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Low-Fat, Plant-Based Diet Protects the Prostate

If you are a man who wants to avoid hav­ing prostate prob­lems, eat less fat and more fiber and catch some rays. The stan­dard Amer­i­can diet, which is high in fat and ani­mal hor­mones and low in fiber, is a major risk fac­tor for prostate prob­lems. The lack of vit­a­min D, the sun­shine vit­a­min, is anoth­er risk fac­tor. To get vit­a­min D, go out in the  sun­shine.

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Why Trolls Attack!

For many years, I’ve worked as a tech­ni­cal edi­tor and writer. As a result, I’ve had the priv­i­lege of proof­read­ing the work of some tru­ly bril­liant, high­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple. I’ve also had to write high­ly tech­ni­cal mate­r­i­al that was then reviewed by experts. The review process is usu­al­ly cor­dial and intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing. Edu­cat­ed peo­ple are gen­er­al­ly grate­ful when you fix their typos and their dan­gling par­tici­ples. They tend to be tough but fair when crit­i­ciz­ing your writ­ing. They gen­er­al­ly stick to a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion of facts. So I was unpre­pared for the kind of com­ments I got from the gen­er­al pub­lic after I start­ed blog­ging.

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Americans Eat Like Sumo Wrestlers

It’s no sur­prise that so many Amer­i­cans look like sumo wrestlers. They eat like sumo wrestlers! As this video explains, ordi­nary peo­ple from the East Asian coun­tries, includ­ing Japan, eat a diet that is based heav­i­ly on steamed rice and veg­eta­bles. To pack on the pounds, sumo wrestlers eat a dish called chanko-nabe, which is high in fat. They also drink a lot of beer. The goal is to eat a lot more calo­ries than they burn up in their train­ing.

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Starches Are the Solution to Your Weight and Health Problems

For years, the best­seller lists have been dom­i­nat­ed by books urg­ing peo­ple to eat plen­ty of meat and fat but to shun car­bo­hy­drates. The Atkins Diet led the parade; but there have been many imi­ta­tors, such as the Zone, the South Beach Diet, the Paleo Diet, and the Dukan Diet. Even some of the veg­an-ori­ent­ed books encour­age peo­ple to avoid starch­es. Yet the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence shows us that human beings are specif­i­cal­ly adapt­ed to thrive on a starchy diet. So I was delight­ed to see that the title of Dr. John McDougall’s lat­est book is The Starch Solu­tion. He explains some­thing that nutri­tion­al epi­demi­ol­o­gists and experts on clin­i­cal nutri­tion have known for many years, name­ly that human beings stay nat­u­ral­ly slim and healthy on a diet based on unre­fined starch­es and veg­eta­bles.

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Constipation Can Cause Pants-Wetting and Bed-Wetting

Back in Novem­ber 2011, I explained that chil­dren who “refuse” to have bow­el move­ments in the pot­ty or are “hold­ing” their stool for days on end aren’t mis­be­hav­ing, they’re con­sti­pat­ed. Recent­ly, I saw some pub­lished stud­ies (click here and here) that showed that con­sti­pa­tion can also cause pants-wet­ting and bed-wet­ting acci­dents. Those stud­ies showed that the prob­lem could often be solved by giv­ing the child lax­a­tives. A bet­ter solu­tion would be to feed the child a diet that would pre­vent con­sti­pa­tion to begin with: a plant-based diet with no dairy prod­ucts.

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Yet Another Silly Study About White Rice!

If you look at arti­cles about East Asian coun­tries in issues of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, you will notice two things. One is that many of the peo­ple in East Asia were eat­ing a lot of white rice. The oth­er is that only the rich peo­ple and the sumo wrestlers were over­weight. That’s because the rich peo­ple and the sumo wrestlers were eat­ing some­thing besides rice and veg­eta­bles.

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Why I Think the Paleo Diet Is Silly

Late­ly, many nutri­tion gurus have been pro­mot­ing what they call a “paleo” diet. The word “paleo” comes from Pale­olith­ic, which lit­er­al­ly means “ear­ly stone age.” They think that human beings ought to be eat­ing a diet like the diet that peo­ple ate dur­ing the ear­ly stone age. Per­son­al­ly, I think that the argu­ments in favor of the paleo diet are sil­ly, for sev­er­al rea­sons. I think that the appeal of the paleo diet is based on ado­les­cent male fan­tasies of being an unwashed, unshaven big game hunter who gets to spend time with a hot-look­ing maid­en in a fur or leather biki­ni. Real men don’t eat quiche. They eat bron­to­burg­ers:

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American Medicine Is Still Stuck in the 1950s!

In the musi­cal Guys and Dolls, the char­ac­ter named Ade­laide has a psy­cho­so­mat­ic cold. As she explained,

The aver­age unmar­ried female
basi­cal­ly inse­cure
due to some long frus­tra­tion may react
with psy­cho­so­mat­ic symp­toms
dif­fi­cult to endure
affect­ing the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract.

Guys and Dolls is a quaint arti­fact from the 1950s. Nev­er­the­less, the Amer­i­can Psy­chi­atric Association’s Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­u­al still gives doc­tors per­mis­sion to say, “It’s all in your head” if they can’t imme­di­ate­ly fig­ure out what’s wrong with you. An arti­cle of mine that was pub­lished in the jour­nal Med­ical Hypothe­ses says that doc­tors can­not make that kind of diag­no­sis with­out mak­ing an error in rea­son­ing. For that rea­son, I argue that the APA should remove con­ver­sion dis­or­der and som­a­ti­za­tion dis­or­der from the DSM. The fifth edi­tion of the DSM (DSM-5) is due in 2013.

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Low-Fat, High-Carb Diets Reverse Insulin Resistance

Dr. George Lund­berg, the for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of JAMA, gra­cious­ly invit­ed me to coau­thor this edi­to­r­i­al on how starchy, low-fat diets reverse insulin resis­tance!

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