To follow up Week 2 of Changing an inflammatory phenotype with broccoli sprouts:

1. I intend to follow the model clinical trial [1] and pause eating broccoli sprouts after ten weeks. The clinical trial subjects experienced benefits after stopping at Day 70, as measured at Day 90 and Day 160.

Sprouting broccoli seeds takes time and care every day. I may not have that time when everyone gets back to work.

Then again, I live in a state headed by Governor Klan Robes Blackface. Here’s his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook entry, 16 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated:

He has no empathy for people like the young black man – laid off for four weeks now – who was severely burned as a child, and who was enthusiastically working at Dunkin Donuts. Or the older lady who was trying to get her life back together at Hair Cuttery, still closed.

Who knows when or if people around here will get their jobs back? Politics are a magnet for the worst.

2. I’ve started to see encouraging signs. Over the last few years, I’ve tried to avoid walking long distances where the surface was tilted to my right in order to not overpronate my left foot and aggravate problems mentioned in Week 1.

That was neither an immediate concern during six-mile-long beach walks yesterday and today, nor have I felt any inflammation afterwards!

3. I have quart Mason jars for sprouting per many YouTube videos, but don’t use them. They’re unsuited for broccoli seeds, which don’t handle extra moisture well.

I’ve had good results with Russian-doll glass bowls. I use a strainer for Round 1, transfer them to a bowl, and wick out extra moisture with a paper towel during Round 2 before putting them back on a pantry shelf. It would be hard to maneuver a paper towel inside a Mason jar.

The bowl at the top left has been replaced by the next size larger than the bowl at the bottom left. Day 3 broccoli sprouts were too crowded to dry in the small bowl.

4. I had heartburn Friday and Saturday after eating 60 grams of 3-day-old broccoli sprouts in 100 ml of water processed with a 1000 W microwave on full power for 35 seconds. Today I removed a thousand spent broccoli seed coats before microwaving, and didn’t have heartburn afterwards. More experiments are required.

[1] 2018 Effects of long-term consumption of broccoli sprouts on inflammatory markers in overweight subjects curated in How much sulforaphane is suitable for healthy people?