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Alyssa Luck

Alyssa Luck

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About Alyssa: Background, Biases, and Philosophy on Health and Disease

Alyssa Luck · Apr 21, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Last updated on April 21, 2022.

Most of us decide whether a bit of information is trustworthy in large part on the basis of who has conveyed it to us. You shouldn’t trust everything people say on the internet, and I’m no exception. This post is meant to give you a sense of who I am as a person, what my biases are, and the perspective I’m writing from, so that you can figure out whether you’ll be taking the information I provide with a grain of salt (or several).

Table of Contents
What qualifies you to talk about health and disease?
Why do you bother writing and sharing this stuff? Do you make money from it?
How do you do research for and write your articles?
Are you one of those anti-Western medicine types?
Are you one of those woo-woo New Age-y energy medicine types?
What’s your perspective on the causes of and solutions for chronic illness?
Are you anti-vegan? Anti-low-carb?
What does your own diet look like?
What are your current research interests and personal goals?

What qualifies you to talk about health and disease?
First of all, I’m not a doctor or other healthcare practitioner, and everything on this website is intended for educational and informational purposes only, and should not be taken as medical advice nor replace advice from a medical professional.

I have a BSPH (Bachelor of Science in Public Health) degree in Nutrition from UNC Chapel Hill. My background in the basics of chemistry, biology, and nutritional biochemistry is pretty solid.

I’ve also been independently researching (aka reading papers that I find on Google Scholar or Pubmed) and writing about health and nutrition for over a decade. I worked for Chris Kresser for a while as a research assistant.

I also have my own experiences with health experimentation to draw from, although I try not to let that bias my non-personal writing.

Why do you bother writing and sharing this stuff? Do you make money from it?
Sure don’t! In fact, it costs me money. Web hosting ain’t free, folks.

I do this for several reasons. One, I enjoy it. It’s fun for me to learn, and I’m the type of person who doesn’t feel like she fully understands something until she can explain it to others. So, I write.

But perhaps more importantly, I had the experience of losing an organ due to lack of information. The information existed – I just didn’t have it. And neither did my doctors, or anyone else around me. I’ve said that I don’t regret that this happened, and I don’t – but I wouldn’t wish it on someone else.

So I feel a very deep compulsion to share everything I can, in as organized a way as possible, such that anyone with IBD who is facing surgery isn’t missing an option that they didn’t know existed.

How do you do research for and write your articles?
Google Scholar, baby! (The Pubmed search function is garbage.)

I’ve gotten better and better over the years at navigating the scientific literature; there’s definitely an art to it. Pro tip: hopping between related papers using the reference list and “cited by” features is often more fruitful than a simple keyword search.

For a complicated topic (which, who am I kidding, is most of them), I’ll often spend days reading before I write anything. Usually I’ll start with a couple recent review articles, but I typically read primary research too, depending on my goals. I’ve often been surprised by researchers missing things, or misrepresenting things. Remember, they’re human too.

Are you one of those anti-Western medicine types?
I suppose it depends on how you define it! I have my biases – Western medicine phenomenally let me down in my time of need. And I know my story is not unique. The fact that we often must resort to removing parts of the digestive systems of IBD patients goes to show how inadequate treatment options currently are.

I also tend towards the belief that a lifetime of drug dependency – even if the drugs work – is setting the bar too low, and isn’t getting at the real causes. That idea rubbed me the wrong way when I was diagnosed at 14, and it still does now. Call it “natural” bias if you’d like.

I do also feel some resentment towards those in the medical profession who denigrate “alternative medicine.” That position seems rather uncalled for, knowing how few answers they themselves hold. I totally understand (and support) the desire to call out “unscientific” practices if there’s risk to the patient, but what I usually see instead is an almost religious disparagement of anything that isn’t a pharmaceutical, regardless of potential risks or benefits.

That said, I believe that most medical professionals have good intentions, and truly want to help people. They, like us, are victims of a dysfunctional system.

I try to give Western medicine the respect it deserves. In some diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, that’s a great deal. In IBD, it’s less. Many IBD patients do well on drugs, and even with surgeries, but many don’t. So however I feel about Western medicine, one thing is clear: it’s not enough.

Are you one of those woo-woo New Age-y energy medicine types?
Again, depends how you define it! I think the “new age” scene is chock full of nonsense, but that there are many valuable nuggets of truth to be found in it. A lot of people see the nonsense and proceed to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which I think is a real shame.

One of my favorite books is The Body Electric by Robert Becker, and it gives a fascinating glimpse into some of the seemingly-fantastical healing powers of the human mind and body, as well as the institutional forces that tend to prevent such research from entering the mainstream.

There’s a lot we don’t yet understand about the world, and the history of science is the history of people and institutions being wrong, repeatedly. Many things that seemed fantastical and heretical in the past seem commonplace now. As such, I’m extraordinarily open-minded to discovering that things I think are nonsense now (astrology??) actually have some truth in them.

And as far as health goes, “energy medicine” and all that encompasses is currently a primary research interest of mine. I think it’s fascinating, and holds a lot of hope for a new era of healthcare that is perhaps – dare I say it – more effective and less harmful than our current one.

What’s your perspective on the causes of and solutions for chronic illness?
Fascinating question, I’m glad you asked!

The causes, in a word? Mismatch.

The concept of evolutionary mismatch is old news, especially in ancestral health/Paleo communities. It’s most commonly applied to diet: eating foods that are mismatched with what we’ve evolved for causes disease.

But I think the mismatch goes much, much deeper than that. Not only things like exercise, circadian rhythm, light exposure, microbial environment, stress, and technology, but also things like societal structure and cultural framework.

The human is a remarkably adaptive creature, but with modern Western society we have clearly encountered the limits of what we can adapt to.

I think the solution to chronic illness – of any sort – lies in creating a healthy environment for oneself, and then adapting to it.

Are you anti-vegan? Anti-low-carb?
Surprisingly, not really! I mean, I don’t really think a vegan diet is generally appropriate for humans, nor do I think that a very-low-carb diet should be adhered to long term, but there’s a time and a place for everything.

What I AM against is people with significant followings who create dogmatic, quasi-religious trappings around food that ensnare people in diets that end up harming them. It’s irresponsible, and it destroys people’s health, because they’re encouraged to ignore the signals of distress their body is sending them.

What does your own diet look like?
Currently, my diet is fairly bean protocol-esque: mostly eggs, fish, lean meats, beans, white rice, oats, gluten-free sourdough bread, potatoes, and veggies. I think this high-soluble-fiber eating style has contributed to some recent health breakthroughs, and seems to make my gut happier than anything else I’ve tried, but by no means do I think it’s optimally healthy or a “model” diet. Ideally I’d like to be eating more nutrient-dense fatty animal foods, like dairy and red meat, but my body doesn’t love those right now.

What are your current research interests and personal goals?
I talked about this a little at the end of my post chronicling my IBD experience. I have several lingering health issues, and my current strategy for addressing them is primarily nervous-system focused: meditation, vagus nerve exercises, and DNRS, to name some of the approaches I’m experimenting with.

Unsurprisingly, my current research interests dovetail with those strategies: I’ve been learning a lot about heart rate variability, and what it can tell us about sympathetic/parasympathetic balance in the nervous system. I’m also currently fascinated by the mechanisms behind meditation, and programs such as DNRS, as well as the broad category of “energy medicine” in general (as I mentioned earlier).

But I also have some fun gut-focused topics up my sleeve, including a deep dive into the multifactorial nature of bloating (it will be cooler than it sounds, promise), and an investigation of the risks and benefits of iron supplementation in the context of digestive disease.

If you want to keep up with the latest, you can follow me on Instagram, where I plan to share snippets of research and other interesting things I’m working on!

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Hi! I’m Alyssa. This website is where I house all of my musings and investigations and pet research projects – topics ranging from autoimmune disease to nutrition to adult palate expansion to psychology and nervous system therapy. I hope you enjoy this awkwardly cropped poor resolution photo of me playing mini golf. If you want to know more about me, click here!

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alyssa.luck

alyssa.luck
Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone who made 28 the best yet - excited for 29🥰

(PS. In case anyone wants to know what it’s like in my head, I was going to write something like “year 28” or “my 28th year” but then I realized that the year between your 28th and 29th birthdays is not your 28th year of life, it’s your 29th year. I am turning 29 because I have been alive for 29 years. So then I had a whole thing about how to word it without being inaccurate and ended up going with what you see above which is vague and weird but the point is it was a good year and I love all the people in my life dearly)
Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipt Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipton, who earned a PhD in developmental biology in 1971 and was an anatomy professor and academic researcher in the 70s and 80s. Despite the book's presentation and Lipton's background, this is not a science book. It is an exposition of an ideology, supported by haphazard and poorly contextualized nuggets of evidence, rhetorical leaps, and a mind-boggling overuse of analogies. 

The book largely failed to deliver on its promised content. What it does is argue for the primacy of the environment over DNA in controlling life; propose that the cell membrane rather than the nucleus is the "brain" of the cell; invoke quantum physics to explain why modern medicine fails; explain that our behavior is largely controlled by our subconscious mind; inform parents that they therefore have a great deal of control over the destiny of their children; and conclude that humans must become nonviolent protectors of the environment and of humanity because Everything Is Connected.

It’s not that these points aren’t relevant to the topic at hand - they are. But they were not connected in a coherent way that would explain how “belief” actually works (like…biologically), and the treatment of scientific concepts throughout was careless, or perhaps disingenuous.

I think he's correct about many things, some of them being common knowledge. For instance, the "new" science of epigenetics is now old news, as is the critical role of parenting and early environment in shaping a child’s future. But however important these and attendant concepts may be, the book did not do a good job explaining, supporting, or connecting them. 

As far as practical guidance, he refers the reader to a list of resources on his website, which is fine, but I expected some scientific insight into how/why those modalities work. None was given. 

On the plus side, the book was quite thought-provoking, and I came away with loads of references and topics to follow up on. My favorite line? "There cannot be exceptions to a theory; exceptions simply mean that a theory is not fully correct."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382), as quoted in the introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra because I like the translation better.
This paper totally changed the way I think about e This paper totally changed the way I think about early nervous system development and the relationship between physiology and sociality. 

The authors propose that newborn babies are not inherently social, and have just one goal in life: physiological homeostasis. I.e. staying alive. This means nutrients, warmth, and regulation of breath and heart rate, i.e. autonomic arousal (it’s well-accepted that newborns sync their breathing and heart rate with caregivers through skin to skin contact). 

All these things are traditionally provided by a loving caregiver. So what the baby experiences during the first weeks of life, over and over, is a shift from physiological perturbation to homeostasis (a highly rewarding event inherently) REPEATEDLY PAIRED with things like the sound of a caregiver’s voice and seeing their face. Thus, over time, the face/voice stimuli become rewarding as well. 

The authors argue that THIS is the beginning of humans’ wiring for sociality, and may explain why loving social interactions can have such a profound regulating effect on physiology throughout life: because the brain was trained for it at an early age. 

This framework holds all kinds of fascinating implications for what happens if that initial “training” isn’t so ideal. What if the return to nutritional homeostasis via feeding is paired with negative expressions and vocalizations rather than loving ones, perhaps as could occur with PPD? What happens if the caregiver has poor autonomic regulation, such that social stimuli become paired with cardiorespiratory overexcitement in the baby? Could that have potential for influencing later introversion vs extroversion? (Because if social interaction is paired with autonomic overexcitement, that could lead to social interaction literally being more energetically draining, which is what introverts experience. Thoughts?)

For my energy metabolism enthusiasts: Table 1 in the paper draws a link between metabolic rate and sociality across species. Swipe for a screenshot. 

Anyway, check out the paper! It’s free, just google “growing a social brain pdf.”
I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple day I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple days to have two tooth implants placed, and I think I’ll take the opportunity to have a little heart-to-heart with my subconscious mind. A bit of medically-assisted self-hypnosis, if you will. 

I randomly stumbled upon these papers a couple months ago - an RCT showing reduced post-op pain in patients who listened to recorded positive messages while under general anesthesia, plus a post-hoc analysis of the same data that found reduced post-op nausea and vomiting in a subset of high-risk patients. 

The full review paper from the first slide is unfortunately in German, but it has long been recognized that even when unconscious, the patient is listening (for better or for worse). 

It boggles my mind that it isn’t standard of care to have patients listen to recordings like this while under sedation, considering that almost nothing could be easier, safer, or cheaper, and we have at least some evidence of significant efficacy. I mean c’mon, what more could you want from an intervention? 

(Yeah, I know. Profit. If anyone still thinks that our medical system operates with patient well-being as the foremost goal, you’re deluding yourself.)

“There should be a fundamental change in the way patients are treated in the operating room and intensive care unit, and background noise and careless conversations should be eliminated.”

“Perhaps it is now time to finally heed this call and to use communication with unconscious patients that goes beyond the most necessary announcement of interventions and is therapeutically effective through positive suggestions. When in doubt, assume that the patient is listening.”
If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have y If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have you moving your eyes or tilting your head, you've probably encountered the work of Stanley Rosenberg. The exercises he created and introduced in his 2017 book now appear in instructional videos all over the internet. 
 
The book itself has much to recommend it: it's accessible, it's practical, it's inspiring. But it has one major flaw: the solid practical and informational content regarding the cranial nerves is framed in terms of the scientifically dubious polyvagal theory. 
 
I particularly enjoyed the book as an introduction to the therapeutic arena of bodywork, of which Rosenberg is a skilled practitioner. His book is full of case reports that demonstrate how immensely powerful extremely subtle movements and physical manipulations can be. These do need to be kept in perspective: it's a small sample size of the most remarkable cases, and the results were achieved within the supportive clinical environment of a skilled practitioner. You can tell from his descriptions how refined his technique is. But nevertheless, it was a paradigm-shifting read for me, and the exercises give you something concrete to play around with. 
 
The book also brought the cranial nerves and the concept of “social engagement” to the fore as arbiters of health. Rosenberg has a solid background in cranial nerve anatomy and shares many interesting tidbits and considerations that you don’t typically hear; for instance, the potential impact of dental and orthodontic work on cranial nerve function.
 
So, is it worth reading? If any of the above piques your interest, go for it! Just read my post on polyvagal theory first – you can use the book to practice separating the wheat (solid informational content) from the chaff (pseudoscientific framing). If nothing else, the book is a nice reminder that genuine healers who get lasting results for their patients do exist.

But if you just want to try the exercises, you can easily find them all on YouTube. 

“You learn techniques to understand principles. When you understand the principles, you will create your own techniques.” -Stanley Rosenberg
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