mold, allergies, tests, sensitization, and so on... fascinating info here...

http://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-video-get-stable-energy-perform-better-by-avoiding-these/

Bulletproof video: Get stable energy & perform better by avoiding these

Here’s a video of a talk I gave recently about one of the major unidentified energy-sapping problems. It will revolutionize the way you think about food and cholesterol, and along the way it will help you troubleshoot how your think and perform.

As an example, I was on the phone this week with Ben Rubin, CTO of sleep hacking company Zeo, going over his personal biohacking regimen with him. He’s on fire already and I’m helping him tune his program to be even more impactful. He’ll be blogging about that on The Bulletproof Executive in the coming weeks.

He asked me, “How do I stay in that high performance state for even longer? I need to avoid the downtime that sometimes hits me. Last night, about 5pm, I just zoned out and didn’t do anything for several hours. It was like I was just too slow and foggy to feel like my normal high productive self.”

It’s a common feeling. You’re rocking it one day, and then you just hit a wall and crash. If it happens every day at the same time, it’s probably blood sugar. But if it’s random, look at what you ate in the hours before and see if it’s any of the high-risk foods I identify in this video.

Foods like chocolate, nuts, coffee, cheese, and processed meats very frequently contain high levels of neuroactive chemicals made by the molds and fungi that inhabit them. Many of these are active in a parts per billion level. It’s one of the prime reasons that you will perform *much* better on a fresh & local diet. Processed foods usually contain detectable levels of toxic molds that affect your brain.

In Ben’s case, he’d eaten some cashews a half hour before he hit the wall. Cashews are a healthy nut when they’re raw, fresh, and stored properly in a refrigerator after they were shelled. My own experience tells me that about 60% of the cashews you can buy contain toxins at a level high enough to lower your performance.

We’re not taught that foods have an immediate and noticeable impact on our energy level and mental performance, but they do. Watch the video to learn more about where to find these hidden performance-hindering substances, and what to do to block them. Then, start noticing whether Starbucks makes you feel worse that that high-end coffee roaster down the street. Keep in mind that not every piece of chocolate has the same level of chemicals in it. By choosing higher quality foods, you can perform better. It can help you avoid *hours* of downtime.

Oh geez - but many of those "indicted" foods are so convenient. :)  It's just our luck that many of the more convenient foods are also the unhealthiest.

I'd like to eat healthy more consistently, but I'm trapped by my own malaise.  (Symptoms of various long-term conditions haven't made me the best-functioning person.  Electrosensitivity/chemical sensitivities only make these energy-sapping symptoms worse.)  

Not that I have a specific problem with these particular foods - I've managed to avoid "processed meats", for the most part (though hotdogs can be a weakness).  But this post is just a general reminder of how I often can't seem to "walk the walk", in terms of stricter avoidance of foods that I know aren't the healthiest.  Money (or the serious lack thereof) is a definite limiting-factor - but I think that I could still do a better job in ways that are within my financial means.

In the late-'80s, when I was a freshman in high-school - I had this good friend whose mother had strong beliefs in certain "elimination diets" for her sons (my friend's younger brothers).  I cannot remember the specifics...but it seems that the sons had problems with hyperactivity, and/or ADHD -and the mother had the belief that certain foods (or the additives in certain foods) either caused or aggravated the problem.  I think even my friend was under orders to avoid certain foods - highly-common foods whose "harmlessness" the general public took for granted (although my friend was Jewish - so it's hard to remember which foods she was avoiding for religious reasons, and which foods she was avoiding for health reasons).  I vaguely remember my mom and I being borderline bemused by these "wacko" dietary restrictions; it just seemed "out there" to us that what someone ate could have any effect on their mental/emotional health.  I mean, it was the '80s, after all - I think such dogma was especially "radical" during those times.  As it turns out, we probably should have been taking this woman a lot more seriously; her insights that diet could influence mental health hit a lot closer to home than I could have imagined at the time.  I owe this woman an apology for even thinking that she was going off the deep end of "health nuttiness" - lol.