If you leave your job for three months without explanation, you’ll probably get fired. If you leave school for three months without a really detailed doctor’s note, you’ll probably get kicked out. If you leave your children unattended for three months, even with a good excuse, they’ll probably hate you, and CPS might take them away.

So, if you used to read my blog, but no longer feel that you can trust me as a webmaster, that’s well within your rights. I could go on and on about my hiatus with all the lab meetings and the presentations and the hours spent slaving away over tubes of clear liquids — but that’s not actually so interesting. You know what is?

What’s interesting is that I’m alive and relatively healthy despite my abominable (to some) diet and lack of exercise choices. Please read on for a heartbreakingly honest confession of my wicked health ways, with photographic examples of the devastation I’ve wreaked on myself, and sometimes on loved ones.

Disclaimer #1: The pictures herein may or may not induce diet fail.

Disclaimer #2: I may or may not use tons of hardcore scientific fact to back up my feeble excuses for my health choices.

Disclaimer #3: I may or may not be an advocate of unhealthiness per se, but I strongly defend people’s rights to make whatever unhealthful choices they wish…so long as they can live to tell about it, as I am.

First off, I can’t decide what my goal is with this post. Is it to absolve myself of the guilt I feel for what I’ve done? Is it to brag about the fact that I can do what I’ve done and get away with it? Or do I just want a platform to rage back against the hordes of people who provoke me time and time again by asking “Oh my gosh, you’re going to eat that?!”? Because the answer to this question is almost always “Yes. With seconds.”

So let’s say you make a cupcake. A cinnamon-y cupcake. You’re feeling indulgent, so you top it with streusel, which is basically butter and cinnamon and sugar. This adds a nice crunchy layer of devil-may-care deliciousness to your dessert.

This would be a fine place to stop and enjoy your creation. Would be, if it weren’t for maple buttercream. This is essentially maple syrup, butter (the real stuff), and powdered sugar.

Wow, you’re really throwing caution to the wind now! And since you’ve gone this far, you can’t think of any great argument against garnishing this confection with crumbled bacon, can you?

Paula Deen has nothing on you, obviously, but why are you doing this? Are you hosting a party? (No.) Do you have an amazing food blog, in addition to having an awesome science blog? (No.) Oh, so you just have a thing for unhealthy food! Lots of unhealthy food.

You don’t even really share these with people, you just eat them. The only reason you’ve taken pictures is to make your friends jealous on Facebook. But maybe you justify this as a rare treat! …What’s that? It’s not a rare treat? You mean you make unhealthy stuff, like, all the time? Surely you jest.

Alright, so I’m talking about myself here. I’m constantly making stuff like this, and not sharing it either. High sugar, high fat — and not just for dessert. My meals are technically not much better: cheap Chinese food, half of a large pizza, Ramen noodles. Even when I cook for myself, which is at least half the time, the meal is almost always along these lines:

Lots of frying, lots of butter. I’m not even going to talk about all of this stuff that I have on the side:

Alright, so you’re getting the picture. I’m not necessarily counting calories. Or fat, sugar, salt, cholesterol…. Maybe at this point you’re saying to yourself “Okay, this is disturbing, but what does it have to do with science?”

I’m not so sure, exactly. I guess I’m only just now becoming fully aware of the fact that I have eaten like this for my entire life, while making no attempt at formal exercise whatsoever, and yet I’m alive. Alive with an unremarkably normal BMI of around 20, normal cholesterol levels, no sign of diabetes, and blood pressure on the lower side. This probably sounds a lot like some sort of Humblebrag. And maybe it is. But I like to think of it as an anomaly of nature, an anomaly that should be questioned, challenged, and weakly explained in list form.

And so I present you with reasons why I’m not dead:

1. “I’m on a ketogenic diet!” A ketogenic diet is one that’s high in fats. I’ve got that covered. However, a ketogenic diet it also low in carbohydrates, so I can’t actually claim to be on a ketogenic diet. But it’s interesting to know that such a diet exists and is used as a form of treatment for epilepsy, brain cancer, and some genetic metabolic disorders. When the body has a relatively high amount of fat and low amount of sugar, the liver will burn fat instead of carbohydrates, which generates a byproduct called ketones. In people who can’t metabolize sugars because of enzymes deficiencies, a ketogenic diet is the way to go; in people who have seizures, it’s not well understood why a ketogenic diet helps, but it does.

"Tonight, we dine in hell! ...Because we hardly ate all day."

2. “I’m on the Warrior Diet!” The Warrior Diet is fairly straightforward: “under-eat” during the day and “overeat” at night. Now, I don’t technically follow the Warrior Diet or any diet at all, but I do find that my breakfast is small, my lunch is small, and my dinner is HUGE. For breakfast, I might grab some Greek yogurt (<200 calories). For lunch, I’ll have something like pita chips
and a cereal bar (<300 calories). And dinner is as much food as I can fit into my body. I’m talking 1200+ calories of pepperoni pizza, 1000+ calories of pasta, or 1400+ calories of fried chicken and biscuits. Followed by whatever my most recent baked good happens to be. So maybe I intake a normal number of calories (or so I’ll tell myself), but most of that happens after 6pm…where no one can see me.

3. “I’ve got good genes!” Ah, yes, those all-powerful “genes.” Those things that we use to excuse ourselves for not being runway models, Olympic swimmers, or (insert enviable profession here). And of course genes have a lot to do with everything we are…but, which genes are we talking about specifically? Very few people actually have a gene in mind when they praise “good genes” or lament “bad genes.” In fact, there aren’t many genes that can be solely blamed for why people are fat, athletic, smart, etc. Truth be told, there’s an enzyme known to break down fat in food and in the body and convert it to energy, and I know one of my two copies of this enzyme is mutated. So I don’t think I can say I have superior genes that let me eat tons of fat and sugar without consequence. If you still think it’s my genes, my dad developed Type 2 diabetes in his 50s, and my mom was diagnosed with high cholesterol in her 50s… neither of them were ever supermodels, either, so my genes probably aren’t terribly special.

4. “Just you wait!” And, after all this, it’s certainly possible that I’ve got some rough days in store for me. Everyone’s heard about how eating lots of fats and sugars predisposes to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and just about every other negative biological outcome. It’s possible that my love of all things fatty is dooming me to a future with scarring in my brain, specifically in my hippocampus. I’m definitely not advocating for anyone to do as I do, but sometimes people break all the health “rules” and turn out just fine, and sometimes people follow every rule and are still struck with health misfortunes.

Honestly, I am in awe of people with well-balanced diets, those of you out there running marathons for fun, and the like. But…I’m just not like that. I’m sure as I get older, I will be forced to make concessions to nature and clean up my act a bit. But, until then, I’d love it if people would give me less grief about what I choose to eat, unless those people are doctors holding the results of my blood work.

And in the meantime, yes, I’m going to eat that.

Stay nerdy.

P.S. I really do apologize for so much time away from blogging. I’m going to shoot for updates every week or every other week, and hope for the best. Thanks as always for your continued support!

P.P.S. Check out this shiny new comedic science blog written by my buddy Tyler: http://www.biLOLogy.net

Lambrechts DA, Wielders LH, Aldenkamp AP, Kessels FG, de Kinderen RJ, & Majoie MJ (2012). The ketogenic diet as a treatment option in adults with chronic refractory epilepsy: Efficacy and tolerability in clinical practice. Epilepsy & behavior : E&B PMID: 22366051

Seyfried TN, Marsh J, Shelton LM, Huysentruyt LC, & Mukherjee P (2011). Is the restricted ketogenic diet a viable alternative to the standard of care for managing malignant brain cancer? Epilepsy research PMID: 21885251

Veggiotti P, Teutonico F, Alfei E, Nardocci N, Zorzi G, Tagliabue A, De Giorgis V, & Balottin U (2010). Glucose transporter type 1 deficiency: ketogenic diet in three patients with atypical phenotype. Brain & development, 32 (5), 404-8 PMID: 19515520

Thaler JP, Yi CX, Schur EA, Guyenet SJ, Hwang BH, Dietrich MO, Zhao X, Sarruf DA, Izgur V, Maravilla KR, Nguyen HT, Fischer JD, Matsen ME, Wisse BE, Morton GJ, Horvath TL, Baskin DG, Tschöp MH, & Schwartz MW (2012). Obesity is associated with hypothalamic injury in rodents and humans. The Journal of clinical investigation, 122 (1), 153-62 PMID: 22201683

Your new afternoon snacks?

It’s 3PM and you’re at your desk fighting determinedly to keep your eyes open. You think maybe some candy or soda could give you the sugar rush you need to get through the last few hours of the work day, so you head to the vending to get some — STOP! Wait a minute. You might want to read this post first before you snag those M&M’s; new research shows that protein might do a better job of keeping you awake, and burning your calories, too.

As someone who’s happiest with meat at every meal, I say: pass me the jerky.

Everyone’s familiar with the concept of a sugar rush: you eat a ton of sweet stuff, you get a huge rush of energy and hyperactivity, and then you “crash” and feel more tired than you did before eating the sweets. That said, it’s almost logical to think that sugar would stimulate cells that help keep us awake. What cells are those? They are neurons called orexin cells, which secrete a stimulant into the brain to help keep us awake and burn calories. In fact, these neurons are less active in obese people and narcoleptics.

Researchers in the U.K. set out to find what makes these drowsiness-busting, calorie-burning neurons tick. They labeled the orexin neurons in mouse brains using genetically-directed fluorescence; this way, they could introduce different types of nutrients and look at their effects on the activity of only the orexin neurons. Interestingly, glucose was found to inhibit these cells, which might explain after-meal sleepiness when the sugar from your food gets into your blood and then to your brain. In a recent follow-up publication, this same group found that dietary amino acids, like the ones found in egg whites, stimulated orexin neurons — these amino acids even reversed the inhibitory effect of glucose.

In other words, and to vastly oversimplify, sugar might contribute to making you sleepy and stout, while protein could help to keep you lively and lean. These findings could to explain previously mystifying studies in which protein meals made people more alert than carbohydrate meals. Additionally, these results could be especially important for altering the dietary compositions of people with disorders like obesity, insomnia, and narcolepsy.

So, if you swap out a candy bar for a protein bar with the same number of calories, the protein might tell your body to burn more of those calories, and you’ll get through your day with fewer yawns. Sounds like a good trade to me.

Stay nerdy.

Burdakov D, Gerasimenko O, & Verkhratsky A (2005). Physiological changes in glucose differentially modulate the excitability of hypothalamic melanin-concentrating hormone and orexin neurons in situ. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 25 (9), 2429-33 PMID: 15745970

Karnani MM, Apergis-Schoute J, Adamantidis A, Jensen LT, de Lecea L, Fugger L, & Burdakov D (2011). Activation of central orexin/hypocretin neurons by dietary amino acids. Neuron, 72 (4), 616-29 PMID: 22099463

If you’re in good enough shape to read this post then I’m sure you’re just fine, but…well, it’s worth a look to see what the latest research says about all that refined sugar and/or alcohol you just consumed.

1. You might not remember stuff. You would think that this is because of the alcohol, but actually, this one’s about the candy. New research in Behavioral Neuroscience shows that when people are on a high fat and refined sugar diet, they have significantly impaired hippocampal memory. This means that the people in the study had trouble forming new memories about their experiences…like what they had even eaten. Depending on how many Skittles you’ve been popping, there’s a chance you might not recall as much as you would have if you’d opted for tricks instead of treats.

2. You might have ended up in the hospital. I don’t mean from alcohol poisoning, although that’s certainly the case for some, but I’m referring to alcohol-related injuries. A recent data analysis exercise estimates that a whopping 21% of hospitalized injuries are attributable to alcohol. A heavy drinker with alcohol in his/her system is anywhere between 4 and 7 times as likely to end up in the hospital with an injury when compared to someone who hasn’t hit the bottle. “But I’m not a heavy drinker!” you say. Turns out, moderate drinkers suffer more injuries per hour with alcohol in their systems than heavy drinkers do, and the occasional binge definitely raises hospital injury risk.

3. You might have had a fight with your significant other. A study in New Zealand found that alcohol was involved in more than 25% of altercations between intimate partners. Women were more likely to report anger, fear, and severity of aggression while feeling victimized, and the perceived severity was significantly greater if the male partner had been drinking. However, men and women claimed approximately equal rates of being the victim or the perpetrator of the aggression. You see, when alcohol’s involved in lovers’ spats, nobody wins.

4. You might have kick-started your heart disease. I hate to scare you, but a science journal called Atherosclerosis probably knows what it’s talking about. Researchers in New York took mice and divided them into three groups: group 1 had two drinks per day, seven days a week (“daily-moderate” drinkers; blood alcohol content 0.07%); group 2 had seven drinks per day, two days a week (“weekend-binge” drinkers; blood alcohol content 0.23%); group 3 had no alcohol (same number of calories, though). While good and bad cholesterol levels rose in both drinking groups, bad cholesterol went up significantly more in the binge-drinking mice. And although the researchers induced atherosclerosis (clogging of the arteries of the heart) in all groups, the moderate-drinking mice actually had smaller atherosclerotic plaques than the no alcohol group; plaque volume was significantly greater in the weekend-binging mice.

Don’t kill the messenger, folks! But do be safe the next time you’re out having your candy- and alcohol-fueled party nights. Your memory/uninjured body/significant other/arteries will thank you.

Stay nerdy! And look way over to the right hand side of the site – you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our RSS. Everybody wins!

Francis HM, & Stevenson RJ (2011). Higher reported saturated fat and refined sugar intake is associated with reduced hippocampal-dependent memory and sensitivity to interoceptive signals. Behavioral neuroscience PMID: 22023100

Miller TR, & Spicer RS (2011). Hospital-Admitted Injury Attributable to Alcohol. Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research PMID: 22004026

Connor JL, Kypri K, Bell ML, & Cousins K (2011). Alcohol involvement in aggression between intimate partners in New Zealand: a national cross-sectional study. BMJ open, 1 (1) PMID: 22021745

Liu W, Redmond EM, Morrow D, & Cullen JP (2011). Differential effects of daily-moderate versus weekend-binge alcohol consumption on atherosclerotic plaque development in mice. Atherosclerosis PMID: 21930274