Male Suicides Rising, Nutrition, Inflammation
Some information and thoughts mostly from my own experiences
I wrote this earlier today as a reply to a comment on another substack about male suicides increasing very much in recent times, when someone had referred to diet.
Then I thought I’d written such a big comment that I could post it here, so here it is, with a lot of refinements and additions:
Suicides are rising mostly globally and have been for decades, correlating with recessions especially.
Besides the ratcheting emasculation of the male role/purpose, men tend not to talk about their feelings - “big boys don't cry” - and trauma needs an outlet or it eats away at the soul.
Crying is very good for emotional processing. So is hugging.
Men are generally not raised to show their vulnerabilities and emotions, because it’s long been conditioned in societies that doing so, for men, is a sign of weakness, which is nonsense of course.
Being very blunt, please forgive me if you are sensitive: men are generally heavier and choose more practical and reliably engineered methods.
There are many other factors. Every suicide is different.
Shockingly, in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere too, in varying degrees), suicides of children less than 10 years of age aren't recorded as suicides, but they do happen.
Think about that please.
what do I know about it?
I've worked self-funded in suicide since 2015: suicide prevention, awareness, education, grief, treatment and recovery innovation, and more recently I've become trained/qualified as a metabolic health coach.
I’ve coached and helped, and I still coach and help, parents whose children want to kill themselves. Or whose children have killed themselves.
I'm a suicide survivor myself - loss of partner to suicide (Apr 2015) and narrowly survived my own suicide attempt (end-2015) - which was also a potential multiple homicide too. I'm very lucky and grateful now for every beautiful moment.
I was unrelentingly suicidal 2015-2021, tailing off/recovering into 2022.
No pharma. Mostly zero alcohol. Zero weed, nor magic mushrooms, nor CBD whatever, nor ayahuasca. Just raw.
And because I was so wretchedly focused, I brought trauma upon trauma upon myself, and the vultures came, of course.
All I wanted was to die, and yet trapped - which is commonly a big factor in how people feel when suicidal - because I knew what suicide does to bereaved loved ones.
diet and educating myself changed everything - bit by bit
Hindsight is fabulous of course. I rejected help. I thought asking for help was weak.
I could have saved myself several years of trauma, although it’s made me who I am now, for which I’m grateful.
Diet changed things massively for me, and understanding inflammation too - which I learnt a lot about c.2016 from Ed Bullmore’s work.
Inflammation, among other things, is a feedback loop from brain-to-body-to-brain-to-body-etc.
And this - inflammation - crucially links:
diet
over-exercise*
stress
physical and emotional illness
*N.B. Gentle exercise or ‘non-destructive’ exercise - especially outdoors in sunlight/daylight and nature, or swimming in natural waters - is extremely good for our emotional and physical health - but exercise that hurts our body is harmful - because it produces inflammation.
So, definitely read Prof Ed Bullmore's book The Inflamed Mind.
I learned by my mistakes that long-distance/marathon running (by which I was self-medicating for several years) is not good for suicide/mental disintegration nor recovery because it causes inflammation.
We must be kind to ourselves, when of course commonly suicidal thoughts and bereavement - loads of guilt, shame, regret, rage, PTSD fractals, etc., and the demons of poor sleep - all can cause very self-destructive urges and lifestyle changes.
Also read Al Alvarez's 1971 seminal work on suicide The Savage God.
Read Kazimierz Dabrowski's book Positive Disintegration, and his BRILLIANT 'successor' Bill Tillier's book Personality Development through Positive Disintegration. See https://PositiveDisintegration.com
Bill is IMHO far cleverer than nearly everyone alive, and he’s a quadriplegic, and lost his wife to suicide around the same time that my partner of 2010-15 Liane killed herself (part of the story is at https://RudeAngel.co.uk).
“We only borrow angels,” is something that I say and write to explain things like this.
Understanding that there is a point to the pain of suicidal disintegration gave me hope, and the Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) explains so much, about sensitivity, trauma, emotional growth, maturity (vs staying blissfully ignorant and ‘stuck’ in old habits). And much much more.
Hope is massively important.
Our pain is more bearable if we know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, even if we can’t yet see it.
I’m thankful to Bill Tillier is among my deepest friends, and I thank the wonderful publisher and coach Maurice Bassett for introducing me to Bill and his work.
A previous substack of mine about Bill’s work and much related, goes very deeply into ‘realities’:
Back to this substack article…
Carbs (carbohydrates in foods and drinks) cause inflammation.
Carbs are basically sugar.
Not all inflamed people are obese. Some people are very metabolically unwell and slim. This is ‘TOFI’ - Thin Outside Fat Inside.
Carbs don’t fill us up, so we eat far too much, and mostly we over-eat very harmful unhealthy and even downright poisonous foods. And drinks.
Look at the labels. Check what you are eating and drinking.
It’s easy. Common sense.
There’s a 100gm panel on the packaging for nearly all processed ‘packaged’ foods and drinks.
If it says 50gms carbs, that’s 50%. Which basically means 50% sugar.
There’s an ingredients list too. Usually the order is according to the biggest % ingredient, ending with the least.
Just a little bit of research and thinking can save and improve and prolong your (healthy) life, and help you teach others.
I've been very 'keto' for two years and mostly carnivore for nearly a year.
I cook in beef dripping, lard or extra virgin olive oil. Butter is very good too but has a low smoke-point.
Grain/seed/veg oils are massively harmful. So are margarines and similar ‘spreads’.
'Low fat' products are very unhealthy. Full fat is healthy. If you want milk, get full fat or unhomogenised, or raw.
Mostly I now have just double cream; about 300-450ml in total every day, including in my tea.
I eat eggs, meat, fish (especially oily edible bones fish such as sardines and pilchards) and a little cheese occasionally.
I eat a lot of offal. Hearts, liver, kidney, and old-fashioned cuts of meat that not many people want these days. Meats on the bone.
If I want something sweet I have 70%+ dark chocolate or 100% cocoa with water, but with cream or milk cocoa is very okay too.
I eat avocados, which actually are berries. Occasionally coconut. Very occasionally a few nuts and seeds.
Other than that, no fruit or veg.
Each of us is different. Try to understand your genetic and ancestral food and drink preferences and tolerances as much as you can.
I might change my diet a little in the future; balance is a process not a state.
I find that I can very happily feel and be very fit and well eating and drinking much less than most people.
Pick salt, rock salt, sea salt and Celtic salt are all okay to eat and add to food, although I am well and fit having very little salt added to my foods. White ‘table salt’ is heavily processed with additives and is best avoided.
Each of us is different, but very very few people can be healthy through to old age, as vegans, and vegetarianism is quite difficult too.
A few people can eat as many carbs as they want (i.e., they are naturally genetically very ‘carb-tolerant’ - but this seems to be rather less than 10% of people.
If you are metabolically healthy then (somewhat unfairly) you can eat/drink more carbs than if you are metabolically unhealthy.
A good quick indicator of metabolic health is your waistline measuring half or less than half of your height.
About 88% of USA people are metabolically unhealthy, and we can extend that loosely to populations in the ‘Western and developed world’.
You need only look around you to see for yourself.
Other points
Microbiome (gut health and natural 'flora' - bacteria) is also crucial for metabolic health.
Too much alcohol or regular ultra-processed foods/drinks and pharmaceuticals all tends to destroy gut flora.
Full-fat yoghurt, kefir, and fermented cabbage (e.g., sauerkraut), etc., is generally all good for microbiome. There are other fermented foods and drinks, of various countries (cultures - excuse the pun).
Artificial sweeteners contain chemicals and ironically produce the same insulin (sugar reaction) as actual sugar, so you’re be much healthier having a natural raw cane sugar such as demerara or jaggery gore.
Simply avoid processed foods and drinks as much as possible.
I'm now hugely fit, strong, healthy, powerful, and zero pharma of any sort since end-2016 - which then was just Paracetamol and Ibuprofen because I drank some wild river water that I later learnt was killing dogs - I refused antibiotics and took three months to recover naturally, and then I was hill-running again.
I mostly walk now, plus gym-work, gardening and natural lifting, carrying and movement - outdoors as much as possible - and calisthenics, yoga, pilates, and I can sprint as fast as I could in my 30s, which was/is very fast.
I'm now 66.
Dr Christopher Palmer (Brain Energy book) and Dr Georgia Ede (Change Your Diet Change Your Mind book) are doing great work on keto/LCHF/carnivore and brain health.
The FDA Food Pyramid is corrupt and so is the NHS Eatwell Guide/Plate.
Happily things are changing fast now, especially UK.
https://PHCuk.org - low carb training is all free. Vast other free resources and training.
https://LowCarbFreshwell.com is QISMET-approved for the UK NHS.
So is https://TheLifeStyleClub.uk (which is part of PHCuk.org = https://PublicHealthCollaboration.org)
Prof Tim Noakes founder of https://Nutrition-Network.org is arguably and IMHO the world's greatest authority and coach/educationalist on keto/LCHF nutrition.
https://Prolongevity.co.uk is fabulous for pharmacists (because the founder Graham Phillips is the UK's top pharmacist) - lots of brilliant free resources and podcasts.
The 1-day International Food Addiction Conference and 2-day PublicHealthCollaboration.org conferences are back-to-back - 17-19 May 2024 London/Croydon.
Lots more on my co-founded website at https://LiveWildLiveFree.org/resources.
Note that this is not medical advice. It’s information. Do your own research using the resources above, and if you are on medication show your doctor LowCarbFreshwell.com/professionals/