BrianMDelaney

Has anyone put together a list of supplements that we might not want to take while on CR? I was thinking of this as I came across this article about SAMe and fasting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10432853/ Brian

Ron, I appreciate your unusually level-headed reflections. I will note again that I think there was -- and still is -- criminality, irrationality, and hysteria on all sides of the issues related to COVID-19, and that we will need more time to sort out what sort of reckoning is warranted. (That isn't to say we have to suspend judgment about everything until some future date. Some wrongs can certainly be judged now.)

As I've noted, I was involved in RaDVaC [*], so I've learned quite a bit about vaccines. My plan is to get the new Novavax vaccine, which seems a bit safer than the mRNA vaccines. Brian [*] Past tense because the RaDVaC team is now wearing its Mind First Foundation hat, and focusing on AI safety.

Ron, a belated thanks for your civil and balanced perspective. We largely agree. My interest actually lies elsewhere, in the sociology of knowledge perspective from which one might illuminate why society tends to form extreme narratives that spawn equally extreme counternarratives. I'm becoming a Pyrrhonist, if only to reduce the collective screaming. This meta-point about skepticism strikes me as more important that the substantive matters about which one might be skeptical. But that's a different topic for a different day. Main point here: your lack of extremeness is rare, and refreshing.

Meet the counter-narrative, same as the old narrative. Scare-quotes can be put around the response to the pro-vaccine position as much it can around vaccine "science". We won't be able to make solid judgments about any of this for a long time. The Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk. But my very provisional view is that I'm very glad COVID vaccines were available; not glad, however, that some people were (to varying degrees) forced to take them.

"New John Ioannidis study finds COVID-19 was a negligible threat especially for healthy people." One needs to look at the -- by the looks of things -- substantial morbidity, not just mortality.

"I just found out I still have a persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection in my gut." Fake news alert: It turns out that the way we tested my gut may not be valid. Am looking into this. Update when I know more.

Well, it's probably both. Indeed, many cases of long COVID are probably driven by a persistent infection (but most are probably driven by something else, such as reactivated EBV, "kicked off" by SARS-CoV-2). By the way, persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections are not at all rare, we're discovering. The virus gets cleared from most parts of the body, but, in many cases, successfully hides from the immune system in other parts of the body.

High everyone. Quick points about Sweden: 1. It does not make sense to compare it to its Nordic or Scandinavian neighbors. Sweden is much more like Belgium or the UK, which had higher per capita death rates. 2. Sweden did not "let it rip". I was there, I know. 3. "The Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk", i.e., we won't know which policies were right until the pandemic is over -- long over. Myself, I think SARS-CoV-2 is a very dangerous virus (which is why I joined the team at radvac.org), and I recommend that people avoid getting infected with it! I just found out I still have a persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection in my gut, after having COVID in July. Am starting a 15-day course of paxlovid tomorrow. Hope everyone is well, Brian

Hi everyone. A warning about nuts.com. They are now shipping nuts in bags that have little "serration"-like holes to make it easier to tear open the bag. (True at least for the one-pound bags of macadamia nuts I just received.) This means the bags are not air-tight. Really irritating. Brian

Definitely! Have her contact me at [First name (chez)] BrianMDelaney.X. Thanks. X = org

Hey gang, Mark Mattson claimed, at the Longo conference, that "all" the CR studies in rodents are really time-restricted eating studies, since the CR'd rodents are fed one time every 24 hours, and eat all the food given to them quickly. I'm virtually certain that there are a couple studies showing CR via two or three meals throughout the day had health benefits, but my PubMed searches are drawing blanks. Can anyone locate one of these studies? Thanks, Brian

Hello Amy! Alas, no, I never got a response. Maybe someone else can try? Brian

On its way!

Gordo, thanks. I just dug into some of the peer-reviewed research articles about ayahuasca. Intriguing. One author even suggested it could increase BDNF levels!

Dean and Gordo, thanks for the wonderful, rich descriptions of your experiences (or experience, singular, to speak in the light of the concept-boundary fluidity some of us may now be moving within). I plan to be in Costa Rica this winter, though it's very unlikely I can stay past the end of February. If that changes, I will let you know. Did either of you, Gordo or Dean, look carefully into the health risks of ayahuasca and the other components of the brew? I'm very intrigued, but anything that tweaks my brain that much would give me pause. Thanks, Brian

"CR" Society. We have needed to broaden our focus a bit....

Sounds wonderful! Hope you all have a great time!

Dean, not to confuse things, but I just looked at weather outlooks ("outlook" = long-range forecast) for Canada/US and Costa Rica for both Feb/March and June. June seems both a bad time to leave the north, and a bad time to be in Costa Rica. How about renting our own finca/casa in Costa Rica in late winter not too far from a town/city big enough taht we'd be able to buy food that suits us? Leave bad weather, go to good weather, and probably save money. But if you really like the Finca de Vida, maybe we book the time for Feb/March 2018, and arrange something more local for sooner -- heck: in a few weeks! Brian

Dean, thanks, great idea! But I return to my question: Just as with the resveratrol studies, one can wonder whether lean, healthy, exercising people -- let alone people on a strict, carefully maintained CR diet -- would benefit from substances which show benefit in a more normal population. - Brian

Not sure about your "So it seems". Could be the case, and it's consistent with the findings, but a cursory glance at the study makes me think we really can't rule out some other effect: maybe it's all the carotenoids and even other phytochemicals put together that reduce risk. CRON-O-Meter shows me at 7-9 mg of "Lutein+Zeaxanthin" most days, plus oodles of other carotenoids, and my assumption has been that adding supplemental lutein and zeaxanthin to that probably won't give me additional protection. But I admit haven't looked into the research carefully. - Brian

Important topic -- thanks! Rodney, the paper you cite is a bit tentative on linolenic acid: "Polyunsaturated fat intake may promote oxidative damage by increasing the degree of unsaturation in the macula, a region particularly susceptible to oxidation due to light exposure and high oxygen tension (24). However, linolenic acid is a minor fatty acid in the macula (7). The lack of a specific biologic mechanism for linolenic acid and the fact that we assessed many individual fatty acids, and thus, [the fact that] this could be a chance finding, emphasizes the need for further assessments of these associations." (My emphasis.) I'd like to see follow-up work done before we start worrying about linolenic acid. I suspect it's an innocent bystander in some other causal relation (although the researchers did rule out many potential non-bystanders). - Brian

Potentially useful article from the Guardian: A chemistry teacher's guide to the perfect cup of coffee - Brian

Cloud- First: welcome! I used to use a similar method to get my hot-brewed (normally brewed) tea to a reasonable drinking temperature. Out of curiosity: I've always read on the labels of the green tea I've bought (as opposed to what Google yields, I now see!) that 70°C is the optimal brewing/steeping temperature for green tea. Just curious if you can shed light on the best temperature for hot-brewed tea. - Brian

For tea, nothing beyond what Google will tell you (i.e., I'm just casting about in the dark; mostly stopped drinking tea a while back because of the Mn). For coffee, I have a simple approach. Cuppers/experts (Chef Google) make it WAY more complicated that it needs to be – encouraging you to buy a bunch of hardware that I'm virtually certain is not needed. My approach: 1. Put 30 g coffee (finely ground will mean slower filter times, which, I gather, is the only reason Chef Google suggests a course grind; but it doesn't matter if you're making a small amount) in a jar with 300 g water in the morning. (Sometimes more, keeping 1:10 ratio.) 2. Shake when I think of it (every 1–3 hours), knowing that it likely doesn't matter. 3. 12–14 hours later pour into a coffee pot with a filter on top, and put in the refrigerator. 4. Next morning: drink. Note: - Chef Google will suggest less water, and that you make a bunch at once, and use it as concentrate. - If making a lot at once, a courser grind might be needed (otherwise the filtering might take a long time). Nope, not really certain. But I can't think of a mechanism by which the benefits wouldn't accrue to those drinking cold-brewed versions. Heat is "molecular momentum" -- if it tastes like a cooler version of what you normally drink, at least some of the molecular bouncing around has done its normal thing, just in slow motion. Can't see that it's likely that all of the molecular bouncing around wouldn't do its normal thing, just in slow motion. (But if the coffee really is less acidic when cold-brewed, something is clearly different.) - Brian P. S. Later edit: My high school chemistry came flooding back, and I should emphasize that temperature changes clearly do not simply in all cases result in a change in the pace of chemical reaction, in part because things that happen at phase changes. And just found this: http://petergiuliano.tumblr.com/post/22177089634/why-you-should-stop-cold-brewing-and-use-the which doesn't actually seem correct to me. PubMed yields nothing that's not behind a paywall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=coffee+brewing+temperature