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Created on Thursday, 11 November 2021 18:46

Despite having the highest vaccination rates in the country, with over 70% fully vaccinated, with over 80% having at least one dose, and vaccination rates among the elderly at 99%, Vermont is experiencing its worst Covid surge ever, with over 300 new cases a day.

https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2021/10/31/vermont-covid-spike-despite-high-vaccinations/

So, how do they account for it? How do they spin it? They said that because of the high vaccination rate, people got complacent about wearing masks (even though masks have never been proven effective). But, recall that at the start of the vaccination campaign, we were told that vaccination was the way to end the pandemic, so that we didn’t have to wear masks any more. Then, they’re blaming the change of seasons, saying that the cold weather is pushing people indoors. Of course, they're also blaming Delta. Then, they point out that since Vermont got started vaccinating so early that the protection is wearing off, so all those people need boosters.

In just about any other area of life, these results would generate the simple conclusion that the vaccines have failed, that they are ineffective, that they don’t work. And keep in mind that they have already admitted that the vaccines do not prevent infection. They admit that the vaccinated get infected and spread infection easily. VIRAL LOADS ARE THE SAME WHETHER YOU’RE VACCINATED OR NOT.

https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-similar-between-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated-people

So, what benefit is there to the vaccines? All they have left to cling to is the claim that the vaccines prevent SERIOUS illness, the kind that requires hospitalization.

However, that is NOT what the vaccine trials showed. What they showed, reportedly, was that rates of mild infection among the vaccinated were less than the unvaccinated. But, that’s all forgotten now. Now, it turns out, according to them, that the true benefit of the vaccines is in preventing serious illness- and that’s despite the fact that Covid deaths among the vaccinated are far from rare.

I mean: if after being vaccinated, you can still get Covid bad enough that it kills you, isn’t that as serious as it gets? It doesn’t get any worse than that, right? If that’s possible, and if it’s happening at a rate that is being reported regularly, then what is there left to cling to to hold onto the belief that the vaccine is protecting you at all?  Virtually nothing.

And for the life of me, I can’t understand why people who think they have Covid want to go to the hospital. Virtually 100% of the people who are dying of Covid are dying IN THE HOSPITAL. Being in the hospital is not saving them. Medical treatment is not saving them. Maybe it’s killing them.

Remember, it was the medical profession that was putting Covid patients on ventilators even though the death rate from being on the ventilator was 97%. It was the medical profession that was talking people into going on ventilators, including people who were NOT visibly struggling to breathe, not complaining of air hunger. Still, they told them, “Let us knock you out, paralyze your breathing muscles, and have a machine force air into your lungs, because, you see, you need the rest.” And people said, “OK.” Doctors were doing this even though there was nothing mechanically wrong or lacking in their patients’ chest movements- their excursion was fine. Still, they were knocking them out and putting them on ventilators.  How much of it was spurred by the fact that the government was paying $39,000 every time they ventilated someone?

It’s a very twisted game they are playing. If you are in the hosptal for anything, they are going to test you for Covid. And remember that anybody can test positive for Covid. In other words, a person who seems to be in perfect health can test positive for Covid. It happens all the time. Also, there is a correlation between the frequency of testing and the generating of a positive test result. In other words, if you keep testing, no matter who you are, eventually, you are going to get a positive test result.

I’m not going to use the example of a coin flip because that’s a 50/50 chance. But, let’s say you had a spinning wheel, and it had numbers from 1 to 10. So, every time you spin the wheel, you’re going to get one of those numbers. And let’s say it’s decided that the number 7 is bad. Well, if you keep spinning that wheel, sooner or later it’s going to land on 7. You’re going to get that positive test result if you just keep testing.  It’s the same way with the Covid test, but it may be more like 1 in 20 than 1 in 10.

Again, the only thing they have left to claim ANY benefit from the vaccine at all is to claim that the vaccine lowers the risk of hospitalization and death. But remember, no matter what you are in the hospital for, if they do a Covid test, and it’s positive, then you’ve got Covid, and Covid is what’s ailing you. Not your longstanding heart condition but Covid. So, wanting to prove the effectiveness of the vaccines, all they have to do is test, test, test, particularly among the unvaccinated. And every time they get a positive test, it’s Bingo.

What I’m saying is that in a rational world, this vaccine program would have been declared a failure long ago. But, we don’t live in a rational world. We live in a world of dogmatism and stupidity, and at the highest level, including among the supposedly learned, who just repeat the brainwashed mantra, ad infinitum.  

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Created on Tuesday, 02 November 2021 04:28

Next comes the bioavailability of nutrients in plant vs. animal foods, where animal foods are better. The term “bioavailability” can encompass many things, but it starts with how absorbable the nutrients are.  It’s undeniable that the fiber in plant foods blocks nutrient absoprtion to some extent. But, it’s part of the natural order. One of my colleages, Dr. Alan Goldhamer, did a determination once of the nutrient content of his recommended vegan diet. And it had something like 39 milligrams of iron. Well, you certainly would not want to absorb 39 milligrams of iron every day. That would cause iron poisoining, for sure. So, thank God the fiber blocks the absorption of much of that iron.  The fact is that we are only supposed to absorb a small percentage of the minerals in plants. You end up sending more minerals to the toilet than to your cells. But again, that’s normal because there is a surplus there.

I’m not saying that vegans can’t get into trouble, say with iron. But, so can meat-eaters. However, something is only a problem if it is one. And the fact is that most vegans who avoid vegan junk foods, usually have no trouble maintaing their iron status.  

You realize that iron is a double-edged sword. It is an oxidizer that rusts you from the inside. It causes free radical damage. You definitely want to get enough iron, but you also don’t want to get too much. And it’s easier to avoid getting too much on a plant diet.

Unless I’m missing something, unless a person is anemic, they do not have a problem with iron. You do a CBC. You run the iron tests like serum iron and ferritin etc. And if everything is within normal limits, then there is nothing to be concerned about. And most vegans are not iron-deficient. However, a small percentage are, and it’s more likely to occur among vegan junk eaters and the aged. And that’s true for non-vegans as well. You can be a meat-eater and be iron-deficient. It happens. And if it happens to a vegan, who likes being a vegan, I would say: just take an iron supplement. Especially today because there are excellent chelated forms of iron that are very effective and gentle on the stomach. Ours is very good, and I have seen it produce great results.

https://klaire.com/irn30-iron-chelate

Then, there is zinc, and it is known that the zinc in plants is not as easily absorbed as the zinc in meat.  And it has been shown that vegans and vegetarians have lower serum zinc levels than meateaters. But, are they showing signs of zinc deficiency, such as increased infections, poor immunity, poor wound healing, etc. I don’t think those problems are common among vegans.  But, age, again, is a factor because when people get older, they don’t absorb zinc as well, no matter what they eat.  

But, I’ll admit that zinc is a potential weak spot in the vegan diet. And, it’s one of the reasons I take our Core Multi every day which has 15 mgs of highly absorbable chelated zinc.

https://klaire.com/cp3203-core-multi

I have never had a zinc blood test, and I have never had any signs of zinc deficiency.  But, I’d rather be safe than sorry, so I take our Core Multi with its 15 mgs of chelated zinc, and I feel protected. I look at it as a form of insurance. I’d rather be safe than sorry. And I’d rather do that than eat meat.

Then, he addresses protein with graphs showing digestibility, with animal foods doing better. Well, no matter what the graphs say, I am 70 years old, 5’6”, 140 pounds, and I can still pull that 140 pounds up a pull-up bar 10x in a row. So, why should I doubt whether I am getting enough protein?

I have pointed out before that human breast milk has the lowest protein content of any mammalian milk at 1 per cent. However, analyses in some nursing mothers has come in below 1 percent, like .9  and even .8 percent protein.  And eating Dr. Saladino’s way is not going to alter that much.  A woman eating the Carnivore diet would still produce milk with 1 percent protein. It might go up to 1.1 percent, but that’s about it. It would not go to 2 percent, or even 1.5 percent.  Forget it. The plain truth is that the human body does what it wants to do, and it wants to make a low-protein milk- even if the mother gorges herself on meat at every meal.

Then he gets to Vitamin K2, and it’s true that you can’t get it from plants. It’s made by bacteria, and bacteria may be making it in your gut from K1. Some fermanted plant foods also have K2, such as natto from soybeans. But, I just take a Vitamin K2 supplement. Again, we have a good one, and I regard it as insurance.

https://klaire.com/vk2-vitamin-k2

Repeatedly, Dr. Saladino said that there are no polyphenols in human biochemistry, that the human body does not make them. Therefore, he claims we don’t need them. But, the human body doesn’t make Vitamin C either, and that’s why we need to get it from food. If it made it then we wouldn’t need it. So, he’s got it ass-backwards.

Then, he gave a list of essential nutrients that can only be found in animal foods: He failed to point out that most of them can be synthsized by the body, including creatine, carnitine, and carnosine. He included choline, but that is produced by plants; in fact, it’s widely distributed. He included Vitamin B12, and that is something that vegans need to supplement with, without a doubt. And it’s not just vegans because with aging, even meateaters can lose the ability to absorb Vitamin B12 from food. Supplementing with one of the sublingual forms of Vitamin B12 is a good idea for all older folks. Even if they include meat in their diet, it’s still a good idea because they could still get in trouble with Vitamin B12,  and it pays to take it for insurance. I do, and it’s this one.

https://klaire.com/cp1180-b12-liquid-methylcobalamin-1-mg

I’ve known for a long time that a vegan diet has to be supplemented. You need to take B12, which everyone agrees. And I think it’s very prudent to take EPA/DHA since the conversion of plant Omega 3 (alpha linolenic acid) into the longer chain polyunsaturated fatty acids is very iffy. Then, taking some supplemental zinc and taurine makes sense to me too- from what we know. Taking Vitamin D3 is also very beneficial. All the vegans that I know or know of do take supplemental B12, but some take just that and nothing else. Some of them are even vegan doctors, and I am not going to tell you that they aren’t doing well, healthwise, because I have no basis to say it or think it. But, I take some supplements, and again, for me, it is a matter of insurance. Some people can sleep at night with little or no insurance. Others need to be insured to the hilt in order to feel safe. I would rather err on the side of caution by taking supplements for nutritional assurance, and I don’t worry about it philosophically.  My goal is not to prove the adequacy of a vegan diet.  I am much more selfish than that. My goal is to live long and to thrive and to avoid the decrepitude of old age.

The idea that a whole, natural fruit or vegetable contributes to the development of atherosclerosis is an impossibility. In other words, it’s crazy to think that fruits and vegetables cause heart disease. There is overwhelming evidence that fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as beans and raw nuts, protect against heart disease. And if you can avoid heart disease, that will probably prevent half or more of the things that can go wrong in old age.

Likewise, fruits and vegetables are protective against cancer. You realize that cancer starts with one abnormal cell. That cell divides into 2, then 4, then 8, then 16, then 32, etc. Early on in this process, the body may get on top of it. It may swoop in and destroy the cancer before it reaches the point of no return. Do you realize that you may have already had cancer and recovered from it without realizing it?  

Well, those “phytochemicals” that Dr. Saladino is so afraid of, that he considers to be toxins, they are like Nature’s chemotherapy but without any untoward side efects. They cause aberrant and senescent cells to commit suicide, a phenomenon called apoptosis, which means programmed cell death. The capacity for apoptosis is rather built-in, but there are phytochemicals that tell the abberent cells to self-destruct.

So, there is very strong epidemiological and experimental evidence that whole natural fruits, vegetables, and other plant foods oppose the development of heart diease (which is, by far, the biggest killer) and cancer (which is second). That is reason enough in itself to make fruits and vegetables a big part of your diet.

No one has the Peter Pan complex more than I do. To say that I detest the idea of growing old is the biggest understatment ever. I know I am going to die, and I also know that before I die, I am going to decline. But, it’s a matter of degree. My goal is forestall, as long as possible, the feeling that I am not myself any more. I don’t have that feeling now. I joke about it sometimes with people. But really, I don’t have that feeling. I feel like I’m still me. I don’t feel less spry than I did 20 or 30 years ago. And I want to keep feeling spry- for as long as possible. And I am thoroughly convinced that plant foods, which have served me well, will continue to serve me well, so that I can experience a higher quality of life than most older people do. I don’t want to wind up like them. Thank you for reading this.  

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Created on Sunday, 31 October 2021 09:22

Before continuing, I want to remind my readers that it is now pomegranate season, and I hope you are going to get your share. The good news about the benefits of pomegranates continues to grow. The latest is that pomegranates contain a substance called punicalagin that bacteria in your gut convert into a substance called utolithin A, which improves and repairs mitochondrial function. It makes your body repair mitorchondria and make new mitochondria, which means more energy for you. I know pomegranates are rather pricey, but try to include some in your diet. It’s worth it.

Now, moving on, next Dr. Saladino referred to a study which denied that there were any measurable antioxidant and immunological benefits in subjects eating a high amount of vegetables.  But, right below it on PubMed, there was another article entitled:

Fruit and vegetable consumption and its relation to markers of inflammation and oxidative stress in adolescents

Background: Fruits and vegetables, foods rich in flavonoids and antioxidants, have been associated with lower risk of stroke, coronary heart disease, and markers of inflammation and oxidative stress in adults. Markers of inflammation and oxidative stress are predictors of coronary heart disease risk; however, it is unknown whether these markers are related to dietary flavonoid and antioxidant intake in youth.

Objective: To determine whether greater intakes of fruit and vegetables, antioxidants, folate, and total flavonoids were inversely associated with markers of inflammation and oxidative stress in 285 adolescent boys and girls aged 13 to 17 years.

Design: In this cross-sectional study conducted between February 1996 and January 2000, diet was assessed by a 127-item food frequency questionnaire. Height and weight measurements were obtained and a fasting blood sample drawn. Spearman partial correlation analyses evaluated the relation of intakes of fruit and vegetables, antioxidants, folate, and flavonoids with markers of inflammation (C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and 15-keto-dihydro-PGF(2alpha) metabolite and oxidative stress (urinary 8-iso prostaglandin F(2alpha), an F(2)-isoprostane), adjusting for age, sex, race, Tanner stage, energy intake, and body mass index.

Results: Urinary F(2)-isoprostane was inversely correlated with intakes of total fruit and vegetables, vitamin C, beta carotene, and flavonoids. Serum C-reactive protein was significantly inversely associated with intakes of fruit (r=-0.19; P=0.004), vitamin C (r=-0.13, P=0.03), and folate (r=-0.18; P=0.004). Serum interleukin-6 was inversely associated with intakes of legumes, vegetables, beta carotene, and vitamin C. Serum tumor necrosis factor-alpha was inversely associated with beta carotene (r=-0.14, P=0.02) and luteolin (r=-0.15, P=0.02).

Conclusion: Study results show that the beneficial effects of fruit and vegetable intake on markers of inflammation and oxidative stress are already present by early adolescence and provide support for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans "to consume five or more servings per day" of fruits and vegetables to promote beneficial cardiovascular health.

RC: I’ll point out that the study he cited did observe that the high vegetable eaters had lower white cell counts than the low vegetable eaters, and that’s consistent with my own observations, as well as those of Dr. Roy Walford, the famous UCLA gerontologist who wrote Maximum Longevity.

At this link, you can read the abstract from the study he cited, and below it, where it says “Similar articles” you’ll see the above study plus several more that all support the benefits of eating vegetables.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30402206/

Then, it gets weird. Dr. Saladino cites a Danish study out to test the antioxidant effect of green tea extract. They wanted to isolate that, so they depleted other dietary sources of antioxidants and flavinoids, hence it was presumably low in vegetables and fruits. Maybe none at all because they described it as fruit and vegetable depletion diet. But get this: the intervention diet consisted of meat patties with the GTE mixed into them. The GTE did increase plama antioxidant status from 1.35 to 1.56. But, the effect wore off, so that once the person was in a fasting state, medically speaking, say by the next morning before eating, that it went back to baseline. But, who would consider a diet of meat patties with some GTE mixed-in optimal? That’s more like what Dr. Saladino eats, except sans the GTE. Everything about this study was goofy, and it didn’t prove anything. Just because a diet of meat paddies and green tea extract didn't change oxidative status much does not disparage fruits and vegetables. 

Next, Dr. Saladino gets to hormesis, which refers to the adaptive response to stressors that results in improved performance. The classic example is exercise, which can be stressful, but your body’s adaptations to it result in you becoming stronger, faster, etc.  Dr. Saladino believes in the benefits of exercise that way, and so do I, to a point, but it’s a fine line. Running marathons no doubt has a hormeitic effect (positive adapations) but let’s not kid ourselves: it also has negative effects. It’s an extreme thing to do, and the bottom line is that it's stressful- both in a good way and a bad way. 

I think that the concept of hormeisis is itself dangerous. At the very least, it is a double-edged sword. Dr. Saladino is gung-ho about hormesis from exercise, and also from extremes of heat and cold, such as swimming in ice water, presumably. Do I approve of that? Actually, I don’t. I wouldn’t do it. So, if I wouldn’t do it, why would I recommend it? But, it’s part of Dr. Saladino’s “radical living” program. But get this: he’s willing to subject his body to that kind of stress, swimming in super-cold water, but he’s unwilling to subject his body to the “stress” of eating an apple. It was I who picked that example, but I could have said any fruit or vegetable since he doesn’t eat any of them.

He also likes extreme heat, so I guess that means a hike in Death Valley on a summer afternoon is good. So, he’d do the hike in 120 degree temperature, but if if he was offered some cold watermelon at the end of it, that he would turn down because it’s too stressful. That is some weird thinking. 

He pointed out that smoking has been shown to raise glutathione levels as do the polycyclic hydrocarbons from meat, but surely he is not advocating smoking on that basis, is he? Holy Mother of God.

I really think he’s got it exactly wrong. Yes, extremes of exercise can have positive adaptations, but it can also have “collatarlly damaging side effects.” Dr. Saladino needs to read The Exercise Myth by Dr. Henry Solomon, and everyone should because it's a good read. 

https://www.amazon.com/Exercise-Myth-Henry-M-D-Solomon/dp/0553257315

I think you should be kind to your body- all the time. Yes, you should exercise, but not to the point of harming yourself. Dr. Solomon isn’t opposed to exercise either- just to the extremes of it. And I think he’s right.

Dr. Saladino wants the stress of extreme exercise, but he’s scared shitless of eating a peach. That is some weird, wacky, wild stuff. 

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Created on Thursday, 28 October 2021 04:56

Next, Dr. Saladino said that domesticated fruits and vegetables don’t exist in Nature, that in most places, the woods or the brush have no edble plants, and he showed a picture. So, the fact that supermarkets are teeming with fruits and vegetables is a bad thing, in his view. He also claimed that modern fruits and vegetables are less toxic than their wild counterparts. But, the fact is that plant foods do occur in the wild. Where I live in Central Texas, there are wild mustang grapes, and they are prolific. They are not very sweet, and people rarely eat them out of hand. Typically, they make jam out of them- or wine. There are the wild native pecans, and they too are prolific. There are wild blackberries; there is a wild Texas persimmon, and they grow wild in my neighborhood. I have two trees of them, myself, although mine are both males, so they don’t bear fruit. They were here when I brought the property. But, I have gotten to taste the wild Texas persimmon. There are wild onions and garlic, hence the names Onion Creek and Garlic Creek that are close to me. I think it was Mark Twain who said that a squirrel, starting in Maine, could jump from chestnut tree to chestnut tree, never touching another tree, and make it to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground. I suspect that was an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Every single food that we have started with some wild derivative. Right? So, let’s move on

Then, he said that the greatest mistake in human history was agriculture. He speculated reasons why Man resorted to growing plants, but think about it: Why would you grow something that you weren’t used to eating? You wouldn’t. Among the earliest human crops were lentils and chickpeas- still in use today, and both favorites of mine. Humans must have been eating them, to some extent, before agriculture. They grew them because they liked them. And that’s true of everything.

He claimed that coinciding with the shift to agriculture came a decline in height and osseous signs of malnutrition. Hmmm. But remember that the domestication of animals for food took place at the same time as plant horticulture. Many of the earliest crops were grown for domesticated animals. Dr. Saladino and others make it seem like it went from a canivore diet (except in a pinch)  to near veganism, due to agriculture. It is a gross exaggeration, to say the least. 

Next, he did a big section on plant toxins in which he said that because plants can’t run away, they fought back against being eaten by evolving toxins to poison their predactors.

But wait: there is a large element of symbiosis that he is overlooking. When you harvest and eat fruit, you are helping to spread the seeds. Even the very eating of it and pooping it out can populate the plants. I was told once that sewage processing plants can have luxuriant tomato plants growing resulting from seeds in the feces germinating. But, even without that, plant consumption can be good for the plants and just what they want us to do. Where I live here in Central Texas, there are two edible plants spread by squirrels. One is pecan and the other hackberry. All over my property, pecan trees and hackberry trees pop up all the time, and it’s from squirrels. And it’s a nuisance too because, endlessly,  I have to pull them out, since I can’t have them growing everywhere. I do have a big hackberry tree that’s wild, and I’m sure it started just that way. And I have a pecan tree too, although I planted it.  So, the fruit tree wants you to eat its bounty and disseminate its seeds, and the same goes for the nut tree.

But, let’s talk about the plant toxins that worry Dr. Saladino so much. He starts with phytoalexins, oxalates, and lectins. 

Phytoalexins are anti-microbial toxins that a plant produces when it’s under attack by fungus, bacteria or other microbes. They are not detetable in uninfected plant tissues. But, it’s been suggested that in humans, phytoalexins can have an anti-cancer effect. There are compounds called stilbenoids that are phytoalexins, and there is one stilbenoid that I’m sure you’ve heard of: resveratrol. People pay good money to take resveratrol. And it’s a phytoalexin.

And I’ve got news for Dr. Saladino about oxalates: as a carnivore, he’s in greater danger of getting kidney stones than I am. A lot of oxalic acid is generated in the body, for instance, from the breakdown of Vitamin C, but also from the breakdown of amino acids. And he is breaking down a lot more amino acids than I am because he consumes a lot more amino acids than I do. But, there’s another factor at work: calcium. To form a calcium oxalate kidney stone, you need two things: oxalic acid and calcium. If there is a lot of oxalic acid, but little or no calcium, you’re not going to have a problem. So, it’s when you have hypercalciuria- high amounts of calcium in the urine that you’re in danger of forming stones. And we know that high protein diets cause hypercalciuria. That’s because those diets are acid-forming, while the body needs to maintain its alkalinity. The ph of the blood is 7.4, which is alkaline. Calcium is a base that can be used to neutralize acids. High meat diets lead to a heavy loss of calcium in the urine.

You can tell if you’re losing a lot of calcium in your urine by mixing a sample of it with Sulkowitch reagent and seeing if it turns cloudy. If clear urine turns cloudy to where you can’t read newsprint through it, you know there is a lot of calcium there. They’ve been doing that test for decades. I learned to do it in Chiropractic college in 1973.

Almost all fruits and vegetables have some oxalic acid; it’s ubiquidous. A few of them have a lot; most notably spinach and swiss chard. And I grow swiss chard here in Central Texas every winter. I’m growing it right now. It’s easy to grow, and it's beautiful. I’ve been doing this for decades, growing and eating swiss chard in the winter, and it’s never bothered me, nor anyone I’ve known. I feed it to my retreat guests. 

I’m not urging people to cast aside all caution. I heard of a case of a woman who went on a spinach juice fast which she supplemented with megadoses of Vitamin C. So, there was a lot of oxalic acid coming in from the spinach juice and forming from the Vitamin C, and she did develop kidney stones that put her in critical condition. So, definitely be reasonable about this. For instance, don’t make a whole salad out of spinach. Make it mostly out of lettuce and other low-oxalate veggies, and just add a few leaves of spinach- if you wish. And don’t juice spinach at all.

So, don’t go hog-wild on high-oxalate vegetables, but eaten in moderation, they’re fine.

Lectins are proteins in plants that can bind with sugars, but like the phytoalexins, some lectins have been found to fight cancer. Lectins are destroyed by cooking. The most dangerous raw bean is the red kidney bean. It could actually kill you. Even undercooked, it could make you very sick. But frankly, I don’t cook them from scratch. I do buy some organic canned soups that contain kidney beans, and I like them. And when they are commercially canned, they are cooked thoroughly to where there is no danger at all. I’ve eaten kidney beans my whole life. Growing up, we loved to make 3 bean salad, with green beans, garbonzos, kidney beans, red peppers and onions.  Season it with some extra virgin olive oil and vinegar. It’s delicious. I’m not giving that up.

Like the phytoalexins, the lectins can have good effects, for instance in cell adhesion, such as when the sperm cells and egg cells bond. That depends on  glycoproteins which are sugar-protein combinations.

Lectins are involved in immune regulation, and they may have direct anti-microbial effects.  And like phytoalexins, lectins have been shown to have an anti-cancer effect.

I mentioned that for oxalic acid, I do avoid eating spinach like lettuce- since I don’t have to. But, for lectins, the only thing I do is make sure I don’t eat raw or undercooked legumes, and I don’t eat raw grains either. Otherwise, I enjoy my tomatoes and potatoes and other plant foods, and I don’t worry about it.

Consider the leading diseases that kill people. On top of the list is heart disease, and if you include cerebrovascular disease (and you might as well since it’s the same disease in a different location) it is overwhelmingly the top killer. Whole natural plant foods have been proven to fight heart disease in all its forms. Following heart disease comes cancer, and again, whole natural plant foods have been shown to have a preventative effect. Then comes COPD, which is due mostly to smoking and air pollution. After that comes diabetes, and you might think that the carnivore diet is best for that, but it isn’t. What do you think happens to the blood sugar of people like Dr. Saladino? It doesn’t drop to zero, and they would be dead if it did. It stays within the normal range, and that means that their diet is turning them into gluconeogenetic machines.  So, what happens if they faifufully do carnivore, but then they come off it for a weekend? That can’t hurt, right? Oh yes it can because their carnivore diet made them more sensitive to sugar. Internally, they are sugar hoarders, whether they like it or not. So, in their avoidance of carbohydrate, they’ve become overly sensitive to sugar. It’s better to let your body adapt to whole natural carbohydrates rather than become a gluconeogensis machine.

There are plenty of things that are terribly wrong that are worth worrying about, but being harmed by a tomato, an apple, a pepper, etc. isn’t one of them.   

So, don’t buy into what these paranoia peddlers are selling because the woes they’re selling, you don’t need to worry about. Fruits and vegetables and other natural plant foods are good for you. Some small observances, like soaking beans and discarding the soak water, also not going gangbusters on high oxalate foods, makes sense. So use common sense, but don’t throw out the most disease-preventing foods on the planet, which are whole, natural plant foods.  

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Created on Monday, 25 October 2021 06:04

Moving on then, Dr. Saladino revealed that he used to have eczema pretty bad, and he showed a picture. Except, you don’t see any eczema in the picture. Then, he said that at the time that his eczema was flaring that he was eating Organic Paleo. Then why the hell is he blaming plant foods when Paleo is Carnivore-light? It’s Carnovorish-ish, which is a term he uses himself. So, even though he was restricting plant foods severely, he still thinks that the small amount of plant foods he was eating were causing his eczema. And lo and behold, when he cut plant foods out of his diet completely, his eczema cleared.

My first question is: What does this have to do with me? I’m 70 years old, and I’ve been eating plant foods liberally my whole life. I wasn’t raised a vegetarian or a vegan, but my parents did provide us with a lot of fruits and vegetables. We ate pretty well. We didn’t have any soda pop in our house or potato chips. We were given fresh fruits every day, as well as green salads, cooked vegetables, beans in the form of lentils and chickpeas, and we had grains as oatmeal and rice and pasta. Now, we also had meat and dairy and eggs. Friday nights, we had scallops because we were Catholic, and back then, Catholics couldn’t eat meat on Friday. So, I had animal foods too. But, I was certainly exposed in a major way to plant foods my whole life, and then I turned vegetarian when I was 19. And at that time, lacto-vegetarianism was the way most people practiced vegetarianism.  And although I had no problem giving up meat, I did struggle with dairy. In fact, I struggled with it for years. It took me a long time to break the addiciton to cheese. But eventually I did, and it’s been out of my life for decades and I don’t miss it.  

But, the point is that he THINKS plant foods gave him eczema, while I KNOW that plant foods did not give me eczema since I’ve never had eczema. So, whose experience am I going to give more weight to? His or mine? Mine, of course. Now, did plant foods cause his eczema? I’ve never heard a dermatologist say that eczema is caused by eating common plant foods. And the vegan community is large enough that if there was a tendency for plant foods to cause eczema, there would be a lot of eczema among vegans. This is a Google search for “eczema among vegans”. If you click on it, you’ll see that there are more people claiming that veganism cured their eczema than caused it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=eczema+among+vegans&rlz=1C1PQHB_enUS777US777&oq=eczema+among+vegans&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30j0i390l3.3120j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

So, I don’t know what was going on with Dr. Saladino at the time, but what I do know is that plant foods do not give me eczema, and I should dismiss his claim as anything I have to act on. 

Let’s move on. Next, he talks about the ideal human diet. He says it should have all the nutrients needed by humans; in the most bio-available forms; and with the least amounts of toxins/antinutrients. That has a nice ring to it, but it’s not as simple as that because there’s an overlap between “nutrients” and “toxins.” For example, iron is an essential mineral, but it’s also an oxidant. It causes free-radical damage. So, maybe the most bio-available form of iron isn’t such a great idea. Maybe it’s better if we get enough but not too much iron. Also, we need to distinguish between real toxins and theoretical toxins. We need to distinguish between real effects and exaggerated concerns. But, let’s keep going.

He says that we became human 2 million years ago with the genus Homo. But keep in mind that, he’s not talking about people like you and me. How long have biologically modern humans existed on Earth? He claims Homo Sapiens have been here for 300,000 to 350,000 years “looking pretty similar to how humans look.” That’s what he said. However, I read about this stuff too, and 300,000 years for homo sapiens is the outlier claim among paleontologists. Some of them think it’s as little as 100,000 years. And even that doesn’t necessarily include the belief that they were identical to us.

I hope you realize that this whole field of paleontology is very highly speculative. It reminds me a lot of virology that way. Paleontology is very involved with Evolutionary theory, which starts with tomfoolery: the idea that, in the beginning, inanimate materials became alive. If anyone tried to claim today that inanimate objects became alive, and I mean in the recent timeframe, meaning: lately; you would think they were crazy. If there is anything we know about Biology, it is that life comes from life. There is no reason to think that that was ever not true. The most plausible theory of biogony is that life came to Earth, and I don’t mean in spaceships. Dormant spores of life must have reached Earth, perhaps in meteors. And if you think it’s far-fetched, it’s not as far-fetched as the idea that non-living materials came to life. And no, I am not the only one who believes this. It's called Cosmic Ancestry or Panspermia.

https://www.panspermia.org/

Then, Dr. Saladino went on to make the preposterous claim that if you saw a Homo Sapien from 300,000 years ago, you might think that he looked normal, “like an MMA fighter.” That’s what he said, and it is pure wishful thinking. He likes the idea beause the longer he can claim that humans, like you and me, lived on meat, the more credibility it gives to his Carnivore Diet- or so he thinks.

I don’t think for a second that people like you and me have existed for 300,00 years. If it were so, then language would have developed much sooner than it did. The oldest extant language in the world today is Coptic Egyptian, which is less than 5000 years old. And it isn’t commonly spoken anywhere. Today, it’s just a liturgical language for the Coptic Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church, rather like Latin in the Roman Catholic Church. 

The oldest still-spoken language is Greek, which goes back 16 centuries before Christ. But, I think it’s fanciful to think that biologically modern humans, who had the larnyx for speech, and the developed brain capable of abstract thought, conceptualization, and other faculties to support speech and language- but just didn’t use it for 295,000 years, that people like you and I just grunted like apes all that time? Bull shit. I don’t buy it, and I don’t put any stock in what Dr. Saladino said.

Then, he goes on to claim that the record shows that the size of the human brain increased, as we headed toward biological modernty, and he thinks that it was due to hunting and the increased consumption of animal foods.

Dr. Saladino waxed on with his preferred way of looking at the primordial past, but I’ll repeat what I said in the first installment: that it’s all based on Neo-Darwinism, and there is no reason to regard it as anything but bias and bloviation. It's a waste of imagination. I am not disputing that our brains got bigger, but why our brains got bigger relates more to what drove the whole panoply of biologial changes from the beginning, rather than “we ate more meat, so our brains got bigger.”

It's really a very goofy idea, based on the fancifulness of Evolutionary Theory. Look: Dr. Saladino has only been doing the Carniore diet for a few years. I guarantee you that his brain isn't getting bigger because of it. He doesn't need a bigger hat size. And if a woman with whom he copulates gets pregnant and has a baby, the size of the baby's brain is going to be determined by its genetics. And if you stuff the kid with meat as he's growing up, there's no reason to think that his brain is going to get bigger than it would otherwise. 

Then, he ventures into the realm of comparative anatomy, and selectively cites things that he thinks bolsters his case. He thinks the rotator cuff anatomy of humans, which is less conducive to climbing but better suited to using tools, that that too came from hunting. Likewise, our hands and feet. Well, obviously, our feet were made for walking, but what about our hands? Have you ever thought about how well suited the human hand is for plucking a fruit from a tree? And what about our teeth with no incisors extending beyond the others  and compact molars to crush and grind plant matter? Look at the teeth of a carnivore. If you’ve got a dog, open his mouth and examine his teeth. Then look in the mirror and smile. You’ll see that you don’t have the teeth of a carnivore.

Then the white sclera of a human, he thinks that was an adaptation to group hunting because it shows the direction that a person is looking, and no doubt he was looking at prey. All this is just fanciful speculation that is completely devoid of anything bankable.

Then, he went on to the idea that our guts got smaller as our brains got bigger, again because of meat, that we didn’t need as much gut when we started eating a more concentrated diet of meat. He went on further with his Paleo-carniverous claims, but I’ve covered enough. I’m going to end this by pointing out that the most proven method of life extension is caloric restriction. It’s worked in numerous species, including mammals. It’s never been tried in humans the same way because you’d have to do it for a lifetime, and that isn’t practical or even possible to control a human’s caloric intake for a lifetime. But, substitute tests have been attempted, where they controlled people’s caloric consumption for a relatively short period of time, such as 2 or 3 years, and then evaluated aging markers, such as telomere length. And the results were impressive. There really is good reason to think that caloric restriction works in humans too.

And, that’s one of the advantages of plant foods, because they’re often high in water and fiber, which gives them lower caloric density. When people eat fresh fruits and vegetables abundantly, it tends to lessen their calorie intake- and painlessly. And again: this is not some theoretical evolutionary construct. This is something that has been demonstrated and proven many times: that lower calories means slower aging.

Take watermelon. It’s got all that deliciousness. What hits the spot better on a hot summer day than cold watermelon? People ask me about the hot summers in Texas where I live, and I tell them that they don’t bother me in the least and for two reasons: swimming and watermelon. I’m a happy camper all summer.

But, even though watermelon can be heavenly to enjoy on a hot day, it’s 92 percent water and only 6% sugar. That’s low even compared to other fruits. Watermelon gives so much eating enjoyment for so few calories- it’s like a gift. But, these carnivore folks don’t get to experience it. Poor saps. I pity them. Oh well: more for me. 

Read what it says about watermelon below because I want you to know that I’m not making it up: 92% water and 6 perent sugar. Plus: a host of nutrients, including being one of the richest sources of lycopene on the planet, which protects your lungs, and prevents prostate cancer in men. What a deal.

https://diabeticme.org/learning-center/diet-guides/is-watermelon-good-for-diabetics-sugar-content-and-health-benefits-of-watermelon/

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Created on Saturday, 23 October 2021 21:11

As I said last time, Dr. Saladino likes to brandish his shirtless image a lot to promote his Carnivore diet and the sale of his products related thereto, and I’m sure it impresses a lot of people. You can see him here:

https://carnivoremd.com/author/paul-saladino/

And he looks good. I don't deny it. But, two can play that game. I just took this image. Today is Saturday, October 23, 2021.

Now, I’m not as big as he is; I’m not as muscular. But, consider the differences. I’m a lot older. I’m 70. I don’t know how old he is, but he’s got to be a lot younger. And he is working at it a lot harder than I am. I’m not straining myself. I don’t go to the gym. I have some exercise equipment at home, but it’s nothing comparable to heavy weightlifting. And mostly, I bicycle, swim, and hike. I’m not trying to bulk up. I’m not trying to increase my muscle size or strength. I just want to retain the muscles I have. They don’t have to get any bigger.  And I don’t eat a high protein diet. I don’t eat meat or animal foods. I eat fruits, vegetables, salad greens, raw nuts and seeds, beans, and whole grains. And that’s it. You’re looking at a body built out of plants.

Now, the point is that even if you’re more impressed with him than with me, that is not grounds to assume that his greater development means that he’s healthier or that his advice is more sound. And actually, when you consider that he is into extreme living, what he calls "radical living," including extreme exercise, extreme protein loading, etc., that if I can do as well as I do without going to extremes of exercise or protein loading or anything else, I think it speaks better for me than it does him. In other words, I am not trying nearly as hard as he is at bodybuilding, and yet I'm doing pretty damn well. 

I’m not saying that to brag; I’m just trying to point out that you have no reason to listen to him over me, even if you think he beats me in the physique contest. It’s not that important. I say: be like me and make your goal to live long and live well; to avoid decrepitude and the medical stage of life, where doctoring is the main thing you’re doing. And with that goal in mind, I’ve got a lot more faith in what I’m doing than what he’s doing.  

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Created on Saturday, 23 October 2021 06:25

Dr. Paul Saladino is an advocate of the Carnivore diet, which entails eating only animal foods and avoiding plant foods completely. He eats a lot of meat, and he does eat eggs. He doesn’t seem too keen on dairy.  He is an M.D. but my impression is that he doesn’t have a regular medical practice. He does consulting with people who want to go Carnivore. He also has a supplement company, and it’s all animal-based.  

I am going to respond to a lecture he gave in defense of the Carnivore diet.

He started with a picture of himself with his shirt off, and he looks fit, rugged, and well-developed. He said his weight is 175 pounds, and he does look good. He also showed a picture of himself when he was a scrawny 140 pound vegan. I take his height to be about 5’11”. I could be wrong, but that’s my best guess.

How old is he?   I don’t know. I’m going to guess and say he's in his 40s. 

So, let’s start with what I make of his impressive physique. Well, it is impressive, and there’s nothing to criticize, but the question is; how much weight should we give it? Being well-developed and strong is certainly a health value, but it’s something you should keep in perspective. Professoinal athletes usually have strong, impressive builds. But, they don’t have any longevity advantage over those who don’t. And, it’s entirely possible to be muscular and look great and still have underlying  maladies. So, the physique thing, even though it’s real, is somewhat of a veneer. And, I think one would be very foolish to think, “He looks good. I want to look like him. So, I’m going to eat what he eats.”

Are you aware that one can be very athletic and muscular and then have a heart attack? Or, be diagnosed with cancer? Again, I’m not saying the strong build isn’t impressive, but I don’t think you should read more into it than is warranted. It only counts for so much.

Furthermore, I am willing to concede that animal proteins are more anabolic than plant proteins. They stimulate muscle growth more than plant proteins do. It’s more difficult to succeed at muscle building on a plant diet than an animal diet.  There, I said it. But, we need to keep our priorities straight. I’m a 70 year old man, and I’m not interested in growing my muscles at all. I think I look pretty good for a 70 year old man, and my goal is to hold on to the muscles I have. If over the next decade I can avoid losing muscle, I’ll be doing better than 95% of people because most people lose a lot of muscle in this decade. You’ve heard of osteoporosis, and it's practically universal. Well, the corallary that goes along with it is sarcopenia or muscle wasting.

But, getting back to the anabolic effect of animal proteins, what worries me is that that same anabolic effect that stimulates muscle growth, may also stimulate tumor growth. The ease by which muscle cells can grow on animal proteins, does the same hold true for cancer cells?

There are a lot of researchers who believe that is the case, and they write up their findings in various journals. T. Colin Campbell is one of them, who feels that animal protein consumption is directly related to cancer incidence.

So again, I get it that animal protein facilitates muscle growth, but what I’m mostly intersted in is maximum lifespan and avoiding degenerative diseases. So, for that reason, I’m not really that impressed with Dr. Saladino’s muscles.

The next thingg he addressed is the idea of Evolution creating a mandate for us to be carnivores because we supposedly did it for so long.  Thousands of years of evolution, or is it millions?

Well, I don’t put any stock in evolutoinary argments, and that’s because I don’t believe in Evolution. Now, before you think that I’m crazy, consider that there is an organization of PhDs who question the validity of Darwinian Evolution. It’s called Dissent from Darwin.

Check it out:

 https://dissentfromdarwin.org/

To belong to that organization, you have to have a PhD in either biological science or Mathematics.

“We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence fr Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

That is their position statement. It would be a tangent for me to delve into it, although I assure you I could.

But, when people make such arguments what they’re really doing is claiming that since humans ate meat in large amounts for a very long time, that we have to keep it doing it. But, there are lots of things that people have done for a very long time. People have drunk alcohol for a very long time, going back to Antiquity. But, that hasn’t changed the fact that alcohol is a protoplasmic poison that harms any human who drinks it. The "alcohol is good for the heart" claim has been completely debunked. All the thousands of years of drinking alcohol hasn’t enabled us to handle it.

But, there is another big issue, and that is that humans have survived Ice Ages. You realize that we emerged in the tropics. All the indications are that we are tropical beings, for instance, our lack of body hair-relatively speaking. We have some hair on our bodies, yes, but we don’t have fur. So, we learned to cover ourselves in order to survive cold. But, the point is that, under primitive conditions, a human during an Ice Age would have no choice but to eat meat. So, was all that meat-eating an evolutionary necessity or was it climate-related? And of course, I realize that even in areas that are tropical, people do eat meat. But, what people eat today is more of a cultural thing.

But, the most important thing I can tell you is that there is no Ice Age today, and there is plenty of plant food available. So, even though it’s cold in Winnipeg and Edmonton, they have the same commerce and distribution as other major cities. So, there is plenty of plant foods in winter, even in places like that. To make the argument that we should eat like Cavemen today because they had to, even though we don’t, is ridiculous.

But, before we leave the subject of Nature and what is natural, I will remind you of what I wrote in a recent post, that human breast milk is the sweetest of all milks. No mammal puts as much sugar in its milk as do humans.

And it’s not just that. No mammal has as many sugar sensors on the tip of its tongue as does a human being. What do you think they’re there for? To commit suicide with? When you talk about what’s natural for a human being, sugar is it. It’s very natural for humans. Of course, I am talking about sugar as it occurs in Nature in whole fresh fruits and also vegetables that on the sweet side, such as peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, and winter squash.  

The argument from Nature does not support the Carnivore diet at all. Do you know how many sugar sensors cats and dogs have on their tongues? Zero. They can’t taste sweetness, period. You might be able to getyour dog to eat something sweet, but he’s not tasting the sugar.

Human dentition supports plant eating. Look at the crushing molars that we have. Compare it to the teeth of a dog with  big incisors, and teeth for cutting and searing but not for grinding and pulverizing. Our teeth say that we should eat plants.

The point is that his Evolutionary agument carries no weight. It’s completely bogus. His “look at my muscles” argument carries a little weight, though not much. His Evolutionary argument carries none at all.

OK, I am going to quit here for now, but I’ll continue this for as long as it takes. If you’re interested, please come back. And if you’re not, no hard feelings. Meanwhile, here is the link to his lecture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsPSJ-dXqks&t=2901s

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Created on Monday, 18 October 2021 19:53

On this the day of Colin Powell’s death, I am seeing mostly articles like this one, about how he lied to the United Nations and caused the deaths of numerous Iraqis, including many civilians.  

https://www.yahoo.com/news/lied-iraqis-still-blame-powell-171618052.html

I’m not opposed to holding him accountable, but what about his boss, George W. Bush? He’s still alive and well, so how about arresting him for war crimes?  As I see it, there is no justification not to.

But, I digress. Colin Powell was 84 years old and he had a type of cancer called multiple myeloma. And he was hospitalized for some time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. They’re saying that he died of Covid complications. And he was fully vaccinated. He is probably the most celebrated fully vaccinated person to die so far.

But, like clockwork, damage control is setting in; they’re saying that his body failed to generate the expected immune response from the vaccine. Of course, if he hadn’t gotten Covid they would have said that the vaccine was protecting him well despite his disease.

But, did he get Covid? And if so, how? He was not going to rock concerts or motorcycle rallies. He wasn’t even going to Walmart. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was in the hospital, where they have the highest safety precautions against Covid. So, how could he have been exposed to it? I realize there are Covid patients in the hospital, but why would they have been anywhere near him? If being 6 feet away protects, then how was he exposed? And surely his nurses and doctors didn’t give it to him because they were practicing all the protocols, right?

Was it a family member? Well, they can be tested. You can find out. So, I’d be willing to bet that this is another case in which we’re just supposed to shake our heads and say, “That lousy virus, it got another one. We’ll never know how it reached him.” That’s the religion of Covidism talking.

 What is the reality here? The reality is that they routinely perform Covid PCR tests on people in the hospital, and if you keep taking that test, sooner or later, you are going to test positive. It happened to the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. He was being tested regularly because he is a paraplegic. And finally, he generated a positive test, even though he was feeling fine. A few days later, he tested negative again.

Since they don’t recognize the possibility of false positive tests, what is their thinking about him? That he got an asymptomatic Covid infection that cleared up in 3 days? Why do they consider that more plausible than that he had a bogus test result?

And if you do test positive, they attribute any symptoms you have to Covid. I assume that Colin Powell died from his disease and probably from the treatment of his disease, and most likely Covid had nothing to do with it. And I’ll stick to that even if he had respiratory symptoms because if you are failing systemically, then respiratory symptoms are likely to occur. The most common cause of death that is put on death certificates is pneumonia,  and that was true before Covid.

And notice that we didn’t hear anything about this until today. It’s not like he was battling Covid for weeks. It’s possible that he turned up a positive Covid test near the end, and because of it, they’re willing to attribute his death to Covid. When in doubt, blame Covid.

I tell you, I truly despise the medical profession. Yes, I know that they sometimes do good, and they even save lives, but, in the aggregate, they are doing so much more harm than good, the net effect is that they are a menace to society. I’m sorry but it’s true.