[Grovenet] What happened to Dairy Queen?

Wed Nov 7 18:59:04 PST 2007

I think you're reinforcing my point that we simply don't have fool-proof
protocols for testing the effects of what we ingest (food or drug) in the
short term. Human kind has always taken generations to decide what's okay
and what's not, sometimes by the simple process of killing off all the
people who insist on using some substance <G>. 

Look at cow's milk. It's toxic to many, if not most, humans. We managed to
kill great numbers of Polynesians by demanding they feed their children milk
as the Europeans explored and settled the South Pacific. 

In the past year I've finally had to accept taking regular meds for the rest
of my life, most likely, as my blood pressure insisted upon rising with my
age. It was a serious process to find efficacious drugs that didn't have
serious side effects. Some, recommended by my ex-doctor, produced such acute
chest pains from upper gastro upset that I told the doc he needed to call me
if I had a heart attack, I surely would never know! His first suggestion was
to add more meds to the ones I was taking to counter the effect, such as
large doses of Prilosec to offset the heartburn caused by the BP med. I
declined to become involved in offering my body for such "drug wars".
Ultimately I found a BP medication that was effective without such severe
side effects. 

Are these drugs safe? Absolutely NOT! But I am convinced that they are
providing me a better chance of keeping up my runs on the beach, or of even
being alive, when I turn 70 next year. Like you, I'm glad I have access to
the right stuff to keep my body working at its best, but I don't for a
second believe that I, or anyone, knows the long term effect of most of
them, whether they come from the supermarket or the pharmacy. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of Carol Morgan
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 2:47 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] What happened to Dairy Queen?

To be clear, I am not arguing that synthetic or man made substances that
achieve a certain biological function are better than the natural
equivalents, quite the contrary. 

For instance, DES, or diethylstilbestrol (I should definitely spell check
this mail) is a synthetic hormone.  And thalidomide was developed
synthesizing some type of antibiotics or natural peptides.  I think this is
a pretty bad idea.  Because something like a synthetic estrogen is going to
basically trick the body into doing something which it wasn't really meant
to do, or respond to some of the properties of the substances it uses
naturally while neglecting or even blocking others.  

I make many of my health care situations to specifically avoid those types
of medicines.  I use Armour thyroid, made from ground animal thyroid glands
(I know, gross, but hey my body won't make my own and I wasn't big on dying
at 28 instead of using it and so far they kill plenty of pigs and cows so
that it is very cheap) instead of Synthroid.  Synthroid, like artificial
hormones, does some of the things natural hormone does but at the level
science is at now it can't really discover everything something does in
order to reproduce it.  And doing half of the effects of a natural substance
can be harmful, because the brain says oh I have plenty of that judging by
feedback from certain tissues so I won't do X to produce it, and on and on,
while certain tissues get none of what they need because the synthesized
substance doesn't interact with them and the body stops producing its own. I
also use an IUD instead of hormones for this reason, sorry to get personal,
but I figure the less something messes around with complicated Rube
Goldberg-like processes like those in the endocrine system of my body the
better. 

And that is one of the problem with corn sweetener, not in my opinion
whether it was genetically modified.  GM actually could possibly give it the
capability of eliminating key harmful effects by making a food less like
something our body would recognize (remember the lion and the bear). But
taking a small part of a whole food like corn and enormously concentrating
it is like tricking the body in a way, because we get a whole bunch of one
part of the food that happens to have a fairly drastic effect on us without
the rest of it that it usually accompanies. That is exactly like using food
like a drug like Ron said.  Natives who chewed Cacao leaves didn't usually
get into too much trouble, but when they found out how to isolate the
bioactive chemical lots of people sure did. 

And really the medication issue is a bit of a diversion, sorry to take it a
bit further.  It is hard (but not impossible such as in the case of the IUD)
to achieve a particular effect on the body without introducing a chemical
that is designed to do something to the body, obviously.  But it isn't hard
to sweeten a soda without doing it that.  And I would take any possible
consequence that has been argued that say NutraSweet or splenda has in any
of the various sub populations that use them over the consequences of the
huge insulin spikes that result from drinks containing any natural
sweetener--in every population and in every individual. 

The real scientific breakthroughs come when they make discoveries that don't
just seem be based on weak correlations because those results could be
anything.  People that use artificial sweeteners?  As a population they tend
to be the people that need to lose weight.  That complicates things
enormously.  The best medicines have the same effects in everyone and not
just in a statistical subpopulation. 

(Well it was no use my spell check didn't have diethylstilbestrol). 

------ Original Message ------ 
Received: 01:17 PM PST, 11/07/2007 
From: "Ron D'Eau Claire" <ron at cobi.biz> 
To: "'Forest Grove local interests list'" <grovenet at rdrop.com> 
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] What happened to Dairy Queen? 

I don't think the problem is with the "artificial" chemicals at all, but 
rather that it takes generations of use to begin to understand their impact.

All the FDA can assure us is that, from the best they can determine, a food 
or drug is not likely to cause severe harm in the very near future. It's 
anyone's guess after that, even if one stops using the chemical. 

I raised a DES child in the early 1960's. Like many thousands of other 
pregnant mothers, my wife showed possible signs of miscarriage. To his 
credit, the OB/GYN's first reaction was that miscarriages were nature's way 
of ending a bad pregnancy, but my wife was worried sick about losing her 
baby. So, after running a lot of tests that showed no other abnormalities he

prescribed diethylstilbestrol, DES, a thoroughly tested and approved drug 
for her condition that had been in use for well over decades with absolutely

no complications. She carried our child to term and Rebecca was a born very 
healthy, robust little girl. 

It was several years later that we got a call from a very distraught 
physician. In a solemn face-to-face meeting he explained that ALL children 
whose mothers took DES were turning up certain problems as the children 
approached maturity. In girls it was certain problems in her cervix that 
might render her sterile or give her cancer. Indeed, it was an abnormally 
high death rate from cervical cancer among young women in their 20's and 
30's that had led back to DES. 

At the very least our daughter would need to start seeing a doctor for 
detailed yearly checkups starting in her early teens. It was not a matter of

*if* she had problems, it was only a matter of how severe and when they 
would appear. 

Even though all of my education and experience to that time had been in 
science and engineering, I realized that I had been putting too much 
unscientific faith in our scientific protocols. In short, while I was quite 
capable of analyzing probabilities and doing measurements in a lab, I had 
taken a totally un-scientific attitude toward what we were doing. I was 
trusting that our scientific efforts were adequate. 

They weren't. 

>From that day on, any chemical I put in my body that hadn't been in use at 
least as long as aspirin became suspect. I do use modern drugs as needed, 
but I also recognize that I don't know what I'm doing to myself except for 
the very short-term effects I hope to gain. I weigh the short term 
advantages against very real, possible long term effects that could cripple 
or kill me. 

My goal became learn to listen to my body and recognize when it was telling 
me something was out of balance. 

My mantra became "all things in moderation". 

After all, even arsenic is a well-proven tonic in miniscule amounts. 

Ron D'Eau Claire 

-----Original Message----- 
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On 
Behalf Of Carol Morgan 
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 10:31 AM 
To: Forest Grove local interests list 
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] What happened to Dairy Queen? 

I actually use Splenda quite often, because my husband is watching his 
weight and doesn't really want to pay any price to do that. 

I know artificial sweeteners have their detractors, but I actually feel 
better about them than real sugar (of any kind) for the following reasons: 

First, all of the artificial sweeteners from saccharine, the most panned, 
have been extensively studied in terms of what harmful effects they might 
have. People were sure that they were to good to be true and have blamed 
them for pretty much every potential harm and they have pretty much come out

unscathed. 

I think that the discrepancy between people thinking that 'artificial' 
chemicals (if there really were a distinction) are bad for us and the fact 
that very few have ended up having the severe bad effects that were 
forcasted is that I think it is very likely that the more a chemical is 
designed not to interact with the systems of our body in any real way, the 
less it has the capacity to affect it to the worse. 

For instance, my friend made the argument that she was avoiding the use of 
artificial coloring because she saw it come out in her child's #2. I asked 
her whether she thought that might mean that unlike real sugar, which as it 
travels through the body is doing all kinds of very powerful things to the 
various systems of the body, these artificial colors are doing absolutely 
nothing and thus pass all the way out of the body unchanged. One of the 
reasons fiber is good for us is precisely because of this. She was 
dumbfounded by my argument and though undeterred at going natural, admitted 
that this made sense and was something she had never thought of. Very much 
the reaction I often get. Interesting and unusual, though mostly 
inconsequential. 

I do agree that unintended consequences on living organisms should be 
considered, both theoretically and experimentally, but if something isn't 
designed (unlike sugar and insulin and corn) to interact with biological 
systems, it won't, not even in unpredicted or longterm ways. It is kind of 
like when King James 1 put a bear and a lion together in a pen to see what 
would happen. They aren't natural enemies so they ignored each other. 

This is kind of why I like Splenda. It is based on a real sugar molecule, 
but is modified so that it doesn't even interact with our metabolism. 

------ Original Message ------ 
Received: 09:33 AM PST, 11/07/2007 
From: chuck <chuck at grovenet.net> 
To: Forest Grove local interests list <grovenet at rdrop.com> 
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] What happened to Dairy Queen? 

It's a shame really, as raw unprocessed cane sugar provides a rich 
source of natural vitamins and minerals. But we have to process the 
heck out of it, stripping any nutritional value. Something else I 
learned, white table sugar is filtered using 'bone char'. Bone char is 
basically the charcoaled remains of animal bones. It's what makes our 
sugar 'white'. Both C&H and Domino use this process. Sounds nasty to 
me. Of course they say they import this 'char' from overseas and only 
use the bones of cows that died a natural death.............riiiiight. 

And High Fructose Corn Syrup (which is in almost everything) is more 
than likely made from Genetically Modified Corn. Thanks Monsanto. 
Another reason for me to avoid it. 

Good alternatives are Stevia, Turbinado Sugar, Raw Sugar, and Agave 
Nectar. They're not as easy to spot in the stores, but Freddys has a 
pretty good selection, as well as New Seasons. 

chuck 

Carol Morgan wrote: 
> 
> A teaspoon of cane sugar, though, certainly bears little resemblance 
> to most of the sweet products consumed. Increasingly the form of 
> sugar being used is corn syrup, which is much more highly 
> concentrated, has a higher glycemic index, and some argue due to the 
> omnipresence of other corn products in everything we use, is causing 
> alergies and even toxicity in some people. 
> 
> And even in a normally functioning pancreatic system, the insulin 
> surges produced by such high quantities of sugar in one concentrated 
> form (very unlike the berries of our ancestors which are quite low in 
> sugar per ounce) have short and long term ill affects on the body. 
> Insulin is one of the most bioactive chemicals known, and one of its 
> primary purposes is to store fat. Without it we couldn't do it. That 
> is why childhood diabetics are usually quite thin. 
> 
> But secondary diabetics usually get that way after constantly 
> submitting their bodies to high insulin surges, resulting in an 
> aquired tolerance, much like to narcotics, along with the obesity that 
> this often causes. 
> 
> A teaspoon sounds so innocent, oh that we all stopped there.... 
> 
> 
> ------ Original Message ------ 
> *Received: *07:48 AM PST, 11/07/2007 
> *From: *"Ron D'Eau Claire" <ron at cobi.biz> 
> *To: *"'Forest Grove local interests list'" <grovenet at rdrop.com> 
> *Subject: *Re: [Grovenet] What happened to Dairy Queen? 
> 
> 
> Sugar has a lot going for it. It's a form of quick energy, a lift that we 
> enjoy. It's why healthy people crave fresh fruits, berries and other 
> naturally sweetened foods. The sweetness is sugar. 
> 
> Calories? A teaspoon full - a HUGE amount to consume at a sitting - 
> has all 
> of 25 (that's twenty-five) calories! Better yet, it's a food most of our 
> bodies process easily. Only those whose systems has been injured by 
> disease 
> or obesity can no longer tolerate it easily. 
> 
> Not all the dangerous drug dealers are standing on street corners. 
> Many of 
> them are supplying the foods and drinks you can buy in the grocery store. 
> 
> Ron D'Eau Claire 
> 
> 
> 

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