I’ve been back in Beijing a week. I’ve been eating lots of fermented food, which is easy to get, including fermented eggs (10 for $1.50) sold at a stand in a shopping mall. There is a bigger yogurt selection here than in Berkeley. Tsinghua University sells its own perfectly good yogurt (20 cents a serving). Every supermarket has a big pickle selection.
In Berkeley, as I blogged earlier, a few months ago I noticed that my nose was no longer runny. My Kleenex consumption, which had been about one box of Kleenex every month or so, was reduced to almost zero. (A reader of this blog had a similar experience.) No doubt this was due to eating much more fermented food. The runny-nose-absence has continued in Beijing.
Last year in Beijing, I had a runny nose. I used about one tissue packet per day. I ate almost no fermented food. So far so good. The interesting twist is that dirty city air has been linked to less runny nose. Air pollution, in other words, can have the same effect as fermented food. Last year, apparently, Beijing air wasn’t dirty enough to get rid of my runny nose.
I’m not joking. After I realized this, I felt a lot better about Beijing’s air, which I have long said is the worst thing about living here. Someday I will blog about the health benefits of smoking, which suggest the same conclusion.
The runny nose is probably allergies, which can vary in severity from year to year (and continent to continent). But if more smog fixes it, I’d say the cure is worse than the disease, seeing as how it reduces life expectancy by up to a couple years.
Smog “reduces life expectancy by up to a couple years”? Where did you learn that? I heard a talk a year ago about the effects of air pollution. It was really hard to show any effect. The only clear effect was for people who lived close to a highway and they had increases on the order of 30% in respiratory illnesses. That is a long way from a 2-year reduction in life expectancy. I told the speaker I was moving to Beijing. Unlikely to be harmful, he said.
off-topic, Seth, but it deals with self-experimentation, so I thought you’d be interested:
https://www.rawpaleoforum.com/journals/lex's-journal/
yo, if the eggs in question are pi-dan （皮蛋） be careful about eating too many; some are very high in zinc due to shortcuts in the fermentation process. others supposedly even have lead. they’re really delicious though–I almost want to go through a few brands and have a chem lab test for the aforementioned so i can eat them in peace.
This is probably the most discussed recent publication on the subject:
https://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/4/376
The finding is that up to 15% of the increase in life expectency in the US is attributable to better air quality. They compared particulate levels across cities. With your background, I’d love to see your critique of the method used.