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Showing posts from August, 2013

Want to Look Younger? Try Fangs

Weston A. Price must be spinning in his grave. Why are Japanese women paying hundreds of pounds to make perfectly straight teeth look crooked and fang-like? The look, known as the 'yaeba' look, is well-liked by men who find it 'childlike' Cosmetic procedure involves attaching mini-fangs to canine teeth So cute...if you're ten years old. Image from the Daily Mail . On the upside, Japanese people who can't afford braces are right uptown now. Hat tip to Allure magazine. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2271585/Japanese-women-paying-hundreds-pounds-crooked-fang-like-teeth-latest-cosmetic-craze.html#ixzz2dYgR0aIo

TMJ Headaches Again; DIY Healing; Heat; No Juice is Good Juice

This past month or so, I've had TMJ headaches in the morning, along with some mild stomach issues and acne the past week or so. I think it's muscle memory from years ago, back when I wore a night guard for TMJ pain. Since getting my braces off and getting dental implant in early June, I've been wearing an upper retainer at night. When I wear it to bed, it reminds me of the old upper retainer I used to wear when I was grinding my teeth some years ago after a car wreck. I think I've started grinding my teeth at night again. I wasn't grinding my teeth just before I got my implant, when I was wearing a retainer during the day. I'm not grinding my teeth now, wearing my retainer after dinner and before bed, as my orthodontist recommended. Since I haven't worn my retainer for a few nights, my headaches and neck pain are gone. My skin is clearing up, too. (Inflammation can become systemic and affect other parts of the body.) ***** The toe I stubbed a month

Chicken Fencing for the City

Living in the city presents some problems with housing chickens. Chicken coops are expensive and yet so tiny that they seem like six-chicken CAFOs. Electric fencing is forbidden. Regular fencing is hard work to build, and it's permanent. If the chickens don't work out, you're stuck with a fence you probably won't need or want. Living in the city presents some advantages, though. The biggest, toughest predators are dogs; aerial predators like owls and hawks probably don't hang around your place. And the city itself can be a source of inspiration for solving your problems. Like free-range chickens, festivals and construction sites have to be fenced off. Around here, we use portable chain link fencing. Taking a cue from that, I built a six-foot by four-foot freestanding fence panel out of scrap wood and wire fencing. I used 1/2" x 3s to make a 6' x 4' box, joining the pieces with metal angle braces that sit on the edge (see top photo). I fli

How I Finally Got Good Skin: Mostly Diet

Someone asked me today what I used on my skin, saying that it looked good and that she'd like to improve her complexion. It's a question I never thought I'd hear back when I was trying everything available for acne, a time that covered most of my life. Partly, it's good genes. Except for acne, we have good skin in my family and tend to look younger than we are as long as we don't smoke. In my case, I had to change my diet and take supplements to (mostly) clear up my skin and make it softer and more resilient to abrasions and sunburn. I don't get razor burn now. Even with my fair skin, I don't use sunscreen anymore. It took a few years on the diet, but now, except for my shoulders, my skin doesn't burn under the Colorado sun. My diet is mostly low-carb paleo and I take vitamins D3, K2, and GNC Hair, Skin & Nails vitamins. I also eat half a pound of liver and two cans of sardines per week. Why this regimen? I started this a few years ago to stop

Cereal Sales Down 10% Over the Last Three Years

CNBC laments the decline of cereal for breakfast. (Click here for video.) Cereal killers at the breakfast table Thu 22 Aug 13 | 11:56 AM ET The following transcript has not been checked for accuracy. cuckoo for cocoa puffs anymore. how are cereal companies handling a decline? the good news, fewer people are skipping breakfast. the bad news, more of skipping cereal. where is mikey when you need it. he will try it. he eats everything. he likes it sm. in the game of life cereal, tastes change. consumers are swimming to yogurt or foods you can eat on the go. so-called cold cereal unit sales have cold 10% in the last three years. they'reinnovating, coming up with protein shakes, breakfast bars, however cereal remains the number one choice for breakfast in america. but not all consumer choose a bowl of cereal and milk. it's also impacting milk sales. also declining as people switch to other beverages. dean food says it's going to be a tough quarter. there

Dr. William Davis in Denver. Pictures!

Dr. Davis, author of Wheat Belly, gave a lecture in Denver tonight. His message was familiar to regular readers of his blog and books: it's not just gluten and it's not just celiac disease--there are many components of wheat that damage human health from every angle, from mental health to dental health and heart disease to autoimmune illness. He took some questions from the audience, but first, let's look at the charge that some have made that Dr. Davis is overweight: Dr. William Davis at the University of Denver, August 19, 2013. He looks trim to me. Some questions from the audience, and Dr. Davis's answers, paraphrased: Q: How does wheat elimination help heart disease? A: What drives plaque is small LDL, and what drives small LDL is grain and sugar. Q: What about being vegetarian? A: Maximize what's left. (Dr. Davis recounted his own vegetarian experience after hearing Dr. Dean Ornish, and recalled that he ended up diabetic.) Q: Why are so many do

Better Arguments in Ten Years?

"If you won't tell us, the bet is off, that is all. But I'm always ready to back my opinion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the bird I ate is country bred." [Sherlock Holmes] "Well then, you've lost your fiver, for it's town bred," snapped the salesman. Sherlock Holmes gathering clues in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" In ten years, will urban poultry growing be so common that we'll be arguing whether country birds or city birds are better? Will medical appointments be so difficult and antibiotics so ineffective that we'll argue whether a sick friend should take vitamin D, coconut oil or phage for her bad cold? Will be be eating more pigweed and lamb's quarters? Giving funny looks to low-fat fossils? Doctors aren't mean, most of the just haven't caught on. May the population get so well that they'll have time to raise some birds!

From Supermax to Chicken Condo

...I've had it backwards all these years. I'm not exploiting [chickens]. They're safe, happy, warm and fed. I'm the one who's miserable....Chickens have gotten humans to work for them. -Lierre Kieth on feeding her chickens on a frozen January morning For seventeen years, my garage has been accumulating spiders, dust and junk. I've been dodging nails sticking out of the wall in near darkness. Yet after all that time, I spent the weekend cleaning it out and refurbishing it. I'm not moving, I haven't gotten more stuff to store in there, and it hasn't become a rat's nest (not literally, anyway). No, I'm getting it ready for chickens: chickens exploiting humans, indeed. When the chickens move in, they'll need a way to get from the garden into their new condo. To that end, I took off the north window, ripped off two layers of screen with a hammer and smashed the louvers off. (It was just as well--the sill and part of the window framing wer

Plan: Chicken Jungle

The site of my possible future chicken jungle: Driveway reclamation area. Plants don't grow well here; maybe livestock would. Chickens' ancestors were from jungles. I'm seriously thinking about fencing in this area of my yard--the part where nothing but holly and old garden roses grow well, the part I hate taking care of--and making it a home for some chickens. It's next to the garage (far right in the photo), which has electricity and room for some nests. I don't think moving the car in and out once or twice a week would hurt chickens. They'd probably do better staying outside in the summer since the garage gets very hot. Risks of the birds being free-range: predators and hail. I live in the middle of a large city, and the only predator I know of here is cats. I have a setup in mind to deter them (3" PVC pipe strung on clothesline atop the fences and gates--the kitties shouldn't be able to get a foothold). I haven't seen a fox around her

Is Denver Going All Real-Food?

Did I just wake up in another city? Three years ago, people here in Denver looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I limited carbohydrates. When I was a kid, my parents' fussy neighbors complained about the roosters crowing, even though they moved into a house adjacent to an agricultural lot. But maybe in a city that loves meat and attracts health and fitness buffs, it had to happen: more people want real food and real solutions to their health problems. I just spent the morning at a chicken exchange, where people also had goats, ducks, rabbits and turkeys for sale. The exchange was in an urban neighborhood of Denver between Broadway and the tracks, five minutes from downtown.  Chicken Swap . Image from http://www.denverchickencooptour.com/ From there, I went to Vitamin Cottage, a health food grocery store, where some of the vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free books and magazines have been replaced by paleo, anti-sugar and pro-cholesterol books. T