# Cholesterol, saturated fat and politically correct nutrition.



## Max_C (Dec 26, 2007)

I wanted to start a new thread so we wouldn't have to continue to hijack someone else's thread to keep the discussion going.



LoveBHMS said:


> Well, since Vitamin D is available in sunshine, you could go outside. Sunshine doesn't have any fat.



As I said before, sunshine does not contain vitamin D. I even linked to a site explaining how the body creates vitamin D from sunshine and oils on / in the skin. The key word there is oils... IE, fat.



> Nobody has said that cholesterol is not present or should not be present in a healthy body. Again, what we've all said repeatedly is there are healthy and unhealthy levels of it. Its total absense is a health hazard, as is too much of it.



I don't recall saying that anyone said cholesterol should not be present. As I've already stated, I believe that the current US recommendations are too low, and statins are prescribed far too quickly without trying to first recommend lifestyle changes to achieve the same results.



> Breast milk is suited to newborn infants, not to adults. As Friday said, many humans are lactose intolerant as they get older, not as babies.



I'm guessing that my other reply had not yet been posted before you posted this reply... because I've already addressed all of these issues so far. It has been my experience that most people who think they are lactose intolerant are really just pasteurized milk intolerant. Once they get real, raw milk in to their diets, they have no problems drinking milk. I've seen this happen more times than I can count.



> Ok. Babies are growing and their bodies have nutritional needs geared toward developing the body into a grown human. Adults are not. The life systems of babies are in developmental stages; the same is not true for adults.



These are not physiological descriptions. These are generalities that would also apply to every human at LEAST to age 16 to 18. Some people even continue growing into their early 20s. They do nothing to explain why saturated fat would go from critical component to deadly poison. Here's a hint... when you start digging in to the actual data of saturated fat studies, you'll find a lot of misinformation. Many, if not most of the studies implicating saturated fat in heart disease actually used man-made saturated fats (trans fats) and claimed that they were the same thing as natural fat. If you really think saturated fat is bad for you, you should read the history of the Sri Lankans. At one time they ate more than 100 lbs of coconut per capita per year. As that rate fell and fat intake was replaced with vegetable oil, heart disease went up. Same went for India, where their scientists have recommended a return to coconut oil. Coconut oil is THE most saturated natural fat on the planet... yet an increase in coconut oil intake has been associated with a reduction in heart disease.
http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/article10132.htm

Additionally, even the bodies of the elderly are in a constant state of regeneration. Many parts of the body completely regenerate on 10 year cycles.
http://ngcblog.nationalgeographic.com/ngcblog/2007/09/inside_the_living_body_facts_a.html

So, I'm not sure why you think that infants have the market on benefits from saturated fat.



> You really bring the wrong, dude. The idea that anyone eats "a lot" of something is debatable. The Japanese diet, like most Asian diets, uses meat as more of a flavor than a staple, and it's a smaller overall percentage of the diet.



It's interesting that you ask me for sources and then don't provide your own when making claims like the one above. The following page disagrees with your assertion.

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/japan.html
_"However, the real basis of the Japanese diet is not rice but fish, consumed at more than 154 pounds per person per year1almost one-half pound per day. This is about the same amount by weight as rice, but in terms of calories, fish provides a greater amount for most of the Japanese.

The Japanese also eat many other animal foods including beef, pork, chicken, duck and eel. Beef consumption has climbed in recent years, some of it locally raised but much of it imported. The famous Kobe beef is tender and full of fat. The Japanese even import large quantities of beef offal.4 Consumption of beef liver, tripe and other organ meats is commonplace. Various organ meats are usually served at specialty restaurants. Eel served at restaurants is often accompanied with a soup containing eel innards.

Beef, pork and chicken are usually grilled and served with a sauce that contains soy sauce along with other ingredients such as merin (a sweet wine), sake (rice wine), vinegar or sugar. _



> The "everything but the oink" is just...laughable. Please site on instance of elderly Japanese eating pig snouts or ears.



You don't strike me as the type of person that's interested in a real debate... but since you asked for it, here you go:

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/food_in_china.html
_"And what do Okinawans eat? The main meat of the diet is pork, and not the lean cuts only. Okinawan cuisine, according to gerontologist Kazuhiko Taira, "is very healthyand very, very greasy," in a 1996 article that appeared in Health Magazine.19 And the whole pig is eateneverything from "tails to nails." Local menus offer boiled pigs feet, entrail soup and *shredded ears*. Pork is cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, kelp and small amounts of sugar, then sliced and chopped up for stir fry dishes. Okinawans eat about 100 grams of meat per daycompared to 70 in Japan and just over 20 in Chinaand at least an equal amount of fish, for a total of about 200 grams per day, compared to 280 grams per person per day of meat and fish in America. Lardnot vegetable oilis used in cooking."_

And here are a few more mentions of the Okinawins and their diets, how the diets are changing in today's world, and how they're living shorter lives. Note the multiple mentions of pork.
http://healthpromotionblog.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/pork-lard-did-not-make-okinawans-fat-sick/

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/do...6047.2001.00235.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=ajc

http://www.health-report.co.uk/saturated_fats_health_benefits.htm

Max.


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## Miss Vickie (Dec 27, 2007)

You're off to a good start, Max, quoting Weston Price. However, if you've looked at his research you'd know that he is touting the aboriginal diet, not saying that everyone should eat the same thing. His work looked at aboriginal cultures around the world and found that -- despite widely varying diets -- those who ate their ancestral diet had similar blood values of things like cholesterol. He's not saying that everyone should eat a diet composing of 60% animal fat. 

Also, no one here is saying that cholesterol is a poison. Unfortunately, though, some of us (raises hand) have a genetic mutation that allows our bodies to make extremely high amounts of cholesterol regardless of what we eat. I was eating a low fat, vegetarian diet and STILL had a cholesterol level of over 300. Now maybe it's just fine for me to go like that for decades, but you know what? My father and uncles -- with the same genetics -- died in their 50's of heart disease. So clearly it's not healthy for all of us to go around with high levels of blood cholesterol. In my case the high lipids, coupled with my high insulin and hypertension made me a heart disease ticking time bomb.

All that being said, though, the whole "the lower the better" mentality that *some* health care providers have is a little short sighted. We do need cholesterol and I'd be very worried if my cholesterol got under 150. Obviously cholesterol isn't the whole picture when it comes to heart disease, and I'm glad to see them looking at the insulin connection, which is important, and inflammation, which is HUGE. But I think that just like some people have glucose levels that are too high and which require medication, the same can be said of cholesterol. 

Blanket statements of any kind "fat is good" or "fat is evil" are facile. The truth is much more complicated than that.

Oh and as for lactose intolerance, I agree with you. Breast milk intolerance is nearly unheard of and when it does happen it's because of something the mom is eating (usually dairy, which gets into the milk). Because breast milk is a whole food and has the enzymes present to break it down (and it's low in lactose, truth be told, compared to cow's milk) it doesn't cause allergies. It is the perfect food for babies but I don't think you should extrapolate that because it's good for babies and has x% of this and y% of that that a) it's good for adults, and b) those percentages are right for adults. All you can really say about breast milk is that it's the perfect food for *babies*.

Anyhow, interesting topic you've brought up. I'll see if I can get Burtimus to come join in since he is very knowledgeable about this.


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## Max_C (Dec 29, 2007)

Miss Vickie, thank you for being courteous in your response. I've actually been regretting my first post considering the uproar my position has caused. It's nice to hear from someone who can respectfully disagree with some points. I don't mind a good debate, but I can't stand the name calling and insults.



Miss Vickie said:


> You're off to a good start, Max, quoting Weston Price. However, if you've looked at his research you'd know that he is touting the aboriginal diet, not saying that everyone should eat the same thing. His work looked at aboriginal cultures around the world and found that -- despite widely varying diets -- those who ate their ancestral diet had similar blood values of things like cholesterol. He's not saying that everyone should eat a diet composing of 60% animal fat.



At first I thought you meant that Dr. Price only studied the Aborigines of Australia. Reading further into your paragraph, you said "His work looked at aboriginal cultures around the world..."

I've always heard and used the term "Aborigine" as this definition I just found: _Aborigine: a dark-skinned member of a race of people living in Australia when Europeans arrived._

I can see, though, that you're using it to mean original people of a given location. I did finally find one definition describing the word that way.

Anyway, I guess I didn't really need to say all of that. The bottom line is, I didn't just stumble upon the Weston A Price Foundation's web site looking for that data. I've read his book and the vast majority of the articles on the WAPF site. Yes, he *did* study cultures all over the world. He was a dentist, and so his primary concern was the teeth of his subjects. He compared the teeth of all of the cultures and learned to equate dental health with overall health. I don't think I ever read that he took cholesterol readings... but I could be wrong. I've read so much of his work over the past 8 years that it's easy to forget what I've read.

That being said, it's true that Dr. Price studied cultures all over the world. What's also true is that these cultures had varying degrees of health. This page discusses that just a little:

http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/out_of_africa.html
_"Price noted that all healthy African groups had good sources of animal fat, and that the healthiest groups consumed less, not more, of plant foods; Burkitt and Trowel, however, postulate that the increase in Western diseases among Africans is due to a reduced consumption of plant foods containing dietary fiber. Heart researcher George Mann's work is conspicuously absent from Burkitt's Western Diseases. Mann studied the Masai tribes and came to the politically incorrect conclusion that their high fat diet did not predispose them to heart disease."_

This link also mentions that those with easiest access to animal based food had the lowest incidence of osteoporosis.

http://www.westonaprice.org/causticcommentary/cc2002wi.html
_"New research by a team of anthropologists, economists and paleopathologists has documented degenerative joint disease, dental decay, stunted growth and other bone problems in pre-Columbian Indians. Those who practiced farming and lived in towns and cities had the most problems, while those who had access to plenty of animal foods had the least. The healthiest populations were those living on the coast of Brazil, where they had access to ample food from land and sea. During the 19th century, the Plains Indians also enjoyed excellent health on a diet based on buffalo. The least healthy people where those from the urban cultures of Mexico and Central America, and the Zuni Pueblo people of New Mexico, whose diets were almost devoid of animal foods (New York Times, 10/29/02). Promotion of plant-based diets for healthy bones is completely untenable in the face of these findings."_



> Also, no one here is saying that cholesterol is a poison. Unfortunately, though, some of us (raises hand) have a genetic mutation that allows our bodies to make extremely high amounts of cholesterol regardless of what we eat. I was eating a low fat, vegetarian diet and STILL had a cholesterol level of over 300. Now maybe it's just fine for me to go like that for decades, but you know what? My father and uncles -- with the same genetics -- died in their 50's of heart disease. So clearly it's not healthy for all of us to go around with high levels of blood cholesterol. In my case the high lipids, coupled with my high insulin and hypertension made me a heart disease ticking time bomb.



There certainly *is* a condition whereby a person genetically produces higher than normal amounts of cholesterol. It's called " familial hypercholesterolaemia." My question is, do you know you have it because you've had the proper tests done that prove beyond a doubt that you have the condition, or are you assuming you have it because you've tried a diet you've been told *should* reduce your cholesterol and it didn't? I've heard stories similar to yours so many times. Those same people are always shocked and amazed when they *increase* their cholesterol and fat intake and their serum cholesterol goes down.

The thing is, while high cholesterol and heart disease may show a relation, one does not necessary cause the other. There is evidence that they are both just symptoms of other problems.

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_1.html
_" But there are a number of significant points that the cholesterol theory overlooks. For example, there is a marked difference between the build-up found in those with familial hypercholesterolaemia and those with coronary heart disease: hypercholesterolaemia causes large deposits at the mouths of the coronary arteries, often leaving the arteries themselves unblocked, and so does not reproduce the type of obstruction found in coronary heart disease. People with myxoedema or nephrosis also have high blood cholesterol levels  yet in them, there is no increase in the incidence of CHD. Neither is raised blood cholesterol a predictor of CHD in people over sixty."_

I recommend reading that whole article if the subject interests you.



> All that being said, though, the whole "the lower the better" mentality that *some* health care providers have is a little short sighted. We do need cholesterol and I'd be very worried if my cholesterol got under 150. Obviously cholesterol isn't the whole picture when it comes to heart disease, and I'm glad to see them looking at the insulin connection, which is important, and inflammation, which is HUGE. But I think that just like some people have glucose levels that are too high and which require medication, the same can be said of cholesterol.



It's refreshing to hear someone mention the insulin connection. In fact, I just read an article implicating insulin resistance in Alzheimer's disease.

http://www.physorg.com/news110029762.html

And while I understand your comparison, there are critical differences between cholesterol and glucose. Cholesterol is a key ingredient in numerous hormones and is a key antioxidant. It's so important that most cells have the ability to produce it themselves. If the body doesn't get enough cholesterol in the diet, it will simply increase production to required levels. That should be a clue of its importance. 

http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/hd.html
_"Recent research shows that cholesterol acts as an antioxidant. This is the likely explanation for the fact that cholesterol levels go up with age. As an antioxidant, cholesterol protects us against free radical damage that leads to heart disease and cancer.

Cholesterol is needed for proper function of serotonin receptors in the brain. Serotonin is the body's natural "feel-good" chemical. Low cholesterol levels have been linked to aggressive and violent behavior, depression and suicide."_

Glucose, on the other hand, can be directly affected by what you eat. Blood glucose levels can vary wildly after just a simple drink.



> Blanket statements of any kind "fat is good" or "fat is evil" are facile. The truth is much more complicated than that.



I couldn't agree more. My problem is that the blanket statement that saturated fat is bad is also not true. As I said before, every study I've personally researched implicating saturated fat in heart disease either deliberately used man made saturated fat (trans fats) or just assumed that some certain fat that showed problems was saturated. The "saturated fat is bad" credo is simply accepted as fact, even among the scientists that are supposed to be open minded.



> Oh and as for lactose intolerance, I agree with you. Breast milk intolerance is nearly unheard of and when it does happen it's because of something the mom is eating (usually dairy, which gets into the milk). Because breast milk is a whole food and has the enzymes present to break it down (and it's low in lactose, truth be told, compared to cow's milk) it doesn't cause allergies. It is the perfect food for babies but I don't think you should extrapolate that because it's good for babies and has x% of this and y% of that that a) it's good for adults, and b) those percentages are right for adults. All you can really say about breast milk is that it's the perfect food for *babies*.



I highly recommend a book simply titled "The Milk Book" if you'd really like to learn what raw milk can do for the human body... and also the treacherous, deceitful, and sometimes illegal (in a recent case in California) tactics used by the US government to keep it out of our homes. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, total raw milk diets were used to cure a host of diseases, both chronic and degenerative. 

www.westonaprice.org/brochures/RealMilkTrifold.pdf
Look on the first page under "Real Milk: Nature's Perfect Food" for an abbreviated list of diseases treated with a raw milk diet.

There are also heart disease risks introduced by modern milk processing.
http://www.westonaprice.org/knowyourfats/homogenization.html



> Anyhow, interesting topic you've brought up. I'll see if I can get Burtimus to come join in since he is very knowledgeable about this.



As long as we can continue to have pleasant exchanges like this one, I'll be happy to keep posting. Thanks for your views. I'm always interested in hearing other peoples' positions.

Max.


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## Max_C (Jan 5, 2008)

Seems my thread isn't generating that much interest. This article was just referenced by mercola.com in their most recent newsletter, so I thought I'd post the link and a few important paragraphs here. It's a long article, but if you're really serious about taking control of your own health, it's a worthy read. It doesn't say it, but the article reads as though the author just got finished reading the book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. If the below article interests you and you'd like to read more, as well as get hundreds of references to research on your own, I highly recommend Gary's book.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22116724
_



"What if Fat Isn't So Bad?"

The first scientific indictment of saturated fat came in 1953. That's the year a physiologist named Ancel Keys, Ph.D., published a highly influential paper titled "Atherosclerosis, a Problem in Newer Public Health." Keys wrote that while the total death rate in the United States was declining, the number of deaths due to heart disease was steadily climbing. And to explain why, he presented a comparison of fat intake and heart disease mortality in six countries: the United States, Canada, Australia, England, Italy, and Japan.

The Americans ate the most fat and had the greatest number of deaths from heart disease; the Japanese ate the least fat and had the fewest deaths from heart disease. The other countries fell neatly in between. The higher the fat intake, according to national diet surveys, the higher the rate of heart disease. And vice versa. Keys called this correlation a "remarkable relationship" and began to publicly hypothesize that consumption of fat causes heart disease. This became known as the diet-heart hypothesis.

At the time, plenty of scientists were skeptical of Keys's assertions. One such critic was Jacob Yerushalmy, Ph.D., founder of the biostatistics graduate program at the University of California at Berkeley. In a 1957 paper, Yerushalmy pointed out that while data from the six countries Keys examined seemed to support the diet-heart hypothesis, statistics were actually available for 22 countries. And when all 22 were analyzed, the apparent link between fat consumption and heart disease disappeared. For example, the death rate from heart disease in Finland was 24 times that of Mexico, even though fat-consumption rates in the two nations were similar.

Click to expand...

_
This is the first glimpse most people get at the flaws and outright deception behind the lipid hypothesis. Ancel Keys and many others of his time had very personal reasons for pushing the lipid hypothesis... if nothing more than an intense desire to save face and mounds of evidence proving they were wrong.

Max.


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## Miss Vickie (Jan 6, 2008)

Max, I think it's great that you're so interested in this. My lack of response has been solely because I had surgery and am recovering, so my time online is very limited. I'm just not comfortable sitting at my desk chair, unfortunately.

I asked Burtimus about the cholesterol connection and he said he believes it might be Melvin Page's work. Like you, I've been studying this stuff so long I can't keep track of whose data is whose. But I do remember that regardless of diet, low fat, high fat, etc aboriginal cultures eating their ancestral diet all had the same (optimal) readings. 

What concerns me, though, is not that *amount* of fat that we get in our diets, but the type of fat. It's not just that it's saturated, which comes with its own set of problems, but my concern is that it comes from animals fed a toxic diet, living in a toxic environment. How healthy can it be, given that poisons are stored in fat cells to ingest that fat? 

BTW, have you heard about Michael Pollen's newish book? In Defense of Food is his newest book and one I'm hoping to read soon. I really enjoy his even-handed approach to nutrition.

Anyhow, didn't want you to think you were just talking to yourself here. Unfortunately, though, I can't really contribute as much as I'd like.

BTW, I know I have familial hypercholesterolemia because of the very specific types of cholesterol that my body produces regardless of what I eat. There are specific patterns -- very high LDL and very low HDL -- that don't change with diet and only grudgingly change with meds. Interestingly, my LDL and triglycerides plummeted after WLS, and yet my HDL remains low, despite exercise. I spent a lot of years studying fats, cholesterol, and how to holistically lower my cholesterol (which was over 300 and which even I had to admit was too high to be safe) and absolutely NOTHING worked. Not high fat. Not low fat. Not Niacin. Not garlic. Nada. This is a pattern that is seen in all the male members of my family and which led to the early death of my dad, uncles and if my brother doesn't take care of himself, he'll be next.


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## Max_C (Jan 7, 2008)

Miss Vickie said:


> Max, I think it's great that you're so interested in this. My lack of response has been solely because I had surgery and am recovering, so my time online is very limited. I'm just not comfortable sitting at my desk chair, unfortunately.



I'm sorry to hear that... but I'm glad you're doing well enough to spend some time online. Thanks for including me in your replies, as I'm sure there must be dozens of others here waiting to hear from you.



> I asked Burtimus about the cholesterol connection and he said he believes it might be Melvin Page's work. Like you, I've been studying this stuff so long I can't keep track of whose data is whose. But I do remember that regardless of diet, low fat, high fat, etc aboriginal cultures eating their ancestral diet all had the same (optimal) readings.



I'm only minorly familiar with Page's work. Most of what I've read about cholesterol comes from the work of Uffe Ravnskov. He's a member (founding member?) of THINCS... The Internation Network of Cholesterol Skeptics. The body of evidence they've built against the lipid hypothesis is so overwhelming it's a wonder the idea is still so mainstream. I've spent great deal of time digging in to the actual data they reference and can find no fault with their presentation.



> What concerns me, though, is not that *amount* of fat that we get in our diets, but the type of fat. It's not just that it's saturated, which comes with its own set of problems, but my concern is that it comes from animals fed a toxic diet, living in a toxic environment. How healthy can it be, given that poisons are stored in fat cells to ingest that fat?



I couldn't agree more. If saturated fat were the real evil, then one would see the same diseases in people who eat the same amount of fat from grass fed beef as those who eat grain (and who knows what else) fed beef. The fact is, by feeding cows grains, you acidify their rumen, thus making them sick. That requires constant drugs to keep them alive. The grains also alter the polyunsaturated fatty acid ratio in the beef. Typical grass fed beef contains polyunsaturated fatty acids of omega 3 and omega 6 in near 1 to 1 ratio. Grain fed beef can be upwards of 1 to 19 or more. Chickens fed grains can produce n3 to n6 ratios of 1 to 40 or more. 

The human body likes its n3 and n6 in nearly equal amounts. A high ratio has been linked to heart disease, depression and a host of other problems.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/555736
_"Depression is the most common psychiatric illness and is linked to the development of coronary heart disease. Depression and stress promote proinflammatory cytokine production. Dietary intakes of omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) also influence inflammation; high omega-6mega-3 ratios enhance proinflammatory cytokine production, although omega-3 has anti-inflammatory properties. The importance of proinflammatory cytokines is demonstrated in their relation to the onset and course of a spectrum of conditions associated with aging, including not only coronary heart disease but also osteoporosis, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, approximately 15% of cancers, Alzheimer's disease, and periodontal disease."_

Saturated fat has become the whipping boy for all the evils man had done to his food, IMHO. 



> BTW, have you heard about Michael Pollen's newish book? In Defense of Food is his newest book and one I'm hoping to read soon. I really enjoy his even-handed approach to nutrition.



No, I hadn't heard about it. I still have a long way to go on the new Gary Taubes book "Good Calories / Bad Calories." The guy has so many references in this thing it just may take me the rest of my life to research them all. So far, I can find no one he has mis quoted. Mr. Taubes REALLY did his homework putting this book together. In a way I wish it wasn't so thorough. I'm sure the length of the book turns some people away from it.



> Anyhow, didn't want you to think you were just talking to yourself here. Unfortunately, though, I can't really contribute as much as I'd like.



Well, I appreciate that you took the time to write what you did. I feel like most people here have already written me off as the board kook. That's OK, though. I've planted the seed. Some day, people will look back and wonder "hhmmmm... if wonder if that crazy nut was right :blink: " 



> BTW, I know I have familial hypercholesterolemia because of the very specific types of cholesterol that my body produces regardless of what I eat. There are specific patterns -- very high LDL and very low HDL -- that don't change with diet and only grudgingly change with meds. Interestingly, my LDL and triglycerides plummeted after WLS, and yet my HDL remains low, despite exercise. I spent a lot of years studying fats, cholesterol, and how to holistically lower my cholesterol (which was over 300 and which even I had to admit was too high to be safe) and absolutely NOTHING worked. Not high fat. Not low fat. Not Niacin. Not garlic. Nada. This is a pattern that is seen in all the male members of my family and which led to the early death of my dad, uncles and if my brother doesn't take care of himself, he'll be next.


[/quote]

Did I already post this article?
http://www.fourfoldhealing.com/NL NovDec 2005.htm#Focus 

If you haven't read this yet, brace yourself. It's going to change the way you see heart disease. If you're like me, you'll read it several times just to make sure you're reading it correctly.

Max.


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## Risible (Jan 8, 2008)

Max_C said:


> Well, I appreciate that you took the time to write what you did. I feel like most people here have already written me off as the board kook. That's OK, though. I've planted the seed. Some day, people will look back and wonder "hhmmmm... if wonder if that crazy nut was right :blink: "



Hi Max,

I just wanted to say (if I haven't already) welcome to Dims! I doubt that anyone has written you off as the "board kook;" unconventional views are most welcome here! 

It's easy to feel ignored on a busy bulletin board like Dims, where there are hundreds of members online and posting at any given time, but get to know some people, take the time to say hi, and you'll feel like a regular in no time!

Sorry I don't have anything to contribute to the conversation here, but I just wanted to say hi!


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