A woman in her twenties discovers that she was born without a cerebellum.
Category Archives: Health
Public School As Child Abuse
Example #43,675,219:
Stuarts Draft fifth-grader Grace Karaffa appeared before the school board Thursday night, saying she had requested the substance while on the playground after suffering chapped lips.
“I was told I couldn’t use it. Then later that day they (lips) started to bleed so I asked for Chapstick again and I was told that it was against the school policy for elementary kids to have Chapstick,” Grace said.
Grace asked the school board to change its policy. “Chapstick allows the human body to heal the lips themselves and protects them in any weather from drying out,” she said. She concluded her speech by saying, “Please school board, allow us to have Chapstick.”
I don’t know if you have to be a moron to be a school-board member, but it certainly seems to help.
The Tyranny Of Home Cooking
As he notes, this is really about the Left’s resentment of anything that requires actual effort. The people who can least afford (in more than one sense of the word) to eat out is poor people. But it’s a bad deal for everyone, in terms of both fiscal and physical health.
Abstinence From Alcohol
That proof that it shortens life is irrefutable.
Well, guess I won’t die of that.
A New Heart-Attack Drug
This seems statistically significant, but (as with statins) I’m always leery of side effects of things like it. And there’s no mention of them.
Low-Carb Diets
Another well-designed study shows its benefits.
[Update a while later]
Here‘s the original NYT piece.
[Afternoon update]
On an email list, I responded to a friend who was interested, but disgusted by eating fat (doesn’t like butter on anything except potatoes, cuts it off steak, etc.)
I’m not big on just eating fat per se myself, but I now take fat I cut off and render it (tallow for beef, lard for pork, schmaltz for chicken) and add it to other things (like a can of “fat-free” baked beans yesterday), or fry eggs or other things in it. For instance, when you cook bacon, you’re actually rendering the lard (the bacon grease). When I render beef suet I get what I call “beef bacon,” tasty bits of crunchy protein, along with the tallow. I’ve quit using seed or vegetable oil for deep frying and switched to lard or tallow (the latter is what used to make McDonalds fries taste good, until they got mau maued into switching to other oils, and it made a lot of economic sense given that they own cattle ranches and generate so much of it in cooking the burgers). Also, eat crispy chicken skin (the chicken version of bacon). There are a lot of non-disgusting ways to increase your fat intake, while improving food taste/mouth feel.
I’d like to start a social media campaign to get McDonalds to go back to tallow for fries (yes, I know that potatoes are problematic, but if you’re going to eat them, at least fry them in a delicious and healthy fat). It might even knock down the prices.
What Makes Us Fat
Here’s a radical idea: Let’s do some actual scientific research:
…much of what we think we know about nutrition is based on observational studies, a mainstay of major research initiatives like the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 120,000 women across the US for three decades. Such studies look for associations between the foods that subjects claim to eat and the diseases they later develop. The problem, as Taubes sees it, is that observational studies may show a link between a food or nutrient and a disease but tell us nothing about whether the food or nutrient is actually causing the disease. It’s a classic blunder of confusing correlation with causation—and failing to test conclusions with controlled experiments. “Good scientists will approach new results like they’re buying a used car,” he says. “When the salesman tells you it’s a great car, you don’t take his word for it. You get it checked out.”
NuSI’s starting assumption, in other words, is that bad science got us into the state of confusion and ignorance we’re in. Now Taubes and Attia want to see if good science can get us out.
What a concept.
Ramen Noodles
Wouldn’t be surprising. It’s nothing but high-glycemic carbs and salt.
ObamaCare
Six reasons it can help the GOP win the senate.
Appendage Radiators
I often sleep with one foot uncovered, and have for decades. Sometimes an arm or two as well. It seems pretty obvious to me that it will help keep your cool, so to speak.