Food Freedom, Mask Mandates, COVID Strategy, and How I'm Doing (Labs)

The PRIME Act

Remember the panic buying and food shortages of 2020? When grocery store shelves were cleaned out and restaurants closed, I recommended a family farm that raised beef (previously bought by closed restaurants) to my coworkers. The PRIME Act has been re-introduced to help family farms like this. It was introduced in 2020 to remove the requirement for most livestock to be processed at a relatively small number of industrial-size slaughterhouses. Smaller, local "custom" slaughterhouses could be used instead for meat staying within the state and would eliminate the need for those animals to travel for hours in trailers. Custom slaughterhouses "must follow federal, state, and local health and safety guidelines and are periodically inspected for cleanliness and safety— similar to how restaurants are inspected," says the Institute for Justice. Critics say the PRIME Act would make the meat supply less safe, but similar laws already apply to poultry.

The Freedom to Breathe Act

Our Senator Braun has introduced a bill to "prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools. The legislation would also prohibit air carriers, transit authorities, and educational institutions from refusing service to individuals who choose not to wear a mask.

COVID Strategy

What to do about the resurrection of masks, testing, isolation, etc.? Dr. Vinay Prasad recommends peaceful noncompliance: in other words, don't test. His video about this was on this blog's feed, but I've pasted it below in case you missed it. Oh--he's also remarked that masks, boosters and Paxlovid haven't been shown to be effective (for most people in the case of Paxlovid).

How I'm Doing

I've been working out twice a week for the past month or two, doing pretty well on diet, and I even lost a few pounds (along with looking and feeling like I gained some muscle). My labs were pretty good, though some measures fell short of Dr. Davis's high standards. Part of it could have been from losing weight, though I don't know if I lost enough to raise my triglycerides. I was also taking iron until recently--my ferritin level was in the normal range, but I'd started feeling hot when I took iron.

My free T4 was a little higher and TSH a little lower than last year, suggesting my strategy of taking more iodine is working. I'm taking 1,000 mcg, which is kind of a high dose. I need to start eating a Brazil nut a day again for the selenium.

Fish oil is something else I need to add every day. I hadn't been taking it because eating fat by itself used to upset my stomach. But now that I can take it, I need to remember to.

So there's nothing worrying going on and I'm in good shape for being 54: I'm within 10 pounds of what I weighed in high school, I take no medications, and, despite the name of this blog, I'm not in any pain. And I've never had COVID!

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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...

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh. Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good. I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds. Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

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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