You know all those stories about old ladies bringing tupperware or ziplock bags to parties and stealing leftovers? You feel bad for them, but at cringe at the same time. I’m the opposite of those old ladies. I bring my own food to fancy parties. Non-fancy parties, too. Anywhere there’s food that I can’t eat […]
Month: June 2016
In which my approach to diet is turned on its head
My introduction to the microbiome (otherwise known as gut bacteria) came through Elaine Gottschall’s Breaking the Vicious Cycle, the book that unleashed the Specific Carbohydrate Diet on the world. Elaine’s research and writings focus on the biochemistry of how food digests in the gut, and mainly focuses on reducing any undigested food that would feed […]
The Unexpected Importance of Mucus
I’ve only ever thought of mucus as a quick-n-dirty way to measure intestinal inflammation. Looks like the bowel/mucus/bacteria relationship is a bit more complex: Viscous mucus covers the intestinal wall, disables bacterial movements, and protects epithelial cells from contact with bacteria. Leukocytes migrate into and patrol within the mucus layer executing surveillance functions without any collateral damage. The […]
Do small changes really work?
Imagine a sunrise. The world is dark, bathed in starlight. Maybe there are a few clouds lingering on the horizon, fog creeping in. Soon the sky begins to lighten. The stars start to fade, so gradually you barely notice at first. Slowly, softly, you see the first shimmers of sunlight peeking over the horizon. The […]
Why I Started this Blog
Hippocrates, one of the founding fathers of medicine, said this: All disease begins in the gut. For a long time, I didn’t believe him. There are plenty of other places in the body that disease can strike. Eye disease, birth defects, infections, cancer of any body part, the list goes on. I’m sure there’s even […]