"It Makes my Teeth Hurt"

My sister Connie used to make green chili that was so hot you wouldn't have wanted to walk barefoot through it. Even our father couldn't eat it, and he likes spicy food. Our mom, on the other hand, can't tolerate anything remotely spicy.

For some reason, my mom's mouth recently became so sensitive that it was hard for her to eat anything. When she tried gargling with sesame oil, it helped her mouth feel better--even though she says it tastes awful.

I also had sensitive gums a few years ago--I think I was brushing too hard. Anything hot, cold or acid (like vinegar or lemon juice) really made them hurt. Avoiding these things helped, and so did brushing more gently with Sensodyne toothpaste. (I hadn't yet read about the benefits of sesame oil.)

Possibly, taking more zinc eating more fat has helped also. These are both good for your skin; they may be good for your gums also. And now that I no longer eat a starchy, sugary diet, I don't feel any need to brush hard, just normally and gently.

If your mouth hurts, try avoiding cinnamon, too: it's an irritant. Remember the bee-stung lips fad from a few years ago? Some of those plumpers used cinnamon as an active ingredient. For those who use cinnamon to slow gastric emptying, it's available in capsule form.

If it hurts to chew anything, let me share my protein shake recipe with you. This is what I have every morning; the supplements are optional.

1-1/2 cups water

1 heaping tablespoon rice protein powder (chocolate)

1 heaping tablespoon nut butter (without sugar or cinnamon)

1 tablespoon olive oil (optional)

2 GNC Hair, Skin & Nails Formula vitamins (optional)

250 mg magnesium (optional)

100 mg zinc (optional)

18 mg iron (optional)

1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum (required)

Put everything but the xanthan gum in a blender and blend until smooth. Add xanthan gum (or some other thickener) and blend again.

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This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

Paleo Diet: Eating Differently from Everyone Else is Fine!

I've been seeing more and more articles by women (it's always women) whose heads have exploded trying to figure out life without yogurt and cupcakes. Oh, the shenanigans they get up to: bathroom problems from stuffing themselves with vegetables, paleo baked goods that don't taste the same as ones from the bakery, and especially the irresistible urge to eat "normally." The technical problems aren't hard to sort out: substitutes like baked goods will taste different because they are different, but an adjustment period of a few months will make those foods taste normal. And whatever you eat, don't stuff yourself. First, though, read a book by Loren Cordain or Mark Sisson to learn about the paleo diet before diving in. The articles I keep reading, though, have more to do with attitude: the urge to be exactly like everybody else or the urge to be helpless. If you're in the second category, I can't, by definition, help you. If you'd rather be Lu

Robert F. Kennedy shows up at the FDA

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder .

A Reason to Eat Red Meat, Fat, Eggs and Salt

It looks like Reason magazine has been reading about my diet...or maybe just studies showing no associations between red meat and mortality, saturated fat and heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease, or salt consumption and disease. Summarizing published research from the past few years, the article calls the government's dietary advice of the past forty years a fiasco of misinformation, even noting there's a positive association between a low-sodium diet and death. It adds that the US government's Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has dropped their long crusade against cholesterol. The article explains, Observational studies [which the government relied on] may be good at developing hypotheses, but they are mostly not a good basis for making behavioral recommendations and imposing regulations. It's refreshing for the mainstream media to recognize that mainstream dietary advice hasn't been working instead of parroting the same misinformation. T

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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