Odds and sods.

Christmas is nearly here, so here's a quick post before I go off and do Christmassy things.

1) The weather: We Brits love to moan about the weather. As we don't get much snow here for most of the year, when we do there's chaos on the roads and railways. Here's what it was like last Monday morning, shortly before I set off to visit mum.



2) NoScript: As I want my ancient lap-top to browse as quickly as possible, stopping unnecessary scripts from running is a good idea, so I added the NoScript add-on. Every new site that I visit has to have scripts marked as either approved for that site, or untrusted for that site. Approved scripts can run. Untrusted ones can't. I like it and it's definitely speeded-up surfing.

3) Vacuum Places Improved: Something that slows down auto-completion of web addresses and Firefox start-up is fragmentation of the Places database, so I added the Vacuum Places Improved add-on. This defragments the Places database and can be run by either clicking on an icon or set to auto-run.

4) Flagfox: The Flagfox add-on displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more...

5) Adblock Plus: I've been using the AdBlock Plus add-on together with its companion Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus for quite a while and I'm still impressed with it.

Nutritional dogma.

Gary Taubes now has a blog. His first two posts have resulted in a lot of opinions being expressed, mine included.

As Henry Larson said in the film "Home for the Holidays (1995)":- "Well, opinions are like assholes, honey. Everybody's got one and everybody thinks everybody else's stinks."

I don't know why, but people adopt nutritional beliefs with a religious fervour. See Low Carb Talibans and read the comments. They choose their TOP EXPERTS (to quote Razwell) and believe everything that they write & say, dismissing any contrary views. What people don't appreciate is that even "experts" get things wrong and have cognitive biases that affect their opinions. See also Elvis lives!

I try to support my opinions using peer-reviewed studies from PubMed. As there are over 20,000,000 studies on that site, the average Joe & Josephine may have difficulty in finding what they're looking for. Here's a tip. Limit the results to studies in English on humans that have abstracts or free full text.

E.G. To find all studies by Leibel RL that meet the above criteria, copy & paste the following line into the search box:-

Leibel RL[Author] AND ("loattrfree full text"[sb] OR hasabstract[text]) AND "humans"[MeSH Terms] AND English[lang]

Other authors worth searching for are Frayn KN, Jéquier E, Flatt JP, Hellerstein MK, Parks EJ, Krauss RM, Dreon DM.

Does anyone have any other author suggestions?

Another useful resource is NCBI Bookshelf.

Uh-oh! There may be trouble ahead...

I won't deny that I'm not very active. On days that I don't visit my mum, I spend many hours reclining on a sofa with a lap-top on a small table, surfing the internet. I make sloths look hyperactive!

I thought that this wasn't a problem as I also don't eat very much (as I'm so engrossed rummaging through the vast amount of information out there) and I'm maintaining a relatively stable weight.

Then I read Sedentary Physiology at Obesity Panacea which lead me to Sedentary Physiology Part 1 – Not Just The Lack of Physical Activity , full study HERE.

"Hamburg et al. (2007) examined the effect of 5 days of complete bed rest on metabolic health in 22 adult volunteers. Study participants remained in bed for over 23.5 h per day, rising only for matters of personal hygiene. At the completion of the study, despite no changes in body weight, they experienced significant increases in total cholesterol, plasma triglycerides, glucose, and insulin resistance. The changes in carbohydrate metabolism were particularly pronounced, with participants experiencing a 67% greater insulin response to a glucose load following the 5-day intervention."

The thing is, I've never liked sports & formal exercise. In infant school, exercise involved running around in the playground. That, I could do. In primary school, exercise involved running around in the playground, some PE and some outdoor sports (rounders & cricket, using a tennis ball). That, I could also do, although my short legs made me rubbish at running. In secondary school, in addition to PE, there were sports such as football, rugby, cricket, hockey, tennis, swimming & cross-country running. That, I utterly hated (tennis was just about bearable) and so to avoid doing them, I developed an art for forging sick notes in my mum's handwriting. This improved my normal handwriting, so some good came of it. So, what to do?

As toilet breaks force me off the sofa, I shall drink more to make me wee more often. I shall also use the upstairs toilet during the day and the downstairs toilet during the night. See also Eat Less, Move More: Solutions to problems.

Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African Paleolithic diet

Thanks to Stephan Guyenet for bringing the study n-6 Fatty acid-specific and mixed polyunsaturate dietary interventions have different effects on CHD risk: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials to my attention in his post Diet-Heart Controlled Trials: a New Literature Review. This shows that diets high in omega-6 (n-6) polyunsaturates but low in omega-3 (n-3) polyunsaturates are heart-unhealthy.

In the West, we are advised to eat lots of "heart-healthy" sunflower oil & spreads. These contain about 70 times more omega-6 than omega-3. Safflower, Grapeseed, Corn & Groundnut Oils also have high omega-6:omega-3 ratios, according to Comparison of Dietary Fats Chart.

I then found the following study also on the British Journal of Nutrition:- Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African Paleolithic diet.

This shows that traditional hunter-gatherer diets have a short-chain omega-3:omega-6 ratio of 1·12–1·64 and a long-chain omega-3:omega-6 ratio of 0·84–1·92. In other words, there is a moderate balance between omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturates.

The diets are also relatively high in protein (25–29% energy) and fat (30–39% energy) but moderate in carbohydrate (39–40% energy).

I thought that followers of a Paleo-type diet would find this interesting.

EDIT: I've just noticed that O Primitivo has already posted about this study!

Robert Sapolsky lectures.

Firstly, thanks to Richard Nikoley for posting links to a couple of lectures by the above Stanford Professor. I've watched three of Sapolsky's lectures so far and they've all been very interesting. Here are links to five of them.

The Uniqueness of Humans (37 mins)

Depression (52 mins)

Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences (1 hour 19 mins)

Toxoplasmosis (37 mins)

The Origin of Religion (9 mins + 10 mins)

I may be gone some time.

Child obesity 'time bomb'

...is today's headline on Nursing Times. Not only do calorie-dense, nutrient-poor junk-foods make children fatter than they should be, they may also turn them into junk-food junkies.

See The Science of Food Addiction , How Junk Foods Hijack the Brain , I'm a secret lemonade drinker... and Dopamine and Obesity: The Food Addiction?

It's currently illegal to advertise cigarettes & alcohol to and/or sell them to children. Would it help to tackle the child obesity problem by making it illegal to advertise sweets, chocolate, crisps, cakes, biscuits, sugary drinks & take-away foods to and/or sell them to children?

A slight hitch, Part 3.

I haven't written anything for a while as I've been lacking in inspiration due to feeling a bit "Meh!". As mentioned in A slight hitch, Part 2. I was ordered to withdraw all of mum's supplements pending investigation by a NHS Dietician. The only thing that I was allowed to continue giving her was smoked salmon for her sandwiches as it's food.

After a long delay, I finally got to see the Dietician, but she was about as useful as a chocolate teapot (she didn't know what half the supplements were), so I had to apply to the Court of Protection to become mum's Deputy so that I would have authority to give her supplements. The forms were returned a week or so later as the financial evidence that I had attached to claim fee exemption was too old. Pah! I received a new P60 in the middle of April, so I re-submitted the forms with a copy of that attached. I phoned the Court on 12th May as I hadn't had any written response and was told that they had received my forms on 21st April and that it could take up to 21 weeks to reach a verdict.

In the meantime, I have to watch mum's mental faculties deteriorate knowing that there are supplements that have helped her brain in the past but I'm not allowed to give them to her. That kinda sucks. Now that there is some sun, I am taking mum onto the patio of the new nursing home around midday to get some UVB, but as she feels the cold more than she used to, only her hands & face are exposed at the moment.

Mum moved to the new nursing home on March 15th and her physical condition has improved thanks to the staff at the new place exercising her. She has regained the use of her left hand (which went floppy at the wrist in November '09 for no apparent reason) and has been walking with the aid of a tri-walker & assisted by a carer since April 16th. The food is better quality and she also gets regular aromatherapy hand massages which she enjoys. That's something to be grateful for.

EDIT: Due to a stress-related health problem in June, I had to cancel my application to become mum's Deputy. I did what I could. I can't do any more. Que sera, sera.