Pain, Pain, Go Away!

A few months ago, I joined Dr. Davis's Inner Circle to resolve some health problems. He recommends making "yogurt" with L. reuteri bacteria for its unique health benefits. Users reported vivid dreams after eating the yogurt. Having suffered from sleep paralysis long ago, I worried that it would return if I ate this yogurt. Sleep paralysis feels like a weight on you while you're somewhere between being asleep and being awake. You're paralyzed while it happens, and since humans tend to assume that things have agency when in doubt, it seems like it's a creature that's sitting on top of you. It's terrifying. It happened to me during the Satanic Panic , which added to my own panic. Decades later, I slept like the dead on a low-carb diet. No dreams, no sleep paralysis, just a very deep, black sleep. Wonderful. I took L. reuteri tablets as supplements for a few months. I dreamed, but nothing remarkable happened. I whipped up a batch of yogurt and ate s...

The other night, the Democratic presidential candidates all said they'd provide free health care to illegal immigrants. Not free emergency services, but free health care. Free in this case means paid for by the taxpayers.   I don't get free health care and I'm a veteran who works for a living. I pay both health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses because 1) I have a high deductible and 2) I order my own tests because most endocrinologists and gastroenterologists have no idea what they're doing. When these socialists are not pandering to illegal immigrants, the same people also say We have food deserts where poor people have a hard time getting groceries Some people struggle to afford health insurance Some people struggle to afford health care and medications Migrants in detention centers aren't being taken care of We have homeless people not being taken care of Health care costs for Americans are steeply rising (which we can all agree on) ...

This is why I don't take the newspaper anymore: I'm tired of the sob stories. The latest is an article in The New York Times about how people in flophouses can't afford unprocessed food. They use the term "working class" to describe people living with no reliable stove or refrigerator or pots, pans and other basic utensils, which annoys me as someone living in a working-class neighborhood. We have our problems, but a lack of a working appliances and cooking utensils is pretty unusual. Some of the people interviewed in a book the article referred to said they were evicted from their last place, but there's no reason given (there never is in the news). First, I have to wonder whether people without cooking utensils care about cooking. It's just as well if they don't--moving to a place with working appliances really should be more important than figuring out how to sit down to poached salmon and asparagus in a lemon-butter sauce at home. And I doub...

...and I said nothing because I wasn't a drinker of sugary sodas. Now, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York is coming for cauliflower, calling it "colonialist" in community gardens. Fox News' guest liberal, Cathy Arue, defended Cortez's statemen t, saying that cauliflower is a monocrop and the soil needs different plants to avoid becoming depleted, since the same old colonialist crops have been grown for generations. From what I understand, people rent plots in community gardens and grow whatever they like. If committees are dictating what crops are to be grown in community gardens in New York City, where Ocasio Cortez is from, maybe the committees, not the cauliflower, are the problem. In any case, is monocropping in community gardens a serious environmental problem? Looking at a few of New York City's 550 community gardens  on Google Street View, I didn't see anything that looked remotely like this: Photo by Gary Rogers. Wikimedia Commons...

Commentator Paul Joseph Watson posted a video on his observation that a lot of left-wing activists share a distinct look, like this man (Paul Crowther), who allegedly threw a milkshake on politician Nigel Farage: Photo from Facebook. I'll stick with coconut milk. Almost everyone he pointed out was overweight and had a puffy face. In another video, he remarked how depressed his soyboy critics were. I'm no expert, but it looks and sounds like hypothyroid. Maybe someone should think about offering everyone seaweed snacks instead of statins. In fairness to them, the standard of care for thyroid treatment, especially in the UK, is so bad that patients have taken to ordering medications from Mexico and Thailand. What got me thinking about hypothyroid was being diagnosed with it. Having been startled by a high BG rating about a month ago, I really whacked back the carbs...and became so tired I barely wanted to move. My heart was going like a jack rabbit. Remembering what I sa...

Or butter, ghee, bacon grease or coconut oil--not something out of a spray can. Eight people have allegedly been injured by exploding cans of cooking spray (like Pam) when putting the cans near a stove . When's the last time you heard of shrapnel from exploding lard? Besides, humans have been eating animal fats for millions of years, and butter and coconuts for several thousand, suggesting we're well-adapted to those foods. Industrially made oils used in Pam, not so much. If your lard comes from a pastured piggy (not a blue box on the grocery store shelf), it'll have lots of vitamin D and no hydrogenated oil. Find a farmer near you that sells lard. Sources I've purchased from and recommend here in central Indiana: Fischer Farms ( bulk orders of their meat, eggs, lard, etc. only) Smoking Goose Source: " 8 People Allegedly Disfigured by Exploding Cans of Cooking Spray Sue Conagra " by Zlati Meyer. USA Today, May  7, 2019.

23andMe, the genetic testing company, sent me a new report saying I have a 64% chance of developing diabetes based on my genetics. Having at least three diabetic grandparents and hypoglycemia from the time I was a kid, I already figured I was a case of diabetes waiting to happen if I didn't take precautions. If I followed 23andMe's crappy advice, I'd probably become one of those cases. GlaxoSmithKline, maker of the diabetes drug Avandia , owns a $300 million share of 23andMe . Some of 23andMe's advice for avoiding diabetes is good--avoid added sugars, refined flour and potatoes. Thanks to the work of journalists, bloggers, podcasters, and a few renegade doctors and researchers who attacked the low-fat orthodoxy, they have to throw that in now to avoid losing all credibility. But their advice on what to eat instead isn't very helpful for filling you up and keeping you from snacking on foods with flour and sugar: Fruit can be very high in sugar; beans are mo...