 What do you think of D. ribose as a sweetener? I want to try it because it's supposed to help fibromyalgia. So D. ribose is a sugar, but it's a very unique sugar. For years I've used D. ribose in my patients with very bad congestive heart failure as a part of a formula to keep them off my heart transplant list because D. ribose can be used by your mitochondria and by your muscles to generate energy a lot easier than simple glucose. It seems to have a direct ability to be used by mitochondria, the little energy organelles in your cells, to produce energy. And so I'm a huge fan of D. ribose. It does have a bit of sweetness so you can use it as a sugar, but trying to use it as a sugar you're going to have to use a lot of it to get the sweetness you want. But as an energy product, as a way of increasing your mitochondria, it's great. Now why might it help fibromyalgia? Because fibromyalgia in part is a mitochondrial problem. Your mitochondria don't produce energy efficiently in your nerves. And so D. ribose is a great way to increase the energy production in your mitochondria. So absolutely, it's a great, great product. What is the best source of DHA for vegetarians? Now I've talked about this a lot in the past, but it bears repeating since the question comes up over and over again. As you know, I was a professor at Loma Linda University for many, many years. And it's a vegetarian and vegan institution. So I have quite a large practice in vegans and vegetarians. Now DHA is one of the two long chain omega-3 fats. The other one is EPA. Now normally we can take short chain omega-3 fats like our inflex seed, for instance. And we should have a system of enzymes that can couple one short chain omega-3 fat with another and then another and then another. And you get eventually a very long chain of omega-3 fats, which are DHA and EPA. Now our brain uses DHA. About half of the fat in our brain is DHA. And interestingly enough, the hippocampus, the memory areas of our brain, are full normally of DHA. And there's very good evidence that the more DHA you have, the bigger your memory centers are, and quite frankly the bigger your brain is. Unfortunately our enzyme system in humans is lousy for taking short chain omega-3 fats and making DHA. We're not a fish. The fish has an incredibly efficient system of taking short chain omega-3 fats and making them long chains. That's why fish oil is full of DHA and EPA and not so much of the other little short chains. And I've studied DHA levels in probably thousands of vegans now. And they're profoundly deficient in DHA even though they're taking flax oil capsules and they're taking flax meal. That's because they don't convert it. So the good news is we now have a number of companies that make algae-based DHA. There's even now some that have algae-based DHA and EPA. And so now there's no excuse for a vegan to be deprived of the proper amount of DHA. And having said that, you want to try to get about a thousand milligrams of DHA per day into your diet. A lot of the vegan DHAs are 500 milligrams so two of them will do it. But whenever you buy the package, read the back. Look for serving size. Sometimes they'll try to fool you and they'll say two serving sizes, two. And then you look down below and you see 500 milligrams and say, oh, you know, that's great. There's 500 milligrams. Well, you'd have to take four of those to get a thousand milligrams. So a thousand milligrams of algae-based DHA, the problem is solved. Okay. Number three, are pumpkins safe to eat if I pressure cook them? The answer is absolutely. In fact, as you probably know, in general, the lectins in squashes are in the peel and the seeds. So the flesh itself doesn't have many lectins. I'll give you an example. I was in Europe two weeks ago. And at every breakfast in France and in Italy, there were peeled and deseeded cucumbers, which is part of the squash family. Nowhere did I ever see a cucumber with peels and seeds intact because these people are smart enough because they're taking away the lectin-containing components of that. So in general, they're pretty safe if you peel and deseed them. But there's one proviso. If you're trying to lose weight or if you're a diabetic or if you have metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance or pre-diabetes, the squash family in general have a lot of sugar in them. So it's not a free food, even if you do the right things. So it ought to be something that's more of a special treat, maybe on the weekends, maybe combined with things that that sugar content is going to be blunted like a lot of fat. But yes, pressure cooking is perfectly safe for squashes. But just be careful if you're a diabetic or a pre-diabetic. It's not one of your best foods.