Breakfast of Supplements

 I was on the Esselstyn Diet, Dr Esselstyn is a cardiologist and the diet is for cutting down on the plaque that tends to cling to the sides of my arteries.   I had a three way bypass and the one on the right side failed which left me feeling like someone was sitting on my chest at about 2:00 in the AM.  I was motivated to be on that diet and it worked great, except for that fact that I was missing some nutrients  that appear to be in meat. It's a vegan diet, and the source of omega-3 fatty acids is from ground up flax seed which was great for his patients, but I don't have the enzyme to do the conversion from short chain to long chain omegas.  I ended up chugging cod liver oil.  The stuff I use now does not have the lemon flavor so it tastes like cod liver.   After a couple of years my doctor told me that my balance was off, and I seemed fragile.   I was. I fell a lot. What pushed me into eating meat was that I knew I was missing someth...

 I've been listening to some discussions and lectures about uric acid.   My brother had gout, and that's from crystals of uric acid being deposited in joints because you have too much of the stuff.  Aside from that almost nobody talks about elevated uric acid values as a problem, but that's changing.  The general idea is that things like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and dementia are related to elevated levels of uric acid.  I've watched this one featuring Dr Perlmutter:            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ6jPCcFNa8  And I'm about to watch this one featuring Dr Johnson:           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTxkAK82e0I I've added quercetin to my list of supplements, and take it daily.  Uric acid is on the list of tests I'll be taking in a couple of weeks time. Phil  

My calcium and magnesium were tested on a blood draw from March 17th, and booth were well in the normal range.  The calcium was 9.4 mg/dL and magnesium was 5.1 which is normal.  My vitamin D level last November was 78.5 ng/dL, my new value is 135 ng/dL. The reason I bring this up is that with high doses of vitamin D (I'm doing 40,000 IU per day), the two biggest problems are a deficiency of magnesium, which people can have anyway, and calcium rising and causing problems such as kidney stones. Or worse.   I got this information from Jeff Bowles , who has some interesting reading material on the subject of vitamin D, and its co-factors.

I have, over the past decade or so, had difficulty getting a good night's sleep. I felt that I was missing something, but didn't have any idea as to what it could be. Then I read a letter from a doctor to his patients . At first I was afraid to go all the way to 30,000 IU of vitamin D, then I get braver and I was doing 50,000. I didn't turn into a frog. I listened to a video by Jeff Bowles , who discusssed vitamin D co-factors . One of which is vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is important in calcium regulation. If calcium is not going to the right places, vitamin K2 will help get it there. Perhaps the most serious high dose vitamin D side effect is a rising blood calcium level, which can result in unfortuanate side effects such as nausea, kidney stones and death. So along with 40,0000 IU of vitamin D3, I'm taking 550mcg of Vitamins K and K2: vitamin k1 phytonadione 100mcg, vitamin k2 menatetrenone 400mcg, vitamin k2 menaquinone 50mcg. I split the D3 into two doses ...

Getting older (I'm 72), I expected some memory degradation and some function deterioration, but I seem OK. I don't remember details, but I do remember some details.  Better than my wife and she's younger than I am. I don't know which supplements seem to have helped my brain, although I can say that the reintroduction of saturated fat into my diet has helped.   I seem less frail. That also introduced more fat soluble vitamins.  The combination of CoQ10 and B2 was helpful, according to my ophthalmologist, my optic nerve is over sized (and oddly, the back of my eyes do not look like I have had diabetes for a couple of decades).  That supplement combination helps grow nerves. Although I'm off the Esselstyn diet, I still try to avoid meat, vegetable oils and I don't eat a lot of nuts.  I do eat eggs (pastured), although not many, and a few other things that are bad for me such as chicken salad, but I limit them. I still have my vegetable soup with some handfuls ...

In a prior post , I noted how red meat, and actually, other meats too, give us long term inflammation because it has a component which can become a component of our cells, functions as well as its corresponding human component, but is noticeable to our immune system, which creates antibodies which attack our cells. Animals can eat meat, like our relatives the chimpanzees, who eat meat, as well as animals who are not close to us who eat meat.   We're different from them. There is an old conspiracy theory, going back thousands of years, that the gods created us from some hominid and their own DNA.  What's that quote about the best laid plans of mice and men? This is just one place where we're not the same as the species we are supposed to have evolved from.   This is about an enzyme that is supposed to convert our sialic acid to the kind monkeys use.   We don't have it, monkey's do.  FYI:  cows and tigers have it too. I guess the god's weren't ...

Over the last year, I've been overstepping the Esselstyn diet and eating things that are probably not good for me.  I've even tried a little meat, usually not red meat, but maybe a little chicken or fish.  Recalling T Colin Campbell and what he said about animal protein, and how it increased the odds of cancer, it was eye opening to find something that supported that and discusses a mechanism for the inflammation that results from eating meat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkRilP1OTU My question is: are the fats ok? Phil

I'm through well over half of my Seventy Second year, and wondering how much more mileage I have left in the old bones.  My brother is just past Eighty, and he almost died from complications of COVID.  The sad thing is, I think he wanted to die, but his relatives insisted that it wasn't his time to go yet, and so I think, begrudgingly, he decided to live. His criteria for dying was that he didn't want it to be his fault.  And this wasn't, since his brother-in-law had arrived from Arizona with COVID and breathed all over him, and he developed the disease and a long time after started throwing clots.  It was a harrowing struggle for his wife to get him to the hospital, and the hospital managed to keep him alive.  He very nearly died. That's the trouble with being old.  People want you to live, and that's not always first in your thoughts. I've been thinking of what I've been eating for the last month, and this being just after the Christmas Season, I'v...

I have tried fasting off and on in my life, and recently tried some intermittent fasting, and actually had some success in bringing my HbA1c down doing that. But I saw a very good discussion about fasting by Dr Sten Ekberg  where he discusses the beneficial effects of fasting. I think it's a great video, hope you enjoy it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgX31OdPaUo PS I should point out that my last serum insulin number was 2.8 which is considered healthy.  My diet is almost entirely vegan and my protein level is not very high, usually I add pea protein to some food, although I do eat bits of cheese and fish.   To really spike insulin, combine protein and carbohydrate, such as starch or sugar.   My doctor explained to me that a lot of people have insulin levels of 13 or higher.      

My cardiologist is breathing down my neck and I'm sure will want to put me on a Statin, which is not an option for me. So I was cutting down on the amount of fat I was eating, primarily because I have an inflamed spot just below my esophagus, and it makes evening difficult if I've eaten anything "wrong", which means anything that will keep me up with a sensation like a finger sticking up my esophagus.   I had my blood draw at the end of August, I see my doctor, and the results on September 7th, and I video with my cardiologist on the 15th.  Yuck. I don't think my scores are great, but I have a better handle on things than I used to. At least I know the basic things to stay away from, I do need some saturated fat for the reason that I start to have real problems without it.   I find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sQrIi-RkuU Dr. Sten Ekberg talks about the standard medical text ( Guyton and Hall Textbook of Medical Physiology ) which he found f...

Once upon a time, I could put anything down my gullet and it would stay there and not complain.  I would have no nasty reaction to food. I'm not like that anymore.  In attempting to eat more fats, I have come across a problem in my gut.  It seems that at the base of my esophagus is a little bit of inflammation, and I get a feeling that someone is sticking a finger up my esophagus. It can keep me awake at night.  Not painful all the time, usually strikes in the evening if I don't restrain my desire for fat.   But I can't eat a lot of fat so have to have some diet other than a ketogenic one. I went to a gastroenterologist who thought it might be GURD, and he prescribed LANSOPRAZOLE,  which is a protein pump inhibitor which shuts down my stomach acid production.   It helps, also nauseating me.  But better nausea than the finger.  My gastroenterologist was a fellow, but my case was a little odd, so he had me talk to the department chair...

I haven't abandoned some of the strictures of the Esselstyn diet, but I have decided that it's not giving me enough of what I need.  Let me point out what my personal doctor said about going back on the Esselstyn diet:   "I reminded him that he looked pretty terrible when I first met him - tremulous, weak, low mm tone/density, more confused, hives all the time - and that he seems much better now so he needs to be quite cautious doing this." Since June 1st , I’ve been cutting back on saturated fats, which I presume will result in lower cholesterol numbers. On June 1 st my hives were mild, I almost didn’t notice them; my cholesterol was 255 and my LDL was 172. My cardiologist wanted to put me on a statin. I've had them before, and I don't like them. So I've been watching ketogenic diet experts discussing the details of how to do a keto diet.  One of these was Dr. Berg , and the other Dr. Stephen Phinney .  They both had interesting things to say, especially ...

Well, I had my first day at the gym in a very long while.  Imagine my surprise when I came home and tested my blood sugar: 175? Why? For the sake of craving, I've been adding the occasional soft or hard boiled egg to my diet, and I had that morning.   Well, and the occasional tin of some small fishy thing like sardines, mackerel or oysters. I think my blood sugar was in a high normal range before I went to the gym, I'm guessing here, but it was really spiked by the time I got back. My guess is that my body went into my stores and converted glycogen or converted something else to glucose.  I've just never noticed that before; maybe I was in better shape. If I stick to my diet which is based on the Esselstyn diet which I cannot tolerate for too long (I tried), then my blood sugars even out in the low to mid 90s.  But I really feel that I'm missing something. I had been missing something, I had a BMI test which indicated a degree of muscle loss (there was not basel...

 I've watched doctors on You Tube explain this or that about diets of various kinds and claim connections between things.  What follows is a presentation by Nina Teicholz a New York Times investigative journalist.  I thought I knew things, apparently I don't , and I'm not sure the people I listened to did either: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rz-8H_i1wA    

I change my mind so much about what I should eat that I hesitate to make any proclamation about food, supplements and health.  Now that I've dropped the Esselstyn diet, I see its flaws.  It was thoroughly anti animal fat, that place where we get oil soluble vitamins and right sized omegas. It put me in a position of not having enough of that kind of fat to make muscle and God knows what else.  It was consistent with so much of what I was being told at cardio rehab, and I fell for it.  After all, they were the experts. The obvious things to eat and not eat could be put in a one page memo.  And it probably has been at one time or another.   I like lists, and this one is what I think is good.   Please take it with a grain of salt, I'm not perfect. Let's start with vitamins:   I like liposomal vitamin C because it stays in your system.  That doesn't mean don't take the other stuff.   The other stuff has a two hour half li...

 I've had the most unpleasant time over the last couple of weeks, since I developed vertigo and had to start watching what I was eating because the wrong food would cause me to repeatedly vomit when I had vertigo. The thing is, repeated vomiting results in stomach upset which, along with vertigo, leads to more vomiting.  I think the vertigo started with an ear infection, which damaged my inner ear of the left side.  I don't hear as well out of that ear anymore. So I've been through almost half a dozen episodes and finally I went to the doctor and she gave me a description of the Epley Maneuver, a series of positions and movements one takes on a bed to reposition the little calcium crystals in the inner ear so that they work properly. I'm sure I did it wrong.  Oddly, it worked.

Once upon a time I loved sweets, but to be safe I settled for crackers with blackberry preserves.  It was good.  Then it struck me that sweet fruity things were slowly damaging my liver and I had to figure out how to stop doing it.  I found a sweetener made of glucose, which the body knows how to deal with. When I need a fix, I just have a spoonful of that.  I also found that large starchy meals tend to set me up for needing sugars, which is doubly problematic because starch makes me break out in hives.   So do any sugars. So I am trying to reduce the amount of starch I eat, which is a problem because my diet was mostly starch,  So this morning I did not have the steel cut oats, vegetables and egg.  I had two soft boiled eggs and a tin of Atlantic Mackerel.  Canned fish really tastes horrible, but it's just the right amount of protein and is filling.  Mackerel tastes better than canned sardines, which, depending on how they're fixed, gen...

I haven't finished it yet, but I've been watching: "Professor Robert Lustig- 'Sugar, metabolic syndrome, and cancer'" . Which is rather eye opening and he really hits it with diabetes, which I have, sugar and fructose and how they lead to fatty liver disease and insulin resistance. I'm going to be seeing if I can arrange to not eat anymore of that stuff.  I may fail upon occasion, but the direction will be to eliminate it from my diet.    

I've come across a book by Mary G. Enig, Ph. D. called Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol . I've barely begun to read it, but I can say that it turns what I thought I knew about facts on its ear.  She looks at studies which in the abstract say that long chain fatty acids are bad for you.  She looked at the data, and it said something different. I can eat butter, coconut oil and if I really went for it I could eat bacon.  But I will stay away from any seed oil or vegetable oil.  Watch those omega sixes. 

My new doctor, a young woman in her late 40's explained to me that having a plant based diet made up of everything but fat leaves very little for my myelin sheaths to playfully reconstruct themselves as they so wish.  I think she used other words. Not entirely sure what she recommended after she explained that, but I had started eating eggs at that point because I knew I needed something.  She later recommended small amounts of butter from pasture raised cows.  Butter is delicious, but was one of the things I stopped eating because I wanted to clear my coronary arteries.   Like so many pleasures of my youth, I thought my days with butter were over. To someone on the Esselstyn diet this is a bit like telling a chaste gentleman that he must participate in wild erotic sex with a beautiful woman at least once a day.  For his health. I'm 71 years old right now; I will have to settle for butter. My hives are slowly not as bad as they were, and I am wondering if it is ...