Cars and soccer

It was extremely clever of me to arrange to drop my car off at the body shop and pick up a rental car during one of the biggest rainstorms we've had in months. It was even more clever of me to choose* a Volkswagen Jetta, knowing from experience that Volkswagen designs elegant yet unintuitive controls for their vehicles. This was confirmed when I tried to defog my front windscreen, and ended up activating the seat warmer. It was deeply comforting to know that if I ran off the freeway and ended up in a ditch because I couldn't see out my front window, at least my ass would be warm. (I did eventually unfog the window, but not before I'd gotten on 280 going the wrong way.)

If it weren't for twitter, I'd have completely missed the fact that the Women's World Cup Soccer tournament is currently underway. When the Men's World Cup is on, they get big screen TVs in all the buildings here at work so that people can watch the games live. Women's World Cup? Nothin'. This makes me sad. However, you can see the game highlights on FIFA.com. I'm totally rooting for Equatorial Guinea. Although, they've already lost to Norway, and they play Brazil next, so they're probably doomed.

* I say "choose", but it was more of a case of my showing up at the rental office and being told, "Your insurance company will reimburse for $30/day, and the only car we have that costs less than $30/day is the Jetta." Why is it so hard to rent a small car? Even the Jetta feels like a boat compared to my Integra.

Aspartame raises fasting glucose levels?

Just came across an intriguing abstract from the current American Diabetes Association's currently ongoing scientific conference. Basically, researchers took two groups of mice (from a mouse strain genetically predisposed towards diabetes), and fed one group rat chow supplemented with corn oil, and the other group rat chow supplemented with corn oil and aspartame. After 18 months, the group fed aspartame has significantly higher fasting glucose than the controls: 144 mg/dL versus 105 mg/dL. (Just for perspective, that difference is the difference between a diagnosis of diabetes and a diagnosis of prediabetes, although most people with diabetes have much higher fasting blood sugars at time of diagnosis.)

The usual caveats apply: it's mice, not humans, and not a huge group of mice (40 total, and 17 of them died before the study was complete.) However, two additional points seem worthy of note:

• The mice fed aspartame had lower body weights and "more favorable lipid data" (presumably cholesterol and triglycerides) than the control group. Which means that if these mice had been people whose doctors were trying to decide whether to screen them for diabetes, they would have seemed to be at lower risk than the controls.


• The amount of aspartame fed to the mice was 6 mg/kg/day. According to Wikipedia, a can of diet soda contains 180 mg of aspartame. For me to get 6 mg/kg/day would take about 2.5 cans of diet soda a day. Do I drink 2.5 cans of diet soda a day? No, but back in my soda-guzzling days, I did easily. As a person with a genetic predisposition towards diabetes, I am not amused.

I don't actually drink much diet soda these days. It wasn't even a conscious health decision - about the same time I started running, plain water just started to seem more appealing as a way of quenching my thirst. I wouldn't necessarily make a major dietary shift based on just one study, but this study does make me feel good about the shift I've already made.