Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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...

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...

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.

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 . 

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 ...

If you'd rather read a printed recipe than watch a video, here are my recent recipes for Better than Grandma's Pumpkin Pie and Probiotic Cranberry-Apple Relish.  Hat tip to Dana Carpender, whose pumpkin pie recipe inspired this one. The cranberry-apple ferment is entirely my own creation.  Pumpkin Pie--no grains, sugar or emulsifiers Crust 2 cups shelled raw pecans 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon monk fruit powder* (or 3 tablespoons sugar substitute) 4 tablespoons butter, melted 2 tablespoons water Pumpkin Pie Filling 1 pie pumpkin 1-1/2 cups half and half (with no thickeners) 3 eggs 3-4 teaspoons monk fruit powder* (or 3/4 cup sugar substitute) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice Preheat the oven to 350F. Stab the top of the pumpkin all the way through the flesh in a few places at the top. Place the pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 hour. Let cool. While the pumpkin is baking, put the pecans in a food processor with the S blade and run until they are finely...

Here's an update on the classic Dana Carpender recipe for pumpkin pie--this one has no emulsifiers and it's made with fresh, roasted pumpkin. Each one-eighth serving has 10g net carb. The original recipe is here . 

 Could your yogurt maker be the cause of failed yogurt batches? Here's my take:

Can you have too much l. reuteri or SIBO yogurt? Yes--more than 1/2 cup of yogurt a day can raise your insulin or, in some people, cause sinus congestion or an upset stomach. Luckily, there are other foods you can ferment.  One of my favorites is apples, cranberries and celery fermented with BiotiQuest Ideal Immunity probiotics. This recipe is slightly different from the one I posted before--I've left out the brown sugar and maple syrup since the apples provide plenty of sugar.  Here's my four-minute video showing how to make it: You can buy the seedling mat here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IDQD32Y/ref=dp_iou_view_item?ie=UTF8&th=1

No inulin? No problem! Use coconut flour instead--it's half the price and available at the grocery store. Here's my video showing how:

Imagine looking in the mirror one morning and finding the side of your head black and your ear twice its normal size. That's what happened to Brad Burnam, who caught a deadly superbug at the hospital where he worked. Sometime after having emergency surgery--one of 21 surgeries over the next five years--he set out to cure himself.  The result he created was a fusion of PHMB, an antibiotic common in Europe but little known in the US, in a petroleum jelly base (like Vaseline), held together with a stabilizer/emulsifier. It sticks to wounds, keeps them moist, and provides a barrier. It cured his antibiotic resistant superbug. After getting FDA clearance, he formed Turn Therapeutics, and Hexagen is now available by prescription.  Screen shot from https://turntherapeutics.com/about/ Millions of Americans suffer from open wounds--chronic issues like diabetic foot ulcers. Readers probably have their blood sugar under control and avoid this condition, but might have parents, partners o...

The right cooking utensils could help reduce your risk of stroke. A few weeks ago, Dr. Davis discussed risk factors for stroke, and mentioned a study of people with 70% or worse carotid blockage, atherosclerosis, having far more inflammation in their plaque if they had more micro- and nano-plastics. The people with more microplastics also had less collagen in their carotid arteries. Collagen helps keep you supple.  Of course we can't avoid our food touching plastic--pretty much everything is packaged in plastic. But we can avoid heating plastic, which causes it to break down and release micro- and nanoplastics a lot faster.  With that in mind, I replaced my plastic ladle and spatula with metal ones. I also looked at my 30-year-old aluminum pressure cooker, chipped and stained on the inside, and wondered if it was time retire it. Brave AI said it should be replaced immediately: "Black chips or flakes inside the cooker indicate that the internal surface has deteriorated, which ...

In time for Halloween, here's a recipe for no-carb "cider" to sip while you watch scary (or mildly spooky) videos. Photo from Pixabay . Ingredients: Hot water Constant Comment tea Doctor's Best magnesium powder in sweet peach flavor Steep a bag of Constant Comment tea in hot water for a few minutes and remove the bag. Add one scoop of magnesium powder (sweet peach flavor). The combination tastes surprisingly like hot apple cider, but with zero carbs. Only have one, or at most two, cups at a time--too much magnesium at once will have you running to the bathroom. Constant Comment tea tastes good on its own if you've maxed out your magnesium dose for the day. You can find both the tea and the magnesium powder at Vitacost.com. Kroger and other grocery stores carry Constant Comment tea, but I've never seen the magnesium powder at a grocery store. With a hot cup of ersatz cider, enjoy a video in the spirit of the season. The Amazing Mr. Blunden Family friendly; mild...

If you love Italian food, vegetables are a great substitute for pasta. If you miss lasagne, you can make eggplant parmesan instead. Spaghetti? Have some zucchini. No need to contort it into noodles--just slice and sauté it.  Vegetables are even better when they're home-grown. The flavors are better than store-bought--smoky peppers; crisp, nutty zucchini; and tomatoes that don't taste like teddy bear stuffing. Skins, like the one on eggplant, are thin enough to eat. Anytime you want herbs, you can step out the door and snip what you need.   All of the herbs and vegetables pictured are low-carb. Parsley is high in potassium and peppers are high in vitamin C. Fall harvest from my garden. Not sold in stores. If you have a sunny spot to grow a garden, mark your calendar now: it's not hard to grow vegetables, and especially herbs, but it takes planning. You can find your last average frost date online and work backwards on a calendar, or just ask an AI app to figure it out for ...

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose."  Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.*  Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it.  I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,  My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...

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...

Google, which owns YouTube, is inviting back creators it kicked off the platform for content about politics, elections, and COVID. Google says the Biden administration pressured them to censor this content, and now Europe is trying to force them to censor lawful content. Jim Jordan, Representative from Ohio, explains on X. Thread here .  Created with AI on ImageFX.  YouTube creators banned or suspended for COVID content (source: Grok). Click to enlarge. Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan 2h • 15 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X 🚨BREAKING: Due to our oversight efforts, GOOGLE commits to offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. Thread: YouTube also: -Admits the Biden Admin censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong” -Confirms that the Biden Admin wanted Americans censored for speech that did not violate YouTube’s policies -Details when YouTube began rolling back its censorship policies on p...

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