Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Pity the proponents of high-carb diets and calorie restriction. They've had the roughest week since Denise Minger dismantled the China Study. First, Jimmy Moore of the Livin' la Vida Low Carb blog dropped the bombshel l that a member of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Committee (U.S.) publicly stated that there was no scientific basis for the U.S. dietary guidelines. Excerpt below--see Jimmy's blog for the whole jaw-dropping scoop. Joanne Slavin, PhD, RD, professor of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, was the head of the Carbohydrate Committee and on the Protein sub-committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Scientific Advisory Committee. She was invited to be one of the guest speakers at The 9th Conference on Preventative Nutrition in Tel Aviv, Israel on May 18, 2011. Perhaps Ms. Slavin felt more at liberty to express her true feelings about the final version of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines being overseas and didn’t realize that I’d have eyes and ears l...

A couple of unexpected consequences have occurred with my new, (mostly) lacto-paleo, high-nutrient diet. My TMJ has almost disappeared. Let me tell you how my case of TMJ came about. It was a Sunday night in November 2006. I was on my way to a dance when an SUV came flying out of the Walgreens parking lot and broadsided my car on the driver's side. Once I stopped my car (which was totaled), the teeth on the right side of my mouth felt like they'd shifted from being clenched so hard. A few months later, the pain in my jaw was so bad that it kept me up nights. I couldn't fall asleep on my right side. Splint therapy helped, but as recently as last October after a dance workshop weekend , my jaw was painful for weeks afterward. So, why didn't I just stop clenching my jaw? When I realized I was doing it, I did, as far as I was able. But it's kind of like telling someone to stop having a tension headache. Things like relaxation, pain relievers, massage and a...

The more I read, the more I realize that people have to be their own advocates concerning their health. There's a lot of information out there, but a lot of it is contradictory--even information that comes from doctors. Without medical training, how do you sort it out? Lately I've been reading The Power of Logical Thinking by Marilyn vos Savant. Readers of a certain age may remember the Monty Hall dilemma from her column in Parade magazine in 1990. She correctly answered a reader's question about probability. The problem was so simple that grade-school age children could--and did--test it for themselves. Yet vos Savant got mountains of mail from professors and Ph.D.s telling her she was wrong. There's a section in her book about averages. "You can drown in a river with an average depth of two feet," she observes. This reminded me of a woman I met last weekend. As she and I talked, the conversation turned to health. She was quite a bit overweight and said she...

I'd like to share some really outstanding health-related blogs with you. All of these bloggers struggled with the health problems they write about. All of them go by science and results, not the dogma that is common in some areas of medicine. All of these authors have helped me and my family in some way: Dr. Eades' blog informed me that excess carbs were the cause of my acid reflux; Dr. Davis's blog has been a lifesaver for my diabetic mother; Tom Naughton's blog usually makes me laugh. If you like their messages, most of them have books or movies (in some cases, free e-books and newsletters) for your reference or that of friends and family who aren't on the Internet. Happy reading! Dr. William Davis , a cardiologist, focuses on preventive medicine. He writes quite a bit about diabetes as well. If you'd rather make lifestyle changes than have heart surgery, this blog may interest you. Dr. Michael Eades , co-author of Protein Power, writes about low-carb living....