The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    Richard Day's picture

    NUTRITION VS. DRUGS

    By Richard Day on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 11:06pm |

    Popeye and Olive Oyl in Fleischer Studios's A Date to Skate (1938

    I have been plagued with gout for more than a few years.

    The diagnosis came from Dr. Wiki and a hundred other on-line sources.

    My feet began swelling up a few years ago on occasion and then the situation appeared every single day.

    My hands would also swell up.

    In anticipation of the New Year I decided to make a change in my diet.

    I awoke one day, months ago with a craving for spinach. Where that craving came from I have no idea.

    I always hated spinach.

    Where in the hell would this craving come from?

    Anyway, four or five months ago I began purchasing cans of spinach (no name spinach goes for 88 cents a can), carrots (something I have always hated), broccoli which I have always despised, grapefruit (until I was about 20 years of age I always thought they were greatfruits), oranges, apples, strawberries and sweet potatoes (yams when no sweet potatoes were presented at the market).

    I awoke a few days ago to discover that I no longer have gout.

    Now awhile ago I hit upon a nutrition link; attempting to find some magic foods to relieve my gout.

    Well, canned spinach and sweet potatoes are listed as almost perfect foods.

    I had always purchased orange juice, vegetable juice and prune juice. But the juices had no affect with regard to the swelling in my extremities.

    Decades ago I just used my expensive juicer. Do you realize how sweet carrot juice is?

    There is no other explanation for this change in my physical being other than changes related to diet.

    At the end of this short piece I include this magic nutritional link.

    Believe it or not tomatoes are listed as being mildly inflammatory.

    Oats (which still make my breakfast two or three times a week) are inflammatory.

    Oh and I have to add that the only other change in my diet regimen includes one aspirin a day. I began that five months ago or so.

    A social worker had told me that doctors had some drugs for this condition but that I would find myself pissing all the time.

    Well, changing your diet can affect and even cure certain problems we may experience in our waning days.

    I know the value of exercise.

    As a kid I walked and rode my bike.

    In my teens and beyond I was stuck walking an awful lot; which I resented.

    Later I jogged—for 15 years actually.

    As I found myself sick and 50 I walked again—two hours every day.

    My condition of gout and depression and other problems caused me to greatly decrease my walking once again.

    I just wish to underline the fact that the foods we eat have an astounding affect upon how we feel.

    I am not part of some important study.

    I am not a doctor.

    I am not selling some silly book on nutrition.

    I went to NY and visited with LisB in September of last year. I wrote about it. We both lost a true friend.

    For some reason—I think related to airplane rides—my gout went away for a week.

    But this new diet, appears to have done the trick.

    And I will tell you one thing for sure; I shall be strong to the finish cause I eats my Spinach!

     

    http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2629/2

     

     

    The end

    Comments

    Well DickDay, there is some controversy surrounding whether or not Popeye was actually eating Spinach or some other leafy green member of the vegetable kingdom  which is beyond the scope of this particular blog entry.

    But be that as it may (and it may), I was talking with my mother about this very thing. She is 90 and takes no drugs at all now but pays attention to her diet. We were talking about cardamom which I put into my Pulla.  Turns out it is very beneficial, so I will be making more as soon as I can.

    Also it turns out I cannot eat oat meal or oats in anything as I have a reaction to them. Organic or not.  

    But diet plays a very big roll in how I feel, that is for sure.

    And I can't handle spinach though. Tried for years. Just makes me sick.

    But glad it works for you.

     


    by cmaukonen on Fri, 02/03/2012 - 11:24pm

    I still eat oats and tomatoes too.

    I don't know what it is.

    I like to use this nutritional site though. Kind of informative as to vitamins and all.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 2:57am

    Yeah dd!

    It's amazing how what we eat has such an impact (sooner or later) on our bodies/mind/spirit.  The truth is too often that the food we ingest is killing us and on the way stealing our quality of life.  So, begs the question - are we being murdered or are we committing suicide?

    The most important thing is that you are living a better life, no longer just surviving.

    And for that I thank you and God, because you truly are a blessing to all who 'know' you.

    Your post made me joyful and grateful.  Appreciate you and your posts.heart

      


    by Aunt Sam on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:11am

    Cooking can be a fun hobby.

    Causes no one any harm.

    And more fruits and vegetables cannot hurt!


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 3:25am

    I actually love fresh spinach and broccoli. In high school they served us this overcooked green stuff that was barely spinach anymore. But that's great news. 


    by Donal on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:16am

    Broccoli lightly cooked and then covered with just the tiniest bit of cheese is not too bad.

    I also cut it up and throw it in tomato sauce and add to some pasta.

    It is nice to try new things; shake up the weekly menu.


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 3:08am

    FINISH DOES NOT RHYME WITH SPINACH!

    I spent a good part of my childhood thinking there must be a word 'finich' because obviously finish doesn't rhyme with spinach.  It didn't occur to me that whoever wrote the Popeye theme were just a hack, who couldn't find a rhyme for swoon if they were standing under a June moon at noon waving a spoon at a loon.  And, "I yam what I yam?"  WTF??! Sweet potatoes?!! I HATE sweet potatoes!! ... Sorry, I digress.

    Now, DD, all kidding aside, you know I'm a friend, so I will tell you this straight;  you have allowed anecdotal evidence to wreak havoc with your rational thought process.  I have seen this happen all too often.  I can't tell you how many times I've had people insist that all my arthritis problems could be cured if I'd just stop eating potatoes and tomatoes. They tell me how their aunt or grandmother was crippled by arthritis and they stopped eating tomatoes and they were immediately dancing around the room and clicking their heals.  I ask them for proof that tomatoes cause arthritis and they give me some mumbo-jumbo about the medical community and drug companies suppressing the evidence and then say, 'but it's a proven fact, everybody knows that nightshade plants cause you to have arthritis.'   I say, that's just an old wives' tale and that there is no scientific evidence that tomatoes 'cause' arthritis symptoms.  Sure, some people may have food allergies, but that is a lot different that tomatoes causing arthritis.  (I don't even bother explaining that Spondylitis is a different form of inflammatory arthritis, and not the same thing as their grandmother's arthritis, but again, I digress.  (And that reminds me, there is a hilarious website I came across once called     TomatoesAreEvil.com. check it out.)  

    Anyway, even though the notion that nightshades are responsible for arthritis is all over the internet, (mostly at health food and vegetarian sites), there are still some web sites that will tell you the truth. 

    My point, and I'm pretty sure I have one, is that what appears to be cause and effect to us, can not always be trusted.   We all tend to observe disparate threads of information and then attempt to sew them all together to form an explanation for whatever we don't understand. But that's not the scientific method, the method which has allowed America to become great,  It's the way the religious Right insists that the world is only 6,000 years old. Do NOT start thinking like a Right-winger, DD.   Keep demanding proof and facts before coming to conclusions like the good Progressive we all know you to be. Don't become an anecdotal evidence addict.  STAND UP FOR TRUTH, SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN WAY!

     

    P.S. This was not in any way written with my tongue in my cheek.  (Although, I do admit, my fingers were crossed just now when I wrote the previous sentence.)


    Your friend to the finich, 

    MrSmith1


    by MrSmith1 on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 1:02am

    Actually I was relieved to find out I do not need to eat cauliflower. ha


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 3:04am

    Or brussel sprouts. Yuck.


    by MrSmith1 on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 8:11am

    While we're nitpicking, I'll add my nitpick: the yams you buy in most supermarkets are actually sweet potatoes. True yams are typically only going to be found at "world" markets and some farmers' markets.

    As for your comment about anecdotal evidence, in general I think you're right, but I'll play devil's advocate and say that:

    1. Different people react differently to different foods so I think it's possible for tomatoes to be a cause for inflammatory-based diseases in some people and still not show up as being statistically significant in a research study that's not sufficiently large (and robust).
    2. There's something to be said for the placebo effect. Even if tomatoes aren't resolving the problem, if you think they are, that might be enough to help. Combine that with positive feedback of exercising more, etc., and you have a possibly potent force on your hands.

    by Verified Atheist on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 11:14am

    Verified, you do not want to get me started about what a f*cking *ss Norman Cousins was with his g*d d*mn placebo effect book. It's all well and good to encourage people to think positively and mildly delude themselves when they have a headache or a food allergy, but to give people false hope that they can cure a serious chronic disease simply by watching comedy movies and taking mega-doses of vitamin C, is, in my opinion, criminal.  Especially when, inevitably people discover that in spite of their placebo and positive state of mind, their disease continues to progress. Then they begin to wonder why they are so cursed. Why did it work for this guy and not work for me?  That leads to serious depression and a sense of hopelessness and despair.

    Cousins set the perception of AS (Ankylosing Spondylitis) back 50 years with his f*cking "Anatomy of an Illness", in which he claimed to have cured himself of AS by watching comedy movies and taking mega-doses of vitamin C.  It was a lie, and he was a fraud.

    He did not have AS, it was a misdiagnosis; every rheumatologist I've ever met agrees that Norman Cousins never had AS; the symptoms he lists in the book are wrong. Even the websites that are devoted to keeping his legacy alive, have scrubbed the words Ankylosing Spondylitis from their sites, and now say he just had some vague inflammatory illness. ... and Cousins had to know he didn't have AS, maybe not right away, but certainly at some point in his life, and he never retracted what he wrote in the book.  So it's still out there, being quoted by lazy journalists and bloggers who write about health and decide they need to do a blog about humor and illness and the placebo effect.  For years, the mention of Ankylosing Spondylitis in that book was many people's only knowledge of the disease.  And it was a completely false one.  Ankylosing Spondylitis can not be cured by laughter and vitamin C.  What Cousins is actually writing about is a way of COPING, not curing.  THAT is what laughter is, a coping mechanism. It makes you feel better, but feeling better is not curing. It is changing your context, not your content. That is the crux of the problem I have with Cousins and all the people that espouse the placebo effect as a panacea.

    I'm certainly the anecdotal proof against Cousin's theory.  I write comedy, I watch comedy movies constantly. I take lots of vitamin C.  I even, at one point, deluded myself, that Cousins' book would help me be cured.  It didn't.  It couldn't. None of what he espouses affects the disease mechanism of AS.   It affects my attitude, not how the disease I have progresses.  Hope is a wonderful thing, but false hope is devastating to the psyche. You can argue about what wonderful contributions Cousins made in other areas, but in my opinion, that is all wiped away by the damage he did in that one book. 

    Sorry for the rant, but I take Cousins' betrayal of people with AS very seriously.


    by MrSmith1 on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:38pm

    You'll probably be happy to know that I don't know who Norman Cousins is, and I've never read his book. wink

    That said, I agree wholeheartedly that relying solely on the placebo effect, especially if there are other medicines with a proven track record is bad medicine. As for food allergies, I have a mild one that I'm about 90% convinced is all in my head, but I still can't get it out of my head: when I eat overly ripe bananas or carrots (and possibly other fruits/vegetables), my throat closes up a little. It's enough to make me uncomfortable, but nothing very serious. This food "allergy" started shortly after I had my wisdom teeth taken out (using only a local anesthetic, something I came to regret during the process), and I wonder if my mind decided to start playing some trick on me at that time. All pure hypothesis, mind you. Over-ripe bananas and carrots do undergo a chemical change, so it is possible there's something truly chemical going on, but I didn't have the problem until my 20s. But yeah, I'm with you that something like the placebo effect can only help so much. My bigger point was that if something works for you, and if there's no reason to suspect it's doing any harm, then keep doing it. (The tomatoes example is borderline: your body might miss that lycopene which is said to help reduce the chances of developing some forms of cancer1.)

    1Friedman M, Levin CE, Lee SU et al. Tomatine-containing green tomato extracts inhibit growth of human breast, colon, liver, and stomach cancer cells. J Agric Food Chem. 2009 Jul 8;57(13):5727-33. 2009.


    by Verified Atheist on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:49pm

    "My bigger point was that if something works for you, and if there's no reason to suspect it's doing any harm, then keep doing it."

     

    I couldn't agree more.


    by MrSmith1 on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 1:34pm

    Different people do react differently.

    And people develop allergies later on in life.

    And, you might take the same vegetable grown in a different environ and it will contain different amounts of nutritious substances since all soils are not the same.

    I just decided to write about one important thing in my life that changed.

    I have not yet contacted Kevin Trudeau! hahahaha


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:56pm

    Very similar story here, Dick.

    About 4 years ago I woke up with what I was sure was a broken toe. Just incredibly, screamingly, tender. Stayed for about a week, then.... faded. Eventually, they told me it was gout. I drank no wine and hardly any booze, and they told me that more and more people "just get it" now.

    Well. My Doc was an idiot (truly) and he let me got through about 5 more attacks, each one of which was so bad I couldn't really walk - just hop. But eventually they gave me Allupurinol, and ... no attacks since. A great relief. So, a point for drugs.

    That said, at the same time, my bowel pretty much blew up, nearly killed me. (Perhaps as a result of eating fast food for 40 years?) Anyway, I began to eat right, even cook a bit. And just as you said, the body definitely seems to me to signal that it wants certain foods. Like you, I now devour carrots, yams, spinach by the bucket. Weird. Lately, my body's been driving me towards nuts and beans. (Really.) Damn fine foods. ;-)

    Anyhoo. A vastly improved diet, combined with a couple of key drugs (like Allupurinol), and then a heavy working out and exercise schedule, and my body is recovering really well from a bad few years. The working out, with weights, has - as a book told me - done incredible thing to further reduce pain. I'm almost entirely pain free now (which I wouldn't have believed even a year ago), the gut works great, I'm benching 350 lbs, resting heart rate <50, even able to run a few miles on these knees. Last on my list is to drop some pounds, tighten up the core. 

    But diet + Allupurinol + some hard weight-lifting = A Happier Boy.

    Glad to hear your regime! But yes, if you'd asked me years ago whether the body would guide you toward foods that worked well for it, I'd have laughed.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 10:11am

    Tis Q.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 10:19am

    This is actually why I wrote this.

    I wanted to hear similar stories.

    But yours...

    I feel good for you and I bet you have less depression and your woman has found a nicer guy to live with. hahahaaa

    Congratulations.

    I have a lot longer road to travel!


    by Richard Day on Sat, 02/04/2012 - 12:59pm