21 Comments
Apr 2Liked by Mickey Kaus

It's counterintuitive but small amounts of apple cider vinegar (begin by watering it down) works without making your health worse. Or, listen to Big Pharma/AMA and shoot another mRNA Vax.

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I have had stomach acid problems because of a medication I am taking. I have osteoporosis, and ended up taking Fosamax for it. But a side effect of Fosamax is acid reflux problems. I was taking the daily maximum of Tums to control it. Then I looked around online and found something else that could help. I reduced my intake of high-acid foods. Some foods are high in acid, a few are alkaline. I miss oranges and other citrus, and especially large amounts of tomato sauce--no spaghetti, no lasagna, limited pizza. But the acid reflux problem is greatly reduced.

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Apr 3Liked by Mickey Kaus

Possibly, it is not the medications for GI problems that is causing a linkage to Alzheimer's Disease, but the inflammation its self. People with with acid reflux or ulcers or colitis maybe more at risk.

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Democrats are the party of censorship (always evil), mass spying and surveillance, forced medical experiments, political prisoners without bail or trial, govt thugs (FBI, CIA, DOJ), kangaroo courts, State propaganda, fascist/corporatist relationships with Big Tech, Big Labor and Big Media, and domination of the education and religious establishment. Republicans do not control any bureaucracy or institution in the nation.

Democrats have worked to perfect election fraud over many decades.

So -- what exactly is the threat to the republic from conservatives other than morally defective leftists enjoying two-minute hatefests by scaring each other with horror stories of the orange Goldstein around the campfire?

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I downloaded US English cognitive test three. Biden could not pass since the 4th response is to choose "I am Man/Woman." He might or might not be smart enough to answer biologically . . . but certainly could not do so ideologically.

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I have acid reflux. Was on one of those drugs for a few months and it didn't seem to work. I then adopted the mantra, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff," and the reflux went away. The reflux was stress related. It still comes back when the stress kicks in, but for the most part, I manage just fine.

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author

Thank you. I will try that. I've been anxious about small things lately. (I don't know why).

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I tried one of the cognitive tests Biden won't take and immediately ran into trouble even though I don't take any antacids...it asked if I was a man or woman!

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My new young doctor ordered me off Omeprazole in 2019 after 20 years, telling me to switch to pepcid. Her rationale was osteoporosis though.

Anyway it was surprisingly easy to switch. If it weren't go coffee and occasional beer I wouldn't need anything.

But are they sure these findings aren't simple correlations?

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Thanks, Mickey, for writing a little longer-form. I've never been persuaded by pundits who generally only criticize one side, for whatever reason (and I know you, like Taibbi, don't get pleasure from criticizing Republicans, although you do criticize them). But I grew up believing journalists (and pundits) are supposed to (and need to) call out stupidity and bullshit and wrongdoing wherever it's from. Write what you really think! If Biden does something evil or just boneheaded and you don't criticize him because you don't like criticizing Democrats, then I'm going to assume you're completely fine with what Biden did. Same with Trump, and everyone on all sides. Anything else is just feeding into the lying, partisan crapola that's driving us all crazy and giving us ever-greater acid-reflux! If you think the Democrats are the bigger threat, write that. But don't just sit on your hands when Trump and Republicans say and do stupid shit. That said, Mickey, I'm a big fan. Keep writing longer.

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I had acid reflux for five years. I was constantly hving to go off of coffee, which is my favorite thing to ingest. It was terrible.

One morning, early, my primary care doc called me out of the blue, and told me she had the fix for my acid reflux. "Eat early in the day," she told me. I knew immediately that would work. It's been several years now of 2-3 daily espresso macchiatos/day. Bliss.

And I've found that I can eat at normal dinner hours 6-7:30ish occasionally without trouble. I don't drink anymore, although I could probably do that on the earlier side and get away with it.

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There’s a notion in rationalist circles about the difference between two mindsets. The first is a “mistake mindset”, wherein you work under the assumption that your opponents are well-meaning but mistaken — they want the same general things you want, but are confused or misinformed and therefore argue in support of bad things. In that case it is worth talking to them: a clear enough explanation will make them understand the truth. The second is a “conflict mindset” wherein your opponents are interested only in power and argue as they do only because it will give them that power. These people are not worth talking to.

The problem is distinguishing between them.

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Small amounts as in one tablespoon in an 8-oz glass of water. I mix half water & half diet 7 up. Makes for a tart drink. For me, works for mild / medium reflux.

Only drawback to apple cider vinegar is concern for imbibing acids. Most of that is from people who don't know we imbibe acids all the time (soft drinks, for instance). Cheers -

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One problem with PPI's that I experienced, is that they are addictive, in the sense that when you stop taking them your reflux gets worse than it was before. My gastroenterologist insisted I was imagining this. But a few months later I found a study which found exactly that. It showed that nearly half of the subjects who had never experienced stomach problems began to have reflux after a month of taking a PPI and then stopping.

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"No matter what the individual qualities [of the defendant], only one method of evaluating him is to be applied: evaluation from the point of view of class expediency."

via Solzhenitsyn, Krylenko's Za Pyat Let (1918-1922), prosecution speeches in the most important trials held before the Moscow and Supreme Revolutionary Tribunals.

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Apr 2·edited Apr 2

Mickey

A confounding variable is one which also (at least partially) explains the outcome. Social scientists see this all the time. The solution is to put the confounding variable into your base model, then add the variables you really want to test and see if the model improves or not.

Think about testing a link between diabetes and dementia. If poor exercise has a relationship to dementia too, then you'd put poor exercise in in the base model and then add diabetes to the full model.

You can have multiple control variables in a model.

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stipulated that data is not the plural of anecdote, my late wife took pepcid daily for 20ish years. she was diagnosed with dementia in 2016.

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I'm sorry to hear that.

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