Life is Healthy

Matt Lentzner, Janine Jagger and I have designed a survey for participants of Gluten-free January, using the online application StatCrunch. Janine is an epidemiologist who studies healthcare worker safety at the University of Virginia; she has experience designing surveys for data collection so we're glad to have her on board. The survey will allow us to systematically gather and analyze data on the results of Gluten-free January. It will be 100 percent anonymous-- none of your answers will be connected to your identity in any way.

This survey has the potential to be really informative, but it will only work if you respond! The more people who take the survey, the more informative it will be, even if you didn't avoid gluten for a single day. If not very many people respond, it will be highly susceptible to "selection bias", where perhaps the only people who responded are people who improved the most, skewing the results.

Matt will be sending the survey out to everyone on his mailing list. Please complete it, even if you didn't end up avoiding gluten at all! There's no shame in it. The survey has responses built in for people who didn't avoid gluten. Your survey will still be useful!

We have potential data from over 500 people. After we crunch the numbers, I'll share them on the blog.

Great piece on Jozen Cummings, author of Until I Get Married. Check out the link below!



Click here for the Washington Post article.

And they say there aren't any good single black men..

"Taking my breath away is a requirement...on a regular basis." Dr. Grant

Love!

I’m still fighting a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder (namely, I’m unmotivated to exercise and thinking eating chocolate might make the sun come out), so this morning I went looking for a kick in the butt.


I found “The Commitment of a Lifetime,” which I wrote in January 2007, a few months before I got to goal. Reading it helped me see how in recent months I’ve slipped into the “motivation mindset,” thinking I need motivation to be successful. Motivation, shmotivation! Commitment is the cure for what’s ailing me. I need to recommit to being healthy and keeping my weight off. If I’m not “motivated” to move or I’m not “motivated” to eat the right thing, commitment says, “Lynn, just do it anyway!”


So today I am recommitting to maintenance, something I knew four years ago would be the most challenging part of my journey. First order of business? Put on my workout clothes (I don’t want to) and go into my workout room (I don’t want to) and pop in a Jackie or Leslie tape (I don’t want to) and get my sweat on. So what if I don’t “want” to? I’m doing it anyway because that’s what commitment is: doing.

The Commitment of a Lifetime (from Jan. 2007)

Goal. Maintenance. Lifetime. The three-word process Weight Watchers uses for the next phase of my weight-loss journey. Losing weight was the easy part. Keeping it off? Well, that’s a whole different beast.

As of this week I’ve lost 153 pounds, more than half myself, and instead of a size 32, I am an 8. I still have a few pounds to go, but I’m not sure how many since my goal is based on my waist size, not a number on the scale. I’ll explain in a minute.

It's taken me two years to reach this point. Two years of forgiving, accepting, not accepting, and learning. A lot of learning. I could earn a Ph.D. from everything I’ve learned these last eight months. Yet the education of Lynn continues.

The physical transformation of anyone who has lost a significant amount of weight pales in comparison to the psychological transformation that must take place in order to maintain weight loss. Committing to losing weight was easy, and as I marched down the scale, I embraced new eating habits and new foods, and I learned all I could about nutrition. Then I met some people from Weight Watchers who had recommitted to losing weight after gaining back most or all of the weight they’d previously lost. I asked them what happened and they all said they didn’t commit to maintenance. They went back to their old ways of eating more and moving less. Successful weight loss, they realized, is a lifestyle change, not a temporary diet. It’s more than food. It’s how our bodies move and feel. It’s about strength and metabolism. So I started to think of the program beyond food, and my goal morphed from the scale to the body.

Just because someone is thin does not mean they are healthy and fit, the same way that being overweight doesn’t mean you can’t have excellent cholesterol levels and strong muscles. The scale is not the best gauge of fitness. Waist size and body fat levels are much better indicators. I’ve met my body fat goal of less than 25 percent, but I’ll officially be at goal when I lose one more inch off my waist.

I’m not a joiner of anything. I even do the Weight Watchers program online because I’m more comfortable doing things alone. But I knew if I didn’t want to be a statistic I’d need to commit to an even greater level of fitness than my walking routine. This meant I needed access to gym equipment. I don’t have the room or the cash to have it in my house, so with some trepidation I joined a gym.

The feeling most engrained in my head from my days at 300 pounds is embarrassment. That didn’t disappear just because the weight was gone. At the gym, I wanted to be an invisible entity – slap on my headphones, hop on a treadmill, maybe lift a few weights. I would slip in unnoticed and leave unnoticed. Within a few weeks, however, a new feeling emerged. Confidence. I became comfortable in the physical space of machines and bodies and equipment. People were kind, and the staff gently encouraged me to reach beyond my original fitness goals. When I started developing muscles I didn’t know I had and finding hip bones and rib bones I’d thought were hidden away forever, I tried to thank one of the staff for his help. He simply smiled and said, “It was all you.”

I began to protest, but then it hit me: I’m the only one who gets me up in the morning, throws my bed hair back in a bun, and schleps off to the gym. I’m the only one who makes my legs pump the elliptical or the bike. I’m the only one who lifts my body into a chin-up and muscles my way through butterflies and pullovers and triceps pulls. And finally I realized that I was the only one who lost my weight and I’m the only one who can keep it off. I needed confidence to see that, and with confidence comes trust. The next step is for me to trust that I can keep this journey going for a lifetime.

I’m still surprised sometimes when I look in the mirror. It’s not easy wrapping my brain or eyes around 153 pounds gone, but it’s not so hard that I will forget the me of two years ago who was embarrassed and lacked confidence. She’s a part of my past now.

Goal. Maintenance. Lifetime. Bring it on.

गते शोको न कर्तव्यो भविष्यं नैव चिंतयेत्।

वर्तमानेन कालेन वर्तयंति विचक्षणाः॥

English translation of Sanskrit Quote:

One should not regret the past. One should not worry about the future.
Wise men act by the present time.

Some people have remarked that the blinded challenge method I posted is cumbersome.

Reader "Me" suggested:

You can buy wheat gluten in a grocery store. Why not simply have your friend add some wheat gluten to your normal protein shake.

They sell empty gelatin capsules with carob content to opacify them. Why not fill a few capsules with whole wheat flour, and then a whole bunch with rice starch or other placebo. For two weeks take a set of, say, three capsules every day, with the set of wheat capsules in line to be taken on a random day selected by your friend. This would further reduce the chances that you would see through the blind, and it prevent the risk of not being able to choke the "smoothie" down. It would also keep it to wheat and nothing but wheat (except for the placebo starch).

"Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he told parishioners at a Baptist church in Montgomery Monday shortly after being sworn in. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

"...once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support."

Natural cures are found though the circulation system. The circulatory system of the human anatomy is in many respects a transportation system. Oxygen fixated upon red blood cells in the lungs is transported in the bloodstream to every cell in the body. The wastes eliminated by cells are conveyed through the bloodstream to the excretory system, which excretes the wastes but saves the blood cells for further utilization. Nutrients are also conveyed from the intestine to the cells through the bloodstream.
When circulation of the blood is impeded, the body is besieged by problems. Upon the delay of nutrients or oxygen, cells die from the lack of sustenance. Upon the impediment of blood flow, efficiency of cellular waste eliminanation is greatly reduced, and upon the accumulation of waste matter due to cellular dysfunction, health problems develop.
This would lead some people to conclude that increasing the rate of circulation will decrease  the chances of problems developing inside the body. The method that comes to most peoples minds as appropriate for accelerating the circulation is exercise.

The Perfect Genetic Storm: Synthetic DNA and the Gulf Blue Plague




Excerpt:

The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably eating up the methane gas. It appears that engineered designer genes have also been used to remove the gas just as they have been used to consume the oil. The common denominator is that neither of these microbes are natural microorganisms. This should come as no surprise.

Microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara stated,

“Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane. The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”

It sounds to me that this created synthetic genome microbe far exceeded the engineering and programming expectations.

According to a Fox Business report,

“This discovery offered a rare glimpse into the remarkable abilities of an obscure family of microbes in the depths of the Gulf”.

I agree. It is scientifically incomprehensible that any natural microorganism could do this and synthetically engineered microbes are definitely obscure by comparison.

University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye, who has been independently analyzing methane from the Gulf of Mexico, also agrees with me. She said,

“It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”

So it has, Samantha. It was specifically engineered and its “superhuman” genetics were created synthetically.

In a January 7, 2011 article, the UK Register wrote how the scientists were particularly

“surprised at the speed with which the bacteria consumed their enormous meal”.

They also brought up the fact that earlier studies elsewhere in the world suggested methane levels around Deepwater Horizon would be well above normal for years ahead. It’s remarkable what highly engineered designer genes can do.

On January 6, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported how the study’s leaders boldly stated that rates of methane decomposition after the Gulf oil spill

“were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet.”

That’s because these are not natural microbes. You can’t compare apples to grapefruit.

TRACE ELEMENTS ADDED TO THE GULF

In the same CS Monitor report, University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye stated how

“[The Gulf] is not well stocked with trace elements the bacteria need to survive – among them, copper, which bacteria specifically use to deal with the methane. Shortages of copper, as well as other trace elements, likely would have slammed the brakes on the exponential growth in bacterial populations needed to get rid of the methane in fewer than four months.”

The same applies to hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that consume oil, except that iron is needed more than the other trace elements. Since copper and iron are not prevalent mineral elements normally found in the Gulf of Mexico, the synthetic bacterium eating both the oil and the methane would not be able to do so at the remarkable speed they have without such essential earth elements. The only possible way these synthetic bacterium could have done this is by adding the required elements to the Gulf. Spraying a highly dissolved or colloidal mixture of trace elements onto and into the Gulf of Mexico would be absolutely required to accomplish this.

In our October 21, 2010 research article The Gulf BLUE PLAGUE (BP): It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature, we had revealed the abnormally high amounts of elements found in the Gulf and that it was being sprayed along with or separately from the oil dispersants. In August 2010, rain water samples were tested by the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana where rain coming directly from the Gulf had unusually high concentrations of iron, copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, and arsenic.

Without a doubt, the synthetically created bacterium introduced into the Gulf of Mexico to consume the oil and gasses were – and continue to be – fed these essential trace elements. Otherwise, they could not have thrived or reproduced at the accelerated rate they have. The continued spraying in the Gulf by aircraft and by boat is not Corexit or other oil dispersal chemicals. Consider the current spraying to have the same effect of adding liquid fertilizer to your crops.

SYNTHETIC MICROBES MUTATING NATURAL MICROORGANISMS

In early December, 2010 the research vessel WeatherBird II, owned by the University of Southern Florida (USF), went back to the Gulf of Mexico for follow-up water and core samples. As reported by Naomi Klein on January 13, 2011 in Hunting the Ocean for BP’s Missing Millions of Barrels of Oil,

“…these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented …evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities…”

This “bizarre sickness” in the indigenous Gulf microorganisms is the direct result of the synthetic microbes that are still creating genetic sicknesses by mutating the DNA of the natural microbes. We had alerted our readers to this in DNA Mutations Confirmed in Gulf of Mexico on September 28, 2010 when we stated,

“DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”

Tampa Bay Online gave further insight to this in an interview with Dr. John Paul, an oceanography biology professor at USF, regarding the oil plume they had discovered 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle:

It was found to be toxic to microscopic sea organisms, causing mutations to their DNA. If this plankton at the base of the marine food chain is contaminated, it could affect the whole ecosystem of the Gulf.

“The problem with mutant DNA is that it can be passed on and we don’t how this will affect fish or other marine life,” he says, adding that the effects could last for decades.

In Naomi Klein’s article, she describes how Paul introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to Gulf water samples and what happened shocked him. The responses of the organisms “were genotoxic or mutagenic”. According to Paul, what was so “scary” about these results is that such genetic damage was “heritable,” meaning the mutations can be passed on.

Genotoxins pass on genetic changes to successors who have never been exposed to the original gene. Healthy microorganisms are then genetically changed and will pass on their DNA mutations to their descendants. This is a genetic chain-reaction as each mutated microbe interacts with and affects other microorganisms, especially with regards to the food chain:

“…the phytoplankton, the bacteria, and the [microorganisms] that graze on them – the zooplankton – seem to be the most potentially impacted.” – Dr. David Hollander, USF Marine Geochemist: December 6, 2010: Video interview on WeatherBird II.

______________
"DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”

Geoengineering the Gulf with mutant bacteria they have not told the public about. Is this why this disappeared so fast from media coverage? Because based on this it is safe to assume this was done deliberately to conduct this experiment. Is this now why BP will continue to make deals to drill in the Arctic and elsewhere, because they can now spill to their heart's content in skirting environmental laws and spending to adhere to safety regulations because they can unleash this genetically mutated synthetic bacteria to eat it all up without revealing the effects it has on our oceans, marinelife and humans? The effects of this are incomprehensible.

Self-experimentation can be an effective way to improve one's health*. One of the problems with diet self-experimentation is that it's difficult to know which changes are the direct result of eating a food, and which are the result of preconceived ideas about a food. For example, are you more likely to notice the fact that you're grumpy after drinking milk if you think milk makes people grumpy? Maybe you're grumpy every other day regardless of diet? Placebo effects and conscious/unconscious bias can lead us to erroneous conclusions.

The beauty of the scientific method is that it offers us effective tools to minimize this kind of bias. This is probably its main advantage over more subjective forms of inquiry**. One of the most effective tools in the scientific method's toolbox is a control. This is a measurement that's used to establish a baseline for comparison with the intervention, which is what you're interested in. Without a control measurement, the intervention measurement is typically meaningless. For example, if we give 100 people pills that cure belly button lint, we have to give a different group placebo (sugar) pills. Only the comparison between drug and placebo groups can tell us if the drug worked, because maybe the changing seasons, regular doctor's visits, or having your belly button examined once a week affects the likelihood of lint.

Another tool is called blinding. This is where the patient, and often the doctor and investigators, don't know which pills are placebo and which are drug. This minimizes bias on the part of the patient, and sometimes the doctor and investigators. If the patient knew he were receiving drug rather than placebo, that could influence the outcome. Likewise, investigators who aren't blinded while they're collecting data can unconsciously (or consciously) influence it.

Back to diet. I want to know if I react to wheat. I've been gluten-free for about a month. But if I eat a slice of bread, how can I be sure I'm not experiencing symptoms because I think I should? How about blinding and a non-gluten control?

Procedure for a Blinded Wheat Challenge

1. Find a friend who can help you.

2. Buy a loaf of wheat bread and a loaf of gluten-free bread.

3. Have your friend choose one of the loaves without telling you which he/she chose.

4. Have your friend take 1-3 slices, blend them with water in a blender until smooth. This is to eliminate differences in consistency that could allow you to determine what you're eating. Don't watch your friend do this-- you might recognize the loaf.

5. Pinch your nose and drink the "bread smoothie" (yum!). This is so that you can't identify the bread by taste. Rinse your mouth with water before releasing your nose. Record how you feel in the next few hours and days.

6. Wait a week. This is called a "washout period". Repeat the experiment with the second loaf, attempting to keep everything else about the experiment as similar as possible.

7. Compare how you felt each time. Have your friend "unblind" you by telling you which bread you ate on each day. If you experienced symptoms during the wheat challenge but not the control challenge, you may be sensitive to wheat.

If you want to take this to the next level of scientific rigor, repeat the procedure several times to see if the result is consistent. The larger the effect, the fewer times you need to repeat it to be confident in the result.


* Although it can also be disastrous. People who get into the most trouble are "extreme thinkers" who have a tendency to take an idea too far, e.g., avoid all animal foods, avoid all carbohydrate, avoid all fat, run two marathons a week, etc.

** More subjective forms of inquiry have their own advantages.

As most of you know, I am hyper vigilant about everything I eat, and going out to eat is second only to a party that is the most challenging to my resolve. You can make an educated guess about what ingredients are in certain dishes, ask the server to ask the chef to prepare something without oil, and order sauces and dressings on the side, but unless the recipe and prep is laid out in black and white, a restaurant food’s calorie/fat/carb/fiber count is usually a crap shoot. That’s why when I find something I know is in my food comfort zone, I stick with it, time after time after time.

On Friday, New Guy and I had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, North Country Brewing Co. in Slippery Rock. I’ve been going there for a couple of years and I always get the hummus and a salad. Hummus and salad, hummus and salad, hummus and salad until two weeks ago I stepped out of my comfort zone and tried the bean burger without the bun. The verdict? Eh…it was OK. Next time I’ll order it without the chili sauce on top. It was a little too spicy for this Norwegian palate.

Normally I have gone back to my comfort zone, but there was one other thing I’ve been hankerin’ to try: the Portabello ‘Shrooben. “Grilled portabellos topped with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese & our homemade Russian dressing. Served on grilled rye.”

I love Reuben sandwiches. Light rye, dark rye, pumpernickel…I don’t care. I love that sandwich. I remember the first one I ever ate. I was 6 or 7 years old. Dad had taken us to a Blue Angels show in Minneapolis and when we got home, he made Reuben sandwiches. The only thing I ever saw my dad make were cheese omelets (which are divine…I still can’t make them as good as he does), so it was fun to watch him make sandwiches for all of us that night. It was also the first time I’d ever eaten sauerkraut, one of the best tasting foods in the world, IMHO.

I haven’t eaten a Reuben in years, convinced it wouldn’t be the same without a cured meat, which I no longer eat. But every time I go to North Country, I look at (and drool over) that dang sandwich. So Friday I tried the Portabello ‘Shrooben, and it seriously was the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time. It was as satisfying as the risotto George’s girlfriend ate on “Seinfeld,” if you know what I mean.

The only thing “heavy” about the sandwich was the bread. However, they grilled it on a dry grill. No butter, just as I’d requested. I also ordered the dressing on the side. Granted, it didn’t have the saltiness that comes with a cured meat, but it was as close to a fabulous Reuben that my vegetarian heart could hope for.

That's not my thumb in the way. That's me giving it a thumbs up, but wow, it makes my sandwich look really tiny!

What a week! Lots of exciting stuff going on and it’s kept me from writing. This trend will continue for awhile, but I’ll still check in here a few days a week. Promise!

First of all, a big hello to new Lynn’s Weigh readers! Thank you for all your comments and emails since the article “8 Amazing Blogger Weight-Loss Transformations” showed up on Yahoo on Monday. Many of you had similar questions, so I’ve added a Frequently Asked Questions page link at the top. On the FAQ page you’ll find links to blogs I’ve written about how I started, what others say about the journey, loose skin, and food.

Second, grandbaby #3 is due in three weeks! I think it’s a boy, but Cassie, Matt and especially Claire thinks it’s a girl. Claire really wants a sister.

Me and Luca the Cheeseball

Cassie at Christmas. She's popped exponentially since then :)

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a condition characterized by the frequent occurrence of abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, bloating and/or gas. If that sounds like an extremely broad description, that's because it is. The word "syndrome" is medicalese for "we don't know what causes it." IBS seems to be a catch-all for various persistent digestive problems that aren't defined as separate disorders, and it has a very high prevalence: as high as 14 percent of people in the US, although the estimates depend on what diagnostic criteria are used (1). It can be brought on or exacerbated by several different types of stressors, including emotional stress and infection.

Maelán Fontes Villalba at Lund University recently forwarded me an interesting new paper in the American Journal of Gastroenterology (2). Dr. Jessica R. Biesiekierski and colleagues recruited 34 IBS patients who did not have celiac disease, but who felt they had benefited from going gluten-free in their daily lives*. All patients continued on their pre-study gluten-free diet, however, all participants were provided with two slices of gluten-free bread and one gluten-free muffin per day. The investigators added isolated wheat gluten to the bread and muffins of half the study group.

During the six weeks of the intervention, patients receiving the gluten-free food fared considerably better on nearly every symptom of IBS measured. The most striking difference was in tiredness-- the gluten-free group was much less tired on average than the gluten group. Interestingly, they found that a negative reaction to gluten was not necessarily accompanied by the presence of anti-gluten antibodies in the blood, which is a test often used to diagnose gluten sensitivity.

Here's what I take away from this study:

1. Wheat gluten can cause symptoms in susceptible people who do not have celiac disease.
2. A lack of circulating antibodies against gluten does not necessarily indicate a lack of gluten sensitivity.
   
3. People with mysterious digestive problems may want to try avoiding gluten for a while to see if it improves their symptoms**.
4. People with mysterious fatigue may want to try avoiding gluten.