How Google Reader Saved My Life

Why I am such a fan of serendipity

Google Reader shut down in 2013.

I was in shock.

This blog is about barefoot running and healthy, paleo-style diets, ultimately. These two topics have utterly changed my and my family’s life in the past five years prior to this news.

I learned about the barefoot running movement, like most of us, from Chris McDougall’s Born to Run.

I’ve gotten to know Chris, and Barefoot Ted, ran a race with Caballo Blanco, toured Dan Lieberman’s lab, helped design some shoes, and helped some folks fix their diets and change their lives.

I learned about Born to Run from an ad at the bottom of an item in Google Reader.

I clicked the link, watched the video, and at the end Chris put on a pair of Vibram Fivefinger Sprints. In the three years I’d had my Sprints, this was the only time I’d seen another human being who had a pair. I immediately bought the book. Thank God.

Through that book, I learned about the paleo diet from Justin Owings, who sent me a link to this post at Stephan Guyenet’s Whole Health Source. The fact that diet could control dental development (my dental development was seriously impaired growing up) blew my mind, and I started following that blog in Google Reader. Six months later, I fixed my diet and changed my life.

I had a stroke at 38, a colon resection after coming close to dying from a perforated colon at 40, and I strongly suspect I was getting osteoporosis. I don’t know where I’d be today.

Those problems are gone thanks to what I found by dumb luck through Google Reader.