The Arrow #147

Hello friends.

Glad to be back on US soil after a two-week trip away. It’s always nice to get back home, but MD and I really did enjoy our time in Australia and New Zealand.

With our host Simon Thornley, MD and I took the ferry from Auckland to Davenport where we climbed a large hill to get an overview. Here is Auckland in the distance.

One of the best things about Auckland, and, I guess New Zealand in general, is that there is no tipping. MD and I ran out to a restaurant one night while the folks we were staying with were out. She had an absolutely delicious venison filet wrapped in bacon and I had a 350g sirloin, that was good, but not as good as MD’s venison.

After the meal, we sat there like typical Americans waiting for our waitress to bring us the check. After a bit, we realized they may operate differently there, so we asked about paying. Our waitress said just pay up front. So we headed for the front. They pulled up our bill, and said, “Tap here with your card,” which I did. Then the machine printed out a receipt, the lady behind the counter said, “Okay, thanks very much,” and walked away. I didn’t have any New Zealand money to leave a tip with, so we just left. Feeling bad, I might add.

When we got back to the house, Simon was home, so I told him what happened. He said “No one tips here. They’ve tried to get it instituted, but no one goes along with it.” And it’s true. Every time we ate anywhere, the staff just brought the little machine to the table with the bill already calculated. A tap of the card, and you’re done. Without the extra 20 percent, or whatever.

I compared that to when we flew out of Dallas a time or two ago. I wanted to get something to snack on for the plane. I found this little kiosk manned (if that’s the correct word) by a woman who didn’t say a single word to me. I looked through the offerings at hand and found a bag of jerky. I grabbed it, walked to the counter, gave her my credit card, which she ran through the machine, which she then turned my way, so I could give her a tip. The starting amount was 15 percent, and it went up to 30 percent. Or, it gave one the option of a specific amount. Or none. I hit none. I was stunned. This woman hadn’t said a word to me, much less helped me find anything or served me in any real way. And yet… tip?

I came across this article a day or two ago, so I’m not the only one offended by tip jars and everyone with their hand out. Lest you think I’m a tightwad, I always tip at least 20 percent for a restaurant meal. I worked as a waiter, so I know the situation. Waiters in the US at least get paid way less than the minimum wage, because tips are worked into their salary.

After spending a couple of days with Simon and family, not wanting to be a burden, we decamped to a VRBO in downtown Auckland right in the middle of everything. On the day we moved in, practically across the street from us there was a huge pro-Palestinian march. We were having a cup of tea a hundred or so yards away when we heard them chanting and saw them marching with countless Palestinian flags.

Then, I spotted a Russian flag in the mix, and despite MD’s exhortations that I not get involved, I headed for a closer look. My plan was to get a photo of the Russian flag next to one of the many Palestinian flags, so I could post it and cause all kinds of cognitive dissonance among the followers of The Current Thing.

Alas, by the time I got there, the Russian flag was too far away to get a photo. I waited for a bit hoping for another, but another was not to come by. I took a couple of photos of the tail end of the march.

As the tail end of the march moved on, the viewers in the square started to walk back toward where we were all having tea. It amazed me how many of them were aged hippies. One guy, who was as white as I am, was wearing a Down With White Supremacy t-shirt. All this took place less than a week after the murder of over a thousand Israelis.

On a brighter note, after writing in last week’s Arrow that I was so enamored of the farm I visited in Australia I forgot to take any photos, our host, Rod Taylor, sent me one. I had forgotten he had taken a picture of MD and me with Rob Liley, the owner. Ignore the people and look at the lush, green pasture in the background. There are about 999 acres you can’t see that are just as green and lovely. An absolutely spectacular place. God only knows how much it would cost to buy. I thought Montecito, CA property was expensive. It pales in comparison to Melbourne, Australia property. If you want real estate sticker shock, go there.

Also, re our trip to Australia, the streaming videos of the talks at Low Carb Sydney are still available for $99 (Australian), which computes to about $62 US. Well worth the investment.

Here is one that was an add on that is available free. It is by Dr. Paul Mason on the logical fallacies of the vegan diet. Well, well worth watching.

As I mentioned in an earlier Arrow, MD and I are doing a course on protein for the Adapt Your Life Academy. We will be doing a free live workshop on protein on Oct 30, 2023 at 8pm EST. If you’re interested, sign up here, and you’ll be sent a link to tune in. I’m not 100 percent positive, but I’m pretty sure if you sign up the workshop will be available online should you not be able to attend on Oct 30. Of course you couldn’t participate live in the Q&A afterward if you tune in later, but you should be able to get the talk.

While on the subject of protein, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about our friend Dr. Gabrielle Lyon’s new book Forever Strong, in which she makes the case that we all need to focus on building and maintaining muscle mass and strength to prevent disease and forestall aging. It’s a great read.

More on the Administrative State

One of the reasons I was happy to see Mike Johnson elected Speaker of the House yesterday is that he is a great opponent of the administrative state. Anyone of either party (although I challenge you to find one who is a Democrat) who is against the administrative state gets my vote. I came across a video yesterday of John Kennedy asking questions of the Consumer Financial Protective Bureau (CFPB). This questioning of the CFPB by Kennedy, whose whiny Louisiana accent belies a razor-sharp legal mind that almost always cuts to the center of any issue, is a case in point. I’ve got it queued to the starting point.

You may think all these questions are a little intrusive—I certainly do—but the real issue comes up at 9:09 when Kennedy brings up the costs involved to implement these rules. This is where the administrative state is a boon to big banks. And is why the big banks are all for these kinds of rules. The big banks can easily afford hiring the extra compliance people to deal with these issues. Small banks operating on smaller margins can’t always afford to do so.

Which is why just about all big businesses love the administrative state. It prevents a lot of competition.

When I watched this video and heard Kennedy talk about the invasion of privacy, all I could think about was how it sounded exactly the way a member of the Senate who was a Democrat would have spoken 25 years ago. On many, many issues the parties have switched sides over the past few decades.

One of the reasons for this switch may have been described by Thomas Sowell years ago in his enlightening book A Conflict of Visions written in the late 1980s and updated in 2006. I hadn’t thought of this book in years until I read a piece a day or two ago by a Russian immigrant to the UK. He was writing about the nightmare in Israel right now, and how the different sides were responding to it.

He economically summarized Sowell’s take of this conflict of visions.

The entire piece is terrific.

I had never heard of this writer until I read this article. I looked him up and discovered he was a young man who immigrated from Russia to the UK when he was eleven. At the time of his leaving Russia, Putin was just working his way up through the ranks. I discovered he had a book out, which he titled An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West. It was on sale on Kindle for $4.99, so I bought it and stayed up half the night last night reading it.

In the book, he describes the differences he’s experienced being in the West as compared to living in Russia, where many of his relatives still live. It gives those of us living in the West—or, I guess I should say it gave me—an idea of how lucky we are to be living here and not there.

After I read his piece above, I signed up for his Substack and spent a lot of yesterday reading it.

I’m curious how everyone else feels about Sowell’s unconstrained vs constrained vision explanation. So, it’s time for a poll.

Israel vs Hammas

As I wrote last week, I don’t have a great understanding of the situation in the middle East vis a vis the Israelis and the Palestinians. I found what appears to be a pretty even-sided description of what’s happened over the past 120 years or so in the area. The part concerning how the two groups have been at one another’s throats starts on page 120 and ends on page 132, so it’s not that long. I’ve got a much better understanding now, but it is far from comprehensive. Plus, it covers only the time from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire until 2000, which was when it was written. Just the reading of this document almost makes me want to take sides with the Palestinians. But, as the article says, the writers decided to start the clock in the late 1800s/early 1900s when the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

If you read the footnotes, which I did, you’ll notice this one:

As you can see, the Jews were really there first. And then again. Both times long before the Palestinians. So who has the right to the land? If you just start at the Ottoman Empire, then the Palestinians have as much, if not more, right than the Jews. But who says it’s correct to start there?

Think about East Prussia.

It had been a part of Germany since reunification in 1881. After WWII, it was ceded to the USSR. Now it is a state (or oblast) of Russia. It’s capital city, Königsberg, the place Immanuel Kant was born and spent his entire life, is now Kaliningrad. The USSR displaced (and/or killed and/or sent to gulags) the entire German population and replaced them with Soviets. A little bit was given to Poland and a strip to Lithuania, but the majority of the former East Prussia is now an exclave of Russia.

Why don’t the Prussians/Germans have a right to take back their ancestral home? They were there for centuries before their land was turned over to the USSR. If you ask that question, you will be told that the Prussians/Germans lost it in the war. And you would probably be told it serves them right for what they did to the Jews.

Now you have the Jews, who not only held the land first, but won the war against various Arab forces not once, but twice, being told they are unlawful occupiers. Had they been like the USSR, they would have shed their entire country of Palestinians in 1967. But they didn’t.

It’s a tough, tough situation. And as much as I feel for the Palestinian plight, I can’t find myself on the side of those who butcher babies, teens, and the elderly just for sport.

Here is a Substack report from a journalist who ended up watching the videos from captured or killed Hamas terrorists. Read it if you dare. I warn you, it isn’t pretty.

There is one paragraph in this piece that really got to me. Not so much for what it said as for… I don’t know. I don’t have words to express it.

Let me give you some background.

A month of two ago I saw a cartoon joke (if you want to call it that) on some website. I looked for it again, but couldn’t find it. It was a guy in the backseat of a car frying eggs under the back window. The caption said, “You’ll know the temperature is right when the baby stops screaming.”

I looked at it and looked at it and could not figure out what the joke was. I showed it to MD, and she immediately said, “the horrific punchline is about a baby dying in a hot car.”

Then she said, I’m sure most people would say, “gross,” or “sick,” or something along those lines. “But,” she said, “if it said ‘You’ll know the temperature is right when the dog stops whining’ people would be going ballistic about it.” And probably cancel whoever created it and whoever posted it as well.

The article above describes the videos of vicious murders captured on Go Pro cameras held by the Hamas terrorists. Here is the paragraph about one of them that gets to me:

MD was right.

I don’t know what that says about us as a society. I love dogs as much as anybody, but I love people, too.

Information on vaccine injuries keeps pouring in. So much so that I haven’t had the time to evaluate all of it. And I don’t want to offer an opinion when I haven’t had time to read the papers in detail. Maybe next week, I’ll give it a go.

Robert Malone, M.D. Explains Vaccine Adulteration

I think pretty much everyone by now has heard of the possible adulteration of the Covid vaccines with SM 40 and rogue DNA particles. Dr. Malone, who actually came up with mRNA vaccines back in the 1980s sheds some light on whether or not this is true, and what it really means if it is.

You can read about it below. Despite Dr. Malone’s trying to explain it simply, it’s still kind of technical. But it’s a high tech issue, so difficult to explain otherwise.

Okay, time for some fun.

Antidepressants or Tolkien

I came across a great game in The Hustle a couple of days ago called Antidepressants or Tolkien. In this game, you are presented with a word that looks and sounds Lord-of-the-Rings-like. Your job is to decide whether the word describes a Tolkien character or an anti-depressant drug.

I was consumed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit when I was in college. I read every word of all the books. And, I am a physician licensed to prescribe drugs in two different states. So, you would think I would do well.

As it turned out, I did a little better than 50 percent, which I should have gotten just by blind luck.

Tells you I forgot a lot of my Tolkien and/or I’m not a prescriber of prescription antidepressants.

Here is the link if you want to give it a try yourself. See if you can beat my miserable 17/24. (Truth be told, I figured I would get them all.)

This game courtesy of my favorite free daily newsletter, The Hustle.

Okay, let’s look at a couple of papers I came across on the ketogenic diet while I was catching up on the plane on the way back from Auckland. Air New Zealand has pretty good free wifi, so I took advantage.

Muscle, Muscle, Muscle

As part of my first talk in Sydney a week and a half ago, I presented some data from the recent Wegovy (semaglutide) study showing what the composition of the weight loss was. Remember, this is the weekly injection of 2.4 mg of semaglutide that costs about $1,300 per month.

I went through this study looking to see if I could ferret out what all the substantial weight loss from this study was made of. Did the subjects lose mainly fat? Or mainly muscle mass? Or some of both?

Given how important muscle mass is to long-term health, it would be nice if this drug brought about mainly a loss of fat mass.

I had to dig, but I finally found it. The composition of the weight loss isn’t mentioned in the study paper. It is mentioned, but you have to go to an appendix to find the information. Even once there, they make it tough on you.

The data is listed on page 20 of the appendix. When you do find it, you still have to do some calculating to find the number you want. But I persisted.

In the main paper, the authors inform you that the body composition was calculated on a sub-group of 140 subjects (out of roughly 1,000 subjects) with no explanation as to how these 140 were chosen. Based on their selection of these 140 (something tells me they didn’t chose the 140 to make the drug look bad), the weight lost calculates to be 42 percent lean body mass. Here is my slide from my talk:

This 42 percent represents a pretty good chunk of muscle mass these folks lost, and it is going to be extremely difficult to get it back. What will most likely happen is these subjects will gain back much of their lost weight (another study has already shown this), and most of it will be fat. Which will make it just that much more difficult to lose weight the next time around. Soon, these subjects will be back at their former weight, but not with their former lean body mass.

Now, with that as a preface, let’s look at a couple of studies of subjects on a ketogenic diet.

The first of these studies looked at 283 overweight/obese women who averaged a bit under age 40. This was a retrospective study, which is a weaker study than the Wegovy study in terms of limiting confounders, so bear that in mind. These subjects were in three different groups and all put on the same very-low-calorie ketogenic diet (VLCKD) for 45 days (a bit over 7 weeks).

One group was on the VLCKD alone. Another group was on the VLCKD with added medium chain triglycerides (20 g/day). The third group was on the same VLCKD with the same dose of medium chain triglycerides (MCT), but started the added MCT five days before starting the VLCKD.

After 45 days, those subjects who started the medium chain triglycerides five days earlier lost the most weight, followed by those who started the MCT at the same time they started the VLCKD. The group without the MCT performed the worst of the three groups.

But the important take away from this study is that even those on the plain vanilla VLCKD without the MCT still lost weight and, most importantly, gained lean body mass while losing weight overall.

The table below is kind of small, but you can see if full size here.

Notice the increase in lean body mass in all groups in the red rectangle. Even in the control group with just the unsupplemented ketogenic diet. Unlike the Wegovy subjects, who lost 42 percent of their weight as lean body mass on the low-calorie diet the drug basically drove them to follow, these subjects all gained lean body mass on a low-calorie ketogenic diet. And all lost weight overall with the ketogenic diet. A win-win indeed.

You can see the findings of this study in graphical form here. I forgot to add that not only did these subjects lose weight overall while gaining lean body mass, they also lowered their inflammatory markers. Always a good thing to do.

Okay, let’s look at one more study.

In this study, 241 obese or overweight females went on a VLCKD for 45 days, just like the group above, but without the MCT.

This was not a randomized, controlled trial. It was just 241 Italian women instructed in following an 800 kcal/day ketogenic diet for a little over seven weeks. As you can see from the above, there were only two clinic visits and a weekly phone call, so not a lot of hands-on counseling.

Yet these women did great.

As you can see, from top to bottom, they lost weight: 7.5 k or 16.5 pounds. They increased their handgrip strength, which is a common measurement for overall strength and muscle mass. And they markedly decreased their high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels, a common measurement of inflammation.

Everyone is into graphics these days, so here is the graphical abstract of this paper.

So, just like the women in the other study, they improved strength, reduced inflammation, and lost weight on an 800 kcal/day diet. But not just any diet. A ketogenic diet.

Either with or without the MCT, the ketogenic diet beats the heck out of Wegovy in terms of retention of the all important muscle mass. You don’t see keto face or keto butt like you see Ozempic face and Wegovy butt. If you don’t believe me, google them.

Video of the Week

Okay, here’s an experience you don’t just have every day. You’re tooling along windsurfing and you have a head on collision with a whale. Would give you something to tell the grandkids about at some point.

I had a bit of trouble uploading this, so if it doesn’t play properly, you can get find it here along with the story.

A final poll.

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

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