Category: health

Inflammatory

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

–Thomas Sowell

A little insanity is good early in the morning. It keeps you young. It revives your zest for life. When I was staying with Brother 4 a few weeks ago, their 1-year-old provided that for me in the form of various games such as “Crazy Head.”

Now that I’m away from their place, I am forced to search for insanity in the news. Thankfully, it’s not hard to find. I was assaulted by an insane article a little bit ago in Time. The gist of the article is a common one:

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Cholesterol Mythology

Not really, and actually my cholesterol was 190 when I had the heart attack. 190, which isn’t that high.

–Mike Ditka

Guess who else’s cholesterol was well within the Mythical Safe Range when he had his first heart attack? Dwight Eisenhower, who was the ideal weight for his height and was very fit when his first heart attack hit at age 64. His cholesterol was 165.

So of course he was put on the now ubiquitous low-fat diet, which included lots of healthy whole grains like oatmeal and lots of margarine, almost no meat, and no fats but margarine and corn oil. What was the result of this amazingly healthy diet? Well, strangely he started gaining weight for the first time in his life. So much so that he kept cutting his food portions down till he was nearly starving: to no avail. Even more oddly, his cholesterol just kept going up and up. From 165 to 259. Just a couple days after Eisenhower got that highest reading, Ancel Keys got his face on the cover of Time for promoting the new “lipid hypothesis,” which blamed fat for everything and advocated, for the first time, a low-fat diet as the cure for all America’s heart disease problems.

Which, as we all know, has clearly been an incredible success, since Americans have no heart disease anymore.
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Paradoxing

Vegetables are interesting, but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

–Fran Lebowitz

I spent some time this week with The Vegetarian. I just met her, but I think she’s due her own capitalized title. A lovely person and not at all evangelistic about her food choices. Credit where credit is due, after all. She doesn’t do it because of any religious or ethical scruples, but because she believes it to be the best way to avoid cancer. But when you’re eating butter, oil, and steaks, and she’s eating chips and salads, one of you is bound to notice something. We didn’t argue or even really discuss, but we did briefly explain our opposing views.

She got where she is by reading, if I recall the title correctly, The Food Revolution. In another post we’ll take a look at that book, but for now let’s go paradoxing, shall we? It’s a little like parasailing, only not at all.

I would like to promise it’ll be fun, but as I’m now in a plane at 38,000 feet crossing the entire United States–and we are currently over North Dakota–I’m afraid we’re shockingly short on fun. And room. And food. Thank goodness I don’t need to eat every two hours, because I don’t have $17 to shell out for a tiny box of “food.”

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PaleoAtkinsPrimalSouthBeachZoneKetogenic

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

― Dwight D. Eisenhower

All the time I hear it: “Oh, so you’re doing ________.” Usually the blank is filled in with Atkins. Sometimes with Paleo. And when I answer, “Not exactly,” I then get questioned about how what I’m doing is different from one of the aforementioned diet plans.

So let me answer that question first and then try to elucidate the differences in some of these plans.

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Ain’t Got No Home

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

― Mark Twain

Greetings from the United States of America, where I just arrived about 24 hours ago.

I’ve made the trip from Asia to North America many, many times in the last 15 years. This trip was by far the easiest, and I’d like to talk briefly about why. I should state first of all that I did get a direct flight, which did cut the total travel time, door to door, to about 16 hours. That’s pretty quick. It’s not unheard of for Asia to North America trips to take over 24 hours door to door, depending on which cities you travel.

However, the biggest thing was the eating.

Before I left, I had a mug of butter and coconut oil coffee, a 4oz ribeye steak, and some bacon. I didn’t eat again for 16 1/2 hours. And I felt absolutely great.

Continue reading Ain’t Got No Home

Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!

Tradition is an explanation for acting without thinking.

–Grace McGarvie

He’s at it again! SOMEONE STOP HIM.

I’m talking about Dr. Oz trying to scare you about eating high fat foods. This time he was on with Piers Morgan talking about the untimely demise of an actor: James Gandolfini. Mr. Gandolfini died recently of a massive heart attack.

First I would just like to say that I find it highly reprehensible to use the tragic death of a relatively young man–who left behind a widow and two children, one of them an infant–in this way. Mr. Gandolfini’s death also apparently occurred while he was on the toilet, something which hardly anyone would even know had not Mehmet Oz (which is an awesome name for a comic book villain, by the way) told the entire world about it on Piers Morgan’s show.

Continue reading Holy Partially-Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Batman!

Sugar

I love to eat–Kit Kats or cookies-and-cream ice cream. I need sugar like five times a day. –Kim Kardashian

Doesn’t that quote rattle your brain a little bit?

I mean, would anyone argue that a diet like that is healthy? I don’t think so. And yet do people publicly denounce Ms. Kardashian as unhealthy, or suggest she needs to change up her diet? No. Why not?

Dare I suggest it’s because she’s not fat?

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Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 2

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

― Michael Crichton

In the previous post I got all worked up over a news article claiming that eating red meat raises the risk of developing diabetes. I may still be slightly worked up, so you might want to go have some chocolate and get back to me tomorrow.

The article was biased from the outset, was not a real “study” at all, relied on notoriously inaccurate data, and ignored important variables altogether. Not to mention that no hypothesis was formed for the purpose of testing and truth-finding. No, we skipped that inconvenient step completely and just jumped to calling it a full-fledged theory and telling everyone how to eat based upon it.
Continue reading Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 2

Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 1

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

–Konrad Lorenz

It’s science today, folks. If you want to run screaming for the door, now’s the time.

I noticed two headlines in the news today. One illustrates total bias in the way something is reported; the other shows proper scientific reporting of a finding that may generate a hypothesis worth looking at. The first is designed to frighten you, the second is designed to inform you.

Continue reading Pardon Me; Your Bias is Showing 1

Meow Chow

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.

― Garrison Keillor

Last week the Roommate’s colleague rescued some kittens out of the trash. The poor little things were so tiny that anyone could see they were way too small to be taken from their mother. The lady had heard them crying in the dumpster.

She pulled the pathetic things out of the garbage. The garbage was behind the local restaurant…which didn’t bode well for Mother, I should say.

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