The SHN #59: Joy, Western Medicine, and G.G. Gurdjieff

Welcome back to The Synergetic Health Newsletter! 

In this edition, I’ll share a practice for following your bliss.

After that, a brief look at Dr. Derrick Lonsdale and his views on Western medicine and the benefits of thiamine.

Then comes a look into the enigmatic spiritual teacher G.G. Gurdjieff.

Finally, I’ll include some links to things I’ve found particularly interesting recently.

Joe Burt

👋 Greetings From Spello, Italy

🤗 Follow Your Joy

If you’ve encountered any spiritual “material” you’ve no doubt come across some teaching about how to find your soul’s purpose.

The gist, shared by many teachers and disciplines, is that your soul has certain intentions in living out this lifetime. Therefore, following the life that the world has laid out for you can lead to suffering, since it can be in stark contrast to your soul’s intentions.

Whether or not you believe that, you may find the following guidance helpful:

Take frequent stock of your situation during the day and assess both what you are currently doing and what you would like to be doing.

If possible, go ahead and do what you would like to be doing (assuming you are not already doing so) regardless of what your mind or others think of it, and whether it seems “reasonable” or not.

Go fully through that experience and then take stock once again of your present situation. What feels best now? What would be joyous in the moment?

Following your “bliss”, following what brings you joy, is a surefire way to maintain a higher energy state and thus bring higher levels of health and well-being into your life.

This may seem like common sense but you will likely notice how much resistance will shoot to the surface if you decide against doing what the world has in store for you and instead decided to do what YOU want to do.

🏠 Western Medicine: A House Built on Sand

A book that’s long been on my reading list is “Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition” by the recently deceased Dr. Derrick Lonsdale and Dr. Chandler Marss.

The book is the life’s work of Lonsdale, who is known as the world expert on thiamine (Vitamin B1). He believes thiamine deficiency produces damage to the mitochondria and can lead to a plethora of mental and physical illnesses.

I plan on eventually reading that book and writing up a long post about it. In the meantime, if you're dealing with a persistent health problem such as chronic fatigue, difficulty concentrating, memory problems, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, abdominal discomfort, anxiety, and mood swings— consider looking into Lonsdale’s work.

For today, I’d like to talk about his blog post from last year “Western Medicine: A House Built on Sand.”

In it, Lonsdale critiques modern medical approaches and advocates for a return to Hippocrates' wisdom of "Let food be thy medicine”:

“Pharmaceutical drugs, with the exception of antibiotics, only treat symptoms. I ask you, does this make any sense at all in the light of what Hippocrates suggested?”

Lonsdale argues that these approaches often neglect the importance of the body's internal environment, or "terrain," in maintaining health. He references Louis Pasteur's alleged deathbed recantation, "The microbe is nothing. The terrain is everything," as a pivotal insight.

Defining health as the ability to respond effectively to a hostile environment, Lonsdale emphasizes that disease can be seen as the inability to adapt to environmental stressors:

“We exist in a hostile environment. Each day throughout life we live in anticipation of potential attack. A physical attack may be an injury, an infection or an ingested toxin. A mental attack, divorce, grieving, loneliness, generally referred to as “stress” may be virtually anything that causes the brain to go into increased action. In facing both physical and mental forces, it is the brain that organizes the defense and it demands an increase in energy output that depends solely on the ability to burn fuel. The fuel burning process is governed by a combination of genetically determined ability and the nature of the fuel. Thus, the treatment of all disease is dependent on this combination being effective. It can be seen as obvious that killing the enemy is insufficient. As our culture exists at the present time, trying to get people to understand the necessity of perfect nutrition is a pipe dream. This particularly applies to youth and the artificiality of the food industry. However, our culture is also virtually brainwashed to accept tablets as a means of treating anything.”

He believes that nutritional deficiencies, particularly thiamine deficiency, can significantly impact the body's ability to defend itself against pathogens and stressors.

Lonsdale advocates for a paradigm shift in medicine, moving away from solely targeting pathogens or genetic factors, and towards supporting the body's internal environment and defense mechanisms. He proposes that vitamin supplementation, particularly thiamine and magnesium, could be a more effective preventive measure than current approaches:

“Dr. Marrs and I have shown that thiamine deficiency is extraordinarily common and that supplementary thiamine and magnesium together balance the ratio of empty calories to the required concentration of cofactors necessary for their oxidation.”

🧘🏻‍♂️ G.G. Gurdjieff

P.D. Ouspensky's book "In Search of the Miraculous" provides a fascinating account of the teachings of the enigmatic spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff.

In Ouspensky's recollections of his time spent with Gurdjieff in the early 20th century, we get a look into his system of thought aimed at human awakening and inner development.

At the core of Gurdjieff's philosophy is the idea that most humans live in a state of "waking sleep," going through life mechanically without true self-awareness. He asserts that we are essentially machines, reacting automatically to external influences rather than exercising conscious will:

"Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions, opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says, does, thinks, feels—all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything."

According to Gurdjieff, the path to awakening begins with self-knowledge. "Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave."

But gaining real self-knowledge requires tremendous effort and struggle against unconscious habits and the false personality we have constructed.

Central to this process is developing the practice of "self-remembering" - becoming aware of oneself in the present moment, dividing attention between the inner and outer worlds. As Ouspensky describes it: "If a man understands this and tries to remember himself, every impression he receives while remembering himself will, so to speak, be doubled. In an ordinary psychic state I simply look at a street. But if I remember myself, I do not simply look at the street; I feel that I am looking, as though saying to myself: 'I am looking.'"

Gurdjieff taught that humans have the potential to evolve, but that this evolution is not guaranteed or automatic. It requires a specific kind of inner work, which he called the "Fourth Way.” This Fourth Way involves working on oneself in the midst of everyday life, with the guidance of a school and teacher.

Key to progressing on this path is learning to observe the various aspects of one's being - the intellectual, emotional, and moving/instinctive "centers" - and bringing them into balance. Self-observation reveals that these centers often function in a scattered way. Work is required to establish inner unity and master the many "I's" that pull us in contradictory directions moment to moment.

Studying Gurdjieff's ideas, one is struck by their difficulty and honesty about the human condition. There are no easy consolations or shortcuts offered. As he states: "A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows."

Yet there is also an optimism available to those willing to undertake the necessary efforts. "It is possible to stop being a machine," Gurdjieff says, "but for that it is necessary first of all to know the machine. A machine, a real machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself. When a machine knows itself it is then no longer a machine, at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already begins to be responsible for its actions."

Gurdjieff's teachings, as transmitted by Ouspensky, present a challenging but hopeful vision of human transformation. Though they at times can seem complex and esoteric, at their heart lies the simple exhortation to "Know thyself" - and through that knowing, to awaken to our real potential. As Gurdjieff puts it: "If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being."

𝕏 Thread of the Week

💪 Your Cells Are Starving for Creatine: In a recent article, Chris Masterjohn, PhD, argues that our cells are actually starving for creatine, a crucial compound for energy production and cellular function. Contrary to popular belief, the high muscle creatine stores achieved through supplementation are not unnatural, but rather the optimal level our bodies desire.

Masterjohn explains that to achieve optimal creatine status without supplements, one would need to consume 1-2 pounds of meat or fish daily. For those who can't or won't eat that much meat, supplementing with 3-5 grams of creatine monohydrate daily is recommended. This applies especially to vegans, low-meat dieters, and those with specific health conditions.

💊 Who Needs Statins? This article by Angela A. Stanton, PhD, examines the widespread use of statins for cholesterol management and heart disease prevention. She argues that the benefits of statins are often overstated while their potential harms are underreported. She illustrates that statins may benefit very few people while potentially harming many more.

The article challenges assumptions about cholesterol, LDL, and their relationship to heart disease. Stanton explains that atherosclerosis is more complex than simply high cholesterol levels, involving factors like oxidized LDL particles and inflammation. She suggests that dietary modifications may be more effective than statins in improving cardiovascular health. The piece also highlights how statins can interfere with essential processes in the body, including the production of CoQ10, which is crucial for heart health.

🔗 One Hitters

🤨 “Skeptics” are skeptical of everything except materialist reductionism (Tweet)

🥩 Are the claims of “more protein=more muscle” accurate? (Post)

💬 “All of life is a game if energy - having it, getting it, choosing where to invest it, spending it.” -Frederick Dodson (Quote)

✔️ That will do it for this time! Hopefully you got some value out of it. If you have any questions/comments/things you’d like to learn more about please don’t hesitate to reach out.

🔗 If you know anyone who loves learning about these types of topics, send them this link!

📰 To read all past newsletters, go here.