My Unremarkable Brain

It’s official: the ketogenic diet has been ranked the #1 Worst Diet of 2018.  Whuuut?   This ranking, combined with the boom in its popularity — “keto” is one of the most-googled terms of the year  — has led to lots of fun and sensational headlines about this “dangerous” “fad” diet.   As I have mentioned , I’m part of a one-year study on the MAD (Modified Atkins Diet), which falls under the broad umbrella of ketogenic diets, so I read the US News report with interest. I have to say, the article itself is pretty fair.  The sections describing ketogenic diets — Overview, Health and Nutrition, Recipes, and Do’s and Don’ts — all jibe pretty well with my own experience.  Interestingly, they are all largely positive, touting the diet’s success in clinical trials for both weight loss and diabetes control, and citing several studies along the way.  So why the low ranking? The ranking is based in the final section, where experts express give it low marks in several categories

Last night I subjected Judy to schmaltzy Christmas Classic, It’s a Wonderful Life (what can I say, I’m a big ol’ softie at heart).  You know the one: Frank Capra’s fairy tale for middle-aged men, in which gee-willikers nice guy George Bailey is rescued from the brink of suicide when an angel shows what life would be like without him. What always impresses me, though, is that the plot above doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie.  The first hour and a half is spent on backstory: who is George Bailey, and how did he get so low?  Really, the movie is a 90-minute tragedy, followed by a 30-minute comedy.   It amazes me that Capra gets away with this — hard to imagine a director pulling it off today.  But the film only works because of that 90 minutes.  As, time and again, George defers his dreams of world travel and big-time success for other obligations, we feel his pain and frustration. It’s the tragic half of the movie that makes George so relatable. But if Georg

’Tis the season for TV Specials, which were always my absolute favorite viewing as a kid.  When that rainbow-colored “SPECIAL” popped up on the black screen, spinning through space to the time of drumbeats, my heart swelled with anticipation. So I was thrilled today when I discovered this 2015 blog post  by Dr. Georgia Ede, a holiday poem in the style of Dr. Seuss’s classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas .  A psychiatrist and researcher, Dr. Ede explores the connection between food and mental health, and she’s the author of one of my favorite quips on the topic: “Studies have shown conclusively that the head is part of the body.”  ( You can check out her talk here ).   In this post on her Diagnosis: Diet site, Dr. Ede writes a charming, Grinch -themed holiday poem about whether or not meat causes cancer.  Sounds crazy, right?  The connection is The World Health Organization (WHO), and their well-publicized 2015 report that called meat a carcinogen.  By now, the WHO’s advi

One of my favorite books this year was Dr. Robert Lustig’s The Hacking of the American Mind .   Reading it is the nonfiction equivalent of sitting in Mister Toad’s Wild Ride: you feel yourself swerving from biochemistry, through history, culture, and law, until finally landing on a dizzying quasi-conspiracy theory that explains why Americans are so depressed ,   overweight ,  addicted , and unhappy .  It’s crackin’ good fun! In the first part, Lustig works to define happiness.  Specifically, he wants to differentiate two facets: contentment and pleasure .  Thousands of years ago, Aristotle separated  eudaimonia — long-term contentment and well-being — from hedonia — temporary pleasure.  Lustig brings these definitions into the 21 st century using the MRI scans and neurochemistry.  He explains that pleasure (a new pair of jeans, a video game, a cup of coffee, a glass of wine), is associated with the production of dopamine, the so-called “seeking reward chemical” in the brai

“I know ev’rybody on this island…” My niece’s sweet, high voice flows into the microphone, through the speakers, and over the room.  At nine years old, she’s fearless.  She loves singing, loves her family.  So why not perform the Moana theme song in front of a crowd of 40 relatives?  You have to admire the innocent bravery of children. It’s my second Thanksgiving in as many days.  Baltimore with Judy’s family, then Boston at mine.  In the weeks leading up to this, My thoughts were about travel, about turkey, about holiday weight gain.  But, of course, that’s not what it’s about.   The basic unit of the brain is the neuron.  An amazing little cell, the neuron moves chemicals and electricity from one place to another.  But the neuron is no good on its own.  The neuron’s power lies in its connections. Together, neurons form neural networks, and these networks create everything we call life: motion, sensation, thoughts, feelings, love.   My epilepsy has taught me a lot o

My life has been unduly influenced by Jim Abrahams.  So I figured on this Thanksgiving week, I’d give a shout-out to the man whom I’ve never met, but who’s made my life better in the most unusual ways. In case you don’t recognize the name, Jim Abrahams is 33% of the trio Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker (or, ZAZ), the brilliant comedy team that made some of the most ridiculously hilarious movies of all time. I’d estimate that about 80% of the words that came out of my mouth between the ages of 12 and 18 were made up of quotes from the Airplane! , P olice Squad , and Naked Gun series.   For my friends and I, it was impossible to get through a week without admonishing one another, “Please don’t call me Shirley,” or asking, “Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?” Sophomoric? Yes.  But we were at that sophomore stage in our lives.  It was our shared language, our way to bond.  Teenage boys (well, let’s face it: men of all ages) don’t generally have a whole lot to say to each other.

“But BigDave,” I hear you say. “I just read an article that said low-carb diets will kill you (well, okay, I read the headline on my feed, but the picture was VERY convincing…).” As Nina Teicholz explains in The Big Fat Surprise , the problem with articles like this one is that they rely on observational studies to draw conclusions.  In contrast to a clinical trial (think hypothesis, experimental group, control group, all that science-y type stuff you haven’t thought about since 11 th grade), an observational study takes a peek at what’s going on with a big group of people and tries to draw connections.  Observational studies give us ideas like: polio is associated with ice cream consumption ,    drowning in a pool is related to Nicholas Cage films , and eating margarine leads to divorce (but only in Maine).     The thing is, Teicholz says, it’s impossible to draw definite conclusions from these types of studies.  They can only yield hypotheses, which then need to

I mentioned in an earlier post  that I’m participating in a year-long study of the Modified Atkins Diet (MAD) and epilepsy.  You may wonder, how did the infamous Dr. Atkins and his infamous "fad diet" get connected with epilepsy?  Excellent question, Sherman! Let’s jump in the Wayback Machine and find out. Epilepsy has been documented in Western culture since ancient times.  Folks back then had no idea what caused seizures (probably something simple like, ya know, demonic possession) but they did find that fasting seemed to prevent them.  Fasting was used widely, by such famous healers as Hipporcrates ( On the Sacred Disease ) and even Jesus (Mark 9:29).   The problem is, you can only fast for so long.  If Looney Tunes taught us anything, it’s that at some point, your best friend starts to look like a carved turkey, and then the whole relationship just goes south. A breakthrough came in the 1920s, when physicians discovered that a low-carb, high-fat d

I’ve fallen in love with Nina Teicholz.  I’m reading her 2014 book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet . Part scientific text, part history, part whodunit, the book asks the question: how did dietary fat get the bad rap it has today, and is it deserved? (Spoiler alert: no).   As a Big Guy of a certain age, on a ketogenic diet for epilepsy , I have certain concerns: what about cholesterol?  What about saturated fat? What about heart disease?  This is why I picked up Big Fat Surprise .  I’m only halfway through, but the book has blown my mind several times already.  The revelations of how soft money, politics, and prejudice form the basis of American dietary guidelines are pretty shocking. (For example, did you know that the famous “ Food Pyramid ” was written by a single, vegetarian-leaning congressional staffer who had no background in science, and with no consensus from the academic community?).   Just last week, Teicholz penned a

Here we go again, folks.  Sunsets are getting earlier and temps are getting cooler, which can only mean one thing: sugar.   It’s well known that the holiday season is when we tend put on extra pounds ,  even though, as fitness guru Vinnie Tortorich says, “It’s not what you do between Christmas and New Year’s that matters, it’s what you do between New Year’s and Christmas.” Part of this may be the much-maligned Christmas Creep .  It’s not enough that we have a couple of cookies and milk on Christmas Eve, we tuck into the candy canes and egg nog for a full month ahead of time. But if you think about it, is it more than just Christmas that's to blame?  If we open up the definition of “holiday season” a bit, a picture starts to form.   Here’s a quick rundown of some fall and winter holidays (both religious and secular, real and made-up).  What traditional foods come to mind? September - Pumpkin Spice Everything Season begins. October - Oktoberfest (along with

Last night, Judy and I met up with some of my old college buds, who were in town for the weekend.  Jim and Mary were the Peter Pan and Wendy of the Lost Boys that were our college rowing crew.  Twenty years later, they’re still the warmest, funniest couple you could ever meet.  We spent hours doing the old where-are-they-now, catching up on our former teammates, talking and laughing, reminiscing and wacking philosophical about life.  It was a fantastic time. “We were such a bunch of clowns,” I mused at one point, “it’s amazing we could even get the boat down the course.” “But you know,” Jim countered, “we actually did okay.  Surprisingly, we had some solid wins in there.” All of which has me thinking about the secret sauce of winning in athletics and life: friendship .  (Yeah, we’re going cheesy today.)  Over the course of just a few years, the guys on my crew somehow went from an assortment of goofballs, to teammates, to lifelong friends.   Kermit and Robin swim laps

A while ago, I posted some thoughts on how all of these popular diets — paleo, vegan, carnivore, plant-based, IF, low-carb, and so on — have a way of becoming belief systems.  People read about it, buy in, join a Facebook group, and soon their new way of eating becomes a complete way of life.  “I eat paleo” becomes “I am paleo.” It’s an identity, a tribe, a religion. But this is not the first time diet and religion have crossed paths in American popular culture.  Gary Taubes, in his incredible book Why We Get Fat, And What to Do About It posits that much of our belief about weight gain today comes from religion, not science.  We see obesity as the “wages” for the dual sins of gluttony and sloth .  All it takes to lose weight, we are told, is to eat less and move more.  If you’re heavy, then it means you’ve failed this simple task, given in to your base, heathen urges.  That spare tire of yours? It’s the scarlet letter that you deserve for being unable to control yourself (and t

It may seem strange that diet would have anything to do with brain health or epilepsy.  But as Dr. Georgia Ede, in a talk at this year’s Low Carb Down Under conference  quipped, “studies have shown conclusively that the head is, in fact, part of the body.”  Funny, isn’t it, that we kind of forget that?  The brain, though only weighing a few pounds, consumes about 20% of our energy .  So how could our diet NOT effect our brain health?   Here’s a broad overview of the connection between food and seizures, in terms that even my unremarkable brain can understand. Your Body is a Hybrid My buddy Rich has a Chevy Volt, of which he’s inordinately fond.  It plugs into the wall, and the battery allows it to run 30 miles on electricity alone.  When the electricity runs out, it’s got a gasoline engine that kicks in as a backup.  In this way, Rich can go as far as he needs to go, using a combination of fuels.   Just like the Volt, your body has two fuel sources: carbohydrates

I recently heard an interview with Dr. Jason Fung, author of The Obesity Code , in which he explained that people trying to lose weight should avoid orange juice because of its high sugar content. "But wait," the interviewer interrupted. "What about vitamin C?" "Are you suffering from scurvy?" Fung fired back.  "If you’re malnourished, then yes, by all means drink the orange juice.  But if you’re trying to lose weight, juice is not your friend."  The question we often lose sight of, he went on to say, is this one: "What problem are you trying to solve?" I love this question.  Like Ernest Hemingway’s famous "bullshit detector," it has the power to help us navigate the muddy, manure-rich field of nutrition today.  We are constantly getting ideas and advice thrown at us, and it often conflicts with the advice we got yesterday.  Eat coconut oil, don’t eat coconut oil.  Drink coffee, don’t drink coffee.  It’s maddening