Yearly Archives: 2011 - Page 8

Around the Web; and Why Is Aspirin Toxic to Cats?

Posted by on April 9, 2011 31 comments

[1] Interesting posts this week: Melissa McEwen assures us: Robb Wolf is not Satan. Kurt Harris’s reader Tara makes the most persuasive case I’ve seen for grass-fed meat through pictures. Emily Deans compares eating disorders to addictions.

[2] Kurt Harris re-re-brands: Paleonu became PaNu became Paleo 2.0 becomes Archevore.com, archevore being a neologism for “one who eats of the essentials.”

Well, it’s more euphonious than “EM2vore,” for “one who eats of the evolutionary metabolic milieu.” A more descriptive name might have been “nontoxivore,” since Kurt’s primary theme is avoidance of “neolithic agents of disease – wheat, excess fructose and excess linoleic acid.”

It will be interesting to see where he’s taking this. Are Archevorean essentials the same as PaNu?

[3] Posts of the week: Chris Masterjohn posts always deserve special notice. On Tuesday he continued his important series investigating whether wheat causes leaky gut, which will trigger a few edits in the next edition of our book. I was asked about this last Saturday and said:

There’s no question that gluten causes problems in non-celiacs – that’s the main result of the Fasano paper Chris cites, and also of papers cited by Andrew Badenoch in a post I linked today. It’s just that leaky gut does not appear to be one of those problems.

It certainly doesn’t mean that wheat is safe to eat.

I may add that pathogens and other food toxins – even perhaps other wheat toxins besides gluten – can cause a leaky gut, providing a way for wheat toxins to enter the body. Moreover, some wheat toxins don’t even need a leaky gut to enter the body. As we discuss in the book (p 134), wheat germ agglutinin can cross barriers via transcytosis, enabling them to enter the body even if the intestinal barrier is intact. Finally, wheat toxins can damage the gut without entering the body at all. So there are many pathways through which wheat toxicity can matter.

Chris had another outstanding post on Friday, about fatty liver disease.

[4] Rosacea is an infection of the skin and vessels: That’s why it can be transmitted through facial skin grafts.

Source: Kanitakis J. Transmission of Rosacea from the Graft in Facial Allotransplantation. Am J Transplant. 2011 Mar 28. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/21443678.

[5] Special offer: The folks at Emerald Forest Xylitol noticed that we recommend their product and would like to give a special offer to PerfectHealthDiet.com readers. Use the coupon code FIRST to get 10% off all products at www.emeraldforestxylitol.com.

Also, Matt Willer of Emerald Forest Xylitol is looking for recipes that include Xylitol for use in his newsletter. If you have a recipe, send it to matt@xylitolusa.com.

[6] Animal photos: If you saw a grizzly charging straight toward you, would you stop to take this photo?

Photographer Alex Wypyszinski did in Yellowstone. The grizzly was chasing an injured bison, and the pair went right past him:

For the full story, see Grizzly versus Bison: the rest of the story (Drew Trafton, 10/29/10, KRTV, Great Falls, Montana). Hat tip Orrin Judd.

[7] Don’t hate the sun: From Britain comes the sad story of a 21-year-old who “hated the sun” and died of skin cancer at 21.

Dr. John Briffa has a summary of the relevant science.

[8] I couldn’t disagree more: Mike the Mad Biologist and Newt Gingrich are dead wrong in their prescription for research funding. We don’t need more concentrated funding, we need more distributed, decentralized funding that is patient-driven, not top-scientist driven.

Discovering cures can be cheap – if you’re looking in the right place. If you’re looking in the wrong direction, the cost of a cure may be infinite.

[9] I hate when that happens:

(Via Stephen Wangen)

[10] Are choline supplements toxic?: At the very beginning of the book (p 3) we state that “the perfect diet should … deliver … no excess nutrients for pathogens.”

Later in the book we give examples of nutrients that, in excess, primarily benefit pathogens: niacin (the primary vitamin for bacteria), iron (critical for metabolism of most pathogens, and a component of bacterial biofilms), and calcium (a component of bacterial biofilms). These are on our list of micronutrients we recommend not supplementing (beyond a multivitamin).

Two readers, Leonardo and Patricia (thank you both!), emailed us about a ScienceDaily article suggesting that choline, one of the micronutrients we most frequently recommend, should be added to this list:

When fed to mice, lecithin and choline were converted to a heart disease-forming product by the intestinal microbes, which promoted fatty plaque deposits to form within arteries (atherosclerosis); in humans, higher blood levels of choline and the heart disease forming microorganism products are strongly associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk.

The story didn’t have enough information, so I downloaded the paper. The paper notes that choline is metabolized by gut bacteria to a gas with a fishy odor called TMA, which is then oxidized in the liver to a compound called TMAO:

Briefly, initial catabolism of choline and other trimethylamine-containing species (for example, betaine) by intestinal microbes forms the gas trimethylamine (TMA), which is efficiently absorbed and rapidly metabolized by at least one member of the hepatic flavin monooxygenase (FMO) family of enzymes, FMO3, to form trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO).

They showed that (a) feeding phosphatidylcholine from egg yolk to mice led to increased blood levels of TMAO and that (b) in a separate study, people with atherosclerosis have elevated blood levels of TMAO, choline, and trimethylglycine.

Supplementing choline at 10 times normal levels to Apoe-knockout mice led to increased TMAO but not choline in blood:

Atherosclerosis-prone mice (C57BL/6J Apoe-/-) at time of weaning were placed on either normal chow diet (contains 0.08–0.09% total choline, wt/wt) or normal chow diet supplemented with intermediate (0.5%) or high amounts of additional choline (1.0%) or TMAO (0.12%)….

Analysis of plasma levels of choline and TMAO in each of the dietary arms showed nominal changes in plasma levels of choline, but significant increases of TMAO in mice receiving either choline or TMAO supplementation (Supplementary Fig. 10).

Serum TMAO levels were correlated with atherosclerotic plaque size and with macrophages turning into foam cells:

[A]ll dietary groups of mice revealed a significant positive correlation between plasma levels of TMAO and atherosclerotic plaque size (Fig. 3e and Supplementary Fig. 9b).

TMA (a gas with a fish odor) has to be converted in the liver to the toxic TMAO in order to produce these bigger atherosclerotic lesions. This conversion happened mainly in mice with low HDL:

Interestingly, a highly significant negative correlation with plasma high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels was noted in both male and female mice (Fig. 4b and Supplementary Fig. 12, middle row).

So if you’re an Apoe(-/-) mouse and eat ten times normal choline, if you have high HDL your arteries are safe but you smell fishy; if you have low HDL you smell fine but your arteries get injured.

What does this tell us about choline supplementation?

For humans with working ApoE alleles, I doubt we can infer anything yet.

For Apoe(-/-) mice fed ten times normal choline, I would suggest shooting for low HDL while dating, then high HDL after marriage.

Reference: Wang Z et al. Gut flora metabolism of phosphatidylcholine promotes cardiovascular disease. Nature, 2011; 472 (7341): 57 DOI: 10.1038/nature09922

[11] One-upping the standing desk: Jamie Scott has a walking desk:

[12] Why is aspirin toxic to cats?: In the book we mention that plant foods always contain toxins, but animal foods don’t – because in poisoning us, animals would poison themselves. As we point out in the book, Bruce Ames and Lois Gold estimate that over 99% of the toxins humans ingest come from plant foods – not industrial or environmental toxins.

One of the main functions of the liver is detoxification. A healthy liver enables us to consume plant foods.

But what happens to the livers of animals that never eat plant foods? If they and their descendants avoid plant foods for millions of years, how would their livers evolve?

The answer is in a fascinating piece by Ed Yong at Discover blogs: “Why Is Aspirin Toxic to Cats?”. The puzzle:

[C]ats are extremely sensitive to aspirin, and even a single extra-strength pill can trigger a fatal overdose.

Some scientists have been investigating this puzzle since the early 1990s. It turns out that all 18 of 18 species of cat studied, including housecats, cheetahs, servals, and tigers, have crippling mutations in a gene involved in liver detoxification. The same gene is also lost in other hypercarnivores, including the brown hyena and the northern elephant seal.

Mr. Yong explains:

Like many other “detoxifying” proteins, UGT1A6 evolved to help animals cope with the thousands of dangerous chemicals in the plants they eat….

But if an animal’s menu consists largely of meat, it has little use for these anti-plant defences. The genes are dispensable…. [T]he ancestral cats gradually built up mutations that disabled their UGT1A6 gene. Evolution is merciless that way – it works on a “use it or lose it” basis.

So – millions of years of hypercarnivory will disable the liver’s ability to metabolize toxins.

Pet owners, be kind to your cats: Don’t feed them plants!

And a new zero-carb danger: After ten thousand generations, your descendants may be unable to take aspirin.

Reference: Shrestha B et al. Evolution of a Major Drug Metabolizing Enzyme Defect in the Domestic Cat and Other Felidae: Phylogenetic Timing and the Role of Hypercarnivory. PLoS One. 2011 Mar 28;6(3):e18046. http://pmid.us/21464924.

[13] Not the weekly video: Best mobile phone commercial I’ve seen:

[14] Weekly video: I grew up near the University of Connecticut campus and have been a fan of their men’s basketball team since the late 1970’s. What Jim Calhoun has done there, building a minor program to national prominence and three championships, is one of the great accomplishment in coaching history. And this year’s team was a minor miracle: with unheralded and under-recruited freshmen playing half the minutes, they won a national championship.

Every year CBS makes a video montage of the tournament. Here it is, One Shining Moment:

Around the Web, Evil Vegan Plot Edition

Posted by on April 2, 2011 33 comments

(My apologies: I have been busy with work and the post on constipation I had planned for Thursday will appear Monday.)

Here are items that caught my eye this week:

[1] Interesting posts this week: Dr. Steve Parker offers a history of the Mediterranean Diet. Did you know that Ancel Keys invented it? Frank Hagan of Low Carb Age reminds us of the dangers of giving too much protein to children – a topic I expect to blog about again soon. The New York Times explains what video of slipping birds teaches us about running form. Mary Shomon lists the 10 Mistakes of Thyroid Doctors. Kevin Brown of Liberation Wellness argues that doctors may be the leading cause of death. Andrew Badenoch of evolvify assembles evidence that gluten is harmful to non-celiacs. J. Stanton of gnolls.org explains why snacking makes you weak.

[2] Low-Carb for Fatty Liver Disease: An oldie but goodie from Michael Eades: Four patients with extremely high triglycerides due to fatty liver were cured in days on a low-carb diet. Yet another condition that is impossible to cure by drugs, trivial to cure by diet.

[3] Is Fruit Paleo?: Melissa McEwen notes what wasn’t on the Paleolithic menu:  fruit.

I might add that it’s not clear that fruit was ever a major part of our ancestors’ diet. The ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas may have been begun eating fruit after their divergence from the “chuman” human-chimp-gorilla common ancestor. Human ancestors may never have lived in the forests, where fruit is available.

What might Paleolithic Europeans have eaten instead? Melissa casts a vote for raw liver.

[4] What happens if you skip the liver?: On Tuesday morning, Shou-Ching asked me to highlight the story about the French vegans whose breast-fed baby died of pneumonia caused by malnourishment. The baby was severely deficient in vitamins A and B12.

A few hours later Richard Nikoley blogged the story. Vegans, head over there for some sense.

It is possible to be a healthy vegetarian – our book has an appendix explaining how to do it – but it helps immensely to include eggs, dairy, and nutritional supplements. To exclude all animal-related foods, and not to supplement key animal-derived nutrients, is slow suicide – sometimes, as the French story shows, quick infanticide.

[5] 30 Bananas a Day not immediately fatal: Thanks to Richard’s post I looked at a video of a 30 Bananas a Day retreat. I was pleased to see them drinking coconut milk (healthy saturated fats) and, on sandwiches, replacing bread with melon slices. A zero-grain saturated-fat-rich diet – it might be malnourishing, but at least it’s low-toxicity:

You know it can’t be all bad if Stephan has converted!

[6] The French resistance lives: The Guardian:

[I]t is not easy being vegetarian in France, the land of steak-frites, foie gras and other solidly carnivorous fare…. A non-scientific survey of Facebook reveals that the British-based Vegan society has 60,978 fans, while the French Vegetarian Association has 1,518 and the Vegetarian and Vegan page 1,173. (By comparison the French “Slap a Vegetarian with an Escalope” page has 168,294 fans.)

Maybe we should take a trip to Paris, to check out the food. It sounds good!

[7] Insulin Wars!: O Primitivo gives this name to the dust-up that started with CarbSane assailing Gary Taubes and picked up recently at Peter’s blog. He offers an amusing cartoon:

As it happens Shou-Ching and I went to hear Gary Taubes talk on “Why We Get Fat” last Wednesday, and I may review it this week. Those who would like to hear a nearly identical talk can go to Gary’s site and view the “IMS Online Lecture” on YouTube.

[8] Good News From Japan: A dog was rescued:

[9] Bad News From Alabama and Malaysia: From an Alabama teacher:

I am a 6th grade school teacher, and I am appalled at what we are feeding our children every day in the lunchroom.  Yesterday our students had pizza, corn, wheat bread, and rice krispie treats.  They could also buy slushies full of sugar and food coloring.  Also available was tea sweetened with splenda.  It is unbelievable that people with degrees in nutrition are planning these meals!  It is no wonder that we have such a problem with childhood obesity and that our schools are full of students that have ADHD, behavior problems, and learning problems.

From another reader:

In Malaysia (Sarawak), I was served a local dessert made with Sago and coconut milk and sugar.  Wonderful!  I asked about the sago and was told it was a starch made from trees!  The next day for lunch I had the sago (in hardened form) with some type of local fish marinated in spicy oil.  I asked if they eat the sago often and sadly I heard this story:  Sago is a local food that they have made and eaten for centuries BUT now everyone in Malaysia realizes that coconut oil and coconut milk have saturated fat so they should not eat it very often and because the sago is primarily associated with these ‘fattening’ and ‘bad for you’ foods, that the sago is going out of style. Truly sad.

Sago is, of course, one of the safe starches recommended in our book; and you know we like coconut oil and coconut milk.

C.H. Spurgeon said that a lie can get around the world before the truth gets its boots on. A lie has conquered Alabama schools and reached Malaysia. Does the truth have its boots on yet?

[10] Candy eating good?: Epidemiology is hard to interpret, but this was interesting. Compared to adults who ate no candy, candy-eaters had lower body weight, 5% slimmer waists, lower blood pressure, and higher HDL – despite eating more total calories and more saturated fat.

I doubt this is supporting evidence for 30 bananas a day. Two more plausible explanations:

  • Adults who eat candy pay no attention to the health advice propagated by authorities, and follow their taste buds (which evolved to help them) toward meats and fats and away from grains.
  • When adults develop poor health, they start avoiding candy.

Nevertheless, if I do review Gary Taubes this week, this paper might deserve a mention. It counts against both the “carbs make you fat” and the “gluttony makes you fat” theories!

Source: O’Neil CE et al. Candy consumption was not associated with body weight measures, risk factors for cardiovascular disease, or metabolic syndrome in US adults: NHANES 1999-2004. Nutr Res. 2011 Feb;31(2):122-30. http://pmid.us/21419316.

(Via John J. Ray, Food & Health Skeptic.)

[11] Addendum to last week: Speaking of John J. Ray, he has a nice cartoon that I wish I’d used in last Saturday’s #11 on increasing morbidity among the elderly:

[12] Second addendum to last week: I noted last Saturday (#8) a study claiming that “displays of power” led to increased testosterone with positive health effects.

But can displaying a “We Rule” t-shirt transform milquetoast economists into dominant athletes? They actually studied this question at Stanford:

(Via John B Taylor)

[13] Aerobic Exercise Not as Healthy as Candy: Fight Aging! notes that while lower metabolic rates extend lifespan, aerobic exercise doesn’t lower metabolic rate (despite lowering pulse rates). Moreover, higher 24-hour energy expenditure shortens lifespan – so “chronic cardio” may shorten lifespan! It may not be a coincidence that centenarians rarely exercise intensely. They are active but rarely fitness freaks.

One topic I’ve gotten a bit interested in is the effect of obesity on lifespan, which is not large. If obesity induces a lifelong reduction in metabolic rate, it may tend to extend lifespan even as it impairs health. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that obesity rates are rising and lifespan is lengthening even as morbidity is increasing.

[14] Evil Plot Uncovered: For weeks Richard Nikoley has been claiming to have evil plots underway. I love an evil plot, so I investigated. I haven’t felt as cheated since I flew business class to Tokyo booked as a vegan, and had to eat seaweed while everyone else got filet mignon.

Turns out his evil plots were to inspire vigorous discussion in his comment section and improve the health of young children.

At first I thought I had been duped: Clark Kent was pretending to be Lex Luthor, and I got suckered. But then I realized it was rather like the Cretan Paradox. If only the evil lie, and he had lied, then he must be evil. And evildoers plot. So he really must have an evil plot – even though he said he did, which would make him honest – unless he had lied about the nature of his plot. But what could his real evil plot be?

It so happened I recently installed a Firefox add-on that displays site meta tags. What do you think is high on Richard’s list? Not the first tag – his reachout to the porn community (“food porn”). This: “vegan / vegetarian.”

This can only mean one thing. Richard Nikoley is attempting a hostile takeover of the vegan community. He’s trying to replace T. Colin Campbell as their leader. His upcoming book? The New Evolutionary Vegan Diet Solution.  Its premise: vegans are so brain-addled from lack of B12, they won’t notice their new diet is 90% beef.

Yes, I know he won’t admit it. No evil plotter ever admits his plans. Just remember – when it happens, you heard it here first.

[15] Hot pinup girl!: Yes, inspired by Richard’s “porn” tag I’m trolling for Google hits:

(via Rantburg)

[16] Video of the week: Hike the Appalachian Trail in 4 minutes:

Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

(Via Craig Newmark.)

Around the Web; and What is the Antidote to Stress?

Posted by on March 26, 2011 44 comments

Here are things that caught my eye this week:

[1] Oxygen Bad, Carbon Dioxide Good?: Gary Taubes told us there were good calories, bad calories; now the New York Times tells us of good air, bad air.  The Buteyko method, a shallow-breathing technique developed in 1952 by a Russian doctor, Konstantin Buteyko, can greatly improve asthma. The explanation:

Mrs. Yakovlev-Fredricksen said: “People don’t realize that too much air can be harmful to health. Almost every asthmatic breathes through his mouth and takes deep, forceful inhalations that trigger a bronchospasm,” the hallmark of asthma.

“We teach them to inhale through the nose, even when they speak and when they sleep, so they don’t lose too much carbon dioxide,” she added.

I find it’s a challenge to keep my mouth closed, so I guess I must be deficient in carbon dioxide!

[2] Gary Taubes should use this: Yes, it is possible to be a 405-pound marathoner.

[3] Interesting posts this week: Emily Deans draws some lessons for healthy weight loss from the Ancel Keys experiments. Dennis Mangan lists a number of papers showing that the elderly live longer when their serum cholesterol is higher. (See also O Primitivo.) CarbSane sets forth her Credo. Beth Mazur comes up with a great scheme for judging the healthfulness of food: Weight Maven’s EZ Points scheme. Julianne Taylor reports that good things happen when pets eat their wild diets.

Finally, Paleo vs non-Paleo:

[4] Comment of the week: Michelle reports that Raynaud’s syndrome might be an infectious condition – and shares the good news that her arthritis is improving with antibiotic therapy:

Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown considered Raynaud’s to be in the family of rheumatoid diseases, and found it responded well to low dose pulsing tetracyclines.  Those pesky stealth infections!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McPherson_Brown

http://www.roadback.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/studies.display/display_id/96.html

Michelle, on low dose pulsing Doxy for Rheumatoid Arthritis and doing well.

[5] Don’t forget to exercise: From a recent review:

Several large cohort studies have attempted to quantify the protective effect of physical activity on cardiovascular and all cause mortality. Nocon et al. in a meta-analysis of 33 studies with 883,372 participants reported significant risk reductions for physically active participants. All-cause mortality was reduced by 33%

Reference: Golbidi S, Laher I. Molecular mechanisms in exercise-induced cardioprotection. Cardiol Res Pract. 2011 Mar 6;2011:972807. http://pmid.us/21403846.

(Via Fight Aging!)

[6] Animal photo: Are these two married?

[7] Medical Breakthrough from Bangladesh: From Foreign Policy, how a civil war ended cholera.

[8] It’s Dad’s fault: When obese, insulin-resistant, low-testosterone male mice were bred with lean, healthy females, their daughters had diabetes-like pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction. They inherited the condition from their fathers via epigenetically modified sperm.

This supports other evidence that obesity induces hard-to-reverse changes throughout the body, and that these changes can be passed on epigenetically.

In an evaluation at F1000, one of the reviewers wondered if low testosterone might be the key. It turns out that men with low testosterone are more likely to develop pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction. Perhaps low testosterone causes diabetes in men and their daughters.

Meanwhile, Sean at PaleoHacks found a psychology paper asserting that “displays of power” increase testosterone. Might this be a new, annoying cure for diabetes?

References:

Ng SF et al. Chronic high-fat diet in fathers programs ?-cell dysfunction in female rat offspring. Nature. 2010 Oct 21;467(7318):963-6. http://pmid.us/20962845.

Stellato RK et al. Testosterone, sex hormone-binding globulin, and the development of type 2 diabetes in middle-aged men: prospective results from the Massachusetts male aging study. Diabetes Care. 2000 Apr;23(4):490-4. http://pmid.us/10857940.

(via The Scientist)

[9] No, it’s Mom’s fault: Mice born to obese mothers are more likely to be infertile (source).

Reference: Martin JR et al. Maternal Ghrelin Deficiency Compromises Reproduction in Female Progeny through Altered Uterine Developmental Programming. Endocrinology. 2011 Feb 15. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/21325042.

[10] Turkeys at Harvard Medical School: No, I don’t mean the doctors. These turkeys:

Via Mike the Mad Biologist.

[11] Declining health since 1998: Via J. Stanton at gnolls.org, lifespan isn’t correlated with health, and health may have peaked in 1998. Our lifespans are still lengthening, but our “healthspans” are shortening. Women can expect to be unable to walk up stairs for the last 10 years of their lives:

[A] 20-year-old today can expect to live one less healthy year over his or her lifespan than a 20-year-old a decade ago, even though life expectancy has grown….

A male 20-year-old today can expect to spend 5.8 years over the rest of his life without basic mobility, compared to 3.8 years a decade ago — an additional two years unable to walk up ten steps or sit for two hours. A female 20-year-old can expect 9.8 years without mobility, compared to 7.3 years a decade ago. (source)

I’m shocked at the magnitude of the health impairments people will live with, but not surprised by the trend. It’s a natural consequence of rising consumption of toxic industrially processed foods.

Our book discusses evidence from Pottenger’s Cats, famine studies, and the Flynn effect that toxicity and malnutrition have transgenerational effects. If diets don’t improve, we might expect the biological damage to be fully visible in the third generation born after toxic food consumption rose in the 1970s.

Reference: Crimmins EM, Beltrán-Sánchez H. Mortality and morbidity trends: is there compression of morbidity? J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci. 2011 Jan;66(1):75-86. http://pmid.us/21135070.

[12] Quote of the week: Charles De Montesquieu: “Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.” If they’d had sugary cereals in those days, breakfast would have gotten the third half!

[13] Elizabeth Taylor died this week at 79. Not enough fat and micronutrients in her diet (indicated by osteoporosis, five vertebral fractures, and two hip replacements); too many cigarettes and other toxins (likely contributors, along with nutrient deficiencies, to her congestive heart failure); too many husbands and, to cover up the damage, too much make-up. But there was never a more beautiful girl:

[14] Stress is Bad – Mythically Bad: Some good things on stress this week. First, Chris Kresser concludes his “9 Steps to Perfect Health” series with advice to “Practice Pleasure”. Pleasure, Chris explains, is “the antidote to chronic stress.”

What’s so bad about stress? A study of 17,000 adults in Stockholm, Sweden found that those with mild psychological stress were more likely to become disabled:

Even mild psychological distress was independently associated with the award of a disability pension … Mild psychological distress may be associated with more long-term disability than previously acknowledged and its public health importance may be underestimated. (source)

Reference: Rai D et al. Psychological distress and risk of long-term disability: population-based longitudinal study. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2011 Mar 21. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/21422028. (Via Russ Farris)

Finally, I enjoyed an excerpt from The Myth of Stress: Where Stress Really Comes From and How to Live a Happier and Healthier Life by Andrew Bernstein.

I was intrigued by the emphasis Andrew places on psychological stress, since I tend to assume that chronic stress is a symptom of some underlying physical ailment. Andrew argues that psychological stress is important in its own right, and that it is remediable:  “the more insights you have … the less you experience stress.”

Even more interesting was Andrew’s critique of stress pioneer Hans Selye, based on later experiments done by Dr. John W. Mason. Andrew concludes:

There is no such thing as a stressor. Nothing has the inherent power to cause stress in you. Things happen (divorce, layoffs, disease, etc.), and you experience stress – or you don’t – depending on what you think about those things. Stress is a function of beliefs, not circumstances.

I believe disease and infections can cause stress in even the most resilient and insightful people, but I’m also willing to believe the psychological aspects of stress are very important. Why did Viktor Frankl survive Auschwitz? Surely insight was part of it.

Reading the excerpt was both pleasurable and insight-generating, so I’m expecting the full book to be a great stress-reducer!

[15] Why the Neandertals went extinct:

French paleontologists have discovered a Neanderthal cave painting said to represent hands eagerly reaching for a Big Mac, or at least proto-Big Mac, according to the journal, Ancient Discoveries….

“What is most striking about this painting,” says Bouisquet, “is that this is precisely the time period during which Neanderthals went extinct. One naturally wonders, Could the consumption of fast food have contributed to the extinction? As yet we simply don’t know.”

From Glossy News, via John Hawks.

[16] Video of the week: The sky of the Mayas.  Tikal was the capital of one of the most powerful Mayan kingdoms. It is now part of Guatemala’s Tikal National Park and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The soundtrack is a recording of Howler monkeys. The video was made by Stéphane Guisard. Enjoy:

Around the Web; and Another Reason to Cook at Home

Posted by on March 19, 2011 11 comments

Here are items that caught my eye this week:

[1] Iodine watch! Japan fallout tracker: So you got potassium iodide somehow, and want to know whether to take it. Here’s an animated gif from the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in Austria that shows the radiation plume from the Japanese reactors. Luckily, the prevailing westerly winds have to date been blowing the radioactivity out to sea. Unluckily, the forecast is for winds to calm this weekend, which may direct the plume toward Tokyo by Sunday.


Ausbreitung der Wolke von Fukushima/permanente Freisetzung/Jod-131

(via Zero Hedge)

The danger is not negligible for the Japanese. Over 4,200 tons of radioactive material are present at the Fukushima site – 24 times the amount present at Chernobyl – although in general the material is less radioactive (due to having already decayed significantly) than the Chernobyl materials. I hope that the world’s potassium iodide supplies are being directed to Japan at the moment. It would be a shame for them to be short-handed.

[2] Panic! Salt shortage in China: The Chinese may be over-reacting to the reactor story. Here they are mobbing a salt vendor in search of iodized salt:

A technician in my wife’s lab reports that her mother-in-law in China bought 20 bags of iodized salt – a lifetime supply – last week, just to be “safe.”

Let’s hope no one dies of salt toxicity trying to protect themselves from radioactivity!

Panic buying is not confined to China. Americans are paying exorbitant prices for iodine, even though the radiation danger here is almost non-existent. The price of the Iodoral tablets we recommend has tripled on Amazon; FDA-approved iodine supplements have risen in price almost 20-fold.

[3] Animal photo: Bad news calls for a hug:

[4] Used copies for sale?: If anyone wants to sell their copy of our book, Zoë would like to hear from you!

[5] Mmmmmmm!: If Sunday is too far away and you need a food post, Guy Giard has your fix. To work up an appetite, click on the cute couple:

[6] How was your meat glue?: As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to cook at home, here’s a new one. Restaurants not only use bad oils and MSG, some of them save money by buying recycled meat scraps, re-assembled into a facsimile of fresh meat through the use of “meat glue” – enzymatic treatment with tissue transglutaminase.

Tissue transglutaminase will be familiar to readers of our book as a primary player in gluten autoimmunity. It is expressed whenever wounds need repair, and helps cross-link proteins. This allows it to knit meat pieces together so they appear like natural flesh.

The trouble is that bacteria collect on the surface of meat. With a whole piece of meat, it is normally sufficient to cook the surface; rare meat is safe, since cooking kills the surface bacteria and the uncooked interior was antiseptic.

But when many small scraps are knitted together this way, the bacteria are retained in the interior of the meat. If the whole “steak” is not thoroughly cooked, bacteria will not be killed and the meat will be infected and unsafe.

Here is a video from Australian TV. Can you tell the real meat from the glued scraps?

[7] New foods to try: Melissa McEwen recommends fermented rice foods: “Indian Idli, which Stephan has blogged about … [is] SO DELICIOUS…. Filipino Puto [is] SO chewy and delicious with butter!… There is also some evidence that fermented rice improves cholesterol markers and reduces fatigue in animals.”

[8] Brain-Gut connections: It seems that trauma to the brain induces a leaky gut within 6 hours. I would never have guessed this as a cause of leaky gut. (Via Chris Kresser)

[9] Good news for Short People: Being small might be an advantage.

[10] True: “No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe.” – Lord Salisbury

[11] Top posts: Chris Masterjohn has a superb post, “Genes, LDL-Cholesterol Levels, and the Central Role of LDL Receptor Activity In Heart Disease”. It is too rich to summarize, but the best post I read this week. Also, Chris Kresser is nearing the end of his “9 Steps to Perfect Health” series (I’m jealous! We only had four steps.) This week he advises “Get More Sleep”.

[12] Almost the Top Post: Maybe I should buy some crickets. It seems hunting crickets is a very effective way to relieve stress – at least for cats. Mark Sisson’s friend’s cat recovered from disease by hunting crickets. What do you think? Will it work for people too?

[13] Lower Manhattan from Brooklyn Bridge Park:

(via Craig Newmark)

[14] Not the weekly video: Are earthquakes predicted by high tides, fish kills, whale beachings, homing pigeons going astray, and clockwise rotation of earthquakes around linked faults?

If so, there might be shaking on the west coast of North America this week:

[15] Weekly video: After all this disaster talk we can use a little fun. Here’s Dean Martin and Goldie Hawn, flirtatious and funny, from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In: