Category: studies

Salis Est Vita

All your emulation centers on the saltworks; instead of ploughs and scythes, you work rollers whence comes all your gain. Upon your industry all other products depend for, although there may be someone who does not seek gold, there never yet lived the man who does not desire salt…

–Cassidorus, A.D. 523

We’ve considered the importance of salt in history and the basic physiological processes that need salt. Clearly salt is not a poison that we should avoid at all costs. The big questions are how much salt is necessary,  how much is too much, and will eating salt drive up my blood pressure?

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Why I Can’t Overeat

Hunger is insolent, and will be fed.

–Homer

Ever since I started eating this way, I wanted to eat eggs. I know they’re relatively cheap little powerhouses of fat, protein, and nutrition. But I’m allergic. Finally I ran across a mention that most people with an allergy to eggs don’t show allergy to raw egg. It’s the “scrambling” of the cooked proteins that makes them indigestible to some. Sure enough, that turned out to be true for me.

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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly III

Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.

― Criss Jami

We’ve looked at the good. We’ve looked at some bad. Now…the ugly.

  • Eating protein will kill you in middle age, and then somehow–magic, I think we can assume–becomes protective after age 65. Variations of this article came out all over the news about two weeks ago. It was such a headline that I had several people ask me about it. It took me about a week to get the time to find the actual study, and then more time to get around to writing about it. But here we go.

As you probably already guessed from the idiotic statement that the same protein that will kill you if you’re 64 will suddenly protect you from death once you turn 65, this is a load of baloney. This contention alone ought to be enough to put every reasonable person on alert. Continue reading The Good, The Bad and The Ugly III

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly I

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten —
If I ever read it.
–Robert Frost

There’s good, bad and ugly in the news. How about the roundup? We’ll start with the good.

The Good:

Fun With Nutrition Insanity

The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in “calories,” which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none.

― Dave Barry

How are we all feeling today? In the Christmas spirit?

Well, never fear. A number of helpful news agencies have published some gobblitigook that will pull you out of that mood as fast as you can say Kris Kringle.

Continue reading Fun With Nutrition Insanity

Knowledge, Not Numbers #2

…High cholesterol levels are really a symptom, not a cause of cardiovascular disease. Not understanding this fact, a lot of people take medicine to try to lower their LDL cholesterol levels artificially. Attempting to control through medication the enzymes that produce elevated cholesterol is analogous to playing pool with a rope.

–Dr. Doug McGuff

Let’s review.

We’ve already discussed how both LDL and HDL are lipoproteins that carry cholesterol around the body. LDL carries it to areas damaged by inflammation; HDL carries it back out.

When LDL particles are big and fluffy in size, they can easily be carried away by HDL and they are not so susceptible to oxidation, human “rusting,” that damages them and you. Very small LDL, sometimes known as VLDL, is very susceptible to oxidation and cannot be easily carried away by HDL. (Of course all this is very simply put.)

Continue reading Knowledge, Not Numbers #2

Knowledge, Not Numbers

A good decision is based on knowledge, not numbers.

–Plato

In the previous post we discussed some important foundational ideas when talking about cholesterol. Today we’ll start going into all this just a bit deeper, starting with what all those numbers mean and why I say that your total cholesterol number is meaningless for you, personally.

Continue reading Knowledge, Not Numbers

Dissatisfries

I like food too much to go on some crazy diet. French fries are my favorite downfall. 
–Holly Madison
If Holly had said “I like tobacco too much to go on some crazy detox. Cigars are my favorite downfall.” What would everyone say?
We would say Holly had an addiction.

Everybody’s Different, Part 2

[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place . . . Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

― Steve Grand

Just a thought about how we are so much more than our atomized stuff, before we talk about that stuff.

Continue reading Everybody’s Different, Part 2

Germany

Andere Länder, andere Sitten.

–German Proverb

So today I was in Germany for a while. I had a ten hour layover in Frankfurt and I took off into the city on the regional trains to spend three hours hiking about Worms. Running about it, actually.

If it’s getting hard to keep track of where I am, I’m sorry. A friend gave me this trip as a gift, to go see family posted abroad for work. I haven’t seen them in years, so that’s the background to this little story.

I got off the plane after a miserable flight (note: Lufthansa seems to have the smallest seats of any airline ever, and that is saying a lot. I’ve flown all over Asia 145 pounds heavier than I am now and I was never so cramped as I was on this trup.) I wanted some food when I got off, and the first thing I found was a little restaurant in the airport advertising breakfast. More than half the breakfast choices were very heavy in fat and protein with only some token carbohydrates to go with them.

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