Intentional sterility for Christian men
y/n?
Good morning everyone.
I just got back from visiting family in Washington, where we celebrated my brother’s wedding. We are soooo stoked for his wife to join the family, and the wedding was an 11/10 on the sweetness scale but a 1/10 for the uncouth emcee who kept hawking his brand from the microphone throughout the reception.
“...Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Tucker Voetberg…And make sure to subscribe to RunningOnButter.com for GREAT content on how to take your life and health to the next level.”
Classless, right?
Other than my brother’s holy matrimony that took place in Seattle last week, there are no other major personal updates. Not a lot going on at the moment.
Now, let’s get to some health news.
Running On Butter exists for many reasons: to inspire, to educate, and, obviously, to achieve total world domination.
But one of our highest callings, dear Buttercups, is to obliterate the fiction that butter—saturated fat—is what caused Grandpa Frank’s heart attack.
Last week I had a conversation with a prominent cardiologist that reminded me of the importance of this mission. He’s a smart physician who has led teams of hundreds of doctors and medical students.
And yet, despite all that training and authority, he’s profoundly misguided about what’s driving plaque buildup in his patients’ arteries and the weakened heartbeat he hears through his stethoscope.
You’re probably thinking:
“Vance, are you—a 26-year-old keyboard-and-CrossFit warrior—seriously telling us that a veteran cardiologist who’s overseen thousands of patients doesn’t understand the nature of heart disease?”
And to that entirely reasonable hesitation, I ask:
Is the Dark Knight trilogy a cinematic masterpiece?
Is there good surf in Hawaii?
Was King Solomon wise?
Is it impossible to make the Olympic Games as a 26-year-old who was a medium-good distance runner in high school, has a background in backyard volleyball and basketball, is above average at pickleball, but really wants it with all his heart?
Some questions simply have obvious answers.
Here’s what ROB has that Nice-but-misinformed-MD does not: Facts and—not for nothing—glasses that make me look smart.
There’s so much research to unpack with the saturated fat controversy, which I have many times, including here.
For today, I just want to arm you with a little bit of your own common sense and intuition.
Heart disease and strokes are a relatively new phenomenon. The 20th century was when things skyrocketed. So why, then, would we blame ancient foods like red meat and butter for modern maladies? And why do countries like France who eat a lot of saturated fat have low rates of heart disease?
Cholesterol is allegedly the bad guy. “The best thing you can do to never get a heart attack is to keep your cholesterol to as close as zero as possible,” the cardiologist told me.
Then why did this brilliant meta-analysis find that those with higher cholesterol live longer? And what are we to do about the fact that LDL cholesterol is a multifaceted compound essential for a myriad of biochemical processes like building the cell membrane and producing hormones?
Next time your doctor or friend tells you that saturated fat and cholesterol are villainous, please challenge them with these questions. And if they’re still not convinced, send them to me. Few things bring me this much joy/rage than this topic.
The Tennessee Titans removed all seed oils from their nutritional protocol. I’m a believer in cutting out of seed oils. We love to see it. But the Titans were 3-14 last year, and I think they need a bigger intervention than the swapping fats. My recommendation:
Vermont became the first state to ban paraquat, a Chinese-owned pesticide. Exposure to this pesticide significantly increases the risk of Parkinson’s disease. I have a close family friend who sprayed synthetic pesticides regularly as a nursery owner. He died a few years ago from Parkinson’s.
Gen Z, the generation of which I am a part, oftentimes complains about not having enough money to buy a house. And it is empirically harder now to buy a house than it was for our parents. But also, we’re faced with our own set of challenges. What am I to do when Spotify Premium increases their prices? Go to the free version like we’re living in 1936? Another burden we’re faced with is the convenience of DoorDash. Again, what are we to do? Cook our own food?
The Enhanced Games, a sporting competition where they pumped a bunch of athletes full of performance-enhancing drugs, went down last week. The premise was simple: Prepare to have your mind blown. Witness the absolute limits of human performance! What actually went down was considerably less impressive. In the men’s 100m, for example, all of the times were slower than the finalists at the Texas boys state championships. Even more surprisingly, none of the athletes ran a personal record ran fast than when they weren’t doping. In swimming, a non-doping swimmer beat the enhanced athletes. The Games were backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Thiel, which feels very Roman-emperor-ish to me.
Bromocriptine, pluchea, and hwyl were just a few of the words spelled correctly by the winner of Scripps National Spelling Bee. I cAn’t spelL those words, but I can spEll my favorite word in the whole world with eXcellent precision.
Justin Whitmel Earley, author of Habits of the Household, wrote an essay nobody asked for in Christianity Today arguing that men should get vasectomies as an act of masculine leadership and sacrificial love.
This article is empty-headed and problematic for many reasons, but its central flaw is that it views sex through a secular lens. Sex, in this article, is reduced to risk management, bodily autonomy, and the equitable distribution of burdens. Missing entirely is the Christian understanding of sex as a covenantal act ordered toward union and fruitfulness.
He also attempts to argue that getting a vasectomy is an act of masculine leadership and sacrifice. That a husband proves his love by taking on the medical burden himself. But this—again—is a modern, therapeutic, and even feminist view of the body. One that sees fertility as a problem to be managed and healthy bodily functions as raw material to be modified in pursuit of personal preferences.
Intentional sterility may be a habit of Mr. Earley’s household, but it will not be a habit of the households we’re building at Running On Butter.
Congrats! …to your brother!
Has Mochi had a vasectomy?