Vaccines

I am a label reader. Whenever I'm thinking about buying food in a box, which is rare, I typically read the whole label to look for sinister ingredients. So when I got a booster vaccine for tetanus last week, naturally I asked for the product information.

Along with a nice dose of tetanus and diphtheria toxoids, my medial deltoid received 0.28 mg of aluminum, up to 0.3 micrograms of mercury, and up to 100 micrograms of "residual formaldehyde". I got the vaccine because I like being able to chew, but I wasn't able to lift my arm for several days. I don't know if that was due to an immune response to the tetanus and diphtheria (probably) or if it was caused by the aluminum, mercury and formaldehyde they injected into my arm.

We work with formaldehyde in my lab, and I can tell you it is not to be messed with. I had to take an entire training course just to use it, during which I learned that if there's enough of it to smell, it's toxic. 0.1 parts per million in the air is enough to cause a burning sensation in the mucous membranes. We always use it in the fume hood. Formaldehyde is a toxin, a carcinogen, and a teratogen (causes birth defects). So I'm sure you'll understand why I wasn't too happy about having 100 ug of it injected into my body.

I'm not criticizing the concept of vaccines, I just wish they'd make more of an effort to clean them up!

Exercise Didn't Keep Us From Getting Fat

One of the surprising things I noticed when I was poring over data from the NHANES survey (US CDC National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) from 1975 to 2006 is that the number of inactive people has diminished in that same time period from 50% to 24%. This is shocking to most people. We have this romanticized idea that in the 1970s people were more active, as if everyone chopped wood and walked 15 miles to work in the morning. The reality is, there were office jobs, housewives and cars without the large numbers of runners and gym-goers we have today.

Granted, NHANES data are self-reported and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, Chris at Conditioning Research pointed me to a study looking at changes in energy expenditure from the 1980s to the present in North America and Europe. It doesn't suffer from the same biases because it's based on direct measurement rather than self-reporting. Here's the executive summary: we're expending slightly more energy than we used to, partly because we exercise more and partly because it takes more energy to move our heavier bodies around.

I'm certainly not blaming the obesity problem on an increase in physical activity, but I do think we can safely rule out inactivity as the reason we've gotten fatter. In my mind, this only leaves one major possible cause for the obesity epidemic: changes in diet. Don't get me wrong, I think exercise is good. It has numerous positive effects on physical and mental health. But it's not as powerful of a tool for fat loss and general health as diet.

Anecdotally, I do know several people who lose fat when they exercise regularly. I also know some who don't lose fat when they exercise. Exercise and a healthy diet converge on some of the same metabolic pathways, such as sensitivity to insulin. But diet changes are far more effective than exercise at correcting metabolic problems. The reason is simple: the problems a person corrects with a good diet are caused by a poor diet to begin with.

A lovely UTI.

My cystitis has turned into a lovely Urinary tract infection. Geez, its terrible. Normally cystopurin or oasis sorts it out, but today I had to go to the doctor. I couldn't handle it any more. On top of that, The red team is playing at home too and I was about to chop my lower body off. So I have cefalexin to take 4 times a day. I hope they work quickly!

today was our little slimming world jaunt. I put on a pound this week, no surprise there. I always do around this time. Doesn't seem to matter what I do, I always gain. So I am not recording it, or feeling bad about it because I have eaten bugger all all week and know I haven't 'really' put on a pound. Next week will show up the loss. Pisses me off though.

I haven't eaten anything all day as I feel so crud. better go and prepare some tea or something.

Yesterday, today

I wasn't feeling too hot yesterday for some reason. I got up and nearly trod on one of our new kittens because they are now under our bed... and moving around too!

We had to do a tesco run for really random things like Salad Cream and pegs, shake and vac and black trousers. The most unconnected shopping list that ever was.

I had a mother of a headache by the time we got home, and the air was really heavy and full of storm... not that we had one though. We went to TB's house to sort her computer out again and then came home. I really wanted to go to sleep but time got away from me. I went to work and bought a bottle of red on the way home and ordered a curry. Its not good really, because I can eat a curry, easily. As long as I make sure I chew those prawns, then it slips down a treat. Rice is no problem for me covered in sauce!

I was all on my own, eating curry and chilling on the sofa watching telly. It was great. DS was in a show so DH and his Mum had taken him to do that for the evening, and as I had to work I couldn't get back in time for it. It made a change to have the whole house to myself... well nearly. Sue was upstairs in bed as she is not well at the moment, but Laszlo was out truck driving. All calm and quiet.

I was really tired by the time DH, DS and Granny got home, and I just wanted to go to bed. So thats what I did. I crawled into bed with a copy of OK and had a good read.

I don't think I ate anything else yesterday apart from the bottle of wine, curry and few crackers and humous at lunch...

Nothing much to report really.

Ho hum.

More Weight Loss Blogs

Read about three more bloggers who have had success losing weight here. One of them, is Shauna, pictured here. She used to weigh 350 pounds and now weighs 175. She's written a book about her weight loss journey and her blog is at The Amazing Adventures of Diet Girl.

Gluten Sensitivity

I'd like to point out an interesting post from Peter at Hyperlipid. He discusses a paper that uses a novel technique to look for immune activation in the gut in response to wheat gluten. For the nerds: they challenged patient gut biopsies with gliadin fragments (gliadin is one of the proteins that make up gluten) and looked for expression of interleukin-15 (IL-15), a marker of activation of the innate immune system. The innate immune system is an old system (evolutionarily speaking) that predates the antibody-producing "adaptive immune system" and nonspecifically defends against pathogens.

Biopsies from 5 out of 6 patients showed an IL-15 response to at least one gliadin fragment. The implication is that the majority of people have an immune response to wheat, even if they don't have Celiac disease. The reason they aren't diagnosed as Celiac patients is they don't have circulating anti-gliadin antibodies (and they presumably don't yet have severe structural damage to their intestinal tract as judged by biopsy or endoscopy), but as the paper shows, people can react to gluten without producing antibodies via the innate immune system.

As someone who regularly does Western blots, I can say I'm not impressed by the quality of their data, but if this is confirmed more solidly and on a larger scale it would be HUGE. As you know if you've been following the blog, the small intestine has a lot of important functions: besides absorbing nutrients and secreting enzymes, it also plays an important role in regulating satiety and insulin secretion by the pancreas and overall insulin sensitivity. It's not an organ you want to damage.

I hate cystitis...

...well at least I think that's what it is. I just get this terrible pain when I get stressed, and lets face it, its been a touch stressful around here these last few weeks.

So I am taking that horrible cranberry flavour salt drink made by canesten... Oasis? I think that's it. It certainly does the job, but I have run out, so am feeling a bit miserable.

Today has been quite good. Food wise, I was hungry when I woke up but after drinking my Berroca I was full again and didn't think about food until about 11:30 when I had a banana.

I had to go out this evening after work, so I knew I would not get dinner until late so I made a slice of toast, bunged some tinned chopped tomato and grated cheese on top and had that for lunch at about 3:30. DS was eating humous after finishing his several slices, piles of tomato and cheese combination as he was still peckish and I dived in aswell with 2 finn crisps and a couple of scrapes of humous.

So today's cals have been higher than of late at 760. I feel hungry now and I am going to have a lasagne that I defrosted this afternoon. I made it myself from scratch, so I don't know how many cals it has... but I have realised that as long as I eat only when I am hungry, and stay away from the BAD junk, then it doesn't really matter what the calorie value is. I like writing what I ate down, because I think it could help someone else thinking about the band, or with a band who wonders when they are at their sweet spot, but I think keeping track of all the cals gets me down if I do it every day. Its good now and again, and I haven't logged cals for a week or so on the daily plate, and I feel liberated.

I think to be honest I am there... I feel good, eat little, don't crave snacks and am losing weight. Sounds like my sweet place to me!