Pain, Pain, Go Away!

 If you have a Suteck or similar yogurt maker, here's how to program it for time and temperature. I've selected 106 degrees because I ferment L. reuteri and B. coagulans together; if you're doing just L. reuteri, set it for 97 degrees.  Thirty-six hours' fermentation is necessary to get high bacterial counts--not just creamy texture.  Enjoy!

Attention Citizens! Investigative journalist Alex Berenson is back on Twitter after a settlement with the company. The "wrongest man" of the pandemic consistently called it right, yet he was suspended for misinformation. The final tweet that got him bounced from Twitter: It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it - at best - as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity. — Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) July 6, 2022 Lifestyle Medicine (or, Your Health before Pharma Profits) Over on YouTube, Dr. Suneel Dhand, internal medicine physician who reads and interprets studies and the news on his channel, started posting there again after his two strikes for "misinformation" timed out. One of his strikes was for reading a news article about a COVID outbreak among vaccinated people last year.  I don't agree

Amish Red gooseberries from my garden. First, the tiny gooseberry plants that arrived in the mail were too small to bear fruit. Then the neighbors' lawn guy cut them down while mowing drunk in the dark. But finally, after putting some bricks around them (and not doing much else), I have a crop of tasty gooseberries.  Gooseberries are juicy, a little tart, and they last longer than other berries. They're like seedless grapes but less sweet with only about 7 grams of net carbohydrate per cup, 42 mg of vitamin C and 297 mg of potassium . If you've never heard of them, you're not alone (and you're probably not English). Gooseberry bushes were banned in the United States for a long time because they were a host plant for a disease that killed white pines. They're still banned in some places. But they're allowed where I live (we don't have many pines in Indiana) and they've grown like champs on the north side of my house. 

With the COVID vaccines looking like they cause heart attacks and reduced sperm counts in young men, 2022 is playing out like the beginning of Idiocracy . (Warning: NSFW.) Of course, Clevon doesn't represent all the vaccine refusers, but Trevor and Carol aren't necessarily smart about anything but test-taking and PowerPoint presentations. These tweets from a few days ago are from someone of the same type, a professor of epidemiology . As such, he must know that masks haven't been shown to stop spread, airplanes are not significant COVID vectors, and a respirator (assuming it's fitted) should be more than adequate protection. And yet Professor Karen tweeted these:  I'm a university graduate myself. But it was the Trevors and Carols and Professor Karens who brought about masking and lockdowns and mostly the Clevons who got us back to normal. Not that I'd recommend Clevon's lifestyle--I'm related to a few Clevons myself. But Trevor, Carol and the professo

This weekend, I picked up three bottles of low-carb barbecue sauce with no frankenfood ingredients at Whole Foods to try out. I put them on chicken wings and tasted them by themselves. Results: Good Food for Good BBQ Sauce Classic , 4g carbohydrate per 2 tablespoons. No sugar added, but the dates make it the sweetest of the bunch and with a warm hint of mustard. It's organic, has a very short list of ingredients and no thickeners or emulsifiers. It's a little runny, but I recommend it for people who like a sweet sauce. Who knew Canadians made such good barbecue sauce? Primal Kitchen Classic BBQ Sauce , 3g carbohydrate per 2 tablespoons. This was the lowest in carbohydrates and the tangiest and smokiest, with vinegar and mustard in the mix. The tapioca starch made it the thickest sauce. It's also organic--what else would you expect from Mark Sisson? Recommended for strict carb control and occasions when you need a thick sauce. LocalFolks Foods Hab-A-Q (Habanero Bar-B-Q) , 5g

USA Today reports that study subjects lost dramatic amounts of weight with diabetes drug tirzepatide. Participants in the randomized, controlled trial lost an average of 15% of their weight at week 72 according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine .  Photo by  Sara Bakhshi  on  Unsplash How does it work? USA Today's interview with a participant offers a clue: The drug prevented her from overeating, [participant Mary] Bruehl said.  If she overindulged, the food would come back up. "I've learned to stop before I get that feeling," she said...The one negative side effect was nausea, which Bruehl felt the day after each of her weekly shots of tirzepatide. She's not alone. From the study , The most common adverse events with tirzepatide were gastrointestinal, and most were mild to moderate in severity, occurring primarily during dose escalation. Adverse events caused treatment discontinuation in 4.3%, 7.1%, 6.2%, and 2.6% of participants receiving 5-

Crowds have gathered across the street at the annual festival put on the by church and school. Every year, I go over and enjoy my annual plate of nachos. Not this, year, though! I'd like to say it's because I'm won't eat junk food, but the truth is, I'm sick of spending money.  Earlier this week, I went to the dentist for a night guard. Grinding my teeth a little at night is normal for me, but my car trouble ($1,800 worth) stressed me to the point that eating fermented foods became painful. While I was at the dentist's office, three healthy-looking young patients were in the waiting room wearing masks. These patients were about to walk 10 feet and take their masks off at a place where people come and go all day and sit with their mouths wide open. Even if you think masks do any good, what's the point if you're going to take them off in a minute? When does this end? COVID isn't going away any more than H1N1, hantavirus or the bubonic plague. Yes--tho