Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Where's the magic pill?
Monday, September 25, 2023
You are NOT rational
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Truth!
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Monday, April 24, 2023
A few links of interest
On the link between UTIs and meat (esp. poultry):
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/23/1171428486/uti-infection-prevent-treat
Enough to make you go whole-food, plant-based, right : )
This is indirectly related to the above, about the spread of H5N1. Sadly, they want to develop vaccines so they can continue to cage the poultry in inhumane conditions (not against vaccines, but wouldn’t fixing the root problem be more intelligent?):
https://www.businessinsider.com/bird-flu-avian-influenza-outbreak-us-h5n1-wiping-out-everything-2023-4
A Canadian looks at our CRT outrage and pegs it on a religious cause (my words): The (almost) worship of the constitution:
https://www.johnstackhouse.com/post/the-americanness-of-crt-outrage
Makes sense to me.
I’ve read before about the historical background of regional differences in the US (although I haven’t read the book). He tackles gun violence this time around:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413
When I moved from MN to IN 20 years ago (I lived in IN for nine years before returning to MN), after living there about 6 months I really noticed the difference between libertarians in MN and IN. In MN, they have a strong social conscience and will back the common good in laws, even though it seems to be against a libertarian leaning—after all, MN had a (wrestling hero) libertarian governor who didn’t try to repeal any of it. And there is a strong corporate conscience here in MN with corporations dedicating 5–10 percent of their profits to charitable causes.
And, finally, Chris Gehrz had ChatGPT do his devotional on the Road to Emmaus (and then discusses what LLM really does):
https://chrisgehrz.substack.com/p/sunday-devotions-on-the-emmaus-road
I wonder what it would do if you asked it if the couple on the road were husband and wife as has lately been bandied about? Probably hallucinate a few references : )
That’s it. Thanks for reading and have a great week!
Friday, March 20, 2020
Flatten the curve
That's what they are saying now (and have been for about a week). It makes sense, but it also means that the lockdown will be more extended. But the best way to prepare is not by hoarding and stockpiling! The best way is by being calm and exuding the peace of God in your daily life.
And this is serious stuff, too. The death rate in China for those who got the virus was running about 2–3%. That's double to triple what the average flu causes. But, the death rate currently in Italy, which is more like the United States in diet and habits, is running between 7–8% for those who get the virus (NPR). Think about that for a minute. If, as some are predicting (Merkel, prime minister of Germany), 80% of the population gets the virus, then we are looking at a potential of 18 million deaths (327.2 million in the US times 80% times 7%). Do the math!
By practicing social distancing, we flatten the curve. Yes, that means longer shutdown. But, by extending the time it also gives researchers a chance to develop a vaccine or discover other methods of mitigating the death rate.
Of course, you could change your diet, too. Stop eating junk food! It lowers your resistance. Take a look at this. Eat more fruits and vegetables. That's evidence-based advice, not a fad diet to make a quick buck.
And that's not just an
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Thursday, September 19, 2019
Whom do you trust?
There's a website called NutritionFacts.org that is not funded by the big Pharma companies or by big medicine; instead it is funded through donations. Check it out! And lest you think the media intentionally mislead you (as some high-raking political figures would have you think), read this post from today. Seems the problem begins a lot closer to the source—the researchers themselves and the sources of their funding. But ultimately, it's also what gets published. This final paragraph of the cited article sums it up:
I think the biggest problem with the way the media reports on medicine, though, is the choice of which stories are covered. In 2003, for instance, SARS and bioterrorism killed less than a dozen people, yet generated over a hundred thousand media reports, which is far more than those covering the actual greatest threats to our lives and health. In fact, ironically, “the more commonplace the cause of death, the less likely it is to be covered by the mass media.” Our leading killer is heart disease, yet it can be prevented, treated, and even reversed with diet and lifestyle changes—now that’s what should be front page news.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
It's never too late!
A hundred years ago, the New York Times reported on a rather sophisticated study for the time: 4,600 cases of cancer appearing over a seven year period, suggesting that the increased consumption of animal foods was to blame. A century later, the latest review on the subjects concluded that mortality from all causes put together, ischemic heart disease, circulatory, and cerebrovascular diseases was significantly lower in those eating meat-free diets, in addition to less cancer and diabetes.Do read the whole thing—and consider adopting a whole foods, plant-based diet! It's never too lateI’m surprised they found such significant results given that people in these studies typically didn’t stop eating meat until late in life. For example, in the largest study done up until recently, up to a third of subjects ate vegetarian for less than five years, yet they still ended up with lower rates of heart disease whether they were under 60 or over 60, normal weight or overweight, used to smoke or never smoked; those that had stopped eating meat had lower risk, suggesting that decades of higher risk dietary behavior could be reversed within just years of eating healthier.
Wednesday, August 03, 2016
Will I live longer if I only smoke 3 packs a day?
Tuesday, August 02, 2016
ad fontes!
Monday, August 01, 2016
Follow the money...
Thursday, July 28, 2016
It's too easy
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
What about methane?
The most famous greenhouse gas, the one that gets most of the attention from the media, activists, and policy makers, is CO2. But CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas, and is not in fact the one most sensitive to reduction efforts. Methane (CH4) offers a more promising lever with which to push back global warming. Molecule for molecule, methane is about twenty-five times more potent in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. But more important, methane, with an atmospheric half-life of seven years, disappears from the atmosphere far faster than carbon dioxide, which has a half-life of more than a century. So almost as soon as we eliminate sources of methane, its contribution to the greenhouse effect begins to wane significantly. By contrast, even after we stop releasing CO2, the gas that has already been released will contribute to global warming for decades.
When the amount of methane in the atmosphere is considered over ta twenty-year period, its global warming potential is said to be seventy-two times that of CO2. And methane is largely associated with industrial livestock production. This means that reducing meat consumption, the main driver of the livestock industry, may be the most rapid way to affect global warming. It turns out that our present programs, focused on carbon dioxide reduction, are mostly a lot of hot air—in more ways than one.
If this new assessment of the methane contribution is correct, the implications are momentous. I am puzzled as to why more people in the environmental community aren’t paying attention to this. Do they not want to challenge the livestock industry? Maybe we need bioengineers to figure out how to entrap and safely process cow farts. Failing this, maybe we should stop producing and eating the machines that do the farting.— Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, pages 168–69 (emphasis original)
Monday, July 25, 2016
It just isn't sustainable in the long run...
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And this is where theology intersects life. This lifestyle is just not sustainable. It is bad stewardship of the earth.
Dare I say it is sinful? Well, at least at the level we are doing it, I think I can say that...
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Friday, July 22, 2016
One-dimensional thinking
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Indeed! What's the greatest source of methane (which is the largest cause of global warming)? Confined feeding operations (CAFOs)!
That's right. Every time you eat a hamburger or steak you are contributing to global warming. Probably more so than using a styrofoam box to wrap the leftovers in...
Whole foods, plant-based diet. Good for the health of the person and the planet!
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Thursday, July 21, 2016
The magic bullet that isn't
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Indeed! I've heard people say it numerous times: "That's OK, I'll just take a calcium pill when I get home." Instead of eating veggies that are loaded with calcium.
Admit it. You're addicted to junk food! Now, take the 6 week challenge: Eat nothing but whole foods on a plant-based, animal-free diet for 6 weeks. I'll bet you feel better. And at the end of 6 weeks, when you try some of the stuff you used to eat, you'll be amazed at how bad it tastes. You will feel the oil coat your tongue and the sugar and salt will jump on your taste buds. You won't like it anymore...
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Wednesday, July 20, 2016
So where does it come from?
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I remember when I was an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin; I was hitch-hiking to school and a couple of grad students picked me up who were working on this kind of stuff (way back in the 1970s); they were discussing the results of their work with each other. The one guy said to the other, "I'm convinced that cancer is man-made." That's stuck with me—obviously, if I can still remember it 40 years later!
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Monday, July 18, 2016
On manipulating genes
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Come, let us play God! So far, every time we've tried, it hasn't worked so well. But, hey, maybe this time, right? : (
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Friday, July 15, 2016
Any chance?
and
Genes are the starting point for health and disease events; they are the “nature” part of the equation. But it is nutrition and other lifestyle factors, the “nurture” part, that control whether and how these genes are expressed. The influence of nurture (i.e., nutrition) has far more influence on health and disease outcome than nature (i.e., genes) .— Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition, pages 123–24
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Roll your own
Sunday, April 17, 2016
I dare you to prove him wrong!
"Not even a case series of a small number of individuals on a Paleo, or animal protein-based, diet has ever shown a reversal of advanced heart disease. Even though hundreds of books are written, lots of big words are thrown around, and lots of claims are made to the contrary, it is all just hot air. These meat-based diets are the problem not the solution."—Joel Fuhrman, The End of Heart Disease, 188
Saturday, December 19, 2015
All I want for Christmas is to be divine...
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No, what we want from science is the ability to become our own gods—but that's basically what he is saying here anyway, isn't it? An end to randomness; the ability to know; the ability to protect ourselves. Those are all basically divine attributes.
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