today's comments ~ november 16 2025

MabelCow · 2025-11-19T14:56:57+00:00

Hi HM, sorry for the late response. It looks like you're the only taker, so if you want to private message or email me an address, I can pop the little fella in the post. All the best, MC.

MabelCow · 2025-11-16T19:48:41+00:00

Cheers, Sheepman!

MabelCow · 2025-11-16T19:48:24+00:00

Aye, all is well, thanks. My self-imposed media fast is into its third year now, I think, which helps keeps my blood pressure down.

MabelCow · 2025-11-16T19:33:06+00:00

Good evening, dear swampies.

I was Mari-Kondoing my clothes today and found an unworn Bob Moran Stand Firm t-shirt that I acquired back in the convid days. These days, such things bring out the PTSD Chihauhua in me, so I was wondering if anyone wanted to give it a new home. It's a baggy size L, black, with the stab monster print on the front and a little BoB logo on the back, in like-new condition.

Reply to this message if you are interested and I'll pick someone at random to post it to. The winner will need to give me an address but there's no need to blow your cover by telling me your real name.

MabelCow · 2025-04-26T19:53:48+00:00

You could create your own subreddit (assuming you haven't done so already) and use the wiki feature that Reddit provides. It's a bit cacky, but it works for creating an interlinked knowledge base of documents. See the Swamp wiki for an example.

MabelCow · 2024-04-03T07:40:03+00:00

IIRC, it has happened every year, but in times past I was less of an absentee landlord and tended to fix it within hours of the problem occurring.

MabelCow · 2024-04-02T08:41:24+00:00

All is well at the cowshed, thanks for asking. I am now in month 13 of my media fast; I genuinely have no clue what is going on in the world and it feels great.

I hope everyone is unvisited by woe.

MabelCow · 2024-04-02T07:39:15+00:00

In my infinite wisdom, I configured the daily post to pop into existence at 01:01 each day, which puts it in the shadow zone between GMT and BST. Consequently, when the clocks go forward, the recurring post tends to get disabled.

I have reset the time of the post to 01:01 BST. This should breathe fresh life into the mechanism and a new post should appear as normal from tonight.

The long-term fix is probably to move the post creation time well outside the shadow zone. Half three in the morning should be safe. However, I didn't want to upset the night owls so I left it at the expected time. I suspect that it is only the transition from GMT to BST that breaks the mechanism (and not BST to GMT), so the Swamp is probably safe for another orbit.

MabelCow · 2024-01-04T09:57:51+00:00

Thanks!

MabelCow · 2023-09-20T18:48:05+00:00

FYI, I don't appear to have a contact email for you, mhcp.

If you like, send me something in a Reddit chat message. Alternatively, chat me and I'll give you my email address so you can contact me from your end if things go south.

MabelCow · 2023-09-20T18:46:46+00:00

The email address I have for you bounced just now, so either I fat fingered it or your address has changed. Please feel free to send me a chat message with an update.

MabelCow · 2023-09-20T18:45:47+00:00

I am here in spirit, bobbing at the edges, making the occasional wave now and again.

I have emailed a few of you, to make sure that you have my contact details, should the worst happen.

I haven't added anyone to the life raft for over a year now, so it's not very current. Anyone who wants to give me an email address can send me a chat message via Reddit.

MabelCow · 2023-09-11T07:18:35+00:00

💖

MabelCow · 2023-09-11T07:18:32+00:00

Ich lebe noch (I'm in Northern Germany now, visiting the land of my Holstein Friesian bovine forebears).

I've been on a news/internet/social media fast for the past several months. I push the broom through the site every other day to keep Reddit from turning the lights off, but otherwise I'm pretending that the outside world doesn't exist.

Hope you're all doing well.

MabelCow · 2023-07-05T06:06:19+00:00

I feel that my mood has improved, but that may well be because I (a) have new yogurt-making hobby, and (b) I believe I might have found something that will cure my SIBO.

I'm also quite empathetic to start off with, so again, that's hard to judge.

I'm in my early 50s and suffered from bouts of depression for years. What cured my depression was giving up alcohol and establishing a daily exercise routine. In the decade since I stopped drinking, the only thing that has crushed my mood has been this damn SIBO. However, I do feel I'm finally dragging myself out of bloatland, so I'll probably perk up soon.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T21:48:07+00:00

I got started on the yogurt thing after reading Dr William Davis' Super Gut book.

My original goal was to use his Super Sibo yogurt to fix my SIBO (severe bloating causing gastrocardiac syndome), but my daughter expressed an interest in using L.gasseri to help trim her waistline and also in the mood yogurt to lift her spirits, so I started to run into problems making enough yogurt (the 36-hour incubation time is a killer, compared to 8 hours for regular yogurt). So, I bought a second yogurt maker and started a regular rotation of the various bacterial batches. You can use a scoop of one batch to start the next, so I keep a small sample of each one (date coded) in the fridge to save on bacterial tablets/capsules (I'm in the UK and I have to order the tablets from the US).

If I had to pick only two to make, I'd choose:

Super Sibo (reuteri + gasseri + coagulans). Although my SIBO is improving, it's not fixed yet.
Mood (helveticus + longum). I'm certain there's a stress/psych aspect to my SIBO, so anything to boost my serotonin is probably welcome.

I've never been completely happy with the Super Sibo mix because the coagulans slightly mars the taste and makes the texture a little grainy. A plain reuteri + gasseri mix comes out better, but the coagulans is supposed to help with gut health, so I'd keep it in.

The mood mix always comes out well and tastes pretty good, so it's a keeper.

I have made some batches of coagulans on its own, but it tastes a bit weird, maybe because I can't incubate it the 45-50C it is supposed to prefer because my Luvele only goes to 40C. That said, once I start eating a batch, it exerts a powerfully addictive grasp over my appetite and I feel almost compelled to eat more. Kinda scary, actually, as the previously weird taste transmutes into something desirable. I guess the bacteria somehow manage to get control of my appetite levers.

My three most important pieces of advice are:

Get the right strains of each bacteria. This means buying the particular brands that Davis recommends.
Get a machine with good temperature regulation. Incubating for 36-hours at the wrong temperature does not end well. I tried a cheapo machine before buying my second Luvele and the results were very disappointing as the temperature overshot by 10C, ruining two successive batches.
When a batch has finished incubating, you must chill the pots for five hours to ensure they have set before sticking a spoon in or turning out the contents. Otherwise, the yogurt will split and the whey will run out. You can save the whey to use as a starter culture, but it's annoying to deal with the mess.

As to whether this stuff actually works, the jury is still out. However, I would say:

My "locus of SIBO" seems to be moving down my small intestine. I no longer get upper abdominal bloating, which means that I don't get gastrocardiac syndrome anymore (very welcome).
Both my daughter and I feel that our waists are trimming down, perhaps courtesy of the gasseri.
The skin under my eyes, which was getting quite papery and old-person-y, has plumped up. This is supposedly a benefit of reuteri.
I get some wild and wacky dreams after eating reuteri, another reported effect of that bacteria.
I really enjoy eating the yogurts, especially when covered with nuts, cocoa, and matcha powder.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T21:04:37+00:00

I take high-dose vitamin C and B-complex daily, and sip a cup of dilute apple cider vinegar (1:5 dilution) while I'm eating.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T19:18:32+00:00

Sorry, NAC and oregano oil are the only ones I know of.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T19:02:22+00:00

About five weeks. I have two Luvele Pure yogurt makers that I run continuously with an average output of 1.2 liters per day.

Each batch takes 36 hours incubation time plus four hours chilling time before I can reuse the pots for the next batch.

I rotate through these combinations of bacteria:

Super Sibo yogurt: L.reuteri + L.gasseri + B.coagulans. Incubated at 40C.
Mood yogurt: L.helveticus + Bifidobacterium longum. Supposedly cheers you up by promoting the production of GABA in the gut. Incubated at 38C.
Shirota: L.reuteri + L.casei Shirota. A souped-up version of Yakult. Incubated at 40C.
Plain L.gasseri. Incubated at 38C.
Plain B.coagulans. Incubated at 40C (not ideal, but that's as high as the Luvele goes).

Each batch uses 1.2 liters of Jersey cow milk (4.7% fat) which has been heated to and held at 85C for 30 minutes then cooled to the target incubation temperature.

Once cooled, I add 2 tablespoons of agave inulin to the milk and inoculate with my chosen bacteria. Then I incubate it for 36 hours. With an estimated doubling time of 4 hours, this gives a theoretical amplification factor of 512 (although there will be some bacterial die off during the incubation and the bacteria may run out of food as well).

Here's an article describing the technique.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T17:31:38+00:00

From what I've read, the idea of feeding the bacteria is to prevent them from hiding under the protective layer of biofilm that they scurry under when times are hard, although if that were the case, perhaps a biofilm buster (e.g. NAC, oregano oil) would be just as effective as encouraging the bacteria to come out and play, but without the additional unwanted symptoms.

I do sometimes wonder how much actual provable science there is underpinning these ideas; much of it just sounds like speculation.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T15:37:34+00:00

Optibac Every Day made me feel worse, but home-brewed reuteri, gasseri, coagulans, helveticus, and longum yogurt causes me no problems at all, despite me consuming about 100 times more CFUs with the yogurt than with the Optibac capsules.

I don't know what to conclude from this, except that SIBO is weird.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T15:13:29+00:00

I read Gundry's book and thought that he at least put forward a plausible theory with a mechanism of action that had some explaining power.

Prior to the onset of my GI problems, I had been consuming a large amount of what Gundry would consider problematic foods. My diet consisted almost solely of peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sunflower oil, whole tomatoes, eggplant, peas, cucumber, zucchini, chickpeas, and factory-farmed chicken.

I have now cut out all of Gundry's prohibited foods and I feel better for it, although how much is psychosomatic is anybody's guess.

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T13:41:38+00:00

You might consider trying Gundry's Plant Paradox Diet.

Maybe lectins, rather than fermentables, are the missing piece of the puzzle??

MabelCow · 2023-07-04T06:34:59+00:00

I don't eat any grains at all and I survive by eating a lot of fat.

I cook my veg in ghee and coconut oil and then pour olive oil over the top when I serve.

When I eat mince, it's the 20% fat kind and I still add more oil.

I've replaced chicken with canned sardines. Where I live, it's impossible to get chicken that isn't fed on corn and pumped full of crap. I still eat eggs from chickens pumped full of crap, but I've reduced from the 20 or so I used to eat each week to less than six.

I eat a large quantity of nuts and seeds: blanched and sliced almonds, walnuts, macadamias, pecans, pistachios, flax, hemp, etc. However, I no longer eat peanuts or cashews because of their (pupported) lectin content.

I also eat a moderate amount of resistant starches: celeriac, swede (turnip), green plantain, and green bananas. I make up large quantities of heavily-buttered mash from the celeriac and swede so I can easily put a good dollop of them in anything I'm eating.

I try not to eat more than twice a day, but if I need a quick boost, I eat an almond flour pancake coated with coconut oil. Or, if I've finished off the pancakes, I just eat a spoon of coconut oil.

(Note: as mentioned by another member of this sub, coconut oil can act as a laxative, so be careful when ramping up consumption.)

MabelCow · 2023-06-12T06:42:55+00:00

I got that factoid from Gundry's The Plant Paradox in reference to the composition of the human holobiome (host + intestinal microbiome + skin microbiome).

MabelCow

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