My monthly fatloss report November 2018....Today's post: 

Tuesday, 11-20-2018

Here's the key news:

Short term results are finally better! I’ve lost 3.5 pounds in the past two months.

Fat Loss Report as measured on Saturday, 11-17-2018

I lost 1.6 pounds since last month to 168.8 from 170.4 pounds.

My goal weight is 161 pounds so I went from 9.4 pounds over to 7.8 pounds over.  This is finally a bit better!

It looks like my desired long term gains will take a lot more work still; but I’m encouraged that they now look possible.

I. Since last month, I lost 1.6 pounds.

Cutting out all the few added sugars in my diet and cutting my wine intake in half and eating the same otherwise did help.

But this past month I also took a week where I ate only low carb meals each day.  On top of that I skipped lunch a few times as a fast between breakfast and dinner.

Chest was about 39 -- about a half inch less.

Waist was about 42 & a half-- about a half inch less.

Hips were 38 & a half-- about a half inch less.

My strength seemed to say the same.  So the losses in my chest and hips are likely of fat.  For sure the half inch loss in my waist was.

II. Initially, I was pleased to be able to do without wine on the days I set to do that.  It’s no routine.

The same is true of the sugars I was eating and only eating at meal time. That too is now routine.

I’ve also gotten used to only eating at meal times.

Even at first no longer using molasses or the bit of dark chocolate was easiest. They weren’t that good tasting and were messy & time consuming to eat. 

Not buying any more organic raisins removed them; but I liked them enough to be sorry to see them go!  Logistically, it was easy. I stopped buying them and my wife ate the few left in the container.

Now I no longer feel their loss as I initially did. Again, I’ve gotten used to the new routine.

Eating only at meal times was a small adjustment but has been quite doable.

III. According to an article I once read, the wine I was drinking each week was supporting 12 pounds of fat.  So removing half that may eventually take off half of 12 pounds or six pounds. 

Since I’ve lost 3.5 pounds, that suggests that staying with the wine cut back may eventually cause at least another 2.5 pounds of fat loss and on the scale.

That has not been my experience with other things I've tried.  But this more long term change may be different.

IV. Then too, I have been drinking bottled water from plastic containers for both chilled water & for making coffee & tea.

The BPA in that water may have been locking down my fat.  So, I finally got the FIXT system & began using it Saturday, 10-20.

That may remove a block to fatloss from other things and increase the fatloss from my belly when I lose more fat from other things.  It may also improve my health protection of my heart and liver and brain.  So, I’m pleased I got it done!

There is still a bit of use left in the initial FIXT filter.  But it looks like I may need to get a filter each month instead of every other month.  At $83 each every month, that’s not yet affordable safely.  And, I’m concerned about generating the solid waste of the filter once a month on top of that.  So I’m back with the bottled water for now.

V.  The VIBE turned out to have an extra 20 minute set up and put away time and take extra time to do the exercises on it as well -- to the point it was taking an extra hour on Saturday and one on Sunday to use it. 

We had some extra time pressure on our weekends recently that prevented its use and I have decided to simply discontinue it for now. When logistics improvements and more space in our home free up the hour and remove the excess set up time, I do hope to resume using it.

VI. My strength training has been progressing without using the VIBE and I may have found a first solution to my left calf and foot weakness.  If it works, it takes 6 to 10 weeks and I've only been using it a bit over one month.  By my report in December or January I may have good news.

VII. A month ago I did 180 pushups and 55 more after a brief rest for a total of 235.

This is a bit less than I did the month before: 194 and 47 more after a brief rest for a total of 241.

But I did 205 + 54 = 259 on another Saturday in October or September.

Because of stress & the particulates from the fires, I’ve switched to doing fewer and slower pushups for strength and at least temporarily discontinued doing them fast as I was doing before.  I did 83 & 9 = 92 Monday morning.

This was inside with the windows closed; but some of the health effect was from walking to our car and for short errands to put some particulates in my lungs.

This past month, I did zero at work short exercise walks.  The readings of our outside air were far higher than was safe to do so.  Maybe by next month that will be better.

VIII. Fixes likely to work that I cannot yet put in place:

Clearly I need to cut back someplace on calories and sugars IN the foods I’ve been eating and reduce their volume a bit and get back to the gym to do heavier weight exercises with barbells and the leg press machine. 

Eating grass fed beef and lamb or Greek yogurt from grass fed cows instead of grass fed yogurt with lactose and which takes up more room in my stomach would help for my breakfast and some breakfasts and dinners.

During my cut down week one week out of four, it might help to have my whey with water and Bullet Proof collagen protein instead of milk.  This would provide less support for building muscle that week.  But it might help my fat loss and to shrink my waist.

AND I need a logistics upgrade to free up the time to go to the gym --

AND to sleep about an hour a day more.

(Sleeping more is known to cut belly fat and to increase muscle and bone building if you exercise which cuts overall fat!)

I recently discovered that a very successful bodybuilder, Ben Pakulski, takes 3 grams a day of a Lion’s mane supplement.  I learned from him that part of increasing strength is increasing the motor nerve control of your muscular contractions while doing exercises.  And working that hard in your workouts tends to de-energize you mentally. 

It seems that research backs up that when taking Lion’s mane you become less depressed and you act less depressed and your blood results back this up.  Unlike the BDNF from exercise you generate more of that can build lasting nerve improvements, research shows that while Lion’s mane works, the nerves it regrows fade when and if you stop taking it.  The better news is that the increased muscle size and strength may remain!

Each of these changes would help; but many of them take more money or space where I live or both than I currently have available. 

So, once again, to lose more fat, in my case, I need to increase my income.

VIII. My past month stressing skipping lunch as a fast several times and eating fewer lentils plus being out of town a week ago where I took less triphala and magnesium caused me to get constipated.

I restored the magnesium and triphala went to 3 tablespoons of lentils every day from two ever other day or no days during that one week.  My wife also served me extra steamed vegetables.

My constipation did clear up.  My hope is that my progress will continue now that I’m eating more lentils; back taking the triphala; and magnesium; but am continuing everything else.  The upset stomach comes and goes during the day but is sticking around so far.

Conclusion:

I expect with my recent permanent upgrades to keep off the fat I’ve lost.  My hope is that I’ll lose down to my 161 goal weight and at least another inch off my waist.

Easier than turkey main dishes….Today's post: Monday, 11-19-2018

The best Thanksgivings are about good times with friends & family.

For people hosting Thanksgiving, shopping for, cooking, and serving a turkey and its traditional side dishes, can be a LOT of work and can be very stressful.

Having cold ham slices of good quality and a great tasting vegan protein dish featuring almond meal style “flour” can be dramatically easier to fix.  Then steamed broccoli and grass fed cheese and various salads with extra virgin olive oil and organic apple cider vinegar can make a good meal that will leave you stuffed and well fed.

That can be a feast and take a third of the time to shop for, prepare and serve as the Turkey routine.

Here’s more on these dishes. 

I’ll postpone my November fatloss report until, tomorrow Tuesday because this article may be in time to be of use for shopping today or tomorrow.

(I posted on the health and fat loss reasons to do this last Thursday, 11-15-2019.)

1.  Whole Foods carries Paleo ham slices.  You can pan fry on low temp or bake these and serve hot.   But doing that the day or night before and serving them cold can unpack your prep time on Thanksgiving.  You can serve these plain because there are flavors in other dishes.

2.  There is an almond flour of an almond meal consistency by Bob’s Red Mill that works mixed with Organicville yellow mustard.  (Organicville is the one mustard that has no sugar or HFCS or MSG.  It’s just mustard; and is the only one I’ve found so far that is!)

The next step is to finely dice organic onions and organic tomato and an organic green such as red leaf lettuce.  This can be served in a wide profile dish with a spoon or as a wrap with a romaine lettuce leaf.  This is best served to neat eaters on a large paper napkin because the mustard can stain cloth.

If it’s OK to serve the almond flour in your group, it is a vegan dish!

But this is for a small group composed only of people who are not allergic to tree nuts.  It’s not a good idea for a large group some of whom might have a tree nut allergy.

3.  A second dish or one you can use instead is to cook triple rinsed quinoa that you heat gently in a cast iron frying pan with diced onion that also gently cooks and add extra virgin olive oil.

This one is also vegan.

4.  A fourth dish is to slowly but thoroughly cook several slices of Paleo bacon and then finely dice it and de-rib and remove the stems of collard greens or Swiss chard and cook that on low heat with diced and peeled onion in the pan the bacon was cooked in.  Then add extra virgin olive oil and heat and serve.

Any two of these dishes can work well.

1.  Steam some sliced or diced organic broccoli.  Then put that in a pre-warmed but NOT hot cast iron frying pan and put some diced Kerrygold grass fed butter and cheddar cheese on it.  Then serve small servings while it is still warm but not hot.

2.  Gently cook some diced organic garlic and finely chopped organic green cabbage in a pan that was used to cook bacon before. 

If you want to go vegan, you can use extra virgin olive oil; but the bacon version I find has more flavor.

3.  Set aside some dishes with diced organic lettuces and some varied kinds of pitted olives and some organic apple cider vinegar and extra virgin olive oil & either use each of those in a mix or serve it cafeteria style for those who would like that.

That version is vegan.  But if you have some people who are not vegetarians or are lacto-vegetarian you can include diced Kerrygold grass fed cheddar.  (Their Dubliner version is consistent and easiest to dice.)

This meal in all its versions is free of turkey, wheat flour, and sugar. 

Yet it can be very tasty and filling enough for a feast! 

Have Thanksgiving WITHOUT turkey….Today's post: Thursday, 11-15-2018

The best Thanksgivings are about good times with friends & family.

For people hosting Thanksgiving, shopping for, cooking, and serving a turkey and its traditional side dishes, can be a LOT of work and can be very stressful.

Having cold ham slices of good quality and a great tasting vegan protein dish featuring almond meal style “flour” can be dramatically easier to fix.  Then steamed broccoli and grass fed cheese and various salads with extra virgin olive oil and organic apple cider vinegar can make a good meal that will leave you stuffed and well fed.

That can be a feast and take a third of the time to shop for, prepare and serve as the Turkey routine.

Monday next week we’ll post more on these dishes.  (I’ll postpone my fatloss report until Tuesday.)

But there are two other reasons to do this besides avoiding the extra effort and stress that NOT doing the turkey routine can give you.

1.  The traditional turkey and side dishes triple or more the fat gain from feasting at Thanksgiving:

The turkey usually comes with bacteria that tend to fatten people who ingest it.  And, the stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls are heavy on carbohydrates and refined grain hybrid wheat. 

You may gain two temporary pounds from the alternative I suggest.  But these ingredients add another six pounds that tends to never go away on top of that.

If you eat a Thanksgiving completely without them and focus on enjoying the people that tends NOT to happen.

2.  The traditional supermarket turkeys have nice sounding descriptions; but the ingredients actually in them can give you a holiday heart attack.  That does happen far too often.

One of the ingredients usually in supermarket turkey is MSG.  Besides being fattening and harmful in many other ways, this tends to make developing a high heart rate with heart rhythm problems called AFIB much more likely.

I got an email today showing that this is just the tip of the iceberg.  If it was illegal to serve very harmful foods and that was enforced, all the turkeys in supermarkets today would vanish;

These ingredients also can cause you to develop heart problems later which often cause you to pay for treatments for rapid heart rate and other high side effect treatments that can make you a cardiac cripple.

(You can get turkeys not sold in supermarkets that are not like that.  But to be sure of it, can double the entire work load of fixing the turkey!)

This article came in an email today.  I find it quite persuasive directly AND because the Thanksgiving & Christmas turkey’s I ate last year caused me to have these rapid heart rate & heart rhythm problems!  Understandably I’ll not eat any more.

I like this article because it explains why that happened to me!

“Martha Rosenberg, a freelance journalist and frequent contributor to the Organic Consumers Association, and Katherine Paul, its associate director, contributed to this article.”

“It’s that time of year again, when turkey takes center stage on millions of dinner tables.

It’s also the time of year when industrial turkey producers trot out their ads and marketing campaigns, in an attempt to trick consumers into believing they’re buying safe, healthy meat birds raised using humane and environmentally sustainable practices.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Cargill claims it’s selling you: “Honest. Simple. Turkey.” Jennie-O touts its “fresh, all natural young turkey,” while Butterball says its turkeys are “always all natural.”

In this week’s essay, Martha Rosenberg outlines all the reasons those claims are false—from the use of ractopamine, to the presence of antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria, to the latest outbreak of salmonella.

Don’t be fooled. Buy local, organic, regeneratively raised and produced turkey instead.

[I favor NOT serving turkey and its traditional side dishes!]

“What Turkey Producers Don't Want You to Know

   

November 15, 2018

As Turkey Day approaches, animal lovers cringe, food safety advocates become vigilant and industrial turkey producers hope you aren’t reading the news.

Specifically, the purveyors of factory farm turkeys hope you haven’t heard about the latest turkey salmonella outbreak in 35 states, causing 63 hospitalizations and at least one death.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

“The outbreak strain of Salmonella Reading has been identified in various raw turkey products, including ground turkey and turkey patties. The outbreak strain has also been found in raw turkey pet food and live turkeys, indicating it might be widespread in the turkey industry."

Factory farm turkey producers also hope you’ve forgotten that avian flu and its prevention killed so many turkeys in 2015—at least 7.5 million—that turkey giant Jennie-O laid off 233 workers.

They hope you’ve forgotten that scientists at the Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State’s Biodesign Institute found Tylenol, Benadryl, caffeine, statins and Prozac in feather meal samples that included U.S. turkeys—“a surprisingly broad spectrum of prescription and over-the-counter drugs,” said study co-author Rolf Halden of Arizona State University.

And finally, Butterball hopes you’ve forgotten that several of its employees were convicted of sickening animal cruelty and that veterinarian Dr. Sarah Mason admits tipping off Butterball about an imminent raid by Hoke County detectives to investigate the abuse.

Can consumers rely on labels to make good buying decisions? Not really.

Many consumers rely on labels to help them avoid serving a sick, contaminated or abused bird on Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately, navigating the maze of labels and marketing claims is at best time consuming, and at worst, a waste of time. For example, "cage free" and "hormone free” are meaningless since cages and hormones aren’t used (or at least, aren’t supposed to be used) in turkey production anyway.

Nor does "young” mean anything—all turkeys are young at the time of slaughter. They live only a matter of weeks or a few months.

And don’t even get us started on turkey labeled “natural,” “all natural” or “100% natural.” As Organic Consumers Association and other food safety and animal welfare groups wrote in a letter last year to Cargill:

“We are concerned about the production and marketing of Cargill’s turkey products. In particular, we believe that Cargill is misleading consumers about (1) its systematic overuse of antibiotics and other contaminants, which can pose a threat to public health; (2) whether its turkey products, and animal husbandry practices, are “natural;” (3) whether its turkey products emanate from facilities that employ inhumane agro-industrial practices; and (4) whether its turkey production practices are “environmentally conscious.”

Here’s a long list of facts you’ll never see listed on the major turkey brands in your grocery store.

1) Ractopamine is still in use

Hormones may not be used in turkey production but ractopamine, the asthma-like growth enhancer used to quickly add muscle weight to factory farm turkeys is banned in 160 countries and widely viewed as dangerous to animals and humans. Ractopamine was approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for use in turkey in 2009, under the brand name Topmax. It has never been labeled.

How dangerous is Topmax? This is what its label says:

“NOT FOR HUMAN USE. Warning. The active ingredient in Topmax, ractopamine hydrochloride, is a beta-adrenergic agonist. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure.

Not for use in humans. Keep out of the reach of children... When mixing and handling Topmax, use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask. Operators should wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling.” There’s even an 800 number for emergencies.”

Monkeys fed ractopamine in a Canadian study "developed daily tachycardia" (rapid heartbeat). Rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged hearts.

In its new drug application (no longer on the FDA website), Elanco, ractopamine’s manufacturer, admitted that ractopamine produced “alterations” in turkey meat such as a “mononuclear cell infiltrate and myofiber degeneration,”  “an increase in the incidence of cysts” and differences, some “significant,” in the weight of organs like hearts, kidneys and livers.

2) Antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are found in turkey

Antibiotics are widely used in turkey production to produce weight gain with less feed, and to stop disease outbreaks from crowded conditions. In fact, when the FDA tried to ban the use of one class of antibiotic—cephalosporins—in 2008, Michael Rybolt, the National Turkey Federation’s director of scientific and regulatory affairs, said, "To raise turkeys without antibiotics would increase the incidence of illness in turkey flocks."

Referring to 227-acre turkey operations as "small family farms," Rybolt said antibiotics were actually green because the use of antibiotics means less land is required to grow feed, less land is required to house turkeys—and less turkey feed means there is less manure.

Not all antibiotics used in U.S. industrial turkey operations are legal, suggests research by scientists at the Bloomberg School’s Center for a Livable Future and Arizona State’s Biodesign Institute. They found fluoroquinolones in eight of 12 samples of feather meal in a multi-state study. Fluoroquinolones are antibiotics used to treat serious bacterial infections in humans, especially infections that have become resistant to other antibiotic. Fluoroquinolones have been banned for livestock use since 2005. [Their side effects are so damaging they are almost always best avoided for use in people!]

Why do the government and all leading medical groups condemn routine, daily use of antibiotics in livestock?”

“… it encourages the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which cause potentially lethal infections in people.

Almost half of turkey samples purchased at U.S. grocery stores harbored antibiotic resistant-infections, according to a 2011 report in the Los Angeles Times. A serious strain of antibiotic-resistant salmonella called Salmonella Heidelberg and Salmonella Hadar forced recalls of turkey products from Jennie-O Turkey. The resistant salmonella strains were so deadly, officials warned that the meat should be disposed in sealed garbage cans to protect wild animals. Even wildlife is threatened by the factory farm-created scourges.

More recently, Consumer Reports issued a lengthy report on the widespread presence of antibiotics and drugs, some banned for use in livestock production, in meat, poultry (including turkey) and pork.

3) Drugs used to treat turkey diseases pose threats to human health

Industrially produced turkeys are at risk of many diseases for which both medicines and vaccines are administered. Until 2015, an arsenic-containing drug called Nitarsone was FDA-approved for the "first six weeks of a turkey’s 20-week life span." Three other arsenic products were rescinded by the FDA in 2012.

It’s shocking that arsenic has been allowed in U.S. poultry production for almost 50 years, given that increasing evidence supports that chronic low-to-moderate exposure results in numerous non-cancerous health effects, including cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory disease, diabetes and cognitive and reproductive defects,” according to a scientific paper published in 2016, in Environmental Health Perspectives. Inorganic arsenic is an established human carcinogen, known to cause cancers of the lung, skin and bladder and possibly cancers of the liver and kidney.

Turkeys can suffer from Aspergillosis (Brooder Pneumonia), Avian Influenza, Avian Leucosis, Histomoniasis, Coccidiosis, Coronavirus, Erysipelas, Typhoid, TB, Fowl Cholera, Mites, Lice, Herpes, Clostridial dermatitis, Cellulitis and much more—and the treatments are often as scary as the conditions.

Consider, for example, the anti-coccidial drug halofuginone which the Federal Register says "is toxic to fish and aquatic life" and "an irritant to eyes and skin.” Users should take care to "Keep [it] out of lakes, ponds, and streams" says the Register. A few years ago, scientists even found the endocrine disrupter Bisphenol A (BPA) in fresh turkey.

4) Animal cruelty abounds in industrial turkey production

Even before 2015 bird flu outbreak that resulted in turkeys being euthanized by suffocation in a way even producers called cruel, industrially produced turkeys had tragic lives.

Unable to mate because of the huge chests they are bred to have (many barely able to walk), producers use a cruel artificial insemination technique, which involves “milking” the males and forcing the semen into the hens. Veterinary journals admit that using chemicals to make turkeys grow abnormally fast puts the birds at risk for "sudden death from cardiac problems and aortic rupture," (diagnosed by the presence of large clots of blood around the turkey's lungs) hypertensive angiopathy and pulmonary edema. Growth drugs in turkeys may also "result in leg weakness or paralysis," says the Federal Code.

Because turkeys are drugged and bred to grow so quickly, their legs can't support their own weight and many arrive with broken and dislocated limbs, a “live hanger” who worked undercover at House of Raeford Farms in Raeford, N.C., the seventh-largest turkey producer in the US,  told me a few years ago. When you try to remove them from their crates, their legs twist completely around, offering no resistance he told me. "The turkeys must be in a lot of pain but they don't cry out. The only sound you hear as you hang them is trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load."

And then there’s this: The kill conveyer belt at the slaughterhouse moves so fast, turkeys miss the “stunner” that is supposed to render them insensate, resulting thousands of birds being boiled alive.

While some food safety and animal rights activists have sought to find turkey producers who do not commit such practices, others warn that so-called ethical producers may be disingenuous.

"Our birds live in harmony with the environment and we allow them plenty of room to roam," says a Diestel Turkey Ranch brochure, displayed at Whole Foods meat counters.

But Slate reported in 2015 that a visit to Diestel’s Jamestown facility, conducted by Direct Action investigators, "revealed horrific conditions, even by the standards of industrial agriculture." Turkeys were jammed into overcrowded barns, trapped in piles of feces, had swollen eyes and open sores and "dead turkeys [were] strewn across the barn floor."

Clearly there is a lot that turkey producers, even the so-called "humane" ones don’t want you to know.”  

Greek and Roman Good Health Discoveries....Today's post:  Tuesday, 11-13-2018

Some of the discoveries from the Greeks and the Romans were sound and useful then. They still were when Europeans re-discovered them. 

Of most importance, because they do work in important areas now AND in some cases are better than what we have now from some mainstream sources, I thought those discoveries and practices were worth posting about.

(I’d be happy to email you the URL where I found this.  davideller7@yahoo.com  is my email.

As I often do, my comments are set off by brackets like these [  ].

Greek medicine ideas & practices that still work today:

1.  “Wealthy and educated Greeks worked at:

maintaining a constant temperature

cleaning their teeth

washing regularly

keeping fit

eating healthfully”

[Avoiding extremes of temperature is often a way to prevent conditions caused by them and reduces excess stress on the body.  You also think better and are nicer to other people when you are not distracted by being very cold and even more when you are too hot.]

[We have some methods of cleaning teeth & gums they did not. 

But many people today are unaware of how much doing this prevents and how damaging the prevented things are!  So some people do little or nothing to clean their teeth and age faster and die younger and lose teeth and look older and less attractive -- and are more likely to get heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease and cancer!

So the Greeks who did clean their teeth got much of this protection; and lived long enough lives to produce the art and practices we now value.]

[It’s still true today that preventing entry and removing: dusts and rotting food and dead animals and human wastes from your living space protects your health.  It’s lifesaving in some cases. Washing yourself also has some of this same effect if it isn’t overdone.]

[The Greeks knew that exercise protected health and slowed aging.  It also enabled Greeks to field fit warriors when they needed to do so.  They also realized that being physically fit kept their minds fit and more youthful.]

[They also ate a variety of fresh nuts and fruit and greens and fish and stored extra virgin olive oil.  In those days, all these were what we would today call organic!

They ate no refined and processed sugar; and they didn’t eat hybrid wheat since it didn’t then exist! 

Dozens of studies have found this diet to be protective in many ways from preventing heart disease to preventing cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.]

2.  Greek doctors became expert herbalists and prescribers of natural remedies. They believed that nature rather than superstition was the best healer. [Some of these likely helped in some cases.  Some of the stronger ones did have side effects.  But we now know that others like olive leaf were that effective but also safe.]

3.  Constant wars gave doctors experience in practical first aid, and they became skilled experts at setting broken bones, fixing dislocated limbs, and curing slipped discs.

Military doctors would remove arrowheads and other pieces of weaponry. They also carried out amputations, for example, to stop the spread of gangrene.

They would close a wound using thread, and dress it with sponge or linen soaked in vinegar, wine, oil, or water, seawater, honey, or powdered plants.

[Even today if a wound is cleaned and covered in this way it tends NOT to get infected and to heal faster than if these things are not done.]

X  X  X

Roman medicine ideas & practices that still work today:

“It was by observing the health of their soldiers that Roman leaders began to realize the importance of public health:

1.  “Most Roman surgeons got their practical experience on the battlefield. They carried a tool kit containing arrow extractors, catheters, scalpels, and forceps.

They used to sterilize their equipment in boiling water before using it. [This prevented infection and increased the survival and cure rates.  It wasn’t until the 1800’s that Europe and the US caught up with this one!]

The Romans performed surgical procedures using opium and scopolamine to relieve pain and acid vinegar to clean up wounds.”

2.  The Romans also had midwives, whom they treated with great respect. Records of medical instruments include a birthing stool, which was a four-legged stool with arm and back supports and a crescent-shaped opening for the delivery of the baby.

[Childbirth is safer and faster when the mother uses a birthing stool instead of lying on her back for the convenience of doctors.  We still have yet to catch up to the Romans in this practice!]

3.  In purpose-built hospitals, people could rest and have a better chance of recovery. In the hospital setting, doctors were able to observe people's condition instead of depending on supernatural forces to perform miracles.

[It wasn’t until just before the US Civil War in Europe and in the US Civil War that we caught up to this practice!]

4.  Claudius Galen, who moved from Greece to Rome in 162 AD, became an expert on anatomy by dissecting animals and applying his knowledge to humans.

He was a popular lecturer and a well-known doctor, eventually becoming Emperor Marcus Aurelius' physician. He also wrote several medical books.

Galen also dissected some human corpses. He dissected a hanged criminal and some bodies that a flood had unearthed in a cemetery.

As a result, Galen displayed an excellent knowledge of bone structure. After cutting the spinal cord of a pig and observing it, he also realized that the brain sends signals to control the muscles.

5.  The Romans made progress in their knowledge of what causes diseases and how to prevent them. Medical theories were sometimes very close to what we know today.

For example, Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.E) believed that disease occurred due to minute creatures too small for the naked eye to see. We now know about bacteria and viruses, which we can only see using a microscope.

6.  Some of their herbal remedies still work:

Garlic: Doctors advised that garlic was good for the heart. [Minced raw garlic and deodorized garlic are both heart protective and prevent cancers too!]

7.  Public health aims to keep the whole community in good health and prevent the spread of disease.

Today, among other things, it involves vaccination programs, promoting a healthful lifestyle and diet, building hospitals, and providing clean water for drinking and washing.

The Romans, unlike the Greeks and Egyptians, were firm believers in public health. They knew that hygiene was vital to prevent the spread of diseases. 

Practical projects, such as creating a water supply, were very important to them. They built aqueducts to pipe water to cites. The sewage system in Rome was so advanced that nothing matching it was built again until the late 17th century.

[It was even later, until after 1940, that this was done in much of the United States!]

One explanation of how the Romans were able to organize such major public projects is that they had a vast but centralized empire. The Emperor wielded his power across the Roman territory, and there was enough cheap labor and sufficient wealth to carry out these schemes.

Some of the wealthy even had underfloor heating in their homes.

The Romans also promoted facilities for personal hygiene by building public baths and washrooms. Their focus was on maintaining a motivated and healthy army, but their citizens also benefited.

Examples of some Roman facilities include:

Public baths: There were nine public baths in Rome alone. Each one had pools at varying temperatures. Some also had gyms and massage rooms. Government inspectors were vigorous in their enforcement of proper hygiene standards.

Hospitals: Ancient Romans were responsible for setting up the first hospitals, which they initially designed to treat soldiers and veterans.

Water supply: The Romans were superb engineers, and they built several aqueducts throughout their Empire to supply people with water.

Planning: The Romans were careful to place army barracks well away from swamps. If marshes got in the way, they would drain them. They were aware of the link between swamps and mosquitoes and understood that these insects could transmit diseases to humans.’

[Much of our public health practices that protect the health of all of us and each of us individually we got from the Greeks and Romans.

It took us hundreds of years to put these in place.  And for some of these we have yet to catch up with the best of their practices!

Many people today in the US are not yet using some of these methods and are sicker and shorter-lived because of it

And of course any of them you use that do work will benefit you!]

Coffee can boost fatloss indirectly….Today's post:  Wednesday, 11-7-2018

Double good news about coffee also has fatloss potential if you strength train!

Yesterday, I posted on the double good news about coffee slowing aging and preventing Alzheimer's and heart disease at the URL below. It works in TWO separate ways!

Direct use of strong stimulants for fatloss has proven so far to be harmful to your heart valves and heart rhythms.

But normal amounts of coffee half an hour to an hour and a half before strength training can enable you to add muscle better because you can make more progress in how strong you are. And, it's MUCH safer.

This also results in adding healthy bone where your exercised muscles attach to it.

Those things can help increase fat loss. They definitely prevent fat gain from age related bone & muscle loss.

AND, you can get the many benefits of the caffeine and related compounds in coffee and the separate protective effects of drinking dark roast coffee if you do that.

Coffee prevents Alzheimer’s two ways....Today's post:  Tuesday, 11-6-2018

1.  Back on Tuesday, August 21, I did a post “Very good news about coffee.”

That post had that researchers have verified that caffeine and similar compounds in coffee actively prevent aging of the mitochondria which protects your brain and heart quite powerfully AND how it does so.

I’ve included some key points from that post below.

2.  Today, the research was announced that roasting coffee beans actively prevents and may reverse Alzheimer’s a completely different way!

Apparently if you drink two to four cups of dark roast coffee a day you get a double acting Alzeimer’s preventive!

There is also a bonus for people who drink decaf.  They have to get a boost to their mitochondria a different way; but if they drink dark roasted decaf, they DO get this second protection!

(I’d be happy to email you the URL where I found this. davideller7@yahoo.com )

“Scientists have now proved that drinking certain types of coffee can be beneficial to brain health, but how does this popular brew support cognitive function? A new study identifies some of the mechanisms 

"Coffee consumption does seem to have some correlation to a decreased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease," notes Dr. Donald Weaver, who is co-director of the Krembil Brain Institute.

"But we wanted to investigate why that is — which compounds are involved and how they may impact age-related cognitive decline," he adds.

Dr. Weaver and team's findings — published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience — suggest that the key to coffee's brain-protecting benefits lie not in its caffeine content, but in the existence of compounds released in the process of roasting the coffee beans.

Gradually, all the links fell into place, as the researchers started focusing on a set of compounds called phenylindanes, which form during the process of roasting coffee beans and lend coffee its bitter flavor.

It is the phenylindanes, rather than any other coffee-related compounds, that seem to inhibit the amalgamation of tau and beta-amyloid. These are toxic proteins, of which the excessive buildup in the brain is a key factor in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

"So phenylindanes are a dual inhibitor. Very interesting, we were not expecting that," Dr. Weaver acknowledges.

It appears that a longer roasting time causes the coffee beans to produce more phenylindanes. This suggests that dark roasted coffee — whether regular or decaf — has the strongest protective effect on the brain.”

Both beta amyloid build-up and faulty tau build up tend to cause damage; but the amalgamation tends to be quite damaging and to spread other research found.

So besides preventing or cleaning out beta amyloid and tau with things like turmeric and vitamin D3 & vitamin K2 & plant sterols, adding this dark roasted coffee effect sounds very effective!

3.  If you didn’t see it, here are some key points from my post on how caffeine and related compounds keep the mitochondria in your brain’s cells strong and healthy:

Very good news about coffee.... Tuesday, 8-21-2018

Maybe you saw some of the research that coffee drinkers were less likely to get diabetes. 

Maybe you saw some of the research that said that coffee drinkers were less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease.

Initially this was thought to be because coffee is surprisingly high in antioxidants.  That may be so to some degree.

1.  But what if there was another much stronger reason for these good results?

I found out today there IS one.

The very good news is that drinking coffee is also good for your heart as well and will help you live longer too!

Most importantly, we now know the reason why this is so!

Your mitochondria are the energy centers in every cell in your body. 

They literally power your good health if you have plenty of them working well.  But if they are damaged or die off so does your health and eventually you!

It seems that coffee use causes your mitochondria to stay healthy and we have research that shows how that happens.

Dr Al Sears sent this in his email today:

“ “Researchers from Germany showed that caffeine can improve heart function in older people in just 10 days. The caffeine transformed old hearts into younger adult hearts.1

You might think that caffeine works by stimulating the heart, the same way it stimulates your brain and energy.

But it actually works deep down at the cellular level to protect and repair the heart muscle.

The researchers found that mitochondria in the heart need a protein called p27.

You know by now that mitochondria are the tiny power plants that fuel every cell in your body. They turn nutrients into fuel. Each of your heart muscle cells has 5,000 of these energy generators. They keep your heart strong, young and energetic.

When the caffeine moved the p27 protein into the mitochondria, it protected heart muscle cells from death and damage. It helped repair the heart muscle after a heart attack. And it improved the function of endothelial cells that line the interior of blood vessels.

All of this helps explain why population studies find that older people with a coffee habit have a reduced risk of death from heart disease.2

One study from Brazil found that people drinking just three cups of coffee a day reduced calcification or hardening of their coronary artery by an amazing 67%!3

Other studies link coffee drinking with lower death rates from type 2 diabetes, respiratory disease and stroke.

Coffee can also slash the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s by 65%.4”

It is true that drinking more than 3 cups of coffee a day can keep you awake at night.  And, drinking two or three cups before 2 PM and stopping does this much less.”

Now we know that drinking dark roast ALSO has a second effective way to prevent Alzheimer’s and memory and cognitive decline!

Stage two fatloss….Today's post:  Thursday, 11-1-2018

1.  Good news first.  If you totally remove all the things that cause addiction to sweets and breads and only eat at meal times as Susan Peirce Thompson teaches, you’ll be less fat and much healthier.

Our last few posts have explored this in some detail. 

We’ve shown this works better when you delete foods and drinks that fatten and sicken you in addition to the sugar and flour she rightly says to remove.

Last week we covered how to do that and feel better too.

We’ve often covered how adding effective strength training and vigorous but brief cardio with rests or easier parts can help you feel better and lose more fat. And this protects your health too.

2.  The less good news is that if your weight for your height shows a desirable BMI, your belly fat may still be excessively high and you’ll still look fat and your health will be at more risk than your BMI would predict.

In my case:

a) If I come close to 5 ft 7.5 inches after working on my back to become a bit less slumped over and get down to 161 pounds, I'll drop out of the fat by BMI category. 

At 170 pounds, I only need to lose 9 pounds of fat to do that.  I’m close enough now that adding the heart protective foods and supplements I take my risk is likely low.

b) But my WHRatio, waist hip ratio -- my waist measurement divided by my hip measurement, of 1.10 shows my potential risk of cardiovascular health problems is very high. 

And, with my big belly, I definitely look fat!

To be low it needs to be .89 or less.  If I can add muscle and subtract fat from my upper thighs and butt, my hips likely would measure 38.5 & .89 x 38.5 = 34.2 & 34 would = .88.

To do that, I need to gain muscle. Likely I need to gain at least 5 pounds in my legs and butt and the larger muscles in my back and chest. 

I’d also need to lose 5 more pounds of fat; but gaining the muscle will do part of that.

3.  The photos in Mike Matthews’ article on percentage body fat, show that those changes would drop my percent fat from 30 to 33 % to the 12% range.  That likely would come close to helping me lose the 9 inches on my waist from 43 to 34 that would put my waist hip ratio into the desirable range.

4.  The bad news is that many people in the United States who escape being obese are fat a shown by their waist hip ratio.  Not long ago, 40% were listed as obese by BMI.  But of the other 60 % at least a third were fat by their waist hip ratio.  This is 20% of everyone.  And, by adding the two, that means that at least 60% of people in the United States were obese.

Because, since then, the Baby Boomers have gotten older and many have gotten fatter and the younger people are consuming far more of the fattening foods and drinks, as many as 75% of all the adults in the United States.

5.  This means that the gap between what will help keep people healthy and looking good and where they are now is quite large.

I’m working on ways to overcome this.

I invite and encourage you to join me.