Happy Turkey Day!

I guess starfish in Chile heard today is Thanksgiving!

Do Carbs Make You Crazy?

I've been following the blog of Dr. Emily Deans, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts interested in the connection between food and mental health. She recently posted a series on the link between carbohydrates, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), aggression, irritability, and other mental disorders.

In this article, she introduces hypoglycemia in the context of the different arguments for the effects of carbohydrates on mental disorders.

In this article, she presents evidence for the link between high-carb diets, hypoglycemia, and irritability and aggression.

In this article, she evaluates the opposite argument that a high-carb diet actually improves mood.

I was led to this series by this most recent article, in which she presents a study that shows a link between high rates of sugar consumption through sodas and aggression in teenagers.

Basically, her main argument in these posts is that it differs from person to person. In my case, I feel the initial rush of euphoria and happiness (serotonin) when I eat carbs. But it quickly does a 180º (serotonin drops), leaving me anxious, irritable, and depressed. So I'm one of those people who does really well on a very low carb (VLC) diet. But there are some people that do well on moderate and high carbohydrate diets.

I'm wondering if high-carbohydrate diets cause proportionately higher rates of hypoglycemia and associated mental health disorders in Latinos and other minority populations? Dr. Deans has clearly shown that there is a link between insulin levels and serotonin. And Latinos have higher rates of diabetes, which is caused by high insulin levels. And people with diabetes typically have higher rates of anxiety and depression. From personal experience, I have a feeling that there's a link but I'm still looking for the evidence to prove it.

I'd be interested to hear your personal experiences of hypoglycemia, irritability, aggression and other related issues!

Wildflowers of Las Cruces

My garden is full of an amazing diversity of beautiful wildflowers. I tried to document them all in photos the other day in order to share them with you.

My favorite of them all is the poppy:

But the other ones are just as beautiful:

How to Reach the Tipping Point | Mark's Daily Apple

Check out this link: How to Reach the Tipping Point | Mark's Daily Apple

If you haven't checked out Mark's Daily Apple, you should! It contains all kinds of useful nutritional information. But my favorites are the success stories. Last Friday's, for example, was amazing.

I really liked this post because I understand the feeling of knowing that you should change, but not feeling like its quite the right moment. Hopefully his blog will give you inspiration, as it has for me. I plan on sharing more of his posts.

Personally, I was at my tipping point at the beginning of this year. But it wasn't until I met Dr. Georgia Ede at Harvard that I was finally pointed in the right direction.

Conociendo a Pablo Neruda

Regresé de mis viajes. Navigue construyendo la alegria
- Pablo Neruda, quote from Las Uvas y el viento painted on his home in Isla Negra

This morning I went to Isla Negra to visit the house and grave of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda - only a 15 minute micro ride away from ECIM!

I had heard of Pablo Neruda from several friends over the years, but never really got to know his work until I moved here. Now I see why everyone loves him. Here's just an example, one of my favorite poems from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Me gustas cuando callas

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
y me oye desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca. 

Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.

Me gustas cuando cllas y estás como distante.
Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
Déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.

Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
Eres como la noche, callada y constelada. 
Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente
Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
Y estoy alegre, alegre que no sea cierto.  

Just like his poems, Neruda's homes are dramatic. Neruda loved the ocean, so the two houses I've seen of his (including La Chascona in Santiago) were built to resemble ships. Plus, the homes are full of his collections of random things from his travels, from shells to bottles. Although I preferred La Chascona, the Isla Negra home was built in a more impressive location on a headland overlooking the ocean. Here are some pictures:

 Museum entrance

 View of the ocean from his house, with a boat 'decorating' the backyard

 Collection of bottles in the bar


















But do you want to know what the most exciting part of the day was? Right before the tour, I found HORSE jerky in a market in the center of Isla Negra!



 If you know one thing about me it's that I love trying new foods. So I couldn't pass it up no matter how many images of Mr. Ed popped into my head. Unlike beef jerky, it had a milder flavor and was really tender - I would actually eat it again.

It was funny because later the tour guide took us inside Neruda's favorite room of his house, the centerpiece of which was a life-size wooden horse! It used to stand in front of a store near his house growing up. He always wanted to buy it because it brought him such great childhood memories. But he had to wait until the store burned down before he could own it. He was so excited that he built a special room that had a barn door and had a welcome party!

Echinoderm love

In case you didn't know, even though I study barnacles, echinoderms (i.e., starfish and sea urchins) hold a special place in my heart. So you can imagine my excitement when I came upon this sight while working in the intertidal yesterday:

A sun star surrounded by sea urchins! There are tons of sun stars and urchins in the ECIM reserve that I work in. However, I've never seen them together. Maybe the urchins were eating the star? At any rate, very cool.

Meet: Rondrigo

If I could have imagined a friend that I was hoping to make in Chile, it would be Rondrigo:

 

Rondrigo is a Chilean grad student at the Universidad de Concepcion. He's working on a project with Sergio Navarrete on the effects of temperature on intertidal organisms. 

During the day, he's hard-working and reserved. But at night, he becomes the life of the party. 

In fact, the first time I met him was at an ECIM party one week after I arrived. I knew from that moment that we would be good friends because we discovered a mutual love for cumbias. Although, he had never heard a Mexican cumbia. And he opened up a whole new world to me when he played for me Chilean cumbias! Here's one of his favorite bands, Chico Trujillo:

But I've also had some of my most intellectually stimulating interactions with Rondrigo. He is very passionate and knowledgeable about Chilean politics, a quality that I've noticed a lot in Chilean students. So he's told me a lot about Chilean history and government, and the current student protests. But what makes it more special is that I can actually understand everything that he tells me and respond, which is something that I had been looking forward to doing during this experience.

Finally, you just have to love a guy with a smile and cheeks like these:

Adventures in cooking

Spring is finally here. I no longer need to wear my jacket around the house or to find a 'guatero con uñas' ;) I'm also seeing signs of Spring in the variety of foods showing up at the supermarket. Well, at least at the large supermarkets in San Antonio, a 30 min harrowing bus ride on cumbia-filled, people-filled microbuses. Tangent: one of my favorite things to do in South America is ride buses. Mostly because of the music, the crazy drivers, and the fact that they're so adventurous compared to the States. So I actually look forward to going into San Antonio. Here's what a Saturday morning on the micro is like:

This week, though, I was so excited when I found cherries at Malloco, the supermercado in Las Cruces:

I'm also getting really good at cooking, mainly using recipes from the Paleo Diet Cookbook (on my iPhone - so convenient) that include ingredients I find at the supermarket. The best thing about these recipes is that they're super easy. I always thought that cooking meat would be time-consuming, but it takes no longer than boiling a pot of pasta. Here are some examples:
 
 

Bacon! I always used to shun bacon when my dad would cook it for breakfast. I never realized that it was basically jet fuel. They sell fresh pancetta in the deli at the Jumbo supermarket in San Antonio, although its kind of expensive. The woman had to ask me three times if I was sure when I asked her for 1 kg (2.2 lbs). She looked at me as if I was going to have a heart attack and go broke right on the spot. I just told her 'segura, porque vale la pena' (one of my favorite expressions in spanish).










Eggplant grilled in olive oil and topped with blue cheese and tomatoes. Super rico!
















Chicken thighs with creamy coconut curry and cauliflower. This is my favorite dish. To make the coconut curry takes 20 minutes, max. I've made it several times since finding coconut milk at San Antonio because its so easy and tasty. 













Celery braised chicken thighs. That sounds so gourmet! But it was surprisingly fast and easy to make.

I'm getting hungry just writing this!

Read this book! In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

I know I'm a little late with this one because it was published in 2008. But I feel like my eyes have been opened to a whole new world since changing my diet, including books and other resources that I had never heard about. I'm finding out about them from other people and want to pay it forward by sharing what I find with you.

To sum it up: 'Michael Pollan describes what he calls the American Paradox:  the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.'

He goes about this by first describing how 'nutritionism', or thinking of food in terms of nutritional and chemical constituents instead of as a whole, led to the emergence of a new market for manufacturers of processed foods. After saturated fat and cholesterol were singled out in the Dietary Goals for the United States, processed foods low in these constituents began dominating the market. But instead of making us healthier, we became fatter.

He goes on to argue how nutritionism is bad science because its impossible to create a well-designed experiment to tease out the effect of one nutrient. In fact, now we're starting to learn that saturated fat and cholesterol weren't the culprits after all; it could be the processed foods high in added sugar that were created to protect us in the first place.

He finishes with his 'Eater's manifesto': eat food, not too much, mostly plants. I especially like the section called 'Eat food', in which he gives really clear guidelines for how to distinguish between real and processed foods. But I think the titles of his other two sections, 'not too much' and 'mostly plants', are a little misleading. He singles out plants because there's never been evidence that eating vegetables is bad for you, although I would also argue that there's no good evidence that eating meat is bad for you. And the reason why he says 'not too much' is because you just won't be that hungry if you are eating well. But it might be a little off-putting to someone who, upon first reading, thinks it means to restrict calories.

This is a really easy read that I highly recommend, especially for its eater's manifesto. I still think of his guidelines every time I shop at the supermarket and evaluate what I have stocked in my fridge. Hopefully you will too!

Home page update

I updated my home page with tabs, one with contact information and another with a link to my research page on the Aizenberg website at Harvard.

I also included a 'start here' tab with my philosophy to eating. Its a distillation of the research I've done so far since my diagnosis, which shapes my diet. Hopefully it also clarifies my choices of nutrition posts.

Enjoy!

Action shot

Little did I know that my friend Pablo was taking artistic photos of me while I was working in the field. But I'm so grateful because this one is super cool!

Meet: Sebastian

I hope to introduce you in several posts to some of the people I work with and have become friends with at ECIM.

The first one is Sebastian, a 21-year old from Rennes, France who is here to gain research experience. He is adorable; if you're ever having a bad day, all you need to do is visit Sebastian because he'll have a smile, hug, joke, or French pastry from his grandmother's recipe book to offer you. Last week he took a 24 hour bus ride to Buenos Aires because he wanted to dance Tango. He ended up meeting tons of Argentinians and not having to pay for hotels or food because they loved him so much.

Here's a photo of him wearing a t-shirt that I brought him from California in appreciation for letting me use his suitcase when I traveled to California. Mine is too big and his has straps to keep things in place (like bottles of wine and bags of coffee). He was so excited; apparently he and his family love California culture.

  

One of my other friends helped me install my final plates yesterday, so all of my plates are in and the experiment is finally started! From now on, I'll be taking photos every day of the plates and analyzing the data.

Watch this video, and why I love Harvard

I love Harvard. It's days like these that remind me that I was meant to be (t)here for my postdoc.

Harvard Food Law Society has been hosting several interesting lectures this semester. The goal of the Society is to expose law students to the issues in law, policy, science, and management that confront professionals in the fields of food law and policy. 

Recently, Robert Lustig from the University of California, San Francisco, presented a lecture titled 'The Sugar Epidemic: Policy vs. Politics'. He argues that the current obesity epidemic is not a personal responsibility issue but a public health concern, and what we (or Harvard Law students) can do about it. The majority of his lecture focuses on how sugar satisfies the four criteria that must be satisfied in order to institute a public health policy intervention, which was done for tobacco and alcohol: unavoidability, toxicity, abuse, and externalities. He concludes by providing strategies that don't work (e.g., government guidelines, menu labeling), those that might work (e.g. controls on advertising and marketing), and those that are likely to work such as  government agency action, pricing strategies, and controls at points of sales.

Here's the video. I recommend watching at least the first 10-15 minutes.

 

I'm also anxiously awaiting a posting of the lecture on October 31 by Dr. Emily Deans, a Massachusetts psychiatrist who is interested in the effects of diet on mental health. She writes an interesting blog that you can find here.

This morning I came upon a link in a recent post on her blog to the Ancestral Health Symposium (AHS) 2012. I was bummed because I didn't get to attend (the first annual) AHS 2011, which took place at UCLA, because I found out about it a week after it happened. But I am super excited to find out that AHS 2012 will take place in August at Harvard!!! I'm going to gear up to submit an abstract for either a presentation or poster.

Mis primeros datos!

My first data points are in! 24 hours after returning to Chile from CA, I was out taking photographs of my plates during the low tide.

The goal of my project is to determine whether three species of barnacles, Jehlius cirratus,  Notochthamalus scabrosus, and Notobalanus flosculus exhibit habitat selection during settlement. Previous work by Fabian Tapia and colleagues suggest that the two Chthamaloid species, J. cirratus and N. scabrosus, do not exhibit habitat selection while the Balanoid N. floculus does. But no one has tested it directly. To test this, I have placed plates with different substrates at different sites in the intertidal. What I'm also hoping to see is whether micro- (flat versus rough surface) or macro-habitat (light versus shade) is more important in influencing settlement patterns in the intertidal. As promised, here are some photos of my plates in the field:

 Plates facing NW, which are exposed to more sunlight.

 More plates facing NW, but tens of meters away.

Plates facing SE, which get more shade.

Wish me luck!

I heart SACNAS

I returned yesterday morning from a week in San Jose, California, where I attended the 2011 SACNAS National Conference. SACNAS is an organization devoted to advancing Hispanics, Chicanos, and Native Americans in science. You can find out more about their organization here.

The SACNAS conference is always informative, fun, inspirational, therapeutic, and motivating. But - although I might have said this last year - this year seemed to be the best yet. I believe it's because it was my first conference since my diagnosis. Not only did I have more energy, but I also felt like it helped improve my networking skills. Before, anxiety would prevent me from approaching people or fully engaging with them. Without anxiety, I had the confidence to approach people and be myself. It was also filled with memorable events, which I felt more fully engaged in and appreciated more than previous years. I could write a book on everything that happened. Instead, I'll share a couple of anecdotes from that week, followed by a list of highlights.

I arrived in San Jose on Wednesday morning. My Aunt Stella, actually my maternal grandmother's sister and mom's aunt, and Uncle Pete picked me up from the airport. We first went to the mall so that I could buy jeans from Express because they sell jeans for short people. I tried to buy jeans in Chile but all of the jeans I found were regular length, which I don't understand because most Chileans are shorter than me. Then we went to In N Out for lunch, where I ate a double-double protein-style. I had been fantasizing about that moment for weeks and it was just as good as I had imagined. We spent the rest of the day running errands, like picking up their grandkids from school. Then that night my cousins Fred, John, and Gina (including two of her four kids) came over for a taco dinner. Here we are after a delicious meal:

 
Fred, me, Aunt Stella, Uncle Pete, and Gina

The conference began on Thursday morning. Here are some highlights from SACNAS 2011:

1. Hanging out with friends from graduate school, including: 

My former undergraduate student and dancing buddy, Marlene

My former neighbors and Ethiopian food buddies, Gloriana and David

 

2. I co-chaired a scientific symposium titled 'Let Nature Be Your Guide: Innovation in Bio-inspired Engineering'. The highlight of the session for me was that a Chicano professor, Gabriel Lopez from Duke University, accepted our invitation to talk about his research in the field. Then myself and my colleagues at Harvard, Yolanda Vasquez and James Weaver, gave talks about our research. Here's a photo of Yolanda giving her talk:

 

3. My current student, Melanie, won an award for her poster presentation. She is a Chilean undergraduate student at UMass Boston. She won for presenting a poster on a project she had done last summer at UMass. I'm sure she won because the judges recognized what an articulate, smart, funny, and friendly person she is. I was also impressed by her networking skills. Even though it was her first SACNAS conference, a couple of people told me that they met her without my introduction and were impressed by her!

Here we are having dinner: 

Here's her name on the jumbotron during the awards ceremony: 

4. The 'Blogging, Tweeting, and Writing: How an Online Presence Can Impact Science and Your Career ' session, which is a new professional development session at SACNAS. I attended because I really enjoy writing this blog and was hoping I would learn new and wonderful things to enhance it and even justify writing it. It ended up being one of the most important professional development sessions I've ever attended at SACNAS.

Alberto Roca introduced the session by presenting the benefits of blogging and using social media. He explained how blogging is great for professional development because it can be used to develop writing skills and network with other professionals in science. But my favorite was how bloggers from underrepresented groups can increase representation of diversity issues in the media, which is exactly why I started this blog. After my diagnosis, I started following Paleo and nutrition blogs online. But I quickly noticed that most of the bloggers were white and male, and the only posts I had read about food access issues and how dietary recommendations impact minority communities were posted by a Filipino (www.fitbomb.com). Alberto also listed other minority bloggers, which I am looking forward to following online.

Then two popular bloggers presented: David Kroll, a professor at the HBCU North Carolina Central University, and Danielle Lee, an instructor at University of Missouri St. Louis. David writes two popular science blogs, Terra Sigillata (cenblog.org/terra-sigillata) and Take as Directed (blogs.plos.org/takeasdirected), while Danielle is the author of Urban Science Adventures (urban-science.blogspot.com) and publishes on Everyday Citizen (www.everydaycitizen.com/dlee/index.html). David described the evolution of his online presence and I was surprised to hear that he has been invited to publish in journals such as Science and Nature, the two top journals in our field, where his science hadn't even been published. Danielle was a joy to listen to, and not only because of  her Southern accent. She gave an energetic presentation about how blogging can impact your science and gave some examples of popular blogs related to science, teaching, and outreach.

During the question and answer session, I stood up and introduced myself and my blog, including the reason why I started it. I also asked how I can get my blog out to a wider audience because right now it's mostly for family and friends. They suggested I post comments on other blogs I follow, which was something I had never thought about before. After the session, I met Alberto, David, and Danielle (who is so adorable that I just had to have a hug) and ended up with a couple of projects to collaborate on. Alberto Roca invited me to the ScienceOnline 2012 conference in North Carolina while David asked if I would give a workshop on writing personal statements to his undergraduate students. I'm super excited at the prospect of working with such a great group of people!

5. The annual SACNAS Pachanga! This year a Cumbia band, complete with an accordion, performed.

6. The annual SACNAS Pow wow. How many other scientific conferences have a Pachanga AND Pow Wow? That would be zero. Just another reason why SACNAS is so awesome.

This year it took place at the San Jose Civic auditorium:

 Dancers processing out of the auditorium at the end of the night.

7. Anticipating next year's conference in Seattle, Washington. The theme is titled 'Creating a Healthy World through Science, Diversity, and Technology.' I plan to organize a session on nutrition tentatively titled 'The Science of Nutrition and how it affects our health, happiness, and productivity', which will fit in perfectly with next year's conference theme.

Finally, I returned to Chile on Monday morning. After Mariluz and Simeón picked me up from the airport, we picked up Simeón's sister, Adriana, and her grandson, Carlitos, before driving to a cemetery near Las Cruces where Simeón's parents and family members are buried. It was my first Día de los Muertos celebration, although they do it a little differently than in Mexico. Mariluz and Simeón cleaned and placed fresh flowers at the graves. The other Chileans I observed were also cleaning but some were even refreshing inscriptions on or repairing headstones. I had bought a sugar skull and coffin in California to place at the graves, which Mariluz didn't appreciate at first until her nephew told her that Día de los Muertos is celebrated a little differently in Mexico. Here's a photo of their family plot, with a Mexican touch: 

After recovering yesterday from jet lag and running some errands, I was out first thing this morning for a 10 am tide to photograph barnacle settlement. I'll share photos tomorrow.