The Nature of Things

The Paleo diet is the latest fad for those who obsess about food. It has swept the nation and become wildly popular, and, truthfully, as a diet fad, it has a lot to recommend it. It focuses on eating only fresh, whole, and healthy foods, prepared from scratch. What can one criticize about that? The diet, however, is likely based on a fiction. After all, the Paleo shopper wasn't able to head down to the local Whole Foods to select fresh foods. No, I suspect the Paleo diner ate pretty much whatever he or she could get his or her teeth into, whether or not it was fresh and whether or not it met strict dietary guidelines. So what's next for the discerning fad dieter? What could be even more extreme and restrictive than the Paleo diet? How about the Plio diet, eating like our ancestors of the Pliocene Epoch? What could be tastier or healthier than a rotting fruit full of worms? (Hat tip to Daily Kos)

I've written here before about my battles with restless leg syndrome and how I was persuaded to sleep with a bar of soap as a magical(?) cure for the problem. Much to my surprise, it actually worked. My twitchy legs stopped twitching at night and keeping me awake. I was able to sleep soundly. I still don't know why it worked. Psychological palliative? Placebo effect? Who knows? Who cares, really, as long as it worked. But then it stopped working. By this past summer, the problem had returned with a vengeance. My legs were no longer just restless at night - they ached. I spent my nights tossing and turning and my days frowning and snapping at people. Finally, I got so desperate that I actually discussed the problem with my doctor. "Well, duh," you might say, and you would be right. My doctor asked me several questions about my symptoms and then explained that there might be several causes. It could be a nerve problem which could be treated with a very low dosage of a ...