Entries Tagged 'health' ↓

Sugar and your Hair

A lot of attention has been paid to the low- and no-carb diets, and I won’t go into the whole debate here except to say the diet with the coolest name is by far the Paleo Diet and the hardest one to stick to by far is the CRON diet, nay lifestyle adopted by hard-core life extensionists. I used to be real skeptical of the uber-popular Atkins diet and still am to some degree regarding the benefit of ketosis. But last winter I tried the South Beach Diet and it really worked for me, even though I plateaued early in Phase 2 never to lose much more. I lost a lot of that oft-mentioned inflammation - my watch all of a sudden was loose; the wrist isn’t usually the first place I lose weight, y’know. It didn’t work for my husband, and I recognize that it’s not a one-diet-fits-all, especially without exercise included in the regime.

However, I noticed an interesting connection since then. When I didn’t eat sugar/carbs, I lost very little hair each day. Having long hair, I notice when I lose hair in the shower and maybe a week after I started the SB diet, my hair practically stopped falling out. And months later when I started slipping off the diet, bam! Hair loss in what I thought was “normal” amounts and what I now consider “obscene amounts” of hair.

Now I try to pay attention to my diet and the subsequent day’s hair loss. Beer is no friend to my hair, although moderate ice cream consumption isn’t too bad, yes!  I can’t figure out wine, apparently I never have any without having something else horrible. Guys, maybe this is something you want to explore if you’re starting to go bald. I have no idea if there is any connection to that, but I’d want to keep my hair as long as possible if it was starting to thin.

Miracle fruit a miracle of the disgusting kind

I bought some miracle fruit pills from ThinkGeek.com on a lark. This fruit native to west africa makes bitter and sour foods taste sweet. My opinion is that anything that tastes bad has to be good for me, so why not enjoy eating bitter but healthy foods like grapefruit, broccli rabe, capers, frisee. All those things that Sean loves with his hot sauce-burned-taste buds but normal people only enjoy when the bitterness is cooked out some, probably also causing loss of nutrients.

OK so I was too chicken to try it with my morning coffee in lieu of sugar, whew, bullet dodged! I did have a tablet just before eating grapefruit. The tablet itself is sort of sweet-ish in a strange way, nothing terribly unpleasant. The grapefruit post-tablet was definitely the most edible grapefruit I’ve ever eaten. But now, drinking water to wash it all down, I realize my folly. The water tastes, oddly, disgustingly, not sweet but kind of sweet with bitter edges. I don’t know how to describe it. And I can’t get the taste to go away! Oh miracle fruit, you mock me with every swallow I take. The thinkgeek website says the effects can last up to 1 hour. As long as it’s not some mutant strain of the miracle fruit, with my luck lately, this strange aftertaste will last until 2009. Guess I’d better go eat the rest of the grapefruit.