Month: July 2012

Sunday’s New York Times had an interesting take on the debate around eating dairy. The author felt that it was simply unnecessary and for many of us, uncomfortable. I think I may love this man. There is a lot of peer pressure to eat dairy and when a parent seems to be voluntarily removing it from their child’s diet there can be a lot of grief from friends and relatives. We fielded questions like “where will he get calcium?” and “why are you denying him ice cream” or “are you sure he can’t have any?” And I had lab work showing that dairy was a problem. I can only imagine what other parents go through. There are mammals who eat meat and eggs. There are mammals who eat plants. There are mammals who eat grains. No mammals besides humans consume milk of any kind past infancy. None. Your child does NOT need dairy…really. If it makes you feel any better about your decision, the data in The China Study indicate that milk consumption is linked to higher incidences of heart disease and cancer. And that research is not isolated. If you don’t have time to read the book, you can check out the link to Forks Over Knives on Hulu on my earlier post. https://humbugstew.com/watch-forks-over-knives-free/ So today I am just sharing his thoughts which, if nothing else, point out...

You know about the placebo effect, but have you heard of the Nocebo effect? That is when the doctor tells you that a situation is hopeless and in the immortal words of Morpheus from The Matrix, “your mind makes it real”. Free your mind. I am not advocating for being utterly delusional. If you have a tumor the size of a baseball and you get winded on your way to get the mail and you have no plans to change your diet of soda and doughnuts then yes, it would be wise to get your affairs in order. But if you are willing to change, then the possibility of a different result, no matter how daunting the odds, does exist. So does the possibility of a cure. Years ago I worked with a man who had been diagnosed a decade earlier with an inoperable brain tumor. His doctor thought he was going to die. He decided that he would live. His boss supported him by making no arrangements for his death or even disability. No one was cross trained. No work was handed off. His entire “support” group of others with brain tumors died. But he did not die. Improbably his tumor went away and he was cancer free and in excellent health when I met him over a decade later. When I was in grammar school I had...

People often express sympathy about our condition. When I tell them that we cannot eat most chips or at most fast food restaurants they feel that it must be awful to be unable to just grab something like that. Actually, its not. Its a gift. Because if you felt as horrible as I do when you ate junk food, you would probably give it up too. Which brings me to the MSG. One of the additives that we end up avoiding by virtue of avoiding processed food is MSG. If you are trying to lose weight I have three suggestions for you 1) Do not start a food blog where you will be required to taste test desserts on a daily basis. 2) Do not drink soda or processed fruit juice 3) Avoid MSG like the plague. Now MSG which goes by many other names and is commonly found in organic and gluten-free processed foods. It is an excitoxin like aspartate and it has long been suspected of causing brain damage in primates. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5812037 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/420883 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4065764 However these studies are not conclusive and the area appears to be poorly researched. They are old studies and I found no newer ones that focused on MSG alone. So there is not much evidence that MSG rots your brain unless you apply it topically to the brain, which you probably were not...