Pain, Pain, Go Away!

I just spent five hours playing video games, by myself, and I don't regret it. I don't want my five hours back to sit on a bar stool, talk about Breaking Bad, watch whatever game is on with other fans, or do something, anything, else with another person. Constant company for a good life is one more piece of conventional wisdom I've scuttled. I like going home and bolting the door. I like to read, think, watch Netflix, play with my dog, and putter around the yard. None of this requires another person. I don't keep up with the Joneses and nobody gives me a hard time about much of anything. I've read that being alone is as bad for you as smoking, but as we like to say, correlation isn't causation. Even if it is in this case, I'll take my own company and take my chances. If you're lonely, I empathize. I've been there. But not all of us loners want company. If togetherness is so good, why have houses gotten so much bigger and households so much small

Why didn't I think of this before? Yesterday, while munching on a carrot, some of the carrot got stuck in my throat. Realizing that this never happens when I eat vegetables with butter, mayonnaise or salad dressing, I had the bright idea to put a pat of butter in my mouth and let nature take its course. It greased my throat and the carrot went down. As a preventive measure, I find taking a magnesium supplement helps. (I take 200 mg of magnesium glycinate daily.) Magnesium is needed for proper involuntary muscle function: it's a standard cure for constipation, and doctors give it to patients having a heart attack.

Why didn't I think of this before? The structural strength of an object is affected by its shape. Think of an I-beam or a piece of paper folded accordion style. This could be held in place with metal stakes and reinforced with triangular wood braces to keep my dog out. The perimeter has concrete and flagstones around it. This will be far cheaper and easier than portable fencing. (I haven't gotten any further than the one panel I built.)

Are people panicking on stationary bikes? You'd think so from the signs in window of a local gym: "Keep Calm and Cycle On." Is the human equivalent of an exercise wheel so stimulating that people need a reminder to keep their wits about them? Maybe it's reverse psychology: up until now, it's been all about pumping us up with motivation a la Richard Simmons to keep up a routine that's as exciting as proofreading retirement plan financial statements. What some people really need is encouragement to continue avoiding carbs in the face of low-fat fuddy-duddies or the Atkins flu. I'm not a fan of motivational fluff, but someone in delicate health could really be frightened by low-carb scare studies and misguided advice to avoid fat. A pithy phrase might help more than a lecture on glycation, endocrinology or lipoproteins. Suggestions: Keep calm and keto on Keep calm and Kerrygold on Keep calm and tallow on Keep calm and Grok on

Some scenes from the Denver Chicken Coop Tour: The owner built top nesting boxes because the chickens couldn't find the lower ones. A simple run from scrap material. A run for a manicured yard. The Chicken Plaza. The view from my house isn't as nice as the view from this chicken house. I'm still working on my own chicken jungle. It's not a unique concept--one place on the tour provided so much cover for the chickens in the form of lamb's quarters (a weed) and a tree that the chickens could free range. After the heavy rains last week, the ground was soft enough to dig trenches around the chicken area so that I could put wire fencing below the ground to keep predators (such as my dog) from tunneling their way to a chicken dinner. While I was at it, I collected the earth worms and started a worm bin to compost kitchen scraps and junk mail and have some protein for the chickens. But as the worms go for $20 a pound, I may sell them instead--as s

It may not be fashionable in the low-carb world, but I like to snack. I feel better when I snack. I don't feel good when I eat big meals and don't know how people put away three-egg bacon-cheese omelets with a bullet-proof coffee. The good thing about low-carb snacking is that by definition, you avoid eating junk like potato chips and fruit pies. The bad news is that low-carb snacks from the convenience store are expensive. Time was when the only two kinds of coffee I drank were free and home-brewed. When I realized cream gave me problems, I started taking it black and then realized that the office coffee was terrible. But the little shop on the first floor made a wonderful cup for $2.11. An equally wonderful home-brewed cup is about 12 cents. Sleeping in an extra ten minutes, the time it takes to brew a 12-cent cup of coffee, is costing me almost $500 a year. I've set my alarm earlier. The convenience store sells Kind bars for around $2.50 and large diet Dr. Pepper fo

Readers may be familiar with the Tao Te Ching , a classical Chinese text of philosophy. It has some common themes with stoicism--to live in harmony with nature, to not be concerned with things outside your control. It reminds me of Bible verses about a soft answer turning away wrath and the meek inheriting the earth; of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow . Maybe that's as dull as watching the grass grow, but I'd rather do that than bang my head on my desk. From Verse 38. The Master does nothing yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things yet many more are left to be done. Or as we say here and now, the faster I go, the behinder I get. My own experience is that once I started low-carb, I spent a lot less time exercising and cooking and got better results--twenty pounds of fat and a bunch of health problems, gone. From Verse 58. Try to make people happy, and you lay the groundwork for misery. Try to make people moral, and you la

Have you seen the trailer for That Sugar Film ? It's funny and smart, and I'm glad the film is being made, but it talks up reducing or eliminating added sugars. If you're going to try this at home, how do you know how much added sugar a product contains--unless it doesn't contain any? For example, the almond butter I buy lists as ingredients dry roasted almonds, honey powder (sugar, honey), palm oil, sea salt. My 80% dark chocolate is made of organic chocolate liquor, organic raw cane sugar, organic cocoa butter, organic ground vanilla beans. They both list total carbohydrate and fiber content, but how in the world are you supposed to distinguish how many carbs came from the sugar and how many came from the other ingredients? Without knowing the amounts of all the ingredients, you can't. By the way, at nine grams net carb per half a chocolate bar and five grams net carb per two tablespoons of almond butter, these products with sugar added come in at a fraction of

Weston A. Price must be spinning in his grave. Why are Japanese women paying hundreds of pounds to make perfectly straight teeth look crooked and fang-like? The look, known as the 'yaeba' look, is well-liked by men who find it 'childlike' Cosmetic procedure involves attaching mini-fangs to canine teeth So cute...if you're ten years old. Image from the Daily Mail . On the upside, Japanese people who can't afford braces are right uptown now. Hat tip to Allure magazine. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2271585/Japanese-women-paying-hundreds-pounds-crooked-fang-like-teeth-latest-cosmetic-craze.html#ixzz2dYgR0aIo

This past month or so, I've had TMJ headaches in the morning, along with some mild stomach issues and acne the past week or so. I think it's muscle memory from years ago, back when I wore a night guard for TMJ pain. Since getting my braces off and getting dental implant in early June, I've been wearing an upper retainer at night. When I wear it to bed, it reminds me of the old upper retainer I used to wear when I was grinding my teeth some years ago after a car wreck. I think I've started grinding my teeth at night again. I wasn't grinding my teeth just before I got my implant, when I was wearing a retainer during the day. I'm not grinding my teeth now, wearing my retainer after dinner and before bed, as my orthodontist recommended. Since I haven't worn my retainer for a few nights, my headaches and neck pain are gone. My skin is clearing up, too. (Inflammation can become systemic and affect other parts of the body.) ***** The toe I stubbed a month

Living in the city presents some problems with housing chickens. Chicken coops are expensive and yet so tiny that they seem like six-chicken CAFOs. Electric fencing is forbidden. Regular fencing is hard work to build, and it's permanent. If the chickens don't work out, you're stuck with a fence you probably won't need or want. Living in the city presents some advantages, though. The biggest, toughest predators are dogs; aerial predators like owls and hawks probably don't hang around your place. And the city itself can be a source of inspiration for solving your problems. Like free-range chickens, festivals and construction sites have to be fenced off. Around here, we use portable chain link fencing. Taking a cue from that, I built a six-foot by four-foot freestanding fence panel out of scrap wood and wire fencing. I used 1/2" x 3s to make a 6' x 4' box, joining the pieces with metal angle braces that sit on the edge (see top photo). I fli

Someone asked me today what I used on my skin, saying that it looked good and that she'd like to improve her complexion. It's a question I never thought I'd hear back when I was trying everything available for acne, a time that covered most of my life. Partly, it's good genes. Except for acne, we have good skin in my family and tend to look younger than we are as long as we don't smoke. In my case, I had to change my diet and take supplements to (mostly) clear up my skin and make it softer and more resilient to abrasions and sunburn. I don't get razor burn now. Even with my fair skin, I don't use sunscreen anymore. It took a few years on the diet, but now, except for my shoulders, my skin doesn't burn under the Colorado sun. My diet is mostly low-carb paleo and I take vitamins D3, K2, and GNC Hair, Skin & Nails vitamins. I also eat half a pound of liver and two cans of sardines per week. Why this regimen? I started this a few years ago to stop

CNBC laments the decline of cereal for breakfast. (Click here for video.) Cereal killers at the breakfast table Thu 22 Aug 13 | 11:56 AM ET The following transcript has not been checked for accuracy. cuckoo for cocoa puffs anymore. how are cereal companies handling a decline? the good news, fewer people are skipping breakfast. the bad news, more of skipping cereal. where is mikey when you need it. he will try it. he eats everything. he likes it sm. in the game of life cereal, tastes change. consumers are swimming to yogurt or foods you can eat on the go. so-called cold cereal unit sales have cold 10% in the last three years. they'reinnovating, coming up with protein shakes, breakfast bars, however cereal remains the number one choice for breakfast in america. but not all consumer choose a bowl of cereal and milk. it's also impacting milk sales. also declining as people switch to other beverages. dean food says it's going to be a tough quarter. there

Dr. Davis, author of Wheat Belly, gave a lecture in Denver tonight. His message was familiar to regular readers of his blog and books: it's not just gluten and it's not just celiac disease--there are many components of wheat that damage human health from every angle, from mental health to dental health and heart disease to autoimmune illness. He took some questions from the audience, but first, let's look at the charge that some have made that Dr. Davis is overweight: Dr. William Davis at the University of Denver, August 19, 2013. He looks trim to me. Some questions from the audience, and Dr. Davis's answers, paraphrased: Q: How does wheat elimination help heart disease? A: What drives plaque is small LDL, and what drives small LDL is grain and sugar. Q: What about being vegetarian? A: Maximize what's left. (Dr. Davis recounted his own vegetarian experience after hearing Dr. Dean Ornish, and recalled that he ended up diabetic.) Q: Why are so many do

"If you won't tell us, the bet is off, that is all. But I'm always ready to back my opinion on a matter of fowls, and I have a fiver on it that the bird I ate is country bred." [Sherlock Holmes] "Well then, you've lost your fiver, for it's town bred," snapped the salesman. Sherlock Holmes gathering clues in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" In ten years, will urban poultry growing be so common that we'll be arguing whether country birds or city birds are better? Will medical appointments be so difficult and antibiotics so ineffective that we'll argue whether a sick friend should take vitamin D, coconut oil or phage for her bad cold? Will be be eating more pigweed and lamb's quarters? Giving funny looks to low-fat fossils? Doctors aren't mean, most of the just haven't caught on. May the population get so well that they'll have time to raise some birds!

...I've had it backwards all these years. I'm not exploiting [chickens]. They're safe, happy, warm and fed. I'm the one who's miserable....Chickens have gotten humans to work for them. -Lierre Kieth on feeding her chickens on a frozen January morning For seventeen years, my garage has been accumulating spiders, dust and junk. I've been dodging nails sticking out of the wall in near darkness. Yet after all that time, I spent the weekend cleaning it out and refurbishing it. I'm not moving, I haven't gotten more stuff to store in there, and it hasn't become a rat's nest (not literally, anyway). No, I'm getting it ready for chickens: chickens exploiting humans, indeed. When the chickens move in, they'll need a way to get from the garden into their new condo. To that end, I took off the north window, ripped off two layers of screen with a hammer and smashed the louvers off. (It was just as well--the sill and part of the window framing wer

The site of my possible future chicken jungle: Driveway reclamation area. Plants don't grow well here; maybe livestock would. Chickens' ancestors were from jungles. I'm seriously thinking about fencing in this area of my yard--the part where nothing but holly and old garden roses grow well, the part I hate taking care of--and making it a home for some chickens. It's next to the garage (far right in the photo), which has electricity and room for some nests. I don't think moving the car in and out once or twice a week would hurt chickens. They'd probably do better staying outside in the summer since the garage gets very hot. Risks of the birds being free-range: predators and hail. I live in the middle of a large city, and the only predator I know of here is cats. I have a setup in mind to deter them (3" PVC pipe strung on clothesline atop the fences and gates--the kitties shouldn't be able to get a foothold). I haven't seen a fox around her

Did I just wake up in another city? Three years ago, people here in Denver looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I limited carbohydrates. When I was a kid, my parents' fussy neighbors complained about the roosters crowing, even though they moved into a house adjacent to an agricultural lot. But maybe in a city that loves meat and attracts health and fitness buffs, it had to happen: more people want real food and real solutions to their health problems. I just spent the morning at a chicken exchange, where people also had goats, ducks, rabbits and turkeys for sale. The exchange was in an urban neighborhood of Denver between Broadway and the tracks, five minutes from downtown.  Chicken Swap . Image from http://www.denverchickencooptour.com/ From there, I went to Vitamin Cottage, a health food grocery store, where some of the vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free books and magazines have been replaced by paleo, anti-sugar and pro-cholesterol books. T

A recent injury left my toe pink and black. I called the color palette "Step into Danger," but Too Faced calls it "Romantic Eye." In fairness, my toe is much brighter. Really, I slathered on the eye shadow. Sometimes a mishap shakes us out of a routine and inspires something new. Viva antifragility !

Rat chow: that's what Ensure and Enterex Diabetic drinks remind me of. I'm not into protein drinks anymore--haven't been in years--but my parents are elderly and it's hard for them to cook. They're also diabetic, and yet my father's doctor recommended two Ensure drinks per day. That's 80 grams, or 18 teaspoons, of liquid sugar. The main ingredients in Ensure: Water, Sugar, Corn Maltodextrin, Milk Protein Concentrate, Soy Oil, Soy Protein Isolate, Cocoa Powder (Processed with Alkali), Pea Protein Concentrate, Canola Oil.  Seriously--the second ingredient is sugar. (Corn maltodextrin in a starchy food additive.) Isn't that a big ol' clue that this isn't suitable for diabetics? A pharmacist recommended Enterex Diabetic . It has fewer carbs, but 24 grams of liquid carbohydrate is too much at one sitting for many diabetics. The ingredients: Water, Maltodextrin, Sodium Caseinate, High-Oleic Safflower Oil, Calcium Caseinate, Fiber (Soy Fib

I feel like I've awakened from a dream. The past few days have been spent crowding out pain signals with music, like sending an avalanche down a mountain gulley. I wondered if some people could manage pain with a Wii or a karaoke machine even better than with music alone. But the music came to be a distraction about the time my foot stopped hurting today. I promised some coworkers more work than I could deliver, which I never do, so I'll be back at work tomorrow. Some studies say that music that you love can make your brain release dopamine. I did feel like something was different, and that I was myself again once I was able to work in silence. Dopamine is a reward neurotransmitter, but I'd had enough music, even though it was rewarding. My foot, whose problems started this, is doing better, so much so that I was able to run for the bus tonight after a former coworker saw me at the bus stop and we started chatting while my bus drove by. I didn't just trot, I ran. M

It's been almost a year since my bike wreck. I'm happy to say that there are no lingering effects from my fractured arm or dental injuries, and in another five months, I'll have replenished my emergency funds. I'm not quite as pleased to say I'm observing the near-anniversary with a badly stubbed toe. A day and a half ago, I was watering the pots when I tripped over the old, rotted steps I disconnected from the house and stubbed my toe on the brand new steps I built. It still hurts. It hurts more than the fractured arm did. It's almost as bad as turf toe . It really hurts when I stand. It hurts a lot less when I elevate my foot and rub the bottom of it or elevate it and listen to music. I was at work and in too much pain to go down and get coffee when I put on Alice Cooper and suddenly--no pain. It's just one more reason to love Alice Cooper. I noticed the same thing back in 2007 when I was infected, recovering from a car wreck and had GI problems. S

My last post discussed the book It Starts with Food and the principles it's based on. Going over the post, I realized that the part about hormones raised some questions. How do cells become insulin resistant? How can too much insulin lead to weight gain? Does too much carbohydrate cause leptin resistance? I'm looking again at the book Endocrinology: Basic and Clinical Principles by Shlomo Melmed and P. Michael Conn from 2005. The book says it isn't clear how insulin resistance develops, but says that it is a "key feature of the prediabetic 'metabolic syndrome' (central obesity, hypertension, insulin resistance, and dyslipidemia)" (page 318). It doesn't say how to reverse it. The book does say that insulin promotes fat formation and inhibits fat burning: Insulin promotes lipid synthesis and inhibits lipid degradation. Before insulin became available for treatment of type 1 diabetes, patients with this disease were invariably thin, reflecting

"Out with the old spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes, sir, a veritable age of reason." -Ulysses McGill, O Brother, Where Art Thou? If only. Eighty years after the Tennessee Valley was put on the grid, health gurus recommend mumbo-jumbo like two-thirds of a cup of sugar a day for diabetics ,* inflammatory foods like wheat for the inflamed , and a low-fat, high-fiber, grain-based diet that fattens up livestock (in weeks!)** but is supposed to make humans slim and trim. The crazies are running the asylum. Are there any reasonable people in the mainstream? I recently sent a friend of mine the book It Starts with Food. It discusses the major hormones involved in fat storage, fat burning and inflammation, along with the authors' dietary recommendations based mostly on our paleolithic ancestors' diets and their clinical experience.

Answer: because probably, nobody else will. Awhile back, my mother's new primary care doctor saw her for a checkup. According to Mom, the doctor took her blood sugar and wrote "diabetes out of control" on her chart and prescribed Metformin and Lantus (insulin). The doctor didn't look at the blood sugar records Mom brought. Maybe it's the new medication, maybe because an infection cleared up, or maybe Mom has gotten more insulin sensitive, but she's been getting hypos in the morning. It's dangerous to have blood sugar get too low during the night. The doctor is hard to reach, and who knows how good she is at dosing insulin. Mom had been fiddling around with her evening insulin dose, but without checking her blood sugar first. So today, after she got her blood sugar up from this morning's level of 55 (70-100 is normal), I suggested she check her blood sugar before taking her evening insulin. When she checked it tonight, it was 70. After doing some

It takes anywhere from seconds to years. It depends on the issue, the person, their diet, and their lifestyle. Lierre Kieth, for instance, felt better the instant she started eating meat again--the tuna was like prana in a can. (Sadly, her back pain from the damage caused by long-term B-12 deficiency will never go away.) There have been a lot of 30-day challenges out there: 30-day paleo, 30-day Whole 9 , even 30-day gluten-free from Dr. Guyanet. (He actually had a terrific blog before he started going on about food reward.) I think these challenges last long enough to get allergens out of your system and let you see if re-exposure bothers you, yet they're short enough to seem manageable. Thirty days is more than long enough to begin clearing up GI problems caused by food. My GERD disappeared within a few days of starting a low-carb diet, and two days on a fat fast cleared up my gastritis. Some issues can take much longer. Almost a year ago, two of my teeth were knocked out of

I'm old enough to remember when the only refreshment at the office was coffee. If you wanted a snack, you had to bring your own or find a vending machine. Yet our brains worked just fine without the constant grazing: we all did our work and only new employees needed frequent reminders of standard operating procedures. Anyone too spacy to remember how to do their job was thought to be a stoner. Now, cake for every birthday is standard. Some offices have free pop and snacks (read: junk food). Soda, chips, crackers, and instant oatmeal make for unstable blood sugar in people susceptible to blood sugar swings, and roller coaster blood sugar levels affect mood, thinking and energy for the worse. How often do you see coworkers getting drowsy a few hours after lunch? How often do you hear, "My brain isn't working today"? Snicker-snacking all day long can make for high blood sugar and lethargy in some people--when it's really bad, it's called "carb coma.&quo

Have you seen the list of drugs whose patents are going to expire in 2013 to 2016 ? It reads like a shopping list of drugs you'll need on a poor diet. Out of the 27 listed, at least 13 are unnecessary (statins), unneeded on a well-planned low-carb diet (acid blockers), treat conditions that might be improved by such a diet (medications for blood pressure, anti-depressants, bipolar disorder, diabetic nerve pain, for instance), or might be improved by removing wheat and other grains (medications for schizophrenia, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and osteoporosis). On the one hand, doctors will feel less encouragement from drug salesmen, seminars and advertisements to prescribe these drugs. Without those headwinds, doctors might be more inclined to suggest diet changes. After all, avoiding grains and eating healthy fats is becoming more mainstream: the book Grain Brain (due out in September) is against wheat, sugar and carbs (presumably too much carb) and is endorsed by several mai

Is this a marketing strategy for that underserved low self-esteem market? At least they're honest.

The rioting proteins have been scavenged, the damage feels like it is being repaired, my belly has shrunk back to its normal size, my face is clearing up, and I was down another pound this morning. The ketostick was purple today, showing a "large" amount of ketones. I am worn out. I feel like I've spent a day or two putting down a riot. I've been staying around 1000 calories per day, but only 80% fat; maybe I'd feel better on 90%, but the situation was urgent and I didn't have time to prepare. I'm declaring victory and celebrating with a lamb chop, buttered vegetables and lemon ice cream.

I've finally found a name for what I have: gastritis. From Wikipedia : Gastritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach, and has many possible causes. [1] The main acute causes are excessive alcohol consumption or prolonged use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (also known as NSAIDs) such as aspirin or ibuprofen . Sometimes gastritis develops after major surgery, traumatic injury, burns, or severe infections. Gastritis may also occur in those who have had weight loss surgery resulting in the banding or reconstruction of the digestive tract. Chronic causes are infection with bacteria, primarily Helicobacter pylori , chronic bile reflux , and stress; certain autoimmune disorders can cause gastritis as well. The most common symptom is abdominal upset or pain. Other symptoms are indigestion, abdominal bloating, nausea, and vomiting and pernicious anemia . Some may have a feeling of fullness or burning in the upper abdomen. [2] [3] A gastroscopy , blo

I don't know much about inflammation. What I do know is that immune cells can run amok, mistaking your own tissue for invaders, damaging it and inflaming it. It's also called autoimmune reaction and it can be systemic, throughout your body. And it's miserable. Food, especially wheat and dairy, is a major cause of inflammation for some people. We focus on carbs around here, but it's funny proteins that cause problems from paranoia to arthritis: gluten, gliadin, whey and casein, for instance. The proteins can also come from your own body: serious injury can cause a release of the DNA from your mitochondria, tiny organelles in your cells, but with their own DNA separate from yours.( 1 ) Interleukin-6 is an inflammatory protein your body makes ; homocysteine (another protein) may cause inflammation when there's too much of it. How do we get these rogue proteins under control? Tess wrote a post on systemic enzymes , calling them THE BEST anti-inflammatory supplement