Got Biomechanical Stresses and Strains?

Then check out Global AO, Atlas Orthogonal.  Here are the rest of the videos on their website.

We should know the importance of our spine, how it works, and how it is protected.  I enjoyed learning the mechanics of the spine, particularly about the Atlas Orthogonal.  The video does a good job of explaining the anatomy of the spine and central nervous system.

Here is a list of doctors in California that are trained in this therapy.  And here is a list of doctors throughout the U.S. and the world trained in this therapy.

I found this video and its information at Karen De Coster's site.

I guess the question that anyone would have is "Where does one begin when it comes time to fix a nerve, muscle, bone, or blood vessel injury?" Or even all four?  Either because of convenience or familiarity, most folks will call their doctor who might refer them to an orthopedic, and who in turn migh prescribe drugs or surgery.  But what if you're part of the growing number of folks who don't like surgery, don't like the way that surgical process itself disrupts energy centers of the body?  What if you prefer non-invasive procedures?  If that's you, then start with acupuncture.  Acupunture involves needles.  And if you're deathly afraid of needles, know that these pierce the skin at a very superficial level, particularly your first time.  Try it and see if it helps.  See if you feel better. If you feel better, then that should be an indication that you're doing, in other words functioning better.  Acupuncturists will palpate the area of complaint to search for pain.  Pain in acupuncture means that area is blocked.  Acupuncturists will needle that area to increase the flow of chi (blood, hormones, energy, and other fluids and animating factors).  Acupuncture may be the most non-invasive treatment and therapy for a host of conditions.  I have found that it works wonders on pain, inflammation, and sleep disorders.  A single acupunture treatment will run any where between $50 and $80.  You can get it for less at an acupuncture clinic.  Check your local Yellow Pages or Google "acupuncture clinic" in your city or area.  The benefit of a clinic is that, one, it is cheaper.  I found a place in my neighborhood that cost me $12 a session; it then went up to $25 a couple of years later.  But if you're treating a chronic condition, then you'll want the clinic since it gives you the chance to treat chronic conditions that might take 6 months to a year.

The next level up of non-invasive treatments might be chiropractics.  These guys perform adjustments of your spine that releases energy.  My first few adjustments I was more limber, more energetic, and a lot more flexible.  After treatments I would play basketball in a local gym, and the guys would ask "Where'd you get all that energy?"  And I told them: my chiropractor.  My chiropractor would adjust me in two places: one in my neck, and the other in my mid to lower spine.  Chiropractic treatments are more expensive than acupuncture.  But you won't need to go as often.  

The next level up of non-invasive treatments might be this Atlas Orthogonal treatment.  But it is expensive.  My guess is that it's well worth the price.  But remember, everything in every market is a sales pitch.  Your job, as is mine, is to determine fact from pitch.

UPDATE, January 13, 2016:  I've tried this therapy.  It defintely adjusts you. I am not sure, however, if the therapy is beneficial long-term.  First, the therapist I saw seemed nervous to me.  When I told her that the radiation from the X-ray made me feel weak, she dismissed me, citing the machine's low, radio-active isotopes emissions.  She may be right, but I did feel weak and I didn't really appreciate her attempt to whitewash it. I don't expect her to baby me either.  She could have recommended something when I got home, something like baking soda, for instance. But I did walk out of her office feeling more balanced and with increased range in my neck and limbs.  These therapists seem to lock people into a dilemma based on the number of treatments for long-term improvements.  One treatment is not enough.  One adjustment is not going remove or override a chronical illness you've had for 10 or 12 years. You will need several treatments.  One, against the time/cost ratio, they're not that much fun or productive.  Your improvments are so subtle and don't seem to gain traction in the direction that you want them to go. What that tells you is that these therapists really do oversell their results. The commenter below regrets her decision, and if someone is regretting a therapeutic decision then it must have caused them some new pain along with some improvements, pain that seems to override any benefits.  One or two adjustments is not enough.  Nor are they cheap.  Generally, if something works, people will praise it, the way I did with my chiropractor.

So this was my experience.  But I'd wondered about others'--what they experienced, good or bad, with this treatment.  It doesn't sound good. And you should know that I spoke to a handful of therapists in the Southern California area.  Each one didn't really sound convincing.  Each one used a tone that offered no guarantees or promises.  One I spoke told me "Wait a minute.  The therapy doesn't promise anything."  I appreciated that caveat.  And that only tells me that whomever is promoting this therapy is doing a great job at it, presenting it as a last restort.  It is not the last resort.  There's always diet and exercise.  Hello!  All this to say that not everyone is happy with this therapy.  Take a look:

I am so glad someone has written about this and I want to share my story. I feel that after 7 years of atlas orthogonal, it's a hoax. I know some will bash me, but it really is.

For several years, it helped me. But like the snowboarder on here, out of nowhere, after an adjustment when my atlas in "in" it will go out and I will have pain in the base of my neck where my atlas is and then my whole body will be off and misaligned. Seriously, all I have to do for this to happen is walk, stretch and live.

Then I am told I need to come in more for more treatments. 
I thought this thing was the best thing since sliced bread, but now, I need a treatment everyday and I can't afford it! So, clearly it's not working. And what I read about it on the net is that people have a treatment and they hold for months to a year??? Are you serious? I wish. In my dreams.

I have a herniated disc and bulging discs and I have come to believe that not everything is the ATLAS's responsibility. I have a herniated disc. The atlas bone is not the sole reason I am out, but I am sold that song by the atlas chiro every time. I am sick of it.

For those that don't have a major problem, I think it can work. But for those that have disc disease, etc, it will work momentarily.

There are my 2 cents. It's not a long time fix, just like all of chiropractic.

And...I have come to question; just what is that soundwave device doing? Really. What is it doing or could it be doing long term?

For years I didn't do Atlas treatment, why am I being sold that it is the only thing that will work?

Especially when it doesn't work for more than a few days. 

I seriously hope that other people write some stories that are not so positive on here because I know there are more of us with this problem than I am finding.

"MCTs . . .  travel directly to the liver where they’re processed into powerful energy particles called ketone[s]."

I tried buttered coffee several months ago.  It just didn't do it for me.  I was not impressed neither with the taste or with the health benefits.  Then I tried it again last week, using instant coffee and raw butter.  I added four tablespoons of raw butter.  I could not believe the difference.  And by difference I mean the effects this time versus the non-effects last time several months ago.  This time I felt remarkable energy.  I had a cup in the afternoon.  And I like the effects so much that I took a second cup of this buttered coffee toward the evening.  Big mistake.  I was wired beyond belief.  Could not sleep.  I've never had any coffee so strong that it interrupted my sleep.  I was wired all night long.  That was the first night.  So I thought I would try it again the following the day and I did.  The energy rush was less but I noticed a tightening of the muscles under my arms and around my rib cage.  I'd read that buttered coffee works as a weight loss and energizer, apparently because it kick starts your metabolism.  It's been a week since I first tried it.  I had a cup this morning and this afternoon and I continue to get both the energizing kick and a tightening effect.  And I wanted to know why--what is it about butter when blended with hot coffee that it provides this synergistic energy that the two of them separately don't?  And I wanted to know whether these effects were healthy for one's tissues--heart, brain, liver, etc.--or not.  Here's what I found.  Laura Jeffers explains in "Can Buttered Coffee Give You a Better Body?"

There’s a lot of hype lately about the most recent coffee trend. Take your morning cup-of-joe, add two tablespoons of butter and some oil, and call it Bulletproof Coffee. No doubt it’s an interesting flavor, but it’s the claims of increased energy and weight loss that seem to be giving this morning jolt traction.

It’s not just any butter and coffee. Those supporting this idea say it has to be unsalted, grass-fed butter and medium-chain triglyceride oil (MCT) added to low-toxicity coffee beans. But can a mixture like that really live up to what proponents are saying?

What happens to butter in your body?

There’s no real research into whether butter-spiked coffee is good for you, but we do know some things about how butter affects your digestion.

According to existing research, fat in butter contains glycosphingolipids, fatty acids that ward off gastrointestinal tract infections, especially in very young children and older adults.

Its omega-3 and omega-6 fats also slow down your body’s metabolism of caffeine, so you hold on to energy longer and avoid the crash that comes when the stimulant wears off.

More about MCT

MCT, most commonly found in coconut oil, is also good for our bodies and brains. When it comes to our bodies, we don’t store MCT in our adipose tissue, the fat around and inside our muscles, like the other dietary fats we eat.

Most of those fats are long-chain triglycerides, but MCTs are shorter. They travel directly to the liver where they’re processed into powerful energy particles called ketone bodies.

In addition, if your brain loses the ability to break down its primary fuel source, glucose, due to cognitive impairment or some other disorder, it can use ketone bodies as an excellent, alternative source. Research shows that people with cognitive impairment who ingest MCT experience an almost immediate improvement in mental function.

My verdict

So, do the health benefits of butter and MCT mean you should add them to your morning coffee? To begin with, if you don’t already drink coffee, I don’t recommend you start. If you do, though, I still don’t endorse your adding butter and oil to it, and I have no plans to do it either.

Healthy fats and oils do have a place in our daily diets, but I’m not convinced that enhancing our coffee with them is the best way to incorporate them.

***************************************************************************

That's odd.  Jeffers doesn't really answer her question of whether buttered coffee builds a better body.  She isolates the benefits of the fat in butter and how that fat wards "off gastrointestinal tract infections, especially in very young children and older adults."  Minimally, her message might be to consume more butter.  But what about butter in one's coffee?  Does the butter emulsify the tanins and caffeine in coffee and render them more absorbable, and if it does is this what is causing the energetic and tightening effects?  She doesn't say that it does.  

And though I have yet to use coconut oil in my coffee, it this ingredient that Jeffers claims provides the greatest health benefit of the buttered coffee.

SANDRINE THURET: ". . . learning, sex, and aerobic activity all increase neurogenesis"

First, let me say that educated folks who believe, think, or assume that people's brains do not regenerate are idiots.  Plain and simple.  And they're often times arrogant with their assumptions or stupid and uninformed and inexperienced views.  They believe that whatever abstract they read in a journal from JAMA or others is like word from Mt. Sinai. Which allows them to parrot what they read as truth.  And then be done with it and never have to think, review, or revise their ill-formed opinion. Everywhere that I've read about the adult brain has stated that people undergo neurogenesis their whole lives.  Period.  There are things that adults can do that will enhance this neurogenesis; those things are described below--exercise, eating fatty foods, and learning. A student asked me several years ago, "Sir, how can you grow more brain cells?"  I told her "Exercise."  Her 15-year-old reply was "Nah-ah."  Here is the article from Huffington Healthy Living:

Can adults grow new neurons? Until relatively recently, experts believed the answer was no.

But as neuroscientist Sandrine Thuret explains in a new TED Talk, humans can indeed generate new brain cells, a process called neurogenesis. More importantly, doing so has a range of important benefits, including improving mood, increasing memory formation, and preventing the decline associated with aging.

Watch Thuret's talk for all of the details, but a few key takeaways are below.

Stress, lack of sleep, and aging all reduce the natural rate of neurogenesis. Certain medications also restrict new neuron growth. Thuret notes that some cancer patients unexpectedly develop symptoms of depression even after being told they are cured of their cancer. Unfortunately, the drugs they've received not only stop cancer cells from multiplying but also stop "new neurons from being generated in their brain," she says, which has a negative impact on their mood.

Movement is the key to neurogenesis.

Conversely, learning, sex, and aerobic activity all increase neurogenesis.

In one of the first studies to highlight the links between aerobics and neurogenesis, Rusty Gage of the Salk Institute examined new brain cell growth in mice. The 'control' mice had no running wheel in their cages, while the 'runners' were able to run in their cages regularly. In the snapshots below, from Gage's experiment, the black dots are new neurons-to-be.

Thuret also explains how dietary habits are crucial to new neuron growth. 

Practices that increase neurogenesis include:

Calorie restriction of 20 to 30 percent.

Intermittent fasting (i.e., spacing the time between your meals)

Intake of flavonoids, which are contained in dark chocolate or blueberries.

Omega-3 fatty acids are present in fatty fish, like salmon.

Conversely, some dietary habits have a negative impact on neurogenesis, like diets rich in high saturated fat and alcohol consumption.

If you want to work on your brain, I would definitely heed that last caveat--avoid alcohol, including wine.  Wine growers around the world have done a superlative job at selling their products and marketing their health benefits.  Resveratrol definitely helps your body, including your brain.  Just get it from a different source other than wine.  Don't get me wrong, sometimes wine just makes the company and the evening and the meal go better.  Sometimes you just want to give yourself over to mild decadence.  I say go for it.  But wine also dehydrates you.  

"Eat bacon, don't jog and NEVER eat fruit"

from the Daily Mail

Eat bacon, don't jog and NEVER eat fruit: Health guru reveals the 10 surprising ways YOU can shed the pounds and get fit.  Grant Petersen is author of the best selling book Eat Bacon, Don't Jog.  He advocates a low-carb diet where most of the calories come from fat.  This puts the body in a state where it burns its own fat for fuel, he says.  Advises five-minuted bursts of intensive exercise rather than jogging.

By GRANT PETERSEN

PUBLISHED: 08:08 EST, 19 October 2015 | UPDATED: 12:24 EST, 19 October 2015

Forget salads--bacon, cheese and cream are the key to weight loss. 

Eating fat--rather than carbohydrates--is the key to slimming down, according to Grant Petersen, author of Eat Bacon, Don't Jog.

For years, Mr Petersen tried to lose weight in the conventional way - through eating a low fat diet and exercising for up to three hours a day.

While he says he wasn't fat by American standards, he wasn't losing weight and became frustrated. 

After researching different diets, he came to believe that rather than being a simple matter of calories eaten versus energy expelled, the hormone insulin affects weight loss.

When a person eats carbohydrates, they are broken down into glucose in the blood.

The pancreas secretes insulin, which clears away glucose from the blood into cells, so it can be used as energy.  But insulin causes calories to be stored as body fat, and prevents people using their own body fat as fuel, Mr Petersen argues.  Cutting out carbohydrates and eating all calories from fat lowers insulin levels, and therefore weight gain. 

Eating no more than 50g of carbohydrates a day - the equivalent of a slice of bread and a banana puts the body into a state known as 'ketosis', in which it burns its own fat for energy, he says.  It also prevents hunger, which mostly comes from craving sugar, he maintains.  Here, Mr Peterson explains why people should stop eating fruit, add oil to their morning coffee and exercise so intensely they are gasping for air...

1. Eat fish, meat, avocados and macadamia nuts.  

The good fats are those that have a healthy ratio of omega-6- to omega-3- fatty-acids. 

These include fats from:

A)  Cold-water fish 

B)  Avocados.  

Avocado contains monounsaturated fat, which has many health benefits.  Fat from salmon, sardines, herring, anchovies; shellfish like crab, shrimp, scallops, and oysters.  They are low on the food chain and die young so they don't have time to accumulate mercury the way big old predator fish like tuna and swordfish do. These are high in omega-3s, low in omega-6s.

Grass-fed animals.  They also have a good ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s, although not as overwhelmingly good as oily fish.  Fats from olives, avocados, and especially macadamia nuts. These fats aren't high in omega-3s, but they have better omega-6 to omega-3 ratios than do most fatty foods. The dominant type of fat in both olive oil and avocado oil is monounsaturated, which provides health benefits that make up for the unimpressive ratios for omega-3s to omega 6s.

2. For breakfast, drink coffee with fat

Put three or four tablespoons of butter, ghee, cream, and/or coconut oil in your morning tea or coffee. This is a perfect breakfast.

If you're just starting out on the low-carb way of life and still crave solid food in the morning, replace that muffin and coffee with two or three eggs and four or five slices of bacon along with your tea or coffee. 

As you get into ketosis, you'll find you're not so hungry when you wake up and won't need all that food until later in the day.  Once you get over not eating in the morning, a hot fatty drink like this will feel normal, even indulgent. 

3. Fruits are just 'juicy sugar orbs' 

Before agriculture, fruit was seasonal, small, sweet only when compared to meat and greens, and rare.  Now it's selectively bred to be huge, supersweet, and abundant; and no matter where you live, you can buy South American grapes in November. 

Fruit is abundant in the sugar fructose - which goes straight to the liver.

 Fruits are universally considered natural and healthy, but compared to their ancient relatives, today's fruits are pretty much just juicy sugar orbs that, from a health perspective, look good only when compared to grains and donuts.  Read this out loud: 'Fruit makes me fat.'  It's not just the quantity of sugar, but the kind.  Glucose, lactose, sucrose, and other sugars get metabolized (used as fuel) all over your body, but fruit sugar - fructose - goes straight to your liver.  Since your liver didn't evolve to handle huge doses of fructose, it turns it into triglycerides (dangerous fat) and sends it out into your blood, to your arteries, and onto your hips.

4. Try 'fasting' - while eating bacon.  

Whatever spiritual, bowel-cleansing, detoxifying, and generally suspect benefits the Eastern mystics and fasting fanatics may tout, the undeniable benefit of fasting is a lowering of blood sugar and a consequent lowering of blood insulin.  When you cut out all food (including carbs), your blood-insulin level will drop, you'll start to burn body fat, and you'll stop being hungry.  But starvation, even if only for a day, is a dreary and unnecessary way to get there.  Besides, when you starve one day, it's easy to eat too much the next day.  If you want to fast to reduce insulin, there are two ways that work just as well and don't make you miserable with cravings. The first is to clump all high-fat, low carb eating into any six-hour period; 8am to 2pm, 12 to 6pm, 6pm to 12pm, any you like - and then fast for the subsequent 18 hours.  The second option is to eat nothing but fat, whenever you like, for 24 hours. For an entire day, eat only cheese, homemade unsugared whipped cream, coconut oil, olive oil, butter, bacon, 2 to 4 ounces of fatty meat, or up to six eggs, depending on how big you are.

5. Dark bitter vegetables are best.  

Dark, leafy vegetables tend to have more nutrients and taste more bitter than lighter vegetables that grow in heads, like cabbages and iceberg lettuce.  Broad, exposed leaves like kale, endive, collards, chard, spinach, watercress, dandelion greens, and mustard greens reach for the sun and lay out flat like a 1950s sunbather.

That exposure helps them develop phytonutrients and antioxidants that protect them from pests. The phytonutrients give them their familiar, bitter taste that most kids hate but adults have learned to tolerate—no doubt in part because they feel virtuous eating them.

6. Never eat an egg white omelette or potatoes.  

The yolk is the best part of the egg. It's 50 percent of the egg's protein and all of its fat. Most people think the cholesterol in the yolk will clog your arteries, but it won't.  Yolks get a bad rap because they contain cholesterol, but there is no relationship between cholesterol in the egg yolk and the cholesterol clogging your arteries.  High bad-cholesterol numbers are driven by carbohydrates and omega-6 oils, not the healthy fats in egg yolks.  Bereft of most nutrients except potassium, potatoes are way too starchy for human health.  If you're serious about health, regard all potatoes - even those presented like healthy, whole gems -like fast-food French fries.

7. Coconut is god.

Coconut oil . . . contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs).  These fats are good because they are metabolized differently than other fats. They're easier to burn as energy, and when you do that you make ketones, an efficient fuel for body, heart, and brain functions.

Coconuts are a great source of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are 'fat royalty' as they are readily burned as energy.  Coconut is right up there with salmon in the 'not magic, but damn close to it' category, partly because it's so low in carbs for a nonleafy plant, but mainly because it's such a great source of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs).   Coconut oil is 66 percent MCTs. MCTs are fat royalty because they aren't stored in the body the way other fats are.  They're readily burned as energy and, in the burning, produce more ketones (cell fuel alternative to glucose) than any other kind of fat. 

Greek yoghurt contains less carbohydrates as the sugary whey has been drained away.  MCTs are being used in treatments for obesity, cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other neurological diseases that typically rely on a steady supply of glucose.  MCTs aren't easy to come by, and coconut products, especially coconut oil, have far more of it than any other food.  

8. Eat Greek yogurt. 

 Greek yogurt is regular yogurt that's been drained of some of its juicy whey to make it thicker.  The milk sugar (lactose) is in the whey, so as it loses whey, it loses carbs.  But among Greek yogurts, there's a wide range in carb contents, so read the labels and get the one with the fewest per cup.  Between 5 grams and 9 grams is good; over 15 grams is too much. Always go for plain— anything added means more carbs.  You'll notice that craters in the tub of yoghurt fill with liquid whey. Dump it out. The whey is sour and has lactose (milk sugar) - double whammy there - so get rid of it and the yoghurt will be milder for it.  Full-fat yogurt tastes better, is richer than low-fat and nonfat yoghurts, and on a super low-carb program, it'll fill you up without making you fat from the extra calories.  If you're used to fruit-flavoured, still buy it plain, but add a few berries and/or a little xylitol or stevia.

9. You CAN drink alcohol.

If you were concerned about calories, you'd have to give up the empty ones from alcohol, but on a low-carb diet that doesn't count calories, as long as your total carbs are low enough, it doesn't matter where they come from.  The goal is to limit carbs to whatever quantity your body can tolerate while still burning fat for fuel, and maintaining a state of ketosis often enough to lose weight and be healthy—and that depends on your insulin sensitivity. 

If you get fat easily, you may have to limit yourself to 20 grams of carbohydrates per day; if you don't, you can probably eat 50 grams of carbs per day.  This is good news for booze fans. Spirits are the lowest in carbs, beer is the highest, and always skip the mixers if they're sweetened.

Essentially zero carbs:

Whiskey, gin, rum, tequila, Scotch, vodka — as long as they're unsweetened and not mixed with sugared soda.

10. Don't jog. 

Short, intense exercise that makes your muscles burn and makes you gasp for more air to supply the burning muscles with oxygen.  It has to be hard. If you can talk or watch TV or maintain the effort level for more than five minutes, it's too easy.  If you want maximum return on your exercising minutes - so you can make it as short as possible -you need to work as hard as you can.

This idea is antithetical to the 'exercise is fun' notion that drives the exercise industry, but let me be clear about this.   Skiing, hiking, riding a bike, and surfing are fun, but the exercise is incidental to the fun.  Fun is great, but it's an inefficient way to get fit. I'm not saying don't do it - that stuff can be the best part of your life.  I'm just saying that when the goal is improved cardiovascularity [strengthening the heart and blood vessels], stronger muscles, and injury resistance, then short, superintense exercise works much better and much faster than play or recreation.  Maximally efficient exercise is barely bearable, and not even close to fun.  

Extracted from Eat Bacon, Don't Jog by Grant Petersen (Workman, £9.99). Copyright ©2014.

Dandelion Greens: Weeds That Heal!!

I'd read a few years back how dandelion greens and their roots were good for a liver detox.  So I tried them but I didn't feel much of a response from the dandelion.  They tasted a little like arrugala, which I'd loved from a wonderful chicken salad made from that leaf--that, olive oil, and pine nuts.  Quite good.  

But then I'd heard that dandelion greens were also good for kidney and blood circulation, so I tried them again recently.  And this time I actually did realize a nice benefit both in circulation in my lower extremeties and a relief in pain in my kidneys.  I am not passing a stone, least not that I know.  It's just that my kidneys haven't been working as they should have been.  Circulation in my legs has been weak the last two weeks; perhaps from too much sitting.

Mercolas' article below starts with the Latin name, botanic classification, and a little history on the plant:

Dynamics of Dandelion Greens

Botanical name: Taraxacum officinaleDandelion greens belong to one of the largest plant families – the Sunflower – which include more than 22,000 species, including daisies and thistles. The first reference of dandelions being used as a medicine was written by Middle Eastern physicians in the 10th and 11th centuries. Welsh medicinals concocted as early as the 13th century made use of both the roots and leaves.

He recommends boiling the leaf in hot water for a tea, and that certainly is a viable recipe.  But one of the things that our bodies need from time to time are bitter foods.  For this reason, I wouldn't hesitate to eat the dandelion leaves raw in a salad.  Plus, their bitter taste is not so bitter.  

After gathering this plentiful, easily recognizable herb – preferably the younger, paler leaves – rinse them gently, pat them dry, and store them in plastic bags in a low-moisture refrigerator drawer. Blanching them by immersing them in boiling water for 20 to 30 seconds helps reduce a sometimes-present acrid taste before adding them to salads or sandwiches. Try adding dandelion greens to soups, stews and casseroles, as well as to herbal teas and coffee.  

Next, he reviews the health benefits of the dandelion leaves.  One of the things that Mercola and other health/nutritionist writers do is wax quite general on any benefits from a particular food.  On dandelions, Mercola does not veer from this formula.  He goes directly to claims from folk medicine.

Health Benefits of Dandelion Greens

When your grandmother said dandelion greens were good for you, she wasn’t kidding.

Folk medicine claims the dandelion plant is a powerful healer, used to purify the blood, settle digestion and prevent piles and gall stones, among other maladies. The fact is the greens of the humble dandelion provide 535 percent of the recommended daily value of vitamin K, which may be the most important source of any other plant-based food to strengthen bones, but may also play a role in fighting Alzheimer's disease by limiting neuron damage in the brain.

He's right though.  Dandelions do have a way of purifying the blood.  And it makes sense then that they would so much Vitamin K.  And then he gives a nod to the benefits of Vitamin K: fights Alzheimer's and strengthens bones.  Perhaps.  Good to know.

He adds that dandelions also are a good source of Vitamin A, one of the best nutrients for healing.  I like the fat soluble form myself, Retinol A:

Dandelion greens also give the body 112 percent of the daily minimum requirement of vitamin A as an antioxidant carotenoid, which is particularly good for the skin, mucus membranes and vision. A flavonoid called zeaxanthin protects the retina from UV rays, while others, primarily carotene, lutein, and cryptoxanthin, protect the body from lung and mouth cancers.

Then Mercola adds to the list of benefits:

Need more benefits? Dandelion greens are high in fiber, which helps your body shed waste. These greens also contain vitamins C and B6, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, iron (crucial for generating red blood cells), potassium (to help regulate heart rate and blood pressure), and manganese. Other nutrients present in dandelion greens include folate, magnesium, phosphorus, and copper.

I did not know that Mercola ranks and recommends certain vegetables over others.  Good to know:

Dandelion greens are on Dr. Mercola’s “most highly recommended vegetables” list.

Dandelion Greens Nutrition Facts Serving Size: One cup of raw, chopped dandelion greens (about 55 grams)
Amt. Per Serving
Calories	25
Protein	1 g
Fiber	2 g
Carbohydrates	5 mg
Sodium	42 mg

Studies Done on Dandelion Greens

Mercola thinks that dandelion kills leukemia cells:

A study in 2011 involving the testing of dandelion root tea showed there may be a "kill switch" on leukemia cell receptors through a process called apoptosis. Researchers reported that dandelion root tea didn’t seem to send the same “kill” message to healthy cells. The study concluded that dandelion root extract may prove to be a non-toxic alternative to conventional leukemia therapy.¹

Dandelion root extract also showed itself to be a possible cancer fighter, halting the growth of melanoma cells without inducing toxicity in non-cancerous cells – even those cells considered to be drug-resistant.²

Dandelion Greens Healthy Recipes: Dandelion and Fennel Salad

Ingredients:

·         1 bunch finely chopped dandelion greens

·         ½ fennel bulb, thinly sliced

·         2 cups thinly sliced Napa cabbage

·         ½ cup bean sprouts

Dressing:

·         1 lemon juiced

·         1 Tbsp. mirin (found in the Asian aisle)

·         1/8 tsp. sesame oil

·         1 tsp. apple cider vinegar

·         1 tsp. tamari soy sauce

·         2 Tbsp. olive oil

·         ¼ tsp. maple syrup

Procedure:

1.   Place the salad ingredients in a large bowl.

2.   Mix all the dressing ingredients together, pour over the top, toss lightly, and enjoy! Makes 4 servings.

(From Healthy Recipes for Your Nutritional Type by Dr. Mercola)

Dandelion Greens Fun Facts

The Middle English form of dandelion – dent-de-lioun – reveals the word’s French origin: dentdelion, meaning "tooth of the lion," for the plant’s sharply indented leaves.

Summary

While dandelions are considered a nuisance by those who prefer a pristine lawn, others know the many benefits that dandelions have yielded over centuries in the areas of folk medicine and healthy eating. It’s proven as an antioxidant that also lowers blood sugar, but it may also be useful in treating jaundice, cirrhosis, edema, gout, eczema, and acne. There’s even evidence that dandelion greens might prove helpful in treating AIDS and herpes. Highly nutritious as an ingredient in salads, its roots show ever-increasing possibilities in the fight against cancer.

from Wired magazine

Cheetos

CHEESE PURISTS THE world over exalt their mummified milk. Their silken Goudas and savory Emmentalers. Their fetid fetas and squeaky queso frescos. Their moldy Roqueforts and runny Camemberts. These disks of rotted dairy are the pinnacle of thousands of years of experimentation that began when a herdsman carrying a ruminant’s stomach brimming with milk found that by journey’s end, he had a bag full of curds and whey.

Modern cheese making is a little more complicated, but the same principles apply. Fresh milk is allowed to ferment, with either wild or cultured bacteria. Then, when they have raised the acidity enough, rennet—enzymes from calves’ stomachs (these have now been replaced with laboratory‑produced enzymes)—is added. This coagulates the caseins, which make up about 80 percent of the total milk protein, so that they form a gel.

Then there’s a lot of manipulation—cutting, stirring, and heating—that removes fluid, or whey, leaving behind solid curds. The curds are put into molds, salted or brined, and pressed, which expels more whey and turns the cheese into a solid mass. Mold may be added, either at the beginning or later in the process. Then, depending on the variety, the cheeses are matured for anywhere from two weeks to two years, allowing enzymes, both those from microbes and those from the rennet, to turn fats and proteins into tasty new substances.

Excerpted from Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat, by Anastacia Marx de Salcedo.

Cheese is one of the bedrocks on which the Western diet is founded—a long‑term storage method for excess milk, especially when cool storerooms and caves were available. But the food didn’t fare so well during summer or in hot climates. With heat, animal fat softens or even liquefies, oozing out and creating an oily and unappealing mess.

In the early twentieth century, dairymen on either side of the Atlantic—the Swiss duo Walter Gerber and Fritz Stettler in 1911 and James Kraft in 1916—hit on and patented a solution to the seasonal sweats: emulsifying salts. The chemical disperses water‑phobic caseins by exchanging sodium for calcium; this permits the now smaller particles to be diffused and suspended in liquid. Melting traditional cheeses and mixing them with the emulsifying salts resulted in a cheese‑like product that withstands high temperatures and protracted storage.

Even better, this new food could be made and sold very cheaply, because it could be produced, at least in part, from the rinds and irregular bits left over from cutting wheels of cheese into bricks. Melting the ingredients also pasteurized them, inactivating the live bacteria and enzymes and contributing to a longer shelf life.

The army placed its first order for processed cheese–which at the beginning, came in only one flavor: white—during World War I, buying twenty‑five million quarter‑pound tins from Kraft. This single act probably established Kraft’s century‑long (and still going strong) food industry hegemony. By the time World War II rolled around, the military was a raving cheeseaholic, consuming the dairy product by itself, on sandwiches, or as sauces for vegetables, potatoes, and pasta.

In 1944 alone, the Quartermaster Corps bought more than one hundred million pounds from Kraft’s parent company, National Dairy Products Corporation (which finally itself took the Kraft name in 1969), as well as five hundred thousand pounds of cheese spread (bacon bits optional) to accompany the K and some of the C rations. During the war, the company’s sales almost doubled. But it still wasn’t enough. The military was hungry for new ways to store, ship, and eat cheese.

A 1943 war bond ad unveiled the product to the public with a picture of a bare‑chested soldier feeding a second soldier a cheese cake on a pointy stick.

At the beginning of the war, the army had embarked on a dehydration‑ and‑compression spree—by removing heavy water and reducing its volume, more food could be packed into a single shipment, always an advantage when there are millions of mouths to feed. All foodstuffs except meat were run through the drying chambers and squashed into bricks—fruits and vegetables, flour, potatoes, eggs, and cheese.

As would become its historic pattern, the military funded or supported a variety of efforts, some of which were destined to die a quiet death and others that would garner glory, becoming wartime staples and the basis for future consumer products. Cheese dehydration research was conducted by the Quartermaster Corps’ Subsistence Research Laboratory, through the USDA laboratories, at various universities, including the University of California at Davis, and by industry, notably Kraft.

Unless a food has a strong and flexible internal structure—think cellulose, the long chains of sugar molecules that give plant cells their rigidity—it crumbles when it dries out, something food technologists call fines. One can imagine the first experiment in drying and pressing a proud block of Wisconsin cheddar: cheese dust. This ruled out eating reconstituted cheese out of hand in slices or chunks. But for cooking, the granular form would be an advantage.

The first real cheese powder was developed in 1943 by George Sanders, a USDA dairy scientist. (Even before the war began, USDA’s research facilities had been enlisted to work toward military goals, exhorted by Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace “to consider their possible contributions to national needs as the defense program approaches the stage of ‘maximum effort.” This relationship continues to this day; the USDA has collaborated with the Quartermaster Corps and later the Natick Center on topics as varied as chemical testing, fungi collection and classification, potatoes, dairy, and, from 1980 on, operation of the army’s radiation food sterilization program.)

Until then, it had been “considered impossible to dehydrate natural, fat‑containing cheese,” because the heat melted the fat, which then separated out. Sanders’s innovation was to divide the process into two steps. In the first, the cheese, shredded or grated, was dried at a low temperature; this hardened the surface proteins of the particles, forming a protective barrier around the lipids. Once sufficient water had been evaporated, the cheese was ground and dehydrated at a higher temperature. The final step was to form it into what the patent describes as cakes. A 1943 war bond ad unveiled the product to the public with a picture of a bare‑chested solider feeding a second soldier bundled up in a parka with a cheese cake on a pointy stick:

For jungle or ski troops—a new kind of cheese! . . . But they should taste the same—and taste good—wherever they’re eaten. That has meant many headaches for the Army Quartermaster Corps and the food processors who supply them. . . . For emergency use in arctic and tropics, National Dairy laboratories developed a dehydrated, compressed cheese that keeps well anywhere and takes less shipping weight and space.

In the summer of 1945, Little Boy and Fat Man were detonated in Japan, ending the war and leaving the Quartermaster Corps with warehouses full of food as well as an elaborate manufacturing and distribution system still churning out goods for millions of troops. This would take years to redirect or dismantle. Fearful of the effect of the sudden withdrawal of its huge wartime contracts, the government propped up the dairy business first by buying their excess product and then, in some cases, by selling it back to them at lower prices. (The Commodity Credit Corporation, created during the Great Depression and still in existence, would later distribute these surpluses to welfare recipients and the elderly—the storied “government cheese.”) A temporary federal agency, the Surplus Property Administration, sold off at bargain‑basement prices the food the Quartermaster Corps had amassed.

Who doesn’t love something they get for free or at a third of the original cost? But what could one do with football fields full of potato flakes, a cave stuffed with dried eggs (the army’s strange storage location for one hundred million pounds of the stuff), or a mountain of dehydrated cheese?

Well, there was one group always interested in lowering the cost of finicky fresh ingredients: the grocery manufacturers, businesses such as Swift, Quaker Oats, General Foods, General Mills, Libby’s, Borden, McCormick, Colgate‑Palmolive, Gerber, Scott Paper, Kellogg’s, Pillsbury, and Kraft. (The strength of the companies that produced the packaged goods that lined the nation’s nascent supermarkets, many with deep military ties, only grew over the next century, as did that of their trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, today the food industry’s most powerful lobbying organization.)

Perhaps instead of real cheese, the food corporations could mix in the cheap powder to add flavor. Not only would they save outright on the cost of ingredients, they’d pay a lot less to ship and store it—after all, that was the army’s primary purpose in developing dehydrated cheese in the first place. These ration conversions inspired a flood of fledgling products, particularly in the new and growing categories of convenience and snack foods.

In 1948 the Frito Company (it merged with H. W. Lay & Company in 1961 to become Frito‑Lay, Inc.) debuted the country’s first cheesy snack food, made with the same Wisconsin cheddar the army used for its dehydrated products. Frito Company founder Charles Doolin had been a military supplier, even building a facility in San Diego, where there is a naval base, to service his contracts.

According to his daughter Kaleta Doolin, “During the war, tins of chips were sent overseas to be served in mess halls and sold in PXs. This venture helped put the company over the top as a nationwide business.” Afterward, new plants were opened in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City, where soon cornmeal and water were being extruded, puffed, fried in oil, and coated with finger‑licking, orange dehydrated cheese. Cheetos!

Excerpted from Combat-Ready Kitchen: How the U.S. Military Shapes the Way You Eat, in agreement with Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, 2015.