I’ve always had high cholesterol (around 240 total), but I’ve never bought into the statin thing. And over the past year, since I went mostly paleo in my diet, I’ve gotten it down to 207 (as of October), with HDL of eighty and triglycerides below fifty, so for me at least, diet makes a big difference (not by cutting out cholesterol, but by cutting out the wrong carbs). I’ve also lost almost twenty pounds, though that wans’t a goal (and I gained seven or eight pounds over the holidays, what with the mashed potatoes and bread with holiday meals). The notion that “you are what you eat” and that fat makes you fat and cholesterol gives you high cholesterol is primitive thinking, and yet it remains the medical mainstream view. And while it’s been good for the drug companies, I think that it’s killed millions over the decades, including my father.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Problem With The Welfare State
When people come to be more reliant on the state than they are on each other, community bonds fray and social solidarity falls into disrepair. When the struggling mum looks to the state for help, rather than turning to family, friends, neighbours, the end result is that she becomes more isolated from her community. When a 17-year-old school student short of cash turns to the state for a weekly handout, he never really develops skills of self-sufficiency or dependency on friends and neighbours. When young men looking for work know that the state will sustain them for long periods of time, especially if they make a performance of being “ill” or “depressed” at the dole centre, then their instinct to work becomes frayed. The old healthy working-class habits of pulling together, “getting on one’s bike”, offering one another work and advice have slowly but surely – and tragically – been replaced by the “helping hand” of the ever-watchful state. People start to rely less on their own wits and mates, and more on the faceless keepers of charitable cash.
It is soul sapping.
Obama’s Surrender Of Afghanistan
Modern Democrats don’t believe in winning wars, just “ending” them.
Dumb Campus Moments Of 2011
The top ten.
What Do The Candidates Think About Space Policy?
Short answer: with the exception of Newt, they don’t. On the day of the Iowa cauci, a survey from (Iowa native) Jeff Foust.
Elizabeth Warren’s Pseudoeconomics
…debunked.
Our Long National Iowa Nightmare
…is almost over. I’m hoping for ties, and continued ties all the way to the convention.
Global Cooling
The Canadian Senate actually pays attention to climate skeptics. Canada has a lot to fear from a return of the glaciers.
Big-Government Conservative
Here’s why it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for Rick Santorum. He’d be another George Bush.
From a small-government perspective, we’re doomed to have a dud in the White House regardless of the outcome (barring a brokered convention). So it’s important to try to get as many true classical liberals into the Congress as possible to check the nanny compulsions emanating from the White House.
[Update a while later]
More from David Boaz.
[Late morning update]
Santorum doesn’t think much of the Second Amendment, either.
Lessons Learned From FDR
…the wrong ones.