An addition to the famous Liver Post: Eat the Offal!

Dr. Colin Champ is a radiation oncologist and author of the Caveman Doctor website. He has written and podcasted for several years on nutrition, lifestyle, and exercise. In this post he discusses how the Masai, who are tall, well muscled, attractive people drink blood and eat the organs and leave the ‘scraps’ for the Europeans!  I happen to like liver but I was raised by farm folk who gave it to us periodically. High school swimmers, who absorb massive numbers of calories, are not picky eaters so thank goodness they gave me liver.

 

What gets in the way of your eating the good stuff instead of that wimpy muscle meat or (whew) chicken breast?

PaleoPathologist on a Jimmy Moore low carb podcast.

Jimmy Moore is well known in the Low Carb community and fairly well known in the Paleo group as well. He is a real success story, having lost 180 lbs on the Atkins diet ten years ago. (That’s more than PaleoPathologist weighs, total!) Jimmy has quite an empire around “Livin La Vida Low Carb” with podcasts, forums, a useful blog, a Low Carb Cruise, all kinds of things. There is a good intro to Low Carbing that covers a lot of useful details (as I’ve said many times, you don’t do Low Carb by just axing flour and sugar!) He has also written a couple of books, Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity, with a co-author, Eric Westman, who is an internal medicine professor at Duke.  PaleoPathologist was a student there and the Internal Medicine professors were very smart people.  I sent my story in to Jimmy (it’s on about page 172 of Keto Clarity) and he invited me to come on his Low Carb Conversations show. What a blast–he is well informed but a kind and generous host. Listen here!

Could cancer be a metabolic rather than a genetic disease?

This is a fascinating hypothesis. I’ve just scanned the article and am far from a molecular biologist; I’m just a simple country pathologist, but I work in a cancer hospital and wonder why we see so much of it around here? Today I made the diagnosis of colon cancer in a 39 year old! And I see squamous cell carcinoma, like the picture below, every week.

evan tumor picture

Lupus study shows possible links to gut bacteria

PaleoPathologist  has been around the block with snake oil salesmen, cons, and the worst of all, well meaning people who are just out and out wrong. The gut thing has been the source of all three of the above for centuries. People used to invent machines that would pump water through you at high speed to give you a good colon cleanse. Of course some people died from water intoxication causing electrolyte problems, but hey, “they were probably too far gone to survive the treatment they needed”, right?

kimchi picture

The Paleo community has some thoughtful people but there are fringes that I at times am afraid of and many are in the “gut flora” camp. Imagine my chagrin when this article came up on Medscape, announcing that serious immunologists think that Lupus (SLE; systemic lupus erythematosus) may have disordered gut bacteria as at least part of the cause. Humility, PaleoPathologist, humility.

PaleoPathologist spent four years doing microbiology research back at Mr. Duke’s in North Carolina. Go Blue Devils. I cannot even imagine doing research on the gut flora; hundreds of species, predominantly anaerobes which are a pain to grow, trillions of mathematical combinations, and besides, it smells bad. I am so glad that there are people who feel the calling to investigate this area.

In the meantime PaleoPathologist will be snarfing kefir, kraut, and kimchi. Incredible Wife grew up in the southern USA and she says, “Every child should eat some dirt!”

So what do you do about YOUR gut flora?

11 foods that don’t need to be put in the refrigerator!

PaleoPathologist has sometimes looked at LifeHacker’s website and there are some good ideas there. IW probably already knows all this stuff but here is a brief and somewhat entertaining look at foods that don’t need refrigeration. Sausage is NOT ON THE LIST, but it looks so good that I had to use the picture again. Happy July 4th!sausage frying

PaleoPathologist tip of the day on Sunburn

PaleoPathologist is fortunate enough to go with Incredible Wife (IW) and a mix of daughters, sons in law, grandsons, parents, etc. to a beach trip each summer. Sometimes it is Holden Beach, North Carolina, this summer it was La Jolla, CA. The picture of course is totally candid, unposed, and naturally I was breathing in a totally relaxed and easy manner.physique at beach..

Tip on making bacon for the Tribe.

Here is a nice recipe for making bacon, in the oven. PaleoPathologist and family sometimes get together for breakfast or brunch, or at the beach like last week, and we like our bacon and eggs. While frying bacon is a nice craft, when you need ten strips the oven method is terrific. I’ve not tried the pinching up little peaks thing, and we’ve always used foil rather than parchment paper. Sounds like a fun experiment. Don’t forget to pour off the grease into an empty coconut oil screwtop jar and save that good pigfat for cooking!

warthog