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Some companies are considering self-insuring their workers to avoid onerous provisions of the Affordable Care Act (such as higher premium prices). MedPageToday has some details:

Self-insured firms finance most worker health costs and buy “stop-loss” reinsurance to cover especially high claims. Self-insurance has typically been the realm of large employers. But Kaiser Health News has reported brisk interest by small companies exploring self coverage.Stop-loss coverage that kicks in as low as $10,000 or $20,000 per worker makes self-insurance an option for firms with as few as 20 or 30 on staff, brokers say. Yet advocates of the law worry that more small firms with young, healthy employees will self-insure next year, exploiting what some see as an ACA loophole and leaving small-group insurance pools with sicker members and higher costs.

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…you just have to walk more, according to an article at MedPageToday. And that takes more time.

I bring this to your attention because of the potassium link. Most of us have heard that reducing salt (sodium) intake is supposed to be good for us, although even that’s debatable. Fewer have heard that higher potassium may be good for us. Those diet characteristics—low sodium and high potassium—are naturally incorporated into the Paleolithic diet (aka Stone Age, caveman, hunter-gatherer or paleo diet).

Read MedPageToday for details. The association between sodium restriction and lower rates of cardiovascular disease and mortality is a confusing mess. My gut feeling is that strict sodium avoidance is important for only 20% of the population, at most. From MedPageToday: 

However, the assertion that reduced salt intake will have beneficial effects on disease outcomes contradicts the results of a 2011 meta-analysis, which failed to show significant relationships between reduced salt intake and mortality or cardiovascular outcomes.

A high ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid was also detrimental. On the other hand, high monounsaturated fat consumption was protective of the brain.

Read for details.

h/t Bix at Fanatic Cook

Dr. Freedhoff is a bariatric physician and a good writer. For example:

The book was written by non-practicing physician turned journalist Dr. Michael Mosley and his journalist co-author Mimi Spencer and it leads with the theory that because humans evolved during times of severe dietary insecurity, where fasting was the unavoidable norm, that fasting has unique properties that in turn are healthful and protective. And while that may be true, it certainly has yet to be proven as the science is nowhere near conclusive yet just as the authors themselves point out on the second introductory page, “Scientists are only just beginning to discover…“

…Sadly, the cautionary comment that the science of fasting is young was a rarity in this book that takes hyperbole, conjecture, anecdote and hope to truly dramatic levels and even just 5 pages following the “just beginning” statement the state of the evidence has somehow morphed into, “The scientific evidence was extensive and compelling“. Odd that statement in the context of this book given the vast bulk of the book is quite literally built off the personal (and clearly conflicted) anecdotal evidence of Dr. Mosley and Ms. Spencer’s own experiences with their diet – one might have thought that were there actually extensive and compelling evidence a medically trained award winning journalist might have preferred to rely on it to tell the story rather than what he ate for breakfast.

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