"Severely criticised by their political opponents for neglecting their official duties, it was said that they had no thought but to live out their days in rural retirement."
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Friday, August 1, 2025
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Thursday, July 24, 2025
Board Certified Psychiatric Pharmacist with a PharmD not an MD says gluten might make some people crazy, cites unsubstantiated leaky gut syndrome
Not enough bread can make you crazy, too.
Mobile Alabama bread riot of 1863
... “I would have been sceptical if you’d told me I’d end up studying this connection,” says Kelly. “My line of thinking was therapy and medications; I didn’t know food and diet could actually be good medicine.” ...
“It’s challenging for someone to be diagnosed with non coeliac gluten sensitivity,” says Kelly.
Gluten was only introduced into our diets about 6,000 years ago. “The idea of breaking it down is really challenging for our bodies and it never breaks down completely,” says Kelly.
When a person with gluten sensitivity eats something with gluten in it – even “healthy” brown pasta or bread – their body produces antibodies to fight against the gluten.
While two types of protein join to make gluten, gliadin and glutenin, it is the former that induces an immune response. This can cause inflammation and contribute to damage in the gut, which leads to the development of “leaky gut”.
The weakened gut wall allows the antibodies to gliadin to leak from the intestine into the general bloodstream. “When it gets across the stomach lining, the body sees it as a foreign substance for some people,” says Kelly.
Consequently inflammation may occur in other parts of the body, including a person’s brain. When the antibodies’ fight gets to the brain, symptoms that develop may include not only foggy thinking, and lack of energy, but also poor emotional control, anxiety, mood changes, hallucinations and/ or seizures, that are often resistant to treatment with medications.
“There’s a specific peptide sequence called 33-mer [found in wheat] that is highly associated with an immune response,” says Deanna. “If you look at the structure of that, it’s very similar to one of the structures of the GRINA receptor, a receptor in the brain. So our bodies potentially can’t tell the difference.”
It is one of Kelly’s theories that in some people their immune system might be attacking some of the tissue in the brain because it looks like gluten.
“We have a paper showing that these antibodies to the receptors to the brain are higher in people who have the antigliadin antibodies.” ...
Of course, not everyone with psychiatric and neurological issues is gluten sensitive. ...
Friday, July 18, 2025
Gluten-free lasagna
A medical diagnosis of celiac disease is no barrier to making lasagna in my experience. These gluten-free pasta sheets by Chickapea, made from chickpeas and lentils, fit the bill perfectly.
Make your tomato sauce from whole peeled tomatoes and fresh carrot, celery, onion and extra virgin olive oil, and your ragu from ground meat without fillers.
Grate your parmigiano reggiano cheese from wedges, and use fresh mozzarella if that's in your recipe.
Substitute a seasoned whole milk ricotta sauce with nutmeg for the béchamel normally made with wheat flour and butter, and you are good to go. I save salted pasta water left over from making other shapes of Chickapea pasta for other dinners to dilute the ricotta.
Your gluten-free family member will thank you for the effort.
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Happiness is ice in July
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Friday, June 6, 2025
Don't believe the haters, seed oils are safe, and canola oil is especially good for you
Saturday, May 31, 2025
Happiness is a cauldron of fat beef
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Happiness is Hodge, Samuel Johnson's cat
Sunday, May 11, 2025
The comedy of maternal love is that its seismic intensity is expressed, most of the time, in totally mundane drudgery
Elizabeth Bruenig for The Atlantic, here:
... My mother used to pick me up from day care in paisley dresses or
broomstick skirts with slouchy boots, hair hot-rolled and blown out,
with the lived-in scent of faded perfume: full glam for an eight-hour
workday with a 45-minute commute on either end and then a second shift
at home, cooking any number of demanding meals—fried chicken, smothered
pork chops, breakfast for dinner with biscuits and gravy—and then
helping me and my brother with our homework and loading up the
dishwasher, all before she took her makeup off. I used to sit beside her
and talk with her while she took her evening bath, watching while she
rinsed her mascara off and finally breathed. ...
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Friday, May 2, 2025
Decades worth of research concludes that happiness is the good mood you get from social interaction
Which is fine if you're an extrovert.
But in former times happiness at its root was simply thought of as good fortune, or as escaping misfortune and accidents, which seems to me a more inclusive definition.
25% of a given population, after all, is composed of introverts, who feel drained by social interaction, not enriched. But they are just as happy to have escaped being hit by a car as any one else.
The field of psychology still seems biased toward the extroverts.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Monday, April 7, 2025
Happiness is Benny Bell's McCarthy and McGinnis
McCarthy is dead, McGinnis don't know it McGinnis is dead, McCarthy don't know it They both lay dead on the very same bed But neither one knows that the other is dead.
Before he died, this fellow McCarthy One Saturday night got drunk at a party He took a swing at Officer King The next day he carried his head in a sling.
McCarthy was always good to his wife He had to be so, or I pity his life Although she was only half his size She'd jump on a table and scratch out his eyes.
On Saint Patrick's Day he was there A shine on his shoes and oil on his hair He wore a green jacket and really looked swell With a genuine shamrock in his lapel.
One day he was taking his wife to a dance A dog took a chance and snapped at his pants McCarthy got angry and started to sneer Then lifted the mongrel and bit off its ear.
He drank like a fish, he ate like a savage His favourite dish was corned beef and cabbage He fought like a tiger, he hit like a mule And boy could he knock off a good game of pool.
McCarthy and Mister McGinnis next door Could never agree, they were always at war Said he to McGinnis, "The day when you die I'll buy everybody a strawberry pie."
Said Mister McGinnis to Mister McCarthy "You may be tough, and healthy and hearty But if you don't shut up and behave You'll soon be asleep in a seven foot grave."
One stormy night, they met in the hall To settle their argument once and for all Now one used a shovel and one used a rock And both were in heaven at seven o'clock.
So McCarthy is dead but McGinnis don't know it McGinnis is dead and McCarthy don't know it They both lay dead on the very same bed But neither one knows that the other is dead.
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Trump tariffs make even middling Italian-sourced extra virgin olive oil out of reach for average Americans
I ran out of this olive oil a few weeks ago. I had shepherded my three liter can over the winter to make it last. I paid $40 for it, now it's $55.
Fuhgeddaboutit.
Monday, March 24, 2025
Friday, March 21, 2025
Friday, March 14, 2025
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Happiness is a succinct visualization of the enduring attraction of liberalism
A liberal suddenly becomes a conservative after getting mugged on the street. Why is there no law and order, he wonders. We need to hire more cops.
But the mugged conservative gets arrested for his own mugging by mistake, and becomes a libertarian in self defense, wondering how the law could be so incompetent as to deprive the victim of his freedom!
Then, however, the arrested libertarian loses his job because his employer finds out about the arrest, and so he becomes a liberal again because of his boss' ignorant prejudice.
But wait, there's more!
At this point the liberal hits on a novel solution. I'll start my own business, he says, that'll show 'em! I'll be the master of my own destiny!
But once faced with all the insane regulations and restraints on his business activities, the liberal, longing to be free of them, becomes a libertarian again.
He's very successful despite all the problems, and eventually marries and has a bunch of kids, who promptly turn him into a conservative again because he wants children who will behave themselves.
Unfortunately they don't, getting into one scrape after another. The medical bills start rolling in and the conservative realizes he needs help paying them or he's not going to turn a profit!
He decides to ask the government to help him with all of those bills. It's unfair, he tells himself, when he has to pay them all by himself when he pays more in taxes than most people do, at which point the conservative has become a liberal again.
Monday, February 24, 2025
Happiness is Roberta Flack, may she rest in peace
“I always say that ‘love is a song’ — meaning that music reaches beyond age, race, nationality and religion to touch our hearts”.
Quoted here.
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
And I woke up humming this for some reason today
Happy landings on a chocolate bar!
(don't let the sickos in the comments ruin it for you)