What are society’s barking dogs? After reading the introduction to this series, this may have been the first suspicious question that poked its head up, whispering in your figurative ear. Or, perhaps, with great confidence you thought of several examples for yourself of what society’s barking dogs may be.

Perhaps city after city filled with obesity was brought to the forefront of your thoughts, or an image of the people in which Alzheimer’s occurs, or the self mutiny of autoimmunity, or even the onslaught of diabetes being fought — but in actuality the reality is that all of these are barking dogs. All of these and more I’m afraid to say, but don’t worry because I’ll make the case for these and more and explain exactly why I dare say so aloud.

Before we begin we should likely start by detailing how I define a barking dog – after all, definitions are important, and if I can’t defend my use of the term down the road then you will surely know the entire dialogue was for naught. Without building an opportunity for falsification, there is no meaning. So, allow me to begin detailing the broad strokes of my finer points so we may paint a picture that we can gaze upon together.

As discussed prior, a barking dog is a circumstance (disease; symptom) which is presumed to be ultimately caused by faulty genetics, poor luck of the draw (randomness), an inherent flaw that was just waiting to break under even the slightest stress (moral or physical), or some other explanation that implies the issue is inherent, progressive, meaningless, unavoidable, and ultimately serves no underlying function or has no logical/purposeful cause but which is likely is the opposite (a meaningful, functional, avoidable result of a pathway or mechanism which has evidence of carrying great importance to survival under normal circumstances). The last points may seem an odd thing to say given the short list we’ve already built (how could a disease be attempting to serve a function? how could anything about these things have a purpose?). These are questions I have asked myself, as I used to truly believe that this could not be the case, but hopefully by traveling with me through my thought process over the course of this series you’ll understand my perspective, and why I chose this phrasing specifically.

For example, growing up I often heard obesity described as being due to inherent gluttony humans have, or more recently an unavoidable drive to overeat hyper-palatable foods, and I always assumed my own obesity was just due to a lack of willpower. To be fair, every so often it will be described in terms of usefulness (surviving winter, or thrifty genes), but in the same breath discussion of “diseases of obesity” (e.g. disease associated with obesity, such as NAFLD, metabolic syndrome, cancer, diabetes, etc) are also uttered, implying it is a net negative, and ultimately causes harm in-and-of itself. Unsurprisingly, this filled a young me with plenty of guilt and self loathing over my own overfatness, to the point that entries in the journal I kept as a 10 year old are filled with disparaging comments about my own willpower, laziness, and gluttony that only increased as I kept gaining weight. Although there’s research now to contradict the idea that obesity causes disease (as you can reverse metabolic syndrome without actually losing weight), there was no possible way for me to know this at the time I was actually dealing with my increasingly expanding waistline.

Likewise, Alzheimer’s or dementia was described to me as something that happens due to age, or a natural part of getting older, or vaguely described as being caused by the build up of proteins in the brain. As if this is something that occurs by accident, happenstance, out of the blue with no warning. Certainly it instilled in me a fear of my own body malfunctioning as the impression I got was that the brain was a ticking time bomb ready to go off at any moment to steal my memories, due to an unfortunate random error. Going off of what I heard the only conclusion I could come to was that this sort of thing just happens, and the most you can do is play crosswords or piano (to steal a line from Amy Berger). Although more recently I’ve seen the finger being pointed at bacteria in the brain, in which case the recommendation is to brush your teeth more and also hope for the best because ultimately it’s luck of the draw. This, also, was what I believed up to adulthood, because it was all I heard, until I heard voices around me saying this might not actually be the case.

Another excellent example is Type 2 Diabetes similarly either described as caused by hefting around too much fat, or perhaps just genetic and all about potential risk – the last being a particularly troublesome idea to me, as my mom had gestational diabetes when she was pregnant with me and I was always warned that diabetes may be lurking around the corner for me as well. Later, I came to hear instead that diabetes is a consequence of eating too much sugar because humans can’t help but consume endless quantities of it, and this raises blood sugar, and this raises insulin, and this results in stubborn fat cells who refuse to take in more fuel instead of differentiating and proliferating to make more room, and this causes insulin resistance. This was more compelling to me, because at least it explained something about diabetes (and obesity) because at least it implied there was something you could do about it, and I certainly experienced that eating carbs increased my appetite. An answer that explains something is certainly one I’m more willing to consider than one that explains nothing at all – that’s all too reasonable. All the same, though, this explanation, too, hinged on an assumption that in some way, somehow, the body is stupid, and it begins and ends with an inherent malfunction that has the only purpose of pissing you off (probably).

In other words, no matter where you turn, the general impression that I got while growing up, across the board, is that either your body is trying to kill you, via things like obesity or diabetes – likely a punishment for your sins of enjoying things and eating things or god forbid both at the same time – or rather just sucks a bit at staying alive and functional simultaneously, such as we see ascribed to autoimmunity or cancer or Alzheimer’s or chronic inflammation, or any other number of explanations that rely on assuming things happen for no good reason, because, well, life just sucks and understanding suffering is a part of life is a necessary piece of growing up.

But, what if there was an alternative explanation to all of these things? What if it wasn’t many random occurrences (or sneaky punishments) happening all of a sudden to modern people in urban environments? What if it wasn’t primarily genetic, although perhaps genetics could lend people to be more vulnerable in certain areas than others, and there was in fact a trigger, and in fact a plausible and sustainable resolution? What if these things all happen because they are being called upon to happen for some plausible, functional, reason and only when they are driven to the point of failure do we suddenly take notice? What if they are all symptoms of the same thing?

After some time of looking past assumptions (with the help of many other people in the community) I realized that hints abound if you look for them. Indigenous populations – like the inuit, maasai, and others – showing no evidence of modern disease, even in their elders. A scant few cases of cancer, diabetes, fatal myocardial infarction, autoimmunity, seasonal allergies, acne, or obesity to be seen. The list of what they don’t have is tremendously long, in parallel to our own woes – even in cultures that traditionally eat a high carbohydrate diet. Even in societies that eat plants full of oxalates, or indulge in nightshades, or legumes or fruit. Even in societies that gorge themselves on fatty meat, thriftiness and gluttony be damned.

Not only that, but now interestingly anecdotal cases are beginning to emerge from ketogenic, and carnivorous, communities touting improvement or remission of supposedly totally random/genetic/progressive/karmic diseases – all the while eating to satiety what would likely not be described as unpalatable foods. I’m certainly not the first, and undoubtedly not the last, to take notice of this happening and, to be sure, many feel that this confirms that sugar is the problem. But, perhaps the treatment says nothing of the cause. Perhaps there’s more to uncover here, more hints, more possible explanation, more sense to be made of the mess of puzzle pieces we have before us. I certainly don’t feel I have all the pieces in front of me, nor am I absolutely sure of the picture it will make when we’re finally done putting it together (however far off of a future that is), but at the very least I can begin to show you some of the pieces that I and a few others are starting to take notice of, so you can decide for yourself how they may fit together.

This describes the situation I currently live in, a world full of barking dogs, conditions which are genetic – yet differ in frequency depending on lifestyle – progressive and incurable – yet can go into remission depending on diet – are caused by gluttony and addiction to carbohydrates – yet don’t occur in all populations that consume high carbohydrate diets – are caused by obesity – yet occur more rapidly in those who are less obese than their American counterparts and can remiss in those haven’t lost weight.

No doubt anyone would be temporarily baffled when confronted with these contradictions, as I was. Anyone would be filled with confusion, but – hopefully – also curiosity. All hope is not lost, as confusion merely means we have plenty to learn.

To gain a bit more understanding, let’s not just start working backwards.

Let’s start thinking backwards.

This series is not about weight loss.

I know this is contradictory to what I mentioned recently on twitter, wherein I floated an idea about writing a blog series on my strategy/philosophy surrounding weight/fat loss, but trust me on this one. It will make sense as we move forward.

Often, I see the same situation occur again and again, both in mainstream perceptions of health, as well as in communities that I quite like. People start from a point of identifying a problem (aesthetic problem, symptom, disease pathology, etc) and think forward to a solution. Too fat? Eat less. Low carb and too fat? Energy restrict. Inflamed? Anti-inflame. Signs of oxidation? Take some anti-oxidants. So it continues on, seemingly forever.

I sometimes imagine this scenario like hearing a dog bark all the time, and thinking forward to the “solution” – the barking is a problem, so inhibit it. Chastise the dog for barking to make them stop, cover their mouth so they can’t let the sound out, get a variety of gadgets and toys to distract them from barking, perform surgery to remove their vocal cords as a last resort.

Now, imagine that there was a barking epidemic in a neighborhood, and not only barking but whining, and growling too. The people in the neighborhood were becoming increasingly agitated as they lost sleep, and became fed up with their pets’ behavior. The problem was beginning to take its toll on people’s wallets, as well, what with the cost of surgeries, medications, and behavioral interventions trying to stop the emotionally and financially costly problem in its tracks.

The proposed solutions did little to quell the problem, however, and the neighborhood became noisier and noisier as the results of thinking forward inevitably failed. Eventually, it was proposed that the dogs were just genetically barkier, or perhaps their vocal cords were malfunctioning for some reason, or maybe the dogs were spoiled in modern environments and erroneous barking occurred as a result.

What would it look like, I wonder, if the residents of the neighborhood had instead started from the identifiable problem- the barking – and thought backwards to try to identify the cause? In other words, what if they tried to understand why seemingly inappropriate barking happens? What if they assumed that the barking was supposed to act as something beneficial, but for some reason, was needed all the time?

If dogs hadn’t always barked all the time, and this changed over the course of a few generations, perhaps something in the environment had changed to necessitate it, or cause a situation where this behavior seemed appropriate to the animals? Perhaps the barking was actually a symptom of an underlying problem, and only by identifying that problem and resolving it could you have a truly positive, long-lasting outcome for the dogs and owners alike.

What if at the start, the people in the neighborhood had noticed the dogs were barking more, and decided to try and identify other situations that may cause dogs to exhibit this symptom? If they had this information, perhaps they could have tried to see if any of these possible causes were reflected by changes in the environment that may have triggered the problem.

Perhaps they’d find it related to degrading quality in care, resulting in injury – in this case, the barking may have been a vocalization of pain from the dogs were experiencing. Perhaps abuse or neglect was the cause – resulting in unwanted behaviors as the dogs vented their emotional turmoil. Or, perhaps it related to poor nutrition causing irritability and poor social behavior – a symptom of their sickness caused by inadequate diet.

If the people in the neighborhood identified these situations accurately, they could quickly rule in or out possibilities, based on whether they fit what was happening in the neighborhood. They could get further context by comparing their dogs to healthy dogs who only barked every now and again and quickly were able to quiet themselves as the situation that necessitated the barking passed on its own.

Once the actual issue was found, they could work as a community to resolve it. Better yet, they could ensure nothing similar happened again as they now truly understood what caused this unfavorable situation in the first place, instead of merely trying to suppress the symptom that annoyed them.

This is the concept of thinking backwards – assuming an identifiable problem is a sign of an underlying problem (not necessarily the problem needing to be directly addressed), and tracing backwards to identify what it could be a reaction to. In doing so, you can hopefully work to fix the environment to stop the behavior or symptom.

Thus, this series is not about weight loss, or fat loss, or fitting into a pair of jeans from high school. Overfatness (or perhaps behavior that leads to fatness, appropriate to a situation you don’t want to be in all the time) is merely one bark amidst a cacophony of howls, growls, and whimpering made by own our own bodies all too often. Although it will be one part of the series, there will be others as well, which we’ll begin to outline in part 2 – Society’s Barking Dogs.

With that in mind, we’re ready to start thinking backwards.