Advanced Mediterranean Diet

From this day forward, my Advanced Mediterranean blogging will be at Advanced Mediterranean Life.  Why not check it out and sign up for e-mail notification of new posts or subscribe to the new RSS feed now, when you’re thinking about it?  Those options are at the upper right corner of the new blog home.

Why the change?  I don’t have the tech skills to update the software at this site.  The new Wordpress.com format is much more user-friendly and esthetically pleasing.

This old URL will be running indefinitely.  Which means it could disappear tomorrow, but I doubt it.  After all, much of my writing links back here.  I’ll manually move some of my favorite posts over to the new blog over time.

Many thanks for your readership!

Steve Parker, M.D.

Katie Matlack at Software Advice has a software wishlist for Apple iPads and iPhones.

• Diabetes Risk Calculator
• Spirometry (for measuring lung function)
• Electrocardiogram (heart electrical tracing) and interpretation

The heart tracing app in particular appeals to me since so many of us have brief palpitations that come and go without warning.  By the time you get to your doctor’s office or emergency department, it’s over.  When your palpitation starts, you could record your heart rhythm almost immediately, sharing with your doctor later.

Already on my iPhone I have a medical calculator (about 100 equations) and infectious disease book that I use several times a week.

Katie Matlack at Software Advice, an online resource, has a software wishlist for Apple iPads and iPhones.

If you’re interested in these apps, leave a comment at Katie’s blog.

Steve Parker, M.D.

I just learned that rapper 50 Cent is co-authoring a fitness and nutrition book, Formula 50: A Six-Week Total Body Transformation Plan.

“Total body transformation” sounded familiar.

A quick search at Amazon.com revealed at least 10 books with that phrase in the title; nearly all are fitness or weight-loss books.  Looks like the trend-setter is Hot Point Fitness: The Revolutionary New Program for Fast and Total Body Transformation, by Steve Zim and Mark Laska, published in 2000.

In case you didn’t know, you can’t copyright a book or song title, at least in the U.S.

I’m starting to think my books are titled too modestly.

Steve Parker, M.D., author of The Advanced Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight, Feel Better, Live Longer and Conquer Diabetes and Prediabetes: The Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet

I’m very excited about a brand new cookbook for folks limiting their consumption of carbohydrates, wheat, and gluten.  It’s a unique collaboration among five chefs (Jennifer Eloff, Maria Emmerich, Carolyn Ketchum, Lisa Marshall, and Kent Altena) and other low-carb luminaries like Jimmy Moore and Dana Carpender.  I was honored to contribute a couple pages myself.  The book is Low-Carbing Among Friends, volume 1. All 325 recipes limit digestible carbohydrates to a maximum of 10 grams; many have five or fewer grams.  This should be great for people with diabetes and anyone trying to manage excess weight with low-carb eating.  All recipes are gluten-free, wheat-free, and sugar-free.

I can’t wait for my copy.  I’m “online friends” with several of the contributors, so I’m familiar with the great quality of their work.  You can get the book at Amazon.com, but I ordered mine from the book’s website, figuring the authors make more profit there.  (If we want good books, we have to support authors.)  It’s not too late to order this as a Christmas present.  Don’t you know someone who could use it?  

Steve Parker, M.D.

Parents in hunter-gatherer societies know why kids don’t like to retire alone to a dark room at night, writes Peter Gray, a psychologist:

Until a mere 10,000 years ago we were all hunter-gatherers.  We all lived in a world where any young child, alone, in the dark, would have been a tasty snack for nighttime predators.  The monsters under the bed or in the closet were real ones, prowling in the jungle or savannah, sniffing around, not far from the band’s encampment. A grass hut was not protection, but the close proximity of an adult, preferably many adults, was protection.  In the history of our species, infants and young children who grew frightened and cried out to elicit adult attention when left alone at night were more likely to survive to pass on their genes to future generations than were children who placidly accepted their fate. In a hunter-gatherer culture only a crazy person or an extremely negligent person would leave a small child alone at night, and at the slightest protest from the child, some adult would come to the rescue.

Safer than sleeping alone on the ground

I gotta confess I’d never thought about it this way before.  Makes sense. Read the rest of Dr. Gray’s post.

Steve Parker, M.D.

h/t to Amy Alkon

I have a soft spot for cannibal jokes.

At the hospital last night, I admitted an elderly heart patient with chest pain.  I asked if he’d ever heard of the Mediterranean diet.  He answered, “What’s that? Does it mean you only eat those kinds of people?”

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: In the course of our conversation, he worked in five other one-line jokes. What a blessing.

PSS:  Q: Why did the cannibal eat the trapeze artist?

A: He wanted a balanced meal.

Diet has always generated passion, and passion in science is an infallible marker of lack of evidence.

That sentence is from a wonderful review of diabetic diet cycles over the last 150 years.  It’s by L. Sawyer and E.A.M Gale, published in Diabetologia (2009, vol. 52, pages 1-7, DOI: 10.1007/s00125-008-1203-9).  Anyone with a serious interest in diabetic diets will appreciate the funny and philosophical style of the authors.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Penelope Cruz credits the Mediterranean diet with helping her keep her weight under control, according to “The Times of India.”

I wanted to share a link with you that’s a review of a documentary called “Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days.”  It’s at Science-Based Medicine, a blog.

Steve Parker, M.D. 

I’m taking some time off.  Hope to see you back here January 3, 2011.

Merry Christmas!

-Steve