Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The Purge I've been nostaligic for the days five to ten years back when the worst interaction you might have online was a nasty comment or two. Moderators, who might have to deal with a few hundred comments at most, blocked the trolls if they became too disruptive. Now that Facebook and Twitter are excommunicating people wholesale, maybe we'll go back to smaller, moderated sites and leave the yelling and screaming to the maddening crowds over there.  Dave Rubin asked Tulsi Gabbard today how she'd moderate Twitter. In practice, I don't think it's possible. It's too big with too many users who are completely unhinged and ready to come after you IRL if they don't like what you say. Then there's Facebook, which seemed like a platform for narcissists during the few weeks I used it long ago. They say people used to live in groups of about 150--maybe it's time for virtual communities to return to something closer to that number. Not only was there less trou...

I'll start with the good news: my Thanksgiving vacation didn't give me COVID. Since I don't have any major risk factors and I'm not 80 years old, I'm not surprised. Yesterday I was able to whip the yard into shape with the mower, rake, hedge trimmers and a sawzall . It was a beautiful sunny day, like winter in Denver, and most of my coworkers who give me work were in training. I was outdoors in a t-shirt. The thyroid problems seem like they're behind me.  But my GERD is back. After coming back from Ohio, I bought a magazine full of delicious looking keto recipes and made some of them: keto pound cake, keto brunch, keto enchiladas, and keto broccoli soup. The last two were heavenly going down--then they started pushing up acid. It's thought to be too much bacteria that creates gas and causes GERD; I wonder if the culture in the cheese has something to do with it, too.  Cheese: my love for you is way out of line. So I was suffering after having the enchiladas ...

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...

Need another reason to give up proton pump inhibitors? Four years ago, I gave up PPIs and cured my GERD with a low-carb diet. I saved hundreds of dollars a year (even figuring in the cost of groceries ), dropped 20 pounds, got rid of aches and pains, improved my HDL cholesterol level, had more energy, and stopped getting cavities. Statistically, I lowered my risk of bone fracture. In case you need another reason to go low-carb and throw away the pills, PPI use is associated with acute kidney injury . Since this study is an association, it could be that PPI use doesn't case kidney injury, but that something else is causing both. It could be that a high-carb diet raises blood sugars to diabetic levels (while also causing GERD) and that high blood sugar causes kidney injury. We know that diabetics are prone to kidney disease. Wouldn't that be a rich irony--that it's too much carbohydrate and not protein that damages your kidneys? If that's the case, there's a double...

It takes anywhere from seconds to years. It depends on the issue, the person, their diet, and their lifestyle. Lierre Kieth, for instance, felt better the instant she started eating meat again--the tuna was like prana in a can. (Sadly, her back pain from the damage caused by long-term B-12 deficiency will never go away.) There have been a lot of 30-day challenges out there: 30-day paleo, 30-day Whole 9 , even 30-day gluten-free from Dr. Guyanet. (He actually had a terrific blog before he started going on about food reward.) I think these challenges last long enough to get allergens out of your system and let you see if re-exposure bothers you, yet they're short enough to seem manageable. Thirty days is more than long enough to begin clearing up GI problems caused by food. My GERD disappeared within a few days of starting a low-carb diet, and two days on a fat fast cleared up my gastritis. Some issues can take much longer. Almost a year ago, two of my teeth were knocked out of ...