Health issues – Page 2 – Into the Woods

Country-style seitan

Country-style steak made from seitan

I have bought seitan in the past (it’s very expensive), and I didn’t really like it. Homemade seitan is a whole ′nother thing. The key ingredient is gluten flour. Gluten alone would be impossibly rubbery, so a certain amount of ground legumes (I used garbanzo beans in the seitan in the photo) is needed to optimize the “bite” of the seitan. And because gluten and legumes alone wouldn’t have much flavor, sauce and seasoning are very important.

I feel sorry for those who can’t tolerate gluten (most people can) or who avoid gluten for some reason. My suspicion is that gluten takes the rap for the downsides of white flour. And, in my view, even white flour has its essential uses, in moderation. Personally, I love gluten, and I have no reason to suspect that gluten has done me or my digestive system any harm. Quite the opposite, I would testify. Gluten is a good source of vegetarian protein.

Anyway, here is a good basic recipe for seitan. That recipe uses 3 parts gluten to 2 parts legume. That’s too much gluten, in my opinion. Even 1 to 1 seems a little high on gluten, so you should experiment with the proportions. The recipe in the link uses lentils. I usually use cooked chickpeas. But any legume would work. Varying the type of legume would vary the spin of the seitan. If you want something more chickeny, use chickpeas. For something more beefy, use blackbeans. Recipes differ on how to cook the seitan. I shape the dough and simmer the seitan in stock. That seems simplest, plus the seitan absorbs flavor from the stock.

I welcome the trend toward fake meats. However, after my initial enthusiasm, I find that I’m not all that interested in fake meats. For one, they’re just too meaty. I prefer vegetarian alternatives that are high in protein but that don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are. Though, according to Wikipedia, the word “seitan” is new, wheat gluten has been eaten in Asia for hundreds of years. The Chinese word translates to “dough tendon,” which is a fine description of the texture of gluten unless you cut the gluten with something that isn’t so rubbery.

Is gluten a processed food? I would argue that it is not. Even old water-powered mills could produce flour from the germ of the wheat. They called it “shorts” flour and sold it as food for pigs. Separating the germ from the bran from the white endosperm after milling was just a matter of sifting, as far as I know.

Seitan is very absorbent, so it loves sauces and gravies. For Asian dishes, I’d suggest cutting it into thin strips (and giving the seitan a quick stir-fry) as though you were making beef and broccoli. Seitan steaks, with dark gravy, naturally, lie at the Western end of the seitan spectrum. I rolled the seitan steak in seasoned flour and lightly fried it, the better to simulate country-style steak.

Seitan is high in protein and low in carbs. It’s also low in fiber, so I think it’s a good idea to serve it with high-fiber foods. I kneaded grated carrots and chopped onions into the seitan in the photo, not only to increase the fiber but also to improve the bite.

Entropy and a speculative theory of health

Basil (with okra in the background) — a negative entropy factory!

Edible order

I have written here before about negative entropy and its relation to life on earth. The post was “The opposite of entropy, and why we’re alive,” from December 2016. The concepts are based on a short but important book by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life. Yes, Erwin Schrödinger is the Schrödinger who gave us the thought experiment about Schrödinger’s cat. The book was first published in 1944 and has gone through at least eighteen printings from Cambridge University Press. I need to summarize some fundamentals, but this is a post about food, not physics.

The concept of entropy

The concept of entropy is simple enough, though a great deal of complex physics arises from the concept. It’s that systems always seek a state of equilibrium. This is laid out in the second law of thermodynamics, which explains why your cup of coffee gets cold. Your coffee will seek the same temperature as the room it’s in. As the coffee loses heat to the room, the temperature of the room will rise very slightly from the heat of the coffee. The thermodynamic system — the coffee and the room — seek a state of equilibrium. A state of equilibrium may sound all orderly and pretty, but the opposite is true. When a system is in a state of equilibrium, no work can be done. The engine in your car can do work only because high heat inside its cylinders (from burning gasoline) is much hotter than the surrounding environment. A gasoline engine would lose efficiency inside a hot oven and would eventually stop running as the oven got hotter.

Life

The physicist Roger Penrose extends Schrödinger’s ideas by pointing out that life on earth is possible because of the temperature difference between our very hot sun, which is surrounded by very cold space. A system that can take advantage of that differential (and the absence of temperature equilibrium) can do work. Penrose: “The green plants take advantage of this and use the low-entropy incoming energy [from the sun] to build up their substance, while emitting high-entropy energy [for example, body heat]. We take advantage of the low-entropy energy in the plants, to keep our own entropy down, as we eat plants, or as we eat animals that eat plants. By this means, life on Earth can survive and flourish.”

We can think of entropy as disorder, and negative entropy as order.

Life, then, to a physicist, is a system that can do work, and create order, by exploiting the temperature differential between a star and the cold space that surrounds the star. All life on earth is dependent on photosynthesis. All the work of photosynthesis must be done by green plants exposed to sunlight. Green plants are little factories that do the work of creating all sorts of orderly molecules that are essential to life as we know it. Animal life is possible because animals eat plants. Animals take in the order (or negative entropy) from the plants and excrete disorder. The taking-in and the excretion are equally essential.

Health and disease

First, a disclaimer. To think about health and disease in terms of entropy and negative entropy does not in any way deny, or conflict with, the sciences of nutrition and medicine. Rather, to think about our own life and health in the context of entropy and negative entropy is just a way of trying to keep in mind the most fundamental principles of what it is that keeps us alive and healthy. To be healthy, we want to maximize the order made possible by our hot sun and cooler planet. We can do that only by eating plants.

In my previous post on this subject, I asked a question as a kind of thought experiment: Would it be possible for human beings to live off of compost? I propose that the answer is no — at least, not for long. Though many of the minerals and even molecules necessary for life can be found in compost, the compost, by decomposing, has lost most of its order. Those minerals and molecules degrade into the soil and get recycled back through living plants exposed to the sun, creating order again by using energy from the sun. I would predict that, if we tried to live off of compost, we would sicken and die as the reserves of negative entropy in our bodies became exhausted and disorder set in. I also would predict that that disorder would be expressed as common, well-known ailments and diseases, leading to a common and well-known cause of death.

For example:

Origin of Cancer: An Information, Energy, and Matter Disease. (Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, 2016.) “We therefore suggest that energy loss (e.g., through impaired mitochondria) or disturbance of information (e.g., through mutations or aneuploidy) or changes in the composition or distribution of matter (e.g., through micro-environmental changes or toxic agents) can irreversibly disturb molecular mechanisms, leading to increased local entropy of cellular functions and structures. In terms of physics, changes to these normally highly ordered reaction probabilities lead to a state that is irreversibly biologically imbalanced, but that is thermodynamically more stable. This primary change—independent of the initiator—now provokes and drives a complex interplay between the availability of energy, the composition, and distribution of matter and increasing information disturbance that is dependent upon reactions that try to overcome or stabilize this intracellular, irreversible disorder described by entropy. Because a return to the original ordered state is not possible for thermodynamic reasons, the cells either die or else they persist in a metastable state. In the latter case, they enter into a self-driven adaptive and evolutionary process that generates a progression of disordered cells and that results in a broad spectrum of progeny with different characteristics. Possibly, one day, one of these cells will show an autonomous and aggressive behavior—it will be a cancer cell.”

Increased temperature and entropy production in cancer: the role of anti-inflammatory drugs. (Inflammopharmacology, 2015.) “Some cancers have been shown to have a higher temperature than surrounding normal tissue. This higher temperature is due to heat generated internally in the cancer. The higher temperature of cancer (compared to surrounding tissue) enables a thermodynamic analysis to be carried out. Here I show that there is increased entropy production in cancer compared with surrounding tissue. This is termed excess entropy production. The excess entropy production is expressed in terms of heat flow from the cancer to surrounding tissue and enzymic reactions in the cancer and surrounding tissue. The excess entropy production in cancer drives it away from the stationary state that is characterised by minimum entropy production.”

The bottom line where our health is involved seems clear enough. Negative entropy and order lead to health. Entropy and disorder lead to disease. What we eat is extremely important for keeping order inside our bodies.

Concepts for better health

“Eat more leaves” is almost a mantra with the food writer Michael Pollan. He is, I think, not thinking about entropy or about physics from physicists such as Roger Penrose or Erwin Schrödinger. The science of nutrition tells us the same thing that physics tells us. Leaves, of course, are the primary source of the negative entropy that supports life on earth. Leaves are healthy things to eat.

Clearly freshness matters. A just-picked squash will turn into compost fairly quickly under certain conditions. Though a just-picked squash and a week-old squash will have identical amounts of some nutrients, clearly the just-picked squash will have more negative entropy, or order, because living things start to decompose as soon as they are cut off from their source of order. With a squash, that happens when you cut the stem between the squash and the leaves of the squash plant. The difference between a fresh squash and a composted squash is entropy. When you eat a squash, you absorb its order. What’s left is compost.

Eat as close to photosynthesis as possible. Chlorophyll itself is very good for us. Could we live on a diet of nothing but meat? Some animals do, obviously, though those animals evolved to be optimized for an all-meat diet (though they get vegetable matter from the entrails of the animals they eat). But human beings are not optimized for an all-meat diet. As Michael Pollan says, eat mostly plants.

Eat preserved foods only if fresh foods are not available. To live in the northern latitudes, it’s necessary to eat preserved foods. But why open a can of vegetables in the summer?

What animals eat matters. It seems reasonable to assume that milk or cheese from cows that ate grass would contain more negative entropy than milk or cheese from cows that ate moldy corn. Honey from bees fed sugar water couldn’t possibly be as good as honey from bees with access to fresh flowers.

Avoid processed foods. Not only do processed foods provide terrible nutrition with an excess of calories, the negative entropy has been processed out. Many processed foods are probably little better than compost, though they may taste better.

Cook sparingly and carefully. Cook with an eye to preserving the order contained in food. For example, be sparing with heat, using no more heat than is necessary to find the sweet spot between deliciousness, digestibility, and maximum order.

Lest this sound like quackery, I should point out that it only boils down to considering health from the perspective of fundamental physics rather than from the higher-level sciences of nutrition and medicine. Those sciences all lead to the same conclusions about what’s healthy and what’s not, though the physics emphasizes one point: Eat as close as possible to the order that plants create from sunlight. That’s another way of saying what nutritionists are saying when they encourage us to eat fresh, whole, unprocessed foods.

Why I have been thinking about this

Having our own garden, or living on a farm, obviously can be beneficial to our health. But even if we don’t have a garden, fresh foods are available in most places (to those who can afford it). I find it ironic that northern Stokes County, where I live, is considered a food desert because of the distance to places that sell fresh food. Many people here buy most of their groceries at places such as Dollar General, where absolutely nothing is fresh and everything is processed. The consequences to people’s health is obvious just from looking at the people in Dollar Generals.

I thought a great deal this spring, as I bucked myself up for a hot summer, about how my garden is my opportunity to maximize my intake, for a full season, of negative entropy from the summer sun. Or, to turn it into a jingle, make order while the sun shines. It’s in summer that negative entropy from the sun is freshest and cheapest. I strongly suspect that, just as we can store food for the winter, our bodies also can store negative entropy for the winter. So, as I see it, we have a kind of duty to take advantage of the sun in summer to benefit our health.

Stars

Stars and life have two interesting things in common. They are the only systems in the universe that can create order out of chaos. Stars actually can create negative entropy inside themselves for their own purposes.¹ And stars also supply the radiant energy that makes life possible.

The astronomer Carl Sagan made the famous statement, “We are star stuff.” I would add to that statement: We are star stuff, powered by starlight.

Notes:

1. An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, Second Edition. Bradley W. Carroll and Dale A. Ostlie. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Page 330.

Extra credit: One way of assessing the consequences of global warming would be estimating its effects on the ability of plant life on earth to create order from the sun. The health of oceans, forests, and tundra obviously is critical. It recently was reported that the Amazon is now a net producer of carbon, rather than a carbon sink. I don’t know of any data on how such things affect the planet’s net ability to create negative entropy. But it can’t be good. Yes, plants need carbon dioxide, as global warming deniers often point out. But carbon dioxide is not the only thing that plants need to flourish. They also need clean water, a suitable environment, and not being killed by human activities.

Our own fresh taste of the 14th Century

The Covid-19 virus. Source: Wikipedia

By historical standards, this plague has been a mild one. So far, worldwide, about 2.3 million people have died from Covid-19. The most fatal pandemic in recorded history was the Black Death, which peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351. The Black Death killed between 75 million and 200 million people.

Covid-19 is not the first plague that seniors like me have lived through. Even today, the World Health Organization estimates that there are 10 to 20 million survivors of polio worldwide. AIDS has killed up 40 million people worldwide, and the peak year for deaths from AIDS — 2004 — is only 16 years behind us. Hundreds of thousands of people still die each year from AIDS.

There is much here to reflect on, including our vulnerability to the dark and primitive side of nature, no matter how modern we think we are or how dazzled (and coddled) we are by our technologies. Nor can we forget that the dark and primitive side of human nature is still with us. When I was a poll watcher during last year’s election, a woman who refused to wear a mask said, loudly, because she wanted as many people as possible to hear, “God’s got me covered.” And just this morning a former friend posted a link on Facebook about how Covid-19 was caused by a global “criminal elite,” including Bill Gates, George Soros, and the Rockefeller family.

Though I think there is such a thing as the arc of justice and slow moral progress, we have plenty of grounds to wonder just how much fairer today’s world is from the world of the 14th Century. Covid-19 reminded us that viruses are just as fatal to the high and mighty as to the poor. But the poor are more exposed, and they’re usually the last to get help.

I feel slightly ashamed to report that, three days ago, I got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19, because my state (North Carolina) is now vaccinating people over 65 as the available vaccine is allocated to risk groups. Meanwhile, teachers can’t yet get the vaccine, nor can younger people with pre-existing conditions. In the U.S., only 28.9 million people have had at least one dose of the vaccine so far. At that rate, according to the New York Times, we won’t reach 90 percent of the U.S. population until Dec. 15.

It’s surprising that I’m just now getting around to reading Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book, in which a 21st Century historian time-travels to 14th Century Oxford to do historical research and accidentally arrives during the middle of the Black Death pandemic. Now seemed like a good time to read this book, the better to appreciate not only how some things never change, but also how much better off we are — or could be if we really tried.

Source: Wikipedia

Having mentioned the 14th Century, I should also mention Barbara Tuchman’s classic (if somewhat controversial) book, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, published in 1978, which I have read twice.

Eat more mushrooms

A stir-fry of Quorn, green pepper, mushrooms, and broccoil

Several articles have appeared recently about the benefits of eating mushrooms at least twice a week. Something in the mushrooms apparently wards off cognitive impairment in older people.

Here are two of the articles:

Science Daily: Eating mushrooms may reduce the risk of cognitive decline

New York Times: Mushrooms may reduce the risk of memory problems

Of course you can eat them raw, but I don’t know of any better way to cook mushrooms than to stir-fry them. I’m pretty sure that I can stir-fry mushrooms in a hot wok with less oil than a skillet would need. They’re browned on the outside but succulent on the inside.

These days, “baby bella” portabella mushrooms, as opposed to the white mushrooms, seem to be available just about everywhere, nice and fresh. The price is good, too.

It appears that the beneficial substance in mushrooms is ergothioneine, an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.

Flu shots?

Wikipedia

Each winter, the media bombard us with articles telling us to get a flu shot. Here’s a typical headline: “The flu vaccine is only about 30% effective but you should get it anyway.”

No thanks. I’ll do my own calculus on whether to get a flu shot.

Those of us who avoid vaccinations are regularly told that we’re being anti-science. “Anti-vaxxers” are often mentioned as the left-wing equivalent of right-wing climate-change deniers. But I would argue that there is room for rational individual calculus about whether to get flu vaccines. The calculus is not the same for everyone, though. The adult calculus is different than the calculus for children. And the calculus is different for, say, smallpox (mortality rate 30 percent) than influenza (less than 1 percent to around 2 percent, keeping in mind that mortality from the H5N1 bird flu is much higher but is not known to be transmitted from human to human).

From the public health perspective, the calculus supports “herd immunity.” The idea is that even a vaccine that is only 30 percent effective will reduce the overall number of flu cases and hospitalizations. Assuming the vaccines themselves are safe (which I don’t necessarily assume), then that public-health calculus makes sense.

However, from an individual perspective, the calculus may look different.

For those who work in hospitals, or at grocery store checkouts, or on airplanes, or who have children in school — people who are constantly and unavoidably exposed to other people and their germs — the individual calculus almost surely would support getting a flu shot.

But I mostly stay home during flu season. When I do go out, I try to avoid rush times, to minimize the number of people I encounter. I keep my distance from people, especially if someone is coughing or sneezing. I watch what I touch. I wash my hands. I keep little towels in my pockets and in the car.

I do acknowledge that we as individuals have an ethical responsibility — even to others — to keep ourselves healthy. If we have something that’s contagious, we have an ethical responsibility not to spread it. Those of us who refuse the flu vaccine are told that we’re making ourselves more dangerous to ourselves and others, that avoiding vaccinations is antisocial and antagonistic toward public health. That is no doubt true with diseases that are highly contagious and when vaccines are available that are known to be safe and effective. (We are told that the mercury preservative in some vaccines is safe. Do I have to believe that?)

But if I avoid getting the flu, and if I therefore don’t help the flu spread by giving the flu to someone else, then my argument would be that I have met my ethical responsibility to others and that I am not harming pubic health. I also would argue that my no-vaccine, minimal-contact method of avoiding the flu is more than 30 percent effective, is rational, and is aware of the science.

It has been 25 years since I’ve had the flu. So far so good.

Water

It’s terrifying how much money Americans spend on bottled water — more than $13 billion a year. Even if bought by the gallon, bottled water costs well over $1 per gallon. When water is bought retail in smaller bottles, it costs $8 per gallon and up.

And the plastic! Each year, 50 million barrels of oil are required to produce the bottles.* Only about 20 percent of those bottles are ever recycled, so each day about 60 million bottles are thrown away, ending up in landfills or even by the roadside. It’s estimated that it takes about 450 years for a plastic bottle to bio-degrade. Not only that, the water gets shipped around in trucks and is eventually refrigerated.

The problem is getting worse, because sales of bottled water continue to grow at about 5 percent per year.

Part of the foolishness of bottled water is that most of it is just filtered municipal water. About 45 percent of bottled water comes from natural springs. But let’s not forget that a well is a spring — same water, and from a greater depth.

It always amazes me, in grocery stores, to see how much sweet liquids and bottled water people have in their carts. Not only is that a lot of plastic to dispose of, who wants to lug all that weight home?

Bottled water has never made sense to me. With the exception of those who live in environmental sacrifice areas, near fracking sites and coal ash impoundments, for example, good water is cheap and easily available to all of us. Everyone, however, should have a good water filter. That’s because filtered water tastes so much better. And if you live in a city, who wants the chlorine?

Before I moved into the abbey, where the refrigerator does the water filtering, I used a gravity filter like those made by Brita. The quality of the filter makes a big difference. Replacement filters for the GE refrigerator cost about $40 each and last about six months. That’s an expensive filter. I tried a less expensive off-brand filter, but the off-brand filter did not provide that springwater taste that everyone loves.

By the way, the abbey’s water comes from a private well, 305 feet deep. The first 60 or so feet passes through soil. Beyond that, it’s granite all the way down. Though maintenance of a water pumping system is an ongoing cost, it’s worth it. Wells are magical. Not as magical as my grandmother’s well with its windlass, rope and bucket, but magical just the same. Being able to have your own well — and with it, water independence — is one of the rewards of rural life.

Why do we do this? What are the factors that convince us that it makes sense to pay thousands of times the cost of water? It’s hard for me to believe that convenience is the factor, because bottled water isn’t nearly as convenient as just holding a glass up to the refrigerator. There also is something ominous about this, as water systems shift from public ownership to corporatization. Eventually water — water! — will become a much greater source of profit to corporations than it already is. Many people seem to have forgotten already that water comes out of the tap. That’s scary, not just because of the environmental and economic costs, but also because it’s yet another way that corporations reprogram us to be thoughtless, throwaway, dependent consumers.

*Source: CreditDonkey

Blue-filtering eyeglasses

My eye doctor urged me to wear blue-filtering glasses while I’m in front of a computer screen or an iPad screen. Though I love the Retina display on my new 27-inch iMac, the screen does seem to be — at least subjectively — more intensely blue than the screen on my old iMac. So I’ve started wearing my blue-filtering reading glasses when sitting in front of the iMac.

The concern for ophthalmologists is high-energy visible light. There is evidence that it is a factor in age-related macular degeneration. Too much blue light also may affect the brain in a way that interferes with sleep.

Adding the blue-filtering feature to a pair of new glasses doesn’t add all that much to the cost of the glasses. Notice in the photo above that the computer screen looks slightly more orange when seen through the glasses, because the blue light is reduced.

If you’re in front of computer screens a lot, and especially if you’re older, this is something worth discussing with your eye doctor.

And, of course, keeping the brightness of the screen as low as is comfortable will help preserve the computer screen, use less energy, and reduce the strain on your eyes.

Coping with carb craving

We all have carb cravings. For me that equals bread, or sometimes potatoes. The best way I know to mitigate the sin is to make one’s carb dishes at home, from scratch. There are ways of making carb dishes a little less carbie, not to mention keeping the salt much lower than what you get in processed foods.

Potato cakes are a Southern institution — or at least used to be in the days when people still cooked. In our household many years ago, they were generally made with leftover mashed potatoes, with chopped onion, an egg, and cracker crumbs to soak up the egg.

Sometimes when I’m cooking potatoes, I’ll cook a few extra (in the skin) and put them in the refrigerator. They might then become potato salad, but they also can become potato cakes. The potato cakes in the photo were an experiment. Some people, it seems, use flour to soak up the egg. I thought that was worth trying. It was a failure. The flour ruined the potato-y taste and made the cakes too heavy. It’s back to cracker crumbs.

As I’ve written before here, we all should eat as though we’re diabetics, even if we’re not. That means being aware of the glycemic index of carbie foods and knowing some tricks for keeping the glycemic index down. With potatoes, you can lower the glycemic index by chilling the potatoes after they’re cooked. Even if you reheat the potatoes, the glycemic index is still lower. So cooking potatoes in advance and chilling them is a healthy as well as a practical thing to do. I don’t know of any reason why this couldn’t be done even with mashed potatoes. Just heat them up again with the cream and butter.

By the way, when I go to ordinary grocery stores (as opposed to Whole Foods), one of the horrifying things I observe is that it’s a tiny minority of people these days who buy fresh foods. Potatoes are everyone’s favorite vegetable, but only the Whole Foods category of people buys potatoes fresh. Other people buy all sorts of frozen potato concoctions. There is simply no excuse, not least because it’s such a waste of money.

Huperzine-A

By the way, this is 1,004th post in the Into the Woods blog.

In the past, I have mentioned one of my heros (or heroines, if you wish) — Rita Levi-Montalcini. Italians affectionately called her “La Professoressa.” She was a Nobel laureate. She discovered nerve growth factor back in the 1980s and in 1986 won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. She died in December 2012 at the age of 103.

My favorite interview with La Professoressa is now behind a paywall. But in the interview (I believe she was 98 or 99 at the time), she was asked how she managed to remain so active, with such a young mind. She said that it was because she took nerve growth factor. Nerve growth factor, as I recall, is manufactured in small quantities in Italy, where it is used to treat certain eye disorders. It is not available in the United States. At the age of 98 or 99, La Professoressa said that her mind was sharper than it had been in her twenties. She still worked in her lab every day.

This naturally got me thinking about how it might be possible to acquire some nerve growth factor. I never found a way, but sources pointed to something similar — Huperzine-A. It’s natural and is derived from an Asian moss. There isn’t as much research on Huperzine as I’d like, but the research that has been done is promising for anything having to do with neurological degeneration such as Alzheimer’s. It seemed likely that Huperzine would be helpful to anyone who’s getting older.

At the time I started taking Huperzine-A, Ken was here. As you know if you’ve read Ken’s book, he’s a smart guy. Sitting across from his young mind at breakfast and dinner every day is a challenge. My 63-year-old mind would sometimes forget things (names and nouns in particular). Sometimes I would tell him something that I’d already told him, and he would nicely let me know that I’d already told him that. I found that tremendously embarrassing.

After a couple of months on Huperzine, I asked Ken if I’d forgotten anything lately or repeated something I’d already told him. He thought for a second and said, “Why no, I don’t think you have.”

After I started taking Huperzine, I finished and published my novel. I lost 20 pounds (and have kept it off). I may certainly still have little memory lapses if I’m tired or distracted (forgetting the names of people I don’t know very well, for example). But I’d put my memory up against anyone’s. If you asked me how many clean coffee cups are in the cabinet, or for an inventory of what’s in the dishwasher at the moment, I’d probably get it right. I rarely misplace things. I don’t forget to shut the chickens up in the evening. I know what’s on my calendar.

The effect of Huperzine is subtle. It doesn’t feel like coffee or any kind of stimulant. In fact it actually lowers the heart rate. My resting pulse is rarely above 72, and if I’m really relaxed it’s in the 60s (though how low it goes varies with how much exercise I’ve been getting). Huperzine just makes you feel more focused and more able to concentrate. It won’t compensate for lack of sleep. Nothing does.

There are two side effects.

If you take it close too close to bedtime, it probably will give you insomnia with a racing mind. (Frankly, a racing mind in the middle of the night can be a good thing, if you don’t have to get up in the morning. The imaginative work I do for novel-writing mostly happens in the middle of the night, or while taking long walks. See Clark Strand’s new book Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age.)

Huperzine also will give you vivid dreams. When I read the Amazon reviews by people taking Huperzine, I thought they might be exaggerating the effect it has on dreams. But they weren’t. If you want to enhance the dream effect, take Huperzine close to bedtime. If you have good dreams, they’ll be very good. If you have a bad dream, it will be very bad. The dream effect, however, does tend to diminish over time. It’s most noticeable in the first days of taking Huperzine. It increases the complexity and vividness of dreams. I often hear music in my dreams. In a dream just last night, an organist was playing a fugue. I am quite sure that I heard all four voices of the fugue, as clearly as if I were at a live performance. I don’t know how the brain can render detailed visual and aural reality on the fly (in dreams, at least), but somehow it does. If you are prone to sleep paralysis, Huperzine probably will aggravate it.

Here’s an Amazon link for buying Huperzine, which I pass on with all possible disclaimers. You should read up on Huperzine before you try it. Read the Amazon reviews.

Huperzine appears to not have much effect on younger people (except for dreams). Younger people probably don’t need it. But I personally am convinced that it helps keep older minds sharp.

The late Rita Levi-Montalcini

Compromising with carbs

Chapati bread, four parts whole wheat to one part soy flour

We’ve known it for years, but a major new study has confirmed the evidence that carbs will make you fat, and fats won’t hurt you. Below is a link to the New York Times story about this study:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html

In my own experience with dieting, I certainly have found this to be true. I am five feet 10. I have never weighed more than 165 pounds, but 165 pounds is way overweight for me. I’m an ectomorph with slender bones. My ideal weight as a younger man was about 148, with some muscle-mass maintained in a gym. Without any gym-maintained muscle mass, my ideal weight is closer to 145 or even a few pounds lower. I judge my ideal weight as the weight at which I look trim and at which my waist is a sensible 32 inches.

Just over a year ago, I had gotten close to 165 pounds, partly because I had expended a lot of effort in learning to make decent sourdough bread. Bread is my downfall. It is my favorite food. I was a picky eater as a child, and without bread I probably would have dried up and blown away.

But here’s the problem: How can we keep bread in our lives but keep carbs down?

Lately I have been experimenting with flat breads. Oven-baked breads, whether risen with yeast or with a sourdough culture, just won’t rise if the dough is heavy. It’s difficult to make good bread even with 100 percent whole wheat, because it’s too heavy. But flat breads are a whole different thing. Flat breads don’t require a bubbly dough. Rather, the dough is rolled thin before it’s baked so that the steam during baking causes the bread to balloon up with one big steam bubble in the middle. The bread sinks as it cools, but it’s very tender. Indian chapati bread is the classic version of this. It’s baked not in an oven, but on a griddle or in a skillet.

It’s very, very easy to make delicious chapati bread from 100 percent whole wheat flour. But it’s also possible to mix in low-carb flours such as soy flour and still end up with great-tasting, tender bread. I’ve been able to make good chapati bread with two parts whole wheat flour to one part soy flour.

However, if you’re not experienced with chapati bread, I’d recommend finding a recipe on the Internet and figuring out the technique. Once you understand how to roll the dough to the right thickness and get it to puff up in a hot skillet, you’re ready to try lower-carb versions.

I’d recommend starting with a ratio of about 5 parts organic whole wheat flour to 1 part soy flour. If the results are good, then try a ratio of 4-1, then 3-1, and then even 2-1. Notice how the soy flour changes the texture of bread. It’s up to you to find the ideal ratio.

The addition of soy flour to whole wheat flour not only increases the protein and lowers the carbs, it also reduces the glycemic index of the bread.

For a year now, I have been able to keep my weight below 147 pounds. To lose weight, I have to ruthlessly cut out carbs. But maintaining a good weight is much easier. It’s all about figuring out what your own limits are with carbs. It’s also about watching the scales and adjusting your weight when you’re only two pounds over, rather than 20. I hope I never have to lose 20 pounds again.