Skip to main content

Eclipse Glasses, Probiotics for Heart, Muscle Recovery

Are your eclipse glasses fake?

The total solar eclipse over North America is almost here, and Indianapolis is in the "path of totality," meaning the moon will completely block the sun here. A lot of people have gotten special glasses to safely look at the eclipse. But the American Astronomical Society says, "counterfeit and fake eclipse glasses are polluting the marketplace." Some of the counterfeit glasses appear to be safe, the society says, but others are fakes that are no more effective than sunglasses.

One of the counterfeits they describe matches the glasses someone gave me. I don't know where she got them, and she's not someone I'd trust to perform adequate due diligence. I just got over an eye injury and I don't need another one--I'll try the pinhole method instead to see crescents during the eclipse if it's not too cloudy.

Picture from Pexels. 


Heart Centered Probiotic

I started getting scary heart palpitations several years ago, about the time I had a dental implant put in after an accident. At the time, I thought it was a lack of electrolytes, or that it was an effect of the epinephrine (both of which can cause heart palpitations). But it went on too long for either of those things to have been the cause. Someone at Dr. Davis's Inner Circle said that Simple Slumber probiotics helped her atrial fibrillation a lot and Heart Centered helped even more, and I found that fermented Ideal Immunity helped my palpitations. (All of these probiotics are made by Biotiquest.) So I got a bottle of Heart Centered and tried fermenting it, but it didn't work--it contains a yeast called S. boulardii. You can ferment S. boulardii in juice, but apparently not in shredded apples (or maybe I did it wrong). I tossed out the failed fermentation and tried the capsules. Maybe it's a coincidence, but after starting it I've found I can make do with half the magnesium I was taking. My heart feels calmer at night, too.

Bacillus Coagulans Probiotic

Like a lot of people at the Inner Circle, I make yogurt out of three different strains. But after doing several batches using the previous batch as starter, it's not clear how much of each of the strains is left. I began to wonder if any B. coagulans was left in my yogurt I started getting foot pain. B. coagulans helps with muscle recovery among other things, and I don't normally have sore feet. 

CVS doesn't seem to carry this probiotic under their store brand anymore, but they had one from Culturelle that comes unflavored in packets. I'll put one in my next yogurt batch and have one tonight. My feet feel OK (probably from yoga)--it's the afternoon of yard work that has me sore but not feeling as bad as I did four years ago when a few hours' work on my garage left me feeling like I'd been run over. 

Gardening is hard enough work that it seems to help prevent osteoporosis. Back in 2000, researchers were surprised that such a "dainty" activity--digging holes, pulling weeds, pushing a mower--helped women maintain bone mass. Maybe they thought gardening meant picking flowers. But my afternoon was spent uprooting dandelions, then starting a patch of lawn from seed: digging out the sedge that was supposed to be a wonder plant, digging out weedy roots, hand-tilling the soil, and sprinkling topsoil over the seeds. Then I moved some plants around the yard and re-seeded bare spots on the tree lawn (the area between the sidewalk and street) after pulling out more dandelions and weedy little shrubs with foot-long roots and then hand-aerating the soil. Finally, I dug out the weeds on the other side of the driveway. So dainty that I need some muscle recovery!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
1 comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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