I used to donate blood, but the Red Cross decided that I spent too much of the early 90s in the U.K. so I might have Mad Cow Disease. I don't know how to check if I do.
I don't feel like I have holes in my brain but maybe there's a hole in the part of my brain that would know if I had holes in my brain.
I'm currently taking a multivitamin with iron, because I gave blood.
The thing that always got me was that for the longest time people with hereditary hemochromatosis could not donate blood even when there are blood shortages. There were various exceptions, but the Red Cross in particular was firm. Basically, they won't pay for you to give blood. Since people with this condition need the blood removed, and they would otherwise have to pay for the treatment, giving them the phlebotomy services amounts to in-kind payment.
Long distance running lowers your iron. I just found out about this because one of Newt's housemates (very nice young woman. Helped him carry a couch a mile and a half through the streets of Toronto because he makes bad logistical decisions) has running-related anemia. Apparently it's literally about impact: your feet hitting the ground mechanically breaks a certain number of red blood cells, and then your body doesn't perfectly recover the iron in the process of growing new ones.
But I think that's only for real long distance -- this kid is doing casual ten mile runs at a seven-minute pace. Replacing iron through diet is surprisingly difficult.
Is there any other way to replace it?
And iron pills stop you up like nobody's business.
Blood transfusions, I guess. But mostly you don't need much, because you're largely recycling your current iron stock. If you need more for some particular reason like blood loss, it's not simple to effectively increase your intake.
Of course. The flared base stays on the outside.
Nothing to say about iron, but for cholesterol (and nutrition in general) I have had a hard time finding good writing-- many studies are underpowered, and there's a lot of uncritical material written, I guess because there's demand to read it. Anyway, for cholesterol, I came across a great high-level summary, included in the google books preview, page 30: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Genetic_Variation_and_Human_Disease/cmTcxO9f0ecC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
I think there's a potential for better understanding of nutrition using UK biobank and other large national phenotype archives (India also has a lot of rich data, but UK biobank have done a huge amount of work to make the data available and usable). I picked a simple query and skimmed results, here's an example that seems OK on a quick read: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36235661/
Lots of vitamins function as cofactors for various enzymatic activity, and there will in general be allele-specific effects to disentangle from population surveys, which will be a technical challenge.
9: I think the chelated ones aren't that bad.
10: there are iron IV infusions. One of the issues with frequent blood donors is that they can become anemic, and there's a question of whether societies are doing enough to safeguard the donors' health. A single IV infusion is well tolerated and has higher compliance rates than the pills but was ruled out as being too expensive.
My hospital does give out iron tablets to blood donors if you want them, but the hospital I donated to didn't offer them.
[Styrian accent] The only iron you need in your diet comes in plates and bars.
That's not interchangeable with menstruation, but it really feels like menstruation should show up somewhere in an article about blood and iron levels.
Loss of blood through menstruation is quite small, though, compared to loss through blood donation. A typical blood donation is 470ml. That's 0.0019708074 hogsheads or 1.98 cups in US measurements.
Typical blood loss during a period is 30-70ml (you can envisage this as being roughly enough to fill the cranial cavity of a North American raccoon).
That may be, but conventional wisdom says that it's enough to keep a lot of women perpetually anemic.
And it's also not something that one can do much about. If you're worried about the health risks of having too much iron in your body, then "have you considered menstruating more often" is not terribly helpful advice.
Although apparently menstrual blood contains less iron than regular blood! Huh.
But if they're talking about the demographics of who is likely to have excess iron in their blood, I'd just like a throwaway sentence acknowledging that half the population age 14-45 has this extra thing going on that affects their blood.
Although it would be nice if the article addressed the differing levels of likelihood that you have too much or two little iron depending on whether or not you menstruate. Anecdotally, I know a bunch of anemic or borderline anemic women -- a number of ex-vegetarians who got told that the easiest way to get their iron back up to healthy levels was to start eating meat again.
An article selling "too much iron is the new hotness in dietary problems" should probably either say "for those who don't menstruate" or "no, really, looks like this is a common problem even among menstruating people" just to address that issue, given that it affects quite a large chunk of the population.
I once had an officemate whose doctor basically ordered her to eat meat. Her migraine stopped and her hair stopped falling out. But she and started dating a German.
Maybe this has changed but Germans used to ear a lot of meat so this might work out.
It was also in Ohio, so unless they moved it's unlikely they're still living after that many years.
Most recent NYT article about clits was earlier this week: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/snakes-clitoris-hemiclitores.html?smid=em-share
Most surprising thing about it is that there is no mention of the unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.
7: I had that once. I'm borderline anemic anyway and training for a half marathon meant I wound up anemic. I could hear my pulse in my ears all the time and got it checked out.
And +1 to menstruation as maybe ought to be mentioned? It's definitely a thing - even the RDA changes based on age/menstruation status.
I'm actually wondering, come to think, if I should take an iron supplement. I'm training for a half (that seems overstated. Technically that's what I'm doing but I'm not expecting to run it fast or anything) and I was just thinking that despite being in really good shape by my standards, I'm kind of tired all the time. I just found out that runners anemia is a thing a couple of weeks ago, and it hadn't occurred to me to think about it personally.
Have you ever not been tired all the time? If so, how?
I think when I was lifting instead of running, I was less tired all the time and more sore all the time.
I remember making fun of how my grandmother would just nod off whenever we got boring. But now I do it.
I had no idea, Moby. I'll try to be more interesting.
31: An actual iron supplement will probably be too much unless you've had blood tests showing that you're anemic. They're usually really high doses like 65mg or 36mg depending on the formulation. You'd probably be fine with a basic multivitamin with iron. Those usually have 18mg for women or 8mg for men and women over 50. How much iron you absorb from food and supplements depends on what you eat with it (dairy inhibits) and your iron status. It ranges from 10-30%. Look for one that's USP verified. Nature made is a good brand. If you want the iron, go with the one for under 50 year-old women.
Thorne labs makes one called Ferrasorb with 36mg iron, b vitamins and vitamin c (enhances absorption). You could get something like that and take it once or twice a week.
32: in the one weird trick category, I find that 100 -200 mg magnesium helps with energy and also stops twitching. There's some arguments that there's less magnesium and other minerals in the soil, so a lot of people are a little low in magnesium. Plus stress depletes it. Unless you have impaired kidney function, that amount won't hurt you. The maximum RDA from supplements is 300mg for women and 400mg for men, and the amount I'm suggesting is half that.
Maybe. I might also try telling people to go away until I'm getting 8 hours of sleep a night.
32 reminds me of this Reductress headline that really made me feel seen: https://reductress.com/post/woman-exhausted-after-pulling-yet-another-all-dayer/
37: I know there's some suspicion that high atmospheric CO2 is letting (or maybe forcing) crop plants make proportionally more carbohydrates and pick up less of everything else, e.g. magnesium. Although it's *also* true that we breed crop plants to do that, afaik. I had a lively conversation with someone trialling potatoes about using harvest weight as the measure of food output instead of dry weight; it's what the market pays for, but is anyone keeping an eye on whether we're getting worse at producing food?
The cleverest CA tomato farmers were dryfarming and producing tomatoes that were practically a paste sauce fresh -- so un-watery, do flavorful. They also sold them for eyewatering prices though I'm not sure it didn't come out to about the same cost of tomato-flavor.
I get my 'matoes from a can.
They were put there by Italian.
36: I take a half dose of the bloodbuilder mini, which equals 13mg. That makes up for the lack of iron in my diet (don't eat a lot of fortified stuff, also way too much junk lately). But yes, a standard 65mg pill would be too much! Bloodwork is pretty cheap, although if you're just feeling tired, LB, it's probably not sleeping enough to recover from the workload. When I had runner's anemia my usual mile time dropped a minute and a half per mile and my ears were so loud I couldn't hear a movie (The Ladykillers, I think.)
That one guy went on to become a Jedi.
44: I'm so used to being ripped off for bloodwork. It's such a hassle to get a slip tot ale to Quest or LabCorp, and you can see how irritating it is for staff that I just go to the hospital's lab and get overcharged.
This thread reminds me that I'm supposed to go to Quest and get a cholesterol test.
Quest mixtape for your cholesterol test.
Heebie, I read about UCS, and immediately thought about when my ortho told me (13yr ago):
"Boys spend too much time (in the gym) pushing, and not enough time pulling; it makes your shoulder girdle imbalanced, and that's what caused your problem."
Too much time trying to get strong on the bench press, not enough time doing face-pulls and all the other back muscle exercises.
I'm glad you figured it out! And boy howdy, having a strong back is like free money, innit?
I do a seated row. Is that close enough?
As long as you're doing it with your face.
I'm about to go lift, so I guess I'll google stuff. Or not.
I always worry that people make fun of me when I leave the gym because I've been lifting wrong.
40: One of my great pessimisms is that we cannot possibly feed everyone on earth to a high standard at the population levels that we getting to. The processed cereal aisle is already a dreadful place; this is not food. But without fortified carbs, nutrition would be even worse than it is.
Just checked my last ferritin test in light of that scare piece: looks middling. Am currently spending a month or three doing weights with the thought that a bit of extra muscle will give the blood glucose more places to go, and hence my (modestly elevated) HbA1c will come down. We'll see. And then there's also the low folate to boost, so plenty of meals along the lines of salmon and broccoli and lentils (but see above: this can't be do-able for everyone, can it?).
49: phone usage exacerbates the effect. I used to be so good about strength training and I am no longer so good about it.
I am not worried about feeding everyone on earth with good nutrition. At least, I am not worried about the potential for growing enough. We waste tremendous amounts of arable acreage and water on feed for animals, ethanol and luxuries (wine, for one). After leaving the farm, about a third of food gets spoiled or wasted. I am fully confident that there is and will be sufficient land and water for plenty of nutritious plant-food for direct human consumption. That will not include frequent cheap meat.
That said, getting to that diet will feel like loss to people used to eating like us. It'll mean a change of cultural identity for the "I love bacon" crowd.
I have heard worrisome things about the potential that the climate will change so much by the end of the century that we can't grow C3 crops anymore, but in that case we're in so much shit that food production is just one of the problems.
Animals are a luxury, ethanol is a waste (at least when used as a fuel), but wine is an important part of food.
That's why I usually gripe about almonds (1.6M acres in CA) rather than wine grapes (0.8M acres). I personally eat almonds more than I drink wine, but I understand that wine is culturally important to people who aren't me.
Right, cultural. I'll go with that.
54: I feel like if meat triples in price, the fast food industry will figure out some amazing things with potatoes. In n Out fries animal style suggest many insufficiently explored directions.
61. Half a century ago in Karachi I learned the answer to "amazing things with potatoes". On meatless days, the street vendors who normally sold burgers or kebabs substituted spicy fried mashed potatoes with lime pickle. They were definitely amazing. We could do a lot worse.
61: much as I love in n out, old school McDonalds fries are superior.
You can also use cheaper meat, like the new Spam Wellington.
in n out is owned by a right wing anti vaccine nut so you may want to find another fast food joint. or not, don't know if that's a factor for you.
in n out is owned by a right wing anti vaccine nut so you may want to find another fast food joint. or not, don't know if that's a factor for you.
I've never been to one. They aren't around where I am.
66: Cool! Another bad guy I've been boycotting, without even knowing it.
66: I figured he was hard core evangelical, given the Bible quotes on paper cups. Haven't been in years, because we don't have In n Out on the East Coast.
Further: I did not know he was any vaccine.
63: With ketchup only, In-n-Out fries suck.
I've never seen an In n Out, as far as I recall. I have stopped at a Kum & Go on the way to Atlanta, though.
Actually, I should just figure out animal style sauce on my own. Then I could put on much better fries.
73: They have those in Nebraska. Always nervous when I put the gas nozzle into the tank there.
75: "Fill 'em and flee 'em", my daddy always said.
74: Grilled onions, cheese and their sauce. Trader Joe's sells a burger sauce that is similar.
The Trader Joe's parking lot is just several accidents waiting to happen all at once.
I guess if they have the soggy kind of fries, I'll sometimes put malt vinegar on them. I don't like ketchup.
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I see the power-sharing deadlock with no government formed in Northern Ireland has gone on long enough that it's time to call a new election. Is the deadline really down primarily to the DUP refusing in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol (the main thing mentioned in explainers)? Or what else is going on? If there were a new agreement, would it require a Sinn Fein First Minister as long as they're the plurality party (or can get a majority for this)?
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I'm willing to be their king and will pay for my own relocation. I'm not technically a descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages, but I grew up in a town named after one.
Brexit has completely fucked up Northern Ireland. Hard to imagine they're ever going to have a government again. Just have to wait a couple decades for unification and hope things to get too violent in the meantime. Also some worry that by the time the North is ready to vote for unification they'll be so poor that the south won't want them.
It's nothing that can't be solved by traditional values. And by traditional values, I mean armed bands stealing cattle.
Conscientious objectors who are very stealthy will be allowed to steal cattle in unarmed bands.
The Trader Joe's parking lot is just several accidents waiting to happen all at once.
My friend explained that too me. Store parking lots are sized by shelf squarefootage. But Trader Joes sells many times the volume of stuff per squarefoot relative to any other grocer. So their parking lots are relatively undersized expect that we hate cars and love anything that makes them so inconvenient that they all go away.
we hate cars and love anything that makes them so inconvenient that they all go away.
This, but unironically.
90: I don't think Megan was being ironic.
Sometimes I get myself in trouble by expressing my hatred of cars around normal people. They don't understand.
On the internet, nobody knows if you're really Alanis Morissette and therefore incapable of recognizing irony.
94: More importantly, no one can tell your clothes are wrinkled, because you're incapable of ironing.
Also some worry that by the time the North is ready to vote for unification they'll be so poor that the south won't want them.
This is already the case - NI gets a net transfer of £10 billion a year from the mainland because it has a generous social security system (similar to ROI), a very high level of public spending, but much lower tax take. Turns out that not only hasn't it been a great few decades for heavy industry-dependent areas of the UK, but five decades of political torture and murder tends to discourage inward investment and encourage emigration. Who knew.
Could ROI match this? Well, €11 billion (£10 billion) is roughly the size of the entire 2023 Irish government budget. Maybe they could double taxes.
Alternatively, they could cut it, and create an interesting two-tier system where you get far less social security, pension, etc, depending which side of the former border you live on.
Or they could cut social security, etc for everyone in Ireland by (at a guess) 50%.
Or maybe they could make that money up with international aid. Joe Biden's terribly proud of his Irish roots. I'm sure he could pass an €11 billion a year forever aid package to a country which a) is one of the wealthiest in Europe and b) isn't even in NATO.
94: You can take a multivitamin for that.
1: A very late response, but Moby and the rest of us former UK residents exposed to mad cows in the 1980s and 90s can give blood again, since October. https://www.redcrossblood.org/local-homepage/news/article/why-there-are-travel-related-restrictions-for-donating-blood-.html
Thanks. That's very good ood to know and I hadn't heard.