Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Best conversation yet: Cashier: How did you get hurt? Me: I fell off my bike. Cashier: Are you going to ride a bike again? Me: Nope. Cashier: So you didn't lose your common sense. That was Sunday. It's Friday, and strangers have stopped asking what happened to me since I'm a lot less black and blue now. I'm washing my own hair, putting on makeup and getting through a day at work without exhaustion. I don't do much at home besides cooking and dishes, and out-eating a teenage boy. Two eggs or a quarter pound of beef is a snack; either one used to be a meal. Rebuilding flesh and replenishing blood (I bled for a day when I fell) must take a lot of nutrients. I'm not wearing the extra calories--I've lost weight. The braces are working. My front teeth are straighter than they've been since I was a kid, and I can chew a little bit, very carefully. Since the tooth that broke was narrower than an implant, I'll have to have my top teeth re-aligned t...

Jennifer McLagan's recipe in The Odd Bits inspired this recipe. Since I can't get blood off the shelf in the U.S., I pour the blood from liver packages into a tightly sealed container in the freezer. The cinnamon keeps the sanguinaccio from tasting like liver. 3/4 cup Splenda 1/3 c Dutch processed cocoa 2 big pinches xanthan gum Pinch of sea salt 1 c coconut milk (full fat, not light) 1/2 c blood 1-1/2 t cinnamon Place the Splenda, cocoa, salt and xanthan gum in a bowl and mix will. Stir in the coconut milk until the mixture is smooth. Pour in the blood through a mesh filter and stir well. Pour the mixture into a saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens and begins to bubble. Remove from heat. Refrigerate, serve cold. Optional: churn the mixture in an ice cream maker once it's cold. ETA: This may be the most filling food I've ever had. One cup of it for dinner--after no lunch today--and I'm full.

Pasta, potatoes and rice may be staples of the Mediterranean, northern Europe and Asia, but there's another, older food that's almost never mentioned in connection with these places: blood. Before explorers brought potatoes to Europe from North America (that is, a few hundred years ago), people in harsh climates used blood for food: it's nutritious, and the animal doesn't have to be killed. Jennifer McLagan writes in Odd Bits, In harsh northern climes where food was often scarce, both Scandinavians and the Irish survived on animal blood. The growing antlers of reindeer were a source for Laplanders, while in Ireland they turned blood into a national dish. The French writer Henri Misson de Valbourg wrote about his voyages through England, Scotland and Ireland in the late seventeenth century in Misson's Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England  (1690). In Ireland, he recalled eating 'one of their most delicious dishes' made from blood mixed wit...

Amy Alkon Interviews Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades Advice Goddess Amy Alkon writes, Low-carb pioneers Dr. Michael Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades are my guests this week. They are two of the all-too-few out there who are behind evidence-based ways to eat -- dietary science as opposed to the "science" on which so many base their diets.... These two have changed the lives and improved the health of more of my readers -- in absolutely incredible ways. People who read their books, like "Protein Power," typically end up losing weight...and with ease...like the pounds are stones falling off a truck. On the show, we'll talk about how to maintain a way of eating, and debunk a lot of widely held myths about diet -- myths many doctors still cling to.  Listen to the interview here  on or after Sunday, January 15, 8 PM. *** I Can't Give 110% Bonfils Blood Center, where I donate blood, started using slightly larger collection bags and increased the minimum wei...

Donating blood yesterday, going to bed late last night, a light breakfast, light lunch, and coming home lightheaded tonight: this is how I account for thinking that a dinner I knew added up to a lot of carbs (46) was a good idea. My resistance was lowered and not replenished. At least I didn't go far over my  daily 50-carb limit, and the meal was real food full of nutrients. But I know that big meals make me feel like a slug. There's been research over the past few years about willpower being limited. Some clinical studies have looked at glucose's relationship to willpower, others have looked at performance on sequential tasks. Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write , In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were ...

"That poor soul." That's what I think when Bonfils Blood Center sends me a letter telling me where my donated blood went. One pint of my blood--one of several from many donors--went to a woman who had a childbirth that would have killed her in times past. Bonfils invited her and all the donors to a party to meet each other. A few dozen donors divided by eight pints per gallon means she lost half or more of her blood. A friend and employee of Bonfils told me about another patient--just a kid--who needed over 100 units of blood. Today, I'm feeling a bit puffed up because I got my six-gallon donor pin. (Not too puffed up, though--my father has donated over 20 gallons and a man named Ned Habich has donated 60.) I went to the bloodmobile parked in front of the Marriott Hotel in downtown Denver this afternoon. I answered a questionnaire and Bonfils tested my iron, pulse and blood pressure. At 118 pounds and with an iron level of 42 ( yay !), I barely met their thresholds f...

Until recently, I'd been having bad nosebleeds for a while. Specifically, since November 1999 when I had septoplasty surgery. My otolaryngologist recommended it because I had a deviated septum (that's the stiff middle part of the inside of the nose) and enlarged turbinates . I had frequent sinus infections and supposedly, this surgery would help prevent them. (It didn't. But it was nice to be able to breath through both sides of my nose at the same time.) About a month ago, I read the following in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution p. 126, published in 1972: About vitamins in general, I don't believe in minimum daily requirements. I believe in optimum dosage. I have used vitamins in megadoses in my practice with great success. .... You cannot safely increase the standard dosage of Vitamin A (5,000 international units) nor of Vitamin D (400 international units). But so-called overdoses of the other vitamins are simply flushed away by the kidneys. And the mineral and vitami...

Let me tell you about the time I woke up on the sidewalk. It was Tuesday, December 14, 2004. I had donated blood and was in a hurry to get back to the office and finish the stack of work on my desk. When I left the bloodmobile, I didn't bother going back into the Marriott to rest up by the fire with some cookies and juice; I ran for the shuttle instead. In the course of my life, I had donated gallons of blood without trouble. After I got on the shuttle, I was in trouble. It was as if I was suddenly infected with a virus: I was sick to my stomach and felt terrible and weak. Being on a moving vehicle made it worse, but I saw no place to get off and sit down. I wondered if this was what it felt like to bleed to death; if this was how soldiers felt when they were wounded. A group of Latina girls looked at me with worry. The shuttle pulled up to the Adam's Mark Hotel where there was a dormant flower bed in a low wall by the sidewalk. Finally--a place to get off and sit down. I got u...