The Root of Recovery

If I could sum up Fluxable in one sentence it would be ‘Live and eat in order to stay close to nature’ but of course it’s really not that simple. The world we live in has strayed such a long way off its axis that it barely resembles the planet that our genes evolved to thrive in.

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997, age 33, I was a rare statistic. I thought of myself as a canary in a coal mine. Not any longer. It is estimated that by 2030 half of us can expect to receive a cancer diagnosis. Averting this catastrophe means either changing the world very quickly – or changing ourselves.

“Don’t let the complexity of cancer blind you to the simplicity of healing”

Living naturally in an unnatural world is no longer something that we can do thoughtlessly. It takes effort and some inside information. And that’s what FLUXABLE is all about.

Living naturally does not mean floating around in a flower meadow – it means doing everything you can to provide your body with the conditions it evolved to expect and it’s a tall order in our complex environment. Let’s be clear, nature is not placid and mild, she is fierce and powerful. All power comes from nature: the beams from radiotherapy, the shocks from electricity, the burns from water, and the protons and electrons that give us life.

Deep in the workings of our cells, a constant stream of protons and electrons is giving us the energy to exist – an electrical gradient, you can think of it the spark of life. We use flux through the electron transport chain to extract energy (as ATP) from the food we eat. We employ it to contract muscles; expand lungs; make hormones, break toxins; hear music, read words, think thoughts. Our body is determined to maintain flux at a steady state while modern life seems designed to disrupt it. The imbalance lies at the root of all our health problems: obesity, dementia, arthritis, diabetes and, of course, cancer.

There is nothing new or woo about flux, The respiratory chain (aka the electron transport chain) was identified by American biochemist Albert Lehninger in 1961 but its vital importance for human (and planetary) health has never been fully appreciated, perhaps because of all the buzz around DNA at that time.

To be honest it is still not afforded the importance it deserves. When I was in nutrition college the process was skated over and never properly explained. It was only when I was reading Transformer, the deep chemistry of life and death, by Nick Lane that the penny dropped for me. Our mitochondria – the little organelles where FLUX happens – are the only bit that passes ‘live’ down the generations. Like the olympic flame they pass from mother to child, and without it we cease to exist.

Having healthier, better-protected mitochondria is key to every aspect of your health. I could go so far as to say that, at the end of the day, you are only as healthy as your mitochondria. Dr Steven Gundry, 2024

Further reading confirmed to me that everything we know about cancer, and everything we know to be effective in cancer treatment and recovery, exerts its effect in the mitochondrial matrix. That’s not to say that our genes are not important but they are only one part of the regulatory machinery of our body. Another enlightening book – How Life Works by Philip Ball – explains much better than I can that the body is regulated by committee rather than ruled by our genes. Indeed, to enjoy the best of health we need a healthy genome, a dense and diverse microbiome and a mighty army of mitochondria, all working together in close cooperation. Cooperating to optimise FLUX.

FLUXABLE is both the theory and practice of becoming fluxable. I hope you will feel inspired to read more on my weekly Substack, or perhaps take one of my course. There’s a book on its way too. Please subscribe to be kept up to date.