I want to do a real write up some day but I’ll be brief… I started going bald rapidly from the temples. I researched… Propecia, and its possibility of permanent sexual dysfunction and that was not acceptable. Rogaine doesn’t work on frontal balding… What to do, accept my fate without fight? Never.

I kept researching and found a sage called Immortal Hair (google it, there’s a great community). He developed a regimen of supplementation and promoted a primal diet to help. Main ones being, CLO, VitD, alpha lipoic acid and many others. It’s an incredibly frantic search for most, and far from a scientific environment -so there is much variability.

For brevity, going bald was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I no longer subsist on cheap carbs, I am thriving and am constantly improving my diet and life.

Almost all of the lost hair grew back (I attacked early) I still have hair, and if I am still losing it it’s at a vastly, vastly slower rate.

Once I made the decision to give it a shot (so glad I did) I was militant… I could count the candy bars and sodas I’ve had since then on my hands. And that was over 2.5 years ago.

If you are balding, check out ImmortalHair’s site… As always it’s a mix of genes and environment, in differing ratios for different people… If you’re are bald, and I’m sure women will back me up here, physical fitness, confidence and compassion are all more important than hair.

Given our millions of years of evolution sans toothpaste, I think it’s safe to go water-only.

In the olde days, I think that people paid a lot of attention to the state of their feet. The whole “anointing your feet with oil” and the practice of washing someone’s feet who have come in from a long journey (awesome by the way) speak to that.

Here are some things that I have discovered from being barefoot a lot over the past 35 years:

1. Getting fissures in your feet from thick callouses splitting should NOT be ignored. You can get a nasty case of cellulitis from foot infections. If your feet have painful fissures in the heel callouses get it attended to. I had cellulitis from this once that worked its way up to midthigh in about 8 hours. IT took a month of IV antibiotics to get rid of it. In grok’s time that would have killed me. (I do not think going paleo obviates using antibiotics when you really need them. That would be stupid .

I noticed that hanging out on the beach naturally abraids callouses. Salt water, sand, lots of activity in and out of the water…you can simulate that with a foot file and salt water soaks if you aren’t near a beach.

2. I think that foot coverings (not modern shoes that overly bind and weaken our feet but moccasin-like things) were used pretty early. The Iceman…the paleolithic fellow that they found in the Italian Alps had moccassins on. He was pretty well outfitted for a 5300 year old fellow actually. His moccassins were winter versions…fur, calf high and stuffed with moss…http://archaeology.about.com/od/iterms/qt/iceman.htm

So some foot covering seems decently grok like to me and appropriate to wear to avoid getting infected. So I wear VivoBarefoots and Five Fingers when I do wear shoes. This actually helps with preventing callouses from turning into wounds and my feet are decently calloused but I still regularly take care of my feet as well.

3. I once saw a picture of a sherpas foot. The Sherpas would often prefer to go barefoot, according to some of the things I have read about them, even if the climbers they were helping bought the sneakers. The fellows foot looked like the bottom of a dogs foot. It was interesting. Not the kind of thing you’d see on a supermodel for sure. It still seemed supple but who could tell from a photo. At any rate, I suspect that being chronically barefoot from birth allows a natural development of protection in your feet that we all have to play catch up on. So I think that feet that are continually bare do become calloused and that callous does help with protecting the paleo foot.

What I think is the most problematic in terms of fissure development is when you spend a lot of time barefoot on surfaces that are hard but not so abrasive. Like a floor of a dojo. In that situation your body gets the incentive to grow callous but the floor is not abrasive enough to wear it down. Plus after stimulating your feet to callous up people often turn around and put shoes on, incubating the growing callous and allowing it to get nice and thick. Then you go barefoot and it dries out in that thick state and cracks. So its that combination of stimulation but then protection from abrasion that actually causes the serious problems. So yeah. To counter that you have to grind your callouses down I think.

I have a nice balance between my minimalist shoes and going barefoot these days that feels natural and good.

Karsk

I mix baking soda, seasalt, kaolin clay, sage, peppermint, myrrh, prickly ash bark and a little stevia with some coconut oil. Rub that on my teeth and then brush.

I’ve seen commercial toothpowders at my Co-op that are pretty much the same thing. My own mixture is gritty and takes getting used to, but I wouldn’t go back.