ERICOPOLY

http://www.drmirkin.com/diabetes/9897.html The researchers found that taking caffeine causes blood sugar and insulin levels to rise even higher after meals. If your blood sugar rises too high, sugar sticks to cells. Once sugar is stuck on a cell membrane, it cannot be released and is converted to a poison called sorbitol which destroys that cell. High levels of insulin constrict arteries to cause heart attacks and act directly on the brain to make you hungry, on your liver to make more fat, and on the fat cells in your belly to pick up that fat.

Buffett said that the government saved Berkshire Hathaway from falling.

It was easy to get wiped out in the late 70's as interest rates soared trying to get inflation under control. In boomtime economies like Alberta, the pain was huge and widespread. Provinces/states (like Arizona) where homebuilding and all its support industries were the leading employers, it was a double whammy. I don't have any real estate (don't plan to either). Maybe FUR or something like that, but that's all. Your comment on interest rates -- they don't matter if you are cash flow positive and on 30 yr fixed. So stay away from short term or adjustable rates, and stay away from areas where the business of building homes is key to employment. Seems like sound advice that is easy enough to follow. Anyhow, the question was about the 1970s and I was merely answering his question. This time around you might be right with regards to rents.

For example, it would be instructive to find out what happened to real estate values in the 1970s when inflation was a serious problem or in Turkey or the Latin American countries when they had their inflation problems. My concern is that all asset prices fall in response to a rise in long term interest rates (which are in turn a response to higher inflationary expectations). I have a copy of Schiller's Irrational Exuberance, Vol II at home. He points out that real estate rose in the 1970s, but in some years the rise was say 7% vs a CPI of 9%. So it rose at a slower rate than CPI part of the time. However, if you have 50% equity in the property, then your ROE is 14% vs 9% CPI. So a real gain of 5%. Were the inflation rate to be 0%, then there would have likely been no real gain whatsoever. Inflation is good for the levered. Not to mention it's good for cash flow (rents going up and interest expenses are fixed). Could be different next time, I don't know. But in the 1970s it was hard to do poorly in real estate.

I was looking at that earlier today. Once the salt comes down, the sugar will follow (or it will taste too sweet). The salt industry spokesperson said that the government shouldn't make the choice, that people will just add more table salt to it. The first thing I thought of was: "Great! So then nobody will miss out, right?"

That's a major strike against the privatization of basic scientific research. The studies that get done are the studies that get funding. Would the drug and food companies willingly fund studies where the thesis is based on something that would put them out of business?

Congratulations! Second that. Congrats! (by the way, to correct something I said earlier, fat burning cycle doesn't happen when hypoglycemic in the presence of insulin. The insulin has to be first absorbed by the body's cells, only then will the fat burning cycle be possible. So in my case, I go to bed and progressively get more hypoglycemic as the night rolls on (so I'm not getting hot), but then eventually the last of my bloodstream insulin gets absorbed and then the fat burning cycle starts which cooks me and makes me sweat. I wake up feeling relatively okay because my blood sugar has come back from the fat burning cycle).

I agree. Keeping people sick to grow GDP, and make it easy to win their votes (their cognitive functions are in a semi-hibernative state from the very insulin spiking that is making them fat). I'm convinced this diabetes is a hyberation trait -- insulin spiking from refined carbs slows you down physically and cognitively, to conserve energy in the winter when food is scarce. The low blood sugar makes the fat burning cycle easy to attain because a minimum of effort (even sleep) depletes what's left of the glucose in your blood. So you stay warm because the fat burning cycle generates heat. I honestly can't think of any other mechanism through which you could conserve as much energy as possible while staying warm at the same time -- isn't that basically what hybernation is all about? It's in the winter when you eat the sugar-mush from the berries you gathered all summer. So a populace that eats a steady diet of sugar much will slip into a hibernation like state both physically and cognitively, ready to believe that even Palin is smart enough to lead us, and if they don't like something they lack the energy and motivation to organize and fight it. Other parts of the world where the diet is better must look at Americans and think they are genetically just really slow -- but it's just hibernation. Look at what happens to other animals Bears hibernate. They eat tons of food in winter and generate body fat. They have thick fur. Once snow accumulates, they stop eating and retire do their dens. Their blood sugar drops and they slip into hypoglycemia -- triggering the fat burn that will keep them warm steadily all winter. In order to make their fat last, they slow their cognitive function way down (brains use energy) and keep completely still (heavily lethargic). They just sleep. Not sure what wakes them up. Perhaps when the weather warms come spring they get night sweats and wake up drenched in sweat? I believe that with global warming I heard somewhere that bears were waking up early from hybernation -- it would mesh well with the night sweat theory. They don't sleep for a set amount of time, they sleep until they wake up drenched in sweat.

What do you think of this natural sweetener? It contains no fructose. Xylitol, or "birch sugar". It is not made in a lab or anything like that. They use it in chewing gum in Europe. It does not promote tooth decay. http://www.3dchem.com/moremolecules.asp?ID=306&othername=birch%20sugar Here it is described on a different page: http://www.ultimatelife.com/CatSweet.htm Third, in spite of the fact that it is a pure carbohydrate, it is metabolized very slowly. This helps prevent sugar "highs" and "lows" experienced by people who have diabetes, hypoglycemia, chronic fatigue syndrome, candida (yeast infection) or any condition caused by sugar imbalance.

lmgtfy click here :) Quote from first the link: "They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose. Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate." I wonder what would happen if they tried feeding ethanol to the cancer cell. Maybe one can get all the phytochemicals and antioxidants from drinking wine with none of the cancer-promoting fructose from drinking grape juice.

Does she have no cavities too? Interestingly, I never got cavities despite all the sugar I consumed. my father never got cavities. my grandfather didn't have cavities despite his sweet tooth. Evolved to eat heavy amounts of blueberry tar in the ice cave!

(I went to a doctor a few years ago after my wife complained about the sweating and was checked out for cancer CAT scanned. Aids tests, etc...) They have now gone away completely after watching the Gary Taubes and Prof Lustig videos and eliminated all refined carbs. My concentration, cognitive function, and memory has also improved. My energy is way up -- I feel more vital. I found some research from the University of Washington linking elevated insulin levels with poor cognitive function and impaired memory. I also found that hypoglycemic people get night sweats (the fats get metabolically active, just like if you've been exercising for 20 minutes). I think what happened is my blood sugar level spikes from all the refined carbs and my insulin gets pumped up so it all goes to the fat cells. Then I run out of blood sugar around 3am and my body decides it's time for a "snack" and starts metabolizing my fat, which generates heat (same as if I was exercising). So my pancreas is very sensitive to blood sugar apparently, so I can't tolerate refined carbs. Like the Pima Indians, except my pancreas probably gets too overly enthusiastic so my insulin likely spikes and my fat cells then gobble up all of my energy leving me hypoglycemic (the chronic fatigue) and thus I burn off the fat when I'm sedentary. My grandfather's parents being from northern Finland, this may be no accident of evolution. Can you imagine living up there before central heating and insulation in the dead of winter, long dark days where you are sedentary (you're not going to go walking around much without flashlights). So being designed such that excess blood sugar goes right to the fat cells leaving me hypoglycemic is a bit of an advantage, because that way I can stay warm while being sedentary in my cave! Diet of northern Finland? Well let's see... wild blueberries (high in fiber and not very sweet), wild game, mushrooms, fish. Not a whole lot of refined carbohydrates. But if you're sitting there with cache of wild blueberry tar or however they would have refined it for consumption during the winter, it would be great to be designed like this! And during summer when you eat in the non-tar form (with the fiber), you don't get this problem of being chronically fatigued. So, ironically when my blood sees more than a little pinch of sugar I get sedentary in my ice cave to wait out the winter, and when I cut way down on the blood sugar I get hyperactive (summer) so I can go gather more berries for the next winter. The refined carbs we're blasted with today would tend to make a person like me insulin resistant over time -- my grandfather, father, and uncle are all type 2 diabetic. Shazaaaam!!!! Nothing like a good narrative that makes sense. I might add this also might lead me to be better as saving money. I evolved to squirrel away blueberries all summer and make tar with it so that I could survive a winter covered in snow and ice with no food but what I saved. I have a hoarding instinct to survive a future of scarcity, and this transfers to accumulation of money in the modern society. I am afraid to spend -- frugal by evolution. The lower brain function in the face of refined carbs (high insulin) might be some sort of hybernation instinct to conserve energy in my ice cave, but when taken with lots of fiber during summer I'm very energetic because I've got a lot of blueberry gathering to do while food is abundant in order to make tar to survive the next winter in my ice cave (and I dare not eat any of the tar for fear I won't have enough). The chronic fatigue is also convenient if you are in hybernation mode -- you won't wiggle around much. You conserve energy this way. I should write a paper about my condition, and call it "Thirty Seven Years In An Ice Cave". Refined carbs (blueberry tar) causes me to go into a hybernating state: 1) chronic fatigue (movement wastes energy) 2) brain fog (brain activity wastes energy) 3) night sweats (keep warm while being sedentary) Semi-sweet blueberries taken fresh in summer with all the fiber 1) very energetic 2) high brain function -- I have my wits about me I can't eat blueberry tar in summer or else I go into a hybernating state and won't survive the next winter. So I've evolved to have a hoarding instinct, and in modern times I hoard money for a future perceived scarcity.

It's somewhat of a coincidence that I'm hearing more about Crohn's lately (after hardly knowing anything about it). Yesterday my neighbor was telling me that people are getting treatment by exposing themselves to hookworms, of all things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy There was an interesting first person account of using hookworm to treat severe asthma that was posted several years ago on Kuro5hin.org. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971 It was a more controversial topic when this guy originally did it. It is pretty fascinating account to read. Apparently this approach works on many autoimmune diseases by giving your immune system something else to attack (instead of your immune system attacking its own body) Weird! I was just listening to a This American Life episode today called Enemy Camp 2010, where one of the stories involved a dude who cured his severe allergies by giving himself hookworm. The guy now sells hookworm that he collects from his own feces as a cure for allergies and other autoimmune ailments. He says he's astonished that more people aren't lining up to buy hookworm from him for things like Crohn's. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/404/enemy-camp-2010 Regarding hookworms -- I just realized something today. On my mother's side (Scottish), my two uncles are both diagnosed with hemochromatosis -- too much iron in their blood. They have to go in on a regular basis to have blood drawn. Oh, and one of their children (my cousin Sarah) was recently diagnosed with MS. MS is an auto-immune disorder. Is it any coincidence -- do you see the genetic dependency here for hookworms?

I am a hybrid 50% Scottish (my mother's family settled in Australia after leaving Scotland) and 50% Northern European (my last name is Swedish as my father's father was born in Finland as was his wife (a Swedish Fin). Blueberries (high in antioxidants) are wild there, but they are not that sweet and they are tough (full of fiber). We went there to visit relatives when I was in 4th grade and I had the worst diarrhea after eating a "normal" sized portion (because I am accustomed to eating what comes from grocery stores). So... my father now has pre-diabetes, his brother is type 2 diabetic, and their father was type 2 diabetic. None of them are fat! What does that say about the link between obesity and type 2 diabetes? Remember my night sweats? My theory is that my night sweats are inherited from my father's side. Far up north in Scandinavia the days are short in winter and cold as hell. So while sleeping, to prevent hypothermia, it makes sense that our genes evolved to metabolize fat no matter what to stay warm. However I ate enormous amounts of junk food (my father did not, nor did his brother, nor did my grandfather) so I had the most energy in my fat cells going to bed at night and thus I'm the one who gets the night sweats and they do not. The Pima Indians likely (being from the Southwest) did not evolve with such long and cold nights, as they have longer light in winter. Even summer nights in the Southwest are warmer than summer nights in northern Finland. I don't know what the hell my ancestors did up in northern Finland in the middle of winter, where daylight only comes for a short period of time each day. Probably a lot of huddling, as they didn't have flashlights to go walking around at night. So ironically, perhaps it's evolution in the sedentary lifestyle of far northern Finland during frigid winter temperatures that causes me to stay slim. Yet people accused the Pima of being sedentary! How funny is that hypothesis? So one of the big problems with having my genes, is that I have been putting myself at risk of type 2 diabetes without realizing it, because I haven't been obese which is the canary in the coal mine. My body hides the problem, so it's not obvious that there is a problem going on. This gives me a false sense of security so I go on eating my junk food. Norwegian women tend to be thin -- are they cooking off their fat at night? Any guys with some experience on that care to share a testimonial -- are they hotter?: How about the Beach Boys: "And the northern girls with the way they kiss, they keep their boyfriends warm at night". Well, what if it wasn't the kissing that is keeping their boyfriends warm at night?

BTW, I've lost 18lbs in the last two weeks You must be losing a lot of fluid? Are you bleeding? Fat has about 3,500 (working from memory) calories per pound. In 14 days, you haven't lost 18 lbs of fat. I never said it was all fat. The first lbs that come off easily on any diet. Low carb or low calorie are always water, not fat or muscle. I will not loose 18lbs in the next 2 weeks. --Eric Sorry for my comment. You might just very well have lost a ton of fat. I didn't understand this all that well until watching the Gary Taubes presentation. I never got fat and ate heaps and heaps of refined carbs. But lately (past week) I've stayed completely away from refined carbs and I'm feeling very energetic despite eating far less (I'm staying away from sugar completely, and I'm eating my salad AFTER I eat the meat portion). And I don't feel hungry. For years I've suffered from night sweats -- literally waking up soaking wet at 3 in the morning. Our white sheets quickly get discolored on my side of the bed from all the sweating, so it's quite disgusting too. Now I've finally solved the riddle. My doctor by the way was no help at all on this. It was this message board! The Gary Taubes video talked about how fat cells are metabolically active. What's been happening to me for years is I overeat refined carbs and put on more fat during the day, and then my fat cells get activated at night trying to burn off all that fat -- probably because it's difficult to be a hunter/gatherer if you're confined to one of those golf carts that obese people drive inside the store no less when shopping at walmart because they can no longer walk. I'm just lucky that my body is designed to burn off the fat during sleep! People who aren't designed to burn quite so much at night would pack on the pounds cumulatively. The SeattleTimes ran an article last summer on night sweats: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2012221342_sweats28.html They have no clue whatsoever. Useless, just like my doctors who could offer no explanation for the night sweats. This Berkshire board has made me wealthy and healthy, now I might live long enough to be wise. Healthy, wealthy, and wise!

That's not a bad suggestion, but they're not the only people in the economy getting subsidies. I only care about reducing fructose consumption. This isn't about free trade and tariffs on sugar from other nations... that's a different topic altogether than just health. Getting more sugar imported from overseas sources (relative to domestic sources) in my opinion does not drive down total sugar consumption, so it's not the problem that I'm immediately interested in.. Okay, I'm with you now on the corn subsidies. Our local grocery store just let my wife know that they won't be supplying pasture raised&finished meat any longer until they can find a new supplier. ThunderingHooves.com, their previous supplier, is going out of business. They just can't compete against the corn subsidy. The feedlots feed corn to the animals, loaded in fructose, and the animals create vLDL in their livers so their meat and dairy will clog your arteries. I don't want beef so delicious "it's to die for", I want beef that I can still enjoy when I'm 100. There's all the other things they get from grass too (like beta carotin, omega-3, etc...) I realized today that our increased rates of cancer can only be avoided on a low fructose diet avoiding sweet fruit -- drink unsweetened herbal tea for the antioxidants: The only place in the body where fructose is used (outside of the liver) is by cancer cells. Cancer cells use fructose to propagate. Without fructose, no cancer propagation. Is it any accident of evolution then that while fruits are poisoning us with cancer propagation, they are also simultaneously giving us the antidote? Yes, I mean antioxidants. The fruits evolved with a given balance -- the fruit wants us to eat it in order for us to spread it's seed far and wide, but the fruit doesn't want to kill us in doing so. The longer it keeps us alive, the more fruit we will eat and the more seeds we will spread. Thus, it gives us the antioxidant for selfish reasons. It's a symbiotic relationship. Our seed companies have been cultivating fruits to produce more fructose (because people prefer to purchase sweeter fruits), and this is throwing off the evolutionary balance between the fructose and the antioxidant. So we get more cancer. The only recourse is to either pick my fruit before it ripens (or buy the cheap produce from Safeway full of carcinogenic pesticides), or buy the organic fruit with the carcinogenic imbalance of fructose to antioxidants. I suppose I will eat avocados and get my antioxidant dose by drinking herbal teas without sugar.

So Berkshire Hathaway owns Dairy Queen and significant stakes in Coca Cola, Kraft Foods, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Costco, and shares of other drug companies... They are making profits via getting you sick, and then selling you drugs for your symptoms. Is this what Ben Franklin meant by "doing well by doing good"? I doubt it. Then they openly discuss their desires to sell Coke into muslim countries that don't drink alcohol. That sounds like growth for their drug stocks to me! At what point does this become immoral? Unethical? He talked once about not wanting to invest in tobacco companies -- this is worse than tobacco. I imagine there is no way that Warren and Charlie realize what they've done.

I kept myself interested for several more hours today thinking about this. It's weird how something "natural" evolved in such a manner that suppresses our satiety, and I don't believe in coincidences when it comes to evolution. So I have a hypothesis: the fruit evolved to produce a sweetener that suppresses satiety so that we'd eat more of it (therefore spreading the seeds at a faster rate). Alternatively, perhaps we just eat more after sugar exposure because our bodies knew that fruits contained less concentrations of calories and thus our appetite evolved to eat a whole lot of them (rather than feeling full after a few bites). Then I read that meals high in protein INCREASE satiety: http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/articles/2009/05/satiety-stuffed-with-protein.aspx That makes sense too -- the appetite evolved to eat less of the foods rich in calories. So preloading the high-protein meal with sugar is a bait and switch game.

That's not a bad suggestion, but they're not the only people in the economy getting subsidies. I only care about reducing fructose consumption. This isn't about free trade and tariffs on sugar from other nations... that's a different topic altogether than just health. Getting more sugar imported from overseas sources (relative to domestic sources) in my opinion does not drive down total sugar consumption, so it's not the problem that I'm immediately interested in.. The Japanese diet is high in carbohydrates -- that didn't present a health problem (prior to WWII). The introduction of sugar presented the health problem. I was being exceeding careful and in doing so totally sidestepped the problem with high fat and high calorie food. That's why I selected a tax based on fructose/fiber ratio and taking into account volume.

Thanks for tips. I will certainly pick that one up given my own experiences with adding omega 3. Incidentally, have you hear of any studies done comparing a population like the Japanese who got the omega 3 through the diet, versus a New Zealander who tries to "cheat" by taking omega-3 supplements? I had a long drive to Sun Peaks today, and did a lot of thinking on that topic. Suppose you eat a big helping of french fries (high omega-6 yet low in omega-3) and then wait twenty minutes and chase it down with omega-3. Does that work? If your cells will take in the omega-6 in the absence of omega-3, will they hold out the "NO VACANCY" sign when the omega-3 comes floating by in the blood stream? Or conversely, suppose you waited longer before taking the supplement. Now all of your cells are holding out the "VACANCY" sign, but this time it's the omega-3 getting gobbled up. How do supplements really work in these systems where the body will accept one in lieu of the other? If you have too high a ratio in reverse (omega-3 to omega-6), what happens? Could you perhaps do even worse harm? I'd love to do research on this kind of thing.

In Washington State we have a guy named Tim Eyeman who fights just about every tax increase and gets voter initiatives started for repealing the tax. Anyways, everybody in the state knows his name. If you search seattletimes.com for the words "Tim Eyeman initiative" you'll get the picture. So anyways, my thinking is that a tax geared around the fiber:fructose ratio while also taking into account volume. Obviously the tax would be heaviest on candy, soft drinks, and juice because of the low fiber content. The reason why I think a fiber:fructose ratio tax would be more effective than Washington State's approach is that the problem isn't just in candy and drinks. There is also a broken incentive structure found in the fresh fruits that are sold. They intentionally cultivate sweeter apples with lower fiber for example. A Golden Delicious apple is to a crab apple as a french bulldog is to a wolf. The tax would encourage producers to cultivate less sweet varieties with more fiber. Watermelon is high in sugar yet low in fiber -- it's going to get more expensive on a relative basis! Want to make the fruit cheaper under the tax? Cultivate them for less sugar and more fiber -- undo a part of the problem. Make it healthy once again to eat a diet rich in fruits -- you shouldn't go to the grave early for eating fruit salad for goodness sakes!!! It also encourages frozen food producers to stop stripping out the fiber on purpose, because that's a big part of the problem once you move away from candy, soft drinks, and juice. Sorry, if it didn't freeze well or cook quickly -- live with it or actually prepare from fresh ingredients and cook (gasp) a meal for a change. The sweet varieties of fruit are sort of like vitamin fortified candy grown on trees. Until then, my favorite fruit has always been avocado anyhow. Now back to my reading -- I had an idea today in the car that exposing kids to sugar early on might make them enjoy alcoholic drinks more later on as adults (the hypglycemic thing). Clearly, somebody has already thought of that so I have found plenty to read about quite easily. The alcoholism runs in families -- but I wonder if it's related to the food on the table. After all, if alcoholics crave sugar it stands to reason that they'd put a ton of sugar on their breakfast cereal, drink lots of juice or soda with meals, coffee with heaps of sweetener, etc... Just a thought, and perhaps garbage... Another random thought: I remember strawberries tasting less sweet as a child because they'd pick them long before they'd produced their full complement of sugar. Today, we bought strawberries from the Costco in Kamloops, BC and they were among the sweetest and best I've ever tasted. It's the middle of fricken winter in Canada folks... I don't remember hunter gatherers flying fresh fruit in by jet during winter (the bullshit argument that fruits are nothing but healthy in large quantities because that's what hunter-gatherers ate).

I have to agree and many thanks to the person who posted the link to the Sugar: The Bitter Truth video. This is actually the most significant thing I've learned in years -- I never liked sugar much (too sweet for me), but never understood it as a poison, until now. I didn't know that consuming fructose would raise my vLDL level, didn't know it would cause gout and hypertension, and I didn't know that food makers strip out the fiber to make it freeze and cook faster. Dammit that's an evil combination! Look, this is all raising the profits of the food makers (High fructose corn syrup is cheap) while it's raising the costs of Medicare and Obamacare. The costs have been externalized. Shareholders of Kraft and Coca Cola are laughing probably because the government is going after the banks instead -- how many people are dead from this financial crisis? How many are sick? This is making me think more about socially responsible investing. Do you care about the money... what matters to you? We talked a bit about lending shares to shorts and some found that unethical, but this goes way beyond that. My suggesting: institute a tax on foods where a healthy balance of sugar to fiber is out of whack. Would this raise the cost of food at the store? Yes. Could people then buy as much house or as much stuff to fill their closet? No. But what's more important in life? What constitutes a standard of living... having more "stuff" or getting sick? I can hear it now... people would argue that such a tax would be "regressive", because it would "hurt" the poorest folks the most (you know, the ones that are dying the fastest from these very foods). Besides, this isn't a nanny state kind of thing. I grew up in a house where certain things were provided free (by my parents). If I "wanted" something, I was free to buy it... with my own money. Unfortunately, much of the external costs of processed foods high in sugar are being provided by our parents (or more precisely, our Uncle Sam). Why can't our Uncle refuse to pay for these costs and just say: "listen up kids, I provide a lot of basic services... but paying for the avoidable consequences of your high sugar and low fiber diet isn't one of them".

Unfortunately we don't actually live in a tax free world, which makes this much more complicated. Sort of. I would find it interesting to conduct a study on people who invest solely through their IRA accounts. My thinking is that you'd still hear them say things like "well it was a buy back when it was $10, but now that it's gone up a few bucks now so I'd recommend not buying it at these levels, but it has a little bit further to go so people who already own it should continue to hold".

It's been a few years since I last posted about this on this board, but I feel like we as men are due for a refresher: http://stupidcelebrities.net/wp-content/danica_mckellar_l1.jpg That's the girl who sat next to me in Linear Algebra, Fall 1995, UCLA Mathematics. Go bruins! (she is also known as Winnie Cooper -- remember the TV show "The Wonder Years").

Totally! Logically, "hold" is the same as "buy" in this game (in a tax free world). Psychology is different though from logic.