I first heard about this book from former President Clinton who talked about Dr. Campbell’s work and this book. He was the walking testimony of the result.

The authors went through many studies, mainly the studies done in China, hence the name the China Study, on answering the questions why there was such a contrast in chronic disease patterns between the rural areas of China (very few cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and others) and the metro area. It all came down to the plant-based whole food diet. Eating animal-based food (beef, pork, chicken, and dairy) significantly contributed to all kinds of chronic diseases.

Finally, the authors attributed why the plant-based whole food diet hasn’t been heavily promoted is because of the medical community lacks basic nutritional education and has been heavily influenced by the drug and dairy industry. Eating the “right” food just doesn’t make money for the pharmaceutical industry. Also the government and politicians have been heavily lobbied by the food, drug and dairy industries.

This book opened my eyes on what we’re doing to poison ourselves by eating so many “junk” foods and animal-based foods in our “civilized” society. I’m convinced that plant-based whole food is the way to a healthy and quality lifestyle.

The following 8 principles are worth remembering:
1. Nutrition represents the combined activities of countless food substances. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
2. Vitamin supplements are not a panacea for good health.
3. There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants.
4. Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or expressed, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed.
5. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals.
6. The name nutrition that prevents disease in its early stages (before diagnosis) can also halt or reverse disease in its later stages (after diagnosis).
7. Nutrition that is truly beneficial for one chronic disease will support health across the board.
8. Good nutrition creates health in all areas of our existence. All parts are interconnected.

Sadly this book has been pulled off distribution after I read the book due to falsified quotes by the author. But I don’t think it’s a total waste of time. One always need to take this kind of book with a grain of salt as the examples tend to be sensationalized to attract readers. Some of the approaches seem to make sense and may be considered as nuggets:

Ways to increase creativity:

Alpha waves: relaxed state of minds and positive mood. Sharing of ideas. Consider the irrelevant. Day dreaming.

The unconcealing: Use of drug? (release of dopamines) Stick with a problem until it surrenders. See through the clutter by relying on the knife and conscious attention – focus on the “right” questions. State of depression may bring out creativity; bipolar people may have an edge. The ability to calculate progress tells you that you’re making progress.

Letting things go: Search for emotion instead of perfection like Yoyo Ma. Made a mistake – shrug it off and smile. Go with the flow like Improv. Draw from frontotemporal demential patients, who have an urge to create close to their deaths – their prefrontal cortex – inhibits imaginative murmurs – is being destroyed. Play like a kid and with pleasure like Yoyo Ma.

The Outsider: Being an outsider or “passionate amateur” has an advantage – he doesn’t know any better. InnoCentive’s posting of hardest scientific problems to solicit ideas from the outsiders with prize money – crowd sourcing of ideas. Young people don’t know enough to be insiders, cynical with expertise; they come with creative advantage. It’s a state of mind; we may need to be unshackled by the familiar and leave behind everything by traveling, new colleagues, and career change.

The High Q: Q is a measurement of density of connections or social intimacy. High Q = great degree of closeness in collaboration – Pixar’s central bathroom near the attrium.

Urban Friction: Biking around allows him to “listen” to the city. Vertical culture of Boston makes it less innovative than San Jose (Silicon Valley), where lots of casual exchanges in “clubs” form weak ties like Israelis’ mandatory military service. The crowded places force us to interact; human friction creates sparks.

The Shakespeare Paradox: The excess of geniuses is not an accident – the access to the a vast number of new stories and old texts in a friend’s bookstore, and stealing the plots of previous literature and making into his own, and a legal environment that encourage creative risk taking without offending royal family, the availability of public education to most of the citizens.

This is a great Children book to read for adults.

A boy shepherd looking for his personal “legend” went on his journey to find the treasures next to the pyramid of Egypt. He sold out his herd of sheep and became a well-heeled crystal sales person and accumulated enough wealth to continue his journey. Then he got tricked/robbed and ran into the Alchemist, who taught him how to listen to his heart and blocked out the aches and distractions like falling in love with a woman of the dessert – Fatima. At the end he found the treasures in his own backyard in Spain and reunited with his Fatima. Ultimately, it’s the boy that turned into an Alchemist.

By definition, an alchemist transforms “cheap” metal like lead into precious metal like gold. (It’s scientifically unfeasible but seems to be catching phrase in the old days.) If one takes the journey of his life with courage and overcome his failures, he’s basically a alchemist, metaphorically. There are many people who get comfortable in life and forget to pursue his/her own “legend” or purpose/meaning of his life like the crystal store owner and the robber who gave him the hint where the physical treasures are. He/she may live through his/her life never knowing what he/she really means to the greater purpose, if he/she does’t pursue them with great efforts. Besides, the world “conspires” to help us one way or another when we pursue our dreams. In any way, everyone makes an impact to the world to various degrees.

The book is nice and short and full of life teachings. Wish I read this book earlier. Somehow it means more to a middle-age person than to a young man or an old man, I suppose.

Yes, USA has lots of ills: budget deficit, extreme partisan, and crime and etc., and “American Dream” is becoming more of a mirage, as pointed out by the authors. It’s nothing new. Many smart people already highlighted them since the “Great Recession” of 2008. China in contrast is progressive (Tienjin’s great conference hall being built in 9 months vs. much delayed repair in the DC subway station) and yet lack the right elements (legal, democracy, and etc.) to overtake US, yet.

The book helped to clarify some of the histories of budget deficits and how Ronald Reagan managed to raise taxes (enhance revenue) in light of the huge deficit during the Star War initiative era and how Clinton did the same because of the Ross Perot. It’s only until George W. Bush’s time that any attempt to reduce deficit was abandoned. “Budget deficits don’t matter,” according to Dick Cheney. It’s sad.

The globalization force (“the world is flat) has taken many of “good” or middle-class jobs from America and the war on physics – denying the global warming reality puts us at a disadvantage.

What’s the author’s proposal/answer? A great 3rd-party candidate that would force the two existing parties (too similar and stodgy to change) to consider the much needed agenda: like reducing the deficit and invest in the “future.” Mmmmm, which rich guy is going to get suckered into becoming a martyr or losing hero? Tough one.

I Listened to the audiobook version of the Steve Jobs autobiography. Very well written. Steve Jobs was a few years my senior so some of his experience is something I can truly relate to, especially around the semiconductor and computer revolutions. A few things stood out for me:

In his early life, he abandoned his daughter, Lisa, and other co-workers. The lack of loyalty stood out for me, perhaps his rapid growth required that he acquired new relationship and people he worked with. The author attributed this characteristic to his insecurity as he was abandoned as a baby and adopted by his loving parents. “The one that was abandoned abandons others.”

Throughout the book, his personality was characterized as bipolar (you’re ether a genius or bozo), mercurial personality: abusive and tough on engineers and others. His over use of intuition as he often touted may be the cause. At least his intuition got better and better along the way. Since he paid attention to the minute details of the designs, Jobs perfected the art of the product design and creating the reality distortion field to get his way.

Bill Gates, whose personality is an antithesis to Steve’s personality, holds different philosophy on software only strategy vs. integrated software/hardware strategy. This has served Microsoft well for the last couple of decades. But even now Microsoft is started to adopt Steve Jobs’ approach and come up with their own branded tablet. This just proved that Jobs is ahead of his time and a true visionary.

Steve Jobs’ relationship with his children seemed to have ups and downs due to his focus on his passion – designing great Apple products.

Though there is no scientific proof but I speculate his heath problem may be caused by his extremely emotional personality, his pure vegan diet, and his frequent purging/starving. This posed shocks to his digestive system and potentially weakened his organ functions. Why he does that is beyond anyone’s guess. How his wife put up with that is beyond my comprehension. For sure, she is no less than Steve Jobs’ success putting up with someone like that.

The big turning point for Steve Jobs wasn’t Apple but Pixar, after failing Next Computer. He suffered through a very difficult time at Pixar as the company struggled in red inks to come up with a different business models than designing the hardware gears for automation. He stumbled into the animation business, thanks to the many talents at Pixar and was able to multiply his $50M investment by 20x. Darn good return!

Steve Jobs’ obsession with simplicity is something I admire. We’re often bombarded with many distractions in our daily lives. Having products whose rough edges have been smoothed out really strike a chord with me. But simplifying things take real work as I discovered recently when I moved my residence. Discarding things and packing essential things takes real work physically and emotionally. I’m inspired to further make my own life simple.

On leadership, Steve Jobs is often direct and brutally honest about people and their results in his eyes. He wanted to work with A players and couldn’t stand B players. Staffing Apple with A players was his goal and his philosophy about leading and sustaining a winning company.

I admire Steve Jobs’ obsession with the mission of product excellence over profit, though profit often follows for Apple. Companies nowadays are often more profit driven than product/service driven. Jobs’ showed us a better way.

Walter Isaacson has captured in great details of Steve Jobs, the man with all his faults and shortcomings. But Steve Jobs’ greatness shines through. He’s truly the Michael Angelo of our time.

Howard Behar presented his 10 principles extracted from the success in his many years of building Starbucks from its local root in Seatle into a global colossus it is now. Like many of the service companies (e.g. McDonald’s), Starbucks’ core competency is to train and retain the people and it must be ingrained into the culture itself in order to stick. It’s about the people and they happen to serve coffee.

There is nothing that’s earth shaking about the 10 principles the author practices and advocates we practice but they’re the real foundations to the true leadership. It’s easy said than done but Mr. Behar seems to walk the talk that contributed to his success at Starbucks. I see lots of similarities to this book, Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s: The 7 Leadership Principles that Drive Break Out Success. They are all sound advises. What stands out for me is to wear one hat (Principle #1). It makes sense.

Here’s a summary of the 10 principles of personal leadership:
1. Know who you are: wear one hat. Be aware of your values, your hat. Make sure you’re pursuing what’s most important. Don’t be less than your true self. When you know who you are, you will see a path of possibility literally unfold before you. You will be gently guided to follow it, or you’ll create your own opportunity.

2. Know why you’re here: do it because it’s right not because it’s right for your resume. “People don’t work on work. They work on dreams.”

3. Think independently: The person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. “People are not assets.” Get rid of rules and encourage independent thinking. This is a bit hard to believe for a service company that need to provide consistent services to customers globally. In a way, it’s empowerment.

4. Build trust: care, like you really mean it. “Love and trust are the universal motivators. And there is no trust without caring.” “Caring about people keeps you focused o what truly matters.” “People don’t care how much you know, they want to know how much you care.”

5. Listen for the truth: the walls talk. Use “compassion emptiness” – involves listening with compassion but without preconceived notions. Listening habbits: a. do it in person, b. listen for the meaning below the surface, c. let silence fill the heart, d. ask and you will hear, e. Make it safe for people to speak up, f. be responsive, g. give feedback, h. commit the time to gain alignment, i. Get to “flow”: communicate about the right things.

6. Be accountable: only the truth sounds like the truth – synonymous with accountability. No secrets, no lies of omission, no hedging and dodging. Take responsibility and say what needs to be said, with care and respect.

7. Take action: Think like a person of action, and act like a person of thought. Find the sweet spot of passion, purpose, and persistence. Feel, do, think. Find the balance, but act.

8. Face challenge: we are human being first. Use all the principles to guide you during the hardest time. Remember to put people first, and you’ll find the guidance you need.

9. Practice leadership: the big noise and the still, small voice. Don’t let the noise crowd out the truth. Listen to your still small voice. Let quiet be your guide.

10. Dare to dream: say yes, the most powerful word in the world. Say yes, and enjoy all that your doing, and help others to do the same.

I didn’t know anything about probiotics except its effectiveness against some of the common illnesses like allergy really interested me.

I got to learn a little about our immunity system: the roles of T-cells (detective lymphocytes), Regulatory T-cells (peace keeping lymphocytes), and B-cells (antibody-producing lymphocytes), phagocytes (foot soldiers), dendritic cells (intelligence agents – drag bad cells to T-cells), and mast cells (water brigades). Allergy is normally an over-reaction of mast cells by releasing histamine. Most of auto-immune diseases boils down to regulatory T-cells (mostly residing in the guts) not doing their jobs. Probiotics help in 3 days: 1) promote a healthy gut and crowd out the undesirables. 2) send “all is well” chemical message to the dentritic cells, 3) affects cells such that B cells are more likely to make secretory IgA (the antibodies that declare molecules to be harmless) than IgE (antibodies that activate mast cells) – fewer allergic responses to innocuous substances.

Optimizing health with probiotics: 1) buffering the effects of stress: reduces the stress hormone production by E. Coli. 2) preventing vaginal and urinary tract infections: prevents the harmful effects of yeasts and bacteria. 3) preventing colic, 4) improving digestive function.

There were chapters about urogential diseases and autoimmune diseases and how probiotics can help. The author seems to suggest there were many diseases that probiotics can be used but more studies are needed.

I particularly like the recipes that author put together in the last chapter which practically replaces all diary/milk/butter with yogurt, and other prebiotics. The author emphasizes reading the labels and looking for the “cultured” product instead of other derived products without much probiotics.

This is a gem of a book. I personally have tried some of the probiotics supplement since started reading the book and found my allergy problem has been more manageable. Overall, it’s an excellent book and a great references. Hopefully we’ll a see a 2nd edition with better evidences of the effectiveness of the probiotics.