Soft drinks & smoking even worse than thought...

Today's post: Thursday, 2-7-2008

Today’s post is a bit shorter than most we do; but it contains some new information.

1. Gout is a VERY uncomfortable condition that creates sharp, stabbing pain in your joints. That’s because it creates uric acid crystals that are quite literally stabbing the inside surface of your joints. Ouch !!

One way to avoid it is to avoid eating excessive amounts of fatty meats -- with hamburger from grain fed cattle being the kind people in the United States now tend to overeat.

Since this kind of meat also is high in omega 6 oils & animal based saturated fat & has excessive calories from that fat that tend to wind up on YOU, it’s a very sound idea to mostly or totally avoid it.

It turns out a second way to avoid gout is to never drink soft drinks. A health news article a week ago on the AFP health news on Yahoo said it’s been found that drinking soft drinks also increases the amount of gout people get.

Since soft drinks also have been implicated in keeping people fat & helping cause type II diabetes, do yourself a favor & drink tea, green tea, or purified water instead.

Why pay money to get fat, sick, & have shooting pains in your joints?

As long as you won’t be driving too soon afterwards, even rum would be better for you.

So would beer for that matter.

So, if you eat at the big chain fast food places, consider water or orange juice & salad to keep you going.

Or go to a Mexican one like Uno Mas. They have decent beer, guacamole, and beans in addition to the standard junk. www.unamas.com will get you to a site local to you if there is one. They also have mild & hot salsa you can put on the beans.

Also, Subway has great sandwich ingredients including many with great flavor. Simply let them keep the cheap refined grain bread & get a sandwich sized serving of a protein food
(they have some lean ones.) – Atkins style. And get water to drink.

2. Regular readers of these posts already know that everyone who smokes is giving themselves heart disease & that lung cancer is the LITTLE risk since, as horrible as it is for those who get it even smokers don’t always get it.

One of the ways that smoking, IN ALL SMOKERS, NOT just some -- creates cardiovascular disease is that it triggers elevated levels of homocysteine.

Homocysteine at those elevated levels helps deposit plaque in your arteries & accelerates your rate of aging.

So the recent news is not surprising but was new to me. It’s now been shown that smokers are far more likely to get senility & dementia, & possibly Alzheimer’s disease.

The reason that this is not surprising is that homocysteine readings of 9.0 & over, particularly of 12.0 & over are predictive of an increased risk of senility & dementia, & possibly Alzheimer’s disease.

So, since smoking produces exactly that effect in virtually all smokers, this new finding is one that data would predict you would find.

Still, in complex biological processes, you don’t always find the effects you predicted & have reason to expect to find.

So, it’s still important news that a study confirms that smoking does tend to trigger senility & dementia, & possibly Alzheimer’s disease.

So, in addition to heart attacks, strokes, peripheral artery disease, kidney disease, & erectile dysfunction, we now can add that smoking helps cause senility & dementia, & possibly Alzheimer’s disease.

If you still smoke, ask yourself this.

Would you prefer a few weeks of undergoing the effort to quit smoking or –

-- would you prefer to not make that effort & look forward to getting heart attacks, strokes, peripheral artery disease, kidney disease, & erectile dysfunction, AND senility & dementia, & possibly Alzheimer’s disease?


Keep in mind that if you need, your doctor can get you Zyban; nicotine replacements are available over the counter, & your HMO or the American Cancer Society can give you a good support group to use -- & that each of these things have been effective in helping people quit smoking.