Category Archives: Around the Web - Page 12

(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.)

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:

• Melissa McEwen describes how she cured her IBS.
• Blisstree has a “series about living with chronic diseases as your perpetual housemate” featuring “IBS Is Why I’m Still Single.”

[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:

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.

(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:

Our prayers to those in harm’s way: To the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, and earlier in Christchurch, our prayers and best wishes.

Here are things that caught my eye this week:

[1] Congratulations, Emily! Dr. Emily Deans is now writing for Psychology Today. It’s great that a wide audience will now be hearing her helpful ideas – for instance, that magnesium may be the healthiest antidepressant.

P.S. – Kurt Harris will be there too!

[2] Secrets to longevity: Longevity project authors say that careful, conscientious people live longer than optimists; hard-working people live the longest; worrying is OK; good marriages extend lifespan, difficult marriages don’t; starting school at a very young age shortens lifespan (that’s bad news for Shou-Ching, she started school early to be with her older brother). Their advice: make a lot of friends, and be active doing things you enjoy.

[3] What’s He up to now?: When commenters leave blog addresses I visit their blogs. Mary of Midlife Makeover Year made me smile with this:

Love this picture of Mary … keeping an eye on her Son who is probably messing up the spice rack again.

[4] Self-Recommending Paper: With Staffan Lindeberg, Loren Cordain, Pedro Bastos, and other leading Paleo figures in the author list, “The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization” is bound to be good. Download here.

[5] Nice to hear: Our Ox Feet and Seaweed Soup is “Absolutely fantastic!”

[6] A new difference between chimps and humans: Penile spines. John Hawks explains that chimpanzees have pointy cactus-like penises while Neandertals and humans don’t. Scientists are wondering when and why our ancestors lost these prickly appendages. The loss makes sex far more enjoyable.

I’m glad I’m human!

[7] Animal photo for no reason whatsoever: Via Yves Smith

[8] Are smokers more creative?: Bruce Charlton wonders if smoking improves mental function.

[9] Don’t eat cardboard: Barry Groves says cardboard breakfast cereal boxes are no longer healthier than the cereals they contain. Sadly, not because the cereals got better.

[10] Don Rumsfeld works at a standing desk, Piers Morgan thinks it’s odd: There are few single life adjustments more likely to improve your health than working at a standing desk. I’ll blog about why after I finish building mine. Don Rumsfeld looks great for 78, and his standing desk probably has something to do with it. Here’s Piers Morgan trying to make it sound weird:

I wonder what would have happened if Rummy had worn his Vibrams!

[11] Cure worse than the disease syndrome: In Science Daily, some excited scientists proclaim a new cure for obesity:

An important discovery in mice may make a big difference in people’s waistlines thanks to a team of Harvard scientists who found that reducing the function of a transmembrane protein, called Klotho, in obese mice with high blood sugar levels produced lean mice with reduced blood sugar levels. This protein also exists in humans, suggesting that selectively targeting Klotho could lead to a new class of drugs to reduce obesity and possibly Type 2 diabetes for people….

“Our study is a small step toward reducing the sufferings of obese and diabetic individuals to bring back the joy of healthy life,” said M. Shawkat Razzaque, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity at Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Boston. “In the dark horizon of obesity and diabetes, Klotho brings a ray of hope.”

I happen to have a passing familiarity with Klotho; it is discussed in this paper which was cited in my post The Amazing Curative Powers of High-Dose Vitamin D in Aging and Autism. Klotho knockout mice experience accelerated aging and die young. Another paper summarizes, “Klotho hypomorphic mice (klotho(hm)) suffer from severe growth deficit, rapid aging, and early death.” From a Nature article, here’s a picture of a normal mouse and a Klotho deficient mouse. Can you guess which mouse had its obesity cured?

Of course, rapid aging and early death is a problem for the longevity researcher, not the obesity researcher. If Klotho blocking cures obesity, the obesity researcher’s job is done, and it’s up to longevity researchers to find a drug that extends the life of anti-Klotho-drug-consuming humans.

[12] 88% of Bavarian doctors have prescribed placebos: Guardian story here.  The study (in German) is here. Hat tip: Tyler Cowen.

I suspect that if US doctors could follow their own clinical judgment without fear of lawsuit or clinical review or patient complaints, placebos might make up a majority of prescriptions. And health might improve! Not because the patients are psychosomatic, either.

[13] Jamie Scott, “That Paleo Guy,” is eloquent about constipation.

[14] Fallon, Nevada, provides evidence for an infectious origin of leukemia.

[15] Weekly Video: The rhythms of traditional life (via Fanatic Cook)