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Alyssa Luck

Alyssa Luck

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5 Reasons You Should Eat Oysters

Alyssa Luck · Aug 3, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Last week, my family and I went on vacation to a beach in Connecticut where my grandparents have a cottage. I had two goals for myself during the trip: 1) to learn how to juggle, and 2) to try raw oysters. I still can’t juggle very well, but I did try raw oysters. And I liked them. And here are 5 reasons you should eat them too.

1. They’re surprisingly nutrient-dense

These slimy little balls of sea snot don’t look like much, but it turns out they’re overflowing with nutrition. This is one of the big reasons I wanted to try them – they kept cropping up on lists of “superfoods” alongside other hard-hitters like liver and egg yolks and dark leafy greens. I was starting to feel left out of the nutrient-seeker club.

Oysters are most renowned for their zinc content, at around 66 mg per dozen (according to the USDA food database). That’s over FOUR TIMES the daily value of 15mg, which is awesome because the typical Western dieter could do with a little more zinc in their life. Zinc is depleted during stress (not that any of us are ever stressed), and high intakes of grains and other phytate-containing foods can result in low zinc levels. (1)

Oysters also have 7-10 mg iron (about half the daily value), 33 -107 mcg selenium (daily value is 70 mcg), 30-55 mg magnesium, and 109 mg choline, which doesn’t compare to the ~150 mg choline in one egg yolk, but it ain’t too shabby!

 

2. They’re sustainable

Several factors come into play when thinking about food sustainability. For instance, you want the environment to be disrupted as little as possible during the production of the food, unlike factory farms that pollute the waterways or trawling operations that destroy entire underwater ecosystems. Ideally, you’d like the food to be part of a healthy, self-sustaining ecosystem while it’s growing, unlike the vast mono-crop farms that deplete the soil, disrupt habitats, and require constant spraying with pesticides and herbicides to maintain.

Luckily, oysters are a solid choice on all these fronts. First of all, you’d be hard-pressed to eat lower on the food chain than an oyster (plankton smoothie, anyone?). And (perhaps surprisingly), farmed oysters are an even better choice than wild oysters.

Because oysters are filter-feeders, all that’s involved in farming them is sticking them in the ocean in nets or trays and letting them grow. They don’t need additional feed, chemicals, or antibiotics, and according to the New England Aquarium, oyster farms can actually improve local water quality. And unlike with wild oysters, you don’t risk disrupting the natural ocean habitat when you harvest them.

 

3. They’re versatile

I personally have only tried raw oysters and smoked tinned oysters, and found the smoked oysters distinctly unpleasant. But I’ve been told oysters are delicious fried, grilled, baked, steamed, or stewed as well. At some point I’ll probably branch out and try oysters cooked different ways, but I have to say – I’m pretty picky when it comes to food textures, and I really don’t like the texture of cooked clams or mussels.  I’m not a huge fan of the taste, either. So if cooked oysters are anything like other cooked bivalves, I’ll probably stick with raw oysters, which are smooth and easy to chew, and taste fresh and salty instead of bitter and musty.

But have I mentioned how many different things you can put on raw oysters? I like lemon juice and horseradish, but you could also try cocktail sauce, hot sauce, chimichurri, bacon and jalapeño, pesto, mignonette sauce, or whatever other tasty sauce or topping you can come up with. More ideas (and some serious oyster porn) here.

 

4. They might just be a perfect food for vegans

*Huddles behind computer screen awaiting an enraged vegan mob wielding spears of sharpened kale stalks*

Before you impale me with a vegetable, hear me out. I truly respect vegans who decide to forgo all animal products to reduce animal suffering, lessen their personal carbon footprint, and improve their health. The trouble is, lots of nutrients are really hard (or impossible) to get from plant foods alone, and unless someone has superior genetics and a truly formidable squad of intestinal microflora, they’d need to take a few supplements to avoid suffering from nutrient deficiency-related health woes.

…or maybe not. A year or two ago, I came across the idea of “bivalveganism” on Denise Minger’s website Raw Food SOS. (If you don’t know who Denise Minger is, I highly recommend you acquaint yourself with her work. She doesn’t blog much, but she’s my favorite health writer by far. And she likes cats.)

According to a couple articles I found online (here and here), oysters don’t have a central nervous system and are unlikely to experience pain the way humans and other animals do. And I already mentioned the impressive sustainability of the oyster, so oysters seem perfectly aligned with both the ethical and environmental ideals of veganism. And as far as health is concerned, oysters supply ample amounts of iron and zinc – two nutrients that are difficult to get on a vegan diet – as well as some B12, which is impossible to get from plants. If I were still vegan, I’d definitely much rather eat oysters a couple times a week than have to take several different supplements.

 

5. They’re delicious

No further elaboration needed. Go eat them. And then leave a comment letting me know your favorite way to eat oysters!

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Hi! I’m Alyssa. I like thunderstorms and cats, hate wearing shoes, and enjoy devising extensive research projects for myself in my free time. This is me in Bali with a monkey on my shoulder. And this is my blog, where I muse about health-related topics and document my relentless self-guinea pigging. If you want to know more about me, click here!

alyssa.luck

alyssa.luck
Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone Photo dump from the last year. Thanks to everyone who made 28 the best yet - excited for 29🥰

(PS. In case anyone wants to know what it’s like in my head, I was going to write something like “year 28” or “my 28th year” but then I realized that the year between your 28th and 29th birthdays is not your 28th year of life, it’s your 29th year. I am turning 29 because I have been alive for 29 years. So then I had a whole thing about how to word it without being inaccurate and ended up going with what you see above which is vague and weird but the point is it was a good year and I love all the people in my life dearly)
Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipt Biology of Belief (2005) was written by Bruce Lipton, who earned a PhD in developmental biology in 1971 and was an anatomy professor and academic researcher in the 70s and 80s. Despite the book's presentation and Lipton's background, this is not a science book. It is an exposition of an ideology, supported by haphazard and poorly contextualized nuggets of evidence, rhetorical leaps, and a mind-boggling overuse of analogies. 

The book largely failed to deliver on its promised content. What it does is argue for the primacy of the environment over DNA in controlling life; propose that the cell membrane rather than the nucleus is the "brain" of the cell; invoke quantum physics to explain why modern medicine fails; explain that our behavior is largely controlled by our subconscious mind; inform parents that they therefore have a great deal of control over the destiny of their children; and conclude that humans must become nonviolent protectors of the environment and of humanity because Everything Is Connected.

It’s not that these points aren’t relevant to the topic at hand - they are. But they were not connected in a coherent way that would explain how “belief” actually works (like…biologically), and the treatment of scientific concepts throughout was careless, or perhaps disingenuous.

I think he's correct about many things, some of them being common knowledge. For instance, the "new" science of epigenetics is now old news, as is the critical role of parenting and early environment in shaping a child’s future. But however important these and attendant concepts may be, the book did not do a good job explaining, supporting, or connecting them. 

As far as practical guidance, he refers the reader to a list of resources on his website, which is fine, but I expected some scientific insight into how/why those modalities work. None was given. 

On the plus side, the book was quite thought-provoking, and I came away with loads of references and topics to follow up on. My favorite line? "There cannot be exceptions to a theory; exceptions simply mean that a theory is not fully correct."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (section 382), as quoted in the introduction to Thus Spoke Zarathustra because I like the translation better.
This paper totally changed the way I think about e This paper totally changed the way I think about early nervous system development and the relationship between physiology and sociality. 

The authors propose that newborn babies are not inherently social, and have just one goal in life: physiological homeostasis. I.e. staying alive. This means nutrients, warmth, and regulation of breath and heart rate, i.e. autonomic arousal (it’s well-accepted that newborns sync their breathing and heart rate with caregivers through skin to skin contact). 

All these things are traditionally provided by a loving caregiver. So what the baby experiences during the first weeks of life, over and over, is a shift from physiological perturbation to homeostasis (a highly rewarding event inherently) REPEATEDLY PAIRED with things like the sound of a caregiver’s voice and seeing their face. Thus, over time, the face/voice stimuli become rewarding as well. 

The authors argue that THIS is the beginning of humans’ wiring for sociality, and may explain why loving social interactions can have such a profound regulating effect on physiology throughout life: because the brain was trained for it at an early age. 

This framework holds all kinds of fascinating implications for what happens if that initial “training” isn’t so ideal. What if the return to nutritional homeostasis via feeding is paired with negative expressions and vocalizations rather than loving ones, perhaps as could occur with PPD? What happens if the caregiver has poor autonomic regulation, such that social stimuli become paired with cardiorespiratory overexcitement in the baby? Could that have potential for influencing later introversion vs extroversion? (Because if social interaction is paired with autonomic overexcitement, that could lead to social interaction literally being more energetically draining, which is what introverts experience. Thoughts?)

For my energy metabolism enthusiasts: Table 1 in the paper draws a link between metabolic rate and sociality across species. Swipe for a screenshot. 

Anyway, check out the paper! It’s free, just google “growing a social brain pdf.”
I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple day I’ll be under general anesthesia in a couple days to have two tooth implants placed, and I think I’ll take the opportunity to have a little heart-to-heart with my subconscious mind. A bit of medically-assisted self-hypnosis, if you will. 

I randomly stumbled upon these papers a couple months ago - an RCT showing reduced post-op pain in patients who listened to recorded positive messages while under general anesthesia, plus a post-hoc analysis of the same data that found reduced post-op nausea and vomiting in a subset of high-risk patients. 

The full review paper from the first slide is unfortunately in German, but it has long been recognized that even when unconscious, the patient is listening (for better or for worse). 

It boggles my mind that it isn’t standard of care to have patients listen to recordings like this while under sedation, considering that almost nothing could be easier, safer, or cheaper, and we have at least some evidence of significant efficacy. I mean c’mon, what more could you want from an intervention? 

(Yeah, I know. Profit. If anyone still thinks that our medical system operates with patient well-being as the foremost goal, you’re deluding yourself.)

“There should be a fundamental change in the way patients are treated in the operating room and intensive care unit, and background noise and careless conversations should be eliminated.”

“Perhaps it is now time to finally heed this call and to use communication with unconscious patients that goes beyond the most necessary announcement of interventions and is therapeutically effective through positive suggestions. When in doubt, assume that the patient is listening.”
If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have y If you've seen "vagus nerve exercises" that have you moving your eyes or tilting your head, you've probably encountered the work of Stanley Rosenberg. The exercises he created and introduced in his 2017 book now appear in instructional videos all over the internet. 
 
The book itself has much to recommend it: it's accessible, it's practical, it's inspiring. But it has one major flaw: the solid practical and informational content regarding the cranial nerves is framed in terms of the scientifically dubious polyvagal theory. 
 
I particularly enjoyed the book as an introduction to the therapeutic arena of bodywork, of which Rosenberg is a skilled practitioner. His book is full of case reports that demonstrate how immensely powerful extremely subtle movements and physical manipulations can be. These do need to be kept in perspective: it's a small sample size of the most remarkable cases, and the results were achieved within the supportive clinical environment of a skilled practitioner. You can tell from his descriptions how refined his technique is. But nevertheless, it was a paradigm-shifting read for me, and the exercises give you something concrete to play around with. 
 
The book also brought the cranial nerves and the concept of “social engagement” to the fore as arbiters of health. Rosenberg has a solid background in cranial nerve anatomy and shares many interesting tidbits and considerations that you don’t typically hear; for instance, the potential impact of dental and orthodontic work on cranial nerve function.
 
So, is it worth reading? If any of the above piques your interest, go for it! Just read my post on polyvagal theory first – you can use the book to practice separating the wheat (solid informational content) from the chaff (pseudoscientific framing). If nothing else, the book is a nice reminder that genuine healers who get lasting results for their patients do exist.

But if you just want to try the exercises, you can easily find them all on YouTube. 

“You learn techniques to understand principles. When you understand the principles, you will create your own techniques.” -Stanley Rosenberg
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