so, i was talking about flavonoids and wanted to post a summary. i still have some reading to do, but...

i can't find any actual science telling me what they're supposed to do; we can barely absorb them, we don't seem to need them for anything, and while eating berries seems to be correlated with healthiness, it's not clear if the flavonoids have anything to do with it. there's lots of other reasons why strawberries are good for you.

so, while these chemicals are antioxidants, your body doesn't seem to use them that way and claims that blueberries or red wine or chocolate help you fight off cancer or prevent dementia would consequently appear to be largely pseudo-science, at this point. that doesn't mean they're not good for you, though; and, it doesn't even mean that the science underlying the premise that the flavonoids is unsound. what it means is that you're not getting substantive levels of these chemicals from any of these foods in a way that you can actually absorb and use. the only ambiguity is that it's not totally clear if the glycoside metabolites may have some fleeting benefit that we don't currently understand, before we piss them out (despite it appearing to be unlikely). but, your body doesn't accept the flavonoids the way it accepts the carotenoids, either, so there's less of a reason to think there's an evolutionary process at work. one thing i'll want to see is what foods have a higher aglycone:glycoside ratio, and if i find something i may want to try it, but it's not clear to me how widely studied this is, and it seems like the assumption is that you get the two of them together in some unclear mix, where the glycoside almost always dominates (due to the poor stability of the aglycones).

that said,

1) i currently eat a daily amount of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries that, together, seems to be maximizing anthocyanidin intake. elderberries have more, but they're poisonous (they appear to be metabolized by your body as cyanide. see the connection?). there's not any good reason for me to cut any of that out of my fruit bowl, right now. there are no dietary requirements, but i couldn't imagine getting more than i already do. they don't seem to be harmful...
2) the only significant sources of flavon-3-ol seems to be chocolate, which i get in my coffee, and apples, which i drink in the form of juice. i'm otherwise not likely to consume any of these things. and, again - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries & cherries (all in my diet) are a minimal source. but, these chemicals are also said to build muscle, and i may even want to avoid them. thankfully, we apparently basically can't absorb them at all.
3) the highest source of flavonols appears to be kale, which i'm probably going to be integrating, anyways. blueberries & broccoli round it out. again - these are poorly absorbed antioxidants.
4) usable flavones only appear to be available in spices. salad, maybe.
5) flavanones only appear to be available in citrus fruits. should i get some lemon in my salad? sounds yummy.
6) about the only way to get isoflavones is via soy, which is a key part of my diet. i could maybe put some bacon bits in the salad. they're cheap, but the omega-6 is a little daunting. we'll see how i feel about that, and how it adds up. isoflavones are, of course, also estrogenic.

so, if i did nothing, i'd be getting tons of flavonoids, as it is.

and, i think berries are still a good gamble in trying to get your cancer risk down.

what i'm going to do is to go ahead and list them (except the flavon-3-ols, which it would appear i don't want much of, anyway) and try to figure out how much i'm getting, without really thinking about it too much further.

but, i am going to read through this pile of articles i've got in my tabs, too, and i'll let you know if anything interesting comes up.

so, here's the list - and we'll see how much of each one i'm getting, whether it really matters, or not:

anthocyanidins:
1) pelargonidin
2) delphinidin
3) cyanidin
4) malvinidin
5) peonidin
6) petunidin
7) rosinidin

flavonols:
1) isorhamnetin
2) kaempferol
3) myricetin
4) quercetin
5) fisetin
6) kaempferide

flavones:
1) luteolin
2) apigenin
3) techtochrysin
4) baicalein (to avoid!)
5) norwogonin
6) wogonin
7) nobiletin

flavanones:
1) eriodictyol
2) hesperetin
3) naringenin
4) hesperidin
5) isosakuranetin
6) pinocembrin
7) sterubin

isoflavones:
1) daidzein
2) genistein
3) glycitein
4) biochanin A
5) formononetin

science is about the method underlying it.

it's just as ignorant to write it off without testing it as it is to use it without any evidentiary basis.

show me the study - i'm agnostic until you do. skeptical, maybe. but, agnostic...

just to put this down, clearly.

what do i think about "herbal medicine"?

well, what does the science say? herbal medicine that works is called medicine. herbal medicine that doesn't work is called a placebo. and, herbal medicine that hasn't been tested is unknown.

so, i don't want to make broad comments about it; if people have been using some root for some reason for centuries, there may very well be good reasons for it. fine. but, show me the study.

and, that's really the right answer.

show me the study!

sure, it might work - i won't write it off, a priori. there's no reason to. but,

show me the study!

so, i had a little talk with my landlord, who decided he wanted to get a rent increase in before they froze it. status: denied.

well, let's deal with the smoke, first, huh?

i may be his sole source of income right now - well, except his pay check with the police, of course.

he hasn't raised rent since i moved in in oct, 2018. i know this place was previously occupied, because there cans of paint from the previous tenant - and because he told me as much. this region, like so many others, went through a wave of italian immigration, so this place seems to have been built with a kitchen in the basement. that's really what i inherited, although the landlord explained that this section was separated out to house an elderly relative, at one point. likely story.

so, i'm paying what i signed up for; he could have raised the rent by the legal amount, pegged to cpi, which was 2.2%, at any time since october, 2019.

i wondered why he didn't...but he didn't...

the legalities are that they announce a maximum rent increase in june, based on the cpi of the previous year and that comes into effect in january of the next year until the end of the calendar date. further, you need to give 90 days notice. that means that the 2.2% (a very high number, relative to recent years) kicked in on january 1st and expires on dec 31st.  as today is sept 11, and he requires 90 days notice, he'd have to date the increase to jan 1, 2021.

but, that's past the end of the calendar date, unfortunately.

denied.

the weirdness stems from the fact that they didn't announce a rent increase number this year, due to "instability".

instability, huh? i guess that's newspeak for deflation.

the cpi last year was 2.2% - an unusually high number. but, the cpi this year is -0.3%.

so, dougy is bringing in a rent freeze - it's for the people!

right. it's deflation, guys.

now, i suppose that they could revamp the legislation between now and then, which would probably not be in anybody's interests. but, if they don't, the fact that they didn't announce it doesn't change the reality of deflation in front of us.

and, are we going to have inflation over the next year? two years?

the rent freeze could last a long time - not because of an order by doug ford, but because we may be in for several years of deflation.

grargh.

let's start again on monday.

hi.

i received your message in response to my previous fax, and i've tried to reach your office a few times by phone with no answer. i call out using google voice and it seems to have specific routing issues that i don't understand - sometimes it works great, sometimes it just rings. this is why i prefer communication over email: death.to.koalas@gmail.com

i think dr e may be the doctor i saw in 2017. i don't fully recall. if so, he said he'd only do this for prostate cancer patients. perhaps he may reconsider - as i'm going to eventually end up there with prostate cancer if i don't get these things taken out, anyways.

i understand that dr. e would require a referral before he can schedule an appointment. but, what i'm trying to determine is what the value of asking to see dr. e is. would dr. e consider a voluntary orchidectomy for a trans person, if they have a referral and funding? or would he reject the premise offhand? see, i'm trying to avoid having to go to toronto. if i can do it here, it'll take twenty minutes and i can take a cab home. i don't see any good reason why i should be forced to go out of town for this.

the thing is that if dr ============= gives you the referral, and i eventually see dr e six months from now, and he refuses for some ideological reason, then i've just wasted six months of my life.

i cannot ask dr =========== to send out 50 referrals and hope one comes back.

so, i am doing the research upfront. 

would dr. e consider this? if so, i'd like to see him and will inform dr. =============. if he won't, i won't waste my time or yours - i'll look elsewhere. but, please understand the paucity of my options.

you can leave me a message at the number you called before, or open a discussion over email. but, what i'm trying to figure out is if this is a valid path, or if i need to call somebody else.

jessica

diamonds have some use in optics and lasers, but we don't need heaps of them.

it's the kind of economic activity that just simply shouldn't exist.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/032615/how-can-marginal-utility-explain-diamondwater-paradox.asp

the sad reality with mining diamonds is that it's just another form of carbon extraction.

i'd rather mine graphene. it's far more useful.

and, to the extent that we are mining diamonds, it should be to convert them into graphene.

there's certain minerals that humans need, but we neither need gold nor diamonds.

this is just a net detriment to the environment, and i'd argue it shouldn't exist at all.

https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/trudeau-ford-to-attend-groundbreaking-ceremony-for-gogama-mine-this-morning-2704436

"but we're winning. and they're losing."

it doesn't matter who wins or loses. ok?

i want to live in a free society where people are allowed to make their own choices, not one where governments make choices for people, in order to "win".

you can tell me to escape to america.

and, i might, in the end.

but, you have to tear down the wall, first.

tear down that wall!

i mean, it's clear that our governments are going to continue to take the most conservative response possible. sadly. the canada i grew up in and used to love doesn't exist any more. we've become a very right-wing society, a gerontocracy and, increasingly, an authoritarian religious totalitarian state.

we are gleefully embracing fascism at the most flimsy excuse possible.

and, i'm heartbroken by it.

it's up to us, now, to participate or not.

if you keep getting tested every time you sneeze, if you participate in their tracing, if you allow them to build these datasets, we will be living through this fascist nightmare for another two or three years, potentially.

your cerb has run out. ei is half as much.

it's just a sneeze; ignore it, stop playing into it.

the flip side is this: if you're young, stop getting tested. it's an easily defeatable virus. you're fucking everything up.

my position is clear enough - the state needs to back off and let the virus spread amongst young people.

the elderly have been given full warning, and then some. they know the risks. it's their choice to stay in where it's safe or go out where it's not; it's their choice to expose themselves to their family, or ask them to stay away.

i have no interest, whatsoever, in continuing to live a cloistered life to "flatten the curve".

i don't care. i want my life back.

https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/ontario-covid-cases-top-200-67-are-people-under-40

get your head around this.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming-agriculture-food-toxic-america

why hydro?

because we've ruined the ground. and, it's an upcoming crisis that we're maybe not aware of.

we will need to eventually return the nutrients to the soil, but it could take centuries to rebuild.

in the mean time, hooking it up to their roots is the most efficient approach - and that is something you could get to scale, if you can build, vertically, enough.

nobody's talking about this.

i do need to push back a little on the idea that you can push organic agriculture to scale.

you can't. we dump huge amounts of shit into the soil because we've leeched it of growing power. that's a hard problem that requires some careful thinking - hydroponics, greenhouses and a serious look at the growth rate.

and, storage is a problem, if you don't use a ton of hydro.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/biden-not-phasing-out-fossil-fuel-relies-on-carbon-capture-robert-pollin/

right.

so, the plan is the pretend you're going to spend a zilion dollars implementing a technology that doesn't exist in order to bring the jobs back.

that's not a plan, at all. that's just cynical politicking.

that's the audacity of empty hope.

https://theanalysis.news/interviews/biden-not-phasing-out-fossil-fuel-relies-on-carbon-capture-robert-pollin/

and, here's a twist: the glucosides appear to be anti-oxidants, but the aglycones of the same flavonoids may actually be mutagenic.

:|.

maybe it's best that this be left alone, then.

i'm going to get that omelette and clean up the train of thought.

to be clear: my view is that if your body can't absorb this, it doesn't really want it.

i'm not taking flavonoid pills....

ok, i found a detailed walkthrough of flavonoid metabolism that is not the answer i want but is a big step towards finding it.

i had to log in through facebook to download it so i can't send you the link. you can search this:

REVIEW ARTICLE

Flavonoid interactions during digestion, absorption, distribution and
metabolism: a sequential structure–activity/property relationship-based
approach in the study of bioavailability and bioactivity

Gerard Bryan Gonzales, Guy Smagghe, Charlotte Grootaert, Moises Zotti, Katleen Raes, and John Van Camp

i expect that this will only help me understand why i can't absorb them when they're attached to a sugar, rather than help me get around the issue.

but, it may give me some clues.

i'm making an omelette, first, and i'll get back to it when i'm done.

no.

wait.

i'm hungry.

that article wasn't about naturally occurring aglycone flavonoids, it was about hydrolyed extracts, which i'm not fucking with.

so, i'm officially giving up on flavonoids - you just can't absorb them.

so, there's six types of flavonoids.

& there's in turn six of the first type, anthocyanidins:
1) cyanidin
2) delphinidin
3) malvidin
4) pelargonidin
5) peonidin
6) petunidin

when they did the studies on rats, they absorbed the complex molecule and metabolized it just fine. but, when they did it with humans, we just sucked the sugar out and discarded the anti-oxidant. these chemicals lose their id when you attach them to a sugar molecule, and freud just fell off his chair.

the absorption of anthocyanins requires either a specific active transport mechanism, to transport glycosides across the intestine wall, or they need to be hydrolyzed to the aglycone in the small intestine through the action of β-glucosidase, β-glucuronidase, and α-rhamnosidase (Manach and others 2005; Kay 2006).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1541-4337.12024

guess rats are smarter than us.

how do you get them without the sugar attached to them, and without fermenting the fruit?

vegetables, maybe? eggplant? nope - sugar there, too. apparently, the flavonoid breaks down easily without the sugar, so there's not really a way out.

hrmmn.

these molecules are labelled as "potent antioxidants", and i don't have a reason to doubt the truth of it. but, they don't seem to do anything else, and if you can't absorb them then you can't absorb them. that's a major strike against blueberries.

according to the following article, i have eight options for sugar-free flavonoids.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4615-4913-0_11

1) pelargonidin
2) delphinidin
3) cyanidin
4) luteolin
5) apigenin
6) kaempferol
7) quercetin
8) myricetin

cross-referencing with the oregon page (https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/flavonoids), i can also add:

9) eriodictyol
10) hesperetin
11) naringenin
12) daidzein
13) genistein
14) glycitein
15) biochanin A
16) formononetin

...as potentially biovailable flavanones and isoflavones.

many of these may not be available in any food in a high enough dosage to meaningfully absorb. so, this list may get pruned down.

*ducks*

but, i'm going to list them anyways and get back to them later.

it's bad news for flavonoids, it seems. they don't get absorbed...

apparently, the problem is that flavonoids tend to come attached to glucose molecules, and the body seems to ignore them in favour of the sugar. so, while you can absorb the red & green pigments, you seem to mostly piss the purple ones out.

the way around this is to find purple pigments that aren't attached to sugar molecules. that would appear to mostly leave teas, soy and berries (including grapes) as the digestible choices, but only some of the options are digestible. does converting the sugar into alcohol release the flavonoid? is that it?

let me see what the exact molecules you can digest are.

so, it seems like carotenoids are worth it as anti-oxidants - we can't make them ourselves, we know we can absorb them into the blood and they seem to be doing something.

there's apparently even active transport for some of them, indicating that your body is expecting them and says "thanks, yoink" when they get in there. that in itself is strong evidence you should be seeking them out, even if we're not 100% sure what they're doing. that's not an accident; there's some evolutionary process, there.

what's next?

an unintended consequence of moving from green peppers to red peppers is that i lost a key source of chlorophyll. what else is green? kiwis, i guess? a quick google search says yes, but that's another good reason to bring in something like broccoli, which is very green.

the fact that you basically can't absorb curcumin tells me your body doesn't want it.

we've been through red/orange, green and yellow. purple's next. so, what about flavonoids, then? what can i actually absorb? let's figure that out...

hey, math nerds dabble.

math nerds on disability don't do anything but :)

obviously, i'm oversimplifying and being a little dramatic to make a point - with flair.

but, my point holds.

"you'd might as well just eat the grain..."

well.

the cow adds some value to it on it's way to you.

we talk about processed meat; but the meat, itself, is really just processed grain - fortified with goodness, but also loaded with byproducts.

when you eat a cow for lunch, your body converts that cow into grain, and then does what it will with it.

the difference is in the vitamins, and other chemicals.

and, what does your body do with protein?

get this.

it converts it into carbs.

what does your body do with fat, then?

it burns it. it's energy...

well, before we invented electricity, we used to use olive oil to make lamps. this is more intuitive than you think!

the amount of carbs i was eating in that pasta bowl over two or three days was still less than most people eat for breakfast. it was a boost, but not a big one. and, like i say - i couldn't fucking eat it, it was too much.

i'm adjusting, getting better, moving on.

eggs have a ridiculous nutritional profile.

they're probably the most healthy food on the planet.

it's like eggs.

people think that, because eggs are high in cholesterol, they're bad for your heart.

but, your body breaks down ingested cholesterol, it doesn't absorb it. so, that idea is based on a bad understanding of how your metabolism works.

if you're concerned about cholesterol, you want to reduce the amount of carbs that you eat, not the amount of cholesterol you eat.

you also want to keep the saturated fats down, a bit, but that seems to be less important.

the eggs are fine. what's killing you is the toast.

so, no - i'm not particularly concerned about consuming protein.

besides - it's carbs that build muscle, not protein. well, technically, your body converts carbs into fat, and you convert it into protein.

eating protein will not help you build muscle at all. sorry.

so, i think this is what we've got:

carotenoids (not including pro-vitamin a)
1) lutein
2) zeaxanthin
3) lycopene
4) phytofluene
5) phytoene
6) astaxanthin
7) capsanthin
8) canthaxanthin
9) cryptoxanthin

that appears to be the totality of what we can actually absorb.

it also seems like it's a good idea to get a little fat with your carotenoids, so if i'm doing this in the salad rather than egg, the caesar/hemp combo sounds like a good approach, to maximize absorption. i was previously eating the tomatoes/peppers mix with (1) omelettes, (2) pasta (cheese & caesar) and, way back, with mayo. that's an interesting twist: the mayo actually helps absorb the vitamins in the tomatoes. huh. wanna think twice about your low fat salad dressing? i'm not thinking twice about my high fat dressing, as it's the primary actual part of my diet....

High carotenoid intake, particularly β-carotene canthaxanthin may result in carotenodermia.[64]

i turned orange when i was a baby, because my mom fed me too much of the same kind of baby food; i actually think it was squash. i just ate the stuff more readily, apparently. you'd have to ask her, my memory is a little blurry, under two years...

1) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10942910601045271#
2) https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/132/3/531S/4687227
3) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566388/
4) https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/carotenoids

so, that's my first update to the list i posted previously.

some of those will come with guidelines and some of them won't. i think i should get all of them in the salad bowl i had decided on, anyways. it's just a question of actually understanding what i'm eating.

i just want to clarify a point, because it seems like the pigs are retarded.

obviously, when i said i moved to pasta because i wanted to "gain weight", i mean i was trying to grow breasts - not that i was trying to build muscle.

that should have been obvious, but apparently wasn't.

i'm transgendered. the last thing i want is to build muscle. duh?