Vegan landlord bans meat-eaters

[mongo_jones]

interesting thing, on a purely empirical basis - my roommate when i first met her was lactose intolerant. but as we've been living together for the last year or so, she has starting getting very bloated nad uncomfortable it seemed no matter what she ate.

tryska,

have you considered that you might be the variable here? smiley goes here.

mongo

[mongo_jones]

the truth is out there, but you will not find it at 7-11

i have not found the truth at 7-11 but i have found cheap, crappy hot-dogs. on long road-trips these are much preferable to the truth.

[tryska]

7-11 coffee ain't too bad either. we used to mix it with all the different creamer flavors. after a pack of each, no need for sugar.

and mongo - it definitely wasn't me - i didn't cook anything for her or encourage ot eat anything she wasn't supposed to eat.

[stovetop]

lol

[Adam Balic]

Interesting paper (although a bit out of date ). I have not doubt that autoimmune diseases have increased in Western countries or countries that have taken up Western lifestyles. I think that diet most likely has in important role as well. But, I'm not sure at what level and what maybe true in one instance may not be so for another.

Celiac disease has increased quite a bit and certainly gliadin (on of proteins that make up gluten) is the trigger and it is quite possible that WGA causes gut inflammation, which leads to the gliadin crossing the epithelial barrier. But, Westen cultures have been eating wheat products for a relatively long period, in some cases actually more in the past then at present, so why the recent increase in Celiac disease? The same  pattern is also true of other auto-immune diseases.

No, the cause isn't 'we eat wheat products', it is something more subtle then that. When I work it out I will let you know, until then please keep sending in your donations.

yeah - that paper was 1999 right? and by all means keep up the good work with your research. that is an interesting question re: why the increase in celiac disease lately - i think still we eat a lot more wheat/corn now than we did in say 1900 because of the advent of processing food on a large scale, and Mr. Kellog et al.

interesting thing, on a purely empirical basis - my roommate when i first met her was lactose intolerant. but as we've been living together for the last year or so, she has starting getting very bloated nad uncomfortable it seemed no matter what she ate. i advised on cutting out gluten, and sure enough, that's bene the culprit. she has no health insurance, so there's no definitive diagnosis of what's going on, but it was interesting to see theory in practice. for me autoimmune disorders are of particular interest because i've got autoimmune thyroiditis.

It worked for me, too.

There's way too much theorizing and not nearly enough real testing of basic principles. The standard American diet has never been tested, it's just considered ok by default. Yet if you give up something that bothers you, you're challenging the status quo, and threatening our way of life.

If not eating wheat makes my symptoms go away, it does. If the theoreticians figure out a mechanism for this, so they do. If they don't, it's not up to me to sacrifice my lifestyle to align to the current paradigm.

Eh yeh, I would not have thought I that have to say that if you have celiac disease then you should cut gluten out of your diet. Also, don't run with sissors, I can't stress this enough.

Also, the "Western diet" doesn't equal an American diet. It is much more diverse then that, but there is still an overall increase allergic and auto-immune disorders. One in four Americans will develop some type of gut inflammation for most it will not be serious, so will require their large intestine to be removed in sections. No matter how much wonder white these people are eating it wouldn't even come close to the amount of bread eaten by some historical and extant cultures that lacked a high incidence of bowel disorders. So gliadin and WGA may be the trigger, but they are not an explanation. So if you have celiacs diesease don't eat bread, but for the population as a whole avoiding bread proberly won't protect them from other autoimmune disorders.

So some research into underlining causes is proberly OK.

[tryska]

so you think parasites may be involved, adam? can you explain further?

[Adam Balic]

so you think parasites may be involved, adam? can you explain further?

Not sure if they are the total answer either, but the system is giving some interesting data.

This is from Joel Wienstock at the Uni. of Iowa

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) has increased substantially in industrialized countries over the last 40 years. IBD probably results from an overly exuberant immune response likely directed at normal constituents of the intestinal flora. Helminths ["worms"] live within the human gut interacting with the mucosal immune system. The host mounts mucosal inflammation to limit helminthic colonization. This reaction to helminths can down-modulate the immune response to other unrelated concomitant inflammatory reactions. Many people live in increasingly hygienic environments and acquire fewer helminths. The major hypothesis of this second project is that helminthic colonization conditions our mucosal immune system to appropriately respond to stimuli avoiding release of excessively strong tissue-destructive, inflammatory molecules. Conversely, failure to undergo helminthic colonization and to experience this mucosal conditioning predisposes people to IBD

Cetainly allergy free children in Africa develop allergy after removal of their worm burdens, so it is an interesting idea. We shall see were it goes.

[tryska]

huh. that is very interesting. and makes sense too. so what types of worms are we talking? pinworms? tapeworms?

[Adam Balic]

May not matter in terms of the anti-inflammatory response, but it would be better not to have some of the more nasty types. Joel Weinstock is using whip-worms, which in low doses in healthy people do very little that is nasty.

[tryska]

that's pretty cool.

[Pan]

Adam, you aren't volunteering to infest yourself with whipworms, are you?

At least until recently, some degree of worm load was considered normal in rural Malaysia. On the whole, I'd rather not have any, myself.

[Katherine]

Adam, you aren't volunteering to infest yourself with whipworms, are you?

At least until recently, some degree of worm load was considered normal in rural Malaysia. On the whole, I'd rather not have any, myself.

I understand that if you carry tapeworms, you are allowed to speak of yourself as "we", Jason.

[Adam Balic]

Adam, you aren't volunteering to infest yourself with whipworms, are you?

At least until recently, some degree of worm load was considered normal in rural Malaysia. On the whole, I'd rather not have any, myself.

Given the choice I would rather a few little friends then a bowel resection and colostomy bag for life, but don't get me wong some of these parasites are very very bad news. So the ideal thing would be to work out what they are doing and how they are doing it, then mimic effect.

[Pan]

That makes sense, Adam.

[Adam Balic]

That makes sense, Adam.

Good, then you can send me money as well.

[jschyun]

Cetainly allergy free children in Africa develop allergy after removal of their worm burdens, so it is an interesting idea. We shall see were it goes.

Africa? I hope you're not talking about guinea worms here. <shiver> I would rather have allergies any day.

[Adam Balic]

Cetainly allergy free children in Africa develop allergy after removal of their worm burdens, so it is an interesting idea. We shall see were it goes.

Africa? I hope you're not talking about guinea worms here. <shiver> I would rather have allergies any day.

No, schistosomes (blood fluke), which you also really, really, don't want. But, it should be remembered that for every bad infection, there are 99 are without any negative effect.

[mongo_jones]

No, schistosomes (blood fluke), which you also really, really, don't want. But, it should be remembered that for every bad infection, there are 99 are without any negative effect.

do those grow up to be like the fluke-man thing from that early x-files episode? by the way, you eastern seaboard people, you know that thing's still swimming around, right? what's that? it was only a show? right, right, and our toothpaste isn't packed with mind-control chemicals either...mmm minty fresh mind-control...

[Dave H]

So this is why the vegan landlord claimed he wanted vegan tenants .. not so much for their "sensitivities" ... but for their sexiness and their sexual "endurance" ...

PETA has all sorts of defenders, on all sorts of moral grounds, but this struck me as one of the best rationales yet ... 

Walking to work last week (this takes place on a quiet side street in NY's East Village), when a middle aged woman walking the opposite way down the sidewalk announced the following in my general direction:

Vegetarians have better sex and they live three times as long to enjoy it!

Unfortunately was too taken aback to inquire how cutting meat from my diet was going to make me live to be 250. (Or to opine that it wouldn't hardly be worth it.)

As for improving my sex life, as far as I can tell from a google search it's supposed to flow directly from the fact that circulatory problems are a major cause of male impotence, and themselves are quite commonly the result of arteriosclerosis and diabetes and so forth, which in turn are related to eating meat as part of a balanced diet how exactly? Unclear.

Perhaps PETA and their ilk would do better publicizing the fact that strict adherence to a raw food diet causes extreme levels of pre-menopausal amenorrhea. 100% all-natural birth control! And besides, less time on the rag means more time for sex, right?

Right??

[stovetop]

it was only a show? right, right, and our toothpaste isn't packed with mind-control chemicals either...mmm minty fresh mind-control...

You better change your tooth paste

steve

[fiftydollars]

...I guess it makes about as much sense to me as banning tenants based upon their art collections...

I realize that I am very late on this one. But anyway…

I know of a financial planner that chose, or rather rejected, clients on just this sort of basis. He once turned down a very wealthy client because, while waiting for her to greet him at her home for their first meeting, he discovered that she owned a Thomas Kinkade original.

[eunny jang]

I know of a financial planner that chose, or rather rejected, clients on just this sort of basis. He once turned down a very wealthy client because, while waiting for her to greet him at her home for their first meeting, he discovered that she owned a Thomas Kinkade original.

Well, that's totally justifiable.

[Hest88]

I know of a financial planner that chose, or rather rejected, clients on just this sort of basis. He once turned down a very wealthy client because, while waiting for her to greet him at her home for their first meeting, he discovered that she owned a Thomas Kinkade original.

Well, that's totally justifiable.

Of course. Why waste his skills when he knew she would be spending her money on worthless items bound to depreciate in value?