Health
116 posts · all topics
Tapatio Tastes Food Tour
A tasting tour of Guadalajara
A Smarter Way to Track Your Diet: An App Proposal
How to design the ultimate diet-tracking app for busy people
Biohacking and Shifting Science
Exploring the historical and contemporary shifts in scientific paradigms, and the phenomenon of biohacking.
Get Your Shots!
If you're pro vaccine,shouldn't you want as many as possible?
How ProdromeGlia™ Affects my OpticareAI Cognitive Risk Score
How does a plasmalogen supplement affect my cognition?
Opticare Analysis
Retinal age and fundus image evaluation day-to-day
Food Experiment: GlucoTrojan
How well does a new food additive my glucose spikes?
Food Experiment: Good Idea Drink
How well does a new soda help prevent my glucose spikes?
Personal Science Week
A weekly newsletter for people who use science for personal reasons.
Do blood donations cause my low ferritin?
How do my blood donations track ferritin levels?
Study my nutrition
A detailed analysis of my nutritional needs
Testing my COVID-19 Antibodies With Serimmune
Results from regular antibody testing
Cumin Club: Indian Food Meal Kits
My experience with an Indian Food meal kit
Rate your favorite nootropics
Nootroflix lets you rate nootropics and get personalized recommendations. But are the results just placebo effects and effort bias?
Does the COVID Vaccine Affect My Heart Rate?
Tracking resting heart rate with Apple Watch before and after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses. Result: no significant heart rate change.
I just want to find something useful in my self-collected data
Why self-trackers inevitably build their own tools, and the challenge of finding truly actionable insights in personal health data.
Clinical comparison of Apple Watch and Amazon Halo
Testing Apple Watch and Amazon Halo heart rate accuracy against a clinical ECG during a treadmill stress test. How accurate are wearables?
Home-Cooked Meals with Shef
Testing the Shef meal service
Comparing Amazon Halo to Apple Watch
Head-to-head comparison of Amazon Halo and Apple Watch for heart rate, sleep tracking, body fat, and tone analysis using R.
Reheated Rice Doesn't Significantly Affect My Glucose Levels
Testing rice preparation methods with a CGM
Keto Experiment # 2 (October 2020)
Second attempt at inducing ketosis through a low-carb diet, with tracking and results from October 2020.
COVID-19 and its R-Squared Relationship to GDP Change
R analysis of the correlation between COVID-19 death rates and GDP decline by country, computing R-squared from Our World in Data.
Lengthening my Deep Sleep With SleepSpace
Can an app improve my sleep?
Using Autocorrelation (Tutorial)
R tutorial on autocorrelation analysis for personal health data, using resting heart rate and weight time series to find hidden patterns.
Keto Experiment # 1 (July 2020)
10-day ketogenic diet experiment tracking ketones, glucose, macros, and blood panel results showing dramatic triglyceride drop.
Mask-Wearing: How to Lie With Statistics
How the same COVID-19 data can prove opposite conclusions about mask mandates, demonstrating chart manipulation and statistical bias.
Testing myself for COVID-19
First-hand experience with at-home COVID-19 testing through the Seattle SCAN study, including kit unboxing, nasal swab process, and results.
Was it SIBO?
Personal experience recovering from bowel obstruction surgery with suspected SIBO, treated with a low-FODMAP elimination diet.
That wasn't fun
Why I spent four nights in the hospital
How effective is the flu vaccine, really?
Analyzing CDC flu vaccine effectiveness data for the 2019-2020 season, showing 45% efficacy and what it means for healthy individuals.
My Favorite Resources for COVID-19
Curated collection of COVID-19 resources: tracking dashboards, scientific research, data sources, projections, and local info.
Understanding my heart rate
How to optimise exercise through monitoring your heart rate
Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Experiment
An easier alternative to full-on fasting.
Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 5
Prolon FMD day 5 finale: high ketosis at GKI 2.52, 5 pounds lost, and reflections on completing the fasting mimicking diet.
Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 4
Prolon FMD day 4: deep ketosis at GKI 2.74, back pain resolution, 3 pounds lost, and managing social meals while fasting.
Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 3
Prolon FMD day 3: ketones at 1.2 mmol/L with GKI of 3.56, reduced hunger, lower back pain side effects, and glucose tracking.
Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 2
Prolon FMD day 2: entering ketosis at 0.9 mmol/L, keto flu symptoms, brain fog, and tracking glucose ketone index (GKI).
Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 1
Day 1 of the Prolon fasting mimicking diet: 1100 calories, meals, and continuous glucose monitor data showing carb spikes.
Viome and DayTwo Updates
Updated 2019 results and dietary recommendations from Viome and DayTwo microbiome-based personalized nutrition tests.
[book] The Longevity Diet
Book summary
What is Health Nucleus
Overview of Health Nucleus (formerly Human Longevity Inc), Craig Venter's genomic health screening service now available from $5,500.
Does my heart rate predict earthquakes?
Apple Watch heart rate data shows a curious spike 15 minutes before a 4.6 magnitude Seattle earthquake while sleeping in July 2019.
Genopalate genetic-based diet recommendations
Genopalate's DNA-based diet recommendations using nutrigenetic scores to personalize food choices based on 28 nutrition-related traits.
Improve sleep through force of will
Self-experiment showing how wearing a sleep mask and staying in bed a full eight hours dramatically improved watch-measured sleep duration.
Reducose Experiments
Personal experiments with Reducose (mulberry leaf extract) to reduce postprandial glucose spikes, with CGM data analysis.
Comparing CGM with Finger Prick
Accuracy comparison of Freestyle Libre CGM versus Contour Next finger prick glucose meter, testing food response after whole wheat bread.
CGM Product Summaries
Overview of continuous glucose monitoring products including Medtronic Guardian, Nutrino FoodPrint, and the OnDuo diabetes platform.
NYTimes thinks glucose testing isn’t helpful
Response to NYT claim that glucose self-testing is unhelpful, arguing continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) provides far more actionable data.
Blood testing with Baze
Review of Baze at-home blood test kit measuring zinc, vitamins D, E, B12, omega-3, and other biomarkers for personalized supplements.
Reevaluating my sleep experiments
Statistical reanalysis of self-tracked sleep data testing whether potato starch, alcohol, or Vitamin D supplements affect sleep quality.
Continuous Glucose Monitoring
Pointers to everything I know about CGM
23andme vs. Helix
Comparing SNP results from 23andMe, Helix, and Psomagen genetic tests to check consistency across consumer genomics platforms.
Easy oyster mushrooms
Grow your own mushrooms
What little I know about nutrition
Brief overview of what I know about nutrition science
Sprouted black beans
Make your own
Sleeping better on a different diet
Exploring the connection between dietary changes, gut microbiome composition, and sleep quality through personal tracking data.
Analyzing my sleep and diet in R
Analyzing sleep data in R to compare rest quality on a low-carb high-fat diet vs regular diet using ggplot and t-tests.
My Philosophy of Food
Personal food philosophy covering sugar avoidance, carb reduction, exercise balance, and practical tips for healthy eating.
Just say no to ‘No MSG'
Why MSG fears are a myth — the science of monosodium glutamate, umami flavor, and why glutamate is safe and natural.
Just say no to ‘No MSG’
Why MSG sensitivity is a myth — the science behind glutamate and why fears about monosodium glutamate are unfounded.
Testing my blood glucose
Self-tracking blood glucose levels after sugar water using a Contour Next EZ monitor and plotting results with R and ggplot.
Best references about 23andme
Curated guide to the best resources, tools, and utilities for analyzing your raw 23andMe genetic data and SNP results.
Koji and aged ribeye
Use fermentation to improve the flavor of meat
Clabbered milk
How to make clabbered milk by leaving unpasteurized milk at room temperature — a traditional fermented food and leavening agent.
Experimenting with a gut cleanse
Your gut microbiome changes constantly in response to everything from diet to exercise, so when looking at multiple uBiome test results side-by-side it can be complicated to figure…
Hunter-gatherers sleep like me
Anthropologists Gandhi Yetish, Hillard Kaplan and their colleagues just published the results of some experiments that show hunter gathers get much less sleep than the eight hours we…
My activity data
A year of food and exercise tracking analyzed in R to find patterns in activity and health data.
[book] The Gluten Lie
View on Amazon Most people will think Alan Levinovitz , a Professor of Religion, an unlikely author of a diet book, particularly one like this that refutes many…
[book] The Gluten Lie
Don't read other health books until you read this one
Zocdoc vs OpenTable
The idea behind ZocDoc is brilliant: a modern, super-easy web site that lets you book a doctor appointment as easily as OpenTable lets you book restaurant reservations. ZocDoc…
Yup, statins make me smarter
After a fifteen day test , I’ve concluded that 20mg of simvastatin daily has a major effect on my results on Seth Robert’s Brain Reaction Time (BRT) test.…
Fish oil makes me smarter
Fish Oil Makes Me Smarter We all feel more “alive” on some days compared to others. Some people call it “being in the zone”, or “flow” , where…
[book] The Rise of Superman
The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler is mostly about extreme sports — the people behind really crazy activities like kayaking…
[book] Missing Microbes
Another fantastic book, by Martin Blaser , professor of microbiology at NYU: Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues . Microbes, a word…
What's in my microbiome?
Although I was an early customer of 23andme, I found the results unsatisfying because there is so little that is actionable . I mean, you don't need a…
Why review dentists?
Searching for a new family dentist I checked the normal reviews on Yelp and Google, searched a bit on the internet, transferred my records from the previous dentist,…
Notes on Seth Roberts Memorial Symposium
I had a long-planned family reunion in Maine the week of the Ancestral Health Symposium in Berkeley this month, so it was just not possible for me to…
Alternative cancer therapies
I’m reading a fascinating book, Outsmart Your Cancer , that summaries dozens of “alternative” cancer treatments, some of which I’ve heard of (e.g. laetrile, Mexican cancer clinics), and…
Don't eat fake sugar
Here’s my theory: artificial sweeteners affect the body the same way as the real stuff. Although your taste buds may think a sucralose-flavored beverage tastes sweet, your brain…
Are potatoes good for you?
Diabetics, and anyone watching the glycemic load from their food knows that potatoes, with their large amount of starch, raise blood sugar levels. The otherwise high nutrient value…
[book] All Natural
The subtitle of this book by Nathanael Johnson explains why I read it: "a skeptic's quest to discover if the natural approach to diet, childbirth, healing, and the…
Why the war on cancer has failed
In spite of a gazillion dollars spent on cancer research over the past 50 years, overall cancer deaths really haven’t changed much. Look at this chart from John…
Is grape juice bad for you?
Our kids love grape juice, but there’s some controversy in our household whether we should indulge their taste or steer them to lower-sugar fruit juices instead. After all,…
What's the appendix for?
My appendix was removed when I was five years old, at the hands of a well-meaning country doctor who thought it would cure my chronic childhood tummy aches.…
Y-Combinator Sam Altman's Future Predictions
From this week's Econtalk podcast Sam Altman, president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, mentions three interesting startup investment trends: wearables (it's inevitable that we'll all have computing devices…
Break out the sriracha
Seth Roberts often came up with hunches, reasonable hypotheses, about various foods or habits. But don’t pick the hypotheses randomly; base it on something, make sure it fits…
How accurate are food labels?
We take for granted that a label printed with calorie and other nutrition information is accurate, but is that true? A short 6-minute documentary and editorial published last…
Using the AliveCor Heart Monitor
Every few months, I feel a slight flutter in my chest, almost like a cough but coming not from the lungs or throat but from something deeper inside.…
Who has the most accurate health news?
The independent site Health News Review evaluated nearly 2000 health-related news articles since 2006, ranking their accuracy and usefulness according to these criteria: cost, benefits, harm, veracity, exaggeration,…
My favorite books about diet and health
Making a list of favorite books is hard because your favorites change over time, often due to reading something that becomes a new favorite. Perhaps it’s easier to…
Call it processed milk
Our middle schooler came home from school yesterday and noticed for the first time that our family drinks whole milk, not the skim milk that her teacher had…
Remembering Seth Roberts
Like many people, I first heard about him back in 2006 through a chapter in the best-selling book Freakonomics . His strange habit of tracking various aspects of…
Paleocon
I liked John Durant’s book (recommended by Steven Pinker) The Paleo Manifesto so when I heard about his new PaleoCon conference, I had to check it out. Today…
Is there such a thing as a "generic" apple?
When you eat any food, shouldn't you care more about the particular piece you are eating, rather than the generic values listed in an app or book about…
Is the FDA the only source of experts?
An SFGate blog, supports the FDA’s decision to prevent informed consumers from having our genes sequenced halt the marketing of 23andme: Silicon Valley whines any time regulators bog…
Sun exposure and health
People born in the Fall tend to live longer than those born in the Spring. That’s the statistically significant conclusion based on a dataset of over one million…
Why they failed: Zeo, Green Goose, 100Plus
Zeo was, for many of us, our favorite QS company : great, consumer-oriented low-cost hardware that measured something useful (sleep) to give insights we couldn't have had otherwise.…
Don’t brush after mealtimes
Advice from the WSJ health column : "When you eat or drink something acidic, the pH in your mouth goes down and can take some time to go…
Homemade sauerkraut
As already noted , I’ve become interested in the role of microbes in our bodies, including the value of fermented foods. First yogurt (which I still make regularly),…
Sleep Times: BodyMedia vs. Zeo
Most of those wrist-style activity monitors try to tell you how well you slept, but I’ve found the technology isn’t particularly accurate . Lately I’ve been trying the…
Why I’m skinny
I weigh about the same today as I did in college: 160 pounds. In my entire life I’ve never weighed more than 170. Maintaining my weight has been…
[Book] Epidemic of Absence
View on Amazon Ecosystems go all the way up and all the way down. Just as humans affect -- and are affected by -- the bigger world of…
Medicine and Anti-Fragility
Black Swan author Nassim Taleb in his highly-anticipated upcoming book uses the term anti-fragility to describe systems that are the opposite of fragile. He coins the term after…
Zeo vs. the motion sensors
I don't have a Jawbone UP . I tried to buy one earlier this month but Best Buy wasn't stocking them until the kinks have been worked out.…
I'm sleeping better, but why?
I love my Zeo Sleep Manager , a cool device that measures my brain activity in order to help understand the quality of my sleep: the amount of…
Is it safe to drink Beijing tap water?
The water in our Beijing apartment looks, smells, and (yes I risked it) tastes just fine. But is it safe to drink? Nearly everyone I know -- foreigners…
Break my back
Long ago, I used to make fun of people who complain of back or muscle problems. Lazy complainers I said. Then about seven or eight years ago I…
I (heart) technology
Embedded content from flickr.com Heart CT Originally uploaded by sprague At my annual physical this week, my doctor suggested that I get a $99 CT Cardiac Score to…
No more Vitamin D shortage
Late last Summer at my annual physical, my doctor tested my Vitamin D levels and found that, like most residents of the Northwest, I was well below optimal…
Steven Pinker on Personal Genomics
The Jan 11th edition of the New York Times Magazine has a cover story by my favorite thinker describing his experiences with genome testing, and he finds the…
What’s in my genes? Results from 23andme
My DNA test results arrived much sooner than I expected. They tell you six to eight weeks, but it was more like two or three. The company that…
My Vitamin D shortage
We don't get nearly enough sun in the Northwest, but we continue to read and believe advice from the rest of the country about the dangers of too…
Doubts about sun exposure and skin cancer
The Seattle Times today points out that Washington State ranks fifth in the country for Melanoma (skin cancer), right up there with other northern long-winter places like Rhode…
Count me in
The new August 2008 issue of Wired describes the Personal Genome Project, an upcoming ambitious attempt to collect DNA and more from 100,000 individuals. Of course I immediately…
One good reason to keep your bottled water
Today's Seattle Times describes bottled water and mentions that many of the the nation's mayors are suggesting we use tap water instead. But missing from the discussion is…
Brown your teeth with Crest Pro-Health Rinse
Image no longer available About two months ago, I bought one of those special giant Costco boxes of a mouthwash from Crest. I've been long convinced by the…