Friday Link-About

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All health and fitness stuff today, because those are the tabs I have open. Links are not affiliate links.

Plastic-hunting. I’ve been reading Estrogeneration, by Anthony Jay. It is the stuff of nightmares, what has happened to our society because of the plasticization of everything. I had (mostly thanks to this guy) been aware of the problems of birth control, plastics, and estrogenic agricultural chemicals for some time, so I’d already eliminated the obvious food culprits: soy and flax, food that isn’t organically grown (to the extent possible), and plastic storage and cooking utensils, including anything with a so-called non-stick surface. I’ve also been super-careful about our cosmetics and personal care products. Anthony G. Jay also does DNA analysis and has a wealth of information at his website, A. J. Consulting. I find his list of clean products particularly helpful.

I have seriously been slacking in the area of drinks, though. We drink water out of plastic bottles when we’re on the go, and I still make coffee in the most common of electric coffee-makers with plastic tubing and parts. I felt yucky about this, but hadn’t gotten motivated to fix it yet. Today, I finally bit the bullet and took a couple of extra steps to get the plastics out of our drinks. I’ve ordered a stainless steel percolator for coffee. The first one I looked at turned out to have an aluminum nut in contact with the coffee. I’m not going to exchange plastic for aluminum, so I finally found this one, which might possibly be actually SS. I hope so, because I don’t want to have to return it. (Update, it was an aluminum nut on the bottom, so I returned it. Glass pour-over it is. My lazy self will just have to add the water manually from now on. First-world problems, indeed!)

And I also picked up some glass water bottles. I’ve already done the glass water bottles in the past, and they worked pretty well, but…well, they break. I’m hoping we can be more careful this time around. Might have been better to go with stainless steel, since we’re prone to breaking things, but I feel like water tastes better in glass.

Healthy doggie. I’ve also ordered some much healthier dog food for my pupper. He eats mostly meat, and mostly right from our table, but sometimes there’s not enough meat left over, so I supplement him with the least unhealthy dog food I can find. That means I try to keep beans and legumes, as well as grains, out of his diet. Yumwoof is so far the best dog food I’ve found that isn’t straight up raw meat, which my dog hates. Expensive, but we don’t give our dog that much kibble, so it should last a while. You and I can both get $20 off our next orders if you hit that link.

And another Mother’s Day gift idea, if you’re still shopping, and the mother in your life is into fitness. (Are you reading this, Get Along Fam?) Egg Weights is offering a limited “Active All Spring” bundle with weights, bag, and a massage tool for $59.99. Very good deal. I love the egg weights I have for running.

That’s all I have in the share-tabs. What are you into these days? I think I’ve got comments open on this post. If not, you can chat with me on Gab, MeWe, and SG, instead.

 

Some Food Discoveries

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Happy food, sad food.

We had a birthday in the family last week, so I took the opportunity to enjoy a piece of my Cake Simulator, this time as a spice cake with peach butter cream frosting (recipes to follow shortly). I veered off my happy carnivore trail for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I wanted to make sure it tastes good, because I haven’t had this version of the Simulation.

Secondly, I accidently bought another round of Nutrisense CGM monitoring, so I had a chance to make absolutely sure this cake doesn’t spike the glucose. I did it for you. I did it for science. I did it because I’m an idiot. Don’t forget to pause your subscription, guys. It auto-renews. Since I didn’t get to do any experimenting at all during the weeks I was intending to, due to an illness, I’m not terribly sorry I have another month to play around with my sugars, though I can’t say I feel good about the expense.

And thirdly, I wanted to see if the oxalate content of tiger-nut flour is enough to trigger my bladder problems. I hadn’t had any in a while, so I couldn’t remember if that was an effect I thought I’d observed or not.

Well, the results are in.

Taste: The thing you’re most concerned with, I’m sure, since that was what I was most concerned with, is how does it taste? I’m pleased to report that it was very, very tasty. A little bit of a bitterness in the mouth afterwards due to the stevia, but while eating it, it’s the best thing ever. Just don’t drink coffee with it, because it increases that aftertaste to a disgusting degree. I can’t understand how anybody “sweetens” coffee with stevia. Blech.

Glucose acceptability:

The farthest red dot to the left is the point at which I ate the cake. I’d been fasting until that point. You can see no spike from this, so I’m pretty confident in saying you can probably have at least one (1/16 of the cake) serving without losing your keto badge for the day. The little “spike” after it was exercise-induced. Your mileage may vary, of course. I’ve seen my glucose spike from “low-carb” foods that didn’t affect Get Along Husband in the slightest, so you want to do your own testing to be sure.

And thirdly, the oxalates. Because I have a lot of scar-tissue around my bladder after all the c-sections (I think this is why, anyway), foods high in oxalate cause me to have a hard time emptying my bladder, usually first thing in the morning. I can’t drink teas or eat spinach (like anybody would want to eat spinach anyway), and many other things cause these problems. And, sadly, tiger-nut flour must have enough oxalate to trigger this dysfunction for me. I was very uncomfortable when I woke up this morning, and took a few hours to finally be back to normal. If you have oxalate troubles, skip this food.

Better be laying in them beans and rice, ammiright? Besides the cake discovery, I’ve also found a very unexpected problem for my children. Over the last few years, I’ve heavily restricted grains and seeds from my children’s diets. We will very occasionally allow organic corn products. I believe grains are detrimental when taken with any regularity. But, because prepping has been on my mind, and rice is shelf-stable for a long time, I thought I’d try re-introducing some rice to my children’s diets, to see if they tolerate it. They enjoyed it, to be sure. Very tasty stuff.

But there was a detriment. Three times I gave them rice, each time a couple of weeks to a month apart. Three times, two of my smaller children got nosebleeds that same night. Nosebleeds? Rice?

So I guess we’ll be relying on some other starchy food for calories in the event we can’t get enough animal-based foods.

One final discovery that I’m sure you’ll be interested in:

Berries are keto food, right? And apple sauce is a no-no, right? Isn’t that what the gurus all say? Well, here you go:

There are a couple of things going on here that confounded this result that you ought to be aware of before you just write off blueberries forever and start eating apple sauce. First of all, obviously, apple sauce is not conducive to ketosis. But it is a 7 on the nutrisense scale, which is better than the blueberries’ 4. These were not particularly sweet blueberries, either. Some of them were still faintly green, and I didn’t enjoy them very much. I hadn’t fasted for very long before either of these tests, but I did throw some protein in with the apple sauce, and I’m sure that blunted the spike quite a bit. I’d have probably gotten closer to the blueberries’ score without the meat sticks. (I love Nick’s Sticks, btw. Not an affiliate link. Just wanted to share.)

The point is, blueberries might not be a great keto food after all. Of course, if you’re not primarily a fat-burner for the last several years, you’re likely going to have different results. Better or worse, I cannot say.

Again, test for yourself. You can get $25 off your first month by using my referral link. I’m not giving you any medical advice, ever. I’m just showing you what happens to a 5-year keto/carnivore when she does this stuff. I’ll have a bunch of exercise-related graphs to show you soon. I may even try a few more plant foods, but the longer I’m carnivore, the less I really care to even find out. I might not bother.

And now, I have a date with my butcher to pick up another whole beef. I can’t believe how much meat these children go through, and if there are going to be food shortages, rice is clearly not an option.

Can I feed this rice to the chickens? Will they explode?

Want to discuss? Meet me on MeWe, Gab, or SG.

 

 

Are You Ready? It’s Time!

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I know you were expecting a Rapture, but you’re probably going to have to go through some stuff, American.

I was talking to a guy on Gab (follow me) yesterday, just in passing, and he was poo-pooing the idea that there could be food shortages in the U.S. It’s just fear porn, he says. This is the post where the exchange took place:

 

It’s hard for me to believe this level of denial exists. People are running out of infant formula, prices are going through the roof, and yet this guy thinks it’s fine. Yeah. It’s fine.

I know things have been very steady–downright luxurious, in fact–in the United States for the entire life of my generation. Even as a “poor” Appalachian girl, I always had enough, if not the finest, food to eat. If you’re a Boomer who was raised dirt-poor, the way my parents and in-laws were, you know that people can, in fact, get very hungry in this country, like any other. But it’s been a long, long time. Even my Boomer family can’t quite process the fact that we’re probably heading back into that level of poverty. Unfortunately, the hard times are coming, and we as a nation (if you can call this God-forsaken place a nation at this point) have earned them.

Get Along Husband and I haven’t been the most diligent of preppers, mostly because we have had to put most of our resources into the raising of our eight children. We’re not wealthy, and they eat a lot, you know. You would certainly want to look to some other blogger for advice on how to do all the prepping and homesteading kinds of things. But we do what we can to be smart about saving not just money, but food and supplies, for just in case things get tight. We didn’t run out of toilet paper during the great panic of 2020, for instance, so we passed that small test, anyway.

It’s about to get a lot harder than just a tp panic.

This nation has been cruising on borrowed, and often stolen, resources for a lot of years. We’re about to find out what life is like when you have to provide for yourself, instead of taking it from whomever you please just because you’re the bigger military or borrowing it from people who must know that you’ll never be able to pay it back.

I won’t rant on how we got here, though it is a temptation. I’ll just say this. Now’s the time. To do what? Well, first, you need to be repenting, America. Not just saying “Sorry I got caught.” (and oh, my, we are busted) but truly falling on your face and begging God to forgive us, and then accepting that there are going to be consequences for our national sins.

After that, if you haven’t already, you might want to lay in some extra non-perishable food, start raising some backyard chickens, put in a little  (or big, if you have the space) garden. Basically, start living like you can’t trust the system to provide, because you can’t. I know, a lot of us didn’t even know we were relying on the system. We thought we were doing things for ourselves. But look at egg prices. They’re slaughtering millions of chickens because of bird flu, prices are going up. Can you even get your own eggs?

It’s probably too late to materially prepare, but this might be a good quick-start guide for anybody who’s been sleeping until today. Honestly, you can only be so prepared for big disruptions. After the initial shock of SHTF, you have to be able to rely on your community to figure out how to proceed in the new conditions. So it’s our minds that really need to be prepared. Praying and fasting are in order.

As I said on SG (where you can also follow me, if you subscribe):

Christians, we are not promised an easy time of it. We are not promised a rapture (sorry) to make sure we never suffer a day in our cushy American lives. But we are promised that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us. As we go into whatever is coming next, I will thank Him for sorting out the wrongs that have been done, for bringing us to our knees so that we may repent as a nation.

Turn to Him. Trust Him. Praise Him.

He’s got our ultimate good, and His own glory in mind.

Want to talk about it? We can discuss on SG, Gab, or MeWe.

Friday Link-About

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Happy Friday! I’m still feeling kind of rough, but I think I have some items of interest lying around here. Is the collapse of our society interesting? Is that the right word?

From a post I wrote in December 2020:

Masks separate us.

…

Possibly the worst thing they do is to leave a blank spot in the impressions our smallest children should be forming right now of interacting with other people, especially strangers. As we’ve learned from studying feral children there is a window of opportunity for children to learn certain things, and those formative years cannot be reclaimed. Who knows what social effects this unprecedented year-long mandate might have? Perhaps there will be no negative effect. I hope and pray that’s so. But would you want to be the guy that signed off on that experiment?

Human beings cannot live under this kind of stress without changing their relationships with one another. And they can’t do that without affecting their souls. 

I don’t believe it is just the IQ of these children that will suffer. I think we’re going to see a huge increase in anti-social behavior in this generation.

And another post I wrote last year:

One of the most painful memories I have of this faceless time was when we were sitting two taped-off rows behind a family with a little guy, maybe a year and a half old, and the sweet fellow couldn’t take his eyes off my face. It would be nice to think that he was staring so much because he’d never seen anybody so pretty, but my mirror tells a different story, so I can’t comfort myself with that explanation. My daughter noticed it, too, and asked me later why he was so interested in my face. “I think,” I said, “that it’s because mine is the only adult face he’s seen without a mask since he was too little to remember. He doesn’t know what to make of grownup strangers’ faces.” It’s a scary thought for our society’s future when you consider all the babies who went through that crucial phase of development without adequate exposure to community faces.

If my fool self could see the disaster coming way back then, then your fool selves should have been able to eventually, as well. Everyone who allowed their children to be around masked people, or who masked their own children to muffle their tiny voices is complicit in the hobbling of our entire next generation.

You. Are. Complicit.

Repent of your cowardice, and see that you don’t follow wicked “authority” so sheepishly ever again.

  • Alright, deep breath. Moving on. A friend from social media shared a couple of easy recipes yesterday, both of which I’m going to try soon:

Homemade Mead

Homemade Apple Cider

  • And while I’m linking, there’s also a Mother’s Day/Women’s gift box available from the same friend. It’s very high-quality stuff, at three price points. I have one of those adorable aprons. Click through to:

Love your wife/mother exorbitantly ($300)

Love your wife/mother extravagantly ($225)

Love your wife/mother enthusiastically ($100)

I suppose I should link to something about Ukraine and Russia, but you know, I’m just worn out with the propaganda. I’ll wait for the next thing, and just remind you that our government and media are packed with liars, and nothing–NOTHING–they tell you is true, or meant to guide you to the truth. Like the masks, you will bring nothing but harm to your family and your nation by falling in line with this narrative.

Anyhow, I’m going to start teaching some lessons now. I’ll try to be more uplifting next time. Have a happy Friday!

Mom Down!

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No need to call for reinforcement.

I’m stuck in bed with a massive head-cold. I can’t hold my head up on my own, but I can still type, so let’s see what we can find to talk about today!

I had planned to take this day off from our usual homeschool co-op to do some extra academic work. After a week of administering superfluous state-mandated standardized tests, I really thought we needed the extra time for our own curriculum. Well, I’m sick, but that doesn’t mean we can’t a lot done, thankfully! Schooling when mom is sick, recovering from having a baby, or even just needing a rest from the grind, is, while still not as pleasant as just playing video games until you recover, very easy if you’ve laid a solid foundation of daily habits. While I’m nowhere near fully Charlotte Mason in my homeschooling approach, I have heartily adopted the CM philosophy on habit.

“Habit is ten natures.”

I get a lot of comments on how “good” my children are. By good, people mean that they are responsible, quiet, hard-working, self-correcting, and obedient. These things are all basically true, but my children are not innately any better than other children. What they are is trained, habituated, to do daily the things that go into being “good”. I don’t have to be present for them to continue their daily routines of chores, school work (though they do need some teaching), and self-care. They’ll start their independent work without me after the breakfast dishes are washed and the chickens and dog are taken care of. I’m still here to help in a lighter capacity than usual, but they’ll mostly figure it out on their own and help each other.

Get Along Husband and I were able to take an trip a couple of years ago for our 20th anniversary, leaving the children at home with their grandmother to keep them company. When we came home, she marveled at how little babysitting she’d actually had to do. It was like she was on vacation. They took care of her. She was basically just there so they’d have somebody to drive in case of emergency. And for fun. My goodness, she’s fun! They cooked the meals, cleaned up, did the household chores, took care of the smaller kids, did a little light school work, and she never had to lift a finger.

Am I bragging? A little bit, honestly, but not on myself. I’m absolutely delighted with my children! But I know that any group of kids that includes at least a couple of teenagers (my oldest boy was 15 at the time of our first trip) ought to be able to live quite comfortably without an adult for a week. Er, not that Nana isn’t an adult, but…well…you know what I mean.

I do feel like we’ve accomplished something, thanks to good teaching from the Bible, other godly parents, and early application of some of Charlotte Mason’s principles. Being able to come home to a smoothly running household with no drama, especially when you consider that the older ones were caring for small children down to the ages of two and three, is a very gratifying feeling.

It was as if we’d never left. Not even a little messy!

That wasn’t by accident or probably even good genetics. Though I’m told my husband was a wonderfully behaved, exquisitely polite child, I’m sure my wild hillbilly genes mitigate that somewhat. It has required a lot of hands-on training, and a lot of careful thought about what each child should be able to do for himself, and when. It’s not something I can really take a lot of personal credit for, though. I wish I could! I did put in the work, and I’m pleased that I was able to, but at the end of the day, I am an unprofitable servant. I’ve only done what all parents should be doing. And there are a lot of parents who are doing far better than I am. I’ve taken my example from them, and I congratulate them, also.

I look around and realize that there are a lot of parents who haven’t been blessed with either the Bible, good example, or such useful books as Laying Down the Rails, and their kids are absolutely lost every day without somebody telling them what to do every twenty seconds.

There are some commonalities I’ve noticed among these families that I think should be addressed. This post is starting to get a little bit too long, and I feel like a nap, so I’ll break the rest of my thoughts off for another day. My kids are delightful! I would love for every mom to be able to say that as whole-heartedly as I do, so I hope this post will turn into something useful, rather than the stream-of-consciousness exercise it set out to be.

Want to discuss? Send me a warm get-well-soon gif? Meet me on SG, MeWe, or Gab.

Using a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor)

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A geeky thing you can do for your health

I’ve been wearing a continuous glucose monitor from nutrisense.io for the last couple of weeks. I’m getting ready to switch it out for a fresh one today, and thought I’d share a link with you guys. For no good reason that I can discern, glucose monitors require a doctor’s prescription most of the time, but Nutrisense provides the service without bothering your own doctor or insurance. I believe there’s a doctor involved in there somewhere, but you pay out of pocket, and it’s considered to be for educational purposes only. Certainly you could share the information you gather with your own doctor, but I honestly have so little faith in the average doctor’s understanding of nutrition and metabolism that I don’t know why you’d want to. You’re often better off taking these matters into your own hands.

There’s really no world-changing reason for me to be using a CGM at this point. I just wanted a window to my metabolism that’s a little larger than the sporadic finger-prick glucose test can give.

A couple of years ago, when I had been doing carnivore for about a year, I got three months’ worth of monitoring from Nutrisense for both myself and Get Along Husband, mostly because I wanted to see if his chronic headaches could be correlated with blood sugar excursions, but also for my own entertainment. To some extent, the headaches were correlated with high glucose, and the CGM convinced him that a high-carb diet was never going to be beneficial to his tender noggin. His general health has benefitted from that information, as well.

There’s nothing like seeing your body struggling to deal with sugar in real time to make you knock that stuff right out!

Now, I have my hba1c and other lab tests, as well as my keto-mojo and the fact that I feel good all the time, to give me all the information I really need to decide whether my carnivore diet is working for me. So I didn’t exactly need a CGM this time around. But I wanted to see a few things after a couple more years of getting 99% of my nutrition from animal products:

  1. How high was my exercise raising my glucose? A couple of years ago, I would frequently see my sugars go up into the 160s after a hard workout or a run. How am I doing with that now? Does my body still need that much sugar, or am I running on fat more than I used to?
  2. Am I metabolically inflexible? What does a meal with carbs do to my body? While my overall numbers look great in a one-time lab test, there is that nagging question of what is happening on those rare occasions that I include berries or fruit or alcohol. Would I be able to go back to eating beans and rice fairly quickly (after all, the Great Reset is being foisted upon us as we speak) without too much metabolic trouble? Am I so physiologically used to running on fat that my body is distressed when I reintroduce sugar?
  3. It is often said by ketosis skeptics that metabolic flexibility goes out the window if you stay in ketosis too much, and that completely eliminating sugar is just as bad as having too much sugar. I doubt that inflexibility goes both ways. I think you can lose your ability to run on fat far more easily than you can lose your ability to run on sugar, but I wanted to see that happening, if it is. If I need to carb-cycle, I want to know that.

While these are things I thought I already knew the answer to because I’ve studied the dickens out of the subject, I really wanted to just see it. So far, I’ve had no real surprises, but I have a couple of weeks left to go in which I’ll probably put myself through some tests that I normally wouldn’t want to do. Hopefully I’ll be able to find the time to share the results with you.

This post is getting too long for a Monday morning, so I’ll be back with some graphs in another post to tell you what I’ve learned, and what I think I’m seeing. In the meantime, whether you eat a standard American diet, or paleo, or carnivore, or just live on air and sunshine like a plant, you might also be interested to see what’s happening to your blood glucose 24/7. If so, I have a referral link that will get you $25 dollars off your first order with Nutrisense. If you sign up, I would also get $25 off my next month, but I’m not going to be doing another month, so I don’t really benefit from this deal.

The cool thing about Nutrisense is that they have dieticians and coaches on hand to help you understand what you’re seeing. You don’t have to be a geek to get a lot of good information from this service.

Let me know if you decide to do it! Want to discuss this, or anything else? Find me any time on SG, Gab, or MeWe.

 

Carnivore Waffles and Keto Maple-flavored Syrup

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You know, for kids!

As usual, recipe up front, babbling about it below:

Print Recipe

Carnivore Waffles

100% Animal-based waffles
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: Carnivore
Keyword: carnivore, keto, low carb
Servings: 8

Equipment

  • waffle maker
  • blender

Ingredients

  • 10 eggs
  • 1 lbs breakfast sausage Other ground meats could be substituted for different tastes/textures
  • 2 tsp beef gelatin Optional. Improves texture

Instructions

  • Blend eggs and sausage together until the mixture is a smooth batter.
  • Cook, 1/2 cup at a time, in a waffle maker on its highest setting.
  • Remove finished waffles to an oven on 200˚ F to keep warm until ready to serve.

Notes

This recipe easily doubles and triples to feed a crowd. 
Print Recipe

Keto Maple-flavored Syrup

A low-carb syrup
Prep Time1 minute
Cook Time5 minutes
Course: Breakfast
Keyword: keto, low carb, sugar-free
Servings: 8

Ingredients

  • 1 tsp xanthan gum
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 cups water
  • 2/3 cups erythritol/stevia granulated sweetener (I prefer the Pyure brand) or your preferred low-carb sweetener
  • 1 tbsp maple extract other extracts, such as vanilla, may be used as well
  • 1 pinch salt

Instructions

  • Whisk xanthan gum into 1/4 cup water and set aside.
  • Whisk sweetener and salt into 2 cups water in a small saucepan.
  • Heat syrup mixture until sweetener is dissolved, then remove from heat.
  • Whisk in maple or other flavorings and xanthan gum mixture.

Notes

This recipe doubles and triples easily to feed a crowd.

Somebody was asking me the other day (as they frequently do) what my kids are eating. I don’t hold them to a carnivore, or even a keto regime, but I’m not putting any more sugar in their lives than is good for them, either. We don’t want a blood sugar spike and drop to start our day off with a case of the grumpies. I give them their starches later in the day when their bodies are better able to use the sugars. (Update: I have since writing this taken my whole family heavily meat-based keto. The sugar isn’t happening around here anymore.)

I make these waffles on special occasions, or just the odd laid-back Saturday. Carb addicts and strict carnivores will want to skip the syrup and just eat these waffles as a bread. I like to spread them absolutely slather them with butter, or maybe add some diced ham to the batter for extra flavor and protein. It’s a really forgiving recipe to play with. Enjoy!

 

You’re Dying! Abort the Carnivore Diet! Abort! Abort! Abort!

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My life’s comedic timing is perfect.

So, I’m standing here in my kitchen. I’ve just put some suet in my beautiful new 8-quart slow cooker to render down into tallow. Since I’m here, and already coated in glorious grass-fed beef fat from stem to stern, I figure I might as well pack some gel capsules with raw beef suet as well. By the way, those are vegetarian capsules. It says so right there on the bag, as if that were a selling point. I’ll explain why and how I do this strange thing in another post. The point is, I am at this moment doing the most medically scandalous thing a body can do, short of joining Hunter in hitting one of his Daddy’s free crackpipes while consuming said raw beef suet.

Spotted in the wild

And the phone rings.

I: Hello?

She: Hello, this is Such-and-such with your doctor’s office. How are you doing today?

I: Hi there! You tell me: How am I doing today?

She: Well, we got your labs back, and your thyroid and HBA1C look great.

I, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because I already know about this shoe. It’s an old, worn out shoe: Good. And?

She: Your cholesterol doesn’t look so good. She (the doctor) says your good cholesterol is high, which is good, but your bad cholesterol is very high, which is bad. She wants you to back off on saturated fats, eat more vegetables and less meat, and get more exercise.

I, grinning and trying not to actually LOL: OK, can you give me the numbers?

See what I mean about my life’s comedic timing? Here I am, deliberately and with wanton disregard for the opinion of Man, packing pills with saturated fat, and my doctor calls me to tell me to KNOCK THAT OFF RIGHT NOW!

I won’t bore you with the rest of the call, Patient Reader, but after the kind receptionist gladly gave me my scary number, I did manage to wring the other, unimportant numbers out of her, as well. Are you ready for these numbers, my friends? Here they are:

  • Total cholesterol: 315
  • LDL (not bad, just misunderstood): 211
  • HDL (The OTHER good cholesterol): 97
  • Triglycerides: 55 (I’ve seen this as low as 37, and I feel a little cheated today. Probably elevated due to stress from rushing out early for the blood-draw. But this is still a very good trig/hdl ratio of about .56)
  • VLDL (The actually bad particle): A perfectly relaxing 7.

Now, none of this was a surprise to me, because I got my own bloodwork done in much greater detail, through Own Your Labs just a month ago. I’m way geekier about my health than my doctor is. I wanted more information than my insurance is willing to pay for, so I have a lot of other great numbers to show, off, too! I’m a textbook example of an (I do believe healthy) phenotype known as a Lean Mass Hyper-responder. I am both fit and slender, and of what is traditionally understood as a “risky” cholesterol profile. In fact, the only number that got flagged in my entire comprehensive panel was my LDL–a paltry 151 at the time, due, I think, to a cold I’d been fighting off. That’s quite low for me. Did you know those terrifying little particles are a vital part of your immune system?

While I find conventional medicine to be very useful for many things, evaluating and ameliorating heart disease risk is not one of them. Hormone replacement, trauma and acute care, and antibiotics are all things for which I am very grateful. But you don’t care about my opinion of western medicine right now, do you?

What you care about, I’m sure, is that I’m going to die of a heart attack and need to get on some statins, STAT. In fact, by the time I hit publish, the ambulance should be on its way. I just called them, to be on the safe side.

Don’t hold your breath, veggie lovers. I intend to outlive you all. 

I am not remotely interested in explaining the intricacies of lipids to a general audience. I don’t have time. Besides, you might be convinced to go carnivore, and I really don’t want you to start competing with me for meat at its current price. I’m not giving you a complete run-down, or even trying to convince you of my way of thinking about this. I will, however, give you a few clues to aid you in your quest for truth as you come to realize what many, many people are catching on to of late: The science–the actual science, and not the pharmaceutical industry’s “studies”–should at least awaken you to the possibility, that the saturated-fat-heart-disease paradigm is ass-backwards and hopelessly lost.

Saturated fat intake doesn’t appear to have much to do with LDL levels.

Saturated fat intake is not associated with all-cause mortality.

People with high LDL outlive people with low LDL.

Replacing saturated animal fats with vegetable oils is associated with higher risk of heart events, even though it does lower serum cholesterol levels. (There’s an apparent paradox between this one and the first study I listed, which I can explain, but won’t.)

That will be enough to get you started. You may also enjoy this very layperson-accessible lecture by Dr. Paul Mason about why doctors still believe such insane things about cholesterol.

My doctor wants to see me again in six months, after I’ve behaved myself with the meat and exercise for a while. (By the way, I exercise like a beast at least five days a week. I have the abs to prove it. It’s a testament to the inadequate intimacy of the doctor-patient relationship in times of telemedicine due to “covid” that she doesn’t know this. She hasn’t actually touched me in a couple of years.) If my One Number doesn’t look any better, she will try to prescribe me a statin, I’m sure. Now, I have some choices to make, and I’m not sure which direction I should go.

I could attempt to educate my doctor on the facts of the matter. I’ve wasted my time like this before, printing out reams of studies in which the doctor was (surprise!) not interested. I fired that doctor, naturally. But the gal I’m seeing right now is super-smart, and she might just be interested. Then again, she might be primarily interested in continuing to collect her paycheck, which cholesterol-hypothesis skeptics tend to have a harder time doing in this system. I could also bring to her the results of my CAC scan (the one I keep putting off) and at least convince her that my arteries at least don’t appear to be harmed yet. There are lots of things I could show to an open-minded person to get a conversation started.

Alternatively, I could ghost myself and not show up for the next lab-work, instead choosing to wait until I have another thyroid check, and evade that topic yet again. Honestly, this is my usual course of action.

Or, I could game my numbers, doing nobody much good at all, but at least getting it on the insurance record that my cholesterol numbers are “healthy”. Funnily enough, all I’d have to do is eat a bunch of carbs for a few days before my labs and I’d look like the healthiest patient you ever saw. There would be enough immediate downsides to this that I doubt I’d ever attempt it. But it would look better for insurance purposes, for sure.

What do you think I should do? We can talk about this on Gab, MeWe, or SG, my current social media hangouts.

 

In Which I Rebuke Myself

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A little.

I was reading and explaining the parable of the early and late workers from Matthew 20 to my children the other day.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.2 Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard.3 And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,4 and said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went.5 Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise.6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing[a]idle, and said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day?’7 They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard,[b]and whatever is right you will receive.’

8 “So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.’9 And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius.10 But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius.11 And when they had received it, they[c]complained against the landowner,12 saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’13 But he answered one of them and said, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?14 Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you.15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?’16 So the last will be first, and the first last. For[d]many are called, but few chosen.”

At the time, I didn’t really make any application to my own thoughts of late, but I felt a little niggling something in my chest, like something…something…oh, well, I’m in a hurry. Let’s move on to math.

So then this morning I was doing what all red-blooded Americans and Canadians are doing right now, whispering my prayers for some peaceful protestors, and cheering for some people standing up to tyranny. I’ve also put my money where my mouth is in supporting Pastor Artur Pawlowski<<<–CLICK THAT LINK and I hope you will, also.

Sweet, ain’t it?

Now, I’ve always had an annoying tendency to see things on multiple levels, and sometimes those levels would seem to contradict each other. Sometimes I lose sleep trying to reconcile my different impressions with each other. They rarely truly contradict, but the more compelling thoughts can pull me too far in one direction or the other at times. On one level, I’ve already said exactly what I think of the Truckers and their protest. It is both marvelous to behold, and yet a sign of inadequate understanding.

But it looks to me like it is becoming more adequate all the time.  

Where I first only saw some people getting mad because they were finally about to be out of a job, unlike that other poor schmuck who has been out of a job for a year now, I’m now perceiving people who are actually sorry they didn’t stand up earlier. People who took an ill-advised vaccine out of naïve obedience to illegitimate demands by “authority” are now unwilling to force others to violate their bodies in the same way. That speaks of repentance, whether they know how to use the word yet or not.

I’m loving the patriotism, and the peacefulness, and the truly Christlike resistance that they are offering. God bless Canada!

So where do I need to rebuke myself? There’s not much wrong with what I said before, right?

No, not really. But that niggling something I felt when I was explaining the parable to my children was the Holy Spirit reminding me that there’s a wrong way to be right.

That’s what happens when you let your precious Self start to take credit for simply showing up a few hours earlier than the next guy down the hiring-line. It’s good that I showed up for work in the morning, refusing early on to mask or to bow to the power that sought to enslave not just me, but my neighbor, whom I actively loved by standing up for his rights, even when he was too scared to do so for himself. It’s good, but it’s not my good. It is Christ’s. Always.

I said before:

There are families who have had to find alternative ways to feed their children after grocery stores wouldn’t let them in. People have lost their jobs. Doctors, pharmacists, and nurses have been silenced for having a different opinion than the approved one. Many have been threatened and intimidated for refusing to back down. Some of the most compelling voices have likely been assassinated, given the mysterious circumstances under which they’ve died. While it is much worse in Canada, we have plenty of stories in the US, too.

 

Pardon me if I’m not terribly impressed that the mob has finally gotten mad, now that enough lives are affected.

 

I only got hired this morning, myself.

Being a natural introvert and observer, it is true that I have sussed things out a little earlier than most. But the Spirit graciously humbled me through the words of Our Lord. “What is it to you if I grant repentance to them today, rather than yesterday? What is an hour or day to the Eternal, anyway? Didn’t you already receive what I promised you?”

We’re all at a different place in our understanding and experience. So the trouble, as usual, isn’t with my discernment, but with my heart, my pride. As if every gift I have weren’t from God, and not of myself, lest I should boast? So, while I retract nothing of the realities of what I said, I repent of my skepticism that God has brought in His perfect time any individual or nation to repentance. Repentance is increasingly what this convoy looks like to me: a great national–no, international–repentance, after realizing we’ve allowed mere Power to subvert righteous Authority.

So, allow me to say publicly what my pride would prefer I admit only privately. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I was right, the wrong way, which is no better than being completely wrong. 

Want to discuss my blunder? I’m always checking in on Gab, MeWe, and SG. In fact, I’m dying for some company on some of these platforms. Hit me up, please!

Friday Link-About

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It’s a good day for some links. 

Save and earn some money. While I think you should try to keep your spending as local as possible, sometimes online shopping is unavoidable. I’ve been saving a lot of money, plus getting cash back from the Honey plugin. I have $37.96 in Honey Gold waiting for me to cash out right now, and probably hundreds of dollars saved in coupons and deals found. You can also earn money on referrals, as I’m expecting to do with this link. Honey is super easy to use. You just install the plugin, shop normally, and then it pops up all by itself and guides you whenever it detects potential savings or earnings.

As the recently released Consumer Price Index shows, you’re going to need whatever breaks you can get:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.6 percent in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 7.5 percent before seasonal adjustment. Increases in the indexes for food, electricity, and shelter were the largest contributors to the seasonally adjusted all items increase. The food index rose 0.9 percent in January following a 0.5-percent increase in December. The energy index also increased 0.9 percent over the month, with an increase in the electricity index being partially offset by declines in the gasoline index and the natural gas index.

Cognitive Warfare is Spiritual Warfare. You have enemies who have never had to fire a shot. Your only defense is Christ:

Cognitive Warfare – the ongoing battle for who you are.

I was noticing the other day how much farther into their teens my children have gotten than their peers–or even I did–before setting aside “childish” things, like imaginative play and actually wanting to be around their siblings and parents. The fact that they’ve never been subjected to the predatory grooming of public schools, nor been exposed to degenerate media, is the biggest reason for that. My children remain naïve and innocent, as Jesus warned us to keep them. Don’t give these people your children:

School district in Enfield, Connecticut asks eighth-graders to share their sexual desires in the form of pizza toppings for a school assignment

If the war on cancer goes like the war on drugs, they’ll be handing out free carcinogens soon. Oh, wait a minute…how much did that vaccine cost you?

If you thought it was a little strange that Biden would suddenly declare war on cancer, as if we hadn’t already been up to our eyeballs in cancer awareness, research, and fundraising, perhaps it will make more sense to you when you understand that the war will be “fought” by the very same people who just gave a whole bunch of people cancer. The covid injections were the ultimate false flag, and now comes the war. The Killshot is the Cancer shot. I’ve known some people to have cancers come roaring back after the shot. I don’t think it’s coincidence. The data seems to bear that out.

For your general health, including cancer prevention: If you’re in the mood for some deep-diving into fructose and all its intricacies, this Peter Attia podcast with Rick Johnson, M.D., How Fructose Drives Metabolic Disease was just fascinating. I listened to it twice. Long story short, go easy on all the sugars and starches, not just fructose, especially if you’re already metabolically damaged.

But you knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?

If I’m a little light on links today, it’s because somebody linked to this and took up ten minutes of my morning. Very entertaining, what they did to my maybe favorite piece of music ever:

Discussion: I’ve disabled comments, as interaction is easier and more fun on social media sites. As always, you can join me on Gab, MeWe, or (my favorite) SG to discuss any of these things, or just the weather.