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The Arrow #205
Hello everyone.
Greetings from Montecito.
Well, the Christmas season has officially started at the Eades domicile. It always happens the day after Thanksgiving when MD whips out the Christmas china. I’m always glad to see it makes its appearance and equally glad to see the end of it.
Here was my morning Americano the Friday after:
On a personal n=1…
As you might have figured given my writings the past few Arrows, I’ve been deeply interested in the subject of ultra-processed foods. So interested, in fact, that about three weeks ago I decided to eliminate as best I could all UPF from my own diet. I haven’t really changed anything in terms of what I eat or how much; I’ve simply been opting for the same foods, but without any additives or adulterations that would be considered UPF.
When I’m hanging around the house, I usually wear old, baggy jeans. But when I go out to play golf with my group, I try to look like a golfer. I went out last Sunday, and my regular golf shorts I always wear kept sliding down on me. I had to take my belt in a notch. I’ve worn the same belt for years, so taking it in a notch is a big deal.
As I wrote above, I haven’t done anything differently diet-wise other than avoiding UPF. Despite the fact that there are but two randomized controlled trials so far (and both were small and not particularly well done), I do think UPF are obesity drivers.
Plus, in general, I just feel better. I would recommend everyone try going non-UPF for a while. If you do, let me know the outcome. I’m keenly interested. It has worked like a charm for me. And our middle son. He’s a total convert.
Ads and the New Platform
I received this poll response about the ad last week.
Nike as a sponsor. Just DON’T do it (please). They are the original wokester company. Ugh!
I agree re Nike and almost didn’t do the ad. But it was the first (and only) well known sponsor that reached out, so I gave it a go.
This gives me the chance to explain the whole ad deal. I switched from Substack to the platform I’m now using (more about which later) for a couple of reasons. First, as I described when I first made the switch, the founder of Substack was in a feud with Elon Musk, and Elon killed the ability to simply post tweets with the click of a button. Many videos and other content are on X/Twitter, and before the feud it was easy to just click on the link to a tweet and paste it into Substack. All that went away. I started looking for a platform that could use the X/Twitter API, so I could simply paste as before.
One of the other benefits of the new platform was that it (supposedly) found sponsors for the writers on the platform. I figured, what the heck, that’s just a bonus. I went months before any such advertisers showed up, then when they did show up, they started showing up by the scores.
A few of them were companies I was aware of, but most were companies I didn’t even know existed. The ones I was aware of and liked, I gave a bit of a boost with an extra personal endorsement. The others, I just put up as they arrived. Many I didn’t bother with, because I didn’t think they had relevance to my audience (i.e., vegan food providers). Or I had issues with the product. For example, just today I got an offer from a cognitive supplement company. I checked out the ingredients and found that all the products have 100 percent of the RDA of niacin. There is plenty of evidence out there indicating that excess niacin can drive glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, and obesity. Most of us get far beyond the RDA in our regular diets, so adding 100 percent more would be counterproductive. So I passed on the offer.
When Nike came along, I thought Wow, a big international company that everyone has heard of. I gave it a go just to see what would happen. I get paid only if people click on the ads, so if everyone hates Nike, then it will be a loser. As it turned out, it was a loser, so I can guarantee the respondent above that I will no longer accept ads from Nike.
I don’t want to encourage people to click just so I’ll get paid. That wouldn’t be right. So, if you see an ad that might be of interest, click away. It counts only once, so you can click as many times as you want. But don’t click if you have no interest in the product.
The nice thing about these ads is that they are already done. The platform serves me a menu of four to six different ad layouts. I pick the one I like best, then all I have to do is click a button, and the platform does the rest.
That’s how it works.
The platform I use is called Beehiiv, and I like it a lot. The customer service people are responsive, and the management is constantly sending out inquiries for features I would like to have added. I hate the comments section, but it is slowly improving. I’m forever hammering them to make it more like Substack, so there can be better back and forth. They have made some progress, but not enough to suit me. So, I keep pushing. Also, I’m trying to get them to code the site so that I can embed short videos (MP4s) right in the site. As it is, I can easily drop in a YouTube or Rumble or most other kinds of videos. But I can’t make a short one myself and embed it. I’m sure they’re tired of my whining, but the squeaky wheel and all that..
For a long time, I thought the platform was a bit unstable, so I didn’t want to recommend it to anyone. But I had a catastrophe with my Mac Mail app not long ago. I couldn’t get it to load despite trying everything I knew how to do or could find online. Every article I came across said right off the bat, make sure you have the latest version of the Mac operating system installed. I ignored all those entreaties and continued to try everything else. I did so simply because it takes a couple of hours to download and install an upgraded operating system, and I seem never to have the time.
But I was desperate to get my email app back in action. So I took the plunge and installed the latest version of the Mac operating system. Bam! my emails immediately came back, my laptop worked a lot faster, and the platform has been stable as a rock since.
So, I can now say with confidence, if you’re thinking of starting a newsletter, I would encourage you to take a look at Beehiiv if and when you are contemplating a platform.
Save Yourself From Intoxicated Sleep
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High Ferritin Levels
I received the following question from a poll respondent.
I also recently have sky high ferritin levels. I too would want to donate blood to get rid of the ferritin but my pc doc insists I see a hematologist....I'm afraid said hem is going to order all sorts of tests and scans....so much wasted time, only to tell me I have elevated ferritin. Would love it if you spoke to said issue i[n] your next newsletter....or at some point. How did you find out about the elevated ferritin? Why was your ferritin being tested at all? I see an endocronogist for Graves disease and his helpful comment was if you had never had your ferritn tested you would not have known and could have avoided having it be something you have to deal with! This struck me as an unmedical response...was it supposed to be helpful? I don't know but if you have any thoughts, I would certainly love to hear them.
The above response from this person’s doc is really bizarre. At least to me.
Ferritin is the storage form of iron. It’s tucked away in what are called ferritin granules. I found my own elevated ferritin levels during a routine blood test. In our clinic in Boulder, ferritin was a part of the routine scan provided by our reference lab. At the time I discovered my ferritin levels were high, I had no idea that I had one of the genes for hemochromatosis. It wasn’t until I learned that my younger first cousin died from full-blown hemochromatosis that I realized I was probably heterozygous for the disorder. (Heterozygous means having one gene for a disorder; homozygous means having both genes—one from the father and one from the mother—and thus the disease.)
Since then, I’ve (mostly) religiously given blood regularly, which is about the only way one can reduce ferritin.
Excess iron tends to store in organs, which takes a toll on their function.
Hemochromatosis is not that rare, and it’s easily discovered by a blood test. In fact, it’s usually discovered on a routine blood panel that includes ferritin. It is confirmed by a genetic test (I was positive, but heterozygous). Since hemochromatosis is not a benign condition and most people—my poor cousin, for example—don’t know they have it until it’s too late, it doesn’t make sense to me that any doctor would question the validity of a ferritin test when it could uncover a serious medical issue that can be handled by nothing more difficult than phlebotomy—i.e., regularly giving blood.
Sitosterolemia
I received the two following amazing poll responses.
Was especially pleased to see your segment on high plant sterols as my athletic hubby was diagnosed with that 2 years ago by a lipidologist while spending several years trying to understand his high calcium score of 400 at the age of 70 and no symptoms of heart disease. Looking forward to your continued research.
and
Last year I was informed of my ABCG5 gene mutation and Sitosterolemia status (69 yo male). Like you, I’ve found very little info on it especially for adults. My CAC score was 600 2 years ago. I try to cut out all seed oils and eat mostly carnivore but it’s very hard if you eat out much. I found your piece on this fascinating and very informative. Thank you! P.S. I was the 1st patient my cardiologist had seen with this and PCP had never heard of it.
Okay, when I read the literature on this disorder, everyone seems to think it is extremely rare. Most of what I’ve read say it occurs in maybe 1 out of 200,000 people. I have ~12,000 subscribers to The Arrow, and I’ve now heard from three people among my readers who have it. Given the published odds, I shouldn’t have heard from one person who had it.
Just for grins, I turned to my trusty WolframAlpha to calculate it for me. As it turns out, the odds of having even two cases show up out of a total sample of 12,000 is a tiny 0.173 percent. If more than 2 cases turn up in my 12,000 followers, the odds would fall to 0.003441 percent.
I suspect that since most people (including docs) don’t know anything about it, it goes unnoticed. And measured. And unstudied. I would bet that just like with hemochromatosis, there are homozygous and heterozygous versions of the disorder. And since there are two genes involved, that means multiple variations. Those who have calcium scores in the thousand may have the homozygous version with both genes affected, whereas others may have the heterozygous version with only one of the two genes involved, and only one gene from one parent. Given the low odds of having three such folks in my 12,000 subscribers leads me to believe there is a heterozygous version with a much wider prevalence than 1 in 200,000.
This could mean an entire spectrum of the disease. And could certainly explain why a lot of people who are told to go on plant-based diets for their cholesterol get worse while doing so.
I’m working with a person right now who has a calcium score of over 3,000, which is unbelievably high. I’ll keep everyone posted as I check out the genetics involved.
I did receive one other poll response (and I get these kinds of responses all the time, so this gives me the chance to discuss it) I think was about sitosterolemia, but I’m not sure.
Please don't get too bogged down with other research that you forget to do what you said you would in this issue! I'm very curious about what you uncover.
I’m sure when people get through reading The Arrow or a section in The Arrow, it is fresh in their mind. But by the time the response comes to me, I have no idea what they’re talking about unless they are more specific. In this case, I suspect it is sitosterolemia, but I have no way of knowing for sure.
If it is sitosterolemia, then rest assured, I’m on it.
So, if you have a request, make it a specific one. Thanks in advance.
And finally, I kind of badmouthed the Fairlife protein shakes last week for saying on their label that they contained whole milk when the macronutrients listed didn’t come anywhere near the macronutrients of whole milk. I heard via email from a friend who is a stickler for accuracy:
For the jacked up protein content, the operative word appears to be “filtered” milk.
They have a “How We Do It” page, explaining (see graphic below).
How many people go to the trouble of going to a product’s website and looking up how it’s made? I certainly don’t. I just look at the ingredients. Though after this experience, I may start digging deeper. And thanks, alert reader, for the heads up!
The label I showed last week describes the first ingredient as “Filtered lowfat grade A milk.” Perhaps in the labeling lingo, that means components were filtered out. I don’t know. In my view, it would be more accurate to label it “filtered and reconstituted…” or “filtered and concentrated”.
In any case, it is still loaded with gums and emulsifiers of one kind or another along with a handful of artificial sweeteners. It qualifies as a UPF in my book, so I’m avoiding it.
If you would like to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month). Thanks in advance.
More on Calcium Scans and Atherosclerosis
A physician reader emailed me an interesting story about his own calcium score, which I’ve copied below.
With all the talk recently about making more use of calcium scores, and in your newsletter, I have an unusual story as far as I can tell I think you would be interested in.
I have quite a family history of heart disease. Grandfather father and brother dying of heart attacks. Through the years I’ve tried to watch my lipids, of course following the [prevailing] theories of the time, didn’t eat eggs for 25 years, all the things that at one time we thought were gospel. I have taken statins for 30 years of one type or another.
Briefly, I developed atrial fibrillation and the cardiologist recommended having it converted. I woke up in my room with the cardiologist there and he said he had “good news and bad news”. He noted that on the first shock that my heart converted, but that the shock put me into “third degree heart block”, and he told me that I would need to have an emergency operation that night to place a pacemaker.
Two years later in 2018 I had some runs of un-sustained ventricular tachycardia, and an arteriogram revealed one obstruction in my coronary circulation in the LAD. This was stented.
Even though I had had a stent in the LAD and a pacemaker, I had never had a calcium score.
For the next five years I indulged heavily on everything scientific about metabolism and listen to all sides. After listening to Ivor Cummins and Peter Attia talk about the calcium score, I thought I would get one in March 2023. My score was 1300 and it was 99% all in the LAD. I freaked out.
I went back to the cardiologist who did the stent and he could see how upset I was and he said that he would do whatever was necessary to decipher the extent of my disease. So I said I wanted a coronary arteriogram. Here’s the kicker. The coronary arteriogram was 100% normal, no obstruction in any vessel. LAD 100% flow. Staggering!
Since I had been on statins for 30 years, my cardiologist hypothesized that the increase in calcium that is seen with long-term statins, so-called statin paradox, calcified my interstitial coronary artery, but the calcium moved to the periphery and it did not obstruct the vessel at all.
So I said to him I have a “hard pipe” with normal flow and he responded “exactly right”.
I have listened to a lot of books and lectures, but I have not heard exactly anything like this. You may want to comment on this? [Link above in the original]
This man’s history is educational at multiple levels.
Many people conflate a high calcium score with heart disease. If you’ve got a high calcium score, then, supposedly, you’ve got serious heart disease. Which, as this man’s history shows, is not always true. A high calcium score and serious atherosclerosis does not always correlate.
Plaque can be protective. It usually forms at junctions in the coronary arteries where blood flow creates the most shear stress. [The Bride reminds me I was a civil engineer before I was a doctor, so considerations of sheer stress is in my DNA.] When blood is flowing along a straight pathway, flow is usually laminar, which means smooth and without turbulence. Coronary arteries are more serpentine than straight. When the arteries divides into two smaller arteries, or when it makes a sharp turn, the blood flows goes from being laminar to being turbulent.
You can hear this change even in a garden hose. Next time your watering something with the hose going full blast, bend the hose. If you listen, you’ll hear a hissing sound at the turn, which means the flow inside the hose has gone from laminar to turbulent.
If you were to take a hose, put multiple bends and kinks in it, then run water at high pressure through it 24/7 for a while you would find damage to the inside of the hose where all the kinks and turns are. But not in the parts that are straight.
It’s the same with coronary arteries. The turns, kinks, and bifurcations are where all the stress is.
Plaque develops to strengthen these areas analogous to patching a pot hole with asphalt. Since plaque contains around 20 percent calcium, the calcium shows up on a calcium scan. If you see a lot of calcium, then there is a lot of plaque. But the plaque may very well be protective and not pathological at all.
What causes heart attacks, if plaque is at the root, are bits of it breaking off and floating downstream until they end up blocking the flow of blood.
If you have a lot of plaque that ends up creating a narrowing, you may have chest pain if you over exert, but it usually goes away once the need for excess blood flow resolves. That process is called angina, which is pronounced differently all over the place. Some say ANgina whereas others say anGINa, not an-GEN-a, but an-GIN-a, with a long I. (Those of us who were taught how to say it properly in the South, say ANgina.)
One can have a lot of protective plaque and still not have heart disease as long as the lumen (the interior of the artery through which the blood flows) is open. If there is a canal the blood can travel along without obstruction, you shouldn’t have an issue.
Way back in 1964, Dr. George Mann (who was an associate director of the Framingham Heart Program) studied heart disease in the Masai in Africa and found it to be non-existent. He ran EKGs on 400 males with a handful of children and women included in the study. He found minimal abnormalities. He also looked at cholesterol levels in 388 Masai males and found only eight to have levels over 200 mg/dl.
The reason Mann was curious about the Masai is that members of this tribe consume huge quantities of milk and meat. When milk is scarce, they will open an artery on a cow, collect blood (not enough to kill the cow, which is a valuable commodity) and drink it. Mann’s work at the Framingham study sensitized him to the association between saturated fat intake, cholesterol levels, and heart disease.
Years later, Mann went back to Africa to take another look at the Masai and heart disease. This time he evaluated 50 autopsies of Masai who had died in accidents and other non-heart disease ways. He discovered that the Masai had extensive atherosclerosis. In other words, a lot of plaque. But at the same time, no occlusion; the openings in the arteries through which the blood courses were large.
We find the Masai vessels do show extensive atherosclerosis ; they show coronary intimal thickening which is equal to that seen in elderly Americans. The unique anatomical feature of the Masai material is that the coronary vessels enlarge with age so that the lumina are not compromised by intimal thickening.
I suspect this is exactly what happened in my respondent’s case: he had a lot of plaque, therefore a lot of calcium and a high calcium score. But at the same time, he had wide open arteries that had enlarged over time. He had great coronary blood flow, so no signs of heart disease despite a huge calcium score.
If you do get a calcium score that is high, don’t make a run to the cardiologist to get an angiogram. Angiograms are not necessarily benign procedures. Things can go wrong. Your best bet, in my opinion, would be to get a stress echocardiogram first. If that is normal, you’re probably in pretty good shape heart-wise. Of course, if based on what your cardiologist finds on the stress echo, something else is warranted, then by all means take the test. It’s been my experience that a normal stress echo makes everyone—cardiologist and patient—feel a lot better in the face of a high calcium score.
As to the article linked above in the quote, maybe statins do stabilize plaque. But I don’t think anyone knows for sure. There are fewer fatal and non-fatal heart attacks in those who take statins than there are in those who don’t. Maybe that’s a consequence of plaque stabilization. But, overall, the total death rate, or all-cause mortality—is the same in both groups.
I’ve seen that a low-carb diet will stabilize plaque as well. I’ve known patients who were agitated because they went low-carb after discovering an elevated calcium score only to re-take another test in a year or two and find a higher score.
Which is why I much prefer the method of risk calculation described in this paper I’ve discussed a few times in the past. It doesn’t rely on the calcium score you get when you get scanned, but on a density score that more accounts for the stable plaque.
How Low Can One Go?
Not a lot lower than this.
One of my readers sent me an article about how someone has written a book titled Turtles All The Way Down with a cover that looks identical to the real book of the same title that I’ve recommended over and over.
As I explained years ago when I first wrote about it, the real Turtles All The Way Down was written by a group of Israeli researchers who studied all the data and published anonymously in Hebrew. It was translated into English with an introduction by Mary Holland, J.D., who is the CEO of the Children’s Health Defense.
Turtles All The Way Down and Dissolving Illusions are my two go to books on the entire vaccine situation. They are both brimming with information impossible to find in other sources.
Now comes a brand new book titled Turtles All The Way Down by someone name Mira Holden, a name remarkably similar to Mary Holland. As you can see below, the covers are identical. The one on the left is the fraud, while the one on the right is the real book.
The real book goes into great detail on how each of the many vaccines we now give our kids was never tested against placebo. Which I found to be a stunning revelation.
The rip-off book apparently presents vaccines as being God’s gift to the world.
I was heartened when I ran a search on Amazon and had the real book pop up first, followed by a long list of other books with turtle in the title. The only way I could find the fraudulent book was to search for it both by title and the (so-called) author’s name. Here is the Amazon link for those who are interested.
The book has been savaged in the reviews and is now listed as out of print despite its Nov 14, 2024 publication date.
Who would stoop to such a thing? I think we all know the answer.
Ultra-Processed Foods and Muscle Quality
I just read about a new study on UPF and muscle quality. The study isn’t published; it’s seeing its first light of day as either a poster presentation or a talk at a radiology conference. Neither of these types of presentations go through a formal peer-review process, but they do go through an informal one. These huge types of annual meetings have hundreds of presentations, so those who attend any particular one are usually interested in whatever the subject.
There is usually a lot of back and forth after the presentation, which often can get heated. This is a kind of on-the-spot peer review that authors have to answer without a lot of time to think about it. But it is not a formal process.
I’m sure the researchers involved will take into consideration any criticisms and work to explain them in their final paper submitted for publication.
Having said all that, even if it were a published, peer-reviewed, paper, it wouldn’t be all that meaningful because it’s an observational study, not a randomized controlled study. But it is interesting nonetheless.
The researchers looked at database of subjects from a large NIH study on osteoarthritis. They selected 666 subjects who did not have osteoarthritis as the study population.
Of the 666 individuals, (455 men, 211 women) the average age was 60 years. On average, participants were overweight with a body mass index (BMI) of 27. Approximately 40% of the foods that they ate in the past year were ultra-processed.
The report doesn’t say how the researchers determined the 40 percent of UPF, but I’m assuming it was from a dietary questionnaire. If so, that knocks the credibility of the study down another notch. But you’ve got to start somewhere.
The researchers found that the more ultra-processed foods people consumed, the more intramuscular fat they had in their thigh muscles, regardless of energy (caloric) intake.
“In an adult population at risk for but without knee or hip osteoarthritis, consuming ultra-processed foods is linked to increased fat within the thigh muscles,” Dr. Akkaya said. “These findings held true regardless of dietary energy content, BMI, sociodemographic factors or physical activity levels.”
The authors selected two MRI evaluations to show what they mean by increased fat within the thigh muscles. As you can see, the subject in A has significantly more fat throughout the muscle as compared to the subject in B.
The muscles shown above are the
quadriceps femoris muscles (knee extensors) from two obese, female participants, aged 58 (A) and 62 years (B), respectively. In A, the thigh muscles on both sides demonstrate abundant fatty streaks, consistent with a high Goutallier grade of 45 for this participant, whose diet from the past 12 months consisted 68% of ultra-processed foods. In B, the thigh muscles show fewer fatty streaks as highlighted in the magnified image, consistent with a low Goutallier grade of 17 for this participant, whose diet contained only 36% ultra-processed foods.
These are representative examples (we suppose) of people who ate a lot of UPF vs those who ate less. In the case above, the one with all the marbling ate almost twice as much UPF as the subject with less.
I’ve presented two RCTs on UPF—one from the NIH, and one from Japan—showing subjects consuming a lot more UPF tend to consume more calories overall as compared to those on little to no UPF. Both of these studies had small numbers of subjects and had other flaws, but they were both done as basically pilot studies just to see if there was enough difference between the study group and the control group to justify doing a larger study.
In the case of the NIH study, there was in increase caloric intake to the tune of about 500 kcal/day in the group consuming the UPF. This study has inspired another one that is now underway. I suspect it will be better done and at least have a washout period between the two phases, so the carryover effect will be eliminated.
A recent article in the NY Times discussed the new study as it is going on and described the life of a subject in such a study. The daily grind of people who sign up for these kinds of studies is illuminating. Sounds to me like a total drag.
My good friend Gary Taubes and I have been arguing about UPF and seed oils for years. Especially seed oils. I believe seed oils and UPF have negative health effects. He is agnostic on both seed oils and UPF. Mainly because there are no high-quality human RCTs on seed oils or UPF and obesity (aside from the two pilot studies discussed above).
Gary makes the case that no one really eats seed oils by themselves. They are a component of processed foods, usually in combination with a lot of carbohydrate. Same with UPF in general. UPF generally contain a ton of sugar and/or other refined carbs along with seed oils with a bunch of flavorings and other additives thrown into the mix.
If you avoid eating UPF and lose weight as a consequence, is it because you cut the carbs, cut all the crap that makes the particular food UPF, or cut both?
A few days ago, Gary wrote an article in his new Substack in defense of bad health journalism. The article is well worth reading, but I was struck by one of the footnotes. It summarizes an argument he and I have had for years.
For whatever reason, RFK, Jr. has focused on Froot Loops as the nutritional bête noire of children these days, primarily because of all the dyes in them. Kellogg of course counters that all the dyes used have been deemed safe by the various governing bodies.
Instead of getting so worked up over the dyes, Gary wonders, why not focus on all the sugar and other carbs in Froot Loops? He asks in one of his footnotes:
Let’s do a very much simplified thought experiment: take 10,000 kids and have them eat Froot Loops every morning for a decade. Half are chosen at random to eat Froot Loops made without the artificial dyes. Half eat the Froot Loops with the dyes, but without the sugar. Which half do you think will be healthier? [Edited minimally for clarity]
I would, of course, bet that the ones eating the Froot Loops with the dyes, but without the sugar, would be healthier. But, as Gary would be the first to agree, we don’t know, because we haven’t done the study.
But there are a mountain of other studies out there comparing the low-carb diet with low-fat diets, and the low-carb is uniformly the victor when it comes to weight loss and/or diabetes resolution.
For decades obesity rates in the US have been fairly stable until right around 1980, when they began to trend upward and haven’t stopped since. (They have stopped recently, probably as a function of all the people on GLP-1ra drugs.)
The big question is what kicked them into overdrive ~1980? The answer is problematic because a number of things changed ~1980. That’s when seed oils really hit their stride and consumption of them has gone nowhere but up. At the same time, fear of fat ended up increasing the carb content of foods and drove people to higher-carb foods all around, because they were “heart healthy.” Consumption of saturated fat dropped off a cliff. And some, I for one, believe that saturated fats are healthful fats and that getting rid of them has been part of the problem.
As I’ve written about in earlier Arrows, niacin intake has increased hugely. Niacin can cause elevated insulin, glucose intolerance, and a decrease in lipolysis (breakdown of fat). And all the junk that goes into food to convert it to UPF started up circa the same time.
If just one of these changes had taken place, and obesity had skyrocketed as it has done, it would be a lot easier to finger the culprit. But with so many possible culprits out there, how do we know which one(s) to blame?
The nice thing is that none of these things are in real foods. If you follow a whole food diet, you don’t get any of the UPF crap. You get real saturated fat. And, if you’re careful just a bit about the carbs you won’t get them in huge quantities. You’ll avoid seed oils, excess niacin and all the rest.
But it takes effort.
I ran out yesterday with my kid to a whole foods grocery store nearby (not a Whole Foods, but a generic whole foods market) to grab a few items. I was just along for the ride, but MD called and asked it I would pick up some eggs and cream. When I looked, every pint or quart of cream they had contained gums and emulsifiers of one sort or another. Even the organic ones. They had two little half-pints of Clover, pasture-raised, organic heavy whipping cream for sale. They cost $4.99 each, which is about what a normal pint would cost of the UPF variety.
Note the ingredients:
And note the “shake before opening.” No gums or emulsifiers, so you have to shake it to mix the little bit of milk that has separated from the cream.
In my view, the problems with these gums and emulsifiers is that we get way too many of them. It’s kind of like niacin, which is part of the enrichment combo used for flour. Because so much snack food is wheat based, those who eat a lot of it, end up with a lot of niacin.
Same with the gums and emulsifiers. A little in this, a little in that, and that = a lot!
If you just drank the cream in the less expensive brands that contain the gums and emulsifiers, you would probably be okay, because in small amounts these products aren’t problematic for most. But when you add in all the other snack foods you might be eating throughout the day, many of which contain gums and emulsifiers, you could end up with a lot. And find yourself emulsifying your gut lining.
These days it’s hard to eat cleanly unless you’re a real label reader and stick with the pure stuff.
I hope RFK, Jr. sticks to his guns on the UPF front. But there’s an array of Big Pharma, Big Food folks gunning for him.
Speaking of Trump appointments…
Jay Bhattacharyia: From “Fringe Epidemiologist” to Head of the NIH
Has there ever been such a turnaround?
Both MD and I have had long, interesting, illuminating conversations with Jay over the past couple of years. He’s really a great, thoughtful guy, but my worry is that he’s too nice. He’s going to have to be tough as nails to get the job done. Fingers crossed.
Emily Kaplan, from the Broken Science Initiative, an organization MD and I have been part of since its inception, has a long interview with Jay. It isn’t on YouTube yet, so I can’t embed it. You’ll have to watch it at this link. It’s well worth your time.
One of the things that surprised me in the interview was that Jay was taken with an economics class he took as an undergrad. It inspired his drive to do research. He hadn’t known much about it till he took the one course, then he was hooked. It ended up leading to his PhD work.
I had the same experience. In engineering school I took Econ 101 as one of my elective choices. I took to it immediately, but I didn’t pursue it. I kind of wish I had. But like with Jay, it gave me a taste for research.
One of my favorite Substack writers is attorney Jeff Childers. He hasn’t ever met Jay face to face, but he’s worked with him on some legal cases. Jeff wrote a nice summary last week of all the trials Jay has endured:
Yesterday, a deeply gratifying and wonderfully ironic story ran above the New York Times’ fold headlined, “Trump Picks Stanford Doctor Who Opposed Lockdowns to Head N.I.H.” The sub-headline gloriously added, “As the director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya would oversee the world’s premier medical research agency, with a $48 billion budget and 27 separate institutes and centers.”
It’s an out-of-the-park home run. I consider Jay to be a friend, even though we’ve never been in the same room together. Call it battlefield camaraderie. I first spoke with Jay in the summer of 2021 while assembling my first vaccine case. I needed unimpeachable experts to help me squash the notion the jabs were covid cure-alls, so the government could not meet the high standard for violating Florida’s constitutional right to privacy.
Remember the insanity of the summer of 2021, as the jab mandates began to take shape, and as mask mania continued slowly climbing toward its grotesque summit. Somebody in the resistance sent me Jay’s cell number, and explained he was a senior professor of health economics and epidemiology at Stanford, one of the most prestigious universities in the world.
I don’t have to tell you that, as a small-firm lawyer from Gainesville, Florida, I thought the chances of getting help from someone of Jay’s prominence was a long shot, but I texted him anyway. I made my best pitch for why my case — the first case seeking a broad injunction against a vaccine mandate in the country — was a good candidate for his help.
To his everlasting credit, Jay immediately agreed to help. Not only that, he refused to take any payment for his time. After we spoke, I discovered he was also helping other lawyers, all across the country, at great professional risk and despite it making him a pariah among his colleagues.
Not only that, Jay kept showing up to help lawyers like me even though he faced scorn and derision from hostile judges. For instance, the Times’s story noted that, in 2021, Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee bashed Jay in a final order, officiously opining, “His demeanor and tone while testifying suggest that he is advancing a personal agenda,” and piling on that the court was “simply unwilling to trust Dr. Bhattacharya.”
In other words, Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw called Jay a liar. In writing. On the official record.
Those kinds of judicial digs can pile up, and they become part of a professional’s permanent record. But still Jay soldiered on. In October 2020, with two other sane scientists, Jay authored the Great Barrington Declaration , an open letter (now signed by almost 1 million scientists and influencers) [both MD and I signed it] reasonably arguing for a focused protection strategy for vulnerable communities, instead of broad mandates and lockdowns.
Human coral snake and then-head of the National Institutes of Health Frances Collins* (*girl’s name) publicly labeled Jay and his co-signers as “fringe epidemiologists.” FOIA records show behind the scenes, cowardly Frances Collins and his top toady, the revolting human cockroach Fauci, together coordinated a secret “takedown” media campaign to smear Jay and destroy his reputation.
Amidst all that, Jay helped then-controversial Florida Governor DeSantis (“Death-Santis”) roll back ineffective and massively destructive covid policies, by appearing on Governor DeSantis’s “science panels,” which allowed the Governor to publicly consult scientists, in a brilliant political maneuver that defeated stupid claims the Governor was not “following the science.”
All of his pro-freedom and pro-science activism dearly cost Jay, whose reputation was slowly bleeding out through thousands of tiny invisible paper cuts, as corporate media whipped everything it could against the professor, trying to discredit and marginalize him. Last year, undaunted and unbeaten, Jay signed on for more, serving as a plaintiff in the “Twitter files” lawsuit against the federal government for pandemic censorship, enduring even more slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Through the peaks and valleys of pandemic successes and setbacks, Jay and I have enjoyed several meaningful, man-to-man, and frank conversations. Jay is a humble, honest, incredibly giving person, always exuding calm, respectful courage and immediately capturing a room’s attention as the evident voice of reason. Jay is an all-in Christian who once sent me a Powerpoint on covid he prepared for his home church.
Four years ago, Frances Collins — as useless a bureaucrat as ever stepped — slandered accomplished Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as a “fringe epidemiologist” and tried to ruin his livelihood. Now, Frances Collins is unemployed, and is touring the podcast circuit with his guitar. And in a historic turnaround story for the ages resembling Biblical Joseph becoming Pharoah’s right-hand-man, Jay is taking Frances’ job.
“Experts agree,” the Times glumly admitted, that “a shake-up is coming to the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment.”
And I, for one, cannot wait.
Nor can MD and I wait. I wish Jay all the success in the world in what is going to be at best a difficult situation. I’m sure he will rise to the occasion.
I just noticed that I crossed the 8,000 word level here. That’s about when I get cut off. And I had a bunch left to write today. I’ll save it for next week.
Odds and Ends
Terrific article about the great European abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? This could be happening more and more with the declining birth rates much of the world is experiencing.
For the first time, fossilized footprints reveal two extinct hominin species—Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei—living side by side 1.5 million years ago.
A study links graying hair to stem cells getting stuck, unable to color new hair growth. Restoring motility to the cells could make the gray go away.
A lost cat’s mysterious 2-month, 900-mile journey from Yellowstone National Park to home to California.
More people are beginning to understand that CO2—widely demonized as a pollutant endangering Earth with excessive heat—is a life-giving substance needed in greater amounts.
Oceanographers record the largest predation event ever observed in the ocean.
According to a recent study, researchers claim to have identified a new ancient human relative. The species, called "Homo juluensis," made stone tools and hunted animals in eastern Asia between 300,000 and 50,000 years ago.
The signature features of ten dog breeds that have been exaggerated over centuries and decades—often to the detriment of their health.
Beware the common table saw. It was responsible for 4,300 amputations last year compared to a total of 3,600 amputations by all other tools.
Scientists discover Ethiopian wolves mimicking bees as plant pollinators. I would guess many other animals do so as well.
Thanks to the use of drones and machine learning, hundreds of Nazca lines have been discovered in southern Peru.
More evidence has emerged suggesting there is more sea ice in the Arctic today than nearly any time in the last 8000 years.
FDA approves the use of Bovaer, the methane-reducing feed supplement, in US dairy cattle. Unless its use is mandated, I doubt many dairies will use it. Who knows what the long-term effects are? Certainly not the FDA.
Paralyzed subjects able to walk again after electrical stimulation of a deep portion of the brain heretofore never associated with motor activity.
Listing of top bucket list experiences by country. Some wouldn’t be on my bucket list, but, as they say, variety is the spice of life.
The crusade against bright headlights has picked up speed in recent years, in large part due to a couple of Reddit nerds. I know all about this as I had a ~2003 Audi A6 that had the xenon LED headlights. People were constantly flashing their brights at me.
A mysterious stone tablet discovered by local fishermen in Bashplemi Lake, Georgia (the country, not the state) contains traces of what appear to be an ancient lost language..
Parkinson's link to microbiome suggests an unexpected, simple treatment: more of the B vitamins biotin and riboflavin. Changes in macronutrient consumption can also rapidly change the microbiome as well. Probably faster than adding B vitamins.
US biologists report that the world's oldest known wild bird, a Laysan albatross, has laid an egg at the approximate age of 74. Bird must have been on a low-carb diet.
MIT chemical engineers have devised a way to capture methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and convert it into polymers. Now maybe they can leave the poor cows alone.
Video of the Week
The VOTW this week isn’t a lovely piece of music, a humorous short video, or a reel of someone one doing something extraordinary. It is instead a short clip from a TV series that has either started or is about to start starring, among others, Billy Bob Thornton.
MD’s sister Rose (RIP) had known Billy Bob’s mother, Virginia, for years and years. MD and I knew her, too. In fact, we attended the big screen premier of Billy Bob’s first major hit of a movie called One False Move, which was spectacular. He wrote it and starred in it. If you haven’t seen it, you should track it down.
It was one of those movies made to go directly to video, which it did. Then either Siskel or Ebert (I can’t remember which one) saw it on a cruise ship, and said WTF! Why is this movie not in theaters. It’s terrific. Based on that recommendation, it made it to the big screen. Really great movie. Billy Bob plays a bad, bad dude.
Billy Bob’s little brother John David (double first names are common in the South, thus Mary Dan) was a medic and an airborne ranger in the US Army. He was the total opposite of Billy Bob. Slim, trim, no tats, incredibly great physical condition. He was a nurse/medic in MD’s clinic in our chain of urgent care centers in Little Rock. All the people who worked there would seek out John David if they needed a shot, because he was the shot ninja. You could not feel it when he gave you a shot. I didn’t believe that until I had to have a shot one day, and I learned that it was true.
When Billy Bob was in Arkansas filming One False Move, he would drop by the clinic occasionally, sometimes with his co-star and future wife Cynda Williams (to whom he was married for about six months, as I recall). Nice guy.
The clip below is from Landman, and in it the Billy Bob character tells an attractive young woman the truth about fossil fuels and alternative energy. Oh, and it has some naughty language, so beware.
Time for the poll, so you can grade my performance this week.
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That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.
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