Coffee
• We have no shortage of posts and links about coffee. Well here is most of the science in one place, a comprehensive UofL Internal Medicine Grand Rounds presentation from Dr Mark Pfeifer.
• Check out the many other IM Grand Rounds on their YouTube channel. The audio/video is always high quality and the content is amazing.
Depths of Wikipedia
• A viral Twitter thread asked people for their favorite Wikipedia page. There is actually a Twitter account called depths of wikipedia. Wild stuff. This page on the Timeline of the Far Future was fascinating, going billions of years into the future. Also check out the List of Unsolved Problems, separated by academic discipline.
• Someone else pointed out that if you click on the very first hyperlink in any wikipedia page, and then continue clicking on the first link in each new page, you will always end on Philosopy. I tried it several times, it works.
Siete
• Immediately go buy these Mexican Wedding cookies from Siete. They are grain free, but still have a decent amount of sugar. Just don’t eat the whole bag. We have seen them at most groceries. The shortbread cookies are also very good.
Susan Cain
• I mentioned the amazing Susan Cain’s appearance on Tim Ferriss recently, promoting her new book Bittersweet (here is the TED talk about sad songs and bittersweet parts of life). She of course published the bestseller Quiet, about introverts (here is the TED talk).
Longevity
• Looking for yet another supplement that promises to help you live forever? There is a LOT of pseudoscience and hype around many different molecules for longevity (resveratrol, metformin, rapamycin, NAD+, glutathione, etc).
• Josh Mitteldorf is a physicist turned evolutionary biologist who wrote Cracking the Aging Code, an awesome, recently published book on why organisms age. In this blog post he reviews data on GlyNAC, the combination of glycine and N-acetyl cysteine (NAC). These fall into the pathway to glutathione, the body’s major antioxidant. Glycine is an amino acid in many foods, especially collagen, gelatin, bone broth. It helps you sleep and may help offset potential negative effects of methionine, another amino acid in animal protein that is thought to cause aging, cancer, etc. NAC is a very safe medication we use for drug overdoses to protect the liver, also used as a supplement for antioxidation. Looks like the combination of the two may reliably improve human biomarkers and increase lifespan in rodents. Also no real downside to these two molecules.
Kefir
• Coffee and Kefir both get a lot of attention on Practice of Wellness. They also happen to be the first and second substances I put in my body each day, coffee while fasting, Kefir to break the fast. Kefir is a fermented dairy food, like yogurt but with far more variety and quantity of healthy microbes.
• This huge review from Examine.com of the effects (more than 70 total!) of Kefir cites tons of studies, most of which are positive. It appears that the main group of people who may want to avoid Kefir are those on chemotherapy (because it is a live food) although these patients do see several positive outcomes.
• Remember that live foods appear to be better than high fiber foods for building a healthy microbiome. Just make sure to get the Kefir with no added sugar.
End of Life
• Please read this amazing humanities piece by UofL Neurology Resident Muhammad Ismail Khalid Yousaf, MD. What a powerful conversation he has with a patient he is called to see. I will not even try to give an interpretation, you must read it.
Reversible
• As my kids would say, this is a “satisfying” video of laminar flow dynamics, mixing dyes into cornstarch, and then unmixing them. I didn’t know that was possible.
Quotes
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
– Philosopher Bertrand Russell
…have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of every day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
– Sculptor Henry Moore
