gdebel

I had to think a little to answer. I don't know any book to learn to cook "as usual" (by the standards of my family for example). However, a good place to find such recipes could be a website called "Marmiton" , where people write their recipes , that are evaluated by the community. If you go for simple recipes, you should not be far from what I define as normal (with all my subjectivity: I understand this is not a valid standard)

I respectfully disagree. Flour is basically crushed wheat. Refined sugar is not crushed beet, and you would have to eat a lot of beet to eat the same amount of sugar that you eat in a typical "industrial food" diet.

I would not take paleo food as a reference, but rather look toward what our grandparents had for lunch when they were kids. I don't think they were doing so badly.

And I don't cook like Bocuse everyday, the five mother sauces are not intended to be eaten on a daily basis :-)

Right but don't you think that olive oil for example was eaten since centuries? I often refer myself to the so-called "Mediterranean diet" as a good reference when I'm asking myself if I should eat something. This is based on data to some degree also.

I made clear I have no anti-american views (and I don't feel like US citizens, generally speaking, are so much more open to external opinions than Europeans by the way). The problem is not related to the quality of soil or to the borders but to the fact that we humans have a recent tendency to over-engineer a very natural process : eating simple, normal, things.

Exactly! No-fat is a strange concept. Fat is not inherently bad, too much added fat is. But I'm pretty sure you can eat 500mg of natural good yogurt a day without being sick. Well, I never tried.

You are right you can find vegetables. But they will have a weird taste and/or have a sweetened sauce (or, you just have to sweeten it in order to eat it). This is the same in fast-food restaurants in France thought, Not a critic toward the US

Haha, you're right kids don't usually eat croissant before school. This is more a Sunday morning dish (when daddy had the courage to wake up earlier to buy them). Good bread is not expensive in France by the way ! (There would be another revolution if that was the case ;-)

I can eat a spoon of salt, or yeast. It is not particularly good but I know what it is, and I know the toxic dose. I won't eat a spoon of sodium benzoate or E324 or I don't know which food additive, I can't buy it in a food store, it is not "food" by itself. So I don't eat it :-)

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added, except in Asian restaurants (and even there, food is often sweetened). Of course it is biased because I have no access usually to a kitchen when I travel.

I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) and I'm not convinced calory count is key. We did not evolved to eat processed sugar, which is not easily found naturally in the environment.

My 2 cents: - eat as much vegetables as you want (learn to cook them, with a little bit of olive oil) - eat as much fish as you want (no need to cook! Low temperature baking, 1h at 70-80°, the best cooking you'll ever have) - eat meat in reasonable, "as-if-you-had-to-hunt-it-with-a-bow" quantities - ban every processed food, sauce, appetizer.... If you would not eat a spoon of every single ingredient of some food, don't eat it. - ban all added sugar, except (real) honey in reasonable proportions.

This implies to know/learn how to cook (not so hard but this is easier when the local/family culture allowed you to learn passively).

It looks like this is hard to do in the USA: you don't easily find, for example, yogurt without sugar added. (Or I didn't look at the right place, once again this is not judgemental).

Generally speaking, it is easy to find online high-level cooking courses, but hard to learn the basics of how to cook your onions or tomatoes in different ways in everyday life, or make an healthy meal with what's left in the fridge; this could be interesting to have.

--edited for typing errors

French Ophthalmologist here. The part that describes how easy it is to obtain glasses without a doctor's prescription is totally false. People do need a prescription made less than 3 years ago (and optometrists do not exist here, you have to go to the doctor). As an ophthalmologist, I may not be objective on this subject; however I can confirm that I find everyday health problems in people that "just want a prescription". This can be a simple cataract, as well as a diabetic retinopathy or a glaucoma. I especially remember a 50 years old woman who had the habit to go to an optician, have her refraction measured, go to her family doctor and ask for the according prescription (with no eye exam). After 10 years without seeing a doctor, I diagnosed her with an advanced glaucoma. She was almost blind. Glaucome is the worst disease: totally asymptomatic and irreversible. Checking your eyes at least every 3 years after 40 is usually a good idea.

Ciclosporin 2% eyedrops and/or punctum plugs may be useful. I home she'll get better eventually.

Ok I get it! It is very simple : RLE implies the removal of the cristalline lens and insertion of an artificial lens that corrects the initial ametropia. The procedure is exactly the same as cataract surgery. The problem is that the lens is the organ that allows accomodation. So while it is usually simple to give you a glass free vision for a given distance, you will need glasses for other distance (usually, you will have a good far vision and glasses to read) which is not something that you want when you are young. The reasoning is that when a cataract surgery will be done anyway a few years after, it is more simple to do one surgery earlier than doing two. Patients with extreme ametropia are more likely to accept glasses. Finally, multifocal lenses exists, but they induce aberrations that are well tolerated when they follow the blurry vision and impairment of cataract, but not so well in previously well-seeing patients.

It depends a lot on your age, and also on your refraction. Refractive lens exchange can be a good option for high myopia/hyperopia after 60, and can be considered after 45. This is hard to give an advice with no context, the topic is quite complex ;-)

Actually, we looked yesterday how many eye surgeons underwent LASIK/PRK in the previous 5 years to write a study about this specific topic (this . We found 16 people. LASEK had a surge of interest 5-10 years ago because it was tought that it could have the pros of both PRK and LASIK. Nowadays it is more or less forgotten (no real benefit in comparison with PRK).

Eye surgeons not getting surgery was totally true 15 years ago but it is not anymore (at least in France)

Halos are frequent especially in the months after surgery. They tend to reduce with time. They are usually not noticed in everyday life but rather by night, while driving for example (dilated pupils). They also depend on the type of treatment (optical zone, amount of correction) that you perform, and for the quality/generation of the laser platform... Information is essential.

Chronic pain is usually related to dry eyes. Those patients should not be operated at all. Bad patient selection can result in terrible results.

Loss of visual acuity after refractive surgery is more than exceptionnal. It is usually manageable with hard contact lenses.

The special thing about refractive surgery is the contrast between its apparent easiness (non specialist eye surgeon will often refer to it as an "easy surgery, no technical difficulties") and the rapidity with which hard to treat complications can occur if everything does not go as planned. Little things (water drop on the cornea during the treatment, centration error, mismanagement of flap cut incidents...) can lead to disasters that you sometimes cannot repair.

I'm interested in data sciences and coding (Python) for research, and I am/was involved in two startups. I visit HN at least 4-5 times a day ;-)

Refractive surgeon here. I work in a well-known eye hospital in Paris. I operated my sister (PRK) and my best friend (LASIK). My mother underwent PRK when I was a child and I think the amount of admiration/gratefulness that she had for her surgeon afterward actually gave me interest for this surgery. We regularly operate ophthalmology residents as well, and one of the surgeons of the center underwent LASIK. However, if you consider surgery, please turn to a well-known and experienced surgeon. It is a very secure surgery that can turn really bad if errors are made during patient selection, surgery planning, surgery itself, and management of the unfrequent complications that can occur. Patient selection is especially important. So you have to choose a surgeon that really cares about his reputation, and that will not operate you whatever your examination.

Eye surgeon here.

Good job and interesting story!

As a side note: for optical reasons, the spherical equivalent of the lens (which will determine if you are overcorrecting or not) is calculated by adding the sphere value + half the cylinder value (whatever the axis value).

You ended with a correct prescription as far as I can tell by looking at the different measurements , however you did not totally grasped the optical subtleties of the accomodation process : astigmatism is important (a small overcorrection is not a big deal anyway)

It is usual to undercorrect the cylinder values given by the autoref and your ophthalmologist would have given you the right prescription I think.

I'm just saying that to underline that as I doctor myself, I'm usually very wary at thinking that I can fully understand, in a few days, what my colleagues do. I'm totally into the hacking spirit but let's stay careful, especially for more dangerous things than glasses.