Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Mary Newport M.D. discusses reversing her husband's Alzheimer's disease with coconut oil. Meantime, A team of biochemists at England's Oxford University have developed a ketone ester. It makes quite considerably higher levels. You can get whatever levels you want, depending on how much you drink. The problem is they need millions of dollars to mass produce it. It is very expensive, and so we can't make very much of it ourselves. What we would like is funding so we could actually scale up and make it. Of course, there is no real profit in manufacturing stuff like that. Dr. Newport states that Alzheimer's is becoming known as diabetes 3--diabetes of the brain. Brain cells become insulin resistant and cannot accept glucose--one of their fuels. Without fuel, the brain cells die. Enter ketones, the brain cells' alternate fuel. You could spend millions of dollars researching a ketone ester, but why not make your own ketones? All you have to do is follow a low...

I've been reading about kids' lunches having to pass inspection here in the U.S. Not lunches that the schools serve, but lunches that kids bring from home. Others have stated the stupidity of both the policy and the standards and have criticized the erosion of our freedoms better than I could put it. But I haven't seen anyone address the question of what to do if your kid can't drink milk or eat grains--commonly intolerated foods that the standards require. You could put the foods in the lunch with instructions not to eat them. If your child has serious reactions to these foods, this could be a bad idea since kids don't always do as they're told. You could go to a doctor and get a waiver for your child, but I hate this idea. A grown man or woman shouldn't need a permission slip to pack a lunch without food that will make their child sick. A trip to the doctor costs money and for many parents, time off from work. And what if your kid doesn't have a dia...

Here's my tasty ranch dressing to go with fish cakes, salad, or raw vegetables. 1 c homemade mayonnaise 2 c coconut milk 1/2 English cucumber, peeled and pureed 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 T Dijon mustard 2 T lemon juice 1 t dried dill 1 t dried parsley salt and pepper Mix all ingredients well. Serve.

Edited to add: I made a mistake in counting the carbs in these cookies: they actually have 2.5 net grams of carb, not one, and five grams of protein. I apologize for the error. By popular demand, my recipe for low carb almond meal chocolate cookies. (Recipe adapted from this one at The Naked Kitchen.) Each of these cookies has a scant 2.5g net carbohydrate and 5g of protein. Why almond flour instead of wheat flour? Cardiologist William Davis wrote a whole book called Wheat Belly on wheat's being one of the worst foods you can put into your mouth. (Wheat elimination is part of his program for reversing heart disease.) Wheat is an appetite stimulant; it can send your blood sugar over the moon, leading to insulin resistance and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that, well, age you; it can cause autoimmune disorders. Even in you've had a negative test for celiac, you might be wheat sensitive. I can attest to the last part. I'm not celiac, but once I eliminated wh...

Highjack the lead: the follower in a partner dance taking over the leading. Over the past year, I've read more and more about biased research, corrupt nutritional organizations, and doctors whose advice is, well, not very helpful. In my experience, a doctor is useful for knowing about illnesses going around, and which medicines (if any) will cure them. If you have concerns about a protocol you're doing against medical advice, a doctor can monitor you. I've had good and bad experiences with various doctors. I don't think most of them are corrupt, I think many of them--outside of when they're treating trauma and infection--just don't know what they're doing. A few years ago, I had an online conversation with a doctor (an MD, not a doctor of funk) with a subspecialty in diabetes who recommended her American patients eat at least 130g (or so) of carb per day because the American Diabetes Association said so. But of course, she did her research as well: she ...

Have you even been going along on your normal diet and suddenly started gaining weight? You're not alone: I was again in that position last week. I was getting a wheat belly without the wheat. During my recent illness, I put on a few pounds, but didn't worry about it. Last week, though, I started gaining a pound a day. This was not good. I didn't want to think about what shape I'd be in after a year's time. But it was funny that conventional wisdom first came to mind: eat less, work out more. No: after two years' blogging and research on low carb diets, I'm convinced of their healthfulness and effectiveness. Working out is great for fitness and well being, but unless you're a serious amateur or professional athlete or dancer (and maybe even if you are), it's not much use for losing fat. My carb intake was under control. But carbohydrate isn't the only thing that spikes insulin: dairy does, too. Paleo researcher Dr. Loren Cordain writes in...

To those who are bored with low-carb fare, may I gently suggest getting out of your rut with some different styles of cooking. Bacon-wrapped shrimp and salad of mustard and turnip greens, cucumber, bell peppers, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Prep time: about 20 minutes. Roast beef in wine sauce with green beans and roasted peppers and mushrooms. Hands-on prep time: under half an hour. These recipes are adapted from Firecracker Shrimp and Filletto di Bue alla Contadina in More Cooking Secrets of the CIA  (Culinary Institute of America). The trout and pork chop recipes are among many other outstanding dishes in the book. It's only $4 on Amazon.

It looks like Big Sugar hasn't corrupted the local government around here. The Tri-County Health Dept.  here has a public service message at a bus stop: I don't agree with the message on the CDC's rethink your drink site that weight is all about the calories. But if you think it is, why not cut out the most nutritionally empty calories? Soda, juice, energy drinks--they're liquid candy bars. 

My new favorite dessert: coconut milk hot chocolate. 1/2 c coconut milk 1 square (1/2 oz) baking chocolate 1 squirt (1/8 t) liquid stevia extract hot water In a saucepan, heat the coconut milk over a medium-low flame. Add the chocolate and stir it as it melts. Add the stevia, stir, and pour into a cup. Add hot water to fill the cup. Net carbs: 6.3g. Don't tell your lipophobic loved ones there's 32g of fat (25g of it saturated). 

Pasta, potatoes and rice may be staples of the Mediterranean, northern Europe and Asia, but there's another, older food that's almost never mentioned in connection with these places: blood. Before explorers brought potatoes to Europe from North America (that is, a few hundred years ago), people in harsh climates used blood for food: it's nutritious, and the animal doesn't have to be killed. Jennifer McLagan writes in Odd Bits, In harsh northern climes where food was often scarce, both Scandinavians and the Irish survived on animal blood. The growing antlers of reindeer were a source for Laplanders, while in Ireland they turned blood into a national dish. The French writer Henri Misson de Valbourg wrote about his voyages through England, Scotland and Ireland in the late seventeenth century in Misson's Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England  (1690). In Ireland, he recalled eating 'one of their most delicious dishes' made from blood mixed wit...

I recently wrote about my SWAMP hypothesis of curing a sinus (or upper respiratory) infection with Mucinex, salt and a large dose of vitamin D. In testing my hypothesis on my own infection, I may have overdosed a little on the vitamin D , so I've been doing some research on vitamin D dosing. In several studies, subjects have been given a one-time dose of 100,000 IU of vitamin D. In one of those studies, the vitamin D levels were tested every few days and graphed. The vitamin D level peaked seven days after the dose, and the measured levels in the subjects didn't even come close to being toxic. (When you look at the graphs, keep in mind that the units are in nmol/L.) The maximum level in any subject was 48.1 ng/mL (ng/mL being the usual unit of measure for vitamin D levels).(1) This is a normal level of vitamin D. In another study, subjects were given a one-time 100,000 IU dose: A single dose in winter of 2.5 mg (100 000 IU) vitamin D has previously been shown to produ...

The latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly has a the elements of a plan for losing weight: monkey meat and reading. Journalist Scott Wallace, on an assignment with National Geographic, trekked through the Amazon eating "nothing but monkey meat for days on end, losing 30 pounds on the journey."(1) That's not all--the magazine adds that reading is associated with lower BMI (body mass index). "In particular, readers are less likely to be overweight than TV watchers. Indeed, regular book-reading seems to predict lower BMI about as reliably as regular exercise."(2) (The article cites a forthcoming paper by Fred C. Pampel  in Sociology of Health and Illness .) "Pampel found that education, employment, and other components of socioeconomic status correlate with body mass index (BMI)." I'm going with reading because it's easier than raising your socioeconomic status. You'll have to source the monkey meat yourself, though. I can't solve all y...

I ran a small, non-randomized, non-clinical, unscientific study where I took a megadose of vitamin D and Mucinex for a persistent sinus infection and counseled my parents to do the same if they were sick. Results: Me: My sinus infection is long gone. The treatment succeeded where a course of antibiotics failed. The vitamin D toxicity side effects (fatigue, muscle weakness and constipation) are gone as well. (See my posts on SWAMP .) Mother: She took 50,000 IU for three days when she felt a cold coming on. Then she started taking 7,000 IU per day. She didn't get sick. In addition, her fasting blood sugar, which had been around 140, started dropping. It was 98 this morning. It may not have been because of the vitamin D, but vitamin D reduces inflammation, which is part of metabolic syndrome. Father: He won't take 50,000 IU of vitamin D at one time. He's taken 10,000 IU per day and Mucinex. He's still sick.

"...Telling a person that they can progressively add more and more dietary carbohydrate means that they don't need to make their peace with not having it. All they need to do is wait a few months..." - The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living Does the lure of adding back carbs derail people from their diets? I don't have any other explanation for the stampede to safe starches or the drift of the potaleo (potato+paleo) movement. This isn't carb creep, where low-carbers get back on track after some weight gain or other problems, it's keeping watch for excuses to eat carbs. At this writing, a Google search for the phrase "adding back carbs" yields 16,000 results. The phrase "permanently limit carbs"? This post will make four. It's time for a different attitude towards high-carb living: it's over. No more pasta, bread, pie, cookies, beer, and so on, ever--unless you're having low-carb versions of those things. (Confessi...