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The Easiest Person to Fool

This week, I uncovered layers of nonsense interspersed with some good information.  The Crappy Childhood Fairy on YouTube mentioned a book where she'd learned about tapping pressure points. I've used acupressure in the past and found some relief for a few different problems, so I looked up the book: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It was a New York Times #1 best seller and has over 46,000 reviews on Amazon.  Yet as I read it, various things leapt out as improbable: a child who didn't recognize himself in the mirror; psychological trauma in childhood resulting in a lack of neurological development in the brain; and finally the story of a man who suddenly "remembered" being molested by a priest. Can that be right? Photo from Pexels . In humans' 2 million year history, children must have gone through much more trauma than kids of the late 20th century, let alone the current crop. How could they have functioned as adults lacking neurological dev

Fermenting with L. Gasseri; Supplies; Order

L. Gasseri BNR17 Lactobacillus gasseri BNR17 is one of the bacteria we use over at Dr. Davis's Inner Circle. It's part of the SIBO yogurt because it creates seven bacteriocins (bacteria killers); it's also been shown to reduce waist size. So instead of making more yogurt with it, I fermented it with apples, carrots and spices (recipe here ). It's delicious, and it got rid of a lot of gas and bloating. My belly feels a little smaller too--always a good thing. I fermented it in my redneck yogurt maker with the heating pad set on high for three days. The bacteria digest the carbohydrate (greatly reducing the carb count) and it gives the apples and carrots a tart taste.  You can get L. gasseri BNR17 from Dr. Mercola's web site--it's in a product called BioThin . Once you ferment something with it, you can use the fermented food as a starter for the next batch; you don't have to keep buying supplements.  * * * * * Supplies Food choices are getting worse. I had t

Plants Arrive Early; Path Puzzle Solved!

It was a perfect weekend for gardening. I pulled weeds, pruned the roses and cut down five-foot clumps of ornamental grass. The dead grass made such a tall pile that I wondered what to do with it. The trash bin was full. You can't compost it since it doesn't break down-- That's exactly what the paths between the raised beds needed. I put a thick layer of the grass and some dead perennial stems on the paths where they'll last a long time and help block weeds. I'll still put down cardboard and mulch to make it look better, but this helped solve two problems at once. Mail-order plants are already arriving, leafy and green. It's much too early to plant them here at the northern edge of Zone 6, where it's a month away from the last average frost. Maybe the nursery doesn't have enough employees to take care of the plants, so they're sending them out. In any case, the seedlings and geraniums growing in the basement have a couple of hydrangeas to keep them c

New Food Reviews; Optimizing Projects

I love novelty. Despite getting in trouble for trying new foods (I ended up in an ambulance once), I enjoy new foods enough to keep trying them.  With the flu going around the office, I thought I'd try fermenting L. casei shirota in pawpaw fruit puree. Pawpaw is a mango-like fruit native to eastern North America. It's very sweet, but fermentation reduces sugar. I cooked the raw puree before fermenting it, then had a few bites with some pork. A few hours later, I was vomiting. It's been days and I'm still not feeling right.  Despite the web full of articles on the amazing properties of pawpaw fruit, it contains neurotoxins . Even members of the Lewis and Clark expedition might have gotten sick on it .  Fortunately, I have fermented pear juice. I put a few capsules of Floristat in the bottle and left it on the counter for a few days. It tastes good and makes my stomach feel a little better.  Finally, Mark Sisson has come out with a healthy queso dip in his Primal Kitchen

Better without Guar Gum & Erythritol

Since ditching the guar gum and erythritol, I feel like I'm 41 again. It was the age I started doing low-carb and had the energy I should have had in my 20s. The problems I had until recently--the pounding heart and breathlessness--are gone.  With this newfound energy, I dug up a boxwood bush and a juniper and potted them for a focal point among my raised beds, having dismantled the fire pit and put the stones along a border by the garage. Tonight I moved some of the beds a few inches to make room for pavers. The spaces between the beds have a thick mat of weeds, thick enough to make weeding a major undertaking, but not thick enough to stop erosion. Back in Denver in a dry, shady part of my yard, it took me years to win the battle of the goatheads in the driveway reclamation area. I'm not going to win such a battle in lush, green Indiana where my weeds are inches from rich soil of raised beds.  "Use gravel for paths!" people say. "Use wood mulch!" "Use

Quest Bars, Coconut Milk Hazards, and More

I used to love Quest bars. They were an easy snack or even a light meal replacement with low carbs and no junky ingredients. Those ingredients have changed, though. They now contain erythritol (sugar alcohol) and corn fiber. Since I'm one of those people who can't eat erythritol without getting stomach cramps, I won't be eating any more Quest bars.  Likewise, certain brands of coconut milk. Several brands contain guar gum, a thickener, which also gives me a stomach ache. Emulsifiers like guar gum can thin the mucus in your gut, allowing things into your bloodstream that don't belong there. I was feeling bloated and getting facial edema after having coconut milk with guar gum. Since changing to a brand without it (Native Forest), the problems have disappeared.  Oddly, Splenda (sucralose) doesn't seem to bother me.  * * * * * A friend who gave me a little bit of a hard time about being unvaccinated just got COVID. Fortunately, he's doing OK. Three years ago, I tho

Pandemic Hair GONE! Wide Canvas Tennis Shoes are Back!

Tonight I got rid of my pandemic hair.  I'd only had three haircuts in two years. I'd been going to a Korean salon where they did a great job, but the stylist didn't speak English. Sometimes the owner spoke to me in Korean until she realized I had no idea what she was saying, then repeated herself so I could understand her. After a few months of social distancing, working from home and a month-and-a-half-long quarantine, I wanted a stylist I could make human contact with. I went to another salon and got a good haircut. When I went back months later, a 90-year-old German emigre cut my hair while we had a good chat. I called the salon months later, but they'd gone out of business.  A year after my second pandemic haircut, around Thanksgiving last year, I went to a Mexican salon down the street. We yukked it up while the stylist cut my hair in a chunky and asymmetrical style that I did my best to fix when I got home.  This month, my hair was so long it didn't fit in my