Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The British Medical Journal (not The Onion) reports that global warming is linked to type 2 diabetes, speculating that the mechanism is brown adipose fat, based on a few small association studies that sound like they didn't have a control group. The media are repeating the story without a hint a skepticism. What could possibly be wrong with a hypothesis that an imperceptible change in the climate could be causing high blood sugar levels? Human evolution began in equatorial Africa--a warm climate. According to migration maps, all of our ancestors were in warm climates until around 40,000 years ago. Comparing diabetes maps of the US and the world with average temperatures, diabetes doesn't look like it relates to hot regions. Most people are indoors most of the time--and almost all of us have air conditioning. In fact, the number of households with air conditioning has gone up in line with diabetes. Maybe that's the cause (not really). Stumped? Consider what d...

Merry Christmas! It's the seventh anniversary of the blog. Just as I was seven years ago, I've had some health problems--but I know how to deal with them now. The past few years put me through the wringer mentally and physically: my parents' problems, being accused of elder abuse (without any basis), an infected tooth, my father dying and my mother moving, and then my own moving and working at five different jobs this year. The stress and illness made my stomach too sensitive for me to want to eat fat--but with my stress level cranked up, I lived on a higher-carb diet and still lost weight. I also had acne and scary palpitations. Last Christmas, fumes from wasabi nuts roasting in the oven made me so ill I spent the day in bed. This Christmas season, feasting at holiday parties kept me up those nights with an upset stomach. I've adopted a Midwestern niceness that makes it hard to say no to goodies. But the same kindness of the people around me has removed a layer of...

Someone didn't get the memo that all the fuss about saturated fats is based on a bunch of debunked junk science. 23 and Me, the company that provides genetic information from a saliva sample, sent me this message: People with your genetic result tend to have a similar  BMI  on diets with greater or less than 22 grams of saturated fat per day, as long as they consume the same number of total calories. However, diets high in saturated fat have been associated with increased LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, which is a risk factor for heart disease. Limit your saturated fat intake. It may not have a large effect on your weight, but it’s important for reducing your risk of heart disease. Fats are an important part of a healthy diet: they give you energy, help build your  cells , and help you absorb certain vitamins. There are three main types of fats, but not all types are equally healthy. Saturated fats: Found primarily in red meat and dairy products, saturated fat h...

Processed foods have a bad rap these days. "Just eat real food," everyone says, and the real food will cure anything from arthritis to migraine headaches. The people who give this advice do tend to be in good health and do tend to eat real food. Well, except when they're eating dark chocolate, or sugary fruit that's only existed for a few hundred years, or drinking wine. The first and third foods are about as real and unprocessed as a Cadbury egg. But if we can wink at dark chocolate, bananas and wine, why not fake cheese? Real cheese and cream give me acne. Fake cheese, like Velveeta and American cheese, don't. For me, they're better than real cheese (and Velveeta melts better than real cheese, too). If you'd like to add fake cheese to your real foods list, here's a wonderful recipe I made (up) tonight. It would have been good with shiratake noodles. 1 pound grass-fed ground beef 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce made with local, vine-ripened tomatoes...

The potato chips, the chocolate, the sweet potato fries--they finally caught up with me. I saw a doctor (!) the other day for a cough I'd had since Memorial Day weekend. We determined it probably wasn't allergies, asthma, or sinus drainage. With a temperature of 97 point something, I didn't have a cold. It was probably silent reflux, since I've had raging reflux before, which I fixed with a low-carb diet . My diet has been off-track for over a year: stress and anxiety over moving across the country (no permanent job waiting for me, buying a house from 1,000 miles away before selling my other house), complications from a root canal (re-infection requiring industrial strength antibiotics that messed up my stomach and skin). I think the only reason I didn't have silent reflux then was that I wasn't eating enough of anything to affect my stomach. Now that things are getting back to normal, my stress level is down and I'm eating more. And now the carbs are giv...

^^I wish he'd offer me some bacon. This is a post that doesn't apply to my readers, just to readers of other blogs. Not blogs that recommend limiting carbs or avoiding things like wheat or dairy, or show you how to cook, or dissect scientific studies, but blogs that tell you the few things you can eat, because everything else will kill you and destroy the planet. (You also need their book, exercise plan, supplements and $500 juicer to avoid dying.) These plans are complicated, difficult, expensive, subject to change, and of questionable validity and efficacy, but they have their benefits. There's the not dying part--and saving the world, too. You also get to feel superior, special and catered to. In other words, you get to be a fussbudget. Robert over at Living Stingy observes that being fussy confers status --or at least the feeling of status. Restaurants, for example, have to try to fill your very special order--that is, if they even serve anything you're ...

It isn't the worst problem to have: to be so healthy you don't need medications or regular medical care. Even so, in the US under Obamacare, you are required to have a medical maintenance plan through a health insurance company. Not traditional insurance that protects you against catastrophes like accidents and serious illnesses, but a maintenance plan that covers, among other things, childbirth, drug and alcohol rehab, and prescription medicines, regardless of whether you need or want any of those things. Scofflaws are subject to the smug-sounding "shared responsibility penalty" regardless of whether they cost anybody anything by giving birth, drying out or needing pills. Lest anyone think uninsured people are all deadbeats, I for one paid all my dental bills from my bike accident a few years ago that weren't covered by my insurance. So far, those bills have been about $8,000 for braces (not covered), a dental implant (not covered), a tooth extraction and a ro...