The set-up
Health Unplugged is the brain child of Darryl Edwards (aka The Fitness Explorer) and his partner in crime Jerry Dhillon. Darryl has become internationally renowned for his approach to health and fitness though primal play, and has been involved in a number of paleo conferences over the years, including Paleo f(x) and the Ancestral Health Symposium. This experience really showed.
Conference guests were treated to a broad-range of talks in three different rooms, and were continuously spoiled for choice. Every session I attended had a good audience, which suggests that everything was relevant, but catered to different people. The sessions included talks on specific topics, panel discussions, and specific Q&A sessions where the floor was open to questions from the audience. There were also a number of movement sessions where people could learn to move, squat and play their way to better health.
In addition to the sessions themselves, there was well-executed paleo buffet lunch included in the price. A number of UK-based companies had stalls throughout the day, providing various treats, books and nutrition and health services. There were also some book signings, where I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Clark, author of the Nutritional Grail. His book is a very well written and meticulously researched. It offers an unbiased approach to nutrition for optimal health, and is yet to receive the acclaim I think it deserves. I would recommend it to everybody that is interested in diet and health.
My Highlights
Dr. Aseem Malhotra started the day with a keynote talk entitled: “Can Dietary Changes Rapidly and Substantially Reduce Cardiovascular Risk?” Dr. Malhotra has become one of the most visible proponents of the ways in which diet can dramatically affect risk of cardiovascular disease. Though he does not specifically align himself with the paleo movement, his focus on the Mediterranean diet, reducing sugar, and increasing healthy fat intake is thoroughly evidence-based, and sat well with the themes of the day. He talked about how the food industry influences government dietary policy, as well as some mechanisms behind how diet can change our risk of heart disease. I enjoyed this talk immensely, and it was a real honour to share the stage with him later in the day during a panel discussion (footage of this will follow soon!).
My talk was next, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a full audience (around 80 people), who responded really well tothe topic: “Is it Paleo” – Grains, Legumes and Dietary Dogma. I covered some reasons why we might not all want to exclude grains and legumes completely, and a disease-specific approach to creating an ideal diet. You can watch this talk here (sorry for the lighting – it was pretty dark in there):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5v22dGf2zk
Food as medicine – can we really ditch the drugs? This was a panel discussion where Aseem Malhotra, Darryl Edwards, Emily Maguire, and I covered the potential power of dietary changes to improve health. As we all have different experiences, this provided a very varied discussion. I covered some of the ways in which lifestyle changes are better than drugs at reducing symptoms of multiple sclerosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and reducing high blood pressure. This tied nicely into the second keynote talk of the day, where Darryl Edwards gave a really good overview on the importance of a whole-lifestyle approach to optimal health in his talk “It may start with food, but what’s optimal?”
CJ Swaby was somebody that I hadn’t heard about before getting involved with Health Unplugged, but meeting him stands out as a major highlight of my day. CJ is primarily a strength coach in North London, but has also trained in various aspects of working with people experiencing death and grief. He facilitated at North London’s first “Death Café” (and later set-up similar events in South London with Suzanne Michal), which allowed people to come together and talk about death.
Rather than talk about lifting heavy things, CJ gave a completely unscripted and raw talk about his own experiences with death, and how people can take a complete lifestyle approach to dealing with grief (including activity, nutrition, and psychological support). I don’t think anybody expected quite such profound words of wisdom to come out during CJs presentation, but his ideas are much more insightful that anything I have heard in this area. He has recently started a website, which will eventually cover many of his ideas, including how strength is much more than something purely physical.
Terry Wahls and Robb Wolf gave keynote talks via live video link from the USA, and these took up the bulk of the middle of the day. Dr. Wahls is a personal hero of mine, having reversed secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis through lifestyle. She went through the basic principles of her story and her approach, similar to her fantastic TED talk. Anybody struggling with any kind of chronic disease should read her book. Robb Wolf was one of the first people I followed in the “paleo” community, and I think he has the best handle of anybody out there on how to achieve a balanced approach to diet and health. He did a pure Q&A session with the audience that was relaxed and funny, and hugely informative. Robb has recently taken on much larger projects such as improving the health of emergency workers. If they manage to ever change the approach to US healthcare, Robb will be at the forefront of that.
Chet Morjaria finished off my day nicely with a session on the squat – teaching people how to assess their own movement and find their best movement patterns. Chet is an editor for Breaking Muscle, and I have been a huge fan of his writing for some time (I linked to some of his articles in the last RagnaRx). I also had the pleasure of sharing an ice cream (shhhh, don’t tell) with him after the conference. He is an incredibly down-to-earth, knowledgeable and intelligent guy who I really hope to work with more in the future.
Take home messages
Before the conference I spoke with a number of people, including Darryl, about the kind of audience to expect. Though I knew we would be talking to a paleo-savvy crowd, I’ll admit that I was surprised by:
- The overall level of knowledge the audience had.
- The extent to which many of the audience have struggled with various aspects of health.
I sat on the “Ask the Paleo Experts: Q&A” session with Darryl and Emily Maguire, where we faced a number of fairly complex questions in relation to diet, from people dealing with various different conditions. I also had a large number of people seek me out during the day to ask about various issues, and it became clear that many of the audience were there to look for answers to questions that the internet and modern medicine had failed to provide so far. This is why the UK (and certainly many other countries outside the US) is so desperate for events like this, as well as more practitioners with the knowledge to provide a holistic approach to health.
I have heard a huge number of positive reviews and comments since the event, and I truly hope that Health Unplugged comes back next year.