand much of you, it will deliver so much more performance than any other kind of ride.

For me, the Xstream filled a perfect niche in my stable. I have the all-rounder, the tourer, the utility bike and the French country bike that carries wine and baguette to the picnic. What I needed was a bike built for eating miles on the open road, a bike that challenges me to greater performance with performance of its own. The Xstream is all that and more.

Note: There have been some design changes on the Xstream since my model came out. Nothing radical, but you can see the latest specs at the RANS website.

How I protect your confidential health information.

In light of the recent disclosures of the U.S. government engaging in massive data collection of private information about its citizens, I am sure that many people are concerned about the security of their medical information, and whether it can be accessed by the NSA or other government surveillance organizations.

The short answer, here at the Center for Alternative Medicine, is no. The health and medical information that we have is protected from government and other unauthorized access in multiple ways, which I will describe below.

Because of the location of my practice and my somewhat unique skillset,  I have  long taken a security-conscious approach to my patient's records, an approach which informed the choices I made when we began digitizing patient data. In light of the news over the past couple of days, I have already made some modifications to the Center's security policies which will further protect my patients' health records.

Operating System Security

As a first step, as we began to put patient charts into digital form, I migrated all of the office's computers to the Linux operating system. Linux is a far more secure operating system than either Windows or MacOS. In fact, because of its secure nature, Linux is the operating system that is used by the vast majority of internet data servers, many of which are under daily multiple attack.

Linux security goes far beyond firewalls and passwords. Linux is designed from the ground up to be largely immune to viruses and "trojan horse" programs. Security is built-in to the system's design, preventing the rather massive security holes which Windows has always exhibited. Furthermore, since all of the software on my Linux systems is open, no secret back doors into the system can exist. They would be immediately spotted by the community which develops and maintains these systems.

 Backup and Online Security

The Center's secured and encrypted local network is also protected by software which immediately informs me if unidentified devices are attempting to access it, even as that access is being denied. Furthermore, none of the computers which store patient data are accessible to any device outside of our local network.

Off-site backup is handled via encrypted VPN and the data is stored on servers outside of the U.S., in a country where data privacy laws are considerably more stringent than in the U.S. The companies operating these servers cannot be coerced by the government into releasing any information.

Email and Patient Communications

Similarly, the email server I use is located overseas in a country secure from U.S. governmental interference or access. Connection to that email server uses end-to-end data encryption, eliminating the possibility of passive data acquisition of both content and metadata.

Though I have not made a habit of it thus far, I have for years been equipped with the ability to send and receive email using PGP encryption. One of the changes I have made in the Center's policy this week is to begin providing my public secure key to patients who wish to use PGP to protect our doctor-patient communications. This provides a second level of security.

And while I have on occasion answered patient questions via Facebook messaging, it is something I have never been entirely comfortable with, and have never initiated. One of the policy changes this week is that neither I nor my staff will communicate health information or discuss health issues with patients via Facebook messaging.

How You Can Protect Your Health Information

There are several steps which you can take to protect your health information, and they are relatively simple.

The first is to drop Gmail like a rock. It is clearly insecure, and Google has been part of the PRISM data collection system for years. There are several other systems which offer free email accounts and which are secure and will not disclose your data to the government. The one I recommend is Zoho, though there are several others.

Second, use a VPN for all of your internet activities. The end-to-end encryption of a VPN prohibits anyone from from watching your passage through the internet (and, yes, disable cookies on your browser!)

Third, use an alternative search engine. The amount of data Google collects on you -- and provides to the government -- is enormous. Your interests are determined by your search habits, and this information is a gold mine for those interested in your health data. There are, however, other search engines that do not collect or store your search data. At the Center, we use DuckDuckGo, a flexible and powerful search engine which also enables you to perform anonymous Google searches. Another popular privacy-oriented search engine is ixquick.

How Secure Are These Measures?

With regard to your health data, I have taken steps to protect your data far and above most other health care providers. Nobody is immune to hacker attack, and I make no claims to that, but I have done my best to ensure that your data remains secure from more than the passive data acquisition that the government appears to be engaging in, as well as typical commercial skullduggery.

Over the summer, I will continue to test and refine our security measures. But rest assured that even at this moment, your confidential health information at the Center is as protected, if not better protected than at any much larger organization.

5 ways to absolutely not get hired by me.

It's official. My office manager of 13-odd years, Teresa, is moving on. She will be missed, and I'll write about that later. But right now, I'm in the throes of a replacement search, knee-deep in a swamp of semi-legitimate candidates. And it's getting uglier by the minute.

If I were smart and good, I would probably get a professional, someone like my friend Bob Corlett at Staffing Advisors, to help me find a new admin. But, like an overambitious homeowner with a dull saw, I'm engaging the project by myself. The trouble is, so are the job candidates. And the results are beginning to look ugly:

So, in the interests of humankind, my sanity, and to bolster the increasingly faint possibility of actually hiring somebody before the next equinox, I am going to share with you, dear candidate, the errors that your predecessors have made that have guaranteed them a place in my personal Hall of Amazing Ineptitude, or in other words, the Would Not Hire Ever file.

1. If you make an appointment for an interview, SHOW UP FOR IT.

No, seriously. Wednesday night I scheduled two candidates to interview. Neither of them showed up. Neither of them called.

 2. Don't wear yoga pants to your interview.

So long as it isn't loaded with enough metal to give the TSA the fantods, I really don't care about your body. I do, however, care about what my patients would think about being greeted by someone in the universal I-didn't-get-out-of-bed-in-time-to-get-dressed outfit. How would you feel if you came to the interview and I was wearing my bike shorts? Ewww.

3. For the love of all that's holy, please clean up your email address.

When I am emailing a candidate to schedule a job interview, and I have to send the email to sweaty_pole_dancer@yahoo.com, I'm not going to do it. I'm just not. You could have the best resume in the world, have all the right experience, be willing to sign a 10-year contract and work for $8/hour with no days off, and I'm still not going to do it.

4. And while you're at it, clean up your social media.

You can bet that the first thing I'm going to do if I may hire you is google the heck out of your name. If 37 of the 40 pictures you're tagged in have someone holding a handle of marshmallow-flavored vodka, I'm not going to call, because of the very poor judgement such pictures indicate. Marshmallow-flavored? Really?

 5. Do not tell me your chiropractor horror stories.

I don't know even why I have to say this, but it's happened. More than once. If you're being interviewed by a chiropractor (me), it is generally regarded as Bad Form to tell me how you, or your nephew, or your Aunt Myrtle had their head almost ripped off by a chiropractor who - gasp! - ADJUSTED THEIR NECK! OMIGOD THE HORROR!

Odds are, I probably adjusted someone's neck less than an hour before seeing you, and that was probably the umpteenth time I had done a neck adjustment that day. It's not dangerous. In fact, it is quite beneficial for many people.

If you follow these relatively simple guidelines, I can guarantee your chances of getting hired by me will go up exponentially. Of course, then you have to deal with the whole working-with-Dr.-Jenkins-issue. But that part is easy. Just ask Teresa.

5 Reasons You Can't Trust Nutrition Research, Part I

If I had a nickel for every time a patient had told me that they  cannot have certain foods, because of an article they saw or their MD told them, I would be a rich man.

A case in point is salt. For years, I have been telling my patients with high blood pressure that salt is the least of their concerns, particularly when they have been scared off of it from their MD. I’ve had patients eating foods that were terrible for their hearts, because their cardiologist had put them on a salt-free diet, and as a result, worsening their condition instead of improving it.

Just last week, “new” research has been reported on which now shows that salt is not an important risk factor for high blood pressure.

The fact of the matter is that physicians such as myself who specialize in nutrition have known for years that only a very small part of the population with high blood pressure is sensitive to dietary salt. That research was done a long time ago.

But the news really never caught on with the popular press, and it clearly didn’t reach the ears of most medical doctors, who have been pressing the no-salt diet for years.

As I read the news online last week, I noted in the comments that several other readers were saying that the research on nutrition is so flighty that they no longer trust any of it, and will just eat whatever they want to.

I have noted before that much of the mainstream medical research cannot be trusted. The majority of it has been tainted by big money from the pharmaceutical industry which has the money to hire its own research organizations and produce “scientific research” that, unsurprisingly, perfectly supports drug marketing plans.

Nutritional research becomes similarly warped, although on a smaller scale and for slightly different reasons.

One of the key problems with nutritional research is funding. Unlike drugs, which have a phenomenal return on investment, herbs and nutrients cannot be patented. So nobody is likely to get rich from, say, a paper which demonstrates that Vitamin C effectively combats the common cold. The return on investment on non-patentable health solutions is pretty low, so research investors are few and far between.

Nonetheless, the research is influenced by greed in a different way. While it is hard to find the money to prove a nutritional intervention is positively therapeutic, there is a tremendous amount of money available for research which will demonstrate that certain nutritional interventions are useless and/or dangerous.

And there is also a tremendous amount of political pressure which can be brought to bear on nutritional therapies, if they are thought to be a threat to pharmaceuticals.

Not but not least in the financial parade are the people which can make money directly by distorting the research. This is the group I am the most familiar with, so they get to be number one in our list:

1. The media: Not getting it right on a daily basis.

It is a poorly-kept secret that, prior to becoming a physician, I was a journalist. In fact, I was a science and technical journalist. My background in the sciences gave me the ability to explain complex technical topics in easily-accessible ways to non-geeks. So I’m familiar with the ways in which reporters, editors and publishers will, both consciously and unconsciously, bend their coverage to suit their needs.

The major problem with the reporting of nutritional research is that the findings of any study are sensationalized to increase the page hits. A relatively minor study of salt and hypertension, for example, becomes the health section’s page 1 news -- and then, for the next 25 years, both diet and medical recommendations are misdirected.

Another problem with nutritional research reporting stems from the reporter’s inability to understand the science itself, or unfamiliarity with the field. It can be difficult to explain scientific-y stuff to a general audience, and to do so well, you must thoroughly understand the science yourself. Too few reporters have more than a basic grasp of the life sciences, much less a basic understanding of nutritional physiology, and fundamentally important data in a study gets flattened, misreported or simply ignored because of the reporter’s ignorance.

Finally, there are a few reporters who have been reported to consciously misconstrue the results of studies on alternative medicine in general.

New York Times health and medicine reporter Gina Kolata is a case in point. The author of hundreds of articles for the Times, Kolata has been uncovered by The Nation and others as using her articles to press her own agenda -- a profitable one, at that. On one occasion, Kolata published an article which strongly hyped a couple of cancer drugs (an article which turned out to be erroneous, to boot) and within hours was floating a book proposal based on buzz generated by her own hype. While this is an ingenious feedback loop for a reporter hungry for a book contract, it is hardly impartial reporting.

Imagine how nutritional research is reported by a writer with the reputation of Kolata, with one hand on the keyboard and the other reaching for the pocket of the pharmacuetical company. It won’t be the unbiased story that many would imagine it to be.

2. Oops, we used the wrong vitamin.

For some reason I've never been able to fathom, the world of mainstream medicine has always been very faddish about vitamins and minerals. One vitamin or another is always "hot" with MDs. When I started practice a couple of decades ago, Vitamin C was the one being recommended by every MD and his brother. I suspect this was based largely on the later work of Linus Pauling, who already had accredited status with the mainstream medical community for his groundbreaking work in molecular biology.

Vitamin C has since cooled considerably since its days as the go-to vitamin for almost everything. Today, that role is fulfilled by Vitamin D. which is currently being touted by the medical community as a second-class cure-all for everything from fatigue to fibromyalgia to heart disease to depression to joint pain (it remains a second-class cure because in mainstream medicine, nothing is better than a pharmaceutical, natch).

Interestingly enough, 10 years ago, before D got big, it was being maligned on many fronts as being a near-useless nutrient which was only being touted by quacks as a remedy for fatigue and fibromyalgia and depression...you get the idea.

Many of these studies suffered from one very significant, very undisclosed flaw: The researchers were using the wrong form of Vitamin D.

The legal definition of Vitamin D includes 2 forms: Vitamin D2 and Vitamin D3. Both are equally useful in preventing rickets in children, which is what all Vitamin D was once thought to be good for. However, when it comes to its effects on the cardiovascular, immune and other systems, the D3 form is much more potent than D2, which often has little to no effect at all in these systems.

However, researchers investigating Vitamin D often neglected to note the difference. Thus, studies would report that Vitamin D was ineffective at treating a certain disorder -- when actually, it was the ineffectual form of Vitamin D that was being used.

A variation on the "wrong vitamin" error is the "lousy vitamin" error. As most people know, there is a great deal of variability among vitamin products. Much of that variability results from how the vitamin is packaged in the tablet -- particularly how well that tablet survives the gastrointestinal tract to dissolve at the right time. Many vitamins just are not digested well, and I have seen on x-rays, vitamin tablets residing unmolested in the large intestine, waiting to be moved out of the body without having given up the slightest amount of the nutrient they were supposed to disseminate. "Pharmaceutical-grade" nutrients tend to be no better in this regard than what you may pick up over the counter at a chain pharmacy store.

So if you are testing the efficacy of a certain nutrient, and not monitoring whether that nutrient is actually getting into the patient's bloodstream, your results are going to reflect more the failure of the nutrient packaging than of the nutrient itself. It has happened more often than you would like to believe.

Coming up in Part II: Dodgy Dosages and Dietary Dilutions.

It's time for cycling in America to grow up.

For decades, cycling in America has struggled to roll beyond the pitifully small number of cyclists who ride on a regular basis. Despite the facts that regular riding can slash your transportation costs, improve your health and longevity (cyclists live 2-5 years longer than non-cyclists) and reduce infrastructure expenses for cities and towns, cycling remains a backseat activity for most people.

There are many reasons cyclists want to see more of us on the road. Some for perceived safety reasons -- citing studies showing that the more cyclists there are on the road, the safer it becomes for all cyclists. Some because a larger cycling population means that more funding will be allocated to cycling-specific infrastructure. Some wish to see cycling increase because of its undeniable environmental, economic, and health benefits.

Certainly, there are areas showing cycling growth. New York, San Francisco, Portland, Denver and a few other cities have seen a rather dramatic upsurge in the use of bicycles on a daily basis for commuting and running errands. But outside of the urban environment's hip pocket, there's not a lot happening.

Take Litchfield, for example. I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen in Litchfield using their bicycle as anything more than a recreational device. There are maybe 2-3 people, in a town of 8,000 who commute by bike, and I have never, ever seen another bicycle parked in front of Stop and Shop, CVS, or along West Street.

Is it unfeasible to use a bicycle for transportation in  Litchfield's suburban/rural environment? Certainly not. If you live in much of Litchfield, you are, by definition, within only a few miles of the town's center. The town's facilities and shops are also within easy cycling distance of  parts of Bantam. I am quite willing to concede that cycling from Northfield, however, may be an uphill slog that fewer are willing to do.

Geography is not the problem. So what is?

There's certainly interest in the state of cycling in Litchfield. There is an active group shepherding a recalcitrant multi-use path into existence. Once completed, this path would connect the center of Litchfield with Bantam, allowing cyclists to avoid Route 202 .

And I confess to being both surprised and dismayed at a few bicycle advocacy meetings I attended in the past couple of years. I was surprised in that the turnout for both meetings, to discuss ways to improve the state of cycling in Litchfield, was significantly higher than I thought it would be . My dismay stemmed from the fact in that I was the only attendee who actually rode a bicycle to the meetings.

Just so that it doesn't slide by, let me repeat that: I was the only person to ride a bicycle to attend two bicycle advocacy meetings.

There's something so dismally wrong with that fact that I have been a little bit afraid to do anything but squint at it sideways for fear of what I might find. At least I was, until I realized that this problem isn't a local one. It's a national one. It's a problem that has infected every cycling advocacy program in the U.S., and it has remained largely ignored:

The problem with cycle advocacy lies at the feet of cyclists themselves and the cycling industry in North America.

The problem is that cyclists need to grow up.

I have been involved deeply in cycling since my teens, when I built my first "10-speed" from junked parts at age 17, to my twenties, when I discovered the joys of recumbent bicycles, to today, as one of the League of American Bicyclist's 3,000+ certified cycling instructors. But while I have grown up with cycling culture, the cycling culture hasn't grown up with me.

Looking back to the cycling renaissance of the 70s, even though it was stirred by gasoline shortages and skyrocketing prices, the appearance and culture of cycling was completely built around the sport of cycling. Movies such as Breaking Away personified the cycling zeitgeist of the 70s.

Fast forward with me through the next 25 years. The next current that dragged cycling again into the public eye was a man by the name of Lance Armstrong. America loves a winner, particularly a winner in a sport dominated by Europeans, who even after 200+ years of independence from the UK, still make us insecure. Armstrong's winning streak, it was thought by many in the cycling community, would bring a flood of riders onto the road. This, of course, was long before we discovered that Armstrong was drugged to the gills and winning more by pharmaceutical fiat than by true talent.

Regardless, the projected jump in numbers never materialized. Sure, there were a few more cyclists on the road than there were before, but hardly enough to make a statistical difference.

Jump to today, and once again, economic conditions have conspired to make cycling a potentially valuable mode of transportation. In fact, it just makes raw common sense to hop on a bike instead of in a car. Without even trying, I saved $3,000 last year by riding a bike a lot of places instead of taking an automobile. Do you have enough spare change to throw away a cool three grand for no reason? I don't. And it's not like I'm some sort of athlete. I'm just a guy on a bike going to work or the store.

And while a few isolated parts of the country have seen a substantial uptick, the seeds of cycling elsewhere in the country have not only failed to blossom, they haven't even taken root (e.g., Litchfield). In many countries of Europe, everyday cycling is becoming a reality as it did long ago for the citizens of the Netherlands, where 86% of the residents hop on their bikes daily to run errands or go to work.

The difference between there and here, and then and now, is the behaviour of the cyclists themselves. Watch, for a few seconds, the cyclists of Copenhagen:

http://youtu.be/xsDxOx7PUP0

What do you see? The first thing I'll bet most people saw was the lack of helmets. Then there is the clothing -- everybody seems to be wearing everyday work or casual clothing. Then there is the behavior, on the part of both motorists and cyclists. The bikes look comfortable, and nobody is bent double in an uncomfortable, pseudo-aerodynamic position. Racks for groceries, briefcases, kids. Everything in that video speaks to what it is like to cycle in a mature cycling culture. Safe. Family-friendly. Gentle.

Compare that to what you've seen of cyclists in the U.S.: Cycling helmets, hi-viz gear, running red lights, running stop signs, making left turns from the right-hand side of the road, riding on sidewalks. Crouched down on uncomfortable-looking bikes stripped down to virtually nothing. Pounding their way to the next stop light. Cycling in the U.S. is almost the converse of cycling in a bicycle-rich environment.

In a cycling-rich environment, the cyclists behave as if cycling is a normal activity. They wear normal clothes. They don't bother with unnecessary safety gear, like hi-viz jackets or helmets. They don't ride like they are pretending to be racing. They ride like -- well, they ride like normal people on a bike. Cycling is the normal way of life.

American cycling, unfortunately, is stuck in the unprofitable, dead-end rut of promoting cycling only as a sport, not as a lifestyle.  From manufacturers to advocacy groups, the vision of cycling in the U.S. is still built around the young, macho cyclist forging his way through danger and adversity.

But if you really want cycling to grow, you have to abandon that shrinking demographic. You have to attract different people to the activity, and in particular, you need to make it appealing to women. The percentage of female cyclists is closely correlated with the growth of cycling in a number of countries, to the extent where women cyclists are considered the canaries in the coal mine. When their numbers drop, cycling dies.

So here are the steps cyclists need to take to ensure the growth of the activity.

1. Stop selling fear. Selling an activity as risky and adventurous works very well on the 14-28 male demographic. It doesn't work so well with women, whose number one reason for not cycling more is that they feel it is unsafe. And why wouldn't they? All of this special safety gear that you allegedly need to ride a bike practically screams DANGER!

The fact of the matter is, cycling is one of the safest activities you can engage in. Injuries requiring medical intervention are relatively rare for cyclists, and those who do suffer injury are not infrequently riding unsafely. The alleged danger of cycling has been highlighted by the focus on racing and exaggerated by an industry focused on selling to their slender demographic.

So, for crying out loud, quit preaching helmets. They aren't necessary and you won't die riding without one. Anyone who has thoroughly examined the literature will reach the conclusion that helmets can do little to protect you against serious injury. So if you want to wear one, wear one. If you don't, don't.

On virtually any ride that I encounter a large number of other cyclists, I am bound to get at least one comment about my lack of helmet. And, invariably -- I know, because I have made it a point to track them -- the people who castigate my bareheadedness proceed to run the next red light or blow through the next stop sign. Which brings me to point number 2:

2. Start riding like adults. Motorists don't respect cyclists, in part, because most cyclists ride like children. The majority of cyclists treat the rules of the road as if compliance was voluntary, not mandatory. It ends up making cyclists look like self-absorbed children, and who wants to be like that? If cyclists start to behave in a manner that makes them look like adults, then it is much more likely that other adults will find the activity interesting. And while we're talking about looks...

3. Save the spandex for when you need it. I agree that when I'm on a long ride on a hot day, cycling-specific clothing makes cycling more pleasurable. But that same apparel drives potential cyclists away in droves. There is nobody on the planet Earth who has not looked at a pair of Lycra shorts and said to themselves "There's no way in hell I'm gonna look good in that."

Trust me, I don't. So, unless it's a longer ride or the weather forces my hand, I don't wear cycling-specific clothing. When I'm going to work in favorable weather, I'm in dress slacks, shirt and often my tie. To the grocery store? It's shorts or jeans and a comfortable shirt and jacket. Remember those Copenhagen cyclists in the video? They're looking pretty fly. In fact, there's a whole website, called Copenhagen Chic, dedicated to the classy men and women cyclists of that city.

4. Be nice to others. In pursuit of the macho road warrior image, most cyclists speed down the road, looks of determination set on their faces, ignoring walkers and runners alike. You want more people to ride bikes? Say hi to the runner that you pass. Wave to the kid on the sidewalk. Slow down to just a few miles per hour when you're on the path and passing pedestrians. It's called being nice, and it works phenomenally well, if you want to encourage others to join you.

5. Tell industry leaders to embrace the reality of a mature, cycling rich culture. I've been a member of the League of American Bicyclists for years. As part of that membership, I receive a complimentary subscription to Bicycling magazine. It is the largest cycling magazine in the country. It is also one of the worst. It depicts cycling in all of the immature stereotypes that restrict its growth. Far better would be a complimentary subscription to a magazine like Bicycle Times, which is a far more adult publication.

Similarly, what few audio/video media outlets that cover cycling need to change their focus. Podcasts such as David Bernstein's The Fredcast need to shift gears into a format less racing-centered and more about the cycling lifestyle. While I admire David and his revolving crew of participants on both The Fredcast and The Spokesmen, I began to lose interest when his coverage of Armstrong's fall and its effect on cycling dominated episode after episode, while topics of real meaning to cyclists, such as funding, politics and other news was virtually ignored.

It all comes down to this. If we want cycling to grow beyond its small, homogeneous niche, all of us cyclists need to change our behavior to reflect the cycling culture that we want to bring about. In other words, if you want an environment where most of the population rides a bike -- then you should ride your bike as you would in that environment.

25 things you didn't know a chiropractor could do: Chiropractic management of depression.

Many people think of chiropractic care as nothing more than a spinal adjustment. While that is the core of our therapeutic interventions, there are a number of other ways we restore patients to health.

I employ lifestyle and nutrition interventions with almost every patient I see; and when you include the ability to utilize blend custom herbal formulae as well as acupuncture and other modalities, the scope of a chiropractic physician's interventions are wide-ranging indeed. The multidisciplinary skillset of the modern chiropractor makes us unique and uniquely valuable to patients suffering from chronic diseases.

People suffering from depression are frequent visitors to my doorstep because, like most chronic disorders, depression is poorly managed by mainstream medicine. Pharmaceuticals -- medicine's primary response to depression -- really don't work that well, especially over the long term. Prozac and the other SSRI's are based on a scientifically-unsound model of depression; and while more recent innovations, such as ketamine, can in certain cases be more effective than an SSRI, medical management of depression largely remains a crapshoot.

Which is why I have made it a point to study the myriad causes of depression and the most effective drug-free therapeutics for people suffering with this disorder. And what the research shows -- and what any evidence-based doctor should realize -- is that there are many ways to successfully address the problem of depression, ways that are far more effective than taking a drug. In this vein, I also make frequent use of the clinical social workers and psychologists who are truly skilled at diagnosing and managing depression without drugs.

I was recently asked to give a presentation on this topic to the annual convention of the Connecticut Society of Medical Assistants. As always, I immensely enjoyed talking before this group. They are interested, animated, participatory and questioning, which are the best qualities for any audience to have.

At the request of several of my patients and others, I am posting the slides I used for this lecture. While I try to pack as much information as I can on my slides, much of the content of the lecture is necessarily lost. Please contact me if you would like more information on any of the topics I cover.

depression-CSMA

Thank you, and happy anniversary.

Six years ago, I took a pretty big gamble. At what turned out to be near the peak of the real estate market, I bought a building that had, since the 1960s, been a veterinary office. I spent an ungodly amount of money to convert it from an animal doctor's office to a people doctor's office, and closed my otherwise thriving practice in Kent to focus all of my efforts on an entirely new beginning in Litchfield.

While I enjoyed my practice in Kent, I came to feel that it was too limited. I opened that practice directly from my internship and graduation, and took my first few years in practice to start adding onto my  base knowledge. My first milestone was achieving board certification in clinical nutrition, followed a few years later by passing another specialty board, and becoming a Fellow of the International Academy of Medical Acupuncture.

My goal had always been to become a holistic GP, the physician that people could turn to for drug-free treatment for all types of disorders, not simply back pain, neck pain, or headaches. And in Kent, I was able to acquire and build on those skills. But I realized that to become the type of physician that I wanted to become, I needed a location that needed me.

So when the vet's office in Litchfield went on the market, I jumped at the opportunity. And though it was a massive financial gamble, by that point in time, I had become mildly inured to that sort of thing. After all, I had left a journalistic career that had put me among the top 5% of freelance writers in the country to go back to chiropractic college and start from scratch.

Still, to be honest, I was a little nervy. This time was a bit different. Now I had a family, two kids, and a house with a mortgage; and here I was adding a second mortgage to the list, while rebooting my practice. You would have to be made of stone not to get a little jittery.

To keep disruption to a minimum, I planned to move my office over the course of a weekend, and start seeing patients just a day or two thereafter; and this was all to occur almost minutes after my general contractor pulled his last employee from the building.

The trouble was, I lacked a Certificate of Occupancy.

I scheduled the inspection for two days prior to re-opening. The inspector, a very nice man, was also thorough -- and found one electrical problem which prohibited him from issuing the certificate.

In a panic, I called up my contractor. His receptionist, no doubt used to such calls, assured me that all would be fixed in record time. And to his credit, it was. The electrician was out the next morning, and corrected the out-of-code electrical wiring. I invited the building inspector back for the following morning.

He came. He approved. He issued my Certificate of Occupancy.

And 45 minutes later, on April 6, 2007, my first Litchfield patient walked through the door.

Within months, I realized that I had made the right decision. Growing mostly by word of mouth, patients started coming to see me, not only for what chiropractic adjusting could do for them, but also for nutritional and acupuncture treatments for a variety of disorders. Within the first year, many  of my Kent patients who had stayed behind returned to the Litchfield practice (rightfully grumbling about the longer commute, it might be said).

Six years later, I have co-created, with the help of my patients, the practice of my dreams. I have patients coming to see me, not just from Litchfield county, but from Massachusetts and Long Island. Each new patient is a welcome guest and a new puzzle for us to solve together. Each day, my skills are challenged, my knowledge stretched, my spirit expanded.

And I would be utterly remiss if I didn't say thanks to Teresa Tuz, my oft-suffering office manager. Teresa had run the Kent office, and (probably against her better judgement), decided to continue the fun with me in Litchfield. She has managed the office through blizzards, floods, blackouts, faced head-on the interminable idiocy of health insurance billing, and along the way has become part of the spirit of the office. I mean, let's face it: When was the last time you heard patient and staff erupt in shared laughter at a doctor's office? But that happens many times a day at Teresa's desk.

The office has also been enriched by my tenants: Dave Pavlick, an extraordinary social worker and expert in the field of neurofeedback, and Christine DC Decarolis, one of the most dedicated massage therapists I have known. She is not only dedicated to her craft, but also to her community, to which she contributes in numerous ways.

Last night, after finishing my chart notes for the day, I locked the door, walked away from the office, and turned to look back. Six years ago, there had been nothing but an empty building, a vision, and a willingness to risk almost everything on that vision. Today, that building has become a place of hope and healing for many. My deepest thanks to everyone who has helped make it so.

The problem with mainstream medicine is staring us in the face.

My perpetual, self-designed, professional continuing education has taken an interesting turn this year, as I've been stepping past the usual rounds of journal articles and monographs on herbs, and acupuncture, and the manual methods of healing of which chiropractic has become the primary form. Digging deeper into the roots of the traditional healing professions, I'm looking past that data, into the ofttimes misty past of traditional medicine, trying to discern what it was that my forebears saw in, say, the bark of the white willow tree -- which, in the industrial age, turned into aspirin. And just what was it about spinal adjusting that led Hippocrates to recommend it.

In essence, I have been delving into my professional collective unconscious, because that was the mode of thought of the earliest healers. Shamans, alchemists, and both early and modern Chinese doctors all work in the realm of symbols and their meanings; which is the same means of communication favored by our unconscious minds. The earliest herbalists often chose herbs based on their resemblance to the body part or disorder they were attempting to heal, bringing together unconscious associations with empirical evidence.

As anyone who has worked extensively with the unconscious mind can attest, this part of you communicates through symbols. While symbols lack precision -- just what does that young boy standing there holding a ball actually mean -- they pack a powerful emotional punch. Someone who is an expert in the manipulation of symbols, such as an advertising professional, has access to our deepest motivations, which is one way in which we can be manipulated without even being conscious of it.

Symbols are a form of visual shorthand, in which a whole host of ideas or emotions are framed and communicated in one fell swoop. For example, with just a glance, everyone knows that this symbol:

means DON'T DO IT, whatever "it" happens to be.

That's an example of an informational symbol. Other symbols are intended to evoke an emotion. For example, this symbol:

Is a nearly-universal symbol of love, and evokes feelings of warmth and affection.

But then there are the symbols which reach deeper still, which are universal, and which tap archetypes in what psychologist Carl Jung called our "collective unconscious." These symbols go back thousands of years, to the earliest civilizations and beyond. These symbols call forth associations from our unconscious to primal psychological forces, powerful motivators of behavior. For most people in the U.S., you don't have to go much further than the corner church to see one of those archetypal symbols at work:

The Christian cross, however, is much older than Christianity. This is what the cross looked like in ancient Egyptian times:

Back then, however, it didn't belong to the Abrahamic god and his son, but to multiple Egyptian gods, who used it to confer life on the mummies of the dead, permitting them an afterlife.

In its earliest incarnation (if I may be so bold), the cross initially appeared like this:

And in this form, the swastika was used to represent the sacred force of abundance, with the arms of the cross invoking the cycle of death and rebirth. Of course, later the symbol was perverted in Western civilization by being reversed and becoming the symbol of an inhuman killing machine.

You can see, however, the common theme of the archteypal cross. At every stage of its existence, it represents the spiritual quality of rebirth, whether it was Christ rising from his sepulchre or mummies restored to the afterlife.

Throughout humanity, this archetypal symbol holds this same meaning. It is part of our collective unconscious, the psychic commonality which links and motivates all of us, whether ancient Egyptian or modern Baptist.

Which brings me, at last, to the point of this post.

Who, reading this blog, is unfamiliar with this symbol:

 Even at its most stylized, this is an easily recognized symbol. It is the symbol of the doctor, of the hospital, of the men and women that will heal you when you are ill and tend to you in your demise.

The problem is that this symbol, commonly called the caduceus, is not the symbol of health or healing at all.

It is the symbol of commerce and money.

The caduceus is the staff of the Greek god Hermes. Hermes is the god of the trades and commerce, and he actually acquired the staff after defrauding his half-brother, Apollo.

And that is the symbolic representation of medicine in this country. There are no healers involved in this archetype, no caregivers, none who would freely give of themselves for the well-being of others.

Instead, the medical industry has chosen as its symbolic representation, the archetype of greed and self interest.

In comparison, what have the members of the second-largest whole body health profession in the world chosen as their symbol?

This is the chiropractic profession's winged angel of health. As you can clearly see, this symbol embodies the cross, that symbol of rebirth and renewal -- and hope. Accompanying the cross is an angel. The angel is another archetype as old as humanity, and its function has been to manifest the divine power to aid mankind. They protect. They guide. They heal.

So let me ask you a very important question. When it comes to your health -- the foundation of your quality of life, the ruler of your longevity --  in whose hands do you trust? The person who chooses to represent himself with greed and unenlightened self-interest? Or the physician who guides himself by the principles embodied by the angels?

It's an important decision. Choose wisely.

Adventures in meditation

Not the least of my challenges in sitting zazen are the dogs. The year-old puppy likes nothing better than to sit in the room with me, gnawing on his bone and occasionally trying to share it with me, although in his puppy brain "share" is spelled "let's play tuggies." Of course, playing tug of war is not conducive to the spiritual process of letting go, but the puppy doesn't seem to mind.

I try to remember how fortunate I am. After all, how many people around the world, sitting and meditating at the same time I am, have the opportunity to seek enlightenment against the backdrop of teeth scraping across femur? Not many, I suspect. I'm a lucky man.

My 12-year-old dog, though, mostly minds his own business. He and I -- well, we've been through the wars together. He was a rescue pup I met when he was  one year old. When we first met, he looked at me as if to say "Well, what took you so long?"

He and I have been inseparable ever since. He was beside me on that long, lonely drive across the country after my mother died. When the oak tree tried to kill me by falling on my head, he did his best to take care of me. And when I got hypothermia while rolling logs in a foot of snow during a blizzard, he was the first one to say, "Dude, you're a wreck. Get inside."

He's been there for the good times, too, like when my then-10-year-old daughter conquered Mt. Washington, and when I caught a monster-sized rainbow trout in a stream that shall forever remain unidentified. He helped me raise my girls; I always counted on him to be my proxy, ensuring my family's safety when I wasn't around. Yeah, the old guy is part of the warp and woof (so to speak)  of my life.

Old age isn't being friendly to him, though. His joints hurt in the morning, and he's got some sort of tremor, and more damn lipomas than a billiard table has balls. He has also gotten a little curmudgeonly, a bit stand-offish. He'll come if you call, will welcome a tummy rub, but rarely requests my affection.

So his behavior when I sat down to meditate this morning came as a bit of a surprise. As I was settling myself in with my first few conscious breaths, he came over to my side, and leaned up against me. He didn't lick me or look up at me. Just leaned in on me.

Without breaking rhythm, I pulled my hands apart and draped my arm about his shoulders, feeling the warmth of his body against mine. In the flickering of the candlelight I looked down at the old guy, thinking about all of the breaths that we had shared in the making of a home and the raising of a family.

"Well," I thought to myself, "I guess today's meditation will be about love."

The Archetypes of Man

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert L. Moore My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent exploration of the male psyche from a Jungian perspective. If one has done much interior exploration, such as that through the Mankind Project NWTA, some of these archetypes will be (sometimes uncomfortably) familiar.

I was happily surprised by the last chapter, which concisely described ways of utilizing the book's insights, as well as an uplifting invocation of what it means to be a man. In these days in which men are constantly being degraded, it is quite refreshing to be reminded of our immense power and value.

If you are planning to read Iron John, read this first. It makes an excellent prequel.

View all my reviews

A Man's Place: The West Street Barber Shop

When I was a boy, every few weeks my father and I would take a walk up Far Hills Avenue, in Oakwood, a "suburb" of Dayton, Ohio. I put "suburb" in quotes, because it was nothing like the suburbs that we think of now, with sidewalk-free winding roads ending in cul-de-sacs with names like "Willow Court" or "Elm Drive," and a good 40 minutes from any city and a 25-minute drive to the mall.

Oakwood was nudged up right up against the city, and only a 15 minute ride by trolley car to central Dayton. It was an electric trolley, with overhead lines, and we used to throw snowballs at them in the winter, trying to knock the connecting arms off of the powered lines. One of its stops was a block away from our family's house.

Back in those days, streets had sidewalks, because people didn't feel the need to hop in their cars to ride a quarter-mile down the road to the pharmacy, or the florist -- or the barber shop. Which is where my father and I would walk to every few weeks. I had nearly forgotten those walks until today, lost somewhere in the 45 subsequent years of family, career, losses and wins. Dad and I would amble up the road -- he was the man who taught me how to amble like a boss -- sometimes talking, sometimes not, sometimes Dad just whistling the aimless tunes that marked the man at his leisure.

We would step inside the barber shop and take a seat. I can still hear in my mind the clatter of scissors, and the rustling of papers, as my father and other men would peruse the Dayton Daily News. Somebody was always talking sports. In the fall, it was Ohio State football, and to what heights legendary coach Woody Hayes would take the team this year. In the winter, the University of Dayton's basketball team was scrutinized for deficiencies.

During the "funny season," the relative merits of LBJ, Nixon, and an ever-changing sideshow of minorly-corrupt state governors would be discussed, often with vigor. Against this backdrop of men enjoying each other's company, the barber would invite me into his chair. He would always ask me if I wanted my ears lowered, and I would smile and say, "yeah, just give me the usual."

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Then I went to college, and the world changed, and all of that was lost. Men no longer went to barbershops, they went to hair stylists, or salons. The stylists were inevitably women, and the clientele mixed. Mostly women, with a few men peppered about. There was no newspaper, no sports section, but style and celebrity magazines on the table. Aside from the fact that there was no-one to discuss sports or politics or other topics of interest around, you couldn't hold a conversation over the noise of hair dryers.

I never felt fully at home at a salon, a feeling I suspect is shared by many men. This was women's territory, the land of looks and locks, of Farrah Fawcett and Dorothy Hamill. This was no place for men. And, frankly, I thought that the old barbershop was lost, relinquished to that quaint-but-long-gone closet of Mayberry and John-boy Walton.

Until today. When, on my way back from the bank, I stumbled upon the West Street Barber Shop, in the center of Litchfield. It is in the collection of buildings known as the Yard, next to the paint store. And it is there that Aaron Devaux has created, not just a place to cut your hair -- but a man's place, a reclamation of one of those public spaces that yielded to the encroachment of gender neutrality when I was in the strength of my early manhood.

I walked in and sat down. In the reclined barber's chair, a man sat, his face swathed by hot towels. In the cold air which I brought in with me, I could see the steam rise from them. Gradually, and with the unhurried skill of a sculptor, Aaron brought lather and a straight razor to the man's face, reducing stubble to a shiny gleam.

Beside me sat an older man, who abruptly harrumphed at the newspaper he was reading. "Look at that idiot," he said, thrusting the newspaper at me, showing me an article about Newtown murderer Adam Lanza. We talked about gun control for a few minutes, and then it was his turn in the chair.

I sat back, intermittently scanning the paper, and watching ESPN highlights on the flat screen TV across from me. The three of us chatted about weather, business and the price of things. We all agreed that the first could be better, as could the second, and well, what could you say about the third? Everything's too expensive these days.

After a bit, Aaron called me up. I didn't say "give me the usual," because I'd never seen him before. But he pretty much knew, through that unspoken osmosis that carpenters use to build houses, what I wanted. As he cut my hair, we talked about the trials and tribulations of being fathers, particularly being fathers of daughters. About the state of Litchfield schools (pretty good, but could be a little better), and the teachers that made an impact in our lives and that of our children. I mentioned how much I missed a good shave with a straight razor since I'd grown a full beard, and he volunteered a trim so I could experience a bit of that pleasure once again.

So then it was my time to lie back, wrapped in the warmth of moist towels, listening to the play-by-play of some game in Cincinnati. And my mind drifted back to those walks and talks with my father, that I had almost entirely forgotten. And in that remembering, I realized that I had found again something that had been lost, and that I needed, but I hadn't known it until now. It wasn't just the excellent haircut, or the trim, or the expertly-wielded straight razor.

It was the kinship of gender, the opportunity to trade insights and opinions with other men who, though different than me, are also very much the same, that made this haircut better than any I have had in years. There aren't too many places left like this. The bar, perhaps, if you have enough money and like the booze. Maybe the gym, though men have lost their singularity there, as well. There just aren't many places for a man to just be a man and, if you'll excuse the awkward metaphor, just let his hair down.

If you are a man, I cannot more strongly recommend that you pay a visit to Aaron at the West Street Barber Shop. I'm not going to give you Aaron's phone number, because you don't need an appointment, and if he's with a customer he'll just ignore your call. His shop is at the bottom of the hill on West Street, in the Yard. If his barber pole is lit, he's there. Walk in, sit down, and grab a section of the newspaper. And rediscover -- or discover for the first time -- a place that was once lost.

Ode to an older winter.

This afternoon, in the interstice between yesterday's grand journey and tomorrow's return to the mundane, I spent a few hours splitting the remains of our woodpile. Cleanup from the recent blizzard had covered most of it, until the warmer temperatures and rain exposed the upper half once again. I decided to take the moment to split and stack what I could yet reach, as my remaining-winter versus split-wood calculations were leaving a gap which would only be closed by a truly abnormally early spring or the addition of more wood under the deck. Not choosing to gamble on the former, I grabbed my maul and headed out back.

It was the quintessential late New England winter afternoon. Sullen clouds sat above the trees, outlining the dark, leafless tree limbs below them. I stood at the bottom of a gravel driveway, now half mud and half ice, bounded at the end by a dirty pile of snow with my last remaining row of unsplit wood poking out. It was cold, but a half-hearted cold. The biting, challenging cold of January was nowhere to be seen. A sweatshirt was sufficient outerwear, though I decided against the kilt, primarily because of the depth of the snow I would have to clamber through to get to my wood.

"Winter's getting old," I thought.

I hefted the maul. "So am I."

I had grabbed my 8-pound maul. It's not really my favorite maul.  It's just a touch too heavy to wield for the longer splitting session I had in mind for the afternoon, and lacks the finesse of my 6-pound maul. But the handle of the six-pounder has gotten a bit too dry this winter, and the head wobbles to the extent that I'm sure I'll leave it deeply buried in the maw of some slightly-split piece of stringy wood, leaving me to flail about with wooden handle and frustration.

I wish I had remembered to let it soak in a bath of neatsfoot oil overnight, but I hadn't. The eight-pounder, though, is equipped with a fiberglass handle which must be attached to the head with some sort of NASA space glue, because nothing I have ever done to it has ever so much as loosened it. And I've managed to behead virtually every handled tool in existence, from a double-bit axe to a pick mattock.

As it turned out, the bigger maul was the right call. At this point, I'm splitting wood a little past it's prime. Not yet punky, but dried past the point where grain has much governance over the split. Frozen as it is, when hit from a blast from Big Boy The Maul, the wood explodes apart, making me feel like a cross between Paul Bunyan and the Terminator. Pieces fly for 3 feet before landing, and I secretly hope someone is watching my display of lumber prowess.

Nobody is, though, except for the puppy who comes out to visit and request a piece of freshly-split wood to chew on, and the birds hiding in the bushes, having their pre-supper conversations at an unusually exuberant volume. It is that chatter, as much as anything else, that tells me that, although spring may not yet be here, winter's strength is waning and his power fading. A month ago, they were largely silent, conserving every ounce of energy for the enormous task of keeping warm and staying alive. I'm not that anxious to see old winter go; like most New Englanders, at least those of us outside the cities, winter brings his own pleasures along with his trials. Few memories are so strong for me as that of drinking my morning coffee next to a flaming wood stove, feeling its heat ripple past me into the rest of the house. Those silent moments are a treasure.

Without warning, the birds' chatter silences, as a cold north wind kicks up. Winter's assertion that he's maybe not so old. Well, neither am I, for that matter, and I ignore the sudden temperature drop, splitting a few more logs to reach my goal, which is to bring the woodpile even with the top of the snow. Just to teach him who's boss.

After splitting, I carry a dozen or so wheelbarrows of split wood and stack it under the porch, where I hope it will dry out enough to be useful for me by the time I need it.

I lean the wheelbarrow against the wood, and then go back out to retrieve the maul. Picking it up, I feel the muscles in my back. They aren't sore, and they probably won't be, but they've been used just enough to feel wanted and loved.

I look one last time to the low clouds of a stale winter sky. They still aren't talking.

I turn to go inside. It's been a good afternoon.

Heart Disease Myths

This month being national Heart Health month, I'll be doing a series of articles on heart disease and how to avoid it. I mean, how to really avoid it, as opposed to the have-this-scan take-this-pill approach to prevention. In fact, it is just that approach to health that has got most of the population walking straight toward the heart attack guillotine. In 20 paragraphs or less, I'm going to show you how to reverse that death march.

The problem is that mainstream medicine has failed miserably at reducing the rate heart disease. After billions of dollars and a half-century of research, heart disease remains this country's number one killer, causing 36% of all deaths.  The claim is often made, based off of a CDC report, that there are fewer people dying from heart disease, and that is true; but that's not because fewer people have heart disease, it's because we can keep people alive longer after heart attacks. They still have heart disease, and are usually very sick, but at least they're not dead. Which is wonderful for those people who are living with heart disease, but honestly, wouldn't it be far better to stop the disaster from happening in the first place?

A more honest method of measuring our ability to prevent heart disease is to measure it's prevalence, or what percentage of the population has heart disease.  In terms of the percentage of the population that has heart disease, "Among adults 18 years and older, the prevalence of heart disease and stroke between 1997 and 2009 has remained essentially the same," according to this report. So, in fact, we aren't really winning the war against heart disease. Instead, mainstream medicine is simply propping up the corpses and declaring victory.

While mainstream medicine pats itself on the back for its "success," the science-based skeptics among us can plainly see that they have been an utter failure at preventing heart disease. The heart of the problem, if you'll forgive the allusion, is that mainstream medicine has built its "prevention" approach on a shaky therapeutic foundation, one predicated more on profitability than on true prevention. These heart disease myths, while they are making lots of money for high-cost, high-tech clinics, surgeons, and pharmaceutical companies, are ignoring the scientific research which conflicts with the profit imperative. The sooner we recognize these myths for what they are, and discard them in favor of evidence-based prevention, the sooner we can reduce the number of Americans dying from heart disease. At the current rate, one American dies from heart disease every 40 seconds. I think we can do better than that.

Heart Disease Is Not A Disease

This may sound spectacularly absurd, but the fact of the matter is, most heart disease does not begin as a pathological process. Heart disease is not a disease in the same way that multiple sclerosis, thyroid disorders or many forms of cancer are diseases. What we call heart disease is actually an unholy conglomeration of lifestyle choices. Stop, for a second, and think about how evolution has molded our bodies. We are designed to live in physically-demanding environments where energy is obtained only with significant energy output. Our ancestors of only a few thousand years ago lived in places where the energy balance between alive and dead was as thin as the edge of a stone blade. Nutrition varied tremendously, from place to place and from season to season. Our bodies developed to adapt to them all. Our systems were honed to provide the best possible performance in those circumstances.

Simultaneously, historical evidence shows that heart disease was not prevalent in pre-industrial societies, from the medieval English to nomadic Ethiopians. What these unlettered, unhygenic people did that we do not is make use of one of the basic premises of medicine, Davis' Law. In non-technical terms, Davis' Law, and it's logical brother, Wolff's Law, boil down to this: Use it or lose it. The heart is a muscle, and the less you use it, the weaker it becomes. What happens to weak hearts? I don't think I really have to tell you.

The real truth is that heart disease is, first of all, the beginning of the failure of a weak, underused muscle: Your heart. What the research actually shows, as opposed to the faux science you have been handed, is that the number one risk factor for heart disease is cardiopulmonary fitness, or in other words, how strong your heart and circulatory system is. The stronger your heart, the less chance you have of having a heart attack or stroke. This influence is so strong that it overrides genetic influence, smoking history, cholesterol levels and weight. For example, if you smoke and do regular, vigorous cardiac activity, you will have a lower risk of heart disease than an unfit non-smoker. If you've got an extra 25 pounds around the middle, but can pound out 50 miles on a bicycle, you are unlikely to die of a heart attack, even though your BMI would make a cardiologist gasp in fear. Our hearts are designed to be used, and used hard. We are made to chase our food with foot and spear, lift logs, roll stones and dig dirt. And the less we do that, the weaker our hearts become. Once a week on the stationary bike while reading the Sunday funnies doesn't turn the trick. You have to pant, sweat and push on an almost daily basis.

You can do this by going to the gym, or by engaging in a home bodyweight/cardio workout. But that takes a lot of self-discipline, more than most of us have. So my suggestion is to incorporate high levels of physical activity into your everyday activities.

Am I suggesting that this we turn our lives into a daily replay of some Scottish highland games? Well, not completely. But if you do want to actually prevent heart disease, it's time to make some changes. Keep the car in the driveway for any trip less than 1 mile. Chop wood to supplement your normal house heat. Ride a bike to work every day, shovel snow instead of blowing it, rake leaves instead of blowing them, and quit blowing away time in front of the television. In our society, we have made physical activity the special time, the consecrated time of the modern American. It's time to reverse that, by integrating high levels of physical activity in our lives and sitting down for our sacred space.

Diet is another lifestyle choice that contributes to heart disease. The confusion that the mainstream medical community faces is that it has no idea what a healthy diet really is, though it hasn't prevented them from promoting an ersatz "heart healthy diet" that fails to do much for anyone. The research shows that vegetarians have a much lower risk of heart attack; it also shows that people eating a meat-heavy Adkins diet also have a lower risk of heart disease.

So, if you want a healthy heart, what are you supposed to do? Become an omnivorous vegetarian?

The problem with the studies purporting to demonstrate the components of a heart-healthy diet is that they fail in two regards. First, they do not take into account what I call individual biochemical diversity, something that I have seen to be of tremendous importance in the nutritional treatment of disease. Second, they ignore the rather extraordinary fact that we do not absorb only energy and nutrients from our food; we also absorb information.

Individual biochemical diversity simply means that we all process our food differently. Some of those differences are genetic, making an eastern European's nutritive processes significantly different from those of a Maori. As a result, though both may suffer from the same malady, the nutritional therapeutic intervention will be different for both. So, yes, for some people, a heart-healthy diet is a vegetarian diet. For others, avoiding heart disease means lots of protein. The trick is finding out what kind of diet (and there are more than just two) will best prevent heart attacks for you.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the concept of xenohormesis. Living things produce certain molecules in response to certain stressors. When those organisms become food, we ingest those molecules, and our body recognizes the signal that the food is giving us. For example, an animal produces certain molecules when it is stressed because its food supply is low. When we eat that animal, we are informed that a famine may be on the way. So guess what? We start storing energy. And energy is stored as -- wait for it -- fat. And, just for giggles, guess how stressed out an animal that has spent the last month of its life in the execrable conditions of a feed lot is? Guess what its meat is full of? Yup. All those chemicals that tell us that a famine is coming.

The study of xenohormesis is in its infancy, but its a safe bet that the "food as information" paradigm plays a much larger role than we currently understand. The trick is, if you want to stay healthy, eat healthy foods.That means locally grown, locally raised, and if not FDA-approved organic (which is the worst kind of organic, mind you) at least raised with no help from Monsanto.

Cholesterol Doesn't Matter. At All.

This is the part where all of the pseudo-skeptics start getting the vapours and call up the quackwatch hotline. But the fact is, when it comes to heart disease, cholesterol doesn't matter. 

I have come to that conclusion, in part, after examining the epidemiological data over the past 30 years, which demonstrates that, although we've reduced cholesterol levels on a nationwide basis, the rate of heart disease, as I mentioned above, has not budged. My conclusion has come after reading multiple studies, often cited in the literature as a justification for the creation of a cholesterol panic, and finding that in many cases, the researchers' own data does not support their conclusions. And, in some cases, the data has been fabricated, or massaged, to produce the desired outcomes.

And I'm not the only physician to arrive at that determination. Marcia Angell, former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, is among many prominent doctors who have looked behind the cholesterol curtain and found the same thing I have -- biased research, bad science, and a public health policy more interested in your wallet than your health.

I could write entire chapters on the damage that the cholesterol myth has done, and perhaps someday I will. Suffice it to say now that, whatever your medical doctor has told you about cholesterol, just ignore it. And, though I risk bringing the wrath of the FDA on my head for saying this (I would certainly never say this to a patient, as recommending pharmaceuticals is not part of my scope of practice), if you have no heart disease, and your MD has given you pills to bring down your cholesterol levels under the guise of prevention, just chuck them. They are likely to do you no good at all.

So I promised you an effective preventive strategy for heart disease in twenty paragraphs, and this is number 20. So here's the deal. Turn off the TV. Hide the car keys. Whatever it is, pick it up yourself and carry it with your own two feet. Sweat and gasp for breath at least once every day. Sprint to the mailbox like you're waiting for your lover's letter. Quit eating crap. Plant or mammal, if it died more than 60 miles from you, don't eat it. Eat anything that's fresh or unprocessed unless it disagrees with you. And one other thing: Ignore most of what you've been told about how to prevent heart disease.

Dr. Avery Jenkins is a chiropractic physician specializing in the treatment of people with chronic disorders. He can be reached at alj@docaltmed.com or by calling 860-567-5727.

Before you go get a flu shot, please read this.

The Cochrane Collaboration is considered the "gold standard" in evidence-based medicine. Cochrane researchers analyze the published studies on health and medicine topics and produce sound, objective reports that practicing doctors such as myself use to guide our decision-making.

In 2010, the Cochrane group analyzed "all trials which compared vaccinated people to unvaccinated people." And this is what they concluded:

"Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalised or working days lost but caused one case of Guillian-Barré syndrome (a major neurological condition leading to paralysis) for every one million vaccinations."

In case you missed it, let me repeat that. "Vaccine use did not affect the number of people hospitalized or working days lost."

On the other hand, while flu vaccines are useless at keeping people from getting the flu, vaccines did cause at least one case of paralysis, and presumably more.

The report went on to say that "fifteen of the 36 trials were funded by vaccine companies and four had no funding declaration. Our results may be an optimistic estimate because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce results favorable to their products."

As if that wasn't enough, the authors added "reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies."

Now, if anyone, after reading these conclusions by some of the brightest minds in medicine, wants to get their flu shot, be my guest.

But if you care about your health, listen to the research, not the people who are going to make money by scaring you into getting a demonstrably useless, and proven harmful flu vaccine.

And do your friends a favor. Pass this information along.

Dr. Avery Jenkins is a chiropractic physician specializing in the treatment of people with chronic disorders. He can be reached at alj@docaltmed.com or by calling 860-567-5727.

Whereabouts Unknown

Even before the tragedy at Sandy Hook had occurred, I was aware this year that my holiday spirit had largely gone wandering for parts unknown. And as I watched the appalling news unfold, scooting into my office to tap the news feed in between seeing patients, what little joy I had in this year's season was entirely squelched by by the horror visited on Newtown.

As one patient had put it just a few days earlier, "Dr. Jenkins, this is the first place I've been to in weeks that isn't all decked out in Christmas." I think he was grateful for the respite, and so, frankly, was I. So the lack of holiday lighting, the absence of festive glitter, the avoidance of celebratory music on the office sound system, were all a part to provide a reprieve for those of us who, for whatever reason, felt overburdened by the season.

My reasons for feeling a little Grinch-like this year have been many. Aside from the obvious sadness of recent events, this year has been one of great struggle.

Having been in practice for nearly two decades now, I'm used to the unavoidable disappointments that come with my profession, one in which great distance between patient and doctor is impossible if one is to get the job done properly. But I was particularly saddened when a couple of my patients were struck by sudden, severe downturns in their health, ones which exceeded my skills or that of any other physician. These are people for whom I'd doctored for many years, and it is hard not to become attached to such people in your life, particularly when they are individuals of great worth.

Normally I am a rather ecumenical friend of religion, regarding religion -- any religion -- as my partner in helping to secure greater health for my patients, and often enlisting it to our mutual advantage. But the events of this year, both in this country and abroad, have highlighted for me the capacity for danger that religion innately possesses. Religion is the nuclear energy of the human spirit. When harnessed appropriately, it can create light and warmth that spreads beyond the individual, enabling him to shelter others in the illumination of his humanity.

At the same time, religion, like nuclear fission, creates waste which can be severely toxic and will last for generations, as it has in Palestine and Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. And at its worst, religion, like an uncontrolled nuclear reaction, can lay devastation and waste over great swaths of our collective spiritual and political landscape. It is hard not to look at the damage caused to thousands upon thousands of lives by religious leaders, either by taking utterly immoral advantage of their charges or by re-asserting slavery for half of humanity, and not only be appalled at the carnage, but also moved at the enormous loss of potential, the wasted spiritual capital left to spiral down the drain of iniquity.

Finally, I am a man who derives much of his strength from the natural environment around him. Little to me is more uplifting than a sojourn, short or long, in the woods, on the water, along a mountainous path, or even (or perhaps especially) taking in the sights, smells and sounds of the landscape about me as I pedal my way through this world, feeling absolutely sanctified to be able to experience it in that unique way that only another pedestrian or cyclist can understand.

And to this man of science and nature, it is absolutely clear that the environment is in great upheaval, one which has been caused by, and which does not bode well for, our species. Mother Nature is indeed angry, and all too few of us are cognizant of the enormous price our children are about to pay for our willful ignorance.

All of these thoughts weigh heavy on my mind and my spirit this morning, a time in which many throughout the western world celebrate family and friends, revel in the delighted squeals of children opening presents. And the thought of such pleasures does make me smile. Whether you are celebrating the birth of your savior Jesus Christ, or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the return of the unconquerable sun, Yule's return of the horned hunter, or the endless light of Hanukkah, this is the time to see the light in the darkness and to bask in the warmth of those around us.

Yet, to borrow from the metaphor of Christianity, within each of us is that part which has not yet arrived at the warmth of the creche. As the wise men struggled through the darkness, seeking purity while bearing the meagre gifts of their imperfection, so does each of us seek the perfect within us with often the dullest of tools and the dimmest of torches.

But if we take care of ourselves and one another, that path may not be as rocky, or as steep, as it might appear. The sun will rise again, and each day -- not just this one -- gives us another opportunity to rise above ourselves and be, not only who we are, but who we could be.

I'm on that road, too, and I'll be looking for you.

26 For 26

Like everybody else across the state and across the country, I have been struggling to find a way to respond to the pure horror of last week's tragedy at Sandy Hook.

My tears are not enough. They do nothing to alter a staggeringly sad reality, a reality so terrible that a seasoned police officer who was one of the first responders to Newtown's call for help, walked away with tears in his eyes, saying "my soul is stained."

Prayers are not enough. Any god capable of hearing and responding to such prayers would never have allowed the events to happen in the first place.

Public policy debates are not enough. Gun control, mental health care...yes, we need to talk about these things. But how does that change the memory of a parent's riven, tear-stained face? It cannot.

As a father, who has always regarded his primary duty to be the defense of his children, I could do nothing to alter those childrens' fates, nor that of their teachers. As a doctor who has always striven to be my patients' SWAT team against disease, I am powerless against the gunman's destruction.

Yet this situation demands some response, some thought, some act that, to the extent that a middle-aged chiropractor in podunk Connecticut can effect any change, will constitute my response to the abyss.

And this, in my very small, very teeny-tiny way, is what it is going to be. I call it the "26 for 26."

Between now and Dec. 14, 2013, I'm going to commit 26 acts of random kindness. They won't necessarily be big things -- I won't be sending any random kids to Harvard -- but they will be, in their own small way, meaningful. They will be acts of opportunity -- if I see a chance to help someone, I will. One act of kindness for each one of the victims, large and small.

I know that this is such a diminutive response in the face of such enormous iniquity. But it's all I've got.

26 for 26.

I hope you will join me.

The Killer

In the early 1980s, I moved to Boston with my girlfriend at the time as did several of our college friends. I remember, after having lived there for some time, going to visit another couple whom we had known in Oxford.

They looked like hell.

They had been spending almost every weekend going to the funerals of yet another friend who had died of what was first known as Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), what we now know as HIV/AIDS.

Back then, HIV/AIDS was a death sentence. Today, thanks to antiretroviral drugs, young men and women with HIV/AIDS may live nearly as long as their peers, making it a chronic, rather than fatal, disease. Nonetheless, it remains a brutal and murderous disease. Survival after infection without treatment is about 10 years, and survival after diagnosis without subsequent treatment can be a matter of months.

While pharmaceuticals play the dominant role in managing AIDS, the research also shows us that nutrition can have an important influence on people with this disease; not surprising, since nutrition has such a profound impact on the functioning of our immune systems.

Though, scientifically, we have come a long way in understanding AIDS, socially, we have not. Thirty-nine states still criminalize AIDS; just recently, an AIDS-positive Iowa man was sentenced to 25 years for having a one-night stand with another man, despite the fact that he used a condom.

Let's be honest: The majority of AIDS criminal laws exist, not to protect the public, but to extend bigotry against gay men. Criminalizing a disease does nothing to prohibit its spread; indeed, it probably increases exposure, by inhibiting people from seeking testing and treatment, or disclosing their status if it is known.

So, we've come a long way in our relationship with this pandemic since it was recognized 25 years ago, but we've got a long way to go.

Today, my heart goes out to all of those who have lost loved ones to AIDS.

Dr. Avery Jenkins is a chiropractic physician specializing in the treatment of people with chronic disorders. He can be reached at alj@docaltmed.com or by calling 860-567-5727.

Comment

In which I unwittingly join a movement and realize the parallels between wireless routers and alternative medicine.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded the digital infrastructure at my office, the Center for Alternative Medicine. The new router I installed included the capacity for multiple wireless networks, so I added second wireless network without a password.

The goal was to provide a means for kids, parents, spouses, and other members of our patients' entourage to easily access the internet while waiting in the reception area. I generally don't (or at least try very hard not to) keep patients waiting, but there is usually a coterie of people in the reception room cooling their heels, either waiting for Christine DeCarolis to finish massaging a friend or David Pavlick to help someone understand the inner workings of their psyche, or for me to take the acupuncture needles out of someone. And, inasmuch as the cellphone service at the Center can only be generously described as "spotty," I thought this would be a convenient benefit for the nice people who come to visit us.

As I booted up the new router, little did I know I was joining a movement. The Open Wireless Movement:

"The Open Wireless Movement is a coalition of Internet freedom advocates, companies, organizations, and technologists working to develop new wireless technologies and to inspire a movement of Internet openness. We are aiming to build technologies that would make it easy for Internet subscribers to portion off their wireless networks for guests and the public while maintaining security, protecting privacy, and preserving quality of access."

It's an interesting idea. The internet has become a pervasive enabler of modern life, the digital road outside everyone's front door. And since I have large amounts of unused bandwidth, why not donate it to the greater good? In terms of security, the open, guest network is entirely isolated from the Center's internal network, so our data remains secure.

As I read more about the Open Wireless Movement, I realized that in many ways it parallels steps I have already taken with the Center's technology. For the past 6 years, all of our software has been based on Open Source software. Instead of Windows or OSX operating systems, all of my computers run Ubuntu. Instead of Microsoft Word, we use LibreOffice. Instead of a $30,000 proprietary Electronic Medical Records system, we use OpenEMR (a choice which allowed me to deploy electronic medical systems comprehensively long before most other doctors, and at very little cost).

All of this software is free. All of the code is open. The only payment I make is by reporting, and assisting in the resolution, of software bugs. Open Software is a community effort, that allows both users and developers to dedicate their time to create highly functional, stable applications.

Without stretching the point, this is also how I view health. We are not isolated entities, encountering and fighting off maurauding species intent on our demise. We are ecosystems. We are walking, talking, thinking conglomerates of living entities, from the bacteria that live in our gut and help us digest our food, to the beneficial prions that protect our nerves. Like whales, we proceed through life surrounded by pilot fish who both live off us and help us to live. Every single one of us is not a single organism but a cooperative collection of organisms. We cannot live without one another.

It's an amazing thought, isn't it? That we, in ourselves, are not one, but many? The recognition of that concept is why alternative medicine succeeds in the locations where traditional medicine fails. In many conditions, it is the balance between ourselves and our environment, or our micro-ecology, that is the culprit.

Mainstream medicine's tools, are blunt and traumatic in this arena. When the problem is not the presence of bad bacteria in the gut, but a lack of commensural bacteria, the big hammer of an antibiotic is a poor choice of tools. Changes in behavior, and even in thought, are more effective here than any antibiotic. There are many similar examples, but you get the idea.

And in the exact same way, alternative medicine and mainstream medicine are complementary. Where the MDs tools are weakest, mine are the strongest; conversely, where I may lack the skills to help someone, my peers in mainstream medicine are often helpful.

Or, as I put it to one of my patients, "I'm not the doctor you want to see when you're having your heart attack; I'm the doctor you should have seen 10 years ago."

So, yeah. Next time you're in our office, enjoy the open wifi. At some very basic level, we're all on the same open network already.

Dr. Avery Jenkins is a chiropractic physician specializing in the treatment of people with chronic disorders. He can be reached at alj@docaltmed.com or by calling 860-567-5727.