Health & Fitness

Once again, Kim Kardashian West is selling the message that to be sexy, popular and accepted you need to distort your body. So wrong.

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Researchers found an unexpected spectrum of mental illnesses in patients with a rare gene mutation. These patients had a ''double hit'' condition that combined features and symptoms of fragile X syndrome and premutation disorder, in addition to a range of psychiatric symptoms. The findings revealed the need for clinicians to consider the complexities of the co-existing conditions of patients with both psychological and fragile X associated disorders.

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Although most beer consumers can distinguish between different bitter tastes in beer, this does not appear to influence which beer they like. It seems they just like beer, regardless of the source of the bitterness.

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For decades, neuropsychologists have used the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children test as the gold-standard intelligence quotient (IQ) test to determine the intellectual abilities of children with special needs. However, this comprehensive test can take up to 2 hours to complete, and many children with special needs have a difficult time participating in such long tests.

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The brain's ventral lateral geniculate nucleus (vLGN) receives signals from the eye, but it is not associated with classical image-forming. For decades little was known about this brain region's cellular structure and purpose. In a new study, neuroscientists reveal newly identified brain cell subtypes unique to this region that form a striking layered formation.

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A new study may help to peel back the layers of unhealthy skin -- at least metaphorically speaking -- and get closer to a cure.

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Cannabidiol, a type of medicinal cannabis, may reduce severe behavioral problems in children and adolescents with an intellectual disability a new study has found.

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“Can I get a hug?”

It’s a simple question for a simple act that’s been especially missed because of COVID-19 distancing. “Human beings need social contact,” says Dr. Eugene Beresin, executive director of The Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “We are not hermits. We are not solo pilots. We are pack animals.” Not that it needs more promotion, but along with feeling connected, a hug has been shown to help fight off a cold and help your mood when dealing with conflict.

But even as restrictions have started to loosen, there are no clear-cut answers on personal interactions between adults. Dr. Todd Ellerin is director of infectious diseases and vice chairman of the department of medicine at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. He doesn’t recommend against giving a hug, but he’s also not giving it the green light.

The reality, he says, is there are no safety guarantees, just as it’s not, “You hug, you get the virus — it’s not that simple.” Like with all coronavirus issues, it’s about individuals making their own assessments about risk.

With a hug, it’s not the act itself that’s worrisome, but everything that comes with it. “It’s where you are and how close you’ll be standing. It’s what you’ll be doing before and after. The hug is not an isolated event.” Ellerin offers three factors to consider in order to determine whether it’s a safe choice for you.

People. Who’s involved? The more people who you’re going to hug, the higher the risk. The health of you and the others involved also matters. It’s not only whether someone has coronavirus symptoms, but anything that would compromise the immune system, like cancer, obesity, heart disease. And age is still a factor. People over 60 years old, even if healthy, are more vulnerable.

Place. Where would it happen? Outside is preferable, and lower risk than indoors.

Space. How close will you be after the hug? The six-foot zone — the approximate distance a droplet travels before it falls — is still a good prescription. And proximity can be an overlooked factor, since there’s the tendency to remain close and talk, and hugs often come with kissing. You’re certainly able to exchange words when you have a mask on. You just shouldn’t. Masks work, but they’re not perfect, so, in order to minimize the risk if you choose to hug, when you’re in close, you shouldn’t talk.

So what’s the ideal hug?

Ellerin says that it needs to be mutual, discussed, and pretty much planned. This is not the time for surprise or spontaneous shows of affection. You need to start at six feet away; if you’ve already been talking close to each other, you’ve increased the risk. You need to be masked and looking in opposite directions, so there’s no breathing or chance of coughing or sneezing on each other. Once the hug is over, you both back away to at least six feet without saying anything. If the hug makes someone cry, you don’t wipe away another person’s tears. And even though you should not have hand-to-hand contact, you want to wash your hands afterwards in order to maintain the habit. If you want to add an extra layer of protection, you can also wear a face shield.

The easier decision might be to say it’s not worth chancing, but in extreme cases, such as when a person is dying, the benefits might outweigh the consequences, Beresin says. These kinds of considerations reflect how COVID-19 has turned instinctive acts into calculations. “You need to be scientific about this, but it’s hard to be scientific about people you love. We’re not robots,” Ellerin says.

Maybe there’s another option

Beresin adds that rather than attempt to script a quick hug and still worry about the dangers, this is an opportunity to be creative, while being masked and at least six feet apart. You can listen to music. You can meditate with guided imagery. You can sit, maybe by a fire, and talk, maybe sharing a reminiscence about a great family vacation or a disastrous Thanksgiving that ended in laughs.

Recollecting, along with making eye contact and saying kind words, are ways to feel close and to be a reminder of how you got through something together. None of these alternatives are as immediate or physical as a hug, “but it does the same kinds of things. We can touch and embrace each other in many different ways,” Beresin says. “And in some respects, it could be better, because it lasts longer than 10 seconds.”

But with the hug, it goes back to the fact that the decision is up to each person. Ellerin says that until a widespread vaccine and treatments are available, “as individuals, we have to learn how to manage risks. It’s not an exact formula.”

For more information about the coronavirus and COVID-19, see the Harvard Health Publishing Coronavirus Resource Center.

The post How risky is a hug right now? appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.

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Forensic scientists have discovered a new way of presenting fragile evidence, by reconstructing a 'jigsaw' of human bone fragments using 3D printing. In the first known study of its kind, researchers took fragmented burnt human bones and tested the ability to make 3D models suitable to be shown to a jury in court.

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In the future, taking your blood pressure medication could be as simple as eating a spoonful of rice. This 'treatment' could also have fewer side effects than current blood pressure medicines. As a first step, researchers have made transgenic rice that contains several anti-hypertensive peptides. When given to hypertensive rats, the rice lowered their blood pressure.

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Problems in how the brain recognizes and processes novel information lie at the root of psychosis, researchers have found. Their discovery that defective brain signals in patients with psychosis could be altered with medication paves the way for new treatments for the disease.

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From stretching in the sun to cups of tea, Phoebe Burgess shares the daily rituals she created during isolation and why she’ll be sticking to them long after.

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Our hunter–gatherer ancestors didn’t have LED lights, iPads or street lights ablaze all night. Instead, they were dependent on the sun, the moon and fire for light. Consistent light cycles ensured that circadian rhythms, moods and hormones were in check.

But today, it’s a different story. We’re exposed to bright lights well past sunset, and during the day, we often don’t get enough real sunlight. Light can increase our productivity, but too much light has consequences. Artificial light at the wrong times creates a mismatch between your genes and the environment, with potentially dire health outcomes.

Reducing your exposure to light pollution can protect you from those negative health outcomes and help you sleep more soundly and feel more energized. Find out how to reduce light pollution and why it’s an important part of an ancestral health-based lifestyle.

Light Pollution: Too Much of a Good Thing

Humans have evolved alongside 24-hour day/night cycles, and our bodily functions have synced up with these cycles in what we call circadian rhythms. Most endocrine hormones exhibit a recognizable daily rhythm, including:^1,2,3,4

Cortisol	Luteinizing hormone	Thyroid hormones
Growth hormone	Insulin	Leptin
Ghrelin	Follicle-stimulating hormone	Melatonin

These hormones regulate daily patterns of bodily processes like digestion, metabolism, and sleep.^5,6,7 For example, cortisol should be highest in the morning to keep us alert and gradually decrease throughout the day, while melatonin should be highest at night to encourage sleep and low during the day. In fact, exposure to bright 480-nm light in the morning helps determine when the pineal glands will start releasing melatonin at night.⁸

Light, at the appropriate times and intensities, is the most potent regulator of our circadian rhythms. When bright light hits our eyes, photosensitive cells communicate with a region in the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which is thought of as the body’s “central clock.”⁹

The SCN regulates clock genes found in cells throughout our bodies. However, growing evidence shows that light can also regulate mood, learning and other functions without affecting circadian rhythm.^10,11

12 Health Consequences of Light Pollution

Light pollution is a major problem in the developed world. At 10 p.m., our hunter–gatherer ancestors may have been settling down for the night under the moon, which emits a mere 0.1 to 0.4 lux of light.^12,13

Compare that to home indoor lights at about 100 to 300 lux, or the bright lights in a store that can reach 1,000 lux.¹⁴ All night long, street lights and store lights create light pollution that prevents more than 99% of people in the U.S. and Europe from experiencing natural light.¹⁵

Light pollution messes with the body’s circadian rhythms, which can disrupt hormones and sleep. Light pollution can also affect mood and cognition without noticeable changes to the circadian rhythm. Whether indirectly or directly, these changes can cause myriad health problems.

Ecological Consequences of Light Pollution

The effects of light pollution extend beyond human behavior and disease. Animals and plants also have evolved along with predictable light patterns, and messing with light timing has ecological impacts. Melatonin, which is suppressed by bright light at night, directly influences the seasonal breeding of animals.⁶¹

Light pollution disrupts animal reproduction, species biodiversity, plant flowering and much, much more.⁶² Light pollution affects many plants and animals, including:⁶³

Birds	Bats	Sea turtles
Marsupials	Rodents	Fish
Moths	Beetles	Spiders
Ants	Worms	Corals
Terrestrial plants

How to Reduce Light Pollution at Home

You don’t have to abandon all electronic activity to mitigate the harmful effects of light pollution at home. Focus on increasing exposure to bright, natural light in the morning and reducing exposure to it in the evening. You will sleep more soundly and feel more energized when your body’s rhythms are synced up with the sun. Here are some helpful tips to get started.

Go Outside, Early

On average, people spend 93% of their time indoors or in a car — it’s no wonder our circadian rhythms are out of whack!⁶⁴ Once you get out of bed in the morning, open all window shades to let in the morning light. Ideally, spend 20 to 30 minutes outside in the early morning. If that’s impossible, a 10,000 lux full-spectrum light box may suffice if you spend a good 30 minutes nearby. If you commute to work, try to drive without sunglasses to increase your light exposure.

Avoid Bright Lights Later in the Day

There are many ways to facilitate this:

1. Replace LED light bulbs with incandescent bulbs. Yes, LEDs win in efficiency, but their environmental friendliness only goes so far. LEDs emit light wavelengths that are really, really good at suppressing melatonin, which you don’t want happening later in the day.
2. Wear amber-colored blue light-blocking glasses in the afternoon and evening, especially if you’re using electronics. These glasses are highly effective at improving sleep and mood.^65,66,67
3. Install a program like f.lux that modifies a device’s display screen to be warmer in the evening and lighter during the day.

Sleep in the Dark

Darken your bedroom at night — the darker, the better. Even dim light at night can disrupt circadian rhythm.^68,69 Nix the night light, install blackout curtains and remove that bright blue digital clock. Your mood, sleep and health will thank you!

How to Reduce Light Pollution at the Community Level

Light pollution negatively affects mood, sleep, ecosystems, and public health. Most of the developed world isn’t able to view the Milky Way at night. Some businesses, like hospitals, might not be able to shut down completely at night, but communities and cities can take steps to reduce light pollution.

In fact, at least 17 of the 50 United States already have laws limiting light pollution.⁷⁰ Some laws require street lights to point downward, while others require low-wattage lighting at night, and even others limit the lights allowed at night. In England, almost a quarter of communities turn off street lights between midnight and 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.⁷¹ And, although it may seem counterintuitive, less light at night doesn’t seem to increase crime.^72,73

For information on how to take action in your community, check out the International Dark Sky Places. This great resource provides educational materials about light pollution, and also gives tips and examples for how to talk to neighbors, communities and even legislators.

>>>>> Click Here <<<<<

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According to some, Bill Gates prominently among them, social distancing is part of “the new normal.” Alas, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest social distancing and lockdowns will not be necessary at all, and were probably a bad idea in the first place. 

According to Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt,¹ the rate of SARS-CoV-2 mortality never experienced exponential growth, as was predicted, which suggests a majority of people may have had some sort of prior resistance or immunity.

Levitt, a professor of structural biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, received the Nobel Prize in 2013 for his development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

No Exponential Growth in Mortality

Statistical data, he points out, reveal a mathematical pattern that has stayed consistent regardless of the interventions implemented. As reported by Freddie Sayers in the video above:

“After around a two-week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes ‘sub-exponential.’ This may seem like a technical distinction, but its implications are profound.

The ‘unmitigated’ scenarios modelled by (among others) Imperial College, and which tilted governments across the world into drastic action, relied on a presumption of continued exponential growth — that with a consistent R number of significantly above 1 and a consistent death rate, very quickly the majority of the population would be infected and huge numbers of deaths would be recorded.

But Professor Levitt’s point is that that hasn’t actually happened anywhere, even in countries that have been relatively lax in their responses …

He believes that both some degree of prior immunity and large numbers of asymptomatic cases are important factors … He describes indiscriminate lockdown measures as ‘a huge mistake,’ and advocates a ‘smart lockdown’ policy, focused on … protecting elderly people.”

Quarantining the Healthy Was Unnecessary

Now, evidence for prior resistance to SARS-CoV-2 is emerging, adding support to Levitt’s suspicions that the lack of exponential mortality growth may be due to the fact that a majority simply aren’t (and weren’t) susceptible to the disease in the first place.

A study² published May 14, 2020, in the journal Cell, found 40% to 60% of people who had not been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 still had resistance to the virus on the T-cell level. According to the authors, this suggests there’s “cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.”

In other words, exposure to coronaviruses that cause the common cold appear to allow your immune system to recognize and fight off SARS-CoV-2 as well. This is great news. Professor Karl Friston, another statistician whose expertise is in mathematical modeling, believes resistance or prior immunity could be as high as 80%. Sayers reports:³

“[Friston] invented the now standard ‘statistical parametric mapping’ technique for understanding brain imaging — and for the past months he has been applying his particular method of Bayesian analysis, which he calls ‘dynamic causal modelling,’ to the available Covid-19 data …

His models suggest that the stark difference between outcomes in the UK and Germany, for example, is not primarily an effect of different government actions (such as … earlier lockdowns), but is better explained by intrinsic differences between the populations that make the ‘susceptible population’ in Germany — the group that is vulnerable to Covid-19 — much smaller than in the UK ...

Even within the UK, the numbers point to the same thing: that the ‘effective susceptible population’ was never 100%, and was at most 50% and probably more like only 20% of the population.”

Social Distancing Should Not Be Part of ‘New Normal’

As noted by Sayers, this really throws the idea of social distancing being an unavoidable part of the post-COVID-19 “new normal” into question. What’s more, once sensible behaviors such as staying home when sick are entered into this model, the effect of lockdown efforts “literally goes away,” Friston says.

According to Friston, the reason why Sweden and the U.K., for example, have had very similar mortality rates despite vastly different government interventions (Sweden did not impose mandatory stay-at-home orders or business closures while the U.K. did), is because Swedes who felt sick stayed home anyway. This is common sense for most people, especially during an active pandemic.

When Sayer asks Friston to comment on Neil Ferguson’s now discredited Imperial College model⁴ that predicted the death of 2 million Americans and 500,000 Britons unless draconian lockdown and social distancing measures were implemented, he replied that Ferguson’s models were correct “under the qualification that the population they were talking about is much smaller than you might imagine.”

“In other words, Ferguson was right that around 80% of susceptible people would rapidly become infected, and … that of those between 0.5% and 1% would die — he just missed the fact that the relevant ‘susceptible population’ was only ever a small portion of people …” Sayer writes.

Pandemic Response Plan Has Been a Giant Flop

Why did U.S. public health officials persuade lawmakers to almost immediately shutter businesses and issue stay-at-home orders for most of our population rather than implementing traditional disease control measures that identify, quarantine and treat the sick? Remember, quarantining is normally reserved for those infected, not for the healthy.

This is a question that deserves an answer. We’re unlikely to get it, however, because the answer would likely reveal that this pandemic has been yet another massive fraud to enrich multinational corporations at the expense of just about everything and everyone else. And, if it weren’t for the captured mainstream media, it would never have worked.

At this point, we can clearly see that an all-encompassing global totalitarian plan had been quietly put together, piece by piece, behind the scenes, only to be put into action once a pandemic — real or imagined — emerged. A key player in the coordination of this plan has been Bill Gates, who stands to profit in any number of ways, both from vaccines and technological rollouts.

As noted by investigative journalist James Corbett in his four-part Corbett Report on Gates,⁵ “every aspect of the current coronavirus pandemic involves organizations, groups and individuals with direct ties to Gates funding.”

This includes the World Health Organization, of course, but also the two research groups responsible for shaping the decision to lock down the U.K. and U.S. — the Imperial College COVID-19 Research Team responsible for the grossly inaccurate mortality model, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation — as well as the National Institutes of Health, and the NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been leading the White House pandemic response team.

Then, of course, there was Event 201, conducted six weeks before the infections started. This was a tabletop exercise staged in October 2019 in which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security got together to gauge the nation’s preparedness for a global coronavirus pandemic.

While that exercise revealed “massive preparedness gaps,”⁶ we’ve seen no shortage of preparedness in terms of comprehensive plans for how to track and trace the infection and vaccine status of everyone using electronic means.

Ditto for plans requiring everyone to carry vaccine records in order to regain the freedom to work, get an education, travel and engage in social activities going forward. I wrote about this elaborate proposal in “Rockefeller Foundation’s Plan to Track Americans.” As noted by Corbett:⁷

“Given the incredible reach that the tentacles of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have into every corner of the global health markets, it should not be surprising that the foundation has been intimately involved with every stage of the current pandemic crisis, either.

In effect, Gates has merely used the wealth from his domination of the software market to leverage himself into a similar position in the world of global health. The whole process has been cloaked in the mantle of selfless philanthropy, but the foundation is not structured as a charitable endeavor.

Instead, it maintains a dual structure: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation distributes money to grantees, but a separate entity, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, manages the endowment assets. These two entities often have overlapping interests, and … grants given by the foundation often directly benefit the value of the trust’s assets.”

Medical Mafia

Indeed, I wrote about this illegal setup in “Bill Gates — Most Dangerous Philanthropist in Modern History?” The Canadian citizen journalist who goes by the name "Amazing Polly," has also detailed how global health groups shamelessly use extortion and protection to achieve their goals, which have everything to do with building wealth and nothing to do with protecting or improving public health.⁸ For more details on this, see “Global Health Mafia Protection.”

In Mafia protection racket schemes, people will pay extortion money when they are convinced bad things can or will happen if they don’t pay the fee. The same phenomenon is now seen with governments who might have been skeptical about an imminent pandemic until the arrival of COVID-19 and now want to pay for preparedness.

All in all, it’s looking like a giant racketeering scheme. And to keep it going into the future, they need everything to fall in line with the idea that nothing can ever be the same as it was pre-COVID-19. Well, that is a lie.

Throughout this pandemic, common-sense prevention strategies have been rebuffed and denigrated, helpful treatment strategies have been suppressed, and scientists and doctors have been censored for speaking out about the usefulness of alternative therapies or older, inexpensive drugs such as hydrochloroquine.

All of this is evidence that public health is not a primary concern but transferring assets to the very wealthy certainly is. Many will be enriched from the global vaccination program and its tracking and tracing technologies, which will ultimately be tied to digital IDs and digital economies.

Enough is enough. The global population needs to see the plan for what it is — a global, totalitarian power grab — and renounce it. We’ve allowed fear to dramatically alter our world. Let’s not make things worse by making those alterations permanent. As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher in her thought-provoking commentary, “How Fear of a Virus Changed Our World”:

“Some of the core values, which have shaped our history and defined who we are as a nation, have been put on trial in 2020 because we are paralyzed by fear of a virus that doctors say could be hiding in the breath of every person who comes near us and contaminate everything we touch …

The authoritarian lockdown approach by governments to the coronavirus pandemic has been framed as a choice between safety and liberty … Public health officials have persuaded lawmakers to divide the American people into two classes: those who are considered “essential” and allowed to continue working and those who are considered “nonessential” and barred from earning a living.

Small businesses and services judged to be “nonessential” have been forced to close their doors … while, paradoxically, everyone is free to roam through grocery stores, drug stores and big box stores like Walmart, Target and Home Depot, owned by big corporations … What we have allowed to be done in the name of public health has no parallel in American history or human history.

The world did not lock down during centuries of epidemics of smallpox, which was a highly contagious virus and had a case fatality rate of 30% … Societies have not closed businesses and schools to prevent tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads the same way as coronavirus and has a case fatality rate still between 20% and 70% …

Why are the majority of people in educated societies like the U.S. cowering in fear before a virus that does not cause any symptoms or complications in the majority of children and adults under the age of 65, and has a mortality rate of about 1%, which is even lower if all the asymptomatic infections are counted? …

You have an opportunity, right now, to contact your elected representatives and let them know how you feel about protecting civil liberties and vaccine informed consent rights in your state. Sign up to use NVIC’s Advocacy Portal to defend voluntary vaccine choices.

And, when you go to the polls November 4, 2020, think hard about who you are voting for and why. If you don’t like the response to the COVID-19 pandemic that your governor or other elected representatives have made, your vote in this and every election beyond this one could affect whether America will continue to value liberty or throw it away.”

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If you've been meaning to update your old headphones to something a little fancier, now's the time to spend up while leading brands like Bose, Beats by Dre, Sony and more celebrate the end of the financial year. 

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