Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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 Fre...

Super-bacteria L. plantarum might be as close as your garden. Zucchini is a good source of the bacteria, and by fermenting it, you can up the benefits like slightly lower blood sugar, improved insulin, improved exercise capacity, improved sleep and mood, and many others. Don't give away that zucchini--ferment it! This recipe has a milder flavor than most fermented foods--it's only slightly tart. And of course it's an alternative to yogurt.  Equipment needed 1 quart jar (or 2 pint jars) with lid(s) Canning funnel (optional) Fermentation device (I use an insulated grocery bag, plastic grocery bag and a heating pad)  Ingredients 2 apples, peeled and cored 1 medium zucchini, unpeeled 4 dates, chopped 1 T cinnamon 1/2 T ground ginger 1 t salt 1/4 t ground cloves 1/4 t nutmeg Filtered water 2 capsules or equivalent of your favorite probiotic that ferments at ~95F (I used Biotiquest Antibiotic Antidote) Shred the apples and zucchini and put them in a large bowl. Add the spices, s...

L. Gasseri BNR17 Lactobacillus gasseri BNR17 is one of the bacteria we use over at Dr. Davis's Inner Circle. It's part of the SIBO yogurt because it creates seven bacteriocins (bacteria killers); it's also been shown to reduce waist size. So instead of making more yogurt with it, I fermented it with apples, carrots and spices (recipe here ). It's delicious, and it got rid of a lot of gas and bloating. My belly feels a little smaller too--always a good thing. I fermented it in my redneck yogurt maker with the heating pad set on high for three days. The bacteria digest the carbohydrate (greatly reducing the carb count) and it gives the apples and carrots a tart taste.  You can get L. gasseri BNR17 from Dr. Mercola's web site--it's in a product called BioThin . Once you ferment something with it, you can use the fermented food as a starter for the next batch; you don't have to keep buying supplements.  * * * * * Supplies Food choices are getting worse. I had t...

If you're an American who orders medications from Canadian pharmacies--or a Canadian who orders medications from Canadian pharmacies--this would be a good time to refill your prescription. Thousands of truckers are protesting vaccine mandates across Canada, their Prime Minister is in hiding, and the convoy organizers say they aren't leaving Ottawa until the mandates are lifted. They have $8 million for sustenance in a GoFundMe account, which GoFundMe has begun to release . While I support their cause, this can only make supply chain problems worse. Some police departments on Twitter reported counting only about a hundred trucks in the convoy, but this looks like a much larger protest. Keep in mind it was nine degrees Fahrenheit in Ottawa--that's minus 13 Celsius--and Canadians are even less given to protesting than Americans. Meantime, the FDA has pulled authorization for monoclonal antibody treatments saying they don't work against, Omicron . However, delta is still i...

Maybe it was getting rid of a biofilm. Maybe it was the iodine in the kelp pills. Maybe it's the adrenal medicine. Or maybe (probably) I got rid of SIBO last year. Whatever it was (probably all of those), I've gotten my strength back. Over the weekend, I made headway on the garage, mowed the lawn--without stopping!--canned some pasta sauce, baked cookies, did the grocery shopping and got the laundry done.  Three-herb marinara. I took six pounds of roma tomatoes from my garden and blanched, cooled, peeled and chopped them. They went into three-herb marinara, made with basil and oregano I picked in the dark and Italian parsley I went to two stores to buy, along with a dab of brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.  While it simmered, I took a shower and then baked a big batch of low-carb cookies. I filled the jars with the sauce and a tablespoon of lemon juice, put them in the water bath, then put the second batch of cookies in the oven. I got to bed at midnight. This wa...

This weekend, I was well enough to wear myself out doing landscape projects. I added to my shade garden, then spaded up an 8x30 foot plot on the corner. The next day, I put down some old bed sheets donated by a neighbor, weighted them down with bricks, and started setting out a hundred home-grown perennials in Xs cut in the sheets. It was hot, sunny and humid. Halfway through, a storm was coming. I worried the sheets would billow up in the wind and break some of the plants, so I threw down two bags of mulch, grabbed the clothes off the line, went inside and watched the rain come down in sheets. When it stopped I finished planting, looking like someone from Dirty Jobs when it was over. Being too tired to cook, I got a low-carb burger and small fries at the drive-through and came back home. In spite of two days' hard work, from the street, the house looked like hippies lived there: tall grass, a missing picket, and of course the bed sheets and plants that were all either little o...

Figuring out my endo problems has been hard. Palpitations can be caused by too much or too little potassium, magnesium, iron, adrenaline and T3 (thyroid hormone). Having experimented with the first three, I think I still have too much T3 in my system. That, and I felt a lot better a week ago after taking a break from taking it, then cutting my dose in half. Back when my adrenals were low, eating more carbohydrate made me feel better. It doesn't now. Another sign that the problem is too much T3. Lab tests last week showed almost everything was normal: iron, magnesium, potassium, hemoglobin, and various kidney functions. My fasting glucose was high, though (106); I'm hoping it's because I was in some distress. I'm also hoping that getting my iron straightened out will help downstream functions of adrenals and thyroid. I went about things backwards: first (says Nora Gedgaudas), it's iron, which affects adrenals, which affects thyroid. There's more to it than...

Over the past few months, my stomach is feeling a lot better and I think it's thanks to low-carb lattes I've been having for breakfast. Plus a lot of Pepto-Bismol. Doing a little research, it turns out that all the ingredients in the latte (coconut milk, cocoa powder, peppermint extract, and even coffee) are antibacterial. So is Pepto-Bismol. I've also been avoiding high-FODMAPS foods that cause bloating. So I think my problem was SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) after taking too many probiotics...and maybe some carb creep. Something felt off. I was tired, I'd gained a few pounds, and felt puffy. I got a new blood glucose meter and tested my fasting and post breakfast levels (breakfast being bacon, eggs, two lattes and some dried seasoned tomatoes). That was about 18 grams of carbohydrate. My blood sugar went from 91 to 146. Not good! After two hours, it went to 109 and stayed around there for the next four and a half hours, when I stopped taking readings...

Feeling stuffed, gassy or bloated? Got acid reflux? A few tips from someone who suffered from upper GI problems for years: Go for a walk. Don't strain yourself--a leisurely stroll is fine. If your blood sugar is up, a little exercise can help lower it, and walking helps your GI system get things moving.  Take an antacid if you have a sour taste in your mouth. If your throat is burning, mix a half teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water and drink it. (This is also an antacid.) If this happens to you often, you should probably cut back on the carbs.  If you're gassy, it'll just have to wear off. Again, though, if this happens often, eat fewer carbohydrates. Dietary fat doesn't produce gas, protein produces a little or no gas, but carbohydrates can produce a lot of gas.  Why do so many people feel lousy after Thanksgiving dinner? Partly, it's from eating too much. But as I've written before, Thanksgiving is a carbohydrate orgy . Not everyone is suite...

It's going both well and badly. My mouth is healing. It stopped bleeding after a day and the chunk my surgeon removed from the roof of my mouth (the size felt somewhere between a shotgun pellet and a pea) feels like it's mostly grown back. Both sites are still tender, though. I'm talking better; I could barely stand to move my mouth for a few days. And I'm down 4.1 pounds since I started Atkins induction a few days ago. But I spent an uncomfortable day today: my heart was pounding even though I was sitting at my desk having a slow day at work among pleasant coworkers. I popped potassium pills to little avail. My distress could have a few causes: Very low carb diet, which has given me palpitations before. Low blood pressure. Right before surgery--when I was about to have my mouth cut and sewn, and I needed a potassium pill to chill out--it was 97/60. Bleeding for a day and relaxing would have only lowered this number. Low blood sugar. I haven't taken my b...

I love vegetables. There are so many foods that I can't eat that meals would be boring without them. In fact, I like them so much that I planted five kinds of lettuce and two kinds of tomatoes in my garden today. All the same, stuffing yourself with vegetables (or anything else) isn't good. 1. Fibrous vegetables can drive up your blood sugar if you eat enough of them. In one of his books, Dr. Richard Bernstein discussed a patient who ended up with a very high blood sugar after eating a head of lettuce. There are stretch receptors in your intestines that, when they sense you've eaten a big meal, release hormones that can end up raising your blood sugar. Bernstein calls this the Chinese Restaurant Effect. 2. All food is inflammatory. As Michael Eades put i t, Eating is an inflammatory process. A number of scientific studies have shown that eating a meal, regardless of the macronutrient composition, causes acute inflammation, which makes sense when you think about it. F...

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the  American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a ...

Years ago, before the Perfect Health Diet came out, I followed a program that involved eating quite a bit "safe starch." It was called Body for Life. It involved eating six small servings of carbohydrate along with six small servings of protein, plus two servings of fibrous vegetables per day. (A serving was the size of your fist or the palm of your hand.) There were six workouts a week (three weightlifting, three cardio) and one free day every week where you ate whatever you wanted and didn't exercise. In all fairness, these two programs are different: BFL allows certain grains, legumes and low-fat dairy and discourages fat. It doesn't call for a wheelbarrow full of vegetation. Nevertheless, my experience eating lots of fruit and lots of starch is relevant to the PHD because the amount and type of digestible carbohydrates are similar, and for the first few years, I didn't eat wheat except on free days. At first on BFL, I felt great. Before, I was continually...

I just found this from the Vitamin D Council: Also, readers should be aware (if they are not already) that vitamin D does not prevent all viral respiratory infections. As we noted in correspondence to our first influenza paper, rhinoviruses, the most common cause of the common cold, are not seasonal; that is, they are just as common in the summer as in the winter, and they do not have a lipoprotein coat for antimicrobial peptides to destroy....If you are already taking 5,000 IU a day and you get a cold, chances are that more vitamin D will not help much. No one should take large doses for more than a few days and then only if the infection is severe(1) However, vitamin D levels are inversely associated with upper respiratory tract infections .(2) If you haven't been taking any vitamin D, a moderate dose might help. Nevertheless, I have (mostly) gotten over my cold faster than some acquaintances, who came down with colds before I did and are still sick. (One coworker ...

This past month or so, I've had TMJ headaches in the morning, along with some mild stomach issues and acne the past week or so. I think it's muscle memory from years ago, back when I wore a night guard for TMJ pain. Since getting my braces off and getting dental implant in early June, I've been wearing an upper retainer at night. When I wear it to bed, it reminds me of the old upper retainer I used to wear when I was grinding my teeth some years ago after a car wreck. I think I've started grinding my teeth at night again. I wasn't grinding my teeth just before I got my implant, when I was wearing a retainer during the day. I'm not grinding my teeth now, wearing my retainer after dinner and before bed, as my orthodontist recommended. Since I haven't worn my retainer for a few nights, my headaches and neck pain are gone. My skin is clearing up, too. (Inflammation can become systemic and affect other parts of the body.) ***** The toe I stubbed a month ...

My last post discussed the book It Starts with Food and the principles it's based on. Going over the post, I realized that the part about hormones raised some questions. How do cells become insulin resistant? How can too much insulin lead to weight gain? Does too much carbohydrate cause leptin resistance? I'm looking again at the book Endocrinology: Basic and Clinical Principles by Shlomo Melmed and P. Michael Conn from 2005. The book says it isn't clear how insulin resistance develops, but says that it is a "key feature of the prediabetic 'metabolic syndrome' (central obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia)" (page 318). It doesn't say how to reverse it. The book does say that insulin promotes fat formation and inhibits fat burning: Insulin promotes lipid synthesis and inhibits lipid degradation. Before insulin became available for treatment of type 1 diabetes, patients with this disease were invariably thin, reflecting ...

I'm old enough to remember when the only refreshment at the office was coffee. If you wanted a snack, you had to bring your own or find a vending machine. Yet our brains worked just fine without the constant grazing: we all did our work and only new employees needed frequent reminders of standard operating procedures. Anyone too spacy to remember how to do their job was thought to be a stoner. Now, cake for every birthday is standard. Some offices have free pop and snacks (read: junk food). Soda, chips, crackers, and instant oatmeal make for unstable blood sugar in people susceptible to blood sugar swings, and roller coaster blood sugar levels affect mood, thinking and energy for the worse. How often do you see coworkers getting drowsy a few hours after lunch? How often do you hear, "My brain isn't working today"? Snicker-snacking all day long can make for high blood sugar and lethargy in some people--when it's really bad, it's called "carb coma....

Everyone loves a good mystery, but in real life, we all love a good solution even more. The book Why Isn't my Brain Working? by Datis Kharrazian is the latter. Even if your brain is working (and I think mine works pretty well), it's worth reading for the insights into the gut-brain connection, cross-reactivity of foods, and what you can do if you get glutened. In my younger days, I read self-help books and went to counseling to be happier. It didn't help much--all they talked about was attitude. Relying on attitude to solve a biological problem is like trying to smile your way out of an infection of H. pylori. I guess I was lucky that I didn't go in for drugs and didn't think doctors could help me. Good thing. I now know my problem was largely hypoglycemia. The management of [certain patients with poor blood sugar control] is so fundamentally basic and easy....[Yet] It is not uncommon for [them] to be put on psychotropic drugs, sleep medications, or labeled ...

The polite brush-off answer: because I'm not you or them. Answers that require more thought: Metabolism doesn't improve with age. I could eat crap, or have nothing but a bun or soda for lunch, when I was nineteen and it didn't bother me. Much. Most people that age can say the same. Now that I'm 44, I usually can't fast and more than a little carb makes me tired and hungry and gives me a stomach ache. A high-nutrient, low-carb diet and three meals/snacks a day is my way of dealing with it. Genes. I'm from a family full of diabetes and hypoglycemia and used to have most of the symptoms of hypoglycemia listed in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution. Expecting someone like me to do well on a "balanced diet" (i.e., lots of starch, little meat) of three meals a day is like putting gasoline in a diesel truck and wondering what's wrong. Natural and Artificial Selection. Richard Dawkins has written about animal species undergoing natural selection wi...

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no. -Amy Winehouse My mother is home from the hospital, where she arrived weak and dehydrated last Thursday. She thinks that an antibiotic made her ill.* My mother uses a wheelchair but she can stand up and she can walk with a walker. She couldn't use her legs when she went to the hospital, but by Monday, she could transfer herself from the bed to the wheelchair with no help, just someone to spot her. The hospital wanted her to go to rehab, but like Amy Winehouse, she said no, no, no, for good reasons: She felt well enough to go home. Rehab is expensive. They feed you a crappy diet at rehab--crappy meaning full of carbage. It's especially unhealthy when you're diabetic, like my mother. Got normal blood sugar? They're johnny-on-the-spot with the orange juice to jack it back up. Mom was assaulted at a rehab center a few years ago. The person was never brought to justice. Being home and careful about her diet...