Pain, Pain, Go Away!

"Life's no fun without a good scare." The Nightmare Before Christmas Hunter-gatherer life probably consisted of a lot of walking and standing, fairly infrequent eating, and the occasional short-lived scare. This sounds a lot like a trip to an amusement park. I just came back from Elitch's, where I did a lot of walking and standing in line and a little eating and riding the rides, where I felt like I was going to die. It left me wondering what effect it has on people when they never feel like they're in danger. It seems like it's common to feel an adrenaline rush, and then joy, when you escape a danger, real or perceived. At the 1989 World Series, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck Candlestick Park and shook the stands for what seemed like minutes, as one reporter described it . The crowd let out a cheer when it was over. People pay to go to amusement parks to have a similar experience: fear, focus, relief, joy, and maybe gratitude that it's over and they...

The new method of getting to bed earlier is working. Last week I had the idea to see going to bed on time as punctuality. (Punctuality is a virtue to me because I so dislike covering for an employee who often shows up very late or waiting on people who are late just because they're diddling around.) I've generally been getting to bed between 10:45 and 11:00. I had a lapse last night because I lost track of time taking pictures to enter a contest for a kitchen makeover. But I haven't been staying up until midnight. I've not only been less tired, but less hungry. I even got up early one morning and worked out. It's been wonderful not to drag bleary-eyed through the day. ***** I had to find an new dentist since the last one quit taking my insurance. After searching reviews on the internet, and trying to decide which ones could be trusted, I settled on a dentist off East Colfax. In Denver, the character of a neighborhood can vary from block to block. There are pla...

The habit of getting to bed on time, at 10:30, has eluded me. I know it's important to get enough sleep, but I'm never tired at 10 PM. I've been inspired to look at this a different way, though: I've begun to see going to bed on time as punctuality. Having waited for hours--no exaggeration--on Thanksgiving dinners at relatives' houses, having waited on my ex-jerk to show up to pretty much anything, having carried a coworker who'd often get to work 20 minutes late and then spend ten minutes making her breakfast, I've had enough. I admit that I often run a few minutes late. (I'm usually on time for work, but I do take PTO or a short lunch if I'm more than a few minutes late.) But now I'm inspired to change. The Art of Manliness site ran an article a few years ago called The Importance of Punctuality . Being on time, it says, shows integrity, dependability, builds self-confidence, and assures you're at your best.  George Washington was a s...

Last time, I discussed clueless meddlers who misread, misunderstand and give useless advice on an individual level. This time, I'm looking at a few clueless meddlers who do it on a scale to attract media attention. Remember The Guy from CSPI, the vegan group that got saturated fats at restaurants replaced with trans fats? Food companies may now be replacing trans fats with something worse, another lab creation , according to Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. Here's The Guy from CSPI in action in a video from Fathead by Tom Naughton: Another crusader against fast food, Kia Robertson, put her nine-year-old daughter up to scolding a McDonald's CEO at a shareholder meeting . It wasn't fair that big companies tricked kids into eating food that isn't good for them, said daughter Hannah, who of course wasn't being manipulated in any way and apparently felt herself smarter than the other kids. At this writing, McDonald's is still selling Happy Meals, a...

Has anyone run into this? A caring but clueless meddler sees someone with problems vaguely like their own and starts giving advice, which you know is off the mark. They're not the type of person who mentions once or twice how something worked for them, but persists even when their errors are pointed out to them. I don't see this often with diet-related stuff, since my mother and I both do low-carb, my meetup group drinks coffee and I avoid health subjects unless others bring them up, and my coworkers are mostly CPAs familiar with HIPAA and have work of their own to worry about. I think the last part is key: work of their own to worry about. Everybody has something they need to be doing--and ought to be doing it instead of creating problems from thin air so they can save the day. Robert over at Living Stingy wrote about the urge to save the day a while back. I might have quoted it before, but it's worth repeating. Before you decide to become an "activist...

Did you read about the new study showing chocolate helps you lose weight? I'm sure regular readers here weren't taken in, but you might want to show something to your friends who keep up with health "news." The authors of that study just revealed that it was a hoax to shine a light on the sloppiness of the health media. The study was real and the authors didn't lie about anything but their credentials, they just did a poor experiment, sent out press releases and paid the impressive-sounding journal The International Archives of Medicine 600 euros to publish it. The study really did show greater weight loss in the chocolate group than the non-chocolate group and the control group, but... Here’s a dirty little science secret: If you measure a large number of things about a small number of people, you are almost guaranteed to get a “statistically significant” result. Our study included 18 different measurements—weight, cholesterol, sodium, blood protein levels...

On the hypothesis that my mineral deficiencies are caused by low stomach acid, today I tried supplementing with vinegar. This morning, I took a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with some water at breakfast (a Quest bar and coffee) and at lunch sprinkled some red wine vinegar on my salad. The good: I didn't get hungry between meals--that's unusual for me, especially on such a light breakfast. The bad: I got acid reflux and a lot of burping, which is also unusual for me. Sinus congestion, too. Given my very low-carb breakfast, the only reason I could think of for the reflux was FODMAPs. (Quest bars have prebiotic fiber that gives some people FODMAPs problems, but not me.) Apples are one of the worst things for giving me acid reflux, and apple cider vinegar is apparently high in FODMAPs--fermentable carbohydrates that some people don't digest well. When you don't digest a carbohydrate well, it ferments in your intestines. Fermentation requires bacteria. But I haven...