Health & Fitness

Do you feel like doing something out of the ordinary today? It might be because on Leap Day interesting things have happened throughout history. Everyone knows you have 365 days on the calendar, but nearly every four years you get an extra day.

This happens since nearly every four years the dates on the calendar don’t line up with the true year, or the amount of time it takes the Earth to orbit the sun. In other words, leap year is the year an extra day is added to the month of February to synchronize the seasons with the calendar.

If you think having a leap year is confusing, wait until we talk about the "leap second."¹ In both cases, with the Leap Day and leap second, scientists adjust the calendar and time to bring the solar day into alignment with Universal Time used in sensitive applications, aviation and the internet.

A leap second accounts for a difference in the gravitational pull on the Earth from the sun and moon. As the Earth rotates it slows imperceptibly so one second of time is added intermittently to the clock.

The last one happened at midnight December 31, 2016, and the next is scheduled for June 30, 2020. The extra second has been added 27 times since 1972. While a leap second may be fascinating, it is unnoticeable in your day. But, an extra day every 4 years may be something to celebrate.

It Started as Julian and Ended as Gregorian

The addition of one day every four years is due to the sun. It takes the Earth 365.242189 days to rotate around the sun one time. Expressed another way, circling the sun takes 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds. When calendars to mark the year were first created, they were based on 365 days in a year without any additional hours or minutes.

The change began in 46 BC² when Julius Caesar asked the Greek astronomer Sosigenes to adjust the Roman calendar with the seasons.³ One of the adjustments called for an extra day to keep the calendar, Earth and sun in sync. But too many leap years created another problem.

By 1577 the difference between the number of days in the Julian calendar base — 365.25 days — and the actual number of days — 365.24219 — resulted in the calendar being 10 days out of alignment with the Earth's position relative to the sun.

To correct for the 11-minute discrepancy, Pope Gregory XIII created the Gregorian calendar.⁴ At the same time, 10 days were dropped from October that year and February 29 became the official additional day.

The point was to make sure the spring and autumn equinoxes fell on the same days each year.⁵ The equinox describes the tilt of the Earth's equator in relation to the sun over the course of one year.⁶ The word is from Latin, meaning aequus (equal) and nox (night) since on the spring and autumn equinox the length of day and night are each 12 hours at all points except at the North and South Poles.

Technically, Leap Year Doesn’t Happen Every Four Years

Although leap year happens on your calendar every four years, it doesn't happen exactly every four years. During Leap Year the extra day is added to the end of February making that year 366 days. If the solar year, sometimes called the tropical year,⁷ was precisely six hours longer than the calendar year, then adding one day every four years would make up for the 24 hours lost.⁸

Instead, the time difference is 11 minutes short of six hours. Without the addition of a leap year the calendar would be off 24 days every 100 years, which would quickly put Christmas during summer in the Northern Hemisphere. However, if a leap year happens exactly every four years, the calendar would also shift, albeit more slowly, by 11 minutes each year.

So, a Gregorian calendar has a slightly more complex set of guidelines. The criteria that helps identify which years are leap years begins with the rule of division. If the year is divisible by four then it is a leap year. However, years that mark centuries are different. These must be divisible by 400. This meant 2000 and 2400 are leap years but 2200 will not be.

Odd Things May Happen on Leap Day

The idea of adding an extra day to the calendar every four years seemed silly to some. One British play poked fun at it with the inclusion of a joke that on that day, women could act like men.⁹ The play was meant to be ridiculous but by the 1700s a tradition was born.

Now it's known as Bachelor's Day in the U.K. or Sadie Hawkins Day in the U.S., a day when it's acceptable for women to ask men for their "hand in marriage." The tradition continues to be popular in the U.K., inspiring some stores to offer discount wedding packages to those who said yes on Leap Day.

One legend has it that women proposing on Leap Day dates back to when English law didn't recognize February 29.¹⁰ The idea was if a day has no legal status it was acceptable to break tradition. In other cultures, a man would be fined if he said "no" to a woman's proposal of marriage on Leap Day. In Denmark he was bound to give her 12 pairs of gloves and in Finland, cloth for a skirt.

Traditions attached to marriages in Leap Year don't stop there. In Greece, 20% of couples don't get married in Leap Year as they believe it's bad luck. Engaged couples aren't the only ones who think there may be some bad luck in the leap year.

In Scotland they say, "Leap Year was ne'er a good sheep year." as they thought livestock didn't thrive in those years. Mother Nature Network reports the Italians go a bit further:¹¹

"In Italy, where they say ‘anno bisesto, anno funesto’ (which means leap year, doom year), there are warnings against planning special activities such as weddings. The reason? ‘Anno bisesto tutte le donne senza sesto’ which means ‘In a leap year, women are erratic.’"

The twin cities Anthony, Texas, and Anthony, New Mexico, took the concept of Leap Year to heart and declared themselves the leap year capitals of the world. Each year they throw a Worldwide Leap Year Festival that goes on for four days, including a birthday party for those who were born on the day.¹²

The festival was proposed in 1988 when two women born on Leap Day, one in each city, proposed the event that includes parades, dancing and tours. The gala has attracted people from around the world.¹³

In Honor of the Leap Year Baby

Most of the 4.1 million "leaplings" or "leapers" don't wait four years to celebrate.¹⁴ Birthdays are either commemorated on February 28 or March 1 — until February 29 rolls around again. The chance of being born on that day is 1 in 1,461, according to History.com.¹⁵

If the chances of being born on Leap Day are that low, then what are the odds that one family might have three children born on consecutive leap days? History.com reports that the Henriksens of Norway made the Guinness Book of World Records when Heidi, Olav and Leif-Martin were born in 1960, 1964 and 1968, respectively.

Others who claim Leap Day as the day of their birth include singer actress Dinah Shore, motivational speaker Tony Robbins and big band leader Jimmy Dorsey.

Those born on Leap Day have access to a special club launched in 1997.¹⁶ The mission of the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies (HSLYDB) is to promote awareness and the challenges people born on Leap Day face with insurance companies and governmental documents. The website says:¹⁷

"Membership in the society is free but is restricted to people born on Leap Year Day. We think we are the world's largest birthday club, and we hope it offers all people born on Leap Year Day even more pleasure in celebrating their birthday."

Corporations also have had some difficulty with people born on a day happening only once every four years. In 2008 Toys R Us had a computer glitch that caused Leap Year babies to miss out on their personalized birthday cards from Geoffrey the Giraffe, the Toys R Us mascot.¹⁸ The problem was fixed after the co-founder of the HSLYDB wrote:

“How do you explain to a five-year-old that they won’t receive a birthday card from Geoffrey over at Toys "R" Us this year, because the Toys "R" Us computer has no way to recognize their birthday?”

What’s Happened on Leap Day?

More than a few interesting events have happened on February 29. One quirky item is February 30. This rare date happened in 1712 in Sweden and Finland when they added the day as they switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.¹⁹ Here are several more happenings on a day that happens just once every four years:

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I was recently interviewed by Siim Land about my new book, "EMF*D," described by Siim as "the most comprehensive guide … to everything you need to know about EMF."

In it, I explain what electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are, the different types of EMFs you're exposed to, the harms associated with exposure, the concerns surrounding 5G and, ultimately, how to protect yourself and limit your exposure.

As I explain in the interview, the thing that catalyzed me to write "EMF*D" was my deep appreciation of the impact of mitochondrial function in health and disease. Once I realized how EMFs impact mitochondrial function — because it's very clear that EMF causes massive mitochondrial dysfunction — the danger our wireless society poses became very clear to me.

Just recently, I read a study¹ stressing the importance of mitochondrial numbers for improving senescent cells — cells that are, in a manner of speaking, "senile" and have stopped reproducing properly. Instead, senescent cells produce inflammation, contributing to old age and, ultimately, death.

The fewer mitochondria you have, and the more dysfunctional they are, the faster you'll age and the more prone you'll be to chronic degenerative disease. By inducing mitochondrial dysfunction, our wireless world may well be driving us all into an early grave.

Cellphone Industry Hides Truth by Manufacturing Doubt

Considering the research data now available, you'd think everyone would understand and accept the fact that EMF is a serious health danger, yet many are still completely in the dark. With "EMF*D," I hope to help more people understand this biological threat.

In 2011, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radiofrequency EMFs as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."² Then, in 2018, the U.S. National Toxicology Program published two lifetime exposure studies conclusively showing cellphone exposure causes cancer.

The NTP's findings were also duplicated by the Italian Ramazzini Institute just a couple of months later. In the wake of these studies, Fiorella Belpoggi, principal investigator and director of the Ramazzini Institute, urged the IARC to upgrade RF-EMF to "probably carcinogenic" or higher.³

Now, just like smoking cigarettes, EMF exposure takes decades before its effects become evident (and even then, the health problem might not be directly linkable to EMF exposure), and this is a significant part of the problem as it allows the telecom industry to — just like the tobacco industry before it — whitewash concerns, manipulate research and prevent proper safety studies from being done.

There's no doubt cellphone manufacturers are aware that EMFs from cellphones contribute to health problems, though. The evidence has been published for decades, and new research is constantly being added.

However, by downplaying positive findings and saying that findings of harm are inconclusive — in other words, by creating doubt and controversy — they effectively prevent the public from knowing the truth and demanding safer products. 

Wireless Industry Is Even Worse Than the Tobacco Industry

Another wireless industry strategy that prevents the problem from becoming public knowledge is the capturing of our federal regulatory agencies, which the tobacco industry wasn't even capable of.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Surgeon General and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all warned people about smoking, yet the tobacco industry continued successfully selling cigarettes for another 20 or 30 years. The wireless industry, on the other hand, has captured the federal regulatory agencies, which prevents those warnings from being issued in the first place.

For example, the chief lobbyist for the wireless industry, Tom Wheeler, was appointed by President Obama to be the head of the Federal Communications Commission, which is a most egregious example of the fox guarding the hen house. Not surprisingly, then, in December 2019 the FCC announced they're going to fund rural 5G deployment to the tune of $9 billion!⁴

As detailed in my February 1, 2020, article, "The War Against 5G Heats Up," the telecom industry has engaged in a vast and illegal fraud where, for decades, basic telephone rate payers — wire line customers — have funded the deployment of wireless in general, and now 5G in particular, through their phone bills.

This illegal redirection of funds amounts to about $1 trillion over the past 15 years, and without this money, 5G would not have been possible in the first place. Were the wireless industry forced to pay its fair share of infrastructure costs, 5G simply wouldn't be economically feasible as a consumer product.

What's so Great About 5G?

What exactly is 5G and why do some people want it? In short, it's all about improving speed. Compared to 4G, 5G is 100 times faster. On a side note, you can determine what your bandwidth is by pulling up fast.com on your cellphone's browser. If you're on 4G, your bandwidth is probably not going to exceed 10 megabytes per second (mb/s). If you're on 5G, it's going to be between 500 and 800 mb/s.

So, the primary benefit of 5G is noticeably faster speed. The vast majority of people simply don't need this kind of bandwidth, but it has great applications for commercial uses such as self-driving cars.

The problem is, 5G may end up making the earth uninhabitable for many who are already struggling with electrosensitivity, and the countless others for whom 5G may prove to be the thing that tips them over the edge into electrohypersensitivity syndrome.

Elon Musk's Starlink project, which is slated to deploy up to 42,000 satellites into low earth orbit, will blanket the entire planet with 5G internet. You won't be able to escape it, no matter how far into the wilderness you go.

5G Is a Prescription for Biological Disaster

Then there are the long-term dangers of 5G, which we still do not have a complete picture of. There has not been a single safety study done on 5G. Studies using 2G, 3G and 4G, however, including the NTP and Ramazzini studies, clearly show there's cause for concern.

5G is more complex, as it uses a variety of frequencies, which makes it a potentially greater threat. The frequency of 4G is typically around 2 to 5 gigahertz (GHz), while 5G will be around 20 to 30 GHz, initially.

Eventually, it may go as high as 80 GHz, which will cause problems for people trying to remediate exposures because there are currently no inexpensive meters that can measure frequencies that high.

Based on the studies already done on previous generations of wireless, we know it's harmful, and 5G is only going to make matters worse, as it will dramatically increase our exposures. 5G requires what essentially amounts to a mini cellphone tower outside every fifth or sixth house on every block.

We also have studies showing the impact of millimeter waves, which is what 5G is using, on insects, animals and plants, and those hazards are well-documented. So, it doesn't just pose a problem for human health, but for the ecosystem as a whole.

Martin Pall, Ph.D., wrote an excellent paper explaining how EMFs affect your voltage gated calcium channels (VGCCs) — channels in the outer plasma membrane of your cells. Each VGCC has a voltage sensor, a structure that detects electrical changes across the plasma membrane and opens the channel. EMFs work through the voltage sensor to activate the channel and radically increase intracellular calcium levels into dangerous ranges.

Similar channels are found in most biological life, including animals, insects, plants and trees. So, flooding the planet with these frequencies will undoubtedly have serious biological consequences across the ecosystem. As such, it's an existential threat to humanity.

One biological consequence is arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat). Other potential consequences include autism and Alzheimer's. Heart and neurological problems top the list because your heart and brain have the greatest density of VGCCs. Men's testes also have a very high density of VGCCs and, indeed, we have evidence showing EMFs increase men's risk of infertility.

Everything points to these frequencies being a prescription for biological disaster, and between skyrocketing autism, Alzheimer's and infertility rates, how can a society be sustained? It can't. It will be extinguished.

We Don't Need Wireless 5G

In reality, we can still get the bandwidth of 5G without 5G wireless. The alternative would be to deploy fiber optic cable. It's faster, safer and less expensive.

Unfortunately, the money originally set aside to implement nationwide fiber optics was rerouted and illegally used to build the wireless infrastructure instead. This is why a group called The Irregulators⁵ are now suing the FCC to put a stop to the illegal subsidy to the wireless industry.

Wireline customers paid for an upgrade to fast and safe fiber optic wiring across the nation, but now we're getting harmful 5G wireless instead. As explained in "The War Against 5G Heats Up" (hyperlinked above), this lawsuit has the potential to alter the telecommunications industry from the ground up, and may be the "weapon" we need to halt to the 5G rollout in the U.S.

The Importance of EMF Avoidance to Protect Your NAD+ Level

Along with practical remediation strategies, "EMF*D" also covers things you can do to protect yourself on a biochemical level. A perfect storm of DNA and cellular protein and membrane destruction is created when you aren't burning fat for fuel (which creates excess superoxide) and then get exposed to EMFs.

This causes a radical increase in nitric oxide release that nearly instantaneously combines with superoxide to create enormous levels of peroxynitrate, which triggers a cascade of destructive events to your cellular and mitochondrial DNA, membranes and proteins.

Although all biologic damage is of concern, it is the DNA strand breaks that are most concerning as they will lead to a radical increase in inflammation and virtually all degenerative diseases.

The good news is your body has the ability to repair this damaged DNA with a family of enzymes called poly ADP ribose polymerase or PARP It is a very effective repair system and works wonderfully to repair the damage as long as it has enough fuel in the form of NAD+. 

The bad news is many of us are running low on this fuel. When excess peroxynitrate activates PARP to repair the DNA damage, it consumes NAD+, and if you run out, you can't repair the damage. This appears to be a central cause for most of the diseases we now see in the modern world.

Optimizing your NAD+ levels may be the single most important strategy for improving your mitochondrial health. The first step is to reduce NAD+ consumption by the correct diet (low in processed foods and net carbohydrates and higher in healthy fats), along with EMF avoidance, as recent research shows NAD+ levels dramatically drop when exposed to EMFs.

Time restricted eating is also very helpful, as is exercise, both of which are powerful, inexpensive and safe ways to boost your NAD+ level.

Helpful Strategies to Limit EMF Damage

In "EMF*D" I also cover the Nrf2 pathway and the importance of minerals such as magnesium to limit the biological damage caused by EMFs. As explained in this interview, upregulating your Nrf2 pathway activates genes that have powerful antioxidant effects, thus helping protect against EMF damage, while magnesium — which is a natural calcium channel blocker — helps reduce the effects of EMF on your VGCCs.

On a side note, molecular hydrogen tablets are an excellent source of ionic elemental magnesium. Each tablet provides about 80 milligrams of ionic elemental magnesium.

Addressing EMF Pollution — A 21st Century Health Imperative

There's no doubt in my mind that EMF exposure is an important lifestyle component that needs to be addressed if you're concerned about your health, which is why I spent three years writing "EMF*D."

My aim was to create a comprehensive and informative guide, detailing not only the risks, but also what you can do to mitigate unavoidable exposures. To get you started, see the tips listed in my previous article, "Top 19 Tips to Reduce Your EMF Exposure."

If you know or suspect you might already be developing a sensitivity to EMFs (full-blown hypersensitivity can often strike seemingly overnight), mitigating your exposures will be particularly paramount. Many sufferers become obsessed with finding solutions, as the effects can be severely crippling. My book can be a valuable resource in your quest for relief.

The EMF Experts website⁶ also lists EMF groups worldwide, to which you can turn with questions, concerns and support, and EMFsafehome.com⁷ lists a number of publications where you can learn more about the dangers of EMFs.

Should you need help remediating your home, consider hiring a trained building biologist to get it done right. A listing can be found on the International Institute for Building-Biology & Ecology's website.⁸

Brian Hoyer, a leading EMF expert⁹ and a primary consultant for "EMF*D" also has a company called Shielded Healing that can provide a thorough analysis of the EMF exposure in your home, and help you devise a remediation plan. You can listen to our excellent three-hour interview for more information, featured in "Your EMF Questions Answered Part 1" and "Your EMF Questions Answered Part 2."

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Researchers have designed an artificial intelligence model that can determine whether lower back pain is acute or chronic by scouring doctors' notes within electronic medical records, an approach that can help to treat patients more accurately, according to a new study.

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Researchers have found that sugar content is the most important factor for people when making healthy food choices -- overriding fat and salt.

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Researchers have found that sugar content is the most important factor for people when making healthy food choices -- overriding fat and salt.

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The balance between weight gain and weight gain loss is predominantly determined by what you eat, how much you eat, and by how much exercise you get. But another important factor is often neglected... it's not just how many calories you eat, but WHEN you eat them that will determine how well you burn those calories.

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New research suggests that companies looking to promote their latest environmentally friendly product should downplay its green credentials if they want consumers to buy it. By highlighting green attributes through advertising, in some situations firms risk generating associations with weak product performance. This is because of the performance ability sometimes associated with green products, whereby consumers perceive them as being less effective.

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Researchers who have discovered why the drug remdesivir is effective in treating the coronaviruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) expect it might also be effective for treating patients infected with the new COVID-19 strain.

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When crossing the street, which way do you first turn your head to check for oncoming traffic? This decision depends on the context of where you are. A group of scientists has been studying how animals use context when making decisions. And now, their latest findings have tied this ability to an unexpected brain region in mice, previously thought to primarily guide and plan movement.

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The balance between weight gain and weight gain loss is predominantly determined by what you eat, how much you eat, and by how much exercise you get. But another important factor is often neglected... it's not just how many calories you eat, but WHEN you eat them that will determine how well you burn those calories.

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Researchers have discovered that our cells replicate their DNA much more loosely than previously thought. The new knowledge might be useful for developing novel treatments against aggressive forms of cancers.

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Researchers have discovered how a notorious pathogen may have hijacked one of nature's most enduring mutual relationships.

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According a new study, the microscopic toner nanoparticles that waft from laser printers may change our genetic and metabolic profiles in ways that make disease more likely.

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The sights and sounds of winning on a slot machine may increase your desire to play -- and your memories of winning big, according to new research.

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Scientists have identified a rare, new cell in the immune system with 'Jekyll and Hyde properties.' These cells play a key protective role in immunity to infection but -- if unregulated -- also mediate tissue damage in autoimmune disorders. The findings should help us design more effective vaccines to prevent infections such as MRSA, and may also assist help us develop of new therapies for autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis.

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A common type of bacteria found in our guts could contribute to bowel cancer, according to new research. Scientists have shown that a toxin released by a strain of E. coli causes unique patterns, or 'fingerprints,' of DNA damage to the cells lining the gut.

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A few years ago, my grandmother suffered a fall and broke her hip. She has never fully recovered and is now constantly fearful of falling, and has significantly limited her activities to prevent a fall from ever happening again. As a scientist focused on translational research in mobility and falls in older adults, of course I asked her how she fell. She stated that she was standing in the kitchen and reading a recipe when the phone rang. When she turned and started to walk over to the phone, her feet “weren’t in the right spot.” She fell sideways and unfortunately, her hip was unable to absorb the impact without breaking.

For older adults, falls are a leading cause of hip and wrist fractures, concussions, mobility disability, loss of independence, and even death. As it turns out, the circumstances leading up to my grandmother’s fall were typical. In fact, the majority of falls occur when an individual is “dual-tasking;” that is, standing or walking while at the same time performing a separate cognitive task (such as reading), a motor task (carrying groceries), or both (walking while talking and carrying a cup of coffee).

Why does dual-tasking (or multitasking) often lead to falls in older adults?

It turns out that the seemingly simple acts of standing upright, or walking down an empty, well-lit hallway, are quite complex. To complete these tasks, we must continuously stabilize our body’s center of mass — a point located just behind our sternum — over the relatively small base of support that we create by positioning our feet on the ground. This control requires quick reflexes, as well as strong muscles of the trunk, hips, legs, ankles, and toes. However, to avoid falling we also need to pay attention to our body and environment, predict and perceive unsafe movements of our body, and adjust accordingly. Our brains need to quickly make sense of information coming from our eyes, ears, and bodies to produce patterns of muscle activity that appropriately adjust our body’s position within the environment.

Therefore, tasks of standing and walking are in fact cognitive tasks, and these tasks require more and more cognitive effort as we grow older and our senses and muscles no longer work as well as they once did. For my grandmother and many others, dual-tasking led to a fall because it diverted shared cognitive resources away from the critical job of controlling her body’s center of mass over her feet on the ground.

The role of our minds in the avoidance of falls is striking

Older adults who are cognitively impaired are more than two times as likely to fall compared to those who are cognitively intact. A recent study by researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has shown that even subtle differences in the brain’s ability to dual-task when walking are predictive of future falls in healthy older adults. Specifically, the researchers asked their volunteers to walk while completing a word-generation task in their laboratory, and used a technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure brain activity. Those volunteers who required more brain activity (mental effort) to complete these tasks were more likely to fall during a four-year follow-up period.

Thankfully, these startling studies have a silver lining: they suggest that cognitive function is a promising — and largely untapped — target for the prevention and rehabilitation of falls. In fact, there are several large-scale clinical trials currently underway that are testing the effects of computer-based cognitive training on balance, mobility, and falls in older adults (see here and here). There is also strong evidence that a physical therapy program that asks patients to balance while completing cognitive tasks like counting backwards significantly reduces the incidence of falls in stroke survivors.

It seems like only a matter of time before cognitive and dual-task training become mainstays of fall prevention programming in older adults. In the meantime, if you are worried about falling, or feel like your balance is slipping, you might consider the following:

• Be aware of your surroundings. Try to minimize distractions if and when you find yourself standing in a crowded room, walking down an uneven sidewalk, or in a hurry to get to an appointment. In these situations, avoid answering your cellphone, keep conversations light, and prioritize your balance above all else.
• Keep your mind sharp. Cognitive decline is not an unavoidable consequence of aging. There are evidence-based tips for maximizing your mental abilities into older age.
• Consider joining a group activity class focused on tai chi, yoga, or dance. These safe mind-body exercises have proven effective for improving balance and even reducing falls in numerous populations of older adults.
• Remember that falls rarely occur due to a single factor, like poor muscle strength, fatigue, or reduced vision. Instead, they usually occur when multiple factors combine to cause an irrecoverable loss of balance. Multifactorial strategies therefore appear to be the best “medicine” for the avoidance of falls over time.

The post The role of our minds in the avoidance of falls appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

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A common type of bacteria found in our guts could contribute to bowel cancer, according to new research. Scientists have shown that a toxin released by a strain of E. coli causes unique patterns, or 'fingerprints,' of DNA damage to the cells lining the gut.

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