A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum; It turns out I am pre-diabetic

So, I have spent a lot of time in recent months... months and months, reading information online about health, particularly as it pertains to ancestral health, food, eating, diet, etc....

So, I finally went and had a bunch of blood work drawn up, and had my AME (Aviation Medical Examiner) order the tests, etc. I see him many more times than I see my GP, so why not?

Top of the list is the "Lipid Panel," which is where you get all your cholesterol and the like information. All measurements are in mg/dl.

Total Cholesterol - 180 (125-200)

HDL - 36 (>= 40)

Triglycerides - 157 (<150)

LDL - 113 <130)

The 'normals' range for those is the number in parenthesis afterwards. So my total cholesterol is right in range, no problems. My HDL or 'good' cholesterol is low. Higher is better. Triglyceride count is a little bit high, and my LDL or 'bad' cholesterol is low. The Ratio for my cholesterol is 5.0, with the toleration being (<= 5.0)

All of my other 'numbers' are fine, with the exception of 1 of them.

My fasting (12 hours, in my case) blood glucose was 104. "Normal" range is 65-99. 100-126ish is considered pre-diabetic.

Kidding, right?

O.k... let's look at this from real science point of view.

First, if we are measuring something, we want to be exact, but we need to know how exact our measurements can even be to begin with. For instance, if I am measuring a wall of a room, and I use a 1 foot ruler, placed over and over on the wall to measure it, that will most likely not be as accurate as simply pulling a tape measure across the wall. Less room to make repeat errors, etc. So it is important to know how accurate you can even begin to measure.

For total cholesterol, the Standard Deviation is 17. It is entirely normal for cholesterol levels to change over the course of days and weeks to at LEAST that amount. So it would be normal for me given this test result to have total cholesterol reading from 163-197. Double that amount, (35,) and then you can start talking about statistical possibility of something having actually changed.

And, btw, I am calling it 'cholesterol' because that is the normal, popular convention. I am fully aware that it is a measurement of the protein that is carrying cholesterol, not the cholesterol itself. I am actually not worried about my cholesterol per se, but I wanted to see the numbers.

That blood sugar thing, though. Hmmm..

So, I went to my local Walgreens, and purchased a blood glucose monitor. My idea was to track my fasting blood sugar every morning, and then read my level when starting a meal, and then post-prandial (after eating) levels at the 1 hour, 2 hour, and 3 hour mark. Far more so than fasting blood sugar, your ability to 'clear,' or clean up your blood after a meal is very important.

Normal levels, with high glycemic index foods (sugary, or foods that dump sugars into your blood,) would be around 145-160 at an hour, 160 at 2 hours, and then a steady decline to normal blood sugars within an hour or so.

Every morning, my blood sugar has consistently been in the 100 range. Morning 1, I had 3 eggs in butter and bacon, and my blood sugar never rose above 95. No surprise there, neither of those has any kind of glycemic load. Lunch was a banana with peanut butter, and the band sent me up to 105 after an hour, but it came right back down again. Dinner was salmon and asparagus, and no spike.

Morning 2, eggs, bacon, this time with a big glass of milk, and I peaked at 106, but it came down in under an hour.

How in the world does my blood sugar elevate when I am not eating?!?!

So, I continued this for the week. On an overnight and out with a friend, I had a fresh baked pretzel with my lunch of a large salad with a 5 oz steak, with bleu cheese, walnuts, and dried apricots.

Zing... an hour later my blood sugar was 145. 2 hours later it was 165, and 3 hours later it was still 160. Yikes... not clearing that wheat and those apricots...

Believe it or not, breads can have quite a bit higher sugar load, because they are carbohydrate loaded like you would not believe. The standard is 'table sugar,' but there are a few things that load you up more than that... and all that sugar has to be cleaned out of your blood.

Bread is off my list, I guess.

So how did I get this way? Pre-Diabetic is a function of a number of things, and you don't need all of these, but you need a couple in the right combinations.

Fasting blood sugar of 100 or more.

Overweight.

Inactive.

45 or older.

High Blood Pressure.

Family history of Type 2 (no way to know, I am adopted.)

HDL <35. (hhmm... close, within the margin of error (Stan Dev of 9 for HDL.)

TRI > 250 (High, but not even in the neighborhood.)

Regularly sleep less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours a night. (eh... debatable.)

Increased Thirst

Frequent urination

Fatigue

Blurred vision (high blood sugars are brutal on the eyes.)

So... over 100 on the sugars, low HDL, but not terrible... the rest is kind of a wash.

So, I started reading up on blood sugar levels, how they can be moved around, what causes certain things in your body, connections with disease, etc.

So, here is my "perfect storm." Written as a timeline (sorta.)

Most of my life, I have been a white bread, coke or pepsi drinking, boxed food type. A good portion of my diet for the last 20 years has included High Fructose Corn Syrup one way or another. Listen, if it comes in a box from a store, it probably has it in there. 45,000 items in a major grocery store, 33,000 will have it. Gotta love subsidizing the corn industry! It is the cheap-o sweetener of choice.

5+ years ago, on our honeymoon in Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia, somehow I managed to get Hepatitis E. So we come home, and I am sick... flu-like symptoms, but the characteristic tea-colored urine gave it away to my doctor. The 'interesting' thing, is that "E" type is mostly harmless. You have it for about 3 weeks, and then it goes away. The only thing it leaves behind is whatever it did to your liver while it was visiting, and you can never give blood again.

Having had Hep E makes you far FAR more susceptible to fatty liver and other diseases of the liver. It elevates your triglycerides (the fat deposits in your liver inhibit recycling them in the normal course of liverly functioning,) and leads to gallstones and can lead to pancreatitis (more on this in a bit.)

Recent and not-so-recent- studies are showing that life long extensive exposure to HFCS in the diet leads to reduced Triglyceride processing by the liver, gallstones, etc... etc....

So.....

Getting Hep E in SE Asia in 2006 may have led to me having pancreatitis in 2008, through fatty liver problems and gallstones, aggravated from a life long exposure to HFCS from a crappy food diet.

I had acute necrotic pancreatitis. The necrosis was roughly half my pancreas. The pancreas is where your beta cells that make insulin are located. I can't make as much insulin as the next person, neither as much nor as fast.

My liver has some damage from the Hep E, and fatty deposits from the processing of all that yummy HFCS, so I cannot detox my blood as fast as normal people.

Ergo----

Low HDL

High TRI

High fasting blood sugar.

Great, what does this mean.

Well, for the past year I have mostly had a 'paleo' diet. I have eliminated soft drinks, most foods that contain processed sugars, etc, pastas, breads, all the 'added' sugar foods.

Well, during sailing season, it was pretty hard to avoid, and I am positive I had more booze than I should. What's the harm, right?

Thankfully, switching my eating pattern a year ago may have helped insulate me from problems. There is no doubt that that style is the way I should be eating. So here is what I get to do....

No more alcohol.

No soft drinks (or really, anything with added sugars.)

Skip the pastas, breads, and other wheat- or cereal grain- based foods.

Generally avoid fruits, especially bananas (boo,) grapes, apples.

So... I am not 'diabetic,' but my body is trying to drag me there. Yes, I will still have the occasional glass of bubbly at a wedding (I have a few this year, etc...) but....

That's what's new.

More funner blog posts to come!

Milk (part 1)

AAaaahhh, milk.

Wow, does this produce some interesting reactions.

There are so many possible "pros" and "cons," it is difficult to know where to start writing.

We are the only mammal that a) drinks milk after weaning, and b) drinks the milk of another animal regularly and deliberately. (I stress the regularly; kittens will gladly lap up cow's milk straight from a pail, puppies will do the same with milk and cream, etc. Orphaned kid goats can be given cow's milk, the list kind of keeps

going.)

We probably started this weird thing of drinking the milk of another species with sheep or goats. Our 'cattle' at the time were most likely the aurochs, which could best be described visually via their modern descendants, the Spanish Fighting Bull, only the auroch was probably quite a bit bigger and meaner. (The last true auroch known died in a private game preserve in 1627 in Poland. How sad.)

Most likely as they penned the aurochs in, gradually they were able to slowly tame them, or breed them for tameness, and someone somewhere got the bright idea that since we are drinking the milk of the goats, and these are milk producers, we can drink their milk, too.

• In actuality, we can drink the milk of any mammal. Virtually every mammal that we have domesticated, we use some form of milk product. Yak milk in Tibet, buffalo milk in Italy (mmm, mozzarella!), horse or llama milk in the Andes, reindeer milk in Lapland. Whether it is to our 'taste' or not, is another story.
• Did you hear about the guy that started the dolphin farm? He drown milking one.

And really, the reasons why we do not drink from all mammals are practical, more than anything. The only areas where there is widespread lactose intolerance, are Asia and the Horn of Africa. There are tribes in Africa that exist on milk, blood, and the cattle both of them come from. (they also have the lowest incidences of coronary heart disease, which should tell you something is wrong with meat = heart disease, but I digress.)

"Oriental" countries' largest domesticated mammals were the horse and the pig. Pigs are reportedly quite difficult to get any 'supply' of milk from. It is more a matter of quantity, rather than quality. High Steppes cultures have the mighty Yak for their milk, and they make use of every single inch of that animal.

So, there is no reason why we couldn't drink the milk of any of our fellow mammals. Quantity becomes the largest problem, although taste probably runs a close second, when you consider that what the mother eats dramatically effects how the milk tastes. So, line up a tiny stool and milk a rat. Grab your SCUBA tank and grab that whale teat! (That would probably not be a problem of quantity.)

What about the poor platypus? Milk away! (But not the male of the species, which has a spur that produces venom. Then again, if you are trying to milk a male you may have other problems from the get-go.)

Milk is something that is designed to help create life. As such, it is supposed to be eaten, one of the very few things on our planet meant for that. Most things are there to reproduce themselves; tomatoes are not there to become salsa, they are there to make more tomato plants. Milk is designed from the start to be drank.

Sigh.. so this is where it gets dicey.

From a practical point of view, our 2nd chromosome is where the gene that expresses 'turning off' the production of lactase, the enzyme that aids the digestion of lactose, the sugar that is only found in milk (trivia-- it is also found in yellow forsythia blossoms in the spring. weird, eh? Too lazy to find independent scientific evidence of that, though.) is found. There are some very interesting debates about this.

It appears that if your ancestors drank milk, (The World minus Far East and parts of Africa,) you have a higher likelihood of that gene expressing in favor of producing lactase. In fact, that gene expressing in favor of producing lactase is the dominant expression of that gene. So once you have a genetic history of it being turned on, it will tend to be turned on.

This makes quite a bit of sense, with recent (last 20K years) evolution. Once we figured out that it made more sense to milk the females of the species, and let the animal live, instead of slaughtering her for meat which would spoil quite soon anyways, we would rapidly develop an evolutional bias towards being able to continue digesting milk. Why not, when it could keep us alive?

Adding to that, we probably rapidly developed age-stable milk. Yogurt... cheese... especially cheese. Cheese can age for upwards of 2 years; try THAT with your normal milk. But talk about nutrition on 'the go!' You could store cheese from your animals, and have a stable food source for the inevitable partial famines that are our historical norm.

But is it healthy for us?

Well, in a word, yes. Yes, even cow's milk. But, it depends on what you mean by milk.

That milk you buy in the store is not 'milk.' It is an industrial product. It has been homogenized (a process which does stop the cream from separating, but totally changes the way that the milk tastes. Having had both, homogenized milk tastes slightly rancid to me. It also hides or masks the taste of the dead bacteria floating in there from pasteurization. Yup, for realz.)

It is also highly likely that it comes from a cow that is milked 3 times a day by a machine, a cow that is fed grains to keep her milk production up even though the grain kills her from the inside, trapped in a stall next to 500 other cows on a production line, standing over a river of your own manure that collects in a toxic lake, automatically injected with antibiotics due to all of the above. Here is that cow--

Yup, that is pretty much where they spend their lives. How 'cow' is that?

So I am stealing the next picture off the website from my friends at Golden Guernsey. Which animal would you rather be, and which would you rather have providing life giving sustenance?

Back to milk....

Without the enzyme lactase, drinking milk causes nausea and diarrhea. "Lactose intolerant" people know that feeling!

What is interesting, is that raw milk has lactase in it. After all, when a baby (of any species) is born, it takes a little while for that digestive system to kick into full swing. The milk has to provide its own means of digestion (after all, the baby is not getting the milk in the womb, it is getting nourishment from the placenta.)

So raw milk is a complete package for nourishment. It seems as though milk proteins evolved alongside the genetic tolerance increase near northern European dairy settlements some time about 8,000 years ago. Coevolution; As we were able to drink more milk for longer periods, the cows evolved to provide our protein requirements.

So since milk comes with it's own digestive system, why are people intolerant of milk?

Most likely, it is because they are drinking pasteurized milk. The pasteurization process kills off the lactobacilli, so YOU are not making lactase, and the milk's food enzyme activity has been killed off. You don't have sufficient lactase to break down the milk sugar (which is a 2-part sugar; lactose is glucose and galactose, making it a disaccharide. There, you've learned something,) and viola, here comes the G/I discomfort. Most people who are 'intolerant,' but can eat cheese or yogurt (where microbes during the fermentation process have consumed pretty much all the lactose,) can handle raw milk easily, and there is a good chance that even people who are 'completely milk' intolerant can handle raw milk, especially from Guernsey or Jersey cows.

The other end of the milk intolerance is a mild allergy to casein, the protein in milk. Guernset and Jersey cows have a higher amount of Casein-b, which has a lower allergic reaction. Casein survives the pasteurization process, but the jury is out on UHT pasteurization (which I have heard that Oberweis uses. Boo on them.)

During homogenization, milk is pumped at high pressure through a mesh screen, and it reduces the milk fats to tiny particles that cannot coalesce back into their former selves. It solves a problem in that it makes the milk more stable for shipping, you don't have to deal with the cream separating from the milk, and it solves a cosmetic problem; When you pasteurize the milk, dead bacteria and white blood cells sink to the bottom of the milk. Homogenizing the milk spreads this throughout the milk. Makes you say yum, doesn't it?

Homogenization also completely destroys the natural flavor of milk. It breaks up the fats into smaller molecules, which produce a rancid flavor and actually make the milk sour faster. This is because the fat particles are smaller and coated with milk protein, where normally they are mostly separate.

But drinking milk is immoral (the vegan argument.)

-- Go away... If you hate me for drinking milk, what will you think when I slice into a steak? "Ethical vegetarian" is completely ridiculous. we're omnivores. Thanks.

We don't 'need' to drink milk.

-- We 'don't need' to do many things. Milk is a complete protein food (it has all the amino acids.) In addition to that, it is convenient, stores well, and has a good dose of everything you need for proper nutrition. If you are trying to lose weight, you should be cutting sugars out of your diet, so milk should be off the list anyways until you get to where you want to be, but there is no real reason not to drink some of it. And it's soooo good.

More in part II!

Philosophy, Ranting, Stream of Consciousness....

So, I am a skeptic. I would debate the sun rising tomorrow. (At 0100-- "It hasn't risen YET.")(0300-- Still waiting!!)

I tend to need proof. I'll go on sketchy incomplete information, sometimes, but really, I'd like to know why.

This is part of what has gotten me recently into health and nutrition. There are just scads of information out there, and so much of it is just wrong!

I start with the 'sniff test.' If it sounds wrong from the start, there are pretty good odds that it's a lemon. (warning, I have my mix-o-matic blender going for when I run into metaphors. I may even mix my mixed metaphors.)

So here is where it all began. We were at the Brookfield Zoo, in the Chicago suburbs, on my mom's birthday, and they had an exhibit titled something like "The world connected" Or some such thing. I figured that would be cool to check out, so why not?

They had an illustration of people fishing, and under it was 'fish are caught off the coast of Chile.' OK, I am on board with that. The following sequence came along.. 'Fish are then flash frozen,' 'fish are shipped to the USA,' 'fish are ground into fish pellets/meal,' 'the fish meal is fed to cattle,' 'voila, you eat them!' (Or some such nonsense for the last picture of a cheeseburger on a plate.'

So... I wandered on, but mentally I kept returning to that last picture, and the picture that had the cow munching happily away on some cattle kibble. To myself, I kept thinking 'cows don't EAT FISH. WTF is wrong with this picture??!?!'

Within a few days of this, I had my conversation with Ash who turned me on to FatHead, and the rest is long sleepless nights reading study after study, blog after blog, gathering up information. Learning. Unlearning. Re-learning.

I have spent hours... and I mean days worth of hours, just trying to find a single study that says HFCS is good for you. Yeah, I know, but there must be ONE. Surely our loving government would not approve a foodstuff/additive/substitute for general consumption (it's in roughly 30,000 of the 35-40,000 items in a major city grocery store) without knowing the long term effects of introducing it into the food supply, would it?? Honest??

So about 2 weeks ago I posted some of the things I have found in the last year, and I will be backing them up one at a time, with footnotes, references, etc, so it is taking me a while to collect all the information right now. So sit tight, sports fans!

I've read more than I ever thought could be written about cholesterol. There is more to read. But I can tell you this right now, we're the only country in the world that is afraid of cholesterol. Here is a good sniff test question-- Would your body, all things being equal, and under normal circumstances, make anything for itself that was harmful?

Of course not. We would not have survived as a species. Period.

Well, your body makes cholesterol. Your diet (defined as what you eat, not a 'Diet,') has almost nothing to do with 'blood serum' levels of cholesterol. In fact, you are not measuring cholesterol in any of the tests, you are measuring the size of the proteins that carry the cholesterol around. LDL, HDL... Low Density Lipoprotein, High Density Lipoprotein. Cholesterol itself is not water soluble, so it can't dissolve in blood; it needs something to 'ferry' it around.

If you had no cholesterol in your diet, your body can manufacture all you need. This should tell you something. This is a BIG MONSTER clue that maybe this is something we need, not something we should be getting RID OF.

This will piss some people off- There are no historically vegan cultures. And vegetarians should be careful. Even historically vegetarian cultures eat some eggs, or trade for fish or fish roe, or drink milk (whole raw milk, not that low fat crap we have here.) Enjoying that low slow decline in your nervous system from lack of B12? If you MUST take supplements to support your diet, then there is probably something wrong with your nutrition.

There is an interesting concept called Bioavailability. Basically, it means how much nutrition can we absorb or take in of something before it exits the system. Bioavailability of human mother's milk is a perfect 100 for protein. For eggs it is also 100. Beef scores about 78-85, depending upon the cut/organ. This continues down until we reach the plants. Animal proteins are called 'whole proteins' due to their complete amino acid profile (This should be another one of the BIG CLUES.) If you are eating animal tissue, you can get your entire protein requirement from it. If you are eating plants for your proteins, you can get most of the amino acids, but not all.

So the bioavailability of meats tends to be quite a bit higher, so it is easier to 'access.' So in an 8 oz serving of beef liver, you would easily get a day's protein requirements for a fairly sedentary individual, but to get it from plants would require a good 2 lbs of plant. Makes my jaws hurt just thinking about it. (numbers are not exact, but the exact numbers ARE coming.)

So much more to come!

On another note...

On another note, I wanted to shout out a congrats to my cousin Anthony, who is most of the way through his IOE as a brand new FO with Silver Wings (used to be Gulfstream.) He busted his ass to get there, like so many of us have. Dealt with all kinds of crap, debt, you name it, but he persevered, and now he is flying for a living.

All the pilots already know this (so do their spouses, too,) but it takes a little bit of almost masochism to want to get involved in our job sometimes. Starting out, the pay is rancid... really not good. I think I have told this before-- flew through the night, snowstorm, heavy winds, no visibility, rain, hail, etc, from Chicago O'Hare to Kalamazoo, Michigan. 50 passengers, none of whom even glanced in the flight deck. We pulled up our arrival time, and it was an hour, exactly. I said to my Captain "I just made $19.90, pre-tax."

Thankfully he has a supportive wife, because it takes an even stronger partner to put up with what a pilot goes through just to do this goofy job.

But a better job is damn hard to find.

I know it is 'just' a Beech 1900, but welcome to the big leagues, Tony.

Congrats,

Scott

A Little About Food

So, last year, I had a conversation with a friend of mine that went something like this--

me: So, I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon this year. What was I thinking?

friend: Really? Come do the Warrior Dash with me!

blah blah blah

friend: So have you seen the movie Supersize Me?

me: Nah. I don't agree with the basic premise. Nobody eats McDonald's 3 times a day, every day for a month. At least go to Wendy's, too (yum, Frosty!)

friend: Then you gotta watch Fat Head.

Thus began my descent into the Rabbit Hole of nutrition. Once I started reading more, I opened an account with Pub Med. I already know the basics on how to look for gaps in logic, and I can understand scientific literature fairly well, I was just rusty. At various times in my life, I've wanted to be :a physicist, a pilot (something came true!), a computer programmer (boring!), etc, but I always had a love for the 'hard' sciences. Those where you design an experiment based on a hypothesis generated by (hopefully) multiple observations, and then you control the variables as much as possible, experiment, and then check your results.

O.k.. small digression.. but like I said, it's quite a rabbit hole!

Here are some of the things that I have come to know. I'm sure there will be a post about the philosophy of knowledge, after all, how do we know what we know, and how do we know that we know it (or something else that will give you a slushi brain freeze.)

Some of these will be expanded upon in later posts; I've actually been working on some of that anyways.

I originally ordered this in order of certainty, but I write stream-of-consciousness, so I am sure It's totally out of order below #5. #13 could easily be #8, etc:

1. High Fructose Corn Syrup is a poison. I'm even looking for studies (peer reviewed, unbiased, etc, ) that prove this wrong, but there is just nothing out there. Get it out of your diet, get it out of your house, get it out of your life.
2. Wheat and cereal grains are almost as bad as #1 for you. There may even be a connection or additive effect here between the two. This indicts all of the modern grains. Wheat, barley, oats, rye. They are all grasses, we are not cows. It is a tribute to our omnivorousness that we can eat them to being with.
3. Sugars on the whole are not that great for you. Naturally occurring, they usually have lots of fibrous materiel around them... mother nature's packages. You have to eat a lot to get the sugar load, but modern cultivated fruits are a little different from the wild ones, especially in nutritional value.
4. Eat Meat. Like it or not, Vegetarians, modern humans are designed to eat nutrient dense foods. Plants just do not cut it for everything. At the very least, have a little fish now and then, preferably line caught.
5. Grass fed ruminants are the most nutrient dense food we have. The nutrient profile is perfect, the O-3 and O-6 ratios are exact for what we need, the nutrient levels (especially in liver, and other organ tissues,) are off the charts.
6. Eggs are awesomeness in a shell. You can do magic with them.
7. Cut 'boxed' food out of your life. The friend mentioned above (Hi Ash!) was the first who referred to it as "Shop the Outside" (I think.) Eat all the stuff around the outside of the grocery store, and skip the stuff on the shelves in the middle.
8. The jury is still out on milk. Partly because most of the studies on milk use dried casein for the study, and that has well known problems with oxidized cholesterol and inflammation. Talk about stacking the cards. If you are not allergic, milk, raw milk, is probably quite healthy. Fermented/aged milk products rock the house-- yogurt, cheese, butter, kefir....
9. Veggies, fresh and in season, are a must. I have increased my veggie intake at least 100% (which, considering how little I used to eat, is still not that much.) I eat more and more when I can. Even broccoli makes me say yum (with a small protest) now.
10. Strength training is excellent for both men and women. Girls, you will never... and I mean never... have enough testosterone to 'bulk up' the way that men might be able to. It takes years of dedication, and casual workouts ain't gonna do it. Learn how to lift something heavy. It's good for you.
11. Cardio is not that great. High Intensity Interval Training is much better. Long term cardio might even be downright unhealthy for you.
12. Cholesterol is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But your body makes it naturally, and diet cholesterol intake has almost no effect on blood serum levels. Sniff test-- Under normal circumstances, does your body make anything that would harm you? Every single cell in your body needs cholesterol to function, and your brain is a'chock full of cholesterol. More to come on that for SURE.
13. Fat intake helps you burn fat. Yup. Honest Injun'.
14. Carbs make you fat. Carbs of all kinds, from simple sugars (fructose, glucose,) to the big 'uns (starch, glycogen, and cellulose.)
15. Soy is most likely really not that good for you, unfermented. This is a mega issue with vegetarians and vegans. Lots of bad words spoken in forums on this one.
16. A calorie is not just a calorie. It is not just calories in/calories out. Your body is not a closed system. More to come
17. Most treadmill type exercise is a waste of time. You don't burn fat that way. Like Dr Lustig says in his video "That cookie you ate? 250 calories? Yeah, an hour walking on the treadmill... good luck."
18. Cooking 'oils' are about one of the worst things out there. Cook with butter, lard, ghee, coconut oil. Olive oil is for tasting, not cooking.
19. We need sunshine. Every single one of our cells can make its own Vitamin D. It takes sunshine. Vitamin D deficiencies are related to depression. Ever wonder why in the winter and when it is cloudy for days on end people get more depressed?
20. Nearly everything we have been told about nutrition in the last 40 years has been exactly 180 degrees wrong. Our grandmothers and grandfathers lived to be 90 cooking with lard, eating fat, not exercising, and staying outdoors. We are dying in our 50s with tons of exercise, cooking oils, eating tofu burgers and wearing SPF WTF just leaving the house. What are we missing here?
21. We don't get fat because we are eating more, we are eating more because we are getting fat. Subtle difference, but wildly important, related to hormonal control of the body. It's not willpower; you are trying to use your will to overpower a million years of evolution in your hypothalamus for hormone control. You ain't gonna win this fight.

Basically, here is what it comes down to;

Eat Real Food.

Get some Exercise and Sunshine. Go for a walk, and lift your face to the sun.

Every now and then, lift, throw, move something heavy.

Laugh. Dance. Enjoy.

Sleep well.

I have bunches more to write on almost all of this. Posting will take a little while, because I want to have the footnotes, so if you are reading this you can do what I do; just go read the study yourself.

Re-learn to engage your brain. Does it pass the 'sniff test?' If something sounds crazy, is it because it is crazy, or am I just looking through the telescope from the wrong direction? IS anything hidden? Correlation is not causation (mantra-- keep repeating this.) Just because something is observed to happen at the same time, does not mean A effects B. It doesn't even mean B effects A. --- Statistically, ownership of computers has increased on a perfect trend line that parallels yogurt consumption. Does owning a computer make you buy yogurt? Does eating yogurt make you want to go buy a computer? (Does Yoplait own shares of Apple?)Are they related through a third mechanism 'confounding' what we are looking at? (owning a computer means you can look up health information more readily, you read yogurt is good for you, more people buy yogurt. Not direct causation.)

I am going to try and index, or at least footnote, my references, so that will take a little time, too.

Plus, I may make some more yogurt, or butter, or maybe pickle some zucchini, or something, and get distracted... and... um...look! Bubbles!

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Cheers!

Scott

Food Werx, Vol 4 - Cheese!

Bring in the cheese!

So I have been having fun

experimenting with milk and milk

products. But I am out of raw milk. I saw a video on YouTube showing a

simple way to make a simple cheese and it seemed like a good idea to try.

A few notes - even really good milk, like Oberweis, may not work. Oberweis supposedly does a variation of ultra-pasteurization, the difference being in regular pasteurization, the milk is heated to 161F for 15-20 seconds, where as the UHP is 275F for a minimum of 1 second. This pretty much destroys any chance for you to use the milk to make any kind

of cheese, according to the various 'make cheese at home' gurus. So, find a good milk and use it!

I used Kilgus' Non-homogenized milk. This is our regular milk (other than the raw milk we just got access to a few weeks ago.) You gotta shake it to mix in the cream that floats to the top, and it tastes sssoooo good.

O.k, off on our adventure!

I worked with a half gallon of milk.

So, you scald the milk, which is heat it on medium until it reaches 170F. This can be seen visually by the bubbles starting to ring the edge of your cook pot. At this point you remove the pot from the heat, and add in a cup of buttermilk and then 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. This acts as the separator, curdling the milk and removing the whey. Let the milk sit for 20 minutes while the acids from the juice do their thing, and then skim the curds out of the milk. Reserve the whey if you want, it is good to make pancakes, or in place of water in just about anything. Maybe for risotto.... hhhmmm....

Gently skim the curds out into a

cheese cloth covered colander, either

putting the colander in a larger pot to save the rest of the whey, or let it drain down the sink if you don't want to keep it. Then gather the cheese cloth into a tight bunch, compressing it and squeezing the curds together.

Tie the top with a string, and then

hang the curds so they can drain the last of the whey and moisture out.

Let them hang for about 30 minutes or a bit longer, and then peel open the cheese cloth. Voila, there is your cheese!

It is really great spread on fresh toasted bread, and I am NOT a bread guy (anymore.)

This was really simple to make, requires no special tools (even the temp you can eyeball by watching the edge of the milk for the bubbles to gather,) and you could use a clean dish towel in place of the cheese cloth. I guess maybe the string could be a special tool. Depends on how well you stock your kitchen!

We pretty much devoured the cheese with dinner. It has a very soft taste, nothing strong at all.

You can make this with 2%, or even skim milk if you wanted. Takes under an hour start to finish, including heating the milk. Can it get any better?

Cheers!

Scott

Food Werx, Vol 3 - Yogurt

So I have been having fun making simple foods, and while I was making the butter, I remembered a video I had seen on how easy it is tomake yogurt; Since I had the time, andThomas was my sou chef, I figured it could be done.

I had separated a good portion of the cream from the top of the milk, but not all of it, not nearly. I blended the rest back in, and then did my prep work to make yogurt. Here is the plan;

The volume of milk will give you your volume of yogurt; it is not reduced, or anything, so what you start with is what you will have at the end. We need--

milk

non-reactive pot (stainless steel preferably, just NOT aluminum)

yogurt starter (from a favorite plain yogurt; I used Trader Joe's Plain.)

thermometer

large pot or sink for cooling water bath

insulated 'cooler' as a fermentor

Sterilize the jar you will be using to make the yogurt by putting it and it's lid into a few inches of water at a boil for 10 minutes or so. Nothing like being sure.

Pour your milk into the non-reactive pot, heat over medium heat until the temperature is between 185F and 190F.

A note on thermometers; A simple way to calibrate, or check the scale of your thermometer- boil water, and then read the temperature off of the thermometer. Water boils at 212F, and a physical trait of transitioning from solid to liquid to gas is that once that temperature threshold is reached,

the substance (water) will NOT increase in temperature until it is in the next state. So when you boil water, once it reaches 212F, the remaining water will r

emain at 212F while the surface water turns into a gas as it boils off. So just read your thermometer in boiling water, and adjust your temperature accordingly. Mine boiled 'at' about 209F, so I did everything with a reading 3F less than required, or stayed at the low end of any temperature bands.

Once the milk reaches 185F, take the pot of milk off the stove, and set it in the cooling water bath.

Once your milk cools to 122F - 130F, pour a cup of the hot milk into a bowl, and whisk with your 'starter' yogurt (about 2T of yogurt per quart

of milk.)

Pour the whisked milk/yogurt mix right back into the scalded milk, and whisk together.

Now pour the milk into your sterilized jar/s, tighten on the lids, place the jars into the 'cooler' and pour a 'bath' of 130F (NOT warmer, 130F+ kills the bacteria that will make your yogurt) water around the jars, up to the lid.

Close the cooler, let sit for a minimum of 3 hours. (I had let mine sit for 3 hours, and I did not like the consistency, so I let it sit another 3 hours, then popped it into the fridge while I went on a 2 day trip.)

Eat and enjoy!!

I was gone on my trip, and Nicole tried it and said it tasted great. I gave it a try when I got home, and I thought it was pretty damn good, too. It's on the menu for breakfast tomorrow!

The finished product:

Food Werx, Vol 2 - butter

So, I have been reading a great deal on nutrition, exercise, endocrinology, plate tectonics, physiology, etc, over the past year or so...

As evidenced by Vol 1, I am trying to make some things at home. We are digging around the back yard, so we can have a good selection of veggies from now on. We're going to plant peppers, zucchini, asparagus, basically, anything that tastes good.

But I am also having fun at home making things from scratch.

Nicole and I both love to cook, so why not?

There will be a blog post coming soon about the health value in milk, both the pros and cons. But in the meantime, we have a good supplier nearby of raw milk, and it is utterly delicious! (like I could resist that!) Nicole thought it tasted a little strange, but it is milk even more the way that I remember it.

So, with that, I decided to have some fun, hence this post. :)

So, I tried my hand at making butter. It is ridiculously easy. I skimmed the heavy cream off the top of our milk (Who here is old enough to remember milk being delivered in bottles to your house, raise your hands!)

Here is a good picture of the milk separated.

This is the way to actually make SKIM milk. It was called that because all the milk fat was 'skimmed' off of the top of the milk once the cream had settled to the top. It is really 'skimmed milk.'

an aside--A problem that I will discuss in my post on milk, is that modern skim milk is mostly made from powdered milk, especially with the big manufacturers. Powdered milk has oxidized cholesterol in it, and oxidization is something we really need to prevent in our bodies.

I set it aside so it could get closer to room temperature; some websites say to do that, others say to simply start with cold cream, you just need to agitate it longer.

So I poured the top cream into a jar with a lid, and then started shaking it. Pretty vigorously, too, at least at the start.

After about 8-10 minutes, I had non-sweetened whipped cream. I could feel the difference in the jar in the way it was no longer sloshing about. I continued shaking the jar, occasionally hitting it against my opposite hand, to loosen the more solider mass inside.

After another 10 minutes or so of this, I had a ball forming inside, and I could feel in the shaking that the liquid had separated, so now I just needed to finish it off, almost there.

20 minutes from when I started, I had it. Butter. Sweet cream butter. The leftover milk is buttermilk, perfect for pancakes, etc... mmmmmm.....

Is it better? It is very light and smooth, and it has all the milk fat that it should. We'll see how it goes.

The real judges will be Thomas and Nicole. It was quick and simple. There is no real reason to do it yourself, except just simply to do it yourself.

Enjoy!!

MMmmmm... Food Werx Vol. 1

Hi all! (all both of you!)

So, I had been thinking about nutritional profiles (see, it's not all about flying anymore!) and peanuts.

Peanuts, properly, are legumes, like beans, etc. Somewhere in here I am sure is part of the source for peanut allergies that are not nut allergies in general, but since I am behind in my reading and have not yet got to that chapter, I will leave off that for now.

So, I rather like the nutrition of cashews versus peanuts, especially the Vitamin K in cashews. So, since I love peanut butter, why not try to make my own cashew butter? I happened to buy some cashews for munching, and I was not out of them yet!

So, I read up a little bit, and found that a good first step is to 'dry roast' the cashews. This can be accomplished a couple of different ways at home, but the simplest is to toss them into a pan and heat them

up, so that they release their oils more freely. Easy way to tell, is the rom starts smelling like roasted nuts. Simple, eh? On the right is a photo of the action--

I did not have a large bunch of nuts to start with, though. Most of what I had read said that they will reduce in volume by about 75%, so you need to start with a fairly large amount. The

problem that you would run into is that there is not enough oil for them to start sticking together once they are blended, so mostly you would

have powdered nuts. I am sure there is a critical point for that, and I am also sure I was below it in volume!

So, with the smell of roasted cashews

filling the kitchen, I popped them into my trusty (and almost 20 year old) blender. They did not take up a great deal of room, and I was pretty sure that was a bad sign.

So I blended... and blended... and finally, I had a fine cashew-y powder. Ok, that was not great, but maybe I could still make it into something. That is when I remembered about there not being enough oil for them to coagulate into 'butter.' Well, what better to use, then butter? I spooned about 1/4 Tablespoon of butter in, and it all came together nicely. Not the best, but still, it was better than trying to spread cashew powder into a sandwich!

Results--

This was the cashew butter right as it came out of the blender. A little grainy, but I think if I used a real food processor, I could get rid of most of the grainy-ness, and I certainly want to incorporate more 'chunks' of cashews, so I will reserve some crushed pieces to add in after the pureeing.

Here is the final result from volume. The jar at the left was about 3/4 full of cashews, and that tiny amount is what they made. I knew it would reduce, but come on!!

So, I've already eaten all of it, and I will just have to try again!

Next up-- Make my own yogurt! (most likely from our raw milk source, the people at Golden Guernsey Dairy. Mmmmmm.... raw milk is good!)

oh, expect a longish rant on our fine state not allowing raw milk producers to advertise (see, I told you it wouldn't be all about flying!)

Cheers!

Scott

Thoughts

Hi All!

So, I am thinking of expanding the blog beyond aviation, etc. I have spent quite a bit of time reading some health blogs, and then going to the sources and reading the original materiel. A few people have asked me questions about some of this, and I am thinking of taking this well beyond aviation, into other areas I am interested in.

I'd include links that I thought were interesting, video, etc....

I guess I am interested in too many things, so I need to expand! (everything but my waistline!)

Cheerio!

Scott

Vacancy/Displacement

To answer some questions,

A friend of mine needed a laymen's explanation for what this 'bid' thing is.

We 'bid' for our positions as pilots based on our seniority, from date of hire. Generally, in order of preference, you want;

Seat (Captain or First Officer)

Domicile (City your flying is based out of)

Equipment (Which airplane you fly. Only 1 at a time (i.e. 737, DC-10))

Your Domicile can govern which equipment you fly. Chicago (ORD) for Eagle has 2 'types' of aircraft, one made by Bombardier, the CRJ-700, and the one that I fly, made by Embraer, Of which there are 3 variations, that one has the prettiest picture. (The variations are mostly # of seats. They all fly the same (bwaahahahahha.... kof kof... sorry... pilot joke.)

It takes a good two months of training to get checked out on another place, so usually, once you are in a specific aircraft, you do not trade around too often. They even make sure there is little incentive to do that, placing limits on how often we can change, making it 'non-reversible' (such as pilots who have transitioned to the CRJ cannot (with a few exceptions) go to the EMB,) and in the case of First Officers (FOs,) not increasing their pay with a different, larger aircraft.

Domicile does get tricky. They have shifted the CRJs around the system a few times, but generally they have been at DFW or ORD. Now we have them on the East Coast, too. But, if you want to fly it, there is no domicile (or base) in LAX, so anyone there would have to commute.

Seat, of course, is the big thing. Captain is where it is at. Pay is quite a bit more (there is an old saw about FOs getting paid for what they do, CAs getting paid for what they know.) The CA sets the tone of the trip, from start to finish. As an FO, you are constantly wondering "Who is the asshole that I am stuck flying with?" As a CA, you're the asshole! If you are outside aviation, it is really difficult to stress how the 'vibe' that a CA has on the flight deck effects simple things, like just the pleasure of our job. We have an awesome (full of awe) job (every seat is a window seat, Miami in winter, Ottawa in June, etc) and simply flying with a decent CA makes life nice. Flying with a real tool of a CA can make your life miserable, and we have a number of pilots that FOs simply refuse to fly with, mostly because they are not personable (I'm being charitable) in the cockpit.

There are trade-offs in here. In my own instance, I could have taken the upgrade to CA a few months earlier, but I would have had to commute to be based out of LaGuardia, because that was the only place open at the time for lowest seniority CAs. I traded the wild increase in $$ for better scheduling (based on my seniority as an FO,) and not having to fly to f-ing LGA every time I had to go to work. Not what I wanted to be doing with a new son.

Of course, some people commute nearly their entire careers. This is the airline/aviation world that we live in. I have friends who, for instance, 'commute' from all over California to ORD to fly. ORD is a lower seniority base, the scheduling makes life easier on them. It can actually be easier (I know people who do this, too,) to commute from Orlando to Chicago, rather than Miami. The schedules might be really bad for commuting in another city that is closer, so you fly further to make your life easier.

At any rate, there are surely dozens of ins and outs with regards to scheduling/domicile/equip, what the heck is a Vac/Disp bid?

Vacancy (open positions in Seat/Domicile/Equip)/Displacement (reducing other positions)

Vacancy

Every month or so, the company offers up a vacancy bid, saying "X number of seats are open for bid in position/base." So it would read something like "25 OCE START/XFR 12MAY12," Which you would read as 25 Chicago (ORD) Captain Embraer positions open, start training or transfer from current domicile date of 12 May 2012. There are a few ways they can make it look, but that is the basics.

Displacement

This is when they are reducing flying or even eliminating positions. Sometimes they enter a market and then decide it was not a good fit, so they change the pilot requirements for that base, etc. This comes in the same format, really. The only problem, is that this is a union job, and you are entitled to displace someone junior to you on the seniority list out of their equipment OR base OR seat, if you are senior to that person and they are the bottom of their list. That's just how it goes. Every system has it's +s and -s...

Eagle is reducing flying, actually, eliminating and entire aircraft from the fleet. The venerable ATR, which has been the workhorse of the Caribbean, Miami, and lately Dallas, is being retired as step #1 of our reductions because of the Nov 30th Chapter 11 filing.

So, the pilots (and F/As are going through the same thing, but they are cross-trained on equipment, so they lose the 'equipment' part of the above part of the post, but not the rest) who fly the ATR are getting dropped into the system, so to speak. They are allowed to basically 're-bid' their positions based upon the fact that what they are now flying is being eliminated. So, some people will elect to go to same seat/different base, different airplane; some will pick going back to FO but staying at the same base (if they have more than 1 airplane type there, which Miami and Dallas do have, but San Juan does not,) and a few other combinations. Because they are shutting down an entire fleet, it is a bit like trying to shove all 18 ozs of a porterhouse steak into your mouth and chew. It is a BIG movement. Lots of people going lots of places, and it will take quite a bit of time to get it all 'digested.'

In addition to that, there are quite a few pilots who have recently upgraded to CA, but will now be knocked back to FO, because more senior CAs will be 'bumping in' above them on their domicile/equipment list. For instance, a CA flying the ATR in San Juan is going to lose that position (no more San Juan base,) so elects to come to ORD as a CA on the EMB. If there is 'no room' (no openings) for him, that does not mean that he cannot bump in, that just means that he will be slotted in based on his seniority and the bottom guy on the list will be bumped back to FO, or to another base.

Eventually, we run out of positions and bases, and that is when furloughs start. After 9/11, if I remember right, I think we layed off 600+ pilots. I know it got very uncomfortably close to me. I was probably within 10 people of 'the street,' as we were laying off in blocks of 100 or so. I know people who were furloughed, then recalled, then furloughed again! (Hi Kim!) Then recalled again, eventually, too.

For the senior FOs, it means their time to Captain is increased (lower pay for longer, but better schedules, for now... plus, they don't get to log PIC (Pilot In Command, or Captain) time. This makes you quite a bit more 'marketable' in the airline world. Captain, after all is God and Goat, and PIC time is the most important flying time as a hiring quantity. 1000 hours of PIC time is the magic number. Doors open for you a little bit easier. OF course, it helps if airlines are hiring, which they are not really doing in any great numbers right now.

For the middle FOs on the list, it means their schedules may get marginally crappier, might lose partial 'Gregorian Calendar' weekends off (airline lingo-- 'weekend' is whatever days your days off fall on. We work in an industry that runs 24/7/365. My 'weekend' has been Tues/Wed sometimes,) or maybe even displaced.

For the bottom FOs, it could mean furlough, being layed off. It most likely will mean that, although not yet. Time will tell.

The Vac/Disp bid (now you know what that means!) was 'run' yesterday and today, and published tonight (well, last night, since it is 0122.) According to an email that I got yesterday, this is the second largest bid Eagle has ever run, second only to the displacement bid after 9/11. You could say this is a Big Deal. It is very disruptive for and to our lives. For 2 years after 9/11, I was displaced first out of ORD and the EMB to BOS and the Saab. Then to New York. Then to Dallas. I transferred to LAX, but that lasted exactly a week (commuting thousands of miles to be #3 from the bottom is a crap sandwich,) back to DFW, and then finally back to ORD.

The whole thing sucks. We have pilots who are perfectly qualified who are losing their positions at the company, positions they have waited on and trained for. Yes, I know it's a bitch all over, but ya see, when we go to another airline (first, they have to be hiring,) you start all over at day #1. Joe the New Guy. Even if you are Direct Entry Captain (hired right into being an asshole,) you are bottom of that respective pay list, and FOs who upgrade who were hired before you get slotted in ahead of you until your seniority catches up. Scheduling will suck for the forseable future. Pay will, too, unless you are very lucky.

As a Captain, the pay is substantially greater. They have not mentioned pay cuts, yet. So, imagine this... Getting moved from CA to FO (only 2 feet, but wow!) will probably (if there are pay cuts,) be about a 65% pay cut (when you factor in OT, etc..) Ouch.

That is the gist of it.

Seniority-wise, for right now, It looks like things are ok for me, but the have not yet announced the plan for aircraft allocation post-Chapter 11 yet. Things could get interesting, and not in the 'I just found that wine is a great hangover cure' way.

So far, I'm still the asshole I'm flying with.

Cheers!

Scott

Not Redacted Yet

Hi gang!

Well, I am not anonymous redacted yet. Still more to come in that department.

But here are some interesting things.

I got stuck in London on my way back from Brussels, and had to stay the night.

These seem to be things that might happen all over the world, but really seem to concentrate in London.

I came through immigration with a Gambain woman and her friend (also from Gambia) who were returning to London for their last year of medical school. I've never been to Gambia. I never thought about going to Gambia. These 2 were a hoot! Suddenly vaulted the country onto the map of places I want to visit (my map looks like a globe. I think it is only missing N Korea and Perth Amboy.)

At baggage claim I met a Finn and his Egyptian girlfriend. They met in London a few years ago, and were coming back from visiting his family over the New Year.

At the hotel bar, I helped the Brit bartender and her Indian coworker defend British Ale against a small group of Italians drinking Peroni (British beer v. Italian beer.)

Now, this all might happen at random times, but for this all in the space of a few hours on a single evening, it sounds like London to me!

So the whole reason I went to Brussels, was to go to an "open interview" roadshow type meeting for Qatar Airways. I was to find that they no longer take applications directly at roadshows, but I got some great face time with the HR bunch, and learned a lot about where they have been and where they want to go as a company. I also learned that I fit the profile of who they want to hire into the 777 and 787. They don't get a high percentage of high time applicants, most are in the 1000 hour range (I have just shy of 10K, 1200 is PIC Jet.) I would be the guy they want in the big 'uns. Of course, they make fleet assignments based upon need, and I could just as easily end up in the A320... or the A330, for that matter.

But as my friend George (who is already flying there) told me :"Brother, you're going to be trading Detroit, Peoria, Omaha, and Buffalo, for Shanghai, Moscow, Dar Es Salaam, and Nairobi."

Most of you know that AMR (parent company for AA and AE) declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the end of November. Mostly, we are pretty sure, they have made it plain that the reason they have done so is to get out from under their pension obligations. That is a story for another post.

But that leaves those of us who are employees with many many questions.

Did the time I have given to this company go to waste? (5 years, 40 years, whatever.)

What if we are weakened as an employee group by this? ("What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." -- Right. Tell me that after losing 3 limbs. Let's face it... physically, you are not as strong as you were before. OF course, mentally, you might be 100 times stronger, but we're talking about paychecks here.) We could all have our jobs, but take a 25% pay cut? Close a few bases, displace a few people... It has all happened before, this is nothing new.

Delta went into BK 11, and emerged as an international powerhouse. United went in, and we still don't know where they are going to end up. Could go either way.

So what about the red-headed stepchild that is my end of the airline?

Well, we don't know.

The fleet allocation for the near future has to be presented to the Court in a week or so. I don't know the date, and it doesn't matter for this.

If they are cutting back, Eagle will most likely have to cut back.

If they cut back as far as some consulting agencies say they need to, it'll be mass pandemonium. I have heard everything up to parking all the ATRs (in progress right now,) then park the 135s (smallest RJ,) 140s (2nd smallest,) 1/2 the 145s (my plane,) and put the CRJs onto AAs payroll. This would make 9/11 look like a picnic, Eagle-wise. I think we furloughed about 700 pilots after 9/11. Might be closer to 500.. something like that. If they do the above 'worst case' scenario, our 3100 pilots would shrink to 1100, maybe less.

I guess you could call it a bloodbath, as long as you are speaking figuratively. Either way, it would be a nightmare, career-wise.

So, why not opt out for a bit?

Qatar Airways is hiring directly into the Boeing 777. Also, the A320 and A330. They are planning classes for the A350 and B787. Starting pay is very (very) nice compared to what we make as new hires anywhere in the USA. Actually, it is nice compared to anything that is made here.

Of course, it is a different world over there. Qatar is another country, they have their own laws, and ways of life.

Could be quite the adventure.

There are many more things to think about, but we've already taken the first step. Let's see where it leads.

Cheers.

Posting again...

Hey All!

So I have been trying to find ways to post about what is going on at our company. To be honest, I can't find a way to write what I want to say without exposing myself to legal work! (Seriously... we get company emails about this all the time.)

Suffice it to say, that no matter how bad my job gets, I want to keep my job. And my job is not that bad!

Interesting things are a-foot. Many changes are coming.

So, I will be posting from another blog anonymously, and heavily edited. I may call the new blog "Redacted."

Cheers!

Scott