Bob Edwards Weekend Highlights – August 8-9, 2009
HOUR ONE
This summer, Rock-n-Roll Hall of Famer Bonnie Raitt and Blues Hall of Famer Taj Mahal are traveling the country together on the “BonTaj Roulet” tour. “This tour is just what the doctor ordered,” Raitt says. “Taj and I have so much in common, but there’s so much unexplored territory between us.” There’s a charitable element to the “BonTaj Roulet” tour as well: a portion of ticket sales will go to charities voted on by the fans.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with executive director Dan Gediman about the essay from Iowa native Anne Heywood. She held 34 different jobs before founding the Career Changing Clinic in New York City to help troops returning from World War II find work. Heywood was the author of There Is a Right Job for Every Woman.
HOUR TWO
The theory of evolution was introduced 150 years ago by Charles Darwin. Yet, still most medical schools do not teach how the human body and mind evolved during and since the Stone Age. Dr. William Meller has spent the bulk of his career studying evolutionary medicine and traveling to countries like Bhutan, Myanmar, and Peru to study ancient methods of healing. Meller discusses evolutionary medicine and how scientists can better learn through the study of anthropology.
Most people would have found Julie Klam’s childhood enviable; her mother would repeatedly take her out of school to spend the day shopping at Bloomingdale’s and having lavish lunches. But Julie would soon learn that her glamorous life growing up in New York’s wealthy Westchester County did little to prepare her for the real world. In her memoir, Please Excuse My Daughter, Klam records her successes and failures making it on her own.
I have always been interested in the effect of our evolutionary past on human behavior and characteristics so I was interested in Dr. Wiliam Meller’s musings. I found some of his asertions about our past and present implications to be fraught with misinformation, or maybe he was just too eager to "bend" information to fit what he wanted to find. An example is suggesting that we were, way long ago, mainly eaters of meat. There is no evidence of that. He said that there was only vegitation available for 2 weeks a year. What’s that all about? I assume that the natural cycles that maintain all herbavores was in existance in "the old days" as they are now with dandilion salad available in the early spring, wild strawberries (or the like) around June, followed by berries in August, followed by a nice "crab" fruit salad in the fall. These would be combined with tubors, seeds (most of which are edible) and the "guts" of all caught game. We have and have always been omnivours. We have teeth that reflect that. We have digestive systems that reflect that. We have needs for B vitamins that reflect that. So why say we only historically had vegitation to chow down on for 2 weeks a year? I suspect that it was to support his "miraculous cure" for diabetes. And this is where I really get steamed. All the folks who have diabetes and will be grasping at straws to "cure" their disease will say, "Gee, Dr. Meller said all I have to do is just eat meat and fat. This will increase my satiety AND cause me to lose weight AND cause me to not have a "sugar" problem anymore!" (And I have some prime Florida swamp…I mean Prime land I’d like to sell ya…just sign here.)
First, as a Physician he needs a "STUDY" whose results show not only that it works, but that the result that we usually see with a extremely low carb diet….
Secondly, doesn’t increase the incidents of heart disease, clogging of the arteries, acidosis, gout, uber constipation and accompanying hemrhhoids, colon cance, and other really BAD conditions (like maybe it won’t cure your diabetes and you could have a lovely diabetic coma and wake up, with a little luck, in a hospital.)
Why would a doctor do anything as irresponsible as suggest that a low carb diet is a "cure" for type II diabetes? Why would NPR not question that? Can a guest on NPR just say anything? I guess so. I’m just sorry for all the people who will try this and find themselves harmed by it. Thanks for letting me express my opinion. Rosalie Brown