- Shio koji, a fermented food I haven’t paid enough attention to
- My experience of vegetarianism by Chris Masterjohn. “[After] a couple of weeks of eating red meat, my panic attacks completely stopped.” I suspect eating butter would have had the same effect — that the problem was lack of certain fats. A 2012 study found an association between vegetarianism and anxiety disorders (such as panic attacks).
- Higher latitudes, more multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis increases by a factor of 40 from low to high latitudes.
- Richard Nikoley’s six years of self-experimentation summed up
- Dangers of statins
- new major in Fermentation Science and Technology at Colorado State University. Smart!
“the adoption of the vegetarian diet tends to follow the onset of mental disorders”: as casual observation suggests.
Regarding the link to the MS/latitude correlation article, could I get the title? The link sends me to a login page but I don’t see a title or author. Thanks.
Seth: That’s odd. The title is “Latitude is Significantly Associated With the Prevalence of Multiple Sclerosis”.
Nikoley’s experience with resistant starch seems interesting, I’m going to try that out with green bananas and raw potato starch and see what happens
There’s a well known hypothesis, examined here, that MS was spread into the Faroes by British troops in WWII. (They’d gone there to garrison the island against the German navy, the Danes not having had time to send a garrison.) The argument is that rural people may have little resistance to micro-organisms brought in by the arrival of urban people. When I remember the spelling of the name of the chap who made the hypothesis, I’ll post it here.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/371519
Seth: Very interesting. It is consistent with the latitude finding if the latitude finding is due to better sleep at lower latitudes. Better sleep, more resistance to infection.
Kinlen: he offered the Faroes example as support when he put forward his hypothesis, aimed first at explaining cancer clusters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Kinlen
Chris M’s improvement could also have been (partly) from taurine in the meat.
While we can synthesise it, some people are not so good at this.
Taurine seems to be important for the brain, though its exact functions are unclear.
The b vitamins probably helped too…
Seth: Interesting idea, I would like to test it by varying my taurine intake and measuring brain function. I haven’t noticed any effect on brain function from changing how much meat I eat (from low to high or high to low…I’ve never gone to zero). Nor I have noticed any effect of changing my Vitamin B intake. In contrast, changing how much animal fat I eat has had easy-to-notice effects.
You can buy L-taurine as a supplement. Taurine is also a feature ingredient in Red Bull (don’t ask me why, but I’ll wager it helps with the energetic feeling)
I guess we have a situation where someone with vegan induced nutrient deficiencies will respond well to all sorts of animal foods, but if you are already well nourished with animal nutrient X, more of it won’t help.
Unless you are one of those who doesn’t do well making their own taurine, or converting beta carotene into vitamin A, etc.
Seth: Yes, it’s very plausible that I already get enough taurine but a vegetarian might not.
I’ve heard from a couple of sources that CoQ10 makes statins safer. Do you think there’s anything to the idea?
Seth: I don’t know anything about this, sorry.