Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The right cooking utensils could help reduce your risk of stroke. A few weeks ago, Dr. Davis discussed risk factors for stroke, and mentioned a study of people with 70% or worse carotid blockage, atherosclerosis, having far more inflammation in their plaque if they had more micro- and nano-plastics. The people with more microplastics also had less collagen in their carotid arteries. Collagen helps keep you supple.  Of course we can't avoid our food touching plastic--pretty much everything is packaged in plastic. But we can avoid heating plastic, which causes it to break down and release micro- and nanoplastics a lot faster.  With that in mind, I replaced my plastic ladle and spatula with metal ones. I also looked at my 30-year-old aluminum pressure cooker, chipped and stained on the inside, and wondered if it was time retire it. Brave AI said it should be replaced immediately: "Black chips or flakes inside the cooker indicate that the internal surface has deteriorated, which ...

In time for Halloween, here's a recipe for no-carb "cider" to sip while you watch scary (or mildly spooky) videos. Photo from Pixabay . Ingredients: Hot water Constant Comment tea Doctor's Best magnesium powder in sweet peach flavor Steep a bag of Constant Comment tea in hot water for a few minutes and remove the bag. Add one scoop of magnesium powder (sweet peach flavor). The combination tastes surprisingly like hot apple cider, but with zero carbs. Only have one, or at most two, cups at a time--too much magnesium at once will have you running to the bathroom. Constant Comment tea tastes good on its own if you've maxed out your magnesium dose for the day. You can find both the tea and the magnesium powder at Vitacost.com. Kroger and other grocery stores carry Constant Comment tea, but I've never seen the magnesium powder at a grocery store. With a hot cup of ersatz cider, enjoy a video in the spirit of the season. The Amazing Mr. Blunden Family friendly; mild...

If you love Italian food, vegetables are a great substitute for pasta. If you miss lasagne, you can make eggplant parmesan instead. Spaghetti? Have some zucchini. No need to contort it into noodles--just slice and sauté it.  Vegetables are even better when they're home-grown. The flavors are better than store-bought--smoky peppers; crisp, nutty zucchini; and tomatoes that don't taste like teddy bear stuffing. Skins, like the one on eggplant, are thin enough to eat. Anytime you want herbs, you can step out the door and snip what you need.   All of the herbs and vegetables pictured are low-carb. Parsley is high in potassium and peppers are high in vitamin C. Fall harvest from my garden. Not sold in stores. If you have a sunny spot to grow a garden, mark your calendar now: it's not hard to grow vegetables, and especially herbs, but it takes planning. You can find your last average frost date online and work backwards on a calendar, or just ask an AI app to figure it out for ...

Jennifer Picone isn't the most abusive gym influencer--far from it--but she may be the most annoying. In a video she posted that went viral, she was working out in a gym when another member appeared in the background by the free weights. The member was minding her own business, not looking in Picone's direction, when Picone got up and told her to move. After filming, Picone edited the video with a note about "Gym etiquette lesson #47" and accused the other gym member of "[doing] that 💩 on purpose."  Shaming other gym members has gotten to be such a big genre that Joey Swoll has a YouTube channel, with half a million subscribers, dedicated to calling out these content creators. Just for Picone, he took a break from his vacation to tell her to mind her own business. This may be the first time that Joey Swoll has taken one of his followers to task. The fact that she follows him and still doesn't know better than to treat the gym like her personal studio sh...

If there's ever a lunatic outside your vehicle, do not engage. Stay in your vehicle. Drive away or call the police. Drive over the curb, lawn or median if necessary; just avoid putting innocent bystanders at risk.*  Save yourself from lunatics like a boss. Screen grab from video by Fredrik Sørlie on Youtube . That advice might have saved a 69-year-old delivery driver from being attacked by former NFL player Mark Sanchez, who for unknown reasons was in an alley after midnight in downtown Indianapolis and decided to pick a fight over a parking space. I say might have because I haven't seen any video of the attack. But other incidents over the years bear out the safety of staying in your car. A neighbor was assaulted and robbed after she got out of her car after someone followed her home and blocked her driveway. And remember Reginald Denny from the LA riots? The victim maced and stabbed Sanchez, but suffered a bad cut to his face and tongue and looks like he was badly beaten. Bo...

It's the sort of thing that sounds like quackery: a pad with tiny red LED lights and a few buttons that's supposed to help you heal, just $30 on ebay. I never would have bought it, but Dr. Davis gave a presentation on infrared light late in 2024. Since I was still suffering from achilles tendonitis after being floxxed , I decided to try it.  I wrapped it around my ankle and turned it on the lowest setting for five minutes. Nothing seemed to happen, but the next day, I wrote,  My tendonitis is GONE after one 5-minute treatment! I didn’t feel it doing anything, I didn’t think it was going to do anything (at least not that quickly), but for the first time in several months, I’ve gotten out of bed and started walking normally and didn’t have any pain reaching with my left arm. I'd been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman after getting out of bed in the morning. The tendonitis returned, but it was improved. I eventually had physical therapy for it, and now, apart from a l...

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...