Month: June 2012

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts7 Comments

 

  • Are the Boston Red Sox malnourished? Paul Jaminet looks at the connection between poor health of the Boston Red Sox and the dietary advice they were given.
  • Cognitive benefits of chewing gum. “Chewing gum was associated with greater alertness and a more positive mood. Reaction times were quicker in the gum condition, and this effect became bigger as the task became more difficult.”
  • Dave Asprey and Quantified Self. “He claims to have jacked up his IQ by 40 points.”
  • “Why is this country called China in English?” I asked a Tsinghua student. “It was a source of china,” she said. She was more right than she could have known. The world’s oldest pottery has been found in China. (Via Melissa McEwen.) Given this head start, it’s no surprise that for a long time China had a monopoly on really hard pottery, called bone china or porcelain. It was the only source of this china.

How Low Blood Sugar is Too Low? New Evidence

Seth Roberts17 Comments

Some people avoid all carbs (that is, all bread, pasta, rice, etc.). Others advocate “safe starches”. No doubt wheat can be dangerous — witness celiac disease (associated with a genetic difference). But I have noticed clear improvements in brain function (measured by arithmetic speed or something similar) after eating something sweet, such as pudding. None of this, unfortunately, helps answer the question: how low blood sugar is too low?

A new study makes more plausible the idea that really low levels of carbs may be bad for you:

A nested case-control study data set was generated from the cohort-study data set (n = 4140 type 2 diabetic outpatients) by sampling controls from the risk sets. Cases (n = 427) were compared with an equal number of controls chosen from those members of the cohort who were at risk for the same follow-up time of the case, matched for age (±3 years), sex, body mass index (BMI) (±2 kg m(-2)), duration of diabetes (±5 years), and Charlson’s Comorbidity Score (CCS) (±1). The main predefined analysis was the comparison of cases and controls for proportion of patients with each HbA1c class (<6.5%, 6.5-7.4%, 7.5-8.4% and ≥8.5%). During a mean follow-up of 5.7 ± 3.5 years, 427 deaths were recorded. The lowest risk of death was observed in the HbA1c 6.5-7.4% category; a lower HbA1c was associated with a non-significant trend towards a higher risk. The risk associated with a low (<6.5%) HbA1c was significantly greater in patients who were insulin-treated than in the rest of the sample.

The study is saying that diabetic patients in the HbA1c 6.5-7.4% category do not improve their health when given insulin that lowers their blood sugar even more. Their health may get worse.

The Power of Blog (Fermented Foods Division)

Seth Roberts3 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted a short note about Yakult, a probiotic dairy drink popular in Asia. Yesterday, I came across someone who had read that note. He wrote about it in a post categorized as Learning Koanic Soul.

To test whether I did indeed now possess Melonhead powers, I attempted to manifest the thing I wanted most, and had been striving to attain the longest: a cure for the adverse side effects of the Accutane I’d taken 8 years ago.

Here’s a brief list of the side effects I suffered:

  • chronic diarrhea
  • chronic fatigue
  • inability to eat almost every food, including pills
  • insomnia
  • additional symptoms, increasing exponentially when I eat forbidden foods or miss sleep

Over the last 8 years I’d painstakingly developed a coping regimen that worked in theory, as long as I did it perfectly. But it was so strict that holding down a job or traveling were almost impractical. And any error meant days if not weeks of down time. I rarely achieved better than than 50% functionality. And my diet was so limited that I ate only one meal continuously – lean steamed meat with rice, scallops and shrimp.

All attempts at a cure had failed, and not only failed, but proven that I couldn’t even digest the pills that might make me better. Instead, the difficulty of digesting the pills induced a failure cascade, a reinforcing feedback loop of insomnia, stress, fatigue and diarrhea. After years of fighting this illness, I had learned a great deal but was running out of things to try.

So, for my first manifestation attempt, I decided to demand an INSTANT cure.

Not a regimen for coping with symptoms… Actual, immediate, damage reversal. . . .The experiment began as I wrapped up a Skype conversation with a Melonhead. He’d just finished describing his “powers” to me. I got the idea for the experiment, and told him what I’d try to manifest. Immediately I experienced a boost in energy – I’d been feeling sick. I was shocked – it appeared to be already working.

I finished talking to the Melonhead, and flicked open my RSS reader while deciding what to do next. Up popped an article by Seth Roberts mentioning the GI healing properties of Yakult, a fermented yoghurt drink common in Asia. Accompanied with link to scientific paper and news report.

This startled me, because I’d been planning to try fermenting my own yoghurt next, although I had low expectations for success. I was planning on getting a yoghurt making machine, yada yada. I began reading with interest. Could this be the sign I’d requested?

As I finished reading, my girlfriend arrived home. I told her I wanted to buy some of this “Yakult” stuff tomorrow, figuring the grocery stores were closed tonight. She replied that she had some in the refrigerator.

This got my attention. I’d requested an instant cure… and the cure, if it was one, had been sitting IN MY REFRIGERATOR before I requested it.

The main problem was the massive sugar content of Yakult. I knew that I had sugar malabsorption issues – I can’t eat fruit. There was an excellent chance that if I tried the Yakult, I would become sick for at least 3 days, and endure excruciating pain. For the record, torture by several consecutive days of gut cramps is one of the few things I am afraid of, being a subset of torture in general. Nevertheless, I elected to drink two (disgustingly sweet) Yakult bottles that night.

Over the next couple of days I continued to ramp up my Yakult dosage. My body rebelled some at the radical change, but it also showed signs of improvement. The expected disaster failed to materialize.

Day two was the worst. I felt as if I might be becoming genuinely sick. Given the amount I’d drunk, this meant a solid three days of agony were kicking off. That night I endured some physical pain, but I was also strangely energized, so that I had the mental reserves to face it out. Normally the illness saps all capacity for resistance.

That night I received a “message” (or had a thought, whichever you prefer) that “it would take three days.” Sure enough, on day 3 I knew was better, significantly so, instead of worse. There could be no further doubt that it was working. For me, something had finally changed.

Note that I would expect a full gut healing to take place over 3-6 months. It’s not simply a matter of fixing diet or finding the right pill, but 1. rebuilding bacterial colonies and 2. regrowing and healing intestinal lining damaged or eaten away by inflammation and acidity. While these results are not instant, they are screamingly fast in GI terms.

Impressed by this initial success, over the next few days I began to let manifestation guide my behavior intuitively, rather than using logic to determine my actions. An image of a key supplement appeared in my head – I went and bought it at the precise store I remembered seeing it. When I arrived I discovered it was on sale: 2 for 1.

At the grocery store, I simply wandered, letting manifestation dictate my purchases. I grew disgusted with the excessive sweetness of Yakult: lo and behold, I found a bulk yoghurt with a lower sugar content. I tested a few key supplements I had lying around, and found I could now digest pills. So I started taking everything I’d stored up but been unable to use. This resulted in a major improvement. At the same time, I gradually began eating a more diverse collection of foods, letting intuition guide me. No disaster ensued.

Once it was clear that I was cured, I wanted to know my new limits. And I didn’t intend to wait 6 months to find out. Among other things, I’ve tested a half block of cheese (lactose and fat intolerance), modest amounts of fruit (fructose and insoluble fiber intolerance), and the finisher, a greasy-spoon restaurant meal.

None of these could induce a return of the diarrhea that has plagued me for the last 8 years. However, the first and third did make me tired and give me gas for a couple of days. So I’m not invincible. The former was probably a matter of trying too much fat too soon (I have liver damage impairing fat digestion), and the latter was simply unfit for human consumption.

All this took about two weeks to transpire, from June 15 to June 28 [2012], and brings us to the present. I am eating a varied and delicious diet, and enjoying good energy and good health. My 8 year torment is at an end.

Conclusion: His girlfriend is Asian, he isn’t. More seriously, it really does show the power of fermented foods, in this case Yakult and yogurt.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Thanks to Bryan Castañeda and Alex Blackwood.

Disappointing Visit to Apple Store

Seth Roberts5 Comments

One of my friends loves her Ipad so I decided to get one. On the same day I started looking at options Microsoft announced their tablet, the Surface. It sounded good. I decided to do more research.

I went to the Apple Store in Palo Alto. The main things I will do with my Ipad are read books and magazines and watch movies. I asked to see a movie on “the new Ipad”. No movies were available, so I watched a trailer for Brave. It was not a good experience. Lots of glare. How much worse could the Surface be? I wondered.

I was curious about the new naming policy. No “Ipad 3″, just “the new Ipad”. “Why isn’t this called the Ipad 3?” I asked an employee. “Company policy,” he said. “What’s the reason for the policy?” I asked. “They don’t tell us that,” he said.

I left the store thinking I would wait for the Surface. Later that day I had lunch with a friend, Steve Omohundro, who (with colleagues) long ago predicted the tablet computer and won a design competition (possibly sponsored by Apple) for doing so. He and his colleagues gave a talk about it and Steve Jobs was in the audience. I forgot to ask him what he thinks of the Ipad and the Surface.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Thanks to David Cramer.

Make Yourself Healthy Article by Me at Boing Boing

Seth Roberts6 Comments

An article by me about how a woman figured out she had gluten intolerance is on Boing Boing today. I first learned about the story through a comment this blog. Thanks, Ginna!

If you know of a case where someone (such as you) improved their health through science (= looking at data, experimentation, collecting data — the opposite of trusting experts) please let me know. In the gluten intolerance story, the experimentation and data collection were as simple as trying a gluten-free diet and learning its effect on (a) how you feel and (b) a kidney function score.

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz

Seth Roberts6 Comments

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz was published two weeks and I got a copy from the publisher. It has a few conceptual chapters (“fermentation as a coevolutionary force”, health benefits, small business) but most of it is DIY, how to ferment X, Y, and Z. Unlike a set of recipes, he includes background with each food so the result is a cross between an encyclopedia and a cookbook. There are also several pages of color photographs, cute marginal drawings, and excellent lists of references and sources. It covers lots of stuff I rarely see. For example, there is one page on fermenting eggs. When I’m in China, I eat lots of fermented eggs. The book doesn’t mention the controversy in China about heavy metals in the fermented eggs.

The author’s enthusiasm is contagious and I’m sure the book will encourage me to ferment more stuff. Nowadays I just make yogurt, kefir, and kombucha — not even sauerkraut. I once got a book called something like The Book of Yogurt that consisted of 30 different yogurt recipes — which differed from each other by only about 5%. Page after page the same with only minor differences. Talk about cut and paste! I got rid of it (“this is useless!”) but now I wish I had saved it because it was so funny.

Which is only to say that food writing is either incredibly difficult or incredibly awful. I used to subscribe to Saveur. Some of their recipes were very good. The writing was awful, however — like something from a tourist guide. Please, don’t tell me how beautiful the country, how friendly the cook, or how tasty the food! Katz does better than that, especially when he is describing what he has actually done. But about half of the book reminds me of my first piece of extended writing — a “state report” about Maine that I did when I was in fifth grade. I went to several encyclopedias and copied the interesting stuff. Katz has gone to quite a few books and copied the interesting stuff.

In at least one case, he has copied too much. I have made yogurt hundreds of times. Only in the beginning did I do something like what practically everyone in America, including Katz, advocates: heat the milk up, let it cool, put in the culture. Now I just take the milk from the refrigerator, put in a tiny amount of culture, surround the milk with hot water (using a Chinese yogurt-making machine that keeps the water warm), and wait. So much easier. The final product is better (smoother, thicker) than the old hard way, especially when I learned that tiny amounts of culture work better than large amounts. “In my experience, cultures from commercial yogurts never maintain their viability beyond a few generations,” Katz writes. My experience is different: I’ve never had a problem using them.

In contrast to Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, The Art of Fermentation is more personal, more hands-on, and less scientific, all of which are improvements, in my opinion. It is also more opinionated, which since the opinions are commonplace, is bad. “I too love the beer they are usually thinking of . . . However I define beer more broadly than the famous 1516 Bavarian beer purity law . . . I define beer as a fermented alcoholic beverage in which . . . ” At another point, to my surprise, he mentions Jane Jacobs and her theory that agriculture began in cities. “If Jacobs’s theory is correct, then fermentation practices must also have had urban roots,” writes Katz. This is not interesting. The small business chapter is interesting whenever Katz is telling the story of a small business and uninteresting the rest of the time (“Consistency is not necessarily important to the home experimentalist”).

Oh well. I am glad to have a book that will encourage me to ferment more stuff and from which I can learn a lot about fermentation. The book is obviously a labor of love and there are not many of those.

Effect of Niacin on Restless Legs Syndrome: The Importance of Dosage

Seth Roberts6 Comments

K. Thomas Packard, who works in the healthcare industry, recently studied the effect of niacin on his Restless Legs Syndrome. He had read how a megadose helped Dennis Mangan’s mother. He gave a talk about his results and posted at Genomera.

The niacin didn’t help him. However, the highest dose he tried was 500 mg/day. Mangan’s mom, who surely weighs less than Packard, took 1000 mg/day. He doesn’t explain why he thought a much lower dose would work. Perhaps he weighs twice as much as Mangan’s mom, so 500 mg/day, in terms of body weight, may have been only 25% of the dose that worked for her. It’s too bad he went to all that trouble and used a maximum dose that could easily have been too low.

Part of the study “hypothesis” (= idea to be tested?) was

The “medium” dose may generally be more effective, than both the “low” and “high” doses, in eliminating symptoms of RLS and avoiding side effects of niacin.

Why this might be true isn’t explained.

After Week 3, Packard wrote “The niacin was not working, so I abandoned the experiment on Wednesday. I went back to my original medication and am doing OK.” He says nothing about side effects.

Packard later found that his ferritin was low, apparently a side effect of this study. If his RLS persists after he improves his ferritin level, I hope he tries niacin again at better dosages.

No Mention of Fermented Foods in Article about Importance of Bacteria

Seth Roberts4 Comments

A new article in the New York Times by Carl Zimmer is about the importance of the bacteria inside of us. Several studies are described. Then it comes to the practical use of the knowledge. Here’s what we can do to improve our inner bacterial ecology:

To ward off dangerous skin pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus, for instance, Dr. Segre envisions applying a cream infused with nutrients [Treatment 1] for harmless skin bacteria to feed on. . . . Adding the bacteria directly may also help. Unfortunately, the science of so-called probiotics [Treatment 2] lags far behind their growth in sales. In 2011, people bought $28 billion of probiotic foods and supplements. . . A growing number of doctors are treating C. difficile with fecal transplants [Treatment 3]: Stool from a healthy donor is delivered like a suppository to an infected patient. The idea is that the good bacteria in the stool establish themselves in the gut and begin to compete with C. difficile. This year, researchers at the University of Alberta reviewed 124 fecal transplants and concluded that the procedure is safe and effective.

No mention of fermented foods. The obvious difference between fermented foods and Treatments 1-3, besides pleasure (fermented foods more pleasurable), is that Treatments 1-3 can be sold for high prices. Fermented foods cannot. (Except wine.) The omission is curious. Just because the people that Zimmer interviews have tunnel vision doesn’t mean that Zimmer must.