Colorado Mountain Home for Sale

Hello, anyone who still reads this blog!

If you know anyone who might be interested in buying a beautiful home in the mountains in Colorado, please take a look at our advertisement on EBay, which has more information and photographs, and pass the link along. Thanks!

Reject the Cultural Revolution For What It Is

I’ve grown tired with blogging about politics in general, and rarely do so anymore. I’m too busy living. However, this whole “Obama school speech” fiasco merits a bit of my snarky attention. It won’t be deep cultural or political commentary, just my own blunt thoughts that will hopefully give a few people a new perspective. Particularly those who have been clogging up my Facebook feed with political opinions. A minor annoyance, but quid pro quo. If you’re already bored to tears about hearing about this issue, I can’t really blame you. Feel free, as with anything else I write, to move along.

Much ado has been made about the President’s speech to schoolchildren. Both sides are up in arms about it, expressing their righteous indignation about one thing or another.

Suddenly, thousands of conservatives are horrified about a presidential address to public school students. It’s unconstitutional, he wants to brainwash them, they will protest, they will keep their children home from school, give them earmuffs, tell them to look away, etc., etc., etc.

Coversely, people who are creeped out about the President speaking to their children are branded by liberals as back-water, inbred, uneducated, white supremacist Christian fundamentalist racists who can’t spell, etc., etc., etc.

Yawn.

First, Reagan, George HW Bush, and George W Bush administrations all had a presence in the public school system. Does anyone remember Nancy Reagan’s obnoxious “Just Say No” campaign? What a barrel of monkeys that was. I’m young enough to remember how well that went over when we were herded into the gymnasium. Blah. If any of these presidents had issued a message to students saying that students should work hard to get ahead, that education is important for the future, that it’s “cool” to be smart and not do drugs, and that too much time shouldn’t be spent in front of the TV or playing video games, etc., it wouldn’t have struck me as odd.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe such messages should faze us. Increasingly, in today’s culture of grade inflation, schooling is presented as some sort of singularly important goal. An eighth grade education used to be sufficient to get along in the world. Now we have people graduating from high school who can't read. Even so, now “everyone should graduate from high school.” And now, in recent decades, alarming statistics are being thrown around that “only” around 25% of people attend college, and shouldn’t everyone have the “right” to attend college? Etc. Everyone has “rights” to an education… not just high school but college, grad school, and soon, who knows, maybe an eternity of publicly funded continuing education programs until the age of 70.

Why is all this considered good? My husband is a high school dropout, and he’s a genius. (That’s why he dropped out. He’s done rather well for himself, too.) Ben Franklin was self-taught. If I have kid(s), they’ll be self-educated with sensible guidance, but not schooled. Not over my dead body. They won’t be taught that formal education is a virtue in and of itself.

I went to a public school system and turned out fine… at least, most of my friends and family think so. Ha. I know plenty of other people who have sent their kids to a public school and it seems to be working out fine for them. I don’t condemn that choice. However -- why is schooling presented as a singularly important value? Why don’t we think about that question for a change? And if the public schools are so goddamn great, why don’t many of our public “servants” trust their offspring to them? I dissent from the very message that everyone needs an “education”, much less a public one, for some greater collective good. If you don’t like my dissent, remember that “Dissent is patriotic.” ha.

But I’ve gotten off on a tangent. I think there is another deeper concern here that is very valid. And that is the main concern I wish to address.

This is not just a straightforward presidential address about the importance of staying in school so that we can all live the quintessential American dream. (As I said above, I don’t even agree with that message, but whatever…) No, this is an address being presented as benevolent at best, harmless at worst, that is probably going to be laden with, and possibly accompanied by, creepy collectivist notions and classroom activities that ask schoolchildren to reflect on questions such as:

“Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?”

“What is the President trying to tell me?”

“What is the President asking me to do?”

Are you fucking kidding me? “What is the President trying to tell me?” “What is the President asking me to do?”

Seeing our elected officials as some sort of know-it-all, authoritarian figures that they should unquestioningly respect (worse, obey) is completely contrary to one the principles that the founders of this country held dear: individual intellectual independence. To put it plainly, the questions above are downright creepy. If people don’t like the analogies between the formation of the Hitlerjugend and Obama rallying support from youth, I suggest viewing this.

People would also do well to remember that the left routinely compared GW Bush to Hitler. Now the shoe is on the other foot and they can’t handle it.

Citizens and children are not here to serve elected officials. This whole “school speech” thing more easily be ignored outside the context of the Obama administration’s other activities: citizens being encouraged to report their neighbors on a White House website for making “fishy” statements, White House officials using social media to gather data on citizens, etc. And it could be more easily ignored if we did not see iconic images and words of the nation’s leader, everywhere you go, all the time:

If you deny that the images above are strongly propagandistic, you’ve been living in a cave your entire life. I took the above images from the web using a Google Image search of “Obama vintage.” The upper right picture is a take on the “Che Guevara” t-shirts that I saw numerous idiot western tourists wearing, all over Tiananmen Square no less, on my last trip to Beijing in 2005. The one at the bottom middle with the star has clear Soviet connotations. This is not conspiracy theory stuff.

I'll grant that the same sort of nationalistic personality cult emerged around George Bush in the fundamentalist Christian community, with pictures of him on church bulletin boards, overhead projectors, and even cardboard cutouts that kids would pray to. It was downright scary. However, it was largely confined to the private sphere and rejected by the culture at large. The Christian right eventually became deeply disappointed with Bush after finding out that he was not “God’s man in the White House” after all.

Here’s the crux of the problem. Given the administration's actions thus far, there's perfectly good reason to believe this will not be a benign little presidential speech about working hard and staying in school. Obama is a narcissist in permanent campaign mode, going around the country trying to sell his collectivist-altruist “brother’s keeper” agenda (whether it’s education, healthcare, or anything else), with an army of followers and teams of youth calling anyone who doesn’t agree with the Great Leader names/traitors/un-American/unpatriotic. Who knows, maybe this blogpost will get me landed on a new special “terrorist watch list.” Sound familiar?

Earth to Obama & Co: Some of us are getting tired of the “Country/Others/First Follow-The-Leader” bullshit. We didn’t like it under Bush and we don’t like it now. We didn’t vote for Bush. Or Obama. Or McCain. We are weary of you and your petty little band of miscreants, and we want you to go home and snooze for awhile.

As always, a bit of humor helps.

How to Scare People With Statistics

For those of you who don't know yet, I'm writing a book with a friend on pregnancy and pre-pregnancy nutrition. I know... a far cry from mushrooms for sure [yes, I'm still very interested in those], and I'm not a certified nutritionist, but it's something I've learned a lot about in the past two years.

In any case, today my friend and I came across the following statement: "Listeria is a serious threat: it has been responsible for 2,500 illnesses and up to 500 deaths a year. Some studies estimate that 30% of those deaths involve pregnant women and their fetuses. Listeriosis can cause miscarriage or premature birth."

I hate statements like this. First, it's designed to scare people. Second, it's basically out of context bullshit.

Let's accept as a fact, for the sake of argument, that 30% of the deaths from listeria are pregnant women and their fetuses. OK, but women are in childbearing years for approximately 25 years of their 77 year life. Guess how much that is? Exactly 30%. Since we're counting the fetus as a death also, that is no more death by listeria, on average, than experienced by the rest of the population. Clearly, just because a pregnant woman gets listeria, it doesn't mean that she or her fetus are more likely to die because of that infection than anyone else.

So why are we telling pregnant women to avoid things like raw seafood, sushi, and pate? Because health professionals and government bureaucrats apparently have a mystical belief (yes, mystical, mythical, quasi-religious, i.e. without evidence or proof) that pregnant women are fragile beings, somehow more susceptible or likely to die of infection than anyone else. Where is the evidence? And both liver and seafood are the TOP sources of vitamin K2-M4. Additionally they supply vitamins A, D3, and essential fatty acids in high amounts. K2-M4 and D3 are critical vitamins for skeletal and immune system development, respectively (actually, skeletal development is dependent on both) and are sucked up by the fetus in high amounts. This is, incidentally, why pregnant and lactating women so often begin to suffer chronic dental problems they've never seen before getting pregnant.

Essential fatty acids are crucial for a developing infant's brain. Deficiency of D3 and K2 is CHRONIC in American society, and vitamin D3 (and probably K2) is seriously depleted in pregnancy and lactation. While food is not an excellent source of D3, it is the ONLY source of vitamin K2. K2 forms provided by plants and bacterial fermentation are likely not as well-utilized by humans.

So, in essence, these recommendations cut of the two prime sources of what is probably the most well-utilized form of vitamin K2 in humans.

What behavior really represents the greater risk here? A miniscule chance of a woman and her fetus dying from listeria (0.00016 percent, to be exact)? Or the mother and/or her fetus being at increased risk of asthma, autoimmune and other immune disorders, dental decay, ALL cancer, depression, and the likelihood that the developing child will have to wear braces because its skull didn't develop normally?

Ugh.

Correction: It just occurred to me that obviously all the women of childbearing age aren't pregnant all the time, so the rate of death of pregnant women and their fetuses IS probably a lot higher than that of the average population (duh, Monica). Still, 500 deaths in the entire country every year due to listeria is very low, and I think these recommendations are doing a lot of harm. Your risk of dying in a car accident is about 1%, as opposed to .00016% (risk of dying of listeria).

My Kind of Vacation!

THE ULTIMATE ADVENTURE CRUISE

To The Point News
Thursday, 07 May 2009

To The Point is excited to offer the ultimate adventure cruise along the pirate-infested coast of Somalia!

We board our luxury cruise ship in Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden near the entrance to the Red Sea, and disembark in Mombassa, Kenya, seven adrenaline-charged days later.





Starting at $5,200 per-person (double occupancy, inside room) and $6,900 (veranda complete with bench rest), you'll relax like never before.



That's because you are welcome to bring your own arsenal with you. If you don't have your own weapons, you can rent them from our onboard Master Gunsmith. Enjoy reloading parties every afternoon with skeet and marksmanship competitions every night!

But the best fun of all, of course, is Pirate Target Practice.

For the object of the cruise is to sail up and down the Somali Coast waiting to get hijacked by pirates. The weapons rental costs are as follows.

Rent a full auto M-16 for only $25/day with ammo attractively priced at $16 per 100 rounds of 5.56 armor-piercing:



On a budget? Rent a full-auto scope-mounted AK-47 for only $9/day with 7.62 ball ammo at $12 per 100 rounds:



Hello! Nothing gets a pirate's attention like a Barrett M-107 50-cal sniper rifle; only $59/day with 25 rounds of armor-piercing ammo affordably priced at only $29.95.



Need a spotter? Our professional crew members can double as spotters for only $30/hour (spotting scope included, but gratuities are not.)



Want to make a real impact? Rent an RPG for only $175/day with three fragmentation rounds included!



Also included: Free complimentary night vision equipment - and throughout the night, coffee, pastries and snacks are always available on the main deck from 7pm until 6am.

Our deluxe package comes complete with gourmet meals and all rooms offer a mini-bar.

But that's not all! Twin mounted miniguns are available for rental at only $450.00 per 30 seconds of sustained fire!



We guarantee that you will experience at least two hijacking attempts by pirates or you'll receive an instant $1,000 refund upon arrival in Mombassa.

How can we make that guarantee? We operate at 5 knots just beyond 12 nautical miles off the coast of Somalia , thus in international waters where pirates have no rights whatever. In fact, we make three passes through the area's most treacherous waters to ensure maximum visibility by Somali "mother ships".

We repeat this for five days, making three complete passes past the entire Somali Coast. At night, the boat is fully lit and bottle rockets are shot every five minutes with loud disco music directionally beamed shoreside to attract maximum attention.



Testimonials from previous participants in the Somali Cruise:

"Six attacks in 4 days were more than I expected. I bagged three pirates, my wife nailed two, and my 12-year old son sank two boats with the mini-gun. This wonderful cruise was fun for the whole family" -- Fred D., Cincinnati , OH

"Pirates 0, Passengers 32! Well worth the trip! Can't recommend it highly enough!" -- Ben L., Bethesda , MD

"I haven't had this much fun since flying choppers in ' Nam . Don't worry about getting shot by pirates... they never even got close to the ship with the crap they shoot and their lousy aim... reminds me of a drunken juicer door-gunner we picked up from the motor pool in Phu Bai!" -- Dan J. -Denver , CO



Come on board and bag your own clutch of genuine Somali pirates! But cabin space is limited so you need to respond quickly. Reserve your package before June 30th and get a great bonus -- 100 rounds of free tracer ammo in the caliber of your choice. So sign up for the Ultimate Somali Coast Adventure Cruise now!

Spring

Is it here yet? Not really. Summer doesn't really come until June up here and even then we can get flurries. But there is a lull in winter weather all the time so that we can enjoy spring-like activities. Our 4.5 feet of snow is already pretty much gone. Amazing.

I opened my hive for the first time since last fall. The bees are quite numerous, have not used up much of their winter stores due to the mild weather earlier this winter, and seem healthy. However, the queen has become extremely unproductive. This happens when you capture swarms. The bees are free and it's fun to do, but you just don't know how old the queen is. There are very few new larvae. I will have to re-queen soon since there is no sign that they are making a new queen. However, there is no sign of illness, either. That's good.

Unfortunately, all the people in the country selling "survivor stock" queens, particularly the company I'm interested in buying from, are booked for queens through June. Damn. These queens are bred without medications in attempts to develop disease-resistant queens -- unlike most of the queens you can buy everywhere that are bred for maximum honey production, etc. Disease resistance is basically thought to be a myth in the beekeeping community, but I will re-queen again this fall with survivor stock. I would also like to get 1-2 more beehives in case of a swarm of this hive, or to capture more swarms.

A brief word on my current thoughts on beekeeping. Typically, beekeepers kill hives any time foulbrood is encountered and heavily medicate for Nosema and varroa mites. Most people intensively manage their bees. There is even some new evidence that by providing comb with cell size that is slightly too large, instead of letting bees making their own preferred cell size, humans are making bees susceptible to varroa mites!

After consideration, I don't think any of this is wise. Without some sort of natural selection taking place, we will not develop resistant bees. Pay now or pay later. For too many decades, commercial beekeepers have followed the "pay later" philosophy in an attempt to maximize production. The parallels to industrial agriculture are striking. And it isn't working. "Colony collapse disorder" appears to be a combination of a new virulent strain of Nosema, pesticides, and other stresses such as varroa mites. It is not one factor but you will not hear about it in the media because people like to look for simple causes. The real world is not that simple sometimes. Michael Bush has been keeping his bees without medications for decades and does fine. I have a lot to learn about beekeeping as I've only been doing this for three years, but I've decided to try this approach also.

The sky is not falling and I have stopped believing that any apocalypse is coming with regard to so-called CCD. Bees have been around for millions of years and they would be and will be fine without our help. However, if we keep burning hives with foulbrood and slamming hives with antibiotics twice a year, we will not breed resistant bees. If we keep medicating for Nosema twice a year, we will not breed resistant bees. If we keep miticides in the hive year-round, we will not breed resistant bees. (We will breed resistant foulbrood, Nosema, and mites, though!) More and more, I'm coming to see parallels between the health of humans, their pets, their livestock, etc. All of these organisms are sick for perfectly logical reasons: humans are treating symptoms rather than root causes. Over the long run this simply makes the problem worse. This doesn't mean "artificial" inputs are never needed. But it does mean that they shouldn't be excessively used as a band-aid to replace an organism's natural mode of survival. Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Enough on that.

The smoker used to calm the bees.

The bees.

In other spring news, I figured it was time to start working on our yard. We are holding our wedding reception at the house so I have a lot of work to do, especially since I did no gardening last year and I am completely unfamiliar with the Colorado climate. Today, I planted 400 annual and perennial seeds, with more on the way. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully they will germinate, not get eaten by critters, and will do well in our harsh climate and dry soil. I tried to pick varieties that would do well in these conditions. You can see I'm about to run out of egg cartons for seeds! I am also in the process of planting bulbs outside. Phew!



It was a day full of spring activity. I'm exhausted, but it felt great!

Dumb Blonde

Blonde jokes bug me because I am a blonde. But this is too funny. Almost as bad as Miss Teen South Carolina.

Hoo boy, check it out:

Great Atheism Posters

I found these interesting atheism posters through Jason's blog. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian home, I can appreciate these. (I'm not bitter anymore. Religion is just ridiculous.)

My almost-favorite.

My favorite. Even in my rather enlightened liberal Christian college environment (as of ten years ago) they were still spreading the idea in Western Civilization classes that the Dark Ages weren't really all that bad. Seriously.

Global Warming Alarmists (i.e. Scientific American) on the Defense?

From Robbservations. Post and linked article well worth the read.

Then there's this from RealClimate, James Hansen's mouthpiece. Admittedly an April Fool's joke, but of late they've really been on the defense, with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Are the climate alarmists feeling the heat? Perhaps so.

Vitamin D Results

I just got my results. My vitamin D level was only 30 ng/mL. That is after over a year of supplementing with cod liver oil, which has 500 IU per 1/2 tsp. I take around 2 tsp. at a time, or 2000 IU. This was also after several sessions of sitting out in the sun this spring at high altitude, 8400 feet. Granted, I have not taken the cod liver oil religiously every day. However, my diet is very good (raw milk, eggs, meat, occasional liver [very high in vitamin D!!]) and although food is not a sufficient source of vitamin D, I probably get around 400IU daily in my food, the government's recommended level.

I can only imagine what my levels would have been on a worse diet without any supplementation at all. Yikes!

This certainly helps to explain why I've always been very susceptible to colds and flu and why I got one cold already this winter and had to take a megadose of vitamin D (50,000IU) a couple of weeks ago in order to ward off yet another cold. I'm not sure what my levels are now after having taken that megadose, which was only about a week after I sent in my test. The expert graphs at grassrootshealth.org indicate that supplementation of every 1000IU for four months will raise D levels 10 ng/mL. Since I want to be at 80 ng/mL, I'll adjust my daily dose toward my target level if I can figure out how much a one-time 50,000IU dose would have raised my levels.

It's quite clear from the small sample size of the population so far at grassrootshealth.org that the majority of the population is deficient, just like I was. I think this serves as a great reminder that you have zero idea what your vitamin D levels are unless you get yourself tested. It's also corroborating evidence that the government's recommended daily intake level stinks.

Get your levels up high enough (60-80 ng/mL) for long enough and you begin to dramatically decrease your risk for a wide range of diseases and health problems. See grassrootshealth.org for more information.

Blizzard Update II

This was yesterday. The actual level is up to her shoulders now.

Now for the cleanup!

Blizzard Update I

From the Weather Channel:

Winter storm to pound Denver today and tonight: March is known for its big snowstorms in Denver and Thursday's storm may produce the heaviest snowfall the city experiences all season.

Denver's average seasonal snowfall is 61.7 inches (1971-2000 period). The city has only received 19.1 inches of snow this season. This is obviously well-below average.

I can tell you that the forecast for our area is not that accurate. Of course we are not in Denver and we will easily get more snow than Denver, but the national weather service was predicting 1.5 to 2 feet total for our area. We are already at 1.5 feet and it's only 12.30PM. The snow warning is in effect for 18 more hours. We estimate that we could get at least 3 feet.

Here are some more recent pictures. The picture I took in the post before was only a few hours ago. It's really coming down, as you can see.

This is our BBQ grill where were just grilling in 70 degree weather last week.

The bees are no doubt in a tight ball keeping warm and feasting on stored honey. They will be back out as soon as it hits 55 or more.

Just a couple of hours ago, we have even more now.

Yes, that's Robb in his bathrobe outside with Dora.

Changing Weather

The weather in the mountains of Colorado is always changing. In January you can get 70 degree cloudless days, or flurries in mid-June.

Last winter was incredibly cold. We went an entire month without it getting above freezing. (Precipitation was still relatively low compared to the 2006-2007, though). This year, we've had a real dearth of snow -- only about 2 feet so far -- and March, usually the snowiest month, brought no precipitation whatsoever. In fact, it's felt like summer the entire month. Some of my time outside has been in flip flops and sleeveless shirts. We have had very different weather than some on the east coast, which has been slammed with snow.

As a result of this dry summer-like weather, forests are extremely dry. My neighbor has lived here for 16 years and we got together last week-end to assess our properties and make plans for tree thinning and slash cleanup for fire mitigation/pine beetle prevention and said she's never seen it so dry. A few weeks ago, our county instituted a fire ban.

Here are some pictures of my bees just a few days ago in sunny, 70 degree weather foraging for pollen. You can see the pollen baskets are full on a few of these bees (bright yellow balls on their legs). I have no idea what the pollen is. I can't imagine they are collecting it from flowers as I've seen none in bloom yet. Pine pollen, maybe? Resourceful little critters.



Conversely, here is the weather today:



Needless to say we are happy it is snowing. 1.5 to 2 more feet are forecast. This puts us out of danger of a forest fire... for the time being, anyway. Hopefully we will get hammered in April, too. (Never thought I'd hear myself wishing for so much snow.)

Swimming in Milk

We are virtually swimming in milk in this house. We get a gallon of raw milk weekly which is really more than we can use. Currently I have a quart of two week old milk that will be fed to the dog over the rest of the week. There is also about 1/2 gallon of homemade kefir in my fridge -- it's a bit more convenient to make than yogurt and lends itself a bit better to smoothies. (Have you tried kefir? It's a fascinating, slightly alcoholic drink I just started to make with some of Diana's donated kefir grains. I do love the products of fermentation!) And then there is about 3/4 gallon of fresh milk, with another gallon on the way on Friday. I've found it difficult to make butter from the skimmed cream because I usually end up getting some milk in it. So when I want to make butter, I just order a quart of cream from the farm and that amount of butter is enough to last a few weeks. I often make homemade ice cream, too, which is not as sensitive to a little adulteration with milk.

All in all, we are overflowing with milk. Whew! How to use it all?

I came across a great post by Liz at Nature's Harmony Farm Blog. Get a load of those gorgeous bottles of milk. Do those look delicious or what? Their calf is weaned so they are now getting 3-4 gallons of milk daily. YIKES! That's over 20 gallons weekly! Turns out she has been making cheese:

I have been skimming this cream by the quart full. First, I made butter. Then, Tim made ice cream. But we still had more cream, so I ventured on to make cream cheese. Wow, was this easy! Now we make these things on a regular basis and are experimenting with different flavors of ice cream and making cream cheese dips. All delicious!

But once you skim off the cream, you are still left with gallons of milk. Since Honey is a Jersey cow with a little Swiss, her milk has a very high butterfat content. If the milk has sat for more than a day before skimming, the heavy cream on top is as thick as paint. Even with the cream skimmed, her milk is not like skim milk. It is even thicker than 2% milk, but not quite like whole milk. I've been drinking LOTS of chocolate milk...YUM! But we needed to use up this milk, so I've been dabbling with cheese making.

I've made some simple cheeses before, but it uses a lot of milk and can get expensive. Now I have all of the Farmhouse Cheddarraw materials, but not the know-how. It always seemed so complicated to me to make cheese, especially hard cheese which needs to be aged. But I've been reading and decided to jump right in. I made the cream cheese and mozarella first. Easy! Then I made Queso Blanco. Easy! With my confidence up I decided to try a Farmhouse Cheddar. Easy! I couldn't believe that it worked - at least I think it did. I won't actually know until it ages for two months.

I think this would be an excellent way for me to use up some of my milk. Nourishing Traditions has great ideas for many fermented milk products but is light on cheesemaking details. Cheesemaking has always seemed complicated to me, but I'm now skeptical how hard it actually is since I've seen how easy it is to make butter, etc. So I dropped a note and asked her where I could find out more about making cheese. It sounds fun!

I'll keep you posted if I end up doing it.

Seafood Casserole

I always enjoy surfing other peoples' blogs for recipes. Of late, I've been slow roasting steaks via Richard's method and it works fabulously. The other night we had tri tip steaks that were to die for and all I added were salt and pepper.

I don't "do" casseroles of the type seen above anymore. Most of my cooking is stovetop, crockpot (heavenly to make bone broth and smell it all day long), or on the grill. However, I've made a similar casserole dish, stovetop style, twice now (the second time was just last night) and thought I'd share it in case any of you want to try it out. This is the type of meaty casserole with loose juice you can often get in Korean restaurants. The ingredients here are by no means Korean, and it doesn't even remotely taste Korean but it is that same style and should be served in a bowl. Try it out if you can find some seafood on sale.

Ingredients

shrimp
scallops (quantity of all these depends on how many you are feeding)
canned tomatoes -- around 14 oz?
green beans (fresh, frozen) OR asparagus (preferably fresh)
white wine (any type you'd like to have with dinner)
butter
coconut oil
heavy cream
salt

Start off by melting coconut oil and butter in a pan at low temperature. 2 T. of each should do for a meal for two, maybe a bit more of the butter. It should be enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Fry the shrimp and scallops and low temperature until they are cooked about halfway through. Add about 1/2 cup or so of white wine. I prefer sauvignon blanc but probably any white wine will do. Add green beans (or asparagus, if you prefer asparagus) and tomatoes (with juice). Simmer for 5 minutes. Add about 1/2 c. heavy cream, possibly more, and salt to taste. Reduce the sauce to your liking.

Serve in a big bowl and be sure to give each bowl a good helping of the sauce. Enjoy with the same wine you used in the dish. This would be perfect recipe to mop up sauce with bread if you eat it. I don't. I just eat the solid ingredients with a spoon, dipping shrimp as necessary, and then drink by spoon whatever juice is left at the end.

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture but you can imagine how pretty it is with the variety of colors. And trust me, it's delicious.

Thinking "Outside the Box" on Diet

What box? The low-carb box.

You've just heard me praise the benefits of a low carb diet for glucose control in diabetics in the past post. While this is true, we should always be on the lookout for controlled studies or good observational studies that contradict what we think we know. More specifically, we should refine our understanding of exactly what entities are problematic in certain food groups which we are already suspicious of as causing health problems.

I recently read a blogger who said that maybe people are too uptight about carbs. I think this is true, but perhaps not for the same reasons. What do I mean by that? Well, there's a certain attitude out there that health is largely genetically determined and that we can eat whatever foods are available to us so long as we do so "in moderation." In other words, it's not really up to us whether we get obese or get heart disease or diabetes. It's pretty much genetically determined. The only thing we can do is try not to eat too many calories, exercise a bit, hope for the best, and then throw drugs at a health problem once it arises. I strongly disagree and the best science available to us does not support such an assertion. When you come to learn that certain foods are a type of slow-acting poison, the idea of "moderation" seems absurd.

That said, we really do need a better understanding of what types of foods and what entities in those foods cause health problems before making swift or premature judgments. We do have solid ideas, but limiting "carbs" may be too simplistic. Perhaps not all carbohydrate-laden food is bad for our health. (I'm speaking strictly from a standpoint of health, not temporary enjoyment. If you are after temporary enjoyment in the absence of context of any health goals, you can justify eating just about anything.)

There are some foods with a pretty high carbohydrate fraction that I believe could be part of a healthy diet. For instance, I'm not at all convinced that potatoes are harmful to anyone but the glucose-intolerant (i.e. the obese, pre-diabetic, and diabetic). We know that the Irish ate a heck of a lot of potatoes. Until the potato famine, the Irish were almost completely dependent upon potatoes. My guess is that they would have done poorly if they did not have any source of animal protein or fat, but I wonder if there is any evidence of diabetes, heart disease, etc. at that time. It would be fascinating to know whether this population from 1600s to the mid 1800s was exempt from other western diseases of civilization that some increasingly believe are caused by carbohydrate.

Not only did the average Irish family of six consume 250 lbs. potatoes weekly, the population doubled from 1800 to 1845. Because the climate was so remarkable for growing potatoes, people were able to be fairly leisurely and abandon other food production — and married earlier, had larger families, and were able to nurse more newborns. That means an average of 6 lbs. potatoes per person per day. Although potatoes are starchy -- in other words, full of sugar, yes -- they have a fair amount of complete protein unlike other vegetables. Six lbs of potatoes is 2500 calories, with 63 grams of protein if one just eats potatoes. That makes potatoes start to sound pretty decent as a major part of the diet and a source of all essential amino acids. (All of the historical information comes from Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds by George Hudler.)

Although these numbers above may be a bit off for average daily intake (6 pounds is a lot -- this means men would have had to eat more to compensate for less intake among women and children), we do know that the Irish relied on potatoes heavily. When corn was imported from America to aid in alleviating the famine, the Irish rejected it, even though they were starving. Apparently their digestive systems were very conditioned to potatoes. In light of this, it would be fascinating to discover more about Irish health at that time. Were they fat? Did they get heart disease? What about diabetes?

This reflects an evolution in my thinking on such dietary matters over the past year. Gary Taubes calls for a more heavy evaluation of the carbohydrate hypothesis at the end of his book Good Calories, Bad Calories. He wouldn't have called for such an evaluation if he considered it proven. Many cultures enjoy a heavy carbohydrate intake with seemingly few health problems (diabetes, cancer, obesity, heart disease) that plague western civilization. Notably, these cultures often chiefly eat starchy tubers or rice. Potatoes lack some of the toxins found in grains and legumes that are suspected of causing modern health problems. In light of this, it would be fascinating to know more about the body composition and health of the Irish just prior to the potato famine if such case studies exist (I'll leave it to health experts to search for and evaluate that information, though). Such information could provide a basis for the types of experiments that Taubes calls for at the end of his book.

I think this excerpt from Stephan's most recent post adequately sums up my evolving thoughts on carbohydrate:

...there's a difference between post-meal glucose and insulin surges and chronically elevated glucose and insulin. Chronically elevated insulin is a marker of metabolic dysfunction, while post-meal insulin surges are not (although glucose surges in excess of 140 mg/dL indicate glucose intolerance). Despite what you may hear from some sectors of the low-carbohydrate community, insulin surges do not necessarily lead to insulin resistance. Just ask a Kitavan. They get 69% of their 2,200 calories per day from high-glycemic starchy tubers and fruit (380 g carbohydrate), with not much fat to slow down digestion. Yet they have low fasting insulin, very little body fat and an undetectable incidence of diabetes, heart attack and stroke. That's despite a significant elderly population on the island.

Yes. And we're also aware of two other native groups in Europe through Weston Price's research that apparently did not suffer from modern health problems yet they had high carbohydrate intake from soaked/sprouted grains. These are are a world of difference biochemically from "whole grains" advocated by health authorities today in phytate, lectins, protease inhibitors, and even gluten content in the case of long sourdough fermentation. Traditional processing of grains removes or greatly reduces these entities. Modern processing does not (and especially since quick-rise techniques have been adopted). Again, from the same post:

Let's take a look at how healthy cultures eat their carbohydrate foods. Cultures that rely heavily on carbohydrate generally fall into three categories: they eat cooked starchy tubers, they grind and cook their grains, or they rely on grains that become very soft when cooked...

The human digestive system is delicate. Cows can eat whole grass seeds and digest them using their giant four-compartment stomach that acts as a fermentation tank. Humans that eat intact grains end up donating them to the waste treatment plant...

Grain consumption and grinding implements appear simultaneously in the archaeological record. Grinding has always been used to increase the digestibility of tough grains, even before the invention of agriculture when hunter-gatherers were gathering wild grains in the fertile crescent. Some archaeologists consider grinding implements one of the diagnostic features of a grain-based culture.

Carbohydrate-based cultures have always prioritized digestibility and nutritional value over GI. Have nutrition authorities suddenly gotten smarter than them in the last 20 years?

I recommend his blog and the comments line of each post for some good skeptical thinking on the glycemic index, what types of carbohydrate are probably unhealthy, what types of processing are healthy and even necessary for our foods, and what we know about human health throughout human history. Much of the information on historical use of carbohydrate seems lost on, or ignored by, the larger "paleo" and "low carb" communities. All of the information on the effects of agricultural products on human health is lost on, or ignored by, our modern nutritional "authorities" and thus, the vast majority of the population.

The same type of critical thinking needs to be applied to "processed food." It's critical to examine the definition of a processed food as well as what types of processing are good and bad for our health. That said, when it comes to human diet, which we know from anthropological studies experiences heavy selection pressure, the precautionary principle is in order. In other words, deviating from the evolutionarily prescribed path needs to be proven to be healthy. What does that mean? It means that the burden of proof is on new foods in use for only 10,000 years or 40 years -- not the foods that humans have been eating for millions of years, foods that were selected for by evolution over time.

Positive Personal Improvements in Type II Diabetes

A couple of weeks ago I dropped a note on Dr. Eades' blog about my frustration with my grandfather's situation. He's 78 and has been a Type II diabetic for 25 years. He managed his condition relatively well without insulin for at least a decade. However, years of slamming himself with too high of a carbohydrate intake (although probably relatively low compared to most Americans) hasn't helped, and his kidneys recently started to fail.

At my wits end (and knowing that low carb would definitely help my grandfather), I sent him Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution last week at Dr. Eades' suggestion. My grandfather had been ordered on a low potassium diet for awhile by his doc around a month ago. Incidentally, it seems this is a slightly carb limiting diet as well, although he can still have one piece of white bread daily. He is not allowed to have bananas and a lot of other carb-heavy stuff so I suspected he is incidentally controlling his blood glucose in addition to ridding the body of potassium, although that is not the intention of the diet.

He has now read Diabetes Solution almost in entirety and told me he’s learned a ton.

Here are the results of 3-4 weeks on the low potassium diet (which is a semi-low-carb diet, although I’m honestly not sure exactly how many grams he’s eating daily) and after just 1 week of reading Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution and incorporating some dietary suggestions from that book as well:

25 lbs. weight loss in approximately a month.

Waking glucose levels down to 95 ng/mL… not sure what they were before, and it's still not ideal, but it’s definitely an improvement.

Insulin usage down more than 50% — used to be 8-10 units at a time, now down to around 4 at a time. His diet is not even uber low carb yet.

Increased energy.

He and my grandmother are pretty excited about these positive results, although he is finding the low potassium diet limiting (he cannot have things such as tomatoes). I suspect that if they just get over their fear of fat (he has "high cholesterol" and is on statins -- UGH! -- my next target once I learn about his lipid profile) and increase their range of foods they will be a bit more satisfied on a low carb diet. Also, once he is able to be off the low potassium diet his range of choices in food will increase a bit more.

I get the sense they will both definitely continue low carbing, their health and well-being will improve, and my grandfather will add some time to his life. I'm very pleased and excited for him.

As a commenter on amazon said of Diabetes Solution, "If the ADA disappeared tomorrow but this book remained, prognosis for all diabetics would be improved."

Unfortunately, that's too true. That sentiment also applies to the rejecting much of the conventional wisdom of the American Heart Association, which ultimately comes not from good medical research but straight from mouths of the USDA/Big Agriculture.

How Much is a Trillion Dollars?

Just see here.

Crazy Low Vitamin D Level

From my Google Reader sharing feature (love that thing!) I found this blogpost from a blogger previously unknown to me named Sara. Sara describes how she lives in the Pacific Northwest and was told by her doctor that 95% of people living in this region are vitamin D deficient. Similar numbers come from those living in upstate New York where I used to live, coming in only second to Seattle in cloudiness.

Learning more about health and nutrition have become an important part of my life and it takes just a small effort to inform others. So without further ado, here's Sara's story:

Since my last "annual" checkup 5 years ago, the medical establishment has created an easy blood test measuring levels of vitamin D. Dr. F and I quickly agreed I should be checked. My assumption was that my levels would be fine or very close to fine because I am serious about my health care, and I take my cod liver and coconut oil on a daily basis.

I don't think coconut oil has vitamin D, but cod liver oil sure does. Even if Sara was taking just 1/2 tsp. of regular, unfermented high vitamin cod liver oil (and I'll be she was taking more than that) she would be getting 500IU of vitamin D. That's on the order of what most multivitamin pills contain, 400IU, and would far exceed what most Americans would get in their food daily. A cup of lowfat milk has only 98IU of D3. An egg? Only 85IU. You'd have to eat 4.7 eggs, assuming no other D intake from food, to get even the paltry amount of vitamin D3 recommended by the FDA's absurdly low RDA level of 400IU.

But back to Sara. I'll bet she was getting at leat 1000IU of vitamin D daily. Was Sara's supplementation good enough? Let's find out:

My results came back yesterday. The scale for vitamin D sufficency is measured, I am pretty sure, on a scale from 0-100. Healthy range is 33-100, and acknowledging that is a crazy huge range, Dr. F says she likes to see her patients at around 50. I weighed in at an alarmingly low 12.

So after supplementing with cod liver oil for who knows how long, this woman's vitamin D levels were only 12 ng/mL!!

Get yourself over to Grassroots Health and order up a cheap $30 25-hydroxyvitamin D test if you cannot get access to one via your healthcare plan (some people can't, I've recently discovered, without going through other ridiculous hoops like getting a bone density test first). Even if you are supplementing you simply don't know whether your serum levels are adequate. I've heard other stories (anecdotes, yes) but of people supplementing on the order of 2000 IU daily for months and still having suboptimal levels of vitamin D. This is a very important vitamin not only for bone health but innate immunity (and thus, all sorts of infectious and autoimmune diseases and your ability to fight cancer once it has formed).

According to the docs over at Grassroots Health, a daily supplement level of 100 IU should be enough to raise your levels over time by 1 ng/mL. So, if your levels come back at 20 ng/mL and you want to be at 40ng/mL, supplement with 2000IU daily. If you want your levels to up around 60-80 (which would be much better), supplement with 4000-6000IU daily. Then re-test in a few months.

As I said before, it's going to be very interesting to see what my vitamin D levels were as of a week ago when I sent in my first test, because I've been supplementing with vitamin D3 (through cod liver oil) for almost a year now. However, I spent 10 of the last 12 years of my life in Syracuse, NY, noted for its cloudiness. A few days after I sent in my test I started to come down with a cold (sneezing, coughing, body ache), my second cold this winter. I took 50,000IU of vitamin D3 the next day and knocked it flat.

Here's to your health!

Inspiring Comment

Over at Richard Nikoley's blog there's a really great comment at the end of this post, by a guy named Scott Miller. It's very inspiring, so I want to quote the whole thing. I agree with a great deal of this. Make sure you read the post and the rest of the comments, though. Without further ado, here's Scott's comment:

Humans are designed as if by the lowest bidder, with serious sub-optimal systems that require specific inputs, otherwise a cascade of problematic chain reactions take place, often causing visible warning symptoms (headaches, eczema), and often not (sudden heart attack). These inputs include vitamins, minerals, water, sunlight, air, amino acids, fats and probably others. (Note that carbs doesn't appear to be a necessary input.)

But, back to my main point... We are not optimally engineered via evolution, which is a key reason seemingly small changes in inputs (lack of sunshine, changes in diet over the last 100 years) have dramatically worsened the health of "advanced civilization."

The paleo diet is perhaps the best *natural* diet for ensuring the ongoing perpetuation of our species, but one must ask the obvious question: Can science create an even better diet, perhaps building upon the paleo diet? And how would this diet be better?

One way is to provide optimal, science-proven inputs, versus inputs at levels that are merely good enough to ensure the survival of our species.

It turns out there are numerous supplements that provide improved levels of health at higher-than-paleo quantities. It also turns out that there are other natural and non-natural substances than have a profound net positive benefit on human health. One of the ones making news in the last three years is resveratrol. But there are literally several dozen others, and you cannot get these at optimal levels relying on diet alone.

Frankly, I don't think you can get nearly enough K2 from diet alone, for example. I make sure I get MK-4 (15m daily) and MK-7 (1mg daily) from supplements. Yes, a paleo diet might get you a decent quantity of K2, but not at levels shown to reverse arterial plaque in studies--the level I come closer to taking.

It's our birthright to live to 90. What we eat, and how we live, can subtract or add to that average. Eating a poor diet can subtract 55 years. I'm personally shooting for 100+. It's not a dream. Most of us can make it. We just need to try.

Duh

This just in. A "new study" finds that vitamin D deficiency is a problem for teenagers:

Teens in the study with the lowest vitamin D levels were more than twice as likely to have high blood pressure and high blood sugar. They were also four times more likely to have metabolic syndrome, defined as have three of more conditions that contribute to heart disease and diabetes — including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, big waists and high cholesterol.

The study's leader, Jared Reis of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said more research will be needed to determine if vitamin D is really behind the health problems and whether getting more would make a difference.

"We're showing strong associations that need to be followed up," he said.

Ya think? Let's see. Most people with sufficient levels of vitamin D as measured by the serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D test are supplementing with at least 2000 IU daily. The government's recommendations? 400 IU. Oh, and for any of these kids that happen to venture from their troglodyte existence these days, how about that other government recommendation to slather on plenty of sunscreen so they'll block production of vitamin D, get a whopping dose of UVA (because their sunblock doesn't block it) and increase their risk for ALL cancer, and ummmm, death.

"We're at the tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Robert Eckel.

No, Dr. Eckel. Just you are at the tip of the iceberg. For some of us, the iceberg melted awhile back.

On average, none of the teens were getting enough vitamin D. Whites had the highest levels, blacks had the lowest levels and Mexican-Americans had levels in between.

No kidding. Why would that be? Think about the results above and how they makes complete sense based on ancestry and the evolutionary history of all. humans.

Experts say there are many questions that still need to be answered about vitamin D, including how much people need.

"As time goes on, we're getting a better idea of what we need and how it's functioning in our bodies," said Adrian Gombart, a vitamin D researcher at Oregon State University.

Some of us already knew it. Long ago. Translation of the "expert" opinion above: "Give us more research money."

The thing that drives me absolutely crazy about the news report is that they suggest people are deficient because of their food, particularly a lack of milk. OK, a crap diet will make you burn through your vitamin D stores faster, but no one these days could get sufficient amounts from food. Especially not the lowfat milk with, at most, 100 IUs of vitamin D3 in a cup. !? Probably the only people who ever got sufficient amounts solely from food were the Inuit, who lived in the far north, had dark skin, and and ate a very very high fat diet (vitamin D is fat soluble)! Duh!

Don't wait for next of a gazillion "studies" to "prove" it, folks. The power of vitamin D was documented scientifically by Weston Price in freaking 1939, not to mention tons of other publications at this point, and already makes complete sense from the standpoint of evolutionary logic. You make up to 7500 units by sitting in the sun for ten minutes. So the government increases recommended levels by 200 IUs to 400 IUs and tells them to drink more lowfat milk. It's absurd. It boggles the mind.

Get your cheap vitamin D test today and contribute 5 minutes of your time to a much more widespread study, the DAction study, to find out whether you are deficient, and start. freaking. supplementing. By sun or by mouth. It's not a controlled trial but they are collecting epidemologic data pre- and post- test. Presumably they'll be able to uncover strong associations with health improvements post-supplementing.

If you have access to free tests via your health insurance, get the 25 hydroxyvitamin D test. Not the 1, 25 dihydroxyvitamin D test. 25% of physicians order the wrong test.

Weight Loss Update (II)

I'm not so sure I should call these posts weight loss updates, since it's fat loss I'm trying to achieve. Nevertheless.

I posted about 2 months ago on my progress. At that time I'd lost 14.5 pounds total. I've now lost 18 pounds and have reduced by body fat percentage to 30% (a reduction of16% total fat from my original body fat percentage, which was 36%). My goal is to get down to approximately 18-20% body fat, which means a target weight loss of 18-22 more pounds, but that's as yet uncertain. You're simply not sure what your weight should be unless you're occasionally re-measuring body fat.

I'm pleased with these results although I seem to be achieving them more slowly than hoped. I'm not sure whether I'll make it to my target weight loss before the wedding or not, but if I don't, that's fine. I'm happy with the progress I'm making. Originally, I thought I only needed to lose about 25 pounds. From my starting weight, and based on this post regarding ideal body fat percentage and changing perceptions of obesity in our culture, I honestly now feel that an ideal weight loss for me, from my starting point, is closer to 40 pounds total. And I'm nearly halfway there.

My current regime consists of a fast 1-2 times weekly, once on Wednesday and the other on Saturday or Sunday. I'm going to start kicking those fasts from 24 hour fasts to 36 hour fasts, and making sure I do them twice weekly (rather than just once). I expect that this will dramatically improve my insulin sensitivity, as starting fasts about 2 months ago did before.

Today is a fast day. I won't eat today. This afternoon, I walked for 45 minutes up several hundred feet in altitude, interspersed with sprints. I've always detested running but I love these sprints. I feel afterward as if I've had a full body workout. As for what I eat, I no longer obsess too much about carbohydrate from fruit or milk, though I still avoid bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice and probably will largely avoid these things for the rest of my life. My guess is that my daily carbohydrate intake is below 60 grams. Type II diabetes runs strongly in my family -- and none of my family members were obese when it set on. I don't want to get it and I'm quite confident now that I never will. I'm pretty sure that if I get my vitamin D levels up and keep them there my risk of cancer decreases dramatically, too. That's an enormous relief, since my mother came down with three cancers around age 25 and many other people in my family have cancers as well. It doesn't mean I'll never come down with cancer. But I'm dramatically decreasing the chances. It's very empowering to be able to take action and release yourself from that kind of fear.

I also ordered a blood glucose meter, which I'm looking forward to using. I'll make sure to report back on serum vitamin D levels, glucose levels, and possibly a lipid profile when I get those done. Too bad I don't have numbers from last year before I started all this. I would imagine dramatic improvements.

Post-workout, I usually lay in the sun for 40 minutes -- 20 each side. Feels great. Though I'm fair and this is high altitude (albeit winter) I've had no problems yet. It will be interesting to see how this affects my serum vitamin D levels in addition to supplementation.

Get a Cheap Vitamin D Test

I've had precious little time for blogging, either here or on FA/RM, due to working three part-time jobs and planning a wedding. That is something I plan to remedy in time.

In the meantime, here is a "public service announcement" I sent out as an email to loved ones this AM. This is long but worth it. You could literally add years to your life.

Most Americans are deficient in vitamin D. If you want to know just how outdated the government's "RDA" levels are, consider that "RDA" dates back to the WWII rationing period. Most people in the northern hemisphere probably need to have intake of around 2000 IU daily in the winter and possibly up to 7500 IU daily, depending on skin tone, age, etc. The FDA recently changed the recommended intake levels from 200 IUs to 400 IUs. Wow, how good of them.

Unfortunately, many sunscreens on the market only block UVB that causes burns, but this is the wavelength which your body uses to make vitamin D that protects you against cancer. (Don't trust the manufacturer's assertions. Check for the chemicals that really protect against UVA if you insist on using sunscreen: titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, avobenzone (Parsol 1789), Mexoryl SX (Tinosorb). If your sunscreen is just a UVB blocker, it doesn't block the UVA that causes cancer. Translation: thanks to a sunscreen that helps you sit out in the sun all day long without burning, you're getting a massive exposure of cancer-inducing UVA without the protection of melanin or vitamin D produced from UVB. Think about how unnatural this is from an evolutionary standpoint. You would naturally reduce your exposure to sun to avoid burning, but what exposure you would get would be beneficial. Further, consider natural populations that live in very northern latitudes with high skin melanin to begin with: e.g. the Inuit. These are people who should be very vitamin D3 deficient. Where did they get their vitamin D? They traditionally got high levels of vitamin D3 in their food.

Vitamin D is not just about rickets. Yes, it is fat soluble, but warnings of fat-soluble vitamin toxicity are grossly overstated. You might get there if you eat nothing but liver for a week. Further, the high grain diet recommended by the USDA's food pyramid will make you burn through your vitamin D (and vitamin C) stores at a faster rate. The result? Most Americans are deficient. They have enough vitamin D to prevent rickets, but not heart disease, cancer, etc.

Vitamin D is an incredibly important hormone (not really a vitamin) that's crucial to not only bone health but innate immunity and cardiovascular disease prevention and reversal. Get your levels up far enough and you virtually eliminate your risk of getting cancer. Not just skin cancer, all cancer.

Sound crazy? It is. Sound too good to be true? It's not. One of my favorite bloggers said it once very eloquently: humans are robust and healthy, just like any other living organism, when they occupy the right ecological niche. How could it be otherwise? Neither our indoor lifestyle nor our modern agricultural diet -- which bears no resemblance whatsoever to what our paleolithic ancestors would have eaten -- helps us occupy this niche. There's no doubt we've begun to evolutionarily adapt to grains and legumes, but not enough. The question is whether you want to be part of evolution going forward and "do your part" for future generations of the human race, or whether you want to do your part for you and eat the best diet you can for the genes you already have.

See more on vitamin D and its association to a wide variety of diseases that we think are normal, genetic, or non-preventable here, here, here, and here. The data will blow you away. Yes, it's correlation, not the causation that can be proved with a controlled trial. But the data become more convincing when you consider that healthy hunter gatherer cultures eating a more paleolithic-type diet (meat, veg, nuts, fruits, starchy tubers, NO non-sprouted grains NOR non-sprouted legumes) and getting adequate vitamin D intake do not get diseases of civilization such as cancer. It's been documented for 100 years or more. And the argument that they didn't live long enough to develop these diseases has been blown out of the water.

OK, off the soapbox. But I only preach because I care. Here's what you can do for yourself:

GrassrootsHealth is an independent non-profit organization offering vitamin D tests for only $30 per person, which is less than half the cost of the test if you order directly. In exchange for getting a cheap test, you offer some basic health information and can continue the twice yearly tests for 5 years if you like. The organizers of the study hope to get data on millions of individuals over a five year period. This is a great opportunity to see whether you have adequate vitamin D levels, either from your diet (unlikely unless you are supplementing with 15 times the level recommended by "the authorities", as I do) or from sun exposure. If you haven't gotten tested, you really don't know whether you're deficient in vitamin D or not. Over 50% of Americans are deficient even by government standards (which are themselves a bit too low. 40 ng/mL is a bit too low, get it above 50 or ideally to 80).

Those of you with health coverage could probably get this test for free, but it's great to be able to just do a blood spot test and not have to leave your house. Furthermore, you'll be providing valuable information from an epidemiological standpoint (i.e. what is your current level of D, how does that correlate with health status, and will your health status change by ameliorating your vitamin D3 levels as tracked over 5 years?) in order to conclusively prove that the status quo of our healthcare system is woefully outdated.

Treatment of these diseases is wonderful and many of my friends and family have had their lives saved by chemo, etc. so my statements shouldn't be taken as any sort of slight to those of you working in the healthcare industry. But the fact is that we can prevent the vast majority of cases of these diseases, and if that would happen then most of the pharma/medical research industry could move on to a more worthy goal: studying disease that is truly not preventable by any means... or helping us all live 120 years or longer. I'd like to see that day -- rather than endless fruitless research comparing the sick to the sicker and trying to "prove" the health "benefits" of a modern lifestyle (lowfat, indoor, etc.) we haven't had for 99% of our evolutionary history.

Here's the link to sign up for the DAction study. Assuming your change your vitamin D intake as necessary based on the results of the test, it could be the most important thing you actually do for your health, ever. I've just signed up for a one-time test of $30. I'll probably continue my participation for at least a year after this.

Just FYI, if you live in NY state, I am sorry to inform you that your nanny state government has decided on your "behalf" that you shouldn't be able to have access to a reduced price vitamin D test. Presumably, they're afraid you will irrevocably damage yourself with a minute pin prick to draw blood. Hard to say what their reasoning (or lack thereof) is but this is pretty much par for the course for NY state.

Rather than get too political (I could go on and on but I won't), once again, residents of NY state lose out. Most residents come in at under 25 ng/mL due to the low level of sunshine. Get this test some other way, folks. Better yet, consider moving to another state. I miss these things about NY: my family, farmer's markets, lush summer vegetation and higher humidity, lakes, and locally grown apples. But life is definitely better out west. Especially considering 300/365 days of full sun yearly as opposed to nearly the exact opposite for upstate NY where I lived most of my life. I just laid out in my swimsuit for 1 hour and a got a (hopefully) good dose of vitamin D. I feel great.

By the way, I got a whopper of a cold three weeks ago despite supplementing with 15 times the level of vitamin D recommended by the authorities and having a pretty tight, grain-free diet. It's going to be really interesting to see what my serum levels of vitamin D are. I suspect years of life in upstate NY, and nearly 33 years of slamming myself with white flour and sugar, has resulted in less than optimal vitamin D levels, even with nearly a year of supplementation. I'll keep you posted.

I'm a Red Pen!

Yikes! From Gus. Well, I suppose as a professor this comes naturally.

You Are a Red Pen

You have an eagle eye for detail, and this often means you end up finding mistakes in people's work. You may seem quick to criticize or correct, but you think accuracy and truth is important. You like to be involved in every project. You feel like you put the polishing touch on things. You would make a good editor, detective, or accountant. When facts matter, you're the person to call on.

What Office Supply Are You?

The Stiff Inflammatory Brush of Diet

From Richard Nikoley of Free the Animal, a prime source of health information, we find this fascinating introduction from heart surgeon Dr. Lundell:

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

What is this inflammatory process? What causes it? Go find out.

Plastic Bags Illegal

Well, folks, it was just a matter of time. Westport, CT has banned the use of plastic bags by retailers. You won't be able to buy one even if the store wanted to sell them. What is worse is that there was no opposition to this. The Thinking Mother has the story.

Besides all that is wrong politically with this action, I share the author's annoyance on a practical level. It's another regulation invented by dolts that isn't actually going to reduce plastic bag usage until plastic bags themselves are banned everywhere (sheesh, why am I giving these people ideas?):

As I said in my other blog post our family reuses all the plastic bags we receive. We also decline use of bags in some stores. If I don’t have those bags to reuse I will have to start buying new factory made plastic bags to use as trash bags, bags to give stuff away in (such as for charity donations) and for general use (holding wet bathing suits in a beach tote bag). If consumers like me stop reusing plastic bags and start buying new plastic bags made in factories (such as by Glad company) then the use of plastic bags has not been reduced it has just been displaced as another cost to the consumer rather than a cost to the store.

Precisely. And that is why the plastic bag nutsos won't stop here with their madness.

I used practically every plastic bag I could get my hands on for picking up dog doo when I lived in a city. And I rarely threw a plastic bag in the trash without using it for something else first. In fact, I didn't have nearly enough plastic bags and sometimes had to buy them. I still find them extraordinarily useful for wastecan liners in my house even though I don't pick up my dog's poop anymore (we live in the middle of nowhere and the waste is greatly reduced with raw feeding). Why should I buy them when I can get them for free at the store if a store is willing to give them away as a courtesy? If they are banned for carryout in stores, then I'll have to buy them off the shelf -- until those are banned, too. Which is the goal, of course.

Not everyone shares my view. A highly educated and successful plastics executive recently told me that it was "counterproductive" to wrap up trash and throw it in a landfill. I didn't bother to inform him that no matter what trash he throws in his bin, it doesn't matter one iota whether it is wrapped up in plastic or not because it is pretty much gone from the nutrient cycle forever. This is a person with three cars and a gynormous mansion and he is worried about throwing away plastic bags. I don't have a problem with his lifestyle, but honestly -- do these people think?

This plastic bag brouhaha bugs me to no end. First, plastic bags make up a miniscule portion of landfill waste (though I'm not concerned about a lot of what goes into landfills). Something like 3% or less. If you are going to get worked up over a few plastic bags, just kill yourself right now and get it over with because your impact on the planet is far greater than a few puny plastic bags.

There are rational environmental concerns, I think. For example, it's disturbing to me that we dump valuable nutrients in the ocean -- nutrients that should be going back into our food. That's not sustainable -- defined as a practice that can be carried out indefinitely without adverse consequences, directly or indirectly, on human health. (But that should be rationally dealt with by establishing private property rights in the ocean.) But my rational environmental concerns don't include plastic bags going into landfills. The plastic was originally under the earth's crust. I could care less whether it now sits in a landfill.

Start infringing on some small right like the right to buy a plastic bag. Once people accept that you can go on to violate other rights in the name of the planet, like the right to eat meat. Think I'm kidding?

The madness needs to stop. "Carbon footprint" is a phrase that just needs to be wiped from the human vocabulary, in my not so humble opinion.

CUTE!!

I have no idea how they got this footage, but it's adorable. Watch to the end!

BPA, Metabolic Syndrome and Diabetes

Hello, readers. I thought I should let you know about two important recent papers published just a few months ago.

In short, it appears that small amounts of BPA in an experimental study on human fat tissue to suppress a key hormone (adiponectin) regulating insulin sensitivity and thus metabolic syndrome and diabetes. The second study is observational, but also shows that those with increased levels of BPA in their bodies have higher rates of diabetes -- this second group reports statistics as odds ratios, which I must say I've never liked, but the error bars are not overlapping on the diabetic/nondiabetic group. Almost every disease state measured has higher levels of urinary BPA as opposed to the "control" group.

There are a ton of studies already on rats showing insulin resistance as an effect of BPA. All along people have said, "Well, rats aren't humans." This is true, but now we have these two human studies, one experimental and one observational supporting this hypothesis of a link between BPA and insulin disorders.

Correlation is not causation as far as the second study is concerned, but it appears as if the mechanisms are known for this and this chemical, even in tiny microgram amounts, is as potent as a steroid hormone in human studies. Very disturbing. I think we need another randomized observational study that can compare BPA levels over a longer time period. I think we need some more studies to clinch this, but in my estimation, these two studies and many rat studies are ample reason for anyone with possible insulin issues, and perhaps even people who don't, to attempt to avoid BPA (canned goods, most plastic containers).

I am not saying BPA should be banned any more than I think sugar should be banned. And I obviously don't believe BPA is solely responsible for current record high levels of Type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity. I think wheat, sugar, vegetable oils, BPA, other endocrine disruptors, and god knows what else in our modern diet and lifestyle combine to create a potent brew that increasing numbers of people simply can't handle as their individual threshholds are tipped.

Needless to say, I think the precautionary principle is appropriate when it comes to our food and how it is prepared. It is not wise to deviate from a natural course until we learn more. We are unwittingly creating problems only to see them decades later. Of course, it goes without saying the government should not be involved in any of this dietary stuff and have too often made all the wrong answers absolute dogma. I do not agree with the idea that BPA should be regulated, but there are two problems here. First are the people that assume that because the FDA might ban it, it must be safe because whatever government does is to be distrusted. Second are the people that assume that the government actually has their back when it comes to "public health" decisions, and whatever is on a grocery shelf or sold at the pharmacy is OK. Yeah right.

Caveat emptor!

Vitamin K2 Deficiency

Stephan hits it out of the ballpark once again.

Unfortunately, too many people in our society suffer from this vitamin deficiency in early life and the effects are irreversible. Get your short course in vitamin K2 by reading Stephan's post. Get the long course by reading Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

If I ever have children they won't suffer the same fate as I did -- painful and expensive surgeries and orthodontics (I've had eight teeth removed, my mouth is so small).

Pregnant ladies, eat your liver and/or dairy products from grass-fed cows. Please don't listen to the conventional medical/nutritional establishment on fat soluble vitamin toxicity -- or their ignorant nonsense about the equivalence of all dairy. If you are worried about pathogens, heat some raw milk. Vitamin K2 will survive the pasteurization process, I believe, but grocery store milk is all deficient in this crucial vitamin.

Your children will thank you. They will grow up with a nice broad face and beautiful straight teeth -- and you will avoid thousands of dollars in medical costs, as if the benefits to your children aren't enough!

Engaged!

Hi everyone -- Robb proposed marriage to me yesterday, and I accepted!

Now which one of you wants to move to CO and become my personal trainer to get me in shape for wedding time? :)

One Thing I Love About Colorado

Today, in mid-January, it's about 58 F outside. Tomorrow there could be a blizzard, but I've been doing reading work outside in a tank top and shorts today. Perhaps it's the intensity of the sun at high altitude (@ 8400 ft.), but I'm not really that chilly.

Going back outside now!

The Nature of Collectivism

My last post was about an inspiring vision of individuality and freedom. In reading these comments on Richard Nikoley's post, one of the commenters linked to these incredible pictures of the inauguration.

Here is a sample:


While I don't believe pictures are arguments, they can certainly be symbolic. As a beekeeper, I see a perfect visual analogy of collectivism in that picture. That is exactly what my bees look like from above when I open the hive.

This picture symbolizes everything that is wrong with society today as we open up the American hive and look down, both physically and philosophically, from above. We see a herd mentality of duty to the collective and ultimately, a society of sacrifice for the group or the leader for "the common good". While individual bees benefit from such a social arrangement of perceived sacrifice due to their genetics and their means of survival, humans do not.

As Richard said:

That, my friends, is the essence of individualism, and there could be no greater contrast between that individualism and those old, tired, collectivist ideas straight from the zookeeper's manual -- hauled out and polished up for those ignorant of the failures of history -- delivered by the new Zookeeper-in-Chief, himself.

Indeed. And in such troubling times, I prefer to focus on a positive vision of individualism instead.

Our True Nature

Our true nature is not to be zoo animals -- of the physical or mental sort.

I got this video from Richard Nikoley of Free the Animal. Richard has some great comments on the inauguration today, too. Check it out.

As for this video: wow. Just... wow. Looks like a blast. Given my recent weight loss and my relative athleticism as a teen, maybe it's really possible if I work up to it.



Strong. Happy. Healthy. Free.

Weight Loss Update

I haven't posted about my weight loss efforts in a long time. In fact I haven't posted anything in a long time! But today I couldn't resist posting an update, in case anyone is still reading this thing. :)

I haven't posted because there was pretty much no weight loss there for awhile! But today, I stepped on the scale, and lo and behold, I was under 150 for the first time in 1.5 years. That was pretty exciting!

I lost roughly 7.5 pounds pretty effortlessly incorporating low carb dieting of the Protein Power type this past summer. My weight loss seemed to stall a few months later. I lost a few more pounds, but I'd been pretty much stationary since October. According to Dr. Eades, this often happens with smaller people. Not only do they have to count carbs, they have to watch intake, especially if they're going too high on cheese or nuts.

I'm happy to report that I've now lost a total of 14 pounds, 5 of it in the past several weeks. YAY ME! How did I do it?

First, not by counting or watching anything. :)

To be honest one of the things I did was that I stopped focusing on carbohydrate so much. Sorry low carbers, I really like my milk! My diet is almost identical to before except I don't worry about any extra carbs I'm ingesting from fruit or milk. I have as much as I want -- which usually isn't more than 1 glass milk and one piece of fruit daily. It's true that your body doesn't need carbohydrate in foods but I like those foods.

Still, my carbohydrate intake is really low, still 50 or fewer grams daily compared to before at around 20-30 grams daily. Most of the time I have berries instead of apples or such, because those are lower in sugar. I never eat bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, or anything like that. At least not for now. I'm not categorically opposed to potatoes or rice but I'm convinced wheat is probably a bad idea, at least for me. It makes me too hungry, and if I can't be thin and satisfied eating bread, I can certainly live without it. I've also learned a lot about the molecular biology of wheat that scares me. In fact, giving up bread has not been a sacrifice at all. Only the first week or two of giving up bread was difficult. I feel much better this way. Now I mop up the egg yolk with bacon instead of bread.

But that's not all I did -- obviously I began eating more calories from carbohydrate so I figured I had to try a different strategy besides simply "low carb". I was confident I wouldn't really gain weight but I still wanted to lose. So, I started incorporating intermittent fasting about a month ago. Richard has written a great deal on this topic, it's my primary source of information on IF. That's how I dropped over 5 pounds. I've lost 2 pounds just in the past week by doing two fasts, 24 hours each. I didn't even exercise. However, the previous week I did several high intensity workouts during a fast, of the type seen here.



I have one of those kettlebell things. Yes, they're fun!

Intermittent fasting is not really a method of caloric restriction because I do eat like a horse the day afterward, and I don't worry about that. In fact, so long as I'm avoiding certain foods I don't limit my intake or deprive myself at all. I eat as much as I want of any food so long as it doesn't have starch, sugar, or vegetable oils. Eventually at my goal I may add in some more starch.

Fasting appears to trigger growth hormone which helps with weight loss. And of course, when you are fasting that long your body has to release fat to use as fuel to turn protein into glucose to keep your body running. Your body definitely gets used to making its own fuel. But what abot muscle loss from the protein being burnt? In the long run, though, you don't lose muscle because of the release of growth hormone. That's why our paleolithic ancestors could still hunt down prey after a day or two of fasting, without weakness. And if you're doing the type of workouts that build muscle, you definitely aren't losing muscle. You're gaining muscle. Pretty cool, huh? More than ever, I'm learning that weight loss and gain is a hormonal issue, not calories in/calories out. Those hormones are drastically altered by diet and lifestyle. In my case, my diet was never all that terrible. I've never been into sugar very much. However, I never would have been able to carry out a 24 hour fast just a year ago because I ate a lot of starch that affected my insulin and blood glucose levels. It would have been torture. Now, because of what I'm eating, it's almost imperceptible.

Perhaps by this summer I will post some pictures of myself. I'm honestly not sure what my target weight is going to be. It's going to depend on a constant re-evaluation of my body fat. I would estimate I have at least 20 more pounds to lose, but I'm expecting much leaner body composition than I've ever had in my lifetime, even as a teenager doing hours of cardio in the pool each day, so the muscle gain might mean less actual weight loss in poundage.

Thanks to all those resources on the right hand side who have educated me about diet and physiology. I really owe them all, including commenters Cheerwino, B. Dietz, and Thrutch, a debt of gratitude for mentioning phrases I'd never heard of, like "insulin resistance". The conventional wisdom has failed so many people. I'm embarrassed that as a biologist I never discovered these things before. It really speaks to the detrimental effect of conventionl wisdom.

I'm spreading the news.

What. An. Idiot.

Perhaps the most infamous Bush quote of all time: "I've had to abandon free market principles to save the free market."

What can I say? At least conservatives (and liberals!) can't say they weren't told that Bush was actually a socialist.

The Physics of Santa Claus

Merry Christmas, everyone! If you haven't seen it before, I bring you the hilarious piece The Physics of Santa Claus!

No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen. (As a fungal taxonomist I can tell you that there are far more than 300k organisms to be described and even roughly 1-2 mammals per year keep on being discovered, so it most certainly does not rule out the discovery of flying reindeer!--MH)

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, and assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimnye, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course we know to be false but for the purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking aabout .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 punds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (refer to point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal load, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entereing the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per SECOND, EACH! In short, hey will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousanths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centripetal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead by now.