Skip to main content

The Problem with Going by the Science

Finishing my garden projects without aggravating my pinched nerve has been impossible. Weeding overgrown areas, pulling up the weed barrier under the weeds, hand-tilling the soil, grading it, then planting was about the most I could do without hurting myself--but then the lawn had to be mowed. Putting off mowing it just makes it harder later. The weather going from chilly to hot within two weeks offered a very short window to get everything done, but almost all of the nearly two hundred seedlings I started are in the ground. 

The worst part about my pinched nerve is that I don't sleep well. It makes my left side buzz and keeps me awake. At that point, doing yoga just makes it worse--all that helps is aspirin. 

So after weeding, tilling, grading and seeding a spot by the driveway this morning, I stopped for the day spent a pleasant hour enjoying some coffee and reading what the Indiana legislature was up to. They've set up a process to create urban agriculture zones, prioritized protection of monuments, made female genital mutilation a felony, required civics education of middle-schoolers, forbade microchipping of employees (that's a thing?) enacted police reforms, established religious services as essential, and empowered the legislature to call themselves into an emergency session during a state of emergency declared by the governor--and put a stop to a never-ending declared emergency. The governor vetoed it. The House overrode the governor's veto, the Senate overrode the governor's veto, and then the attorney general refused the represent the governor in his lawsuit over the bill. Maybe the governor needs to take that middle-school civics class and review separation of powers. Maybe someone needs to remind him that authoritarian governors keep losing in court (see Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, and New York). Maybe he just needs to stop and realize that Hoosiers have spoken: we don't want a handful of people putting us through an endless state of emergency. 

Oddly, people's caution seems to be in inverse proportion to their likelihood of getting a bad case of COVID. A neighbor in delicate health hasn't been vaccinated. People I know who work entirely at home, and don't care to hit the bars at quitting time, have gotten the shot.  Some universities in Indiana and elsewhere are requiring students and faculty to be vaccinated. Some higher-risk people never stopped coming to the office; a lot of lower-risk people are now maskless (which is allowed if you're fully vaccinated). Indianapolis is the only place left in Indiana with a mask mandate, even though the county's advisory level is 1 out of a possible 3--around the middle of the pack for the state. Even through March Madness, deaths were around 1 or 2 per day, where they've stayed ever since.

This is the problem with "going by THE SCIENCE." Even if the science is clear (and it isn't for efficacy of masks or long-term side effects of vaccines), people react differently to that information. People who don't want to be cooped up or live with a long list of rules--like people in the Dakotas--well, they don't want to be cooped up or follow a long list of rules. If you're living cheek by jowl with people, you need to accommodate each other more. So yes, having a patchwork of laws makes sense for a patchwork of people, even if some of the individual laws don't. 

As for me, I don't get pills, shots or procedures I don't need, period. I'm at a low risk for COVID. If I were to get it and give it to someone else, it would very likely be to someone who also decided not to get the shot and decided not to stay home. If they have risk factors of overweight, vitamin D deficiency or diabetes, those risk factors are largely optional and anybody "going by the science" would do the best they could to mitigate those factors instead of putting on weight. So no, I don't feel bad about not getting a shot. The only thing that feels bad is my pinched nerve. And I'm not getting a shot for it!

Labels:

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…
So sorry to read about your pinched nerve, I'm not sure where in the body it us but maybe one of these articles can help?
https://www.healthline.com/health/pinched-nerve-in-neck-exercises

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320045

All the best Jan
May 23, 2021
Lori Miller said…
Thanks, Jan! The pinched nerve is in my lumbar region (lower back). I'm seeing a chiropractor and avoiding overworking my back.
May 24, 2021
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

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 . ...
18 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more