Snowflakes are us

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, April 12, 2024

Very early on in the health coaching coursework, we were introduced to the concept of “bio-individuality,” which essentially means that each one of us is unique in our body’s history, make-up, and responses. 

We forget this, given that we’re all human and given our proclivity to want someone else’s answers to work for us, or to find that elusive silver bullet that will solve all our problems. An operation, a therapy, a cure, a new regimen — the metformin, or Ozempic, or mushroom powders, or bovine colostrum, or creatine, or every other thing under the sun.

I personally like to think of people as snowflakes, because no two bodies (and minds and hearts) are alike, despite our genes being 99.9% identical. Clearly, many protocols work for the majority; and we know that breathing, sleeping, eating, relaxing, and moving better are universally important. But other things require paying attention to who we are and what our health and ancestral history are so that we can find better solutions; this means first noticing how we feel and taking responsibility for it. 

As is true for all of us in human bodies, our health history starts with birth itself. In my case, my mother, 35 and in an Army hospital in Pittsburgh (where my dad was stationed), was told she was too old to nurse. Think about this flabbergasting factoid, which was evidently the going wisdom in the Army, in the 50s, from their medical establishment. 

Who knows how my digestion and anything else might have been different had I been nursed? But very quickly, it became evident I was allergic to soy and cow’s milk in any form and eventually was given what my mother referred to as “liquid meat.” She typically made a face when she told this story, as if the whole thing — feeding me and changing me — was just plain awful. Hello, world, and thanks for having me, despite all the nose-holding going on!

For me and my French roots, and even though I was allergic to lactose (and gluten), dairy — and bread — were a way of life. Hot chocolate. French cheese. Custards. Pastries. I ate it all, unaware of what I might have felt like without it. And I managed to survive until… I arrived here in southwestern Colorado in the 80s, at which point I started noticing that certain bodily functions were not as forgiving at altitude. Especially digestion. 

I mean, it makes sense! Because here in the mountains, the heart may beat faster, which may in turn cause reduced stroke efficiency. This may then suppress non-essential bodily functions, resulting in a decline in food digestion efficiency. Plus, as atmospheric pressure reduces, more gas will diffuse across into the gut and expand, causing bloating and discomfort. It explains a lot, for me.

Even so, that did not prevent me from passing along that “French girl’s breakfast” of hot chocolate and baguette to my daughter (Cindy Bread back then was at Cindy Farny’s house across the street from us), who was also gluten intolerant and has become more so with time. Though she is her own snowflake, she is partly me, as well. 

The point is this: because we are the same but all very different, it can get confusing out there! This is especially true regarding diet and nutrition, a sphere in which experts are in constant disagreement. Plus, the winds change direction every ten years or so. In my own experience, I have gone in and out with eggs at least three or four times in my life. That’s just eggs! There are relentless and ongoing arguments regarding protein sources, fasting, supplementation, water, fats, carbs, beans, grains, fish, superfoods, fruits, and scads of other topics. 

Eventually, however, we just have to take responsibility for our bodies. We either have to follow trusted providers and healers, follow the research, follow our guts, or follow blindly in the status quo and accept the consequences, whether it feels so good or not. 

The upside here is that with information being so available to us at the moment (good, bad, or artificial), there is an incredible abundance of ongoing dialog, research, innovation and wisdom in human health. Fascinating frontiers will likely increase our health spans, including the fields of longevity, personalized health, the use of AI, microbiome research, tech wearables, mind-body therapies, micro-dosing therapies, and regenerative health. 

More and more I hope we can see the value in honoring our unique human bodies and keeping them as vibrant as possible.