I won’t dwell heavily on this since I’ve done it any number of times in the past, but futurepundit has a pretty good piece talking about new research that further implicates fructose in the obesity and diabetes epidemics we’re undergoing in western cultures and the US particularly. The one bummer outcome of the research from my perspective is they also tied increased uric acid levels to the problem, and the high protein diet I eat increases my uric acid levels. I just can’t win, by the time I’m 60 I will be eating a diet that consists of green peppers, hearts of celery, and 4 slivers of almond a day.

So, I came back from lunch last week and all of the sudden felt like I was going blind in one eye. I pretty quickly noticed that if I could squint I could see a very large gray spot in the middle of my vision in my right eye. I got in to see an ophthalmologist the following day who examined me and then referred me to a retinal specialist, who I saw yesterday. Turns out I have Central Serous Retinopathy in both eyes, though I wasn’t noticing it in my left eye because the blister was on the periphery of my vision. After 3-4 years of recurring health problems (hernias, diabetes and related stuff, debilitating bacterial infections) I finally had a year of no problems in 2005. So much for clear sailing in 2006. Anyway this is the bad news – I can’t see very well. The good news is while the causes of this are not well understood, in most cases it clears itself up within 6 months all on its own. I have to do a daily eye chart exam on myself to track the progression of the blind spot, and if things get worse it’s back to the specialist for more examinations and possible surgery. But if as expected things slowly get better, I’ll be in the clear by the middle of the summer, and the only lingering aftereffect of this will be that I get to see a retinal specialist once a year for pictures of my eye to make sure there are no recurrences or other retinal issues. The other good news is that my immediate thought when I saw the blind spot was ‘fuck, it’s the diabetes, I’m going blind already, despite such good control over it.’ Turns out it has nothing to do with any of that which was a tremendous relief to me. The last bit of good news was that a previously known condition I have in my right eye, Pigmentary Dispersion (sometimes a precursor to glaucoma) was basically unchanged and was no cause for worry.

There’s a sort of humorous aside to this in that when I was undergoing the first examination the doctor asked me if I had ever suffered trauma to my right eye, as it’s often a cause of pigmentary dispersion syndrome. At the time I couldn’t recall anything but then on the ride home I had this vivid memory of my jr/high school era friend Mark Ross plinking me in the right eye with a snail when we were in high school during a crazed snail fight (there were millions of them on the beach during low tide at Caumsett State Park). It broke my contact lens in my eye and caused poor vision for days in that eye. So, it’s all Mark Ross’s fault. If I go blind I’ll have to track him down and give him grief about it.

So via my previous post you have some sense of the harm corn syrup is doing to us. How did things get to this point, where corn syrup is found so pervasively in our foods? Check out this post for the details. The short version is: lobbying and government subsidies, with the Archer Daniels Midlands company as the villain.

This has come up a couple of times in email and IM conversations I’ve had over the past month or so, the fact that there is evidence that there is a link between the increased intake of high fructose (and other forms) of corn syrup over the past couple of decades and the increased rate of type II diabetes in north Americans. I had lost the link I had to the first research I had read on the subject. I watch a lot of medical RSS feeds and fortunately this came through today. It’s dense, but it lays out the case pretty comprehensively. The short version for folks who can’t spend the time to read it: read the labels on your food carefully. Avoid prepackaged, pre-prepared foodstuffs, soft drinks, and prepackaged sweetened beverages in general, and above all avoid corn syrup and all its derivatives. There was a recent article in the NY Times which showed that 33% of the kids born in NYC within the last 5 years will develop type II diabetes. It’s an epidemic and no one is immune – learn to watch what you eat.

All of this is just a part of it of course – a balanced, healthy diet and regular exercise are just as important, but the above stuff is actually the easiest thing to do – stop buying the 20 oz. cokes at lunch and microwaving that chef boyardee ravioli, your endocrine system will thank you.

Man, the medical establishment can drive one nuts. Check out the results of an 8 year study on the effects of a low-fat diet in this article in the New York Times. The answer? Not much at all in terms of the incidence of heart disease and various cancers between the women on the diet and the ones who were not. This is apparently one of the most comprehensive studies of this nature ever conducted, and the results have thrown things into confusion for dietitian and physicians trying to advise their patients, including folks like me. The article is well worth a look for anyone interested in healthy eating.

One of the side effects of the warm winter has been that Soolin has actually picked up a couple of ticks, including one in January which I would have thought was impossible. As a happy coincidence, Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools site mentioned a cheap apparently very safe and effective tick removal tool, the . I just added this to my amazon wishlist – as soon as I’ve used it to remove a tick I’ll post a review. Even if it’s only mediocre though it has got to be better than my current ‘work at it with tweezers’ method of removal.

I’ve been talking about this here ever since I came down with it – today I note it’s finally starting to truly hit the mainstream. I was as oblivious to this as anyone else was until I was afflicted. If you’re an american, especially, apparently, an east coast reared american, you are strongly urged to spend some time learning what a healthy diet is all about. A brief statistic from today’s New York Times to help drive the point home:

One in three children born in the United States five years ago are expected to become diabetic in their lifetimes, according to a projection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The forecast is even bleaker for Latinos: one in every two.

33% folks, one third of the population, is now predicted to suffer from the disease. Our north american lifestyle, and especially our eating habits, are completely fucked is what this is all about, and corn syrup in all its forms is playing a big role in this. Read the labels of the foods you eat and if it has high fructose corn syrup in it, don’t eat it! (which, alas, is terribly difficult, since everything has it in it). Eat vegetables, lots of vegetables, and not in the ‘yeah yeah I had 3 sprigs of frozen broccoli with dinner’ kind of way, and search on diabetes here if you want more folk advice from me, but more importantly, go read the New York Times article published today (registration probably required, use bugmenot.com if that bothers you), and the rest of the series this week. And most importantly, please, if you have kids, stop feeding them the crap you’re feeding them.