Category: Health

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Books Food and Drink Health

The Thread

How’d I change from a fat-fearing, carb-loving American into an avoider of most industrial food?

A short history…by twenty, I’d been a vegetarian for three years, but going to college and living in the South made it too challenging and alienating. So I started eating meat again and found myself feeling better. In college I ate a fairly common American diet of cafeteria food. After college, I pretty successfully switched to the low-fat, high-carb style of eating promoted by the American Heart Association and most other institutions.

I’ve always been active and interested in health; and about ten years ago I started hearing a few voices in the wilderness warning about the standard American diet that I’d embraced. Here’s an abbreviated thread about how the change happened in my thinking concerning how we should eat.

About eight years ago I read “The Fat Fallacy” which was written by a PhD who moved with his family to France for his advanced neuroscience study. While living in France for a couple of years, they ate the way the French traditionally have eaten, basically lots more fat and fewer processed foods. When they returned to the States they were thinner and healthier.

Then several years ago I read a book about paleolithic style eating and athletes. It was really intriguing but not compelling enough to get me to abandon the standard eating recommendations.

What really convinced me about four years ago was an interview I heard on the radio with Gary Taubes and reading his NYT article “What if It’s all Been a Big Fat Lie?” and then his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” It’s so thorough and well researched it’s sometimes like reading a text-book; it was a tough slog but worth it.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I just read an interview with Gary Taubes over at the Browser.  The interview covers most of what he details in GCBC but in a more boiled down version easy to follow form. I think you’ll find it interesting, at the least.

It’s a good way to start a new way of thinking for a new year, or any time.

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Health Ideas Uncategorized

Personal Science

Sometimes it’s a plastic spoon that you need. And sometimes just washing a spoon can be the best solution.

A couple of weeks ago I said some people taking vitamin D noticed that if they took it later in the day it disturbed their sleep. Because vitamin D mimics sun exposure (which triggers vitamin D production), taking it soon after waking up returned their sleep to a more normal pattern. Possibly, that’s the time of day our bodies evolved to receive sunlight and so sunlight or its substitute, vitamin D, acts as a trigger for our bodies’ clocks.

Personal science tries to make discoveries by tracking results of simple experiments using yourself  as a guinea pig (as a sample group of one). Tracking how dose/timing affect sleep when taking vitamin D is a good fit for personal science.

Big science is done by big labs or companies that generally won’t bother doing research on things that are simple to do or have inexpensive fixes. The more money professional researchers spend the more important and attention grabbing it seems. So for example, looking at how your sleep is affected by when you take vitamin D, is something more suited to personal science because it’d be tough getting funding for research into an inexpensive solution, such as changing the time you take it.

Personal science is not strict science in the sense that there aren’t control groups or disinterested clinical observers, but the results of good personal science can help the experimenter personally and maybe spur others, with the same issues, to replicate the results. For example, Seth Roberts, a university professor, has been doing personal science for some time and picked up on the vitamin D thread and then added his personal findings to the discussion.

And of course, the ideas and results of personal science can always be picked up and pursued by big science practitioners, a trickle up model.

Besides picking a problem you’re interested in and trying to cut down on the number of variables all you need to do personal science is a pen and a notebook to track your daily observations. You may be able to sort out some of your health questions (or not) and maybe have fun too.

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Health

Personalized Medications Soon?

In the not too distant future will medications and supplements be tailored for your particular situation? Should a 105 pound woman and a 205 pound man both be taking the same two tablet dose of aspirin for example?

I don’t take any supplements or medications yet, but I still think it’s interesting. I started thinking about this after hearing about people taking vitamin D at different times during the day with different impacts on their sleep.

Our bodies produce vitamin D after being exposed to sunlight, but since many people don’t get adequate sun exposure they’ll take a vitamin D supplement. Some people found their sleep disturbed by taking it later in the day or at night. Basically taking vitamin D soon after you wake seems to be the best time; mimicking the time you’d traditionally be getting sunlight. So taking it later in the day confuses your body’s clock. When the folks with sleep disruptions who were taking vitamin D switched to taking it soon after waking their sleep issues went away.

That example is only about timing, what about all of your particular information the parameters that make you… you. Maybe soon, companies and doctors will begin to customize medications and supplements to your size, age, and sex. Maybe even a few other easily measured parameters will be factored in to make the model even better like race, sleep patterns, or how many drinks you have at night.

Genetics, testing, and medicine are only getting more sophisticated and computing power is increasing and getting cheaper so maybe personalized medicines aren’t far away.

Is an iMed app for your iPhone on the near horizon? It could easily transfer your particulars to the pharmacy’s data base to help create medications to suit you. It might even keep you honest about your weight if you knew it was going to be a factor in getting your medicine right.

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Health Ideas

The Secret Lives of Doctors

What is it that doctors actually do medically in personal situations at the end of their lives? How do they treat themselves? In a terminal situation what do they do for themselves that’s different from what they do for other people in the same situation?

I read a doctor’s account about how his friend, a fellow doctor, responded to being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His insider knowledge and experience mix together for a course of action that might surprise the lay public.

After his diagnosis, the doctor eschewed chemo, radiation, and surgery. Instead he spent his last several months at home trying to enjoy the rest of his life with his friends and family.

The doctor with cancer knew what was going to happen and what his options were. And he didn’t have to worry about exercising the simplest option, doing as little as necessary. He couldn’t get into trouble, as he might have if dealing with a patient, for not using extraordinary efforts – for likely minimal gains in extra time in a probably lower quality life. The expense in terms of pain and money, along with the time spent in a hospital, don’t generally pay off.

The take away from this doctor’s story is that his story is not unique amongst doctors. They’ve seen enough people at the end of life and know what can be done to prolong lives. And of course, they have access to those treatments. But it seems their secret is that they prefer to go peacefully and gently, on their own terms.

 

 

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Health Ideas Living Abroad

What Are Your Emergency Essentials?

Suppose you needed to abandon your home because of something like a tornado or a hurricane. What would you take?

Earlier this month we had two potential hurricanes that where approaching our coast of Mexico. It turned out to be a non event; we just got some light rains.

But I still prepared for it. There is a lot of stuff you could do and most people won’t. But there are some emergency essentials that are easy to get together and to keep stashed out-of-the-way until you need them.

Like most people I don’t keep extra gasoline around, so I made sure the car had a full tank of gas. Why not avoid long lines and save time if an evacuation is called for? It’s the same thing for water so I bought some extra jugs of water.

Here’re the emergency essentials I keep handy inside a plastic pail with a watertight lid:

A radio/flashlight unit that runs on batteries or can be hand cranked and some fresh batteries – duck tape – a lighter – a small pot with a lid – half liter water bottle – small first aid kit with booklet – a box of disposable syringes w/ needles – a bar of soap – iodine drops – and a leatherman multi-tool.

Pretty self-explanatory except maybe for: the syringes – in case a medical team is out and I need a shot and iodine drops – for disinfecting water.

These are only the low hanging fruit of emergency essentials. If you assemble this stuff once ahead of time, and without any pressure of impending doom, it’s easy and maybe even a fun project. And then you can forget about it and hope you never need it.

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Health Ideas

Back Burner Mysteries

Albert Einstein said “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Me too. This week must be mystery week for me, in my previous post I wanted to know how many enlightened people there are nowadays.

I know there’re more important mysteries out there that need answering but I have two more on the back burners waiting for explanations. The oldest one of the two I’ll call the German toilet mystery. A more recent mystery is the pop rivet mystery. Neither one is particularly important to the big picture but I don’t have answers to them so they leave me curious.

I’ll start with the one that’s been on the back burner the longest – the German toilet. I first noticed them in Germany years ago. They look like a regular toilet on the outside. But when you look in there’s a platform for anything that comes out of you to land on. This is a dry platform in the toilet bowl, the normal water part is in the back part of the bowl. When you flush, whatever’s on that little platform is whisked off, down, and away just like a normal toilet.

When I was in Germany these toilets seemed pretty common. I thought they were weird and I asked lots of people there about them. But the people who were used to using them didn’t understand my confusion. And the people who shared my confusion had no idea. I still don’t know, maybe there’s something fascinating to the Germanic psyche about excrement or at least to the designers of these types of toilets. They seem to have designed something that resonated with Germans and the German market found them compelling enough to buy.

The next mystery is one that is newer for me. I read a comment on another blog about a mystery the commenter was trying to figure out.

He noticed a strange performance phenomenon when using a pop riveter (basically big pliers that need two hands) on a project.

He had to squeeze the pop riveter really hard to put in each rivet and got to the point where he could put one in about every 15 seconds. He noticed that after about 10 to 15 minutes squeezing the handles of the pop riveter became suddenly easier, while the force needed to squeeze the tool didn’t change. The rest of the rivets he put in during that session all felt easy. The same thing happened during each session working with the pop riveter. So he decided to experiment at the gym.

He knew he could lift 405 pounds off of the floor once. So he’d try lifting and then dropping 255 pounds off of the ground every 15 seconds for 15 minutes or until he noticed the same thing he had while pop riveting. At 12 and a half minutes the lifting suddenly became easier! The change was so sudden and profound that he started adding weight every 2-4 pulls and spent minutes 17, 18, and 19 lifting 365 pounds every 15 seconds.

He talked one of his weight lifting friends into trying it with him the next week. At 12 minutes and 15 seconds, the pop riveter’s lifts suddenly got easier, but he didn’t say anything. At 13 and a half minutes his friend was shocked; the lifting suddenly felt easier to him too. They continued to 15 minutes and both agreed the perceived effort during the final minutes was less than all the lifts leading up to the sudden change point.

The pop riveter continued experimenting in the gym with other types of lifts and found that they consistently got easier 10 to 12 minutes into each session.

Is strength a skill? Maybe there’s an undocumented phenomenon that could be useful to know about? Is it only a perception change? How long-lasting is the change? He’s not sure what to make of it and it’s a mystery to me too. But it’s interesting.

 

 

 

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Health Ideas

Chairmen

Are you a sitter or a stander? The time you’re spending in a chair could be having real negative effects on your health. This applies to both exercisers and sofa slugs. We’re turning into a society of chairmen at our own peril.

Investigating sitting has gained traction with researchers. The more you sit the more you weigh and the higher the chance you’ll suffer a heart attack. Basically excessive sitting should be avoided.

Sitting is becoming recognized as a new area of concern in terms of health. Research is showing a progressively higher rate of mortality as time spent sitting increases. People sitting for 3/4 of their day were up to 47% more likely to die than people sitting for only a 1/4 of their day. If you’d like another way of looking at some of the findings on excessive sitting visit this infographic. It’s well done but too big to include here.

Here’s a real surprise, death rates are about the same for both exercisers and non-exercisers! Excessive sitting increases the chance of dying regardless of  time spent exercising. There’s a difference between activity and exercise. Nowadays, exercise happens in a short window during leisure time with the balance of the leisure time spent… sitting. The time at work traditionally occupied with activity is now taken up with… sitting. Sitting is an independent risk factor in your health.

Just after WWII a British researcher studied bus drivers and conductors working on London’s double-decker buses. The drivers were sitters whereas the conductors moved up and down 500 to 75o stair steps a day. It turned out that conductors had half as many deaths from heart attacks as did the drivers. Similarly, in 1953 British researchers also found that (sitting) bus drivers were twice as likely to die from a heart attack than were (standing) trolley car operators.

Try not to be a chairman.

 

 

 

 

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Health Ideas Travel

Escalator to the Gym

Almost everywhere you go these days you need to search amongst oversized people to find a regular sized person. I don’t know the numbers, but my observation in the Western world, is that overweight people seem to outnumber the people who aren’t overweight. I guess people like eating too much and not moving enough. But, we’re meant to move around – and probably while carrying something.

When I travel I see lots of people in airports pulling around small carry-on bags on wheels. I understand using wheels on big heavy bags. But, these days most of the airlines are encouraging us to only take carry-on luggage. And we’re often complying.

If you’re traveling light, you can benefit from going without wheels on small luggage. Instead of the wheelie bag, why not just use a bag you can hand carry or use with a shoulder sling? You’ll move around more quickly and negotiate tight spots, like the aisles on the plane and in the news stand, more easily. And you’ll wind up getting a little free exercise.

Is it human nature to avoid any possible exertion? Probably, but most people who can afford to fly  aren’t engaged in activities requiring them to seek relief from physical hardship. The stairs in airports are actually faster and very easy if you’re carrying your bag. You’ll begin to notice that the stairs are hardly used anymore in airports. Same deal with the moving sidewalks in airports – if it’s not your first time seeing one or you’re running late for a flight – why stand there for two minutes? It’s like people taking the escalator up to the gym to get a workout.

Have a look at this article about sitting that I just spotted in the NYT. Here’s an excerpt:

After assessing how much food each of his subjects needed to maintain their current weight, Dr. Levine then began to ply them with an extra 1,000 calories per day. Sure enough, some of his subjects packed on the pounds, while others gained little to no weight.

“We measured everything, thinking we were going to find some magic metabolic factor that would explain why some people didn’t gain weight,”… with the help of the motion-tracking underwear, they discovered the answer. “The people who didn’t gain weight were unconsciously moving around more,” Dr. Jensen says. They hadn’t started exercising more — that was prohibited by the study. Their bodies simply responded naturally by making more little movements than they had before the overfeeding began, like taking the stairs, trotting down the hall to the office water cooler, bustling about with chores at home or simply fidgeting. On average, the subjects who gained weight sat two hours more per day than those who hadn’t.

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Health Ideas

Killer Graphics

Here’s a good example of the visual display of information. It’s showing the death rate per watts generated using coal, oil, and nuclear. You barely notice the black square representing nuclear; it’s there, but tiny compared to the deaths that can be attributed to using oil and coal for fuel. If you’re concerned about the risks of nuclear power, it seems to be a lot safer than coal and oil.

I’m not a fan of any these sources of energy and I think we should be pursuing and investing in newer, cleaner energy technologies. With the problems in Japan right now there seems to be a renewed scrutiny of nuclear power. There’s a very dramatic and scary problem in Japan. But, we forget about the non-dramatic, not-as-scary, but chronic problems associated with using oil and coal. Out of sight, out of mind, feel good. It’s going on now, while you’re reading.

Faster and cheaper sound good. Oil and coal are faster and cheaper. But if all of the costs to the environment and to human health are accounted for these things aren’t so cheap. Look at the killer graphics above.

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Health Living Abroad Mexico

Magico Mexico

Our street in Mexico is only a block long. It seems a fairly normal little residential street. But there’s lots happening. On one end of our block is a laundry and there’s a tortilla shop on the other end. Two doors from the laundry is a nice small hotel. If you go around the other corner you’ll find a grocery store, surf shop, and hair salon that also sells musical instruments. Not to mention there’s a Mexican traditional healer and someone selling shrimp who both live in the middle of our block. Three houses away from mine is a guy who’ll climb up your palm tree and harvest the coconuts.

Guess what else? This weekend I found out a young dentist just opened up shop on our block at the end of the healer’s driveway.

Saturday night my girlfriend slipped and fell. The fall didn’t look too bad – until I saw a tooth skitter across the floor. I picked it up and realized it was one of her front teeth. Luckily a friend was with us who is a dental assistant. We got my girlfriend up, into the bathroom, and slid the tooth back into its rightful spot within 30 seconds. While putting the tooth back, we saw that three of the neighboring teeth were half of their length and loose; the shiny tile floor that she hit was hard.

Enter the new dentist on the block. We had no idea he was tucked in across the street. But our friend had just started working with him doing volunteer dental work on school kids in town. She woke him up and he worked on the damaged teeth for two and a half hours (’til 3 am).

It was a neighborhood affair really. Our bilingual friend from the laundry and his friend came in, providing exact translations. I did some assisting and moral support. Our dental assistant friend and her husband were there for encouragement and technical advice. And to top it off the dentist’s mom, who’s a nurse, came in at 2:30 am to supply and administer two non dental injections, after the teeth were stabilized.

The care and attention continues from more and more people each day. The final work will probably be done by a cosmetic dentist in Puerto Vallarta. The bad news is four damaged teeth that’ll be fixed . The good news is all the great people around us in Mexico.