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Confessions of a Proselytizing Immortalist
I start by telling about how, throughout high school, I fol-
lowed the biosphere dome and Dr. Walford, [2] because of
my love of science fiction. While growing up, I always had
the dream of traveling to the stars. I guess I was hoping that in
my 20’s there would be self-contained spaceships heading to
colonize Mars, and that I could sign up. When the biosphere
was in the media usually there was also mention of the calorie
restriction (CR) diet so it was always in the back of my mind
as a slimming and anti-aging diet.
In my early twenties I choose to start a family, and learned
from La Leche League [3] about the healthiest way to do that.
When it came time to wean them from the breast milk that
gave them the thickest neuron connections, quickest reflexes
and strongest immune systems that with our current technol-
ogy they could have, I had to look at what real food was best
to put into their growing bodies. I lived in Eugene, Oregon
where there was so much support – with actual organic-only
restaurants, free health newsletters, and a high population of
health conscious people – that I was introduced to a new way
of looking at food. I realized that we replace many cells every
6 months and most of our body every seven years, so that we
truly become what we eat many times during our lifetime.
I also started learning about fungicides, germicides, pesti-
cides, rodenticides, herbicides, antimicrobials and how they
collect in body tissues. I read studies such as the recent one
funded by the National Institute for Environmental and
Health Sciences [4], that looked at pre-school age children in
Seattle and found that organically fed children vs. non organi-
cally fed children had six times less organophosphorus (due to
pesticide exposure) in their urine.
Though I had started eating more natural and organic
foods, I was still 205 pounds three months after the birth
of my last child, and I started thinking I needed a real diet!
I began reading about all the diets out there and remembered