Caffiend 5/27/2008

  My primary caffeine delivery system is soda. I only resort to coffee very occasionally, when I'm particularly exhausted and I have to resort to drastic measures.

  Coffee is obviously more efficient, since it's richer in the hyperactive ingredient. Unfortunately, I'm unnaturally sensitive to hot liquids. Freshly brewed coffee has to sit for a long time before I can drink it. Iced coffee is fine, but it winds up being so diluted by water that it's mostly useless. Also, coffee breath is perhaps the foulest oral stank that one can achieve short of a gangrenous tongue.

  The problem with soda is, of course, the metric buttload of empty calories in each serving. As I fall rapidly into my mid 30s, my metabolism has finally started to fail me. My midsection is turning into honky pudding, and there's a slab of flesh under my jaw that's threatening to envelop my chin.

  For the sake of my health, my wife's visual environment, and my dwindling supply of pants that fit, it's time for me to cut out some of the gratuitous high fructose corn syrup. And don't talk to me about diet soda. If sugar cane could urinate, it would taste exactly like diet soda, and it probably wouldn't linger on the tongue for quite as long.

  Difficulty: I'm still in law school. When I was only working full time, I'd almost completely cut out caffeine, but the pressure of law school reawakened my jitterbug in a big way. I'm working over the summer, but classes start again in late August. I can't predict what will happen once I'm back to that grind.

  Because you're no doubt curious it's my blog and I'll write about whatever stupid, solipsistic topic I want, I'm going to start tracking my progress as I try to wean myself from the caffeine habit. I'm sure it will be riveting slightly less boring than trimming your own nose hair. Stay tuned.

I Was Not Aware Of That

  Three things I did not know:

1.  Dr. Henry Heimlich, purported inventor of the famed and (I shit you not) registered trademark "maneuver" for rescuing choking victims is still alive.

  I don't know why, but I always assumed that such a simple procedure must have been invented in the 19th century. Based on the last name, I pictured a humble Bavarian physician, decked out in lederhosen and suspenders. While knocking back a pint at a rural ale house, he rushed to the aid of one of the town volk who was choking on a bit of bratwurst. Thanks to his quick thinking, his technique became the namesake maneuver, and his improvised flailings (and maybe the bit of horked-up sausage) were preserved for posterity.

  As it turns out, the maneuver was first described in the mid-70s. Although it is still taught as a remedy for choking, it isn't the recommended first treatment. Dr. Heimlich was born in Delaware in 1920, and doesn't seem to be particularly humble. Or Bavarian.

2.  Dr. Heimlich has been dogged by allegations of fraud.

  One of Dr. Heimlich's most persistent critics is his son, Peter Heimlich. Among the allegations he levels against his father is the charge that the famous technique was appropriated from Dr. Heimlich's long time colleague, Dr. Edward Patrick.

3.  Dr. Heimlich may be completely, dangerously, batshit insane.

  Dr. Heimlich advocates the use of his system of abdominal thrusts to treat drowning victims, despite much evidence that such use is dangerous and potentially fatal. Most obviously crazy, though, is his insistence that he can cure HIV/AIDS with an injection. Of malaria.

  Dr. Heimlich, who has no training as an immunologist, seriously believes that he can cure AIDS, as well as cancer and Lyme disease, by injecting patients with malaria. In support of this hypothesis, he's conducted ethically suspect trials with HIV patients in China and Africa. One of the conditions of those trials was that participants couldn't receive any other treatment, either for their HIV or the symptoms of their malaria infections.

  This is what I get for relying on Eddie Izzard for information about a public figure.



I'm not about to say that my hour of casual reading amounts to a definitive case, but there is a good bit of evidence of a disconnect between Dr. Heimlich's self-promoted legacy and the details of his actual career in public health. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to argue.