Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Hurray! The construction work in my mouth is almost finished. It's been nine months since the bike accident that broke a tooth and knocked two others out of place. Next week, I get a crown and a new retainer, and my insurance is actually going to pay for a little bit of it. My orthodontist gave me a celebratory candied apple, which I gave to the receptionist where I work. In other news, I'm smarter than a Supreme Court Justice. Judge Stephen Breyer just fractured his shoulder in his third serious bike accident. I packed it in after my first serious accident. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/supreme-court-justice-stephen-breyer-hurts-shoulder-in-biking-accident-in-dc/2013/04/27/f9fafde8-af6d-11e2-a986-eec837b1888b_story.html

I never gave much thought to food reward, but lunch today reminded me of it. I sat down to burger with bacon and salsa--the salsa's made from a 40-year-old secret family recipe, said the girl I bought it from, cole slaw, and sweet potato fries cooked in lard. Delicious! But I'm halfway through it and I can't eat another bite. I was really hungry, too. Looks like it's leftovers for dinner. Maybe tubers and cabbage aren't rewarding. But aren't bacon, lard and sweetener (in the dressing) supposed to be? Before low-carb, I could eat a bag of cookies at one go--and would most Saturdays (getting an early start on my free day). If someone in the office ordered pizza while we were working late, people knew they'd better not get between me and the pizza. I haven't kept up my plan for getting to bed early , but good news: without the flavored coffee (flavored with chemicals and with solvents), I'm feeling so much better that I've been doing fine st...

In my last post, I gave some reasons why Coloradans have a low rate of obesity (assuming they really do, and I think that's true). Here's more evidence that we're less obese, but more importantly, that obesity and heart disease are associated with diabetes. (Everyone say it with me: association is not causation.) No, but looking at these maps makes you go "hmmm...is there a real connection there?" (Hint: type 2 diabetics tend to be overweight, and high blood sugars are hard on arteries and other tissues.) Source: PositivelyAware.com Source: Center for Disease Control Curious about high cholesterol by state? It doesn't look like the other maps, does it? No light, healthy stripe down the Rocky Mountains or ominous dark cloud from the Mississippi Delta up to Pennsylvania and down to Florida. For the first three maps, culture, race and poverty, and maybe even minerals in the soil look like they might be factors. But what do Hawaii, Alaska and ...

And more importantly, would moving to Colorado help you lose weight? A recent study suggested that some people in the northern US may be lying about having a svelte figure by fudging on their height and weight in phone surveys. The abstract of the study didn't mention the West, but all the obesity maps I've seen show Colorado as having the lowest rate of obesity in the US. I don't know whether that's accurate, but I think we're better than average. A few months ago, my employer held a firm-wide video conference where we could see members of all or most of the other offices. We have two offices in Colorado; the rest are in downtown areas of medium and large cities in the South and the Midwest. We all work in the same industry; the employees are mostly white, college educated professionals. As far as I know, the only big difference between all of us is our locations. I'm guessing there were a few hundred people in total on screen; we saw different offices at...

I wish my neighbors' yard looked like this instead of the weed-choked dump they've let it turn into: Jennifer and Jason Helvenston, gardening scofflaws. Photo from the Institute of Justice. The city of Orlando, Florida ordered the Helvenstons to dig up their front yard and replace it with lawn or face a $500 per day fine. From the Institute for Justice (the same nonprofit organization that's defending blogger Steve Cooksey at diabetes-warrior.net ), Jennifer and Jason Helvenston of Orlando, Fla., take their role as responsible members of society very seriously, by choosing to commit their lives to sustainability: They built their home with naturally sourced materials, harvest eggs from their backyard chickens and grow vegetables in their front yard. Not only does their garden provide them with their own food, but it has become a community attraction where the couple teaches local youth about homegrown vegetables. The Helvenstons embody life, liberty and ...

I've never understood the appeal of pancakes: they're dry and tasteless. If you put syrup on them, they're sweet and soggy. Being mostly flour and sugar (if you put syrup on them), they really should be considered a dessert. Crepes are a different animal: they're light and fluffy and moist if you put some butter on them. They're not too eggy-tasting. If you make them with coconut flour and don't drench them in syrup, they shouldn't jack up your blood sugar. In other words, they're real food, not dessert. The recipe is from Cooking with Coconut Flour by Bruce Fife. It took 15 minutes to make these.

Four More Weeks My orthodontist wants to wait four more weeks to take my braces off so that I can get a new crown. Meantime, my insurance is actually considering paying for some of this expensive dental work. Hot dog. Acid reflux, acne, and upset stomach down to flavored coffee I just tried to expand my food horizons and once again, ended up with problems. It took a few months to figure out it was flavored coffee. It's not the caffeine or the acid, since regular coffee and tea doesn't bother me, or anything I put in it (I take it black). It's not any natural flavors, since nuts, vanilla and cocoa don't bother me. It's the chemicals. According to enotes.com , Flavoring oils are combinations of natural and synthetic flavor chemicals which are compounded by professional flavor chemists. Natural oils used in flavored coffees are extracted from a variety of sources, such as vanilla beans, cocoa beans, and various nuts and berries. Cinnamon, clove, and chicory...