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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30-second Fix for a Cracked Stick Blender

Use Mighty Fixit (if you still have some from 2012) or Rescue Tape (which looks like a similar product) to fix a cracked stick blender. After I fixed the attachment, I washed it in the sink and the tape held up. I also wrapped a knife handle several years ago, and it's been through thousands of washings.

Moving on to YouTube

Remember when the blogosphere was a wild ride? Doctors, writers and researchers dove into research, picked apart studies and stood up to official advice and conventional wisdom that didn't work. We found each other in the comments and made a community. Along the way, Dr. T. Colin Campbell's research got exposed as shoddy by an English major, Tom Naughton made us laugh, "safe starch" fads made us scratch our heads, "Diabetes Warrior" Steve Cooksey almost went to jail, CarbSane trolled everyone who was anyone, and CarbSaneR trolled the troll. Now it's very quiet. Blogs don't come up in Google search results anymore and even if they did, most of the bloggers have stopped writing. That's why I've moved on to YouTube. Videos do come up in search results and my shorts--which are mostly what I make--get pushed out to hundreds of people or more. My videos are on food and health (biohacking), but also on growing things and fixing things. If you...

Holiday Dinner Tip from Restaurant Pros: Limit the Menu

After watching some people online getting freaked out about trying to put on holiday dinners and getting overwhelmed to the point that they're thinking about canceling the whole thing, I thought I'd put out a restaurant tip that will help people put on a dinner with less aggravation. A big complaint among the frustrated home cooks I've seen is that family members are not contributing to the dinner. But a bigger problem I see is that their menu is just too big. One lady's family is having her make 12 dishes all by herself, and some of these dishes look pretty complicated. Watch the video here or read on. The reason this is aggravating is that more dishes mean more shopping, more prep, and more cleanup. It's hard to make several dishes that will all be ready at the same time. Even though I used to be a prep cook at a restaurant, I've put on Thanksgiving dinners myself, and I cook from scratch almost every day, there's no way I'd try to make a 12-course di...

The Inner Circle Site is a Maze!

If you're a member of Dr. Davis's Inner Circle site, you know how hard it is to navigate. But I have a YouTube Playlist of videos I've created on using the site--finding yogurt recipes, using the search function, uploading lab tests, finding which lab tests you should take, and more. All videos are under 11 minutes, the longer ones have chapters and time stamps in the description, and in about 30 minutes, you'll be navigating the site like techno-boss. Link here .

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives. Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours. This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.) Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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