I am almost finished with a book called The Schwarzbein Principle, and it’s really, really good. Every American who cares anything about his health should read this book.

When I first heard about it, it was from some friends, in the context of their attempts to lose weight, so I didn’t especially pay attention. Later, one of them mentioned, in passing, that the author is an endocrinologist, and my ears perked up. Adrenal fatigue is the health issue I’ve been struggling for a while to overcome, so an endocrinologist’s book could help.

Overall, I really like the way Schwarzbein thinks. Her philosophies line up very nicely with what I already believe to be sound common sense — eat real food, get moderate exercise, etc. Her basic principles:

1. Eat for healthy nutrition. This includes eating plenty of real fats and protein, and avoiding eating carbs alone, drinking plenty of water, eating plenty of nonstarchy veggies, and eating snacks.
2. Manage stress.
3. Decrease or eliminate toxic chemicals, including nicotine, alcohol, refined sugar, artificial sweeteners, illicit drugs and narcotics, MSG, preservatives and additives, fake fats (hydrogenated oils!), caffeine, and other stimulants including herbal stimulants like ma huang (a.k.a. ephedra, not to be confused with huang qi/huang chi/astragalus, which is technically also a stimulant, but not nearly as strong. Astragalus is usually used as an immune stimulant, not a general stimulant.).
4. Get sufficient exercise, including exercise to tone/strengthen your muscles, exercise to increase/maintain your flexibility, and exercise to stimulate the cardiovascular system.
5. If necessary, use bio-identical hormone replacement therapy.

The basic premise is that, just as knocking one hormone off-balance within the body will disrupt the balance of all the other hormones, so re-balancing a single hormone can help bring the others back into balance. The Schwarzbein program focuses on insulin. Too-high levels of insulin can not only cause blood-sugar-related problems like hypoglycemia and diabetes, but can also cause (directly or indirectly) a host of other problems, like heart disease, weight gain or weight loss, infertility, addiction problems, osteoporosis, and more. Eating plenty of protein and fat, avoiding stimulants (including sugar, stress, and the physical stress of skipping meals, as well as the more obvious stimulants), and consuming carbohydrates only in conjunction with the other macronutrients (protein & fat) will help bring the insulin levels back to normal, as will regular exercise (and other lesser factors).

The only downside I see is that Dr. Shwarzbein is an evolutionist (as are, unfortunately, most health and science writers).

If you care about preserving your health through sound nutrition, this is an excellent explanation of what to eat and what your body does with what you eat. It confronts some very common myths (such as the belief that dietary cholesterol is unhealthful) and overly simplistic thinking (“calories make you fat”) and explains why the alternatives are true.