Leading scientist in the field of nutrition
Where does free will stop, and frittata begin? Last week during gaps between appointments I reviewed a few old posts and started to doubt the dubito cogito sum I borrowed for the recent sundowner article (1). Descartes was describing the autonomy of reason, but from there by easy...
One far-off June I drove south from Marquette in the UP down to Kalamazoo, then turned southwest to Champaign. Instead of an 8-hour sprint across the Interstates I navigated 23 hours of blacktop and chert backroads, tacking through green oceans of corn, corn, soy, soy and corn. These...
The photo is a colored scanning electron micrograph of the epidermis, the outermost layer of the skin you see, at lower magnification, when you look in the mirror. It consists of dead cells, so anti-ageing cosmeceuticals do not work here. They work in the deeper tissues, and they...
Freshly caught fish are one of life’s primeval pleasures. For most inland consumers, however, fish must be preserved before it can be served. It might not be an obvious question, but how is preserving done? And could it be done better? I fly too frequently, and have left...
‘Sundowning’ describes a state of confusion in the elderly that develops in the late afternoon and lasts until sleep finally knits up the raveled sleeve. Disorientation may be accompanied by anxiety, agitation, aggression, pacing, ignoring directions, hallucinations. It signals progressive brain damage, and foreshadows the slide into dementia....
Slugs secrete slime, bureaucrats secrete bureaucracy. They polish the seats of their office chairs and do the bidding of their masters, which is generally directed towards money. They are highly motivated to protect their polishing rags, and thus naturally costive. In my experience they too grow towards money,...
When most people think of mast cells, they mostly think about histamine intolerance (HI). HI symptoms include, in no particular order, asthma, congestion, diarrhea, facial flushing, headache, hypotension, urticaria, vertigo and vomiting. Then they think about avoiding mast cell triggers. Alcohol, aspirin, hot food insect stings, these are...
According to UK Biobank data, excessive television-watching raises the risk of depression, dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Not just CNN, Fox News and the BBC, all of which are obviously neurotoxic, but TV in general (1). And what about computers? A screen is a screen is a screen, no?...
Vascular ageing describes changes in the structural and mechanical properties of the vascular wall which lead to increased arterial stiffness. Stiffness of the arteries is now recognized not only as a key component of vascular ageing, but as one of the most important structural biomarkers of overall biological...
The fatty acid amides, compounds formed in the body but also found in certain foods (cited below), modify the activity of the endocannabinoid system. Amongst other things they inhibit the breakdown of the endocannabinoid anandamide, an entourage effect which is relaxing and calming. You may have experienced this...