kokotg
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Posts posted by kokotg
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14 minutes ago, Katy said:
I follow this guy on YouTube & Instagram. It was an incredibly small study.
I don't know if he's talking about a different study or what, but that doesn't sound anything like the one the CNN article linked above is talking about.
QuoteHazen’s research had a simple goal: find unknown chemicals or compounds in a person’s blood that might predict their risk for a heart attack, stroke or death in the next three years. To do so, the team began analyzing 1,157 blood samples in people at risk for heart disease collected between 2004 and 2011.
“We found this substance that seemed to play a big role, but we didn’t know what it was,” Hazen said. “Then we discovered it was erythritol, a sweetener.”
The human body naturally creates erythritol but in very low amounts that would not account for the levels they measured, he said.
To confirm the findings, Hazen’s team tested another batch of blood samples from over 2,100 people in the United States and an additional 833 samples gathered by colleagues in Europe through 2018. About three-quarters of the participants in all three populations had coronary disease or high blood pressure, and about a fifth had diabetes, Hazen said. Over half were male and in their 60s and 70s.
In all three populations, researchers found that higher levels of erythritol were connected to a greater risk of heart attack, stroke or death within three years.
oh, I see...he's talking about the next part, where they tried to figure out what exactly was happening and why the correlation. That was indeed 8 people. But the association they found that led to that study is definitely concerning (although there could be other explanations for it...like that higher risk people are more likely to consume a lot of erythritol anyway, perhaps).
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My takeaway is that there aren't really any sweeteners, real or artificial, that are a good idea in large amounts. Like the article quoted one of the scientists saying that they're finding erythritol raises your risk of heart disease as much as diabetes. So, you know, just give up on trying not to get diabetes isn't a good alternative plan. We already knew that sugar is associated with all kinds of health risks. There are still concerns about cancer risk and sweeteners like aspartame (which I know everyone has officially declared safe, but they said about erythritol, too). My problem is I very much DO have a sweet tooth (and the aforementioned love of chocolate). It's very specifically about wanting chocolate-bearing desserts, really. I don't add sugar to anything like coffee or tea; I don't eat sugary granola bars or cereals or whatever....I just like to have something sweet and chocolatey sometimes and also not die of heart disease or get diabetes (which I have an extremely strong family history of). Why is it so hard?!
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18 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:
Other issues, such as the presence or lack thereof, of Muslim student organizations or faculty are not relevant to the OP’s question.
It's true. Sorry; sometimes I get carried away about semantics.
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29 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:
What they say and what is reality are two different things. The school has zero accountability to any Christian denomination; they are self-regulating as far as belief and policy. It is a hostile environment for evangelical Christians, faculty and students alike. Many of the “Christian” fellowship groups, both student led and those with paid staff are clearly woke and politically progressive.
We have many close friends with kids in school there, friends on the faculty, and friends in the administration. Many departments have no Bible believing Christian professors. No one in Nashville thinks Belmont is a Christian school.
No dog in this fight, but are you saying that they WOULD hire, say, an openly Muslim professor even though the administration says they won't? Because otherwise I just can't imagine saying that it's an inclusive school. That's not what inclusive means. I also don't believe (as a Christian) that "woke and politically progressive" mean not Christian, fwiw. I would suggest that "inclusive" might mean something very different to a not religious student from a protestant tradition than to a Muslim or Jewish or Hindu student. This is from less than a year ago: https://www.belmontvision.com/post/the-efforts-to-start-a-club-for-belmont-s-muslim-students
QuoteBelmont has over 160 student organizations, but a Muslim student organization isn’t one of them — and after multiple rejected attempts to start one, students and faculty have pretty much stopped trying.
For over 10 years now, advocates on campus have been trying to start a religious organization for Muslim students, but were denied by administrators at every turn.
ETA: I'm not questioning whether they'd be welcoming to a trans student, and I'm glad to hear they would be (I also don't think that's at odds with being Christian); I'm just questioning saying that a school that won't employ anyone who doesn't at least profess to be Christian or Jewish can be called secular.
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9 minutes ago, Paige said:
Is erythritol clearly listed in ingredients separate from stevia? DH loves stevia based products (I hate them) but I don't see anything with erythritol on the label in our house.
It should be
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11 minutes ago, kristin0713 said:
This is what I’m thinking. Adding erythritol to every drink, dessert, bowl of oatmeal, etc is extreme compared to brushing teeth and chewing gum with xylitol. I’m not throwing out the toothpaste, but I’ll probably toss the Truvia and go back to plain stevia. It’s annoying because my favorite ones are from Trader Joe’s (not local to me) and Trim Healthy Mama (requires shipping.)
yes...I wouldn't be terribly worried about relatively tiny amounts of xylitol. I do suspect that erythritol got singled out and not xylitol because people tend to consume it in much larger amounts because it's a more common sweetener in pre-packaged stuff. I actually bake with xylitol as a 1 to 1 sugar substitute. Or at least I used to. Sigh. I guess my choices are diabetes, heart failure, or never eat dessert again. Excuse me while I go get my chocolate fix with a small square of 85% dark chocolate (carefully chosen from the tiny list of lead-free brands)
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4 hours ago, ScoutTN said:
Belmont is now a secular, progressive uni and I don’t think a trans kid would have any trouble there. But as my kid is local and didn’t board in the dorms, I don’t have first-hand knowledge about that dimension.
Belmont definitely doesn't bill itself as secular; they call themselves a Christian university and require religion classes (although not necessarily on Christianity) and until....a few weeks ago, apparently, you had to be a Christian to teach there (I remember reading about that a couple of years ago, so I checked to see if it was still true, and it's big news that they're planning to hire some Jewish professors for the first time): https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/13/belmont-plans-hire-jewish-faculty-first-time
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yes, it's sometimes helpful. Some schools will tell you they don't match other offers and some will tell you they do, and IME there's no predicting which schools are which. My only experience with a public school being willing to negotiate was with music scholarships, so not sure how relevant that is to other kinds of admissions. But at least with departmental scholarships like that, there might be room to negotiate.
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I guess I better hurry up and finish this batch of brownies sweetened with xylitol that I just made before December when that study is finished 😂
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5 minutes ago, popmom said:
I saw that, too. I've never been a fan of the way it tastes. I use Sweetleaf stevia. It's just stevia and inulin. I'll have to look at what dh puts in his coffee. His may have it.
Also, sugar alcohols tear up my GI tract. I avoid them. No xylitol for me.
See, my stomach doesn't like inulin 😞 Although in small amounts it's probably fine. I prefer xylitol to erythritol taste-wise, but apparently it has more effect on blood sugar than erythritol. But better that than a heart attack. But I'd be surprised if erythritol was terrible for your heart and xylitol was totally fine.
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Welp. I don't even know. I wonder if xylitol is any different? Or if this will hold up to more study. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/health/zero-calorie-sweetener-heart-attack-stroke-wellness/index.html
QuoteA sugar replacement called erythritol — used to add bulk or sweeten stevia, monk-fruit, and keto reduced-sugar products — has been linked to blood clotting, stroke, heart attack and death, according to a new study.
QuotePeople with existing risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, were twice as likely to experience a heart attack or stroke if they had the highest levels of erythritol in their blood, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.
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Going back to the Is it vaccines or covid? heart attack risk thing, I just came across this: https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-vaccination-linked-to-fewer-heart-attacks-strokes-and-other-cardiovascular-issues/
QuoteAnalyzing the most extensive datasets in the United States, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have revealed that vaccination against COVID-19 is associated with fewer heart attacks, strokes, and other cardiovascular issues among people who were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
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How great it would be to have boosters that are way more effective against infection? Fingers crossed (also, I'm glad to hear there are still people working on this; it seemed like everyone had just given up and we were resigned to getting covid constantly forever and just being glad it was less likely to kill us these days): https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/nasal-covid-vaccine-shows-promise-early-clinical-trial-rcna71841
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It took me awhile to remember that the timing lined up, but I'm pretty sure that I can blame the Harry Potter traveling exhibition we went to the weekend before for our covid. We wore masks, but it was crowded, and 10 year old was not as careful as usual because we were so sure he was 3 weeks out from having covid and thus very unlikely to get it again. Sigh. Totally anecdotally of course, I've noticed a huge uptick in "well, we avoided it for 3 years, but..." types of posts over the past couple of weeks. Like on par with the height of omicron last winter and with last summer, which I attribute to lots of unmasked air travel. I'm sure part of it is that I'm noticing, since that happened to us (but it happened to us in three separate transmissions in less than a month, which is weird in itself), but also...if you're still holding out, maybe a good time to lay EXTRA LOW. The Harry Potter exhibition was fine, but it wasn't worth getting covid for. I'm grateful that I've never felt worse than moderate cold territory, but then it seemed to plateau at mild cold around day 4 and now it's still hanging out there on day 10, and I'm worried I'm going to have a stuffy head and that almost over a cold feeling for the rest of my life. /whine
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13 minutes ago, Storygirl said:
About David Guterson -- I've also only read Snow Falling on Cedars, a very long time ago. But, interestingly, his brother, Ben Guterson, is also an author, and I've really enjoyed his middle grade fantasy series, Winterhouse. I still need to read the third one in the series but can recommend the first two.
interesting! I just looked them up, and I bet my 10 year old would like them...he's read a surprising number of books about mysterious hotels lately. Well, two.
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2 minutes ago, Grace Hopper said:
Who is the author of The Cartographers? My library search turned up two different authors.
Peng Shepherd
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My Less is Lost audiobook loan timed out, and now I'm halfway through with 11 weeks to go on the waitlist! Oops. So now I just started The Cartographers based on a Facebook friend's strong recommendation. It's a thriller about maps, which isn't my usual sort of fare, but we'll see. And then I'm reading David Guterson's The Last Case, which started off slow but has me sucked in now, nearly halfway through. David Guterson is the Snow Falling on Cedars guy who also homeschooled his kids and wrote a book about homeschooling before he was well known, so I've always had him in my head as an interesting guy, though I hadn't read anything of his since Snow Falling on Cedars many years ago.
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2 hours ago, Ting Tang said:
I'm curious about athlete and young people's deaths. I can search and find headlines, and I do feel I see more of it now. (sincerely, a vaccinated person) My husband is legitimately worried about his Pfizer vax. He does believe Covid and the response was a scam. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.
If it were vaccines and not covid causing increased deaths from heart attacks, we wouldn't have seen it start before vaccines were available, and it wouldn't be associated with surges in covid: https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/covid-19-surges-linked-to-spike-in-heart-attacks/
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My oldest did BC in 11th grade and took linear algebra and "intro to logic, set theory, and proofs" (basically a proof-heavy discrete math course, as far as I can tell) at a local university in 12th grade. He's about to graduate with a degree in math from Macalester (a small LAC). This worked fine for him. He deliberately didn't take multivariable, partially because he wanted a break from calc and partially because we figured most of the other math majors would be taking it their first year at Mac and that it might be better to leave it for that. Linear algebra was interesting because he ended up TAing for a linear algebra class his 2nd year of college, and that kind of made him wish he'd waited because he'd forgotten a lot and the class he'd taken hadn't covered as much. But then he got to attend the classes since he was TAing, so it was a bit stressful but all worked out. He really enjoyed the proofs class, and I think it helped solidify that that was what he wanted to do in college. And, indeed, he hasn't strayed at all; he went to a LAC so he could take all kinds of classes, but almost all of his classes have been math, CS, stats, and GIS-based geography classes. He could have gotten credit for discrete math from the proofs class, but opted to take it at his college instead.
So...what he did was fine, but I think other options would have been equally fine. What kinds of colleges is he looking at? There is some concern at smaller schools about running out of math to take, particularly since you're looking at 2 full years of college classes. I think this is a bit overblown in most cases, though, except perhaps at schools with extremely small math departments. My kid didn't have any trouble finding classes, and there are lots of options other than just whatever's on the course schedule that semester, too (he did a Budapest Semester in Mathematics, a summer REU, and is doing an honors project now; plus he had the option of doing other independent studies).-
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2 hours ago, WTM said:
How do you decide what pieces to read?
Mostly I had a couple of books I wanted to read with him and then I based the themes around those and then found essays that worked. I happened to have two collections of essays already of writers writing about writing, so we read a lot of those. Travel writing is, of course, super easy to find. Today we read James Baldwin's "Stranger in the Village." I have a bunch of e-book collections of travel essays bookmarked on my library wishlist. I haven't been pre-reading the essays for the most part. We read them and annotate them at the same time and then talk about them...if something turns out not to be a great essay, it didn't take very long anyway 🙂
ETA: I aim to read/discuss one essay a week, read and discuss a chunk of whatever longer book we're reading, do some AP classroom stuff, and have him write and go over one essay from past exam questions (the format hasn't changed much recently, so there are TONS to pick from)
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I won't be much help, because we're doing it now, so I don't know yet how the exam will go (but I think fine, based on exam prep he's done so far). But we're using it as a year of reading/discussing non-fiction rather than following the sample syllabus very closely. First semester we did a "writers on writing" theme and read George Saunders A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, Maureen Corrigan's So We Read On, and Daniel Mendehlson's An Odyssey plus a bunch of essays. This semester we have a travel writing theme, which has turned out to have a travel writing about the South/race specifically theme, and we're reading Confederates in the Attic, How the Word is Passed, and...not sure what else yet. Plus more essays. Writing is mostly short essays using previous exam questions, but he'll also do a research project/paper this semester (visiting a historic site and writing about how the history is presented). And then we do test prep from ap classroom.
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1 minute ago, Sebastian (a lady) said:
I think you may want to contact the colleges your student is interested in. You may be misunderstanding their requirements.
UT Austin for example asks for an official transcript signed by the person responsible for the homeschooling. They don't require the student to use accredited classes.
https://admissions.utexas.edu/apply/freshman-admission#fndtn-t25-home-schooled-ged-students
This. And/or talk to homeschoolers in your area who have been through the college admissions process already. I don't know anything about Texas specifically, but it's very rare for colleges to require an accredited transcript of homeschoolers. My kids have a combined 20+ college applications under their belts, and we've never encountered that.
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What schools are saying she needs a GED or accredited transcript?
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49 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:
So odd. Is your 10 year old having any symptoms now? I am glad he rebounded that fast. I would imagine lots of people are not testing when they or the kids fall ill with something that short. I am glad it kind of clears things up about how it happened.
nope--he was sick Tuesday, stayed home from classes he had that day, and then woke up feeling mostly fine Wednesday. I'm not sure we would have tested him even if we hadn't been SO SURE he'd just had covid because it really just seemed like a mild cold. We only tested last night because my husband wanted to; I was, again, so sure we'd just caught a cold from my 10 year old that I wasn't worried about it. We'd stayed home from stuff this week because we were feeling bad, but DS17 likely would have gone to classes and rehearsal Monday--a day too early by CDC guidelines--if he hadn't tested. They did piano lessons virtually this past week, and I'm so relieved we didn't have to send a "sorry; we exposed you to covid" text to the piano teacher for the second time in a month!
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Erythritol news: this is not ideal
in The Chat Board
Posted
It also says that they had already done testing before the 8 person study that showed that erythritol was provoking clotting in the blood. The 8 person study was just one small part of the whole thing.