Red meat consumption — whether processed or not — was linked to onset of type 2 diabetes in the U.S. according to a 2023 article in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The research was a long-term observational study by mostly Harvard-based scientists. Among the authors that might be familiar to you are Walter Willett, Frank Hu, and Frank Sacks. Click the link for the deets.
This doesn’t prove that red meat consumption causes diabetes. But if you enjoy a fair or high amount of red meat, you might benefit by cutting back, especially if diabetes runs in your family. I’d also suggest regular exercise and avoiding overweight and obesity to reduce your risks of type 2 diabetes. The author suggest red meat alternatives: nuts, legumes, dairy foods.
The current observational study is unlikely to end the discussion on whether red meat intake increases risk of type 2 diabetes and even less likely to end the epistemological debates on how to grade quality of observational evidence when many efforts are made to reduce bias and confounding.
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All in all, the study by Gu et al. may arguably be the best evidence to date on the relation between red meat intake and type 2 diabetes. Yet somehow, I feel that the books have not been closed.
Posted onFebruary 20, 2024|Comments Off on Mild-Blowing Interview by Tucker Carlson of Mike Benz, Exec. Director of Foundation For Freedom Online
Mr Benz alleges that the waves of online speech censorship we’ve seen since ~2018 are due to collusion between the legacy media/social media giants and the U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA, NGOs, and the Department of Defense. And it’s not limited to the U.S. In fact, it started with efforts to by the CIA and DoD to combat international terrorism and meddle in other countries’ politics.
Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy." pic.twitter.com/hDTEjAf89T
The Deep State does not appreciate this interview. I hope Mr Benz has a hefty life insurance policy. He should have stated for the record that he is not now nor has he ever been suicidal, and he’d never kill himself. I would not knowingly get in an airplane or in a car with him.
If you can impeach Mr Benz’s credibility, please share in the Comments.
This interview is more important the Tucker’s recent interview of Putin.
Posted onFebruary 18, 2024|Comments Off on Neurontin or Lyrica for Chronic Pain?
“You can take this pill, but there’s not much evidence it does any good.”
Physicians in the U.S. who prescribe opioids need a license from the Drug Enforcement Administration and it has to be renewed periodically. By the time of my next renewal, I must be able to prove to the DEA that I’ve had six (eight?) hours of approved continuing medical education on drug abuse and addiction. Because of the prescription opioid “epidemic” that reared it’s head several years ago, regulators are putting pressure on prescribers to reduce prescriptions. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it can be taken too far, like expecting a patient with very recent knee or hip replacement surgery to be just fine with acetaminophen (aka paracetamol) alone. Big Pharma has convinced some prescribers to substitute opioids with Neurontin (aka gabapentin) or Lyrica (pregabalin). If not substitution, then augmentation of opioid effect at lower doses. I definitely see that in my part of the world.
One of the most notorious examples of Big Pharma living up to its reputation for evil-doing is the illegal promotion of anticonvulsant drugs like Neurontin and Lyrica for painful problems like back pain. Pfizer coughed up billions for lawsuit settlements and record-breaking fines. I think it’s safe to say that they didn’t actually pay enough to undo the damage, though…
Thanks to that horror show, and to research by Peet et al, we now know that there was a mighty 5× surge in gabapentin prescriptions in the 2000s and 2010s. That was — and continues to be — a chilling demonstration of the power of under-handed and well-funded marketing. Even as opioid prescriptions fell somewhat, gabapentin scrips rose dramatically, despite the dubious value for most of what it was being prescribed for (most kinds of pain).
Posted onJanuary 30, 2024|Comments Off on “Dry January” Is Almost Over: Should You Extend It to 100 Days?
I don’t know Andrew Huberman’s credentials or reliability, but you might find the following helpful. I haven’t watched it yet and may never; it’s two hours.
A Mediterranean diet of seafood, whole grains, nuts, fruit and vegetables could lower the risk of dementia by almost a quarter, according to a recent study.
Significantly the findings suggested that, even for individuals with a higher genetic predisposition to dementia, having a more Mediterranean-like diet reduced the likelihood of developing dementia.
The study which has been ongoing for the past two years, was led by Newcastle University in collaboration with colleagues from Queen’s University Belfast, University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia and the University of Edinburgh and has been published in the medical journal, BMC Medicine.
This was a large-scale project with analysis of data from over 60,000 older adults in the UK, which explored whether individuals who followed a Mediterranean-like diet had a lower risk of developing dementia than those who did not.
The research found that those with the highest level of adherence to a Mediterranean diet had a 23% reduced risk of developing dementia over a nine-year period than those with the lowest level of adherence.
Posted onJanuary 22, 2024|Comments Off on COVID-19 Link Dump: New mRNA Omicron Booster is Dead; the Unnatural Origin of COVID-19; Dr Dalgleish Calls for mRNA Vax Ban; Wm Briggs Says Your Mask Doesn’t Work; Cochrane Library on Mask Effectiveness
Dr. Mandy Cohen, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, accidentally announced mRNA’s passing on Friday on X (aka Twitter). Wearing a blue dress and her trademark vapid smile, Dr. Cohen admitted barely 1 out of 50 Americans have received the new mRNA Omicron booster.
Hours later, Pfizer confirmed the death, saying it will write off nearly $1 billion in mRNA jab inventory because of weak demand. Pfizer expects the market for shots to be one-third smaller than it predicted just weeks ago – though its new estimate still appears too high.
I contacted a scientist who had been involved in the study of the original SARS for his evaluation and explanation of the Japanese scientists’ report. His explanation is below. It is challenging for non-professionals to follow, but less so than the Japanese study itself. As I understand the findings, it is the absence of synonymous mutations in the variants that reveal that Covid and its variants are lab creations.
I suspect that the Japanese study will be suppressed and that any American or Western scientist who took up this inquiry would find himself cut off from research funds and his career terminated.
Those of us who knew from the beginning that the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 contained inserts which could not have possibly occurred naturally, and were similar to ones that had already been published from the Wuhan laboratory, have had to endure unbelievable scorn, scientific ostracism and the ignominy of being ‘cancelled’ by the mainstream media as well as by professional colleagues for nearly three years now.
In the summer of 2020 a paper I co-authored, describing the findings of an Anglo-Norwegian team of scientists who had demonstrated unique ‘fingerprints’ of laboratory manipulation in the Covid virus, was suppressed in both the U.S. and U.K. This was at the time that the World Health Organisation, leading science journals and others were going to huge lengths to persuade us that Covid was a natural occurrence, and that we should spend a lot more money to fight any such future threats.
Dear reader, a full-on spacesuit equipped with oxygen tanks, or with filters down below the viron level, will protect you from inhaling a respiratory virus. As long as you have it on. And don’t have to change the filter.
And you don’t eat. Or drink. Or use the facilities.
So it can be said “masks work” in blocking the spread of bugs.
But the flimsy plastic cheesy gappy snot-filled breath-soaked “surgical masks” the panicked hand-wringing shaking fear-filled hersterics made it a crimenot to wear?
The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional RCTs during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children.
There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness, and although this effect was also present when ILI and laboratory‐confirmed influenza were analysed separately, it was not found to be a significant difference for the latter two outcomes. Harms associated with physical interventions were under‐investigated.
Comments Off on COVID-19 Link Dump: New mRNA Omicron Booster is Dead; the Unnatural Origin of COVID-19; Dr Dalgleish Calls for mRNA Vax Ban; Wm Briggs Says Your Mask Doesn’t Work; Cochrane Library on Mask Effectiveness
Radical new information on osteoarthritis from Paul Ingraham:
One of the most deeply held beliefs in musculoskeletal medicine is that osteoarthritis is a “wear and tear” condition — that joints slowly crumble under the onslaught of gravity and use and abuse. This fundamentally mechanical view of arthritis directly suggests that the heavier we are, the more likely we are to have trouble in our load-bearing joints.
But that’s just not the case: osteoarthritis prevalence doubled in the 20th Century independent of age and weight (Wallace 2017).
So something else has to be going on. People got heavier on average, but not twice as heavy!
Or consider this: obese people get more osteoarthritis of the hand (Jiang 2016), but probably not because they are walking on their hands.
So … why?
This post weaves together the threads of several past posts about the biochemical foundations of seemingly “mechanical” problems, and you may recognize some pieces. But this is an all-new synthesis, anchored by some good science news you can use — practical and encouraging, which is a rare pleasure.
Posted onJanuary 12, 2024|Comments Off on Are You Doing the “Dry January” Thing? Don’t Give Up!
This YouTuber mentions a book by Allen Carr: “Quit Drinking Without Willpower.” Comedian Nikki Glaser elsewhere has lauded Carr’s “The Easy Way to Stop Drinking,” but I can’t find that at Amazon.com. I did see his “The Easy Way for Women to Stop Drinking,” “The Easy Way to Control Alcohol,” and “Stop Drinking Now.”
There’s a lot going on in this study. I didn’t understand some of the statistics. Click the link for full details. Here’s the abstract:
Background
Psychiatric disorders have been a challenge for public health and will bring economic problems to individuals and healthcare systems in the future. One of the important factors that could affect these disorders is diet.
Objective
In the current study with a cross-sectional design, we investigated the association of Paleolithic and Mediterranean diets with psychological disorders in a sample of adult women.
Methods
Participants were 435 adult women between 20 and 50 years old that refer to healthcare centers in the south of Tehran, Iran. The diet scores were created by the response to a valid and reliable semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), and the psychological profile was determined by response to the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The multivariable-adjusted logistic regression was applied to compute the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI).
Results
After adjusted for potential confounders, it is evident that participants in the highest Paleolithic diet tertile had lower odds of depression (OR = 0.21; 95% CI: 0.12, 0.37: P < 0.001), anxiety (OR = 0.27; 95% CI: 0.16, 0.45: P < 0.001), and stress (OR = 0.19; 95% CI: 0.11, 0.32; P < 0.001) in comparison to the lowest tertile. Furthermore, those in the third tertile of the Mediterranean diet score were at lower risk of depression (OR = 0.20; 95% CI: 0.11, 0.36; P < 0.001), anxiety (OR = 0.22; 95% CI: 0.13, 0.38; P < 0.001), and stress (OR = 0.23; 95% CI: 0.13, 0.39; P < 0.001) compared with those in the first tertile.
Conclusion
The result of the current study suggests that greater adherence to Paleolithic and Mediterranean dietary patterns may be related with a decreased risk of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, and stress.
I stopped exercising 18-24 months ago, I’m not even sure why. Probably just got busy with work or life and got out of the habit. I turn 70 next year and know that I must exercise regularly to improve and maintain my vigor as aging progresses. I expect big changes, and not for the better, over the next decade. My father died at 83; my mother is still alive and fairly healthy at 92.
Here’s the program I started yesterday:
Push-ups.
Dumbell overhead presses, Arnold style.
One-arm bent-over rows with dumbell.
Single-leg Romanian dead lifts with dumbell.
Squats with dumbells.
Bench presses (alternating flat and inclined).
Walking the dogs for 2.5-4 miles, at least 2-3 times a week.
A recent visit with my brother-in-law Dale inspired me to start walking the famous “10,000 steps a day,” roughly five miles. That’s what he does. My dogs love it. I usually fail when I’m working a string of 12-hour shifts. If you’re an older woman, maybe 4,400 steps/day is enough for a longevity benefit. In other populations studied, 6,000 to 8,000 steps/day was optimal for the longevity benefit. I admitted a patient to the hospital a few days ago who told me her health insurer sends her a small check monthly if she meets their step goal. She’s saving them money via lower healthcare expenditures, and they’re sharing with her. I love it!
For exercises 1 through 5 above, I’ll do them for 90 seconds each, loading myself with enough weight to exhaust myself by the time I’m done. My cadence for them will be ~5 seconds each direction. E.g., for the bench press, 5 seconds slowly lifting the dumbells up, the 5 seconds slowly lowering them. Sort of like Chris Highcock’s Hillfit program.
Before you start a new fitness program, I suggest you take some baseline measurements.
As in May, 2012, I still weigh 168 lb (76.4 kg). But this required loss of 12 lb (5.5 kg) over the last year. Compared to 2012, however, I’m sure I’ve lost strength and muscle mass and gained girth. At the level of the umbilicus, my abdominal circumference while standing upright is 38.5 inches (98 cm). That number in May, 2012, was 36.5 inches (92.5 cm). If I measure my girth while supine, the number is three inches less. Assuming I’ve lost an inch of height over the last 15 years, my BMI is 23.4. Calculate your BMI here.
Advanced Mediterranean Diet 