Every blog needs to have a presentation page, the famous “About us”. I have been postponing writing it for months, telling myself that I have more important things to do. However, during an exercise of self administered psychoanalysis, I’ve realized that it’s not that I have more important things to do, it’s just that I don’t really want to write it because it is a difficult task, which involves defining what this blog is about and why do I write it. And I must admit that I don’t feel like exposing myself to the public opinion, that I am afraid of making a mistake and then having to face the consequences.
But here we go.
Blog Disidente was born with very little ambition, just as a means to release my frustration. Even though I had never considered myself a “dissident”, after a few years of disappointments with the conventional medical establishment, personal experimentation, and a lot of reading, I started to reconsider the validity of many of the assumptions that I had always taken for granted. Like the idea that grains should be the base of our diet, or that our food supply provides all the nutrients we need, or that conventional doctors and their drugs help us achieve optimal health.
That you need to use sunscreen, the food that we eat doesn’t have any pesticide residue, tap water is adequate for human consumption, and cosmetic products help you look young and don’t contain any toxic chemicals because they’re hypoallergenic. That saturated fat is bad for you, cholesterol is public enemy number one, and the only thing you need to do to lose weight is to eat less and move more. That modern agriculture doesn’t destroy a seemingly endless supply of soil. Well, I think you see where I’m going.
So, very much against my will, I became a dissident. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to carry out a little experiment. Tell your neighbor that instead of using sunscreen, she should just seek some shade after sunbathing for a while. But then, how do I get my tan?
I don’t really know what exactly Blog Disidente is but I know what I’d like it to be. A platform where you can access information that is not generally available in Spanish language, related to crucial issues for us and the coming generations: How to eat properly, how to produce healthy food that is available for every pocket, and how to treat illness without having to use drastic measures like surgery or long-term drug administration. In this blog you’ll find interviews and videos where a series of experts share a different point of view. I don’t necessarily agree with every one of their ideas or statements, but I choose them because in general I like their message and share most of their opinions.
And because I am aware that not only can I make mistakes, but I sure make them, I welcome everyone, no matter what your belief system is, to tell me that I am wrong and show me how. I just ask for respect and an open mind. Too often in the internet we see discussions about health and nutrition becoming endless dialectic battles, where no one’s listening. From here I want to make a call for sanity, respect and humbleness.
I don’t like being a victim or blaming others for my problems. The world is the way it is because we all made it that way. And we can all together shape it the way we want it to be. I don’t reject science, technology or modern medicine. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be improved. They can. Very often we perceive science and medicine as a completely different world, where limits are well defined and where making mistakes is not an option. I am sorry to tell you that this is not the case, there’s still a lot we have to learn. Quoting Isaac Newton, “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.”
As a disclaimer let me say that I am not a medical doctor, a biologist, a chemist, or a nutritionist. I’m not even a professional translator. I don’t intend to replace your doctor’s or health practitioner’s advice, and I am not an expert in the subjects I am interested in and therefore include here. I have a PhD in Physics and after earning my degree I spent four years working at a national laboratory in the US. Those years in California gave me the opportunity to learn about Joel Salatin and Sally Fallon, my two biggest influences. Thanks to them and many others I believe a better world is possible, and if we want to change it we need to start from us and our immediate surroundings.
Here you’ll find mainly a collection of podcast and video translations performed always with explicit consent from the original authors, as well as some articles and comments of my own. I also plan to organize Q&A sessions with some of the featured guests, to facilitate a dialogue and solve questions. For this your participation is not only welcome, it is essential.
Mónica Fernández currently lives in northern Spain with her family. If you are the author of materials that you think are in line with her interests and you would like to translate into Spanish, or if you just want to say hi, please contact her at blogdisidente@gmail.com. You can listen to Monica speaking with Jimmy Moore on The Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show here.
Blog Disidente 