The Purge, COVID, and Return of GERD

The Purge

I've been nostaligic for the days five to ten years back when the worst interaction you might have online was a nasty comment or two. Moderators, who might have to deal with a few hundred comments at most, blocked the trolls if they became too disruptive. Now that Facebook and Twitter are excommunicating people wholesale, maybe we'll go back to smaller, moderated sites and leave the yelling and screaming to the maddening crowds over there.

Dave Rubin asked Tulsi Gabbard today how she'd moderate Twitter. In practice, I don't think it's possible. It's too big with too many users who are completely unhinged and ready to come after you IRL if they don't like what you say. Then there's Facebook, which seemed like a platform for narcissists during the few weeks I used it long ago. They say people used to live in groups of about 150--maybe it's time for virtual communities to return to something closer to that number. Not only was there less troublemaking on smaller sites, but the discussion was better quality.

Christmas COVID Spike?

In states I looked at on the COVID Tracking Project (those from previous posts), there was no spike in deaths or hospitalizations a few weeks after Christmas. If anything, some states saw a dip in deaths around Christmas. But whatever trends that were around before Christmas continued.

Vaccine Refuseniks

About half of medical professionals are refusing to take the COVID vaccine, citing concerns about unknown long-term side effects and, especially among black people, being experimented on. Our healthcare heroes are now cast as morons, drooling while they read vaccine conspiracy theories about growing a third ear on social media--the same social media sites that are purging non-corporate COVID information as fast as they can. Yes, some doctor really did say "grow a third ear." Perhaps rhetorically, but it's clear she thinks people who don't want the vaccine are knuckleheads.

Digesting Keto Comfort Foods

Delish Magazine came out with an issue called Keto Comfort Foods. I've made several recipes from it--bagels, brownies, enchiladas, soup--and they've turned out great. But they gave me terrible GERD! I'd understood GERD or acid reflux was caused by too many carbohydrates making too much gas and pushing up your stomach acid. But I read about a few people getting GERD on keto and even during fasts. So something else had to be at work. The only thing I could come up with was the peristalic motion of your digestive system was off and actually running in reverse. Your muscles need magnesium to work right, and keto diets can purge a lot of magnesium. Sure enough, more magnesium helped.

If you're using Dr. Davis's magnesium water, make sure the milk of magnesia doesn't have sodium hypochlorite, aka bleach. Nobody can find milk of magnesia without it. Instead, I've been taking 400 mg of magnesium citrate per day (spaced out). Fortunately, we have our own chat site where we don't have to cater to anyone's interests but our own.

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Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here . * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fermented bread and butter pickle recipe ft. L. Plantarum

After Dr. Davis said the other night that L. plantarum may reduce some of the effects of the herbicide glyphosate (which is everywhere), I'm re-running my recipe for fermented bread and butter pickles. Pickling cucumbers naturally have L. plantarum bacteria on them, and fermenting them with some brown sugar multiplies these bacteria. (Just don't use chlorinated water to wash them.) And if you're growing your own cucumbers, avoid spraying the fruits with Bacillus thuringiensis , or Bt (leaves and vines are OK). It's unclear what effect a big dose of Bt would have on humans. Another benefit of DIY pickles: no emulsifiers like polysorbate 80, which is a common ingredient in pickles. If you have GI problems, it could be from emulsifiers. These sweet-and-sour pickles are the tastiest I've ever made. There's just a little added sugar (some of which the bacteria will consume) and turmeric that gives the pickles their bright color. Special equipment Quar...

Cardio: A Waste of Valuable Dance Time

"I'd rather hold a girl in my arms than a football." -Joe DeCicco, friend and dancing fanatic Have you heard that it takes a woman 77 hours of exercise to lose a kilogram of fat? (For us Americans, that's half a pound.) That's according to a study cited by Dr. John Briffa .(1) The women who huffed and puffed three hours a week for a year ended up 4.4 pounds lighter than the sedentary women. That doesn't surprise me: my own weight loss involved a lot less exercise than what I'd been doing. I did no cardio workouts, just strength training . I had more time and energy for dancing, which is a stress reliever, helps keep me in shape, and it's a ton of fun. It's not expensive to dance (as long as you stay away from the studios). I've found excellent lessons at clubs where the teachers really care about the students getting it. Here in Denver, there are dancing clubs that are run by nonprofit organizations, where the prices are reasonable and...

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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