RIIIIINNNGG!  RIIIIINNNGG! 

“Hello, Livin’ La Vida Lo-”

“Jimmy, it’s Tom Naughton.”

“Oh.  Hi.”

“Hi.”

“I already said that.  Hi.  Anything else?”

“Geez … no offense, Jimmy, but that’s not much of a greeting.  I kind of thought you’d be happy to hear from me.  We haven’t spoken since–”

“Oh, zip it.”

“What?  Did you just tell me to zip it?”

“No.  Well, sort of.  Sorry, Tom.  I’ve been in such a bad mood lately.”

“Really?  How long?”

“I’d say about four years.  Pretty much starting around the time I lost all that weight.”

“Wow.  Me too … ever since I went on that low-carb diet Dr. Eades talked me into trying.  I lost weight, my cholesterol dropped, my HDL went up, my blood sugar normalized, and my arthritis went away.”

“It’s depressing, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.  That’s actually why I was calling.  I just read an article on the MSN web site that says low-carb diets are bad for your mood.  The headline even said bread equals happy.”

“Yeah, I was just reading that one myself, and– wait a second.  How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“How did you insert a link into spoken dialog like that?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Yes, you did.  You just said ‘an article on the MSN web site,’ and it had a link in it.”

“You just did the same thing, smart guy.  Read the previous line.  It’s right there.”

“No, I was quoting you … that was you who just–”

“This sounds like case of people who live in glass houses, if you ask me.”

“Oh, shut up, Tom!”

“You shut up, Jimmy!”

“No, you– oh, sorry.  There I go again. Sorry. I’ve just been in such a bad mood.”

“No, I’m sorry.  Bad mood.  By the way, you probably saw they mentioned Livin’ La Vida in the article.  I bet that made you happy.”

“Nope.  Nothing makes me happy.  Not since I lost all that weight.”

“I understand.  Anyway, since you read the article, I thought maybe we could discuss it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m in a bad mood.”

“Yeah, me too.  But I’ve got to say, I’m pretty surprised in your case, Jimmy.  You always sound so cheerful in those podcasts of yours.”

“Pure fakery.  Soon as I’m done recording one of them, I crawl in bed and listen to Tammy Wynette songs.  Sometimes I even sit around and watch reruns of Dr. Phil.”

“Wow.  That is bad.”

“Well, who are you to talk?  You made a comedy film, for pete’s sake!  I thought you were a happy guy.”

“I ought to be.  I live in a beautiful little town, and I have a lovely wife and two adorable girls.  But here I am, always in a bad mood.  Probably not enough serotonin.  The authors of the study say a high-carb diet produces serotonin.”

“So does cocaine!  So does beer!  That doesn’t mean they’re good for you.”

“Well, maybe we should both get off this low-carb kick.  We might be happier.”

“Are you kidding me?  You really want to risk gaining weight and developing diabetes, or heart disease, or arthritis, or cancer, or some autoimmune disease?”

“Sure, I’d probably be sick.  But I’d be in a good mood about it.  Plus I could finally get over the social eating impairment.”

“Social eating impairment?”

“The authors of the study think maybe we’re depressed because we can’t eat bread and pasta in social situations.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“That’s because you have cognitive impairment from not getting enough glucose to your brain.”

“That’s not true!  The body makes all the glucose it needs from dietary protein.  It’s called gluconeogenesis!”

“I’m familiar with the term, Mister Big Words!”

“Shut up, Tom!”

“You shut up, Jimmy!”

“No, you …. Arrrgggh!  Sorry.  I’ve been in such a–”

“I know,  I know.  Me too.  But you know, the social impairment thing makes sense.  After my theater group was done performing last Saturday night, we had a cast party at the director’s house, and she served lasagna.  I didn’t eat any.”

“And I bet she felt insulted.”

“Yup.  She pointed me out to the entire cast and said I’d never work in this town again.”

“That’s awful.”

“I’m kidding.  She didn’t even notice.  It was a buffet.”

“That’s not funny, Tom.”

“Just trying to make a joke, Jimmy.  Lighten things up a little.”

“It was a stupid joke.”

“Don’t tell me what is or isn’t a stupid joke!  I’m a comedian, dangit!”

“Well, excuuuuuuse me, Mister Funny Man!”

“Shut up, Jimmy!”

“You shut up, Tom!”

“No, you … ahhhh, there we go again.  Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.  It was an okay joke.  I just don’t feel like laughing.  I’m in a bad mood.”

“Me too.  Anyway, I gotta ask:  when you go out to eat, do you feel socially impaired?”

“All the time.  You know how it is.  You take your wife to a nice restaurant, the waitress is all perky and nice while you order your steak, then when you say, ‘No, thanks, I don’t want the potato or the rice pilaf,’ she goes all icy on you.  Next thing you know, other people on the restaurant staff are pointing at you and whispering.”

“And you’re sure it’s not the way you’re dressed?”

“No, I– what kind of a crack is that?!”

“Sorry, Jimmy.  When I get depressed I start projecting my negative feelings about myself onto other people.  I’m the one who’s been wearing the same golf shirt for three days.  Trust me.”

“You know, this conversation isn’t going very well.  You think maybe we should talk later?”

“Good idea.  Let me go whip up a big plate of pasta and I’ll call you back in half an hour.”

“Make it an hour.  I should probably bake a couple of potatoes.”

“Right.  Plus that’ll give you time to drink a couple dozen Cokes.”

“I don’t do that anymore!”

“Well, maybe you should!  You might be nicer on the phone!”

“Shut up, Tom!”

“You shut up, Jimmy!”

CLICK.

The post last week about Cocoa Krispies and the immune system generated a lot of comments about vitamin D, so I thought I’d post a YouTube interview with Dr. John Cannell in which he talks about the topic:

By coincidence, a reader also sent me a link today to another YouTube video about vitamin D and cancer.  You may remember Dr. Garland, who appears later in this video, from a previous video post as well.  In that video, he explains the DINOMIT theory of cancer.  It’s fascinating stuff.  This one is pretty good too:

In reading a little more about vitamin D over the weekend, I even came across some information suggesting that an adequate level of vitamin D in the blood may prevent the balding gene from expressing.  Now they tell me.  If only I’d heard about that one in my thirties.

But if keeping my vitamin D level up saves me from the horrors of colon cancer and chemotherapy, which I’ve seen my dad go through twice, I can live with the Kojak look.

I stumbled across this video while looking for something else.   I’m not going to pick apart this woman’s arguments because 1) she’s not actually making any, and 2) I believe in the old saying that if your opponent in a debate is making a fool of himself, don’t interrupt.

I love that last line:  “Start acting like we act, and then you’ll be able to think like we think.”

Yes, I’m afraid that could happen.  I’d better go cook up a steak now to protect myself.

Sometimes when I read health and medical articles in the newspaper, I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, or just bang my head against the wall.  If memory serves, a recent article about the wonders of gastric-bypass surgery prompted a full round of each, followed by a string of expletives that made me grateful my daughters were in school.  (If my memory is fuzzy, it’s probably because of the head-banging.)

The article, which appeared in our local newspaper but originated with the Los Angeles Times, was headlined: Gastric bypass: Is it a diabetes fix?  Here is a link to the online version so you can read the full story in all its glorious stupidity.  In the meantime, I’ve pasted several snippets below, with my comments interspersed.

The discovery came about by accident more than a decade ago: Weight-loss surgery often led to dramatic improvements in the control of Type 2 diabetes, often before patients had even left the hospital.

Wow, that’s amazing!  I wonder what it is about having surgery that reduces a patient’s runaway blood sugar so quickly.  Perhaps by the time most of us reach adulthood, we have a big wad of undigested cotton candy sitting in our small intestines, left over from childhood trips to the state fair.  Remove the intestines, remove the cotton candy.  Makes sense.

Or perhaps it has something to do with the post-surgery diet, which consists of two to three ounces of sugar-free liquids or sugar-free gelatin.  Newsflash:  if you stop dumping sugar and starch into your digestive system, your blood sugar goes down.

Today, evidence of the connection is so solid that some doctors say surgery should be considered as a treatment for diabetes, regardless of a person’s weight or desire to lose weight.

Yes, more surgery is clearly the answer.  Granted, a couple of generations ago we had only a fraction of the Type 2 diabetes rate we see today, and that was long before surgeons were comfortable ripping people’s guts out.  But what the skeptics forget is that safety standards were lax in those days, and lots of people used to accidentally rip their own guts out in day-to-day activities like chopping wood, tossing lawn darts, and going fishing with really big hooks.  It’s much safer and far less painful to let a surgeon remove your intestines.

“We thought diabetes was an incurable, progressive disease,” says Dr. Walter J. Pories, a professor of surgery at East Carolina University and a leading researcher on weight-loss surgery.

Well, of course you did, Doctor Doofenshmirtz.  That’s because people in your profession have been trying to cure diabetes with low-fat diets, then scratching their heads in amazement when the diets don’t work.  By the way, if you’re ever quizzed on the topic of alcoholism, the answer is: No, you can’t cure it by switching from bourbon to scotch.  I thought you should know.

“This operation takes about an hour, and two days in the hospital, and these people go off their diabetes medication. It’s unbelievable.”

No, I believe it.  They’re able to go off their medication because the surgery also forces them to go off sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream.  In fact, about all they can eat are tiny portions of meat and vegetables.

But experts still aren’t sure why obesity surgery helps resolve Type 2 diabetes or how long the effect might last.

It’ll last as long as the newly-mangled patients avoid sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream

This much is clear: Patients who have weight-loss surgery begin to lose weight rapidly, which by itself improves Type 2 diabetes, allowing diabetics to more easily control their blood glucose levels. But something else appears to be occurring as well.

The “something else” is what’s not occurring:  consuming sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream

There is strong evidence that surgery — especially gastric bypass surgery, which makes the stomach smaller and allows food to bypass part of the small intestine — causes chemical changes in the intestine, says Dr. Jonathan Q. Purnell, director of the Bionutrition Unit at Oregon Health & Science University.

Yes, all kinds of wonderful changes occur in the digestive system when you rip out several feet of it.  Here are just a few:

• Reduced ability to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, leading to chronic deficiencies in vitamins A, B12, D, E and K – even if you take a lot of supplements.
• Dumping of poorly-digested food into the large intestine, causing dizziness, bloating, diarrhea and fatigue.
• Ulcers.
• Nausea and vomiting

But researchers now suspect it has other functions related to metabolism.

Of course it does, you @#$%ing idiots!  When you’re limited to a few ounces of protein and vegetables per day and have to give up sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream, your metabolism changes.

Surgery somehow alters the secretion of hormones in the gut that play a role in appetite and help process sugar normally.

No, making a drastic change in your diet alters the secretion of hormones.  When you give up sugar and starch, you don’t need nearly as much insulin anymore.  Ask Dr. Jay Wortman.  He gave up sugar and starch after becoming a Type 2 diabetic, and he doesn’t need medication either.  (But of course, the Canadian government is convinced his new diet causes heart disease.)

But diabetes also tends to resolve or improve in 50% to 80% of people who have lap-band surgery, in which a band is placed around the top of the stomach to make it smaller, he says. And there is some evidence that the effect occurs in a newer type of weight-loss surgery called gastric sleeve, in which a portion of the stomach is removed so that it takes the shape of a tube or sleeve.

Uh, what a minute … I thought you were just telling us that removing several feet of the intestines creates magical hormonal changes.  The lap band and the lap sleeve just force you to eat less — which for most people means focusing on protein foods and giving up sugar and starch.  Do you see the contradiction here?

Evidence suggests the effect on diabetes can last for an extended period or even indefinitely, particularly if people don’t regain a lot of weight.

It’s not regaining the weight that causes diabetes to return.  The weight gain and the diabetes are both caused by people deciding they can fill their itty-bitty stomachs with itty-bitty servings of sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream.  Then they get insulin spikes that make them ravenously hungry, so they eat more than they’re supposed to.  Some even manage to stretch their itty-bitty stomachs back to a nearly-normal size.

“There is durability, but we also know that some people do get the disease back again,” Purnell says… It’s not clear yet why people have different responses.

Well, let me take a shot at explaining this mystery, Dr. Frankenstein:  some people stick to the recommended post-surgery diet of meat and vegetables.  Some people go back to eating the sugar and starch that made them fat and diabetic in the first place.

Studies from several other countries show that surgery also results in remission of diabetes for people who are not morbidly obese.

So let me get this straight:  obesity causes diabetes, yet we can cure people who aren’t obese but still have diabetes by ripping their guts out and forcing them to stop filling up on sodas, corn chips, bread, Cocoa Puffs, mashed potatoes, pancakes, cookies, bagels, french fries, snickerdoodles, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, Twinkies, and Chunky Monkey ice cream.  Call me crazy, but it’s starting to sound like diet might have something to do with developing Type 2 diabetes.  (No, wait … it’s a progressive, incurable disease that nobody can really explain …)

There is even discussion, particularly in other countries, of performing weight-loss surgery for people with Type 2 diabetes who are not overweight.

Of course there is.  Other countries don’t have our obesity rate.  How the heck are the bariatric surgeons in France and Spain supposed to make a living if they’re only allowed to operate on fat people?

“Doctors say, ‘If I can lower glucose by medications, why send patients to surgery?’” Purnell says. “Surgery, however, allows people to have meaningful and sustained weight loss and their diabetes is better. There are risks involved with surgery, obviously, but it makes sense, to me, to do surgery.”

Spot-on, Dr. Frankenstein.  As you know from your advanced medical training, there are only two types of treatments that can make sick people well: drugs and surgery. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go bang my head against the wall.

I’ve now completed five weeks of the 6-Week Cure For The Middle-Aged Middle.  I lost three pounds this week, plus another half inch from my waist. 

The only real temptation to cheat came on Friday night, when most of us in the cast of Twelve Angry Men went to a Mexican restaurant after the show.   I had a couple of Negra Modelo beers, but didn’t touch the chips and salsa.  I ordered carne asada and ate the meat, guacamole, sour cream, and a couple spoonfuls of the refried beans.  I skipped the huge mound of rice and the flour tortillas that came with the dinner.

So the results so far:  Started at 205 pounds, 41 inches around the middle.  I’m now at 197 pounds, 37 inches.  I’ve also made excellent progress on the weight machines.  If nothing else, this experiment taught me that whey protein shakes enhance the effects of my workouts.

In case you haven’t noticed, Kellogg’s is attempting to cash in on the swine-flu hysteria by informing parents that cereals like Cocoa Krispies can help boost their kids’ immune systems.

Wow, sugary cereal is amazing stuff. According to the American Heart Association, it helps prevent heart disease, and now we’re learning that it wards off the H1N1 virus as well. Somebody call the Obama administration and tell them they can stop feeling embarrassed about promising we’d have 120 million doses of H1N1 vaccine ready by October. Turns out we don’t need it … we have Cocoa Krispies!

It’s too bad my daughters don’t eat cereal for breakfast. Sara, who will turn six this week, might’ve avoided the swine flu. Maybe I should tear into a few bowls of cereal myself, since I spent part of the weekend lying next to her, checking on her fever and unsuccessfully dodging her coughing fits.

The scientific basis (ahem, ahem) for the Kellogg’s claim is that a serving of Cocoa Krispies provide 25% of the recommended daily amount of a few vitamins, such as A, B, C and E. Whoopie. A cup of the stuff also provides you with a big wallop of sugar. Considering that sugar depresses your immune system, eating a bowl of cereal to get a few vitamins is a bit like drinking a bottle of scotch in hopes of ingesting the two aspirin you dropped in there. Maybe they’ll help with the hangover.

Linus Pauling demonstrated years ago that vitamin C helps white blood cells gobble up bacteria and viruses. The trouble with sugar (well, one trouble among many) is that it competes with vitamin C and blocks it from getting into your cells. The more sugar in your bloodstream, the less capable your body is of battling infections.

My daughter had the misfortune of coming home from school with flu symptoms on Friday –  the day before Halloween, the children’s high holiday of sugar-eating. On Saturday, her temperature rose to 103.5.  She still wanted to go trick-or-treating and we let her, figuring kids get maybe five or six good Halloweens in their entire lives and we didn’t want to take one away.

I had to leave before dark to perform in a production of Twelve Angry Men, so my wife took the little witch — accompanied by her gypsy little sister — to a dozen or so houses on our street. Sara soon lost her will to spook the neighbors, however, and my wife had to carry her home.

I reminded her the next day that sugar is bad for her immune system, and for once she didn’t ask to review the scientific literature to make sure I wasn’t just scheming to deprive her of her right to candy. She negotiated her way into eating one small piece.

We elected awhile back not to seek out the H1N1 vaccine — I’m not sure we could’ve found any, given the shortage — but for the past few weeks, I’ve been making sure my daughters take their multivitamins, and I’ve been giving them an additional 1,000 units of vitamin D, which has been shown to boost the immune system.  (I’ve also been taking 6,000 units myself.) When Sara came home with the flu, I upped her dose to 2,000 units.

On Sunday afternoon, her fever inched up to just over 104 and she threw up a couple of times.  We don’t know for sure it was swine flu, but she certainly had the symptoms, and that’s supposedly the only flu going around right now.  Since she didn’t feel like eating, I made her a small protein shake and mixed in some coconut oil.

She was sick again late Sunday night. We’re big believers in the power of positive thinking, so as I lay next to her with her head on my shoulder, I told her something she always loves to hear: “Sara, you’re a tough chick.” (And she is. Her two favorite phrases, in order, are “Watch this!” followed by “I’m okay.”)

She agreed. “I know, Daddy. I’m a tough chick. My body is killing the flu.” Then, since a high fever puts her in a mental state that resembles being happily drunk, she babbled on for some time, recounting detailed storylines of some of her favorite TV shows, giving me a blow-by-blow of her week in school, and expressing her doubts about the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve System. (I might’ve imagined that last one. I was getting tired.)

She woke up this morning with no symptoms and no fever. She was bouncy and energetic all day. In the afternoon, her temperature rose to 99.6, then dropped again. Before bed, she told me she’s not sick anymore and wants to go to school tomorrow.

If this was the swine flu, she beat it in three days — and she’s never eaten Cocoa Krispies in her life. I’m reasonably sure her immune system was better off without the stuff.

Small gypsy, and a witch with the flu.