A Coffee Conjecture & My Nutritional Bricolage

When you reflect on imperfect wisdom--opacity--for awhile, you realize that we can generate conjectures for testing in infinite ways, from any (Whole Health) Source.

Hypotheses do not discriminate; mythologize, experiment, iterate.

For instance, in his excellent podcast with Jimmy Moore, Richard Nikoley discusses his self-experimentation bouts during his ancestral health journey, and in this discussion, he shares that somewhere he read a memorable story about two groups of people living in neighboring regions on an island. The group that lived inland learned to trade and maintain cordial relations with the group living by the sea because the inland group members knew that they needed marine foods in their diets in order to achieve optimal health. From this thread, Richard reminded himself--via an m=1 my-thologizing process--about the importance of seafood in his diet, and he responded by adding fish back into his regular n=1 nutritional bricolage lineup with positive results.

So, in this spirit, I present a conjecture that appeared to me recently: One benefit of making coffee could be that it filters toxins out of our water. Toxin avoidance is one of the most important health concepts in modern day. It's well-known that our drinking water contains potential poisons. Therefore, consuming coffee may also be a great way to start the day because it is (relatively) safer to drink than most of our available water sources are.

Of course, we will never know if this hypothesis is true--we can never confirm anything fully in science--but we can use it as a proxy to inform our personal self-experiments.

Personally, I've used a lot of awesome epistemocratic maps to generate my Barbell-diversified portfolio of health stories. Perhaps, by simply sharing the results from my recent trips to my local grocery stores (Trader Joe's and Whole Foods), the spirit of these nutritional bricolage stories will rise to the surface:

Drinks

Coffee beans (Major Dickason's Blend at Peet's Coffee & Tea)

Tejava tea

Foods

Raw, sashimi-grade Ahi tuna

Raw crab (canned)

Wild Sockeye salmon

Uncured bacon (nitrate-free, et al.)

Italian sausage (ibid)

Brown, free-range eggs

Raw almonds

FAGE Total Greek yogurt

Celery

Unsalted butter (organic)

Onions

Mushrooms

Raw milk bleu cheese (crumbled)

Raw coconut butter (Artisana)

Raw coconut oil (ibid)

Lemon & lime juice (concentrate)

Avocados

This list is pretty comprehensive/representative of the real foods conjectures that I'm currently testing on my own body.

In listening to my body continually (trying to Free the Animal, really), I'm hoping to connect more deeply with my ancestral physiological roots, in combination with modern technological tools, to optimize my health and make my biology as robust to disease as possible given local conditions and constraints in my Patient of One case.

Regardless of the results of my tinkering, I'm always attempting to be aware of where my faith is; and, right now, when it comes to placing faith in what I elect to put in my mouth, I am thankful for the entire Ancestral Health epistemocracy community for thinkering with diet conjectures openly--I've tapped into this library-like resource extensively.

And, to end with a nice extension of my previous two essays, here's what Frank Wilson has to say about faith (thanks to Dave Lull):

"For to live in faith means to embrace both the uncertainty of being and the non-necessity of oneself. Faith takes courage."

"Faith enables us to live with uncertainty."

How do you cope with uncertainty?

We all have faith in something.

To good health,

Brent