Indicators of Health
Look at your fingernail cuticles. If they are growing back rapidly, that is a sign of good health, growth, and anabolism. Recessed and dry cuticles are a sign of catabolism. I noticed very recessed cuticles after a trip to NYC where I walked around a lot and didn’t eat much the next day. After eating food, the cuticles went back to normal in the evening. Old people generally have recessed and dry cuticles. Isotretinoin (chemo/poison) causes cuticles to disappear.
Low metabolism can be seen by hard skin on the front and side of the foot due to chafing. At a high level of metabolism, skin cells regenerate fast enough so that there is no chafing from shoes on that part of the foot.
Furthermore, the quality of the blood vessels in the hands are a good indicator of health. Unhealthy people have a kind of thinnish skin and twisted look to the vessels.
Sometimes, people think being skinny is an indicator of health such as many middle aged women with paper-thin skin, but that’s not true. Muscles are also not a great indicator of health.
The mistake people make is that they are not able to see health as a cohesive whole. They see a single problem, such as hair loss, but don’t see that their joints have become large, arthritic, and calcified with age. There was a doctor in my hometown who seemed to be slightly troubled by hair loss, so he used minoxidil. The hair did grow back to some extent, but it was quite fine and weird looking. Though hair is often used as a proxy of health, just like I’m using cuticles here as a proxy of health, focusing on the indicator rather than the cause is faulty.
People now also have an overreliance on the cause-effect theory. Thing X changes Thing Y. Constipation? Buy an anti-constipation medicine (while not realizing that fermented foods have the same effect). Probiotics or eating stir-fried salad act opposite to constipating effects, things that kill the gut bacteria such as oregano oil or isotretinoin induce constipation.
Obesity? Take Ozempic. It’s clear that this method of thinking is failing, and what is now needed is cohesive-picture thinking rather than statistics and data driven authoritarianism.
Thick hair, thick skin, ability to tan, oily skin, quality tear film in the eyes, and so on are indicators of health. They represent an organism’s ability to have a high metabolism, high cellular replication, and basically go through the world as “positive pressure” rather than negative pressure. Malnutrition is associated with dry skin and thin skin.
Octopus eggs hatch faster around heat. If we look at animals, herbivores such as pandas, sloths, and koalas spend a large amount of time eating. Even large animals such as elephants spend 60-80% of their time eating. While the general impression is that many of the herbivores are lazy and low energy, deer would be a good counterexample. Carnivores can also be low energy, such as pythons and alligators, but they seem to be cold-blooded.
My general impression is that the more metabolically stimulating things people eat, the more energy they have to do things. From personal experience, such as when I eat 3000-4000 calories in a day (mainly of fats, meats, fruits, carbs, and no vegetable oils), I can feel this. You also feel different when eating a spoonful of coconut oil.
The key idea was that energy and structure are interdependent, at every level.
— Ray Peat
Signs of health:
- Cuticles
- Thick hair
- Oily, sweaty skin
- Easy ability to tan
- Fast growing cuticles
- Thick skin and a certain look in peoples’ blood vessels in their hands (the opposite of varicose veins)
- Flesh coherence on the body (some people have the shape of a healthy person but their tissue seems to be less “attached” or plump)
- Good metabolism
- Warm body temperature
- Good jaw growth and erupted wisdom teeth
Miscellaneous Health Stuff
- Fingernail test for clubbing.
- Candida spit test.
- Thyroid ankle test.
- Things to notice in teeth:
- Jaw misalignment
- Rabbit teeth
- Messed up big toe due to modern shoes (bunions)
- Unstraight/damaged fingers/arthritis
- Angle of jaw. Square/round face is generally good. Jaw angled down/long face sign of sleep apneas.
A theory about sprains and aches
If we imagine a body as a wall with cells, except that as people get older the cells that make up the wall decrease but the shape is still the same, it makes sense that cracks start to form. I think cold weather induces joint paint because cold decreases the flexibility of the body as cold reduces blood flow and activity, making it more like a dried twig than a supple young branch.