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We all know them. The people you can't go out to eat with. The ones who can go through an entire menu of options and find something wrong with each one. The ones who, on sipping a glass of wine, will tell you that this vintage, woodsy with a hint of vanilla, has come from the Bordeaux region, Francois Fancy's vineyard to be exact, and the grapes were most likely picked during the record rainy week of August 7, 1997. And you order what they order instead of the house wine because you feel like such an oenologic imbecile in their presence. They're the ones who want their ice cream slightly microwaved before eating it. The ones you have to call in advance of a dinner party to be sure what you're fixing will be something they will eat.

Picky eaters? Food snobs? Pains in the butt? Or supertasters?

I vote for the latter. Research in recent years has identified a type of eater who is naturally, genetically, more sensitive to the flavors and textures of foods. I experienced this phenomenon in person a few years ago at a nutrition conference. One of my college friends and now nutrition researcher, Valerie Duffy, studies supertasting. At her booth, she handed me and my coworker each a piece of paper and asked us to place it on our tongue. While I sat there for a few seconds wondering what the gimmick was, my friend immediately began to gag and cough, explaining that it was the most vile thing she had ever placed in her mouth. We learned that she is a supertaster and I…am a nontaster.

Supertasters are interesting people. I imagine they're the ones in medieval times called in to sample the king's food to be sure it wasn't poisoned. (I could use one of them in my home to let me know when I should be throwing things away.) We had a wine professor back at Cornell whose sense of taste was so keen he was flown to several vineyards each year to sample the harvest and, based on his response, the wine was priced.

The specifics of how this is determined are outlined nicely in this article. What is important to take away from this blog post, is that everyone experiences food differently, and that is important to account for. I try to use this information in my writing here. Rather than encourage you to eat only foods that I would like, I write about as many foods as I can in hopes that each of you develops your own"favorite" list with confidence. Without even doing the PROP test, I'm betting you can tell who you are by the kind of food blogs you enjoy. If you have cinnamon from 3 different countries in your custom-made spice cabinet (you know who you are!), love endless detail about ingredients, preparation, subtle characteristics of food…you're probably more of a supertaster. If that intimidates you and you're more of a"just tell me what to make for dinner and for heaven's sake use the five ingredients I have in the fridge and make it easy" kind of reader, you're more than likely a nontaster.

One of my dearest friends is a supertaster. It took awhile for this friend to relax around me with food, probably because this characteristic can make it hard to socialize with friends and you can begin to become self-conscious about how your tastebuds behave in public. You can be pegged as a pain, eyes roll, people wonder if you have an eating disorder. I eventually learned what the top ten list of"friendship favorite ingredients" was, to microwave the ice cream, and not to experiment too much in the kitchen (note to self: marinated smoked scallops--definitely not a supertaster's favorite), and we got along fine. I actually eat better when I'm with this friend, I believe, because whereas I am more of an eat to live person and can get by on pretty much anything that quaffs my hunger and gets me back to work, my friend tends to steer me toward food experiences that encourage me to sit, relax, taste, and enjoy food for the many other pleasures it provides.

What's interesting about nontasters is that they tend to like more fat. That makes sense, since flavors are more soluble in fat, and food for a nontaster is more enjoyable if you do anything to it to enhance the flavor. I definitely love my fat!

Taste perception outside of the food world is pretty interesting. Supertasters, for example, are less likely to experience depression. And middle-aged nontasting women are more prone to obesity. Well that makes sense…first of all, if you're eating more fat so you can taste your food, you're eating more calories…and if you're trying NOT to eat fat because you've been told it's unhealthy, you're walking around looking for something to nosh on that allows your tastebuds to tell you you're full and it's time to stop eating.

You apparently cannot fool your tastebuds the way some food companies would like you to believe.

Does that mean supertasters are destined to be happy and thin while nontasters are cursed to be depressed and fat? Absolutely not. Many factors contribute to your mood and your weight. The point here is that it's better to identify the foods you LIKE and learn how to eat those in healthy balance, rather than try to eat things you don't because some food expert wrote some diet du jour that half of Hollywood is following that has no foods you enjoy in the meal plans.

Be confident in what your taste buds tell you. Don't apologize for what you like and what you don't. Work with what you've got. Enjoy the flavor ride. Microwaved ice cream, nachos, and all.

Joiner TE Jr, Perez M. Phenylthiocarbamide tasting and family history of depression, revisited: low rates of depression in families of supertasters. Psychiatry Res. 2004 Apr 15;126(1):83-7.
Goldstein GL, Daun H, Tepper BJ. Adiposity in middle-aged women is associated with genetic taste blindness to 6-n-propylthiouracil. Obes Res. 2005 Jun;13(6):1017-23.

Two weeks ago this Sunday, my friend was featured on CBS Sunday Morning. To celebrate, she had a viewing party at two other friends' popular local store. I was planning to go, and stop at the gym on my way home. Then I decided that with the weather being so perfect, I could use the 10 mile round trip there and back as my gym. So I woke up early, strapped on my Rollerblades, and headed to the celebration.

Two minutes out of the door, I took the first tumble on my Rollerblades that I have had in 23 years of using them. I sat, hurting, on the street corner, thinking about what to do. My first thought was"if I go home and sit, this is going to be even worse, maybe it will be better to head over anyway and keep things mobile." So that is what I did. It wasn't that bad, really, until I skated home. I had a huge bruise on my tailbone and ended spending most of the rest of the day in a fetal position, which is the only position that didn't hurt.

Today, 12 days later, is the first day since then that I have been mostly free of pain. I live in a second floor condo, and have only ventured out a few times because the stairs have just been unthinkable. I really wanted to swim, but as luck would have it, the heater at the pool was broken, cutting me out of that as well.

I'm really disappointed, and frustrated, because I've been working really hard lately, and physical activity is always a welcome stress release. I had also promised myself tennis lessons this summer as an employee incentive program (yes, we have one in this one-person operation!), in an attempt to better balance my life. And it looked--still looks--like the first half of the summer will be tennis-free.: (

What I am happy about, is that I handled this injury far better than I did when I was off of one leg for 8 weeks due to a ski injury. Back then, exercise was everything. Of course, I was in graduate school for exercise physiology and everyone around me worked out far too much (exercise addiction is the normal social behavior in Boulder, Colorado, where grad school was), so I didn't realize just how far my dependence on exercise for stress management had gone, until fate completely yanked it from me.

It was really hard. I had to figure out what to do with my time. My emotions. My stress. Eventually, I came to realize that far too much of who I was, was wrapped up in exercise. It probably even steered me into studying exercise for reasons at the time that were not entirely healthy! I was stuck in a city where everyone was like that, and when I couldn't be part of it, I found myself alone, quite a bit, because I couldn't partake in the obsession that everyone used to socialize.

But I'm glad it happened. I was young enough to recognize the opportunity I had been given, to learn to be more balanced, to pursue other leisure activities, to come to love myself even if I was not always on a bike, or skis, or skates.

I'm pretty over that obsession at this point, but I do have a driven personality. So when I had this long list of things to do, this research institute to launch, a mortgage to pay, and I couldn't sit at the computer long enough to do the work I needed to do, and I worked longer than normal hours to do it anyway…after a few days, I caught myself trying not to listen to the message.

I had an agenda, and it wasn't happening, and I was trying to steer myself around it. I had to let go, and let life show me what the better agenda was. And when I did, when I took an afternoon off to have some frozen yogurt and stroll Costco with a friend, and just enjoyed a few movies on television…the agenda that made itself clear was far better than the one I was trying to force.

Exhibit A: inCYST eMarket.

Exhibit B: An invitation to speak locally for one of my very favorite health organizations.

Exhibit C: Other friends connecting in ways outside of me, but directly related to my letting go of a few things that turned around and benefitted me.

I think the tumble happened for a reason. It was a big detour sign. I was too busy to see it as I passed it on the side of the road, and I was headed toward a precipitous cliff. I was so focused I was not paying attention to important pieces of the puzzle that were on less-traveled roads.

My message is that whoever you are, wherever you are…if something happened to you today that feels like it derailed your most important agenda, take heart. If you choose to listen and accept with an open heart, who knows what bigger agenda it may be nudging you toward accomplishing?

I hope you all are not tired of my drumming into you the importance of sleep! This time, I want to look at a study about menopause. A 7 1/2 year study (which really is long and not common to see), discovered that administering melatonin delayed the events of menopause.

If you think of melatonin as one of the body's most powerful (potentially THE most powerful) antioxidant, this makes sense.

What does this have to do with PCOS? My personal feeling is that seeing all the symptoms of PCOS in the age demographic I've watch those symptoms drift down to means I'm seeing old people walk around in young peoples' bodies. I've been in this field for 26 years now, and when I first started out, it was rare to see anyone with insulin resistance or diabetes who was younger than the age of 40.

Fast forward to 5 years ago when I worked with a 9 year old girl. Not only was she insulin resistant, but she was complaining of joint pain that sounded like arthritis, hair loss, and memory problems at school. That's when the lightbulb went off for me. In at least a few cases, it seems as though PCOS is what happens when diseases of old age creep into the reproductive system.

The way we live, which is hard, fast, and with the expectation that pills and procedures can make up for those choices, eventually catches up with us. Pay attention to a few simple things which involve better balance and self care…and we can put off some of the yucky parts about having more birthdays under our belts.

The good news is, if you decide to take action, much of this can reverse. I received an excited phone call not too long ago from a colleague who's been through my PCOS training. She told me that the last 5 clients who she'd advised regarding their infertility had all become pregnant. One of them had failed with in vitro fertilization and was beginning to resign herself to the possibility that she'd never have kids.

My colleague's caveat: The clients who succeed are the ones who are willing to do the work.

We had a discussion about how being a dietitian working in reproduction is really a challenging proposition. Practically everyone else who offers a solution is the one who does the work, while the patient is relatively passive. It can create the impression that fertility is something you can have, if you have enough money to throw at the best experts out there.

Pay someone else to do the work? Do some work yourself? We've really got a hard sell.

But when I received this phone call I literally had chills. All this studying, writing, promoting, training, stressing over how we're going to get this program to take hold…for those five new lives, is completely worth it.

Trust me, it took me awhile to admit to myself, and I do this for a living, that I could improve on my own habits. But as I've realized how much better I feel, I've become very protective of my sleep. I'm rarely even awake anymore to watch the evening news. And when I miss my sleep, I can really see what it does to my body. I'm spacy, moody, stiff, I crave sweets, and I am lethargic. I'm not nearly as creative or productive.

I've also started imposing a rule on myself, if I don't have a good night's sleep, I don't work out the next day. I do go for a walk, but I focus on stress management and I try to time my activity so that I can get some ultraviolet light and hopefully correct my sleep clock. But I've learned, at least for myself, that when I push it, and expect to be able to work long hours AND exercise AND socialize, etc., etc., etc., something always gives.

Maybe that's the good part of having more birthdays under my belt…some wisdom has funally sunk in.

Diaz BL, Llaneza PC. Endocrine regulation of the course of menopause by oral melatonin: first case report. Menopause. 2008 Mar-Apr;15(2):388-92.

It's a question we get all the time and the answer is yes, no, and maybe.

If you have a diagnosis of celiac disease, the answer is definitely yes.

If you are eliminating gluten from your diet because someone on the Internet has told you to do so, the answer is no.

If you think you may have a food sensitivity, then the answer is maybe. The problem with slapping a gluten-free restriction on yourself is that you may be eliminating foods you don't need to eliminate. You may have a simple sensitivity to wheat, for example, but that doesn't mean you need to eliminate ALL gluten-containing foods.

If you cast a wide net, and eliminate 200 things, and only one of them is the culprit, you've just eliminated 199 foods that you could have eaten that actually could have been productive for you. That's going to make it hard for you to stay on track, because you've limited the variety of foods you can eat, your ability to eat out, socialize, etc.

Michal Hogan, RD, one of our inCYSTers in Columbus, has shared that sometimes, when people don't have a gluten issue, simply by limiting gluten in the diet, they can create one! Don't want to go there, now, do you?

At inCYST we do believe that food sensitivities can trigger an inflammatory process and be a major factor in PCOS. We've even added that topic to our professional training. However, we believe there is a much more scientific and accurate way of pinpointing the problem. It's called LEAP testing. Many of our network members are Certified LEAP Therapists, meaning that if you believe a food sensitivity is part of your problem, they can help you to interpret a blood test that tells you EXACTLY what your issue is. So you're not unnecessarily eliminating foods, and you have a precise game plan.

To learn more about LEAP testing, go to http://www.nowleap.com/. If you'd like to find a LEAP therapist in your area, Michal is a LEAP mentor. You can contact her at nutritionresults@aol.com.