please excuse me....

while i put on this necklace and then take an afternoon ride on this amazing beach cruiser....

i always feel it's important to match your accessories with your bike :)

*images courtesy of fric frac, it's mary ruffle

not your little girl's pink....

although it might not appeal to everyone's palette, i think the color pink is fantastic. in fact, if taken seriously, it can completely transform a room into well..... perfection.

*images courtesy of kelly green interiors, little green notebooks, ruthie sommers (2 images), sally steponkus, shop gramercy

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Dirilis 11 Hari Lagi!

Belajar Komputer | Ubuntu adalah salah satu distro yang punya nama kode (code name) untuk tiap rilis barunya. Setelah Ubuntu 9.10 disebut dengan nama Karmic Koala, maka berdasarkan sebuah post resmi di Ubuntu Wiki, Ubuntu 10.04 akan dirilis dengan codename Lucid Lynx.

Lucid Lynx sendiri akan menjadi salah satu versi LTS (long time support) dari Ubuntu. Dengan demikian Lucid Lynx akan

Full-fat Dairy for Cardiovascular Health??

[2013 update: a few colleagues and I have published a comprehensive review paper on the association between full-fat dairy consumption and obesity, metabolic health, and cardiovascular disease.  You can find it here.]

I just saw a paper in the AJCN titled "Dairy consumption and patterns of mortality of
Australian adults". It's a prospective study with a 15-year follow-up period. Here's a quote from the abstract:

There was no consistent and significant association between total dairy intake and total or cause-specific mortality. However, compared with those with the lowest intake of full-fat dairy, participants with the highest intake (median intake 339 g/day) had reduced death due to CVD (HR: 0.31; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.12–0.79; P for trend = 0.04) after adjustment for calcium intake and other confounders. Intakes of low-fat dairy, specific dairy foods, calcium and vitamin D showed no consistent associations.

People who ate the most full-fat dairy had a 69% lower risk of cardiovascular death than those who ate the least. Otherwise stated, people who mostly avoided dairy or consumed low-fat dairy had more than three times the risk of dying of coronary heart disease or stroke than people who ate the most full-fat diary.  This result is an outlier, and also observational so difficult to interpret, but it certainly is difficult to reconcile with the idea that dairy fat is a significant contributor to cardiovascular disease.

Contrary to popular belief, full-fat dairy, including milk, butter and cheese, has never been convincingly linked to cardiovascular disease. What has been linked to cardiovascular disease is milk fat's replacement, margarine. In the Rotterdam study, high vitamin K2 intake was linked to a lower risk of fatal heart attack, aortic calcification and all-cause mortality. Most of the K2 came from full-fat cheese.

From a 2005 literature review on milk and cardiovascular disease in the EJCN:

In total, 10 studies were identified. Their results show a high degree of consistency in the reported risk for heart disease and stroke, all but one study suggesting a relative risk of less than one in subjects with the highest intakes of milk.

...the studies, taken together, suggest that milk drinking may be associated with a small but worthwhile reduction in heart disease and stroke risk.

...All the cohort studies in the present review had, however, been set up at times when reduced-fat milks were unavailable, or scarce.

gray and white...

makes for a nice, peaceful combination.....

*images courtesy of house and garden, plush palate, mackenzie horan, the city sage, yatzer, absolutely beautiful things, skona hem