The Arrow #172

Hello friends.

Greetings from Montecito. Back to Dallas in a couple of days.

Before we get started, I’ve got to reply to the many people who took me to task for not liking The Matrix. I get the point of it, I just thought it wasn’t all that good. It was like when I first saw 2001 A Space Odyssey years after it had been released. I had heard nothing but great things about it, and I thought it sucked. Like The Matrix, it obviously was of an age. If you saw it when it was new, you probably would like it forever. Coming to it late, as we did, just didn’t do it for us. Though I am thankful for the red pill-blue pill metaphor.

A lot of info to cover today, so let’s get to it.

Plant-Based Viagra

One of the medical information subscriptions I follow is Medscape. It comes in multiple variations depending upon how a doc signs up for it. I get a bunch of different ones in an effort to keep up with the breaking news in multiple specialties. Since diet impacts virtually everything, I keep up with pretty much all the specialties.

A couple of days ago, an article in one of these many missives caught my eye.

Whenever I see anything related to diet, I click on it. I figured this one was some sort of clickbait, but I clicked anyway. As it turned out, it was a bunch of gibberish, but educational gibberish. I’ll delve into it just to demonstrate how ignorant many doctors are.

Medical education (usually) selects for a typical breed of person. One who often isn’t a master of critical thinking. I don’t know how it is now, but back in the day it was extremely difficult to get into medical school. At that time, physicians made very good livings. Better livings, in fact, than virtually any other post-graduate education could provide.

I remember a line out of Dr. William Nolan’s terrific book The Making of a Surgeon. He was talking about his own decision to go to medical school. His father, who was a hardworking lawyer told him not to go to law school, but to become a doctor instead. “Those bastards have it made.” (I figured Nolan’s book would be long out of print, but I just checked on Amazon, and it’s still available. I followed in his footsteps a number of years later, and his description of a surgical residency is on the money.)

My own decision to go to medical school was driven by a couple of considerations: one was money. I looked at the ads for doctors in the back of medical journals and realized they were making vastly more money than I was as an engineer. Using my engineering brain and higher math skills, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the income lost by taking a few years off going to medical school would be rapidly replaced in just a few years of practicing medicine. (Didn’t really work out that way in the end. One of our sons, who is a lawyer, made more money than we ever did practicing medicine.)

The other factor prompting me to go was as a result of my SCUBA instructor work. In training both to become a diver and a dive instructor, I encountered medicine for the first time. Diving medicine is an important part of what one learns in becoming both a diver and especially in becoming an instructor.

Plus, during my dive instructor days, I met a guy who was a 4th year medical student and a diver. We became great friends. I mentioned to him that I was interested in diving medicine, and that I had become enamored of going to medical school. He arranged for me to scrub into some surgeries, watch an autopsy, and hang out with him while he was on call and pretend I, too, was a medical student.

That sealed the deal.

I went to medical school. In engineering school, we learned concepts and applied them to specific engineering problems. In medical school, we learned facts and terms. Thousands and thousands of them. It was basically rote memorization. And it kind of has to be because of how much one has to cram in over the first two years. Then the second two years on the wards is almost more of the same. No one wants to be called down by the Chief Resident or, God forbid, the attending physician on rounds for not knowing something. So more memorization about all the patients in your care and everything about their particular diseases.

There was almost no reading of the scientific literature anywhere along the way. If you were assigned a paper, it was to learn whatever the paper had to say. Not to critically evaluate the methodology involved. Or even the conclusions.

I don’t know what would have happened had I read a paper critically like I do everyday today and told the doc who assigned it to me that it was total bullshit. Had I done that, I might still be an engineer.

It takes a while to learn how to read scientific papers critically.

So, with that intro, let’s look at the article above about how diet could replace viagra for erectile dysfunction.

Once I clicked on the link above, I was taken to this page.

Okay, the article is a report by Dr. Rubin, pictured above, who is obviously the urological reporter for Medscape. She is reporting what she learned from “an incredible conference” presenter, Dr. Stacy Loeb.

Given the scary title of the actual article Meat Isn’t Manly When It Comes to Erectile Dysfunction, you’ve got to figure it’s going to be a meat basher.

And it is. But is it based on any reliable evidence?

Let’s take a look.

The piece is presented in an interview format with Dr. Rubin interviewing Dr. Loeb. Here is a link to the entire thing, so you can read it in all its inanity. But, since it’s a subscription, I don’t know if there is a paywall or not. So, I’ll quote the pertinent parts.

It starts off with Dr. Ruben asking Dr. Loeb how she (Dr. Loeb) “recently became very interested in studying plant-based diets. How did that start, and how has the research evolved over time?”

We know right off the bat that Dr. Loeb is “interested” in plant-based diets, which doubtless means she’s biased in that direction. Nothing wrong with that. I’m biased in favor of low-carb, meat-based diets. And I’m more than willing to provide data to back up my bias.

Let’s see how Dr. Loeb does.

Okay, you can pretty much tell where her head is on this. The “That was really good news, and it’s a win-win” line says it all. I’m pretty sure that before the “really good news” study results came in Dr. Loeb was a plant-based diet advocate.

The drivel continues. What was this major win-win?

Dr. Rubin asks Dr. Loeb to describe her research and talk about how much benefit men get from switching to a plant-based diet.

Okay, she repeats her win-win mantra and disses meat yet again with the “it’s not masculine” line. But is her evidence valid?

In a word, no.

Let’s look at the study, which is linked in the quote above.

A quick read through by anyone who knows anything at all about analyzing studies reveals that the results are meaningless. It’s an observational study, which can’t prove causality, despite Dr. Loeb’s implication that it does.

First, look at the statistical analysis of the data, which, if you know anything about statistical analysis, is all you have to see.

The bolded figures are based on relative risk figures, which need to be much higher for even those who believe in observational studies to consider valid.

In case you don’t read the study, hPDI stands for healthy plant-diet index while uPDI stands for unhealthy plant-diet index. Unhealthy plants despite being a sin against good grammar refers to processed grains vs whole grains.

Then when you get to how the study was done, anyone with good sense loses all confidence in it.

First, here is how the researchers came up with their database:

That’s how they winnowed their subjects to get to the final group. Then they gave them Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQ) asking them about what they ate over the previous four years. Can you remember how many times you ate bread over the last year? Or cheese? Or whatever? FFQs are a joke. Yet those who use them say, But they’re our only alternative.

Yes, but that alternative sucks and makes any study that uses FFQs suspect. And worthless.

Given the way they selected the subjects and the fact that they then used FFQs makes the study not worth the paper is was written on. And even selecting the subjects and using FFQs didn’t give a huge difference between the groups. Certainly not enough to come anywhere close to making the recommendation to avoid meat.

But this is all lost on the two docs in the article. After hearing this evidence, Dr. Rubin gushes, How do you get people to go on plant-based diets?

As you can see, the hard-nosed reporter Dr. Rubin fell for this nonsense hook, line, and sinker. No asking about the study at all.

In her answer, Dr. Loeb outs herself completely. Citing the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a dead give away. It’s a vegan/vegetarian group of docs.

She is clueless about protein intake in people old enough to have ED. They need more animal protein, not less. And it is extremely difficult to get enough protein on plant-based diets. I would love to have her tell me just what kind of plant-based diet would provide 1.5 times the RDA of quality protein.

And Dr. Loeb obviously has an inability to understand these kinds of studies. The first part of her answer that I bolded above is total nonsense. Read it and tell me what it says. We looked at these quintiles and those quintiles. And what?

“It really does make a big difference.”

No, it doesn’t. The data are inconclusive. At least to anyone who has even a modicum of understanding as to what these kinds of studies mean.

But people who are as ignorant as these two will read this and may end up putting their patients with ED on plant-based diets. And in the process not do anything about their ED, but cause them to lose difficult-to-regain lean body mass.

Jesus wept.

Okay, on to something more fun and exciting.

There is a new Substack writer you all need to read

As I’m sure most of you know, my beloved wife and partner in crime, MD (Mary Dan Eades, M.D.), is obsessed with the Outlander series on [fill in the blank]. She loves everything about it with the possible exception of the occasional medical errors. And even those she doesn’t not love, but feels the desire to explain.

She figures what with all the money the series has spent on incredible accuracy in costumes, in sets, in settings and all the money it’s surely made, there should be at least enough for a medical consultant on the set. And maybe there is one, but if there is, he/she is kind of clueless, or those in charge go for the drama over the reality. It is just tv after all.

As well as being a terrific clinician, which she absolutely is, MD is sort of a medical historian. She loves to read about and study how medicine was practiced in the centuries before now.

She has decided to examine all the medical interludes appearing on her beloved Outlander (showing errors where they occur and giving kudos where deserved) and describe how the procedures that are done and medicines given veer from the reality of the time and from what would be done today.

Give the first article of her Substack, called Outlander MD, a look. Even if you are not an Outlander fan, or even if you don’t even know what Outlander is, you’ll learn a lot about how medicine was practiced in the late 1700s.

One thing the denizens of the Highlands of Scotland and the wilds of early America didn’t have to concern themselves with, from a healthy eating standpoint, was ultra processed foods. We, today aren’t so lucky, so…

Ultra-Processed Foods, Oh My!

I was cruising around on Twitter a few days ago and came across this atrocity:

Most of you should know by now that I don’t really take these things at face value. I’m always skeptical. And so with this. I couldn’t believe that ice cream of any sort wouldn’t melt in 22 hours, so I decided to try this experiment myself.

MD was heading to the grocery store, so I had her grab a Nestle’s Drumstick like the one used in the experiment above. She came back with the Original Vanilla version. She couldn’t find the Cookies & Cream version shown above.

Note the big yellow circle saying “NO ARTIFICIAL flavors or colors.”

Here are the ingredients:

Here this baby is on the plate at 11:30 AM yesterday. Looks pretty good.

And here it is at 11:30 this morning. It was kept inside, in the shade, away from direct sunlight at Montecito temps, which are ~ 65F.

As you can see, it doesn’t look a whole lot like something you would want to eat. I suppose the oily yellowish stuff around the edge of the plate is whatever was temperature sensitive and melted in this conglomeration of ingredients.

When I pressed my finger into the whitish stuff inside the cone, it felt oily and kind of softly spongy. Sort of like marshmallow fluff, but not sticky. It didn’t feel much like anything I would like to eat, but in the interest of science, I manned up and tasted it (mainly because I couldn’t get MD to do it), and it had a sweetish oily taste and mouth feel. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for ten minutes or so.

The chocolate coating was pretty much intact, but chocolate candy left out retains its shape as long as it doesn’t get hot. And the peanuts are peanuts, so nothing is going to happen to them.

All in all, it was a pretty nasty mess. I don’t make it a habit to eat Drumsticks, but I can assure you I’ll never eat another.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the difference between foods in the US and foods in Europe, so I decided to see what the ingredients were in the European version of Drumsticks. As it turned out, I couldn’t find anything other than that Drumsticks weren’t sold in Europe. I’m not sure whether or not that’s true. Any European readers out there have any knowledge of Nestle’s Drumsticks? If so, let me know the ingredients. I’m keenly interested.

In looking at the label shown above, I noticed at the bottom that the product is distributed by Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, Inc. in Oakland, CA. In checking online, I discovered that Dreyer’s (and Drumstick) was purchased by Nestle about 20 years ago.

If so, I would guess that Dreyer’s Vanilla ice cream recipe is used to make them. The one in the video at the top is Cookies & Cream. Dreyer’s has an ice cream called Cookies & Cream, so it stands to reason that the version I got was made with Dreyer’s Vanilla ice cream.

The ingredients in the Drumstick as shown on the label above are: skim milk, sugar, peanuts, coconut oil, whey, corn syrup, bleached wheat flour, palm oil, cocoa, palm olein, soy lecithin, soybean oil, cream, guar gum, monoglycerides, milk, salt, natural flavor, carob bean gum, annatto color.

If you compare that to the ingredients in Dreyer’s Vanilla Ice Cream, you can see most are the same. I’ve underlined below the ingredients in the ice cream.

Skim milk, sugar, peanuts, coconut oil, whey, corn syrup, bleached wheat flour, palm oil, cocoa, palm olein, soy lecithin, soybean oil, cream, guar gum, monoglycerides, milk, salt, natural flavor, carob bean gum, annatto color.

I would guess the other ingredients go into the cone and chocolate coating. Then, of course, the peanuts on top.

Since the ingredients in the Dreyer’s Vanilla Ice Cream are the same as those in the Drumstick, I would bet Dreyer’s Vanilla Ice Cream is used for the ice cream part.

My next experiment will be to get some Dreyer’s Vanilla Ice Cream and let it sit for 24 hours to see what happens. I suspect I’ll be left with the same thing I found inside the cone with the Drumsticks.

Not very appetizing.

Food Is Better In Europe

MD and I have spent a lot of time in Europe, and I can tell you categorically that the food is better there. The only thing that may be better in the US is a big ribeye steak. I think those are better here. But everything else—at least of the foods we enjoy most—is better in Europe.

Here is a great video I came across while looking for info on Drumsticks in Europe. (Apparently, there aren’t any.) Probably because Europe bans way more food additives than does the US.

The young lady narrating the video is a midwesterner transplanted to Europe for some five years now. I think she’s in Germany, but I haven’t watched any other of her videos, so I don’t know the whole story.

Her experience matches ours.

Many people lose weight while traveling in Europe without trying. And it’s not because they are exercising more. The food is better there and contains vastly fewer additives than does food in the US.

One of the statements the narrator of the video made reminded me of a great experience MD and I had in Sicily. The narrator said salads in Europe are made with fewer ingredients than those in the US, and are much tastier simply because the ingredients are tastier.

Years ago MD and I along with a group of friends stayed for several days at a winery and cooking school in Sicily. It was a strange experience because all the people involved with the winery were some kind of ancient royalty. As were all their friends who came to meet us. There were princes, counts, dukes, contessas, and God only knows what else. I felt kind of like I was in a production of Huckleberry Finn, with the King and the Duke and all.

While there, we were provided with meals and a gracious plenty of very good wines. The contessa was a terrific cook and one day she whipped together a salad that was without exaggeration the single best salad MD and I had ever eaten. It still tops the bill for great salads with us. And it was simple beyond belief.

She made it with whatever the Sicilian equivalent is of fresh butter lettuce with fresh olive oil and salt. It sounds—and was—the essence of simplicity, but it was delicious beyond belief. When we got home, MD grabbed some fresh butter lettuce, and we slathered it with olive oil and salt. No comparison. It tasted like a pale, pale imitation of the contessa’s salad.

The difference, of course, was the quality of the lettuce and the olive oil. Hers were both fresh. God only knows how long it had been since the lettuce we tried at home was picked. The olive oil may have been three years old, for all we knew. Hers came from the olive grove down the way, fresh pressed. It makes a huge, huge difference.

One more European food story.

We made a run through southern Spain a few years back with the same couple we went to Sicily with. Our first day was in Seville, and we hit a restaurant that had gazpacho on the menu. As I was to learn, gazpacho is native to southern Spain and is on the menu and just about every restaurant in the region. But this was the first of the trip.

I love gazpacho. And I especially love gazpacho that is chunky. In fact, the chunkier, the better. So, of course, I order it.

It comes and they put the bowl down before me, and it looks exactly like the Campbell’s cream of tomato soup I grew up on. All soup, no chunks. I was hugely disappointed. Then the waiter came back with a tray filled with chopped tomatoes, chopped peppers, chopped onions, and sour cream.

He spooned the tomatoes, peppers, and onions into my soup, then floated a bit of sour cream on it.

I took a bite and was in heaven. It surpassed any gazpacho I had ever eaten. It was really beyond belief. And it wasn’t just the chunky part, though that played a large role. It was the taste of the soup itself. Slightly acidic. I wish I had all the culinary terms to describe it better, but I don’t. [The bride tells me it is piquant.]

The entire rest of the trip, I refused to go to any restaurant that did not have gazpacho on the menu. I ended up driving the frigging car for the entire trip, so I demanded in recompense that we avoid any non-gazpacho-having restaurants. So, other than breakfast, I had gazpacho at every meal throughout the entire trip.

As soon as we got home, I rushed out and bought a big book on Spanish cooking that had a recipe for gazpacho in it. Brought it home and encouraged the bride to make it. Despite her best efforts, it sucked. I mean it was okay, but like the fresh lettuce salad, not even close to how good the gazpacho was in Spain. I was hugely disappointed.

A couple of years later, we had occasion to meet a genius chef who was of Spanish ancestry, but grew up in Mexico, where his mother was a famous soap opera star. He could do anything with food. I told him about my bitter disappointment with the gazpacho we made here. He said the recipe we used was fine, but it would never taste the same because the tomatoes taste different in Spain. Different water. Different soil. He took the recipe and fooled around with it and sent it back to us.

MD prepared it using his changes, but with American tomatoes, and it was almost the same as the Spanish variety. According to MD, it’s a real pain to make the base. I wouldn’t know, because she does that. My job is to chop the fresh tomatoes, peppers, and onions. She chops them too coarse. I like them just like they do it in Spain. Little bitty chunks, not chunks the size of marbles.

These are just two of the food differences between the US and Europe.

There is one more big difference, but it has to do with the size of the cities.

In the US, you can get great food in any large city. Even smallish cities will have a decent handful of restaurants. But if you get off the beaten path and hit small town America, you’re in trouble. I know there are exceptions, but in general small town food sucks. And this is from someone who has driven across America many times in all directions. That didn’t used to be the case and there was good home-cooking all across American small towns, but that’s changed.

Once MD and I had to go to Aberdeen, SD to give a talk to some cattlemen’s association groups. There was no way to fly in there that was convenient, so we drove from Boulder, where we were living at the time. We stopped for lunch somewhere in Nebraska, and it was dreadful. From the pretty awful choices available on the menu, we both selected a hamburger patty and asked if we could substitute anything for the fries. The waitress said sure. She said we could get a fruit salad. We said we’ll take it.

When our lunch came, it was an overcooked hamburger patty, fruit cocktail in syrup out of a can, and two slices of plain white sandwich bread. So, beware food in small town America. It’s not all as bad as that one meal was in Nebraska, but it’s close.

In Europe, it’s just the opposite. Based on our experience driving all over the place there (mainly in Spain, France, and Italy), you can find better food in small towns than in larger towns. It’s always fresh and seasonal. It may not be better than food in Paris, but it’s damn near as good, especially if you’re just eating simple food.

I’ll leave you with this video of a Roman pizza maker who has been at it for 60 years. Do not watch if you are hungry. The food looks phenomenal. Domino’s it ain’t.

The Plain Truth About Vaccines

As I’ve written in these pages many times, I’ve given God only knows how many vaccines to all kinds of people in my medical career. Mainly kids, I’m sad to say. I didn’t learn much about vaccines in medical school, but I, like everyone else, thought they were life-saving wonder drugs (if you can call them drugs).

Probably the only good to come out of the so-called Covid pandemic is that so many people—myself included—got red pilled on vaccines. Not just the Covid vaccine, but vaccines in general.

I read countless articles and a handful of books, the two most salient of which were Turtles All the Way Down and Dissolving Illusions. I highly recommend both of them.

What I mainly learned that put me off of the vaccines is that vaccines have never been tested against placebo, so we don’t know if they save lives and misery or not. We do know they prevent some of the diseases they are designed to immunize against, but we don’t know what the long-term outcomes are.

The reason the vaccines have not been tested against placebo is because the people making the vaccines posit that it would be unethical to deprive the placebo group of the vaccine. So the so-called placebo group gets the old, established vaccine, while the study group gets the new one. If the side effects from the new one aren’t markedly worse than those engendered by the old one, then the new one is approved. But we don’t know how the side effect profile of the old one compares to a placebo vaccine, because the old one was compared to the one before it.

So, as it stands now, there will never be a study looking at one of these vaccines compared to placebo due to these ‘ethical’ issues.

There have been retrospective studies of those who have been vaccinated compared to those who haven’t, and in those studies the unvaccinated came out the better. But those aren’t RCTs, so we don’t know for sure. It could be that the family structure of those not taking vaccines is different from that of those who do. That could make a difference. There could be any number of differences, and the only way to tell for sure is to do a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Which will never be done.

I’ve talked to a handful of docs about this. And they fall into two groups. One says, Are you out of your mind? Vaccines save lives. They don’t want to hear anything different. The others are a bit more open minded, but it’s hard to get them to contemplate giving up the measles vaccine and others like it that are a part of the kiddy vaccine protocol.

I was delighted to learn that Peter McCullough is on the same page as I am re the vaccine situation.

He makes a pretty clear statement of fact. Something really needs to be done to correct the situation before a lot more kids are damaged.

An Interesting Gallup Poll

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a couple of sensitive types take me to task in the poll responses for being too overtly political. I didn’t think I was, but they sure did. I’m sure these people would be surprised to know what my politics really are. I suspect I know theirs, but I might be surprised, too.

I saw this Gallup poll a couple of weeks ago and found it astonishing. It is an open ended poll, meaning people weren’t asked specific questions, as in, “Are you happy with the economy right now?”

There were just asked for their thoughts on what were the problems America is facing. And they were asked over a three month period. I’ll keep on the lookout for the one for April and post when I see it.

Since this is a Gallup poll, I would assume the pollsters lean a little to the left, but I’m not sure. They’re certainly not right wingers, that’s for sure.

I’m making no commentary on the poll. It pretty much speaks for itself.

Make of it what you wish. Just don’t attack me if you don’t like what it says. I had nothing to do with it.

My Definition of a True American

I came across this bizarre video of Tucker Carlson opening for Kid Rock. I don’t know if Tucker was on something or what, but he seems a little stressed and out of character. Of course, he is addressing probably more real people in front of him than he ever has before by several magnitudes. It would be enough to throw anyone off.

During this weird monologue, Tucker asks the question, “what does a real American look like?”

Well, my vote for what a real American looks like goes to this kid in Indiana.

What do I like about him? He sprang into action when needed. He’s soft spoken and self effacing. Think Gary Cooper. He loves his parents. And he’s a welder. Which means he makes stuff. He doesn’t push papers and fiddle with documents. He actually produces or fixes things.

Being a welder is a tough job. I spent part of a summer in River Rouge, Michigan being a welder, and I hated every minute of it. But I did help make stuff. The company I worked for built those asphalt heating trailers you see whenever road construction is going on. We built them from the ground up.

As I’ve written a number of times, End Times, the book I read in January of this year completely changed my outlook on many things, including what is really important. People who can make things are the most important of all.

I remember from years ago when I read J. Paul Getty’s autobiography what he said about those who make things. (The book is in Dallas, or I would give you the exact quote.) J. Paul said that if an upper-level manager got sick and was off for two weeks, nothing much would change. But if a master machinist working on the shop floor were to miss a few days, it would be a disaster.

Keep a soft spot in your heart for those who produce.

How to Live Longer…Sort Of

A new study on longevity just came out of Sweden. Titled Blood biomarker profiles and exceptional longevity: comparison of centenarians and non-centenarians in a 35-year follow-up of the Swedish AMORIS cohort the study is of a type I despise. But it is interesting nonetheless.

I don’t like these kinds of studies because it doesn’t have an hypothesis it’s testing. Instead, it is just a bunch of data collected and presented. You can’t draw any causal conclusions from it. But it is eye-opening to see.

Here’s what the authors did.

Sweden has socialized medicine and can compile a database of subjects who come in for treatment. In this case, here is a description of the database:

Here is what they were looking for:

They looked at the blood work of those individuals who made it to 100 years old and compared that to those who died before reaching centenarian status to see if there was a difference. The idea, of course, is that if so, maybe something could be done earlier in life to change blood work values in an effort to make folks live longer. Or maybe prevent them from dying earlier, which amounts to the same thing.

Here is what they looked at specifically:

To put this in tabular format, here are the subsets of these blood values and what they apply to:

• Inflammation: Uric acid

• Metabolic status: Total cholesterol and glucose

• Liver function: ALAT, ASAT, albumin, GGT, ALP, and LD

• Kidney function: Creatinine

• Anemia: Iron and total iron-binding capacity (TIBC)

• Nutrition: Albumin

You might wonder how these few blood values could tell such a complete story. But they kind of do. The only one I would quibble with is the total cholesterol as a marker for metabolic status. Triglycerides would have been a better indicator.

All those liver function tests pretty accurately describe what’s going on with the liver, the major metabolic organ in the body. Creatinine is typically used as a marker for kidney function. Iron and TIBC are used for determining whether or not one has anemia. And albumin is a marker of protein nutrition.

Albumin is a protein that carries a lot of other substances through the blood. The liver makes albumin from protein, so if you’re protein deficient, your albumin levels will be low.

Now, knowing all this, what did they find?

So, if your total cholesterol is higher at a younger age, you have a greater chance to live to be 100. Which demands an answer to the question, why in God’s name would you want to lower your cholesterol at age 65? Yet many people go on statins to do so, which seems a bit of a fool’s errand.

Second, a low glucose level means you aren’t insulin resistant and have tight metabolic control.

Lower signs of kidney issues and liver issues also indicate good metabolic control. Most of our overweight patients had elevated uric acid, elevated liver enzymes, and elevated creatinine. All of which resolved for most of them once they started a low-carb diet.

Finally, iron levels are pretty much a function of diet. Best way to get iron. Eat meat. (And heme iron in meat isn’t absorbed unless you need it, so there’s no chance of iron overload with meat like there might be with supplements or inorganic iron found in plants.)

Although I’m ready to embrace this study since it tells me what I want to hear, it really isn’t all that valid.

We don’t know if changing these biomarkers with drugs or lifestyle really makes a difference. Only an RCT would tell us that for sure. I suspect that if you are able to change them with lifestyle, you would probably prolong your life, but I don’t know for sure.

If you try to change them with drugs, you’re getting into Campbell’s law territory there.

This is a pretty easy study to read, so I would urge you to read it and judge for yourself. Plus, take a look at the graphics along with the description of other such studies.

Odds and Ends

• James Webb telescope finds origins of the biggest explosion since the Big Bang. But where is the gold and platinum?

• What it was like being a 27 year old male in 18th century London.

• Canadian grandmother breaks world record by planking for 4.5 hours.

• Scientists discover first algae that can fix nitrogen. Could end up allowing plants to produce some of their own fertilizer.

• Based on Google flight searches, here are the top 20 travel destinations for this summer.

• The Titanic sank 112 years ago this past Monday. Here is some more info on the ship and its passengers for those obsessed.

• Great map showing how the climates of Old World countries are replicated in North America. Give me Portugal.

• Did chastity belts ever really exist? One medievalist doesn’t believe so.

• These scientists believe Paleolithic cave paintings were done while the artists were ‘stoned’ by hypoxemia. I’m not sure I agree. The paintings are way too realistic to be done by someone impaired.

• The talks that could have ended the war in Ukraine. A hidden history of diplomacy that came up short.

• An ancient recipe for Mesopotamian beer has survived the millennia to find new life as a modern drink. The article demonstrates the BBC’s insane obsession with climate change. More about that than the interesting beer involved.

• Just what we need. McDonald’s latest marketing ploy is to introduce billboards that smell like their French fries.

• Chinese organized crime’s latest target: US gift cards.

• I wonder what the unintended consequences of this project will be.

• Here are the difficulty levels of most European languages for Americans to learn as determined by the Foreign Service Institute.

• I’m surprised there isn’t more of this. Nasa says part of International Space Station crashed into Florida home.

• Long, fascinating article about the first US-based nuclear spy and how he escaped prosecution while the Rosenbergs, who did much less, got executed.

• UAE learns it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. A little cloud seeding here and there shouldn’t be a problem. Should it?

• Once again, Pfizer can’t be trusted. RCT shows Paxlovid no better than placebo in the sustained alleviation of symptoms of Covid.

• Elephant takes a break from the circus monotony and goes walkabout in Butte, Montana.

Newsletter Recommendations

I’ve got a few for you this week.

As always, there is Alex & Books, a weekly free newsletter mainly about non-fiction books. If you like to read—and you must, to have made it this far down, do yourself a favor and take a look.

Also, The Aurorean, a newsletter about science. I get a lot of my info for the Odds and Ends section from this free newsletter. Give it a try.

And, last, but certainly not least, OutlanderMD. Also free and filled with 18th century medical lore and 20th and 21st Century medical insight.

Okay, it’s time for the…

Video of the Week

Finally, for the first time in years, Saturday Night Live had a truly funny, non-political segment. This one featuring Ryan Gosling. It’s really funny.

Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week.

That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

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