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THE EMOTIONAL GEEK: From a thread on my forum, written by some pretty amazing women with deep seated issues came some clarity. I feel it was something I said that sparked this flame over the past 18 months. I wanted to share it right now in this part of the Brain Gut series.

Inger has found optimal not by subjecting herself to her pain, but by understanding her pain and fine-tuning her instrument (aka her brain) by using food as her medicine and not her entertainment.

How did she do it? She listened to her inner sense, and found her personal ground zero.

She fine tuned her instrument eating Mackerel Head smoothies and raw beef heart salad. She shared it all in her own voice long before she knew about the Epi-paleo Rx. She intuitively knew what to do because she listened to her body. She does not know why but she also does not care. She just knows that this is her pathway to optimal and her journey is the journey of an amazing starfish. When I gave my opening speech at Paleo Fx this is precisely the person I was looking to touch. Inger has touched many people like only she can. She posts her pics and failings and her deepest thoughts and she conquers her fears one day at time. She has the most simple amazing introspection because her brain is now sensing her own reality in all dimensions. She has healed what was ailing her. Her journey is not complete but no journey really is because we always face new challenges to improve our former selves.

She planted herself in the middle of a personal thread on my site that is even more amazing because it shows the deep struggle for optimal when a person’s instrument is not well tuned. It shows the the fight for optimal in real time with a real disease.

In between Inger’s words of wisdom is the real message of Optimal. If you wish more joy, serve. If you want more salary, solve problems. If you want more freedoms in life, face your fears. The enemy is you.

And only you can remake you. To get there you must first accept your personal ground zero. This is where the road to Optimal begins. Many people ask me where they should start on my blog. I think this blog maybe the real starting point. It is place were we start whispering to ourselves this can’t really be happening. But when you are in tune with your current environment and you can feel what to do…………and you actually do it. Then, and only then, you are on the road to healing whatever illness ails you. This is a beautiful day, when you get to experience it. The paradox is, it maybe not seem like it now with your broken instrument but if you follow the idea intuitively and you execute it………your new reality will never be deleted. In a sense, this new reality or journey, you may realize you have come far in your introspection……..but your new instrument tells you implicitly, you have not come far enough.

How do I know this correct?

A lady 25,000 miles from me read the very same thread before me………and said this: Originally Posted by KiwiLauren in the same thread noted above.

“Inger, I know this was for someone else, but I think it’s for all of us. Thank you.”

That is the message of this blog in between my words. Inger is teaching us all how to fine tune our instrument in our head to see the world as it………but more importantly, to imagine how it can be if we embrace our inner ground zero and rebuild ourselves from bottom to top. Take your time……believe in you you, because it is a beautiful day to become what you once could not fathom………and the tools are in front of you to complete that task. To realize it…….you just need to fine tune your instrument by making food your medicine and not your entertainment. Start out today thinking about something else. Your personal ground zero. It maybe a rude awakening, but the rest of your life will be spent rebuilding your road back to you. This is how you find your inner masterpiece and begin to improve your former self. Inger, really is a starfish that knows how to spark a flame…………..Her spirit is the wind behind this blog’s wings. She inspires us all to become something we just do not see or feel yet.

Moreover, my hope is her flame lights many candles on my site. When she shares her light with us, it does not diminish her flame…… makes the world a brighter place for us all. Inger hold her candle to light the path to optimal. When I read her words I want to put down my flashlight and be lit by her flame. She is an amazing women who can teach us all how to begin the journey. She taught me how to explain it to you all by her mere presence.

Embrace your fears and challenge yourself. When you do, amazing things just seem to happen. It is really that simple. Evolutionary biology is simple yet elegant……..Just like Inger’s intuition.




How did  Inger really do it with her Mackrel head smoothie and raw beef heart salad and a painful divorce?

From the forum, Michael says on heart disease, “What a coincidence! This was the topic on Jimmy Moore’s podcast today, where he had guest Kent Rieske.

Mr. Rieske said that what the medical profession does is not “science”, which as an engineer appalls him. I thought that was slightly unfair, because I don’t think that, say, Ancel Keys equals “the medical profession”. I’m also inclined to suspect that engineers have their own déformation professionnelle – they think everything’s about math. So Rieske said that a low-carb diet would halt the deposition of arterial plaque but could not reverse it. I suspect he’s looked at some material on this and is probably right. His answer is medication to reduce LDL cholesterol below a certain number. The idea seems to be that you manipulate variables, by any means available, and the answer falls out. All about math. But what if you don’t understand the aetiology fully? What if there are dimensions to the problem you haven’t even dreamed of? How if, everything else being as it is, the LDL needs to be where it is?

I had an inkling of what was coming in BG13 – although it goes without saying no more than that. I’d seen the “French paradox is really an Epi-paleo paradox” material and put a few things together.

So Ancel Key’s line was that heart disease is caused by saturated fat. The low carb people think it’s caused by carbohydrate. Paleo’s current position seems to be that it’s caused by saturated fat plus high-glycemic load carbs.

But what if the problems is that it’s not so much what you eat as what you don’t eat? Where’s the DHA in current diets?  This is a great question Mike brings up.

Cordain has something about two Inuit bodies from medieval times that had been mummified in the ice. He says they have arterial plaque, and this shows that saturated fat will cause plaque to form (although, he says, that need not be a problem). I wonder if anyone has thought to do static-isotope analysis on the bones. It would be interesting to know whether they were eating predominantly land-based game (such as caribou) or predominantly sea-resources.”

A very intuitive Sally says, “Anything that prevents autophagy would be a cause. Lack of sleep, lack of DHA, impaired hormone communication, inflammation, oxidation.” She was channeling BG 11 and 12 with this reply.

KiwiLauren responds abruptly, “I am realizing more and more that the truth is a matter of both great simplicity and great complexity. It is what we do eat AND what we don’t. It is what we do and what we don’t do. It is what we think, what we don’t think, and what we fail to even realize. It is our genetic switches, our epigenetic flipping of those switches and our knowledge of our own selves mixed with our current environment. There will never be one silver bullet or magic answer. The more you know, the more you have to learn. I love that you are able to put all these sources together and question things. It helps me a lot in discovering my own learning edge.”

My response to her was simple, but it began a powerful thought which followed later. I said, “what causes us to get fat is abnormal cellular signaling in the brain due to inflammation at the hypothalamus…..from there it all goes bad. You must have the brain injury first to get the disease. Moreover, lots of things cause the injury to begin with.” The injury must exist in the brain before the illness appears. This is a foundational concept in my theory of obesity.

Michael points out the incongruencies in paleo theory by pointing out the French eat baggettes and makes a great point. I respond with the French don’t have the hypothalamic injuries from their foods as we do in America. In my opinion, it’s not the foods that get us fat, but it is the initial brain injury in the hypothalamus that does. That smoking gun is in our food supply by design and not in theirs. Modern humans have created those injuries at an alarming rate by creating epigenetic mismatches. They blame all types of foods and macronutrients, when all long it was modern life which caused their initial brain damage that altered how the account for electrons from food via their altered gut.

Ben G then chimed in with the great question in the Ask Jack forum, “ Dr. Kruse, I’m asking in a general sense what usually happens in the following scenario:

If a person for example on one of those Starvation diets (take the Minnesota Experiment where the patients were ravenous after the end of the experiment–or a protein sparing modified fast (PSMF) where those clinics put you on 500-800 calories a day VLCD were to then jump into the 50 degree water strictly and do the LRx Epi-paleo Rx very strictly, would they likely be able to keep the weight down and transition over to LR, or would their hormones and hypothalamus be so fried that they will rapidly gain weight back (as usual) regardless of a LRx+CT intervention?”

This question sparked a flame in me that was lit by Inger, and the answer came easy. It is the science explanation of how we fine tune our instrument to play the music of our life that Inger, beautifully demonstrates daily at my site but can not explain. She plays by feel and I do not. I have to know the biology. Inger is teaching me how to write by feel now. She is fine tuning my instrument. A true starfish.

GEEK ALERT: I responded, “Yes they would, but leptin signaling in the brain would be very adaptive in reclaiming the calories in this specific case…….if one ate a boat load of food that can’t be burned for energy (DHA) then you have this effect……..the gut filled with foods to give the visceral sensation of massive eating (controls incretin gut hormone signaling) while simultaneously eating the type of food that is highly anti inflammatory and needed for proper signaling of leptin into the brain to quell the desire to gorge.

When you add CT to the mix appetite is demolished and autophagy is favored……..because you are as chemically reduced as your physiology allows it to be. This is laid out in Brain Gut 12. This is the ultimate secret of the Ancient Pathway when you use the optimal epigenetic signals for diet and environment. We are designed for cold environment and a marine diet and this is core foundational principle of every mammal left on this planet since the K-T event. We just have remained blind to it. Hence, this is why K-T is Factor X for all eutherian mammals left standing. Modern life has allowed us to stray very far from our real evolutionary blueprint. I am not talking about the paleo 1.0 book here either!

What I just laid out in this response is the core secret message of my Quilt. When I had this thought in Florence initially, my life changed forever. I realized that I could reclaim my health if I allowed my bodies signaling to come back to its default settings using nothing but epigenetic signaling. Nothing fancy, just pure simplicity. I knew I had to get out of my own way for my own sake. I knew if I could make my brain a better signal detector of circadian signals I could reclaim optimal. If we are listening to our thoughts clearly, we all harbor one fiercely held aspiration for our own health. We should aspire and behave congruently to keep us healthy. I no longer allowed my thoughts subjugate my biologic needs. Food became my medicine not my entertainment. With this type of medicine, I believe, we all can regain our health. Without our health, does anything else really matter?”

Michael responded, “It would be the ultimate irony if the conditions of the modern world were causing our offspring to revert to something more archaic.”

That is precisely what I have been knocking the door on for the last 18 months. Become cold dark, sleepy, and boring and watch your inner masterpiece form right in front of your mirror without much work. The modern world tells you what they think you need to do to to regain it. They tell you you need exercise and gyms and cross fit workouts, yet none of those things were around 2 million years ago and we survived just fine. When you let the nano-machinery in you that has been forged by millions of years of empiric design work for you alone some amazing stuff happens to you. Your job is to just get out of your own way………and it is hard to do in the modern world today because of the beliefs of society and culture. We just can’t seem to fathom that there is a bad side to technologic advancement because our thoughts have led so far away optimal by a lot of bad music. We are the best informed society because of technology and yet we will die from our technologic ignorance because modern technology does not consider biologic effects a priori.

BIOLOGIC EXPLANATION OF HOW TUNING THE INSTRUMENT OCCURS: The brain allows us to sense the epigenetics alterations in our environment well. .I want you to now channel what I said about the heart and brain in Brain Gut 13 with respect to how the Na/K ATPase is affected in metabolic terms in all tissues. Then, I want you to think about the number one killer of all humans today: Heart disease. How does heart disease tie into this theory of whole body physiology?

If you begin to alter your blood glucose because of dietary or any other epigenetics signal (light or temp) and cause inflammation at a cellular level by eating badly or not being mindful of circadian cycles, you start secreting large amounts of insulin from beta cells to deal with it. This alters your Magnesium levels which activate the metabolically efficient Na/K ratio because of DHA as laid out in BG 13. When we have an altered Na/K (low) ratio, this in turn, simultaneously cause brain metabolism to ratched down because its function is directly coupled to the efficiency of the Na/K ATPase for our species. As the brain’s metabolism falters, it begins to shunt energy to itself at the determent of other organs. It robs Peter to pay Paul. This physiologic bio energetic “stealing” of energy alters functions everywhere in the body to satisfy the brains needs. As other organs fail slowly under this physiologic directive this further alters brain function from the excessive 60{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} energy boon created by the DHA/ Na/K ATPase, which results in your feeling less well with less energy and you have a chronic cognitive haze. Is this sounding familiar to anyone?
It is the modern human condition that most of us exist in. As this goes on chronically, brain function is eroded (the real source of adrenal fatigue in the PVN) because there is an excess of Na ions, which alter our homeostatic brain controls of the renin angiotensin system and this alters our Blood Pressure. The renin angiotensin system target organ is the kidneys. The kidneys control the electrolyte balance of the serum and ultimate of the CSF (ultrafiltrate of the serum) to further alter the function of our brain.

This slow erosion of our kidney function goes on undetected and slowly undermines our electrical systems balance. This implies that our declining kidney function, directly efffects our electrical system of our heart (conduction system AV node and sinus pacemaker) to become less optimal or “foggy” in its function too. The relays in the hearts electrical system is sticky and this cause all kinds of unusual heart rhythms. This shows you why declining brain function always correlates with declining heart function. Modern medicine has never made this link but they know it exists. These organs are chemically and electrically tied together by the action of the Na/K ATPase, DHA and iodine at a foundational level physiologically in humans in our cell membranes. This all results in the many types of cardiac dysrythmias we see clinically. This is an early sign of major bio-energenic shifts in cells all tied to oxidation.
When this goes on further brain function erodes and we can not sense it well. We, in essence, lose our primal sense of well being and eventually we develop an inability to sense vascular trouble before it happens clinically. This leads to a heart attack. Now think back to Inger………she can’t tell you any of this physiology……..but she can tell you that she feels a sense of well being now because her signaling and sensation in her brain is approaching optimal. This means the Na/K ATPase battery in her cell membranes in her brain that is driving her Ferrari engine, is working at the peak 60{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} efficiency I mention in BG 13. How did she intuitively find it? Look at what she eats: MHS and fermented raw heart in a jar!
She has tapped into her brain sensation because this is what it needs to sense its world to avoid illness. That my friend is understanding heart disease from the Quilt’s perspective. Inger is a perfect example of where form has met evolutionary function.


NON GEEKS: This means seafood is loaded with fats that are not used for energy but our conserved for use in our cell membranes. It means they are not part of the calorie equation and no one seems to realize it. This means that the Epi-paleo Rx allows us to eat the most nutrient dense diet for the brain, while simultaneously experiencing not having to deal with the calorie penalty that causes us to gain weight. Moreover, since seafood is also highly anti-inflammatory because of its iodine and DHA content, it also lowers inflammation to improve signaling, and allows the brain to heal. When inflammation is lowered everything falls into place. As your brain heals, you begin to pay deep attention to the circadian cycles that our blueprint is based off of and you begin to feel like Inger. This is how the master musician fine tunes their instrument so it can begin to play the music it was born to make. When you do this, your soul begins to dance and your life begins once again. The more you dance the more you begin to once again move naturally and less like the zoo animal you have become. Without even realizing it you became a ballroom dancer and you just stepped back onto the road of Optimal after a short sojourn in the modern world that lead you astray and dulled your senses to the music of a beautiful life.

When you get here……….your life begins to be many beautiful days strung together one after another.


TRUTH BOMB ALERT: Today modern medicine believes the source of most of our problems can be found in our genome. This is especially true in cancer research. They are dead wrong. Your genes are just the first edition of your story…….your life however is made by the future editions to the genome. This is where epigenetics occurs and why it is far more important that the first draft of your story.

Today modern healthcare is pushing all health care professionals to evidence based medicine approaches touting its great benefits. Well, those benefits are greatest for the health care complex and drug makers and not the patient, in my view. Doctors are allowing their power to be be slyly usurped again because the are overworked and burned out and asleep at the wheel. Why do I feel this way? This blog is about just that. What underlies the etiology is this: The manner in which we ask questions is deeply flawed. Here is where the major causative factor lies in medicine that too few are talking about in research literature. You need to know it. Positive findings, whether they are good or bad for our biology, are twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This dramatically skews the meaning of what the evidence is really showing us in medicine.  It is at the core why people do not get better with evidence based practices and remain a medical annuity for the system.  This is a cancer at the core evidence-based medicine today. When you become aware of what you do not know, it becomes easier to get to optimal.  They key is for you to avoid those pitfalls before you access the healthcare system. Unfortunately, physicians are paid on this data and that is why it appears to many people that doctors just don’t get it.  Many of us do, but if we step out of line we get punished by the system.  You need to understand that.

We do not procrastinate because we are really busy in our lives, we do it because we are running away from our fears. Today change that and watch you catch a wave of inspiration that might just change you life. You’ll be quite surprised to find out how far you can go from the point that you thought was the end. Embrace challenge and change, they harden us and open us to a new reality that was created in our evolutionary past.

How do you know when you have arrived? You hear thoughts like this in your head: It is impossible said, pride, It’s risky said experience. It’s pointless, said reason. But you give it a try anyway, because you are beginning to listen to your intuition. When you begin to listen to this music, is when the instrument that makes the music, begins to sound like the best music you have ever heard. This is where ideation without execution stops once and for all, and good things begin to occur for you. This is where the road to Optimal begins. Inger tapped it with a Mackerel Head smoothie and some fermented raw heart from a jar..

Intuition is where the magic happens!