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The Vacation-Health Meme: The Ultimate Cheat Code to Effortless Health & Longevity?

Relax, Don't Worry and Enjoy Yourself. Everything Is Fine.

Dr. Syed Haider

Twitter is the perfect medium for the meme: the bitesized idea that people copy and spread like a virus to all their friends. 

One of my favorite memes to ponder over the last few years has been some variation of the following: 

I went on a European vacation, ditched my diet, but lost weight anyway!

Actually the first version that caught my eye was about gluten. People claiming gluten sensitivity or even full blown celiac disease saying they could tolerate the presumably better quality wheat in Europe without having any symptoms. 

People variously theorized that this was because of the better wheat grade, lower pesticide levels, lack of additional dough conditioners and other ingredients, etc. 

This spurred the usual outrage response in myself and others: what is wrong with the USDA! Why is our American food supply such a toxic-waste dumpster fire!

Occasionally there would be a temporizing note from some commenter claiming that the wheat wasn’t actually that different in Europe, and neither were pesticide levels. But this would be counteracted by others claiming things like overall quality and lack of unnecessary chemicals/dough conditioners: one respondent claiming that in most French/Italian bakeries there were only 3 ingredients: water, salt and flour, i.e. not even yeast - all the bread was supposedly sourdough. 

I never researched it too deeply (didn’t even bother to google it til now: so apparently one important difference is most European wheat is lower in gluten, similar to more traditional ancient wheat varieties). I just continued eating the best food I could, while suffering the usual undercurrent of pervasive worry about what I was subjecting my body to … occasionally thinking to myself that unless I moved to the countryside and started my own farm I would never be able to have truly healthy food. 

The other version of this meme I recently saw again was the claim that a European vacation led to effortless weight loss. 

Some people theorized it was just the extra walking most people do while on a European vacation. My brother went with his wife, both foodies, and enjoyed the heck out of authentic Italian food, but also reported easily walking something like 20-40k steps a day. 

But in my experience walking even that much doesn’t make a big difference right away, or even after weeks. For me it usually takes a change in the kitchen or at the dining table to get the weigh to start dropping. Which isn’t surprising if you’ve ever checked to see how many calories you burn walking. A small cookies worth, maybe? But, other peoples experiences may be different. A recent news item claimed that metabolism doesn’t drop until we hit our 60s, so supposedly the only reason we gain weight is that we are less active than we were as children. Of course when it comes to weight it’s usually not that simple: the other difference we have with our childhood selves are that we have a lot more stress, usually spend less time outside so less sun, sleep less and suffer the obesogenic effects of toxin buildup: i.e. pesticides, plastics and forever chemicals. 

So another theory is that it’s just the additive effects of relaxing, sleeping better and getting more sun all of which lower stress steroid hormone levels that make us fat and sick

Anyway all sound plausible, but while I was preparing my FLCCC conference presentation, I came across a few very unusual placebo studies that added a new twist to my understanding of the European vacation health boon phenomenon.

A group of hotel cleaners were split into 2 groups. One group was told that their regular work activities (sweeping, scrubbing, changing sheets, etc) qualified as a significant amount of exercise and actually met the surgeon generals recommendations for daily exercise for optimal health. The other group was just educated on exercise in general. 

Over the next 4 weeks the first group lost half a pound a week and lost inches off their waist, without making any changes to their daily routine. The second group also didn’t make any changes to their routine, and their weight and waists stayed the same. 

So when the belief about preexisting activities changed for the positive, the previously inhibited “effect” kicked in … and/or when the negative belief (I don’t exercise enough) was removed, it’s “nocebo” effect was lifted. 

The other two studies both showed that patient’s perceived health whether good or bad predicted how long they lived, regardless of whether their perception was in line with reality, with those who had the highest perceived health having a 6X lower risk of dying than those who had the lowest perceived health. So those who thought they were healthier lived longer, even if they weren’t actually as healthy as they thought. And those who thought they were unhealthy lived shorter lives, even if they weren't actually as unhealthy as they presumed. And the effect was very, very strong. 

In both cases the objective medical reality, e.g. things like weight, blood pressure, lipid levels, etc. did not predict mortality as much as a patients own perceived reality. 

This makes me think of the wide range of differing beliefs about optimal diet. I see people in optimal seeming health who are vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivore, carnivore and everything in between. 

What I never see is anyone in optimal health who doesn’t believe they are eating healthy. 

Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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So is it possible that one reason some people on a European vacation become healthier and lighter is simply because they bought into a meme about European vacations making you healthier and lighter? 

Like everything the reality for most people is probably a mixture: both the physical (after all the gluten content is different and the US does have more lax food additive regulations and presumably vacations are relaxing and involve more activity and time spent outdoors) and mental (believing a viral meme). Some peoples sensitivity to the physical factors may be greater and some peoples sensitivity to their own negative or positive beliefs may be more pronounced.

And yet the tantalizing possibility remains: if a meme can make you healthier could it be that a meme is all we need?

It may seem unlikely we can just think ourselves thin, or healthy, regardless of what we do or eat … but maybe that’s just a self-limiting belief?

The experiences of mind body healers like doctors Howard Schubiner and Phil Parker suggest that many of the illnesses we consider to be purely or at least somewhat physical are in fact amenable to purely mental correction, including environmental and food allergies, asthma, multiple chemical sensitivities, autoimmune diseases, Long COVID, Vaccine injuries, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease (and confections), EBV, fibromyalgia, degenerative pain syndromes, bipolar, depression, anxiety, insomnia, tinnitus, neuropathy, etc (maybe all diseases?). 

The techniques don’t work for everyone, which may indicate not everyone is willing to believe and do the work, but there is no detectable difference between patients diagnosed with the above diseases who completely recover with mind body techniques alone vs those who do not. 

So we know that you can retrain your brain and ditch your limiting beliefs and regain your health despite having persisting evidence of the physical causes that we assume are causative: inflammatory markers, microclots, infections, proven food allergies, and toxins like spike protein. 

If you are having trouble making the changes you believe would be necessary to get healthy, it’s at least worth trying something much easier, that just requires thinking different. 

Consider the possibility that the only limits are those we impose on ourselves and they are more like habits than strict laws (Rupert Sheldrake posits this may apply even to universal “constants”, that when measured are not so constant after all, like the speed of light). 

But, there’s no reason to limit yourself to just a meme either, why not recreate all the elements of the European Vacation wherever you are? 

It’s clear that stress is one of the biggest instigators and perpetuators of disease. It’s not just the gluten intolerant or overweight who report benefitting from vacations:

Long COVID and Vax injured patients very often report going on a fun vacation and having their symptoms disappear and thinking they are cured! Only to have them all reappear when they get back to their normal lives (and it’s not just European vacations, so it’s not just the wheat, and chemicals). 

But “vacation mode” is really just a state of mind, isn’t it? 

Tom Sawyers friends have fun painting his Aunt Polly’s fence, because they don’t think of it as work. 

You can also enjoy your life whether you’re working or vacationing. 

This is Vacation Mode:

Relax, don’t worry and enjoy yourself. Chill out. Chillax even. Just take it easy. 

(This was the most important lesson taught by my first Chi Kung teacher and made all the difference between practicing real Chi Kung that actually releases energetic blockages and the light physical exercise of waving hands around in the air that many supposed Chi Kung practitioners engage in)

Eat well and enjoy the heck out of it.

Sleep well and enjoy the heck out of it. 

Spend plenty of time in the sun walking outdoors and enjoy the heck out of it.

Connect, talk, laugh & have fun with other people. 

Walk barefoot in the sand, glorify in the fantastic beauty of nature. 

Work some and play some. Have balance. 

All in all it’s called: the good life.

What’s most important is just don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff. Don’t be your own worst enemy. 

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And while you’re at it, take advantage of the power of belief by adopting the meme that you will get healthy. Envision it, look forward to it, feel grateful for it. 

Believe everything in the universe is there to help you, guide you forward and make you stronger, healthier and happier. Be grateful, fill your heart with joy love and positivity. 

One of the best ways I know to do this is imagine what you want and feel grateful for it. Whatever you do believe it’s good for you, even if you occasionally eat a cupcake or some ice cream or some French fries. Focus on all the good that’s there and imagine how it will help rather than hurt you. Do it with love and light in your heart, make it good for you rather than making it part of a pattern of self harm. 

One of the biggest differences between us our ancestors is that we’ve been convinced that everything we’re doing is harmful for us, whereas they thought everything they were doing was good for them. 

We’ve been deeply convinced that there is danger everywhere. The real pandemic is a pandemic of fear. 

I know I won’t convince everyone that’s it’s all in their heads, but I hope I can convince everyone there is some way out from the maze of disease so many are trapped in. If you don’t want to give up the story you believe about your illness then at least find a version of the story that gives you a chance at a way out. 

Maybe the healers role is to find a story that both they and their patient can agree on and then provide a solution within that paradigm, whether that means attacking and clearing the spike protein or just changing limiting beliefs like my favorite hotel workers.

Belief is a funny thing. It can change in an instant (e.g. when someone you trusted completely betrays you), or stay stubbornly persistent despite your attempts to change it. You can’t just wish beliefs away, but you can learn how to change them using techniques like Phil Parkers Lightning Process or the approach taught by Howard Schubiner. 

So consider learning more about mind body medicine and belief and whatever you do it certainly won’t hurt to enter Vacation Mode more often or even all the time: relax, stop worrying and enjoy yourself, because we know for certain that negative stress is one of the biggest factors in causing and perpetuating chronic illness. And if you’re up for it you can also start getting better quality food and detoxing from chemicals.

The single easiest way I can think of to make the most people healthier is not to try to get them to exercise or eat different (have you ever tried convincing someone of that?), it’s to stop terrorizing them with fear of everything in their control and outside of it (if you’re the one terrorizing yourself than you have to decide to stop exposing yourself to that information). Less stress alone would go a long way towards improving health. 

So maybe this little Vacation to Health meme can help some people to take those first baby steps towards wellness.

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