Pain, Pain, Go Away!

I've had acne for almost 30 years. It started with a few pimples when I was 12 and escalated into cysts when I was 20. A coworker actually said to me, "God, what happened to your face?" "Oh," I wish I'd replied, "I bet you say that to all the girls." What's the French word for repartee you think of as you're walking out of the party, down the steps? My sister had acne too. She was good-looking until she'd been on meth for about a year, and afterwards lived on coffee, Pepsi and burritos. She blamed her acne on--wait for it--green beans and washcloths. I should have taken a clue from her diet. My poison isn't Pepsi, but Coke. When I stopped drinking Coke in 2007 to help my stomach, my skin cleared up. It was less dry and flaky, too. So except for falling off the wagon and going through caffeine withdrawal again in 2007, all has been well. Then I started drinking Coke Zero a few weeks ago. "Since it doesn't have sugar," I

If high quality meat and cheese are upwards of $5 per pound and potatoes, bread and bananas cost a fraction of that, the low-carb meat-and-cheese diet sounds like it would be much more expensive than the high-carb diet. Does it work out that way in real life? Since I buy almost everything with a debit card and record all the transactions on my computer, I have records for everything I've spent on food, health care and skin care. (The only serious cash I spend is for cover charges to dance clubs.) These three things--the food I eat, my skin, and overall health--have significantly changed since I started a low-carb diet back in February. I decided to analyze how the diet has affected my spending in those areas, which I believe have changed because of my low-carb diet. Although I have data for all 2009, I have only three whole months' data for the time I've been low-carb. For 2010, I used the period March 1 through May 31. In addition, I excluded some unusual items for 2009:

Eating out is a challenge with diet restrictions, especially when your diet contradicts conventional wisdom about what a healthy diet is. Maybe that's why low-brow grocers and restaurants--you know, those places for people who just don't care what they put in their bodies--seem to have more low-carb offerings than health food stores and natty eateries. Most nice restaurants put a basket of savory bread in front of you when you're hungry. Except for the ubiquitous grilled chicken salad, everything on the menu has fruit, rice, potatoes or pasta. Even at the two airports where I recently ate (not exactly fine dining there), most of the food looked starchy and sugary. But the burger from Burger King was fine without the bun and the quarter-pound, cheesy hot dog in Indiana hit the spot. (Certain processed meats give me a sinus headache--this didn't.) And the chicken club from a Hardee's in that state was just as tasty as those I get at Carl's Jr. (the same company)

Until recently, I'd been having bad nosebleeds for a while. Specifically, since November 1999 when I had septoplasty surgery. My otolaryngologist recommended it because I had a deviated septum (that's the stiff middle part of the inside of the nose) and enlarged turbinates . I had frequent sinus infections and supposedly, this surgery would help prevent them. (It didn't. But it was nice to be able to breath through both sides of my nose at the same time.) About a month ago, I read the following in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution p. 126, published in 1972: About vitamins in general, I don't believe in minimum daily requirements. I believe in optimum dosage. I have used vitamins in megadoses in my practice with great success. .... You cannot safely increase the standard dosage of Vitamin A (5,000 international units) nor of Vitamin D (400 international units). But so-called overdoses of the other vitamins are simply flushed away by the kidneys. And the mineral and vitami

Let me tell you about the time I woke up on the sidewalk. It was Tuesday, December 14, 2004. I had donated blood and was in a hurry to get back to the office and finish the stack of work on my desk. When I left the bloodmobile, I didn't bother going back into the Marriott to rest up by the fire with some cookies and juice; I ran for the shuttle instead. In the course of my life, I had donated gallons of blood without trouble. After I got on the shuttle, I was in trouble. It was as if I was suddenly infected with a virus: I was sick to my stomach and felt terrible and weak. Being on a moving vehicle made it worse, but I saw no place to get off and sit down. I wondered if this was what it felt like to bleed to death; if this was how soldiers felt when they were wounded. A group of Latina girls looked at me with worry. The shuttle pulled up to the Adam's Mark Hotel where there was a dormant flower bed in a low wall by the sidewalk. Finally--a place to get off and sit down. I got u

The more I read, the more I realize that people have to be their own advocates concerning their health. There's a lot of information out there, but a lot of it is contradictory--even information that comes from doctors. Without medical training, how do you sort it out? Lately I've been reading The Power of Logical Thinking by Marilyn vos Savant. Readers of a certain age may remember the Monty Hall dilemma from her column in Parade magazine in 1990. She correctly answered a reader's question about probability. The problem was so simple that grade-school age children could--and did--test it for themselves. Yet vos Savant got mountains of mail from professors and Ph.D.s telling her she was wrong. There's a section in her book about averages. "You can drown in a river with an average depth of two feet," she observes. This reminded me of a woman I met last weekend. As she and I talked, the conversation turned to health. She was quite a bit overweight and said she

I'd like to share some really outstanding health-related blogs with you. All of these bloggers struggled with the health problems they write about. All of them go by science and results, not the dogma that is common in some areas of medicine. All of these authors have helped me and my family in some way: Dr. Eades' blog informed me that excess carbs were the cause of my acid reflux; Dr. Davis's blog has been a lifesaver for my diabetic mother; Tom Naughton's blog usually makes me laugh. If you like their messages, most of them have books or movies (in some cases, free e-books and newsletters) for your reference or that of friends and family who aren't on the Internet. Happy reading! Dr. William Davis , a cardiologist, focuses on preventive medicine. He writes quite a bit about diabetes as well. If you'd rather make lifestyle changes than have heart surgery, this blog may interest you. Dr. Michael Eades , co-author of Protein Power, writes about low-carb living.