He probably was buying them at a feed store. It used to be much much cheaper to buy steel cut oats and big bags of wheat berries as livestock feed. We ate them as kids in the 70s and 80s. We ground the wheat with a hand mill. Not sure if its cheaper now. Soy and corn are primary feed stock produced these days.
Depending on the time when you did this, those feed store oats may have been handled in a way that wasn't as safe. Regulations change all the time (and differ by country), but often livestock feed is held the looser handling regulations.
I accidentally fell into working for state government. Small state relatively and it has been one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. I am able to help people, again, use technology to make things easier. It is very enjoyable. I can see myself working here until I am no longer able to keep up. I enjoy programming, but more importantly solving problems, and really hope that I don't have to retire.
Just anecdotal. Was T2 and getting kidney stones every two or three months (cause not related but treatment was). Cut out oxalates which restricted diet. Monitored sugar 3-5 times daily. Switched to carnivore diet + onions and mushrooms and went on Metformin. All at the same time. Did this for 2.5 months with no additional exercise. This dropped me down below T2 level. Went off Metformin and am maintaining with same daily testing. Off carnivore for paleo minus anything with oxalates after the 2.5 months strict carnivore.
Strict carnivore for me was steak, hamburger, stew meat fried in butter, mushrooms and onions in butter, bacon, and very sharp cheddar (only on burgers or raw). Eat every bit of gristle and fat. It is very hard to get enough fat.
Brain fog lasted for 10-11 days. Felt fantastic after that.
To keep your carnivore costs down I would recommend stew meat from Costco fried with onions and mushrooms when you can't stand steak or plain burgers.
This has worked for me for the last 6 months. I have no idea what it will be long term. Maybe someone will find something useful in it.
Sumo wrestlers kind of fascinate me in this regard. It's very rare to find a professional who is diabetic, even though they eat one big carb-heavy meal a day and are morbidly obese. IIRC, this is explained by their low visceral fat levels, which are driven by high adiponectin levels that are themselves driven by their intense workouts and consistent sleep habits. Their high subcutaneous fat proportion is actually thought to be protective. T2D catches up to them after they retire and stop exercising and sleeping well.
Their experience touches on 3 factors:
>Exercise volume (which, according to newer research, should be spread out over the course of the day)
>Diet (which should be focused not just on maintaining steady, low blood sugar levels, but on dietary factors that encourage subcutaneous rather than visceral fat deposition)
>Sleep quality
The last, I think, is extremely undervalued. My father developed T2 in his 30s, and it progressed consistently until he was diagnosed with sleep apnea and received treatment. Around the same time, his work schedule finally became more reasonable after a career of early mornings and late nights. This is someone who had to pass annual physical fitness exams for his job, cooked and ate relatively healthily, etc. I'm convinced it was the years of poor sleep that set him up for insulin resistance.
There is of course substantial variability in individual patient response to treatments. But a high-carb diet is unlikely to work out well for someone who is already insulin resistant. If that's the only diet that they can live with then their life is likely to be drastically shortened.
As for plant based versus animal based diets, we don't have any high quality RCTs to indicate that one or the other has a different impact on insulin resistance (assuming the same macros). So that's unlikely to be directly relevant for most patients, except to the extent that it impacts ease of living permanently maintaining carb restriction.
Sure but 1) there are many of us who are helped by WFPB and 2) Whole Foods plant based != plant based. High carbs was just my paraphrasing of what we do - lots of greens, lots of raw, elimination of meat, oil and sugar. And a bunch of other things. And while it helps reverse a few things, I agree it may not work in some or many scenarios.
I'm WFPB (plus salmon and eggs) myself. I grew up as a vegetarian and the carnivore diet is too unpalatable to me, even though it would probably work. WFPB can work to stave off T2D, but at least for me, I have to be vigilant about my choices and always pair carbs with proteins and fats.
I've found I do best with a very similar diet... mostly meat and eggs, some cheese and sometimes onions, mushrooms etc. I notice that some starchy foods hit me worse than others. Legumes are pretty bad on how I feel, and spike me to no end. Similar with wheat products. Corn, rice and potatoes spike my glucose, but I don't feel physically ill the next day like with many other foods.
It sucks, and I wind up cheating 2-3x a week (I live with people that eat different than I do).
I like to add that the reason why the carnivore diet seems to work really well is a couple of things.
- compliance is straightforward
- on average, will tick all the boxes for nutritional needs. (ie. vegans eating only oreos would not be very healthy, while vegans eating 5 colors a day would be far better off)
What have you used as a source for low oxalate foods? My husband has to avoid them for the same reason but it seems like superficially reliable sources disagree on which foods to avoid.
Which is why I went paleo after 2.5 months minus oxalates. I honestly have concerns about stomach cancer (family tree) and it allowed my to substitute coconut oil for a lot of the animal based fat I needed to consume for those 2.5 months. It is hard to do 20% of your calories in animal fat (male) and 30% (female) to maintain hormone levels. I don't know if those are hard and fast rules but they were the generic guidelines given to my by my PA.
Smoked for 15 years, switched to vaping, switched to low dose nicotine pouches, now switching to Gr1nds (coffee grounds). I just really don't like gum.
I smoked for 20 years. Tried stopping for 5 years.
Then did a course on the nature of nicotine addiction.
Some core facts:
Smoking works by relieving the psychological pain that is created by not smoking. Reread that.
There are no other real benefits. Smokers have a higher baseline stresslevel.
All nicotine addiction works the same as smoking, all nicotine products are created by the tobacco industry. You are still addicted to nicotine if you use patches.
The only real way is to stop using it and to endure the mild withdrawal symptoms.
Did you know that the tobacco industry spreads anecdotes of people who died of some smoking related disease and kept smoking till the very end? Why? Because it implicitly tells you two things: it's either just so good. "To die for" good. Or it must be really hard to quit.
They also spread horror stories about withdrawal. Many smokers think the withdrawal will get even worse when they are actually already at peak withdrawal. Just hang in there a little more. It's not so bad. You can do it.
Then, when you have kicked the habit. Convince yourself that even just 1 cigarette will enslaved you again, so smoking "just one" is not an option.
> The only real way is to stop using it and to endure the mild withdrawal symptoms.
I’m curious - have you ever been addicted to nicotine? If so, how much per day were you consuming?
I have been. I’ve kicked it multiple times and decided consciously to pick it back up because the benefits (focus) outweighed the drawbacks at the time.
When I was consuming nicotine at the level of a “pack a day” smoker, the withdrawal sucked but wasn’t as bad as you might think. The worst lasted a day or so. After three days it wasn’t perceptible if I wasn’t thinking about it.
One thing to consider though is that it’s entirely possible to consume many times the nicotine by vaping that you would by smoking. Severity of withdrawal correlates to the amount you consume.
My approach has been to taper off a bit by consciously deciding to only consume it if I was really craving it - and putting the device in another room afterward to avoid consuming mindlessly. After a week or so of that, my use had dropped to the point that the cravings were only once or twice per day. From there it was trivial to quit - withstanding the early withdrawal symptoms in the evening and going to sleep was enough so that the next morning the worst had passed.
Trying to quit cold turkey while you’re sucking down two Juul pods a day is very, very different than when you’re only using 1-2 per week.
How does the tobacco industry spread those anecdotes exactly? I find it a bit difficult to believe, seems like smokers would be able to spread them on their own just as well, as they provide stories to relate to when you can't quit.
(Apologies if I come off as overly critical, generally I agree with what you wrote)
More people can afford phones than can afford tutors (or even books). We shouldn't get rid of tutors anymore than we should throw out Khanmigo because it isn't perfect.
...this. I have 10 hours a week in the car commuting and since there is a lot of podcast on video now I split my time in half. Half podcasts and half youtube. Sometimes I have to watch sections at home or work with code or equations but all in all it works very well. Probably not a new habit for others but the last two years I have been pulling in a lot of youtube "talks".
I find youtube releases of D&D streaming sessions to be a good road trip background noise. It keeps me more engaged/awake than a podcast/audio book. It also helps that I'm super far behind on many D&D streamers so there are 50+ 3 hour long videos in my que sometimes for stories that stretch across multiple groups of players.
