7*(1-2-3)

 

A pretty butterfly resting on a filbert branch

Work proceeds in tiny nibbles.

Winter Crisp Chinese Cabbage planted approx July 1

Short season, European Cabbage

Onions/shallots

The next flight of Chinese Cabbage was planted today. This is a 70 day cultivar.

Two of my figs have tiny figlets on them: Vendino de Norte (little green northern fig) and Violette de Bordeaux. This was an unexpected development

General pissing-and-moaning

The dietician swung through and provided a consult. The young lady looked to be all of thirteen.

Like some older people, mom is subject to retaining water which presents as edema (swelling) in her lower legs. Consequently, mom is on a very low salt diet...roughly 800-to-1000mg per day.

I shared that with the dietician and she said...."I will make a note of that." 

Then she went off on a long, disjoint lecture on how high protein diets are magical for reducing edema. In that discussion, she went off on a tangent on trying to describe "osmosis" but she used awkward analogies that she thought would get traction with somebody who came of age before "talkie" movies were released.

Then she assured me "I will tell food service to keep the daily sodium below 2000mg. That is our general target."

OK, I don't know everything. I don't pretend to. 

When I came home I hit Google Scholar to see what the latest research was regarding high-protein diets to remediate edema.

Google returned research from 1920-to-1957 that suggested that the distended bellies of starving children was more related to protein insufficiency than it was to insufficient calories.

I suspect our uber-young dietician was snoozing during the lecture and missed some of the finer details in the relationship between fluid retention and protein consumption. The kids in the picture were eating a diet of about 4% protein and the amino acids were extremely unbalanced, resulting in an effective protein of 1%-to-2%.

Not only did I hear the magical fix for fluid retention from the dietician, I also heard it from the (male) nurses on the floor. "Fluid retention...the best thing you can do is stuff as much Greek yogurt as you can down your mom's gullet." I also got the crazy, double back-flip "It is hard to explain" explanation that eating protein activated a mysterious osmosis mechanism made the retained water disappear. 

I would not care if it was not my mom and if it weren't for the fact that a super-high protein diet can jack around your metabolism and stress your kidneys as it tries to eliminate ketones and other macro-molecules it does not normally see.

Maybe I am way out in the weeds. If so, I hope one of my readers can point me to some peer-reviewed research that will explain the mechanism. 

I am aware that I am not operating as "my best self". Maybe I am missing something that is glaringly obvious. But until I have better information, I am going to assume that Mom's dietician graduated in the bottom 20% of her class. And, by virtue of being cute and earnest, was able to convince the nurses about Protein = Magic.