I've come back from paradise... or at least Saint Martin.

It was good to get some time out in the sun and swim in the beautiful blue Caribbean. I also rediscovered the pleasure of reading from books, versus all the reading that I do from computer monitors. With proper lighting it is just so much easier on the eyes. Everyone at the hotel was reading different books... except that they were all written by someone named Gresham.

I've never cultivated much of a taste for fiction, since you have to work so hard at populating a mental space to hold all the necessary components; the setting, theme, characters. I find that many people who do like fiction seem to have a type of RAM memory in a certain part of their brains that they can fill with all the plot details, then erase for use with the next novel. I feel sometimes that if I did too much of that it might push some of the other stuff out, so in the midst of all those murder mysteries, there I was with Paul Kennedy's ‘Freedom From Fear' (a 900 page thriller on US history during the 1930's depression) and Larry Wall's ‘Programming Perl' (made especially interesting by the fact that none of us took our computers with us).

I'm in the process of completing the SWAMI GenoType software (which is mostly written in Perl) and in a blitz of activity since my return it is now at the point where we can beta test it in the clinic. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself. It takes between 90 and 230 individual client parameters (blood groups, asymmetries, etc) and analyzes 700 individual foods according to 200 nutrient parameters (antioxidants, propensity to foster microbial overgrowth, acetylcholine content, etc.) For all those 12,600,000 individual calculations, the program is quite fast, though I do admit to a perverse pleasure sitting there for about 30 seconds watching it groan under the strain.

One of the mottos of Perl is that ‘There is more than one way to do it' (TIMTOWTDI, usually pronounced "Tim Toady"). The more that I think about it, there is a lot of Tim Toady in my nutrition research as well.

Probably because at heart I am fundamentally a post-modernist.

Post modernists believe in AND more than OR, whereas modernists tend to give OR precedence in their lives and thoughts. The folks who get all bent out of shape about ‘the GTD versus the BTD' are probably modernists and think that there is only one path to the truth. There is certainly one truth (or fact, or whatever) but that is not the same as saying that there is only one way to find it.

1.

We've been rearranging the clinic this past weekend. My office is being converted into a more general-use, conference-type room. While this sounds perhaps like a demotion, it is actually being done at my request. With the addition of Dr. Colicci to the D'Adamo Clinic staff, we are doing more of a team approach to the patients, and this did not work with an office devoted to just one physician.

Probably the best thing we're adding to the room is a 4' by 8' white dry erase board. This will allow us to 'teach' the patient about the particulars of how we plan to structure their approach. I normally do a lot of this, most often drawing on the examination table paper (which many people take home as a souvenir). I love to explain stuff, but I'm a very 'visual' type person (love to draw, etc.) and if truth be told have always been a bit nonplussed by the whole 'performance' component of doctor consultations, i.e me behind the desk, across from the patient.

It is amazing what this small change in visit structure has done to my perspective. Whereas I used to think 'I've got six patients today,' I'm now finding that I'm thinking 'Hey, I've got six classes to teach today.'

This will also be helpful with regard to the practitioner training that we do at the Clinic, since I can't think of the last time I've seen a patient when there was not an extern or preceptor in as well. Frankly, I'm finding that naturopathic education is still leaving a lot to be desired (amazingly, they don't teach nutrigenomics; have one class each in genetics and immunology; and do not learn any statistics or bioinformantics). I know that there are the 'nuts and bolts' to teach, such as the anatomy and physiology, but it is surprising just how little space these students have for the real aspects of naturopathic practice, since they are so busy learning and memorizing a lot of things which will allow them to pass a board exam, but could more easily be simply looked up while in practice.

2.

SWAMI is coming along nicely. I've written another 1,000 lines of code; mostly the 'calculation' subroutines. A bit more of that and I'll more onto the 'search and sort' and 'report' modules. I'm thinking of licensing a consumer version (SWAMI-lite) of the program that will allow anyone for a small fee to input their own data and run a single version of the SWAMI program. I'll just have to see how practical it is.

3.

Final plug for the lecture that I will be giving at the New York Open Center, February 15th at 7:30 PM. It is only $30, and they give you a free hardcover copy of The GenoType Diet which I would be most happy to personally inscribe for you. Click here for more info.

4.

This late breaking bit of news: I've just received an email that the supplement facts boxes are now online for all The GenoType Diet products. Hopefully this will provide folks with the information that they need to decide whether they want to include these products in their supplement plans. A big thanks to my friends Jon Humberstone and Keith McBride for working over the weekend to make this happen.

5.

Video of the Month:

Michael Moore is a guy it is not hard to have an opinion on, and I actually have a few. However his film 'Sicko' does cast aside the curtain on the con-job that Americans are fed about just how 'great' our health care system is. In the meantime in this video clip he also shows just how flaccid and conformist the US major media is: