Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Move over, juicers: there's a new elixir in town. Boil some bones for a day, along with vinegar to extract the nutrients, and voila--you have the latest health drink. Well, you have it if you're willing to spend a whole day cooking it or pay $8 for a little carton of it. After all, it's water that bones were boiled in . Photo from  https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-skull-table-decor-417049/ Hold on, says Dr. Davis. He reports that bone broth is high in lead, and the ideal amount of ingested lead is zero. There's also not that much nutrition in bone broth. Who'd have guessed? Nutrients in bone broth. Note the vegetable ingredients, the source vitamins A and C. Click to enlarge. Source:  https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/551729/nutrients When he said this at the last meetup, some members in the chat said, "What about organic bone broth?" Does it matter? Let's discuss. Even if organic bone broth isn't infused with (much) lead, it...

Here's a tale of two holidays. Thanksgiving day, I could barely get out of my chair. Answering three phone calls was a major annoyance and baking a crustless pumpkin pie was a slog. But over Christmas week, I've put plastic weatherstripping over windows at my parents' house, gone to a movie, done a lot of shopping (after watching a lot of What Not to Wear ), learned to use my new Mac, recycled my old computer and printer, and taken two trunk loads of stuff to Goodwill after cleaning out my basement. I haven't cleaned out my basement in almost 18 years. I'm working out twice a week again. And my pants are falling off me. What made the difference? Before Thanksgiving, I'd gotten out of the habit of taking an iron supplement. I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia a few years ago when I went to see a doctor for an unrelated problem. (He noticed I was pale and ordered a test.) Even with good diet habits since then (no medications, no grain, no dairy except b...

Proposed elementary school lunch, courtesy of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010: Chef Salad (1 cup romaine, .5 oz low-fat mozzarella, 1.5 oz grilled chicken) with Whole Wheat Soft Pretzel (2.5 oz) Corn, cooked (1/2 cup) Baby Carrots, raw (1/4 cup) Banana Skim Chocolate Milk (8 oz) Low Fat Ranch Dressing (1.5 oz) Low Fat Italian Dressing (1.5 oz) The nutrient composition of this lunch (info from nutritiondata.com): Carbohydrate: 138g Fat: 16g Protein: 37g Fiber: 10g Net carbohydrate (ie., digestible): 128g Calories: 886 CPF composition by calories: approximately 62:17:16 Assumptions: 1 slice commercially prepared whole wheat bread, 1 oz carrots, low fat ranch dressing Let's look at the nutrient composition of a McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese, small fries and a diet drink or water: Carbohydrate: 69g Fat: 37g Protein: 32 g Fiber: 6g Net carbohydrate: 63g Calories: 740 CPF composition by calories: 37:17:45 To be sure, neither of...

To make it easy to stay on track with Molly's diet, I've created a meal planning spreadsheet. I've listed the foods and amounts she commonly eats along with calories, carbs, fat, and protein. I just enter how many servings of various foods I'm thinking about feeding her on a given day, and the total nutrients show up. You can download the spreadsheet here: http://www.slideshare.net/lorimiller/nutrient-counter Of course, you can insert rows for other foods if you want to do a little bit of research on nutrient content (like, Nutritiondata.com or copying data from a food package), copy and paste the formulas from the orange (or gray) part of the spreadsheet, and re-do the Total row if needed. Needless to say, you can use this for your own diet if you wish.

Just over a month ago, I (along with my dog) set out on a cavity healing diet : low in carb, grain-free, high in vitamins A and D, and high in calcium and phosphorus. I've made some changes along the way and listed what Molly and I are now eating at the end of this post. Potassium Power The potassium pills seem to have put the pep back in my step. This weekend, I worked both days helping the tax secretary, whipped my house back into shape, and I'm ready to go out and tear up the dance floor tonight. The Dry Skin Epidemic Since starting this diet, after I stopped eating raw eggs (since I seemed to be allergic to them), my skin has looked better than it ever has. My skin improved last year after I started a low-carb, high-fat diet (more resilient, less callousing, and lot less dry), but now I'm cautiously optimistic that my niggling adult acne is completely gone. A diet's effect on skin was brought home to me while I read an article in People magazine (no jokes, please) t...

Note: I'm reposting this with some edits. When I first wrote this article, I was under the impression that my dog had a tiny hole in her tooth that had healed (see photo). What looked like a pinhole may have been some crud on her tooth. I've also made another change in my diet. -Ed. A week ago, I went on a cavity-healing diet and put my dog, Molly, on the same diet a few days later when I noticed she had a cavity in her lower-right canine. As described in the highly researched book Cure Tooth Decay by Ramiel Nagel, the experiments of Weston A. Price showed children's cavities healed when they were fed one highly nutritious meal a day of tomato or orange juice with cod liver oil or high-vitamin butter, meat/bone marrow/vegetable stew, cooked fruit, milk, and rolls made from freshly ground wheat. (Note that this experiment and others like it were done in the 1920s and 1930s when meat and milk were from grass-fed, pasture-raised animals, wheat was very different in its genet...

There's a food group that seems to be getting some much deserved love. It's inexpensive, full of nutrients, all natural, it's been eaten for millennia, and it's easy to prepare. It's variety meat--liver, oxtail, and various organ meats. (The downside is that some of these are an acquired taste.) Vitamin Cottage was out of beef liver today, so I went to Denver Urban Homesteaders. Bill Flentje at the Ranch Direct Foods counter said he's been selling cuts that are normally unpopular, like the oxtail and liver I bought. (Salmon was selling well, too, and someone bought five pounds of liverwurst.) But the t-bone steaks weren't moving. Are people buying nutrients by the pound? I don't know, but check the vitamin and mineral content of beef liver here (set the serving size to 100g). (Notice you'd have to eat seven cups of spinach to get that much iron.) Now look at the nutrients in a t-bone (set the serving size to 100 grams to compare). It doesn't ev...

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...