Posts

Showing posts from December, 2011

Ground meat treats: Zucchini and onion meatloaf

Image
A cousin of the meatball ( ), the meatloaf is a traditional German dish. The recipe below is for a meal that feeds 4-8 people. The ground beef used has little fat, and thus a relatively low omega-6 content. Most of the fat comes from the 1 lb of ground grass-fed lamb in the recipe, which has a higher omega-3 to omega-6 ratio than the regular (i.e., non-grass-fed) ground beef. The egg acts as a binder. Leave the potato out if you want to decrease the carbohydrate content; it does not add much (nutrient numbers are provided at the end of the post). - Prepare some dry seasoning powder by mixing salt, parsley flakes, garlic powder, chili powder, and a small amount of cayenne pepper. - Grate one zucchini squash and one peeled potato. Cut half an onion into small pieces of similar size. - Mix 2 lb of very lean ground beef (96/4) with 1 lb of ground grass-fed lamb. - Add the dry seasoning, zucchini, potato, onion and a whole egg to the ground meat mix. - Vigorously mix by hand until you get a

Protein powders before fasted weight training? Here is a more natural and cheaper alternative

Image
The idea that protein powders should be consumed prior to weight training has been around for a while, and is very popular among bodybuilders. Something like 10 grams or so of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) is frequently recommended. More recently, with the increase in popularity of intermittent fasting, it has been strongly recommended prior to “fasted weight training”. The quotation marks here are because, obviously, if you are consuming anything that contains calories prior to weight training, the weight training is NOT being done in a fasted state. (Source: Ecopaper.com) Most of the evidence available suggests that intermittent fasting is generally healthy. In fact, being able to fast for 16 hours or more, particularly without craving sweet foods, is actually a sign of a healthy glucose metabolism; which may complicate a cause-and-effect analysis between intermittent fasting and general health. The opposite, craving sweet foods every few hours, is generally a bad sign. One key

Make getting and giving vaccines a holiday tradition

I'm finally joining the #VaxDrive after being inspired by all the tweets and, especially, from Dr. Rubidium's post . Honestly, I was looking for something just like this to write about, because I've found myself completely disenchanted with this year's holiday season. It has become the season of buying junk for people who don't need it and receiving junk from people who have no idea what to buy for you. It's stressful, it's wasteful, it's expensive, and it's turned into a stupid tradition. Why not just skip it? Instead, save some lives, buy measles vaccines by clicking here . It only costs a dollar to vaccinate each child, or you can vaccinate a village for $500. A whole village! Another thing: first, go get a flu shot yourself and, second, go help an older person (your mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa) get him or herself a high-dose flu shot. Why a high-dose flu shot? Why not just a standard dose? Here's why: As recently as November, I attended th

Finding your sweet spot for muscle gain with HCE

Image
In order to achieve muscle gain, one has to repeatedly hit the “supercompensation” window, which is a fleeting period of time occurring at some point in the muscle recovery phase after an intense anaerobic exercise session. The figure below, from Vladimir Zatsiorsky’s and William Kraemer’s outstanding book Science and Practice of Strength Training ( ) provides an illustration of the supercompensation idea. Supercompensation is covered in more detail in a previous post ( ). Trying to hit the supercompensation window is a common denominator among HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE) users who employ the software ( ) to maximize muscle gain. (That is, among those who know and subscribe to the theory of supercompensation.) This post outlines what I believe is a good way of doing that while avoiding some pitfalls. The data used in the example that follows has been created by me, and is based on a real case. I disguised the data, simplified it, added error etc. to make the underlying method rel

Want to make coffee less acidic? Add cream to it

Image
The table below is from a 2008 article by Ehlen and colleagues ( ), showing the amount of erosion caused by various types of beverages, when teeth were exposed to them for 25 h in vitro . Erosion depth is measured in microns. The third row shows the chance probabilities (i.e., P values) associated with the differences in erosion of enamel and root. As you can see, even diet drinks may cause tooth erosion. That is not to say that if you drink a diet soda occasionally you will destroy your teeth, but regular drinking may be a problem. I discussed this study in a previous post ( ). After that post was published here some folks asked me about coffee, so I decided to do some research. Unfortunately coffee by itself can also cause some erosion, primarily because of its acidity. Generally speaking, you want a liquid substance that you are interested in drinking to have a pH as close to 7 as possible, as this pH is neutral ( ). Tap and mineral water have a pH that is very close to 7. Black cof