Unpleasant lipid blockage, personal

There are some pretty nasty spin offs from eating a diet based around saturated fat. Over the last few days I've run it to a particular problem which is a direct result of my eating habits. It was very unpleasant and involved a serious lipid blockage.

A blockage of the main drain from my washing up sink, that is. Not the little U bend in the kitchen, I mean the outside drain, deep, dark, stinking and which must have been overflowing in to the gravel for quite some time. The water was disgusting. I had to hand bale it out down to a steel grid. This was stuck solid and I still haven't been able to remove it. But by slotting an aluminium blade through a gap in the grid and wiggling it back and forth I got the bulk of the water to slowly drain away.

Next move was a trip to B&Q for a large bottle of concentrated caustic soda solution. Sodium hydroxide reacts with fats to form soap, which is soluble, and so clears the drain. Unfortunately it also does the same to the lipids in your skin, so this stuff is not nice to handle. Goggles, gloves and great care are needed, and serious chemical burns result from significant skin contact. I followed it with a kettle of boiling water to speed the process up. Once the drain was clear I ran a large volume of very hot water through it. So far so good, it cleared and has stayed clear.

But it got me thinking. Why on earth have cardiologists not tried running hot caustic soda through peoples' coronary arteries? It should be pretty obvious that if the cause of clogged arteries and clogged drains is the one and the same devil, saturated fat, maybe the same solution should be applied. This is the level of thought that comes up with stupid comments about "artery clogging" saturated fats. Give me a break. Arteries are NOT NOT NOT drains. They do not clog with saturated fat. Do not accept a place in a trial of caustic soda angioplasty when offered it by your cardiologist.

Although my drains do block with saturated fat, my arteries don't. The occasional drain blockage is a price well worth paying for cardiac health.

Peter