Health & Fitness

Find it hard to fit in a full-body workout every day? Bec Chidiac, co-owner of Peaches Pilates, shares a 10-minute standing circuit you can do anywhere that'll lengthen, strengthen and tone your entire body. 

from Fitness | body+soul https://ift.tt/2HeZcqy

Sam Wood shares five simple no-cook lunch recipes each under 400 calories to help you lose weight without starving yourself.

from Nutrition | body+soul https://ift.tt/3o2Usox

Once Natalie Sarah gave up her unhealthy snacking habits, she saw the weight fall off. Here, she shares all her diet and exercise secrets.

from Diet | body+soul https://ift.tt/3kbNlIh

Trying to lose weight? Tracking your calories will help. Here's a handy guide from accredited dietitian Melissa Meier.

from Nutrition | body+soul https://ift.tt/2HkHr9i

Model Chrissy Teigen has broken her silence on social media weeks after the tragedy of losing her third child Jack, due to pregnancy complications.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/3o5eeA0

Former TV star Pete Evans is in the spotlight again for making controversial anti-vaxxer claims in a discussion about potential COVID-19 vaccines.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/37qddMK

In good news, Premier Daniel Andrews has announced the easing of some coronavirus restrictions in Melbourne and regional Victoria after days of intense lockdown. Here's a full rundown of all the changes.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/2Hbsy9h

While SARS-CoV-2 is a rampant virus that can cause severe problems in vulnerable individuals, the real pandemic — meaning the underlying cause that makes people susceptible to complications from the infection in the first place — is metabolic inflexibility or insulin resistance.

In this interview, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist and author of “The 21 Day Immunity Plan,” delves into the specifics and explains the role insulin resistance plays in the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The real pandemic is poor metabolic health, or metabolic inflexibility,” Malhotra says. “I had become aware, as early on as March, when we were getting data from China and Italy, that there was a clear link between conditions related to excess body fat, in simple terms defined as poor metabolic health, [and] worse outcomes from COVID-19.

We're talking about conditions like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and, of course, obesity. And that data kept emerging. That link was so clear, and it wasn't just out of the blue.

As somebody who's been a practicing doctor for almost two decades, it's very clear — we know people who have poor metabolic health certainly tend to have worse outcomes from really any infection, but COVID-19 has highlighted it more, and made us think about it more.

We're talking about chest infections, hospital admissions with pneumonia [and] Type 2 diabetics tend to do a lot worse. I was looking at that data and thought, ‘There's something missing out of this mainstream conversation.’ It was getting a lot of immediate coverage across the world, in the U.K., in the United States, but no one was talking about lifestyle.”

Obesity Is a Significant COVID-19 Risk Factor

Aside from old age, obesity has been identified as one of the primary risk factors for being hospitalized with COVID-19 — doubling the risk of hospitalization in patients under the age of 60 in one study¹ — even if the individual has no other obesity-related health problems. A French study^2,3 also found obese patients treated for COVID-19 were more likely to require mechanical ventilation.

One hypothesis for why obesity is worsening COVID-19 has to do with the fact that obesity causes chronic inflammation.⁴ Having more proinflammatory cytokines in circulation increases your risk of experiencing a cytokine storm.

A cytokine storm response is typically the reason why people die from infections, be it the seasonal flu, Ebola, urinary tract infection or COVID-19. Obesity also makes you more vulnerable to infectious diseases by lowering your immune function.^5,6,7,8,9,10

Insulin Resistance Augments Infection Risks

Obesity is often rooted in insulin resistance, brought on by a flawed diet, and insulin resistance is another top risk factor for COVID-19 that worsens outcomes and increases your risk of death. An April 15, 2020, article¹¹ in The Scientist reviews evidence^12,13 showing how higher blood glucose levels impact viral replication and the development of cytokine storms.

While the research in question looked at influenza A-induced cytokine storms, these findings may well be applicable in COVID-19 as well. In a Science Advances press release, co-author Shi Liu stated:¹⁴

“We believe that glucose metabolism contributes to various COVID-19 outcomes since both influenza and COVID-19 can induce a cytokine storm, and since COVID-19 patients with diabetes have shown higher mortality.”

COVID-19 Risk Factors Can Be Rapidly Ameliorated

The good news, as Malhotra stresses, is that the lifestyle factors that make you more prone to severe COVID-19 infection and death can be modified and ameliorated in as little as 21 days, simply by changing your diet. Like me, Malhotra feels this has been sorely missing from pandemic response messaging.

“They should have been saying, ‘Listen, there's no better time for you to really think about trying to improve your health and looking into what you eat, [get] moderate exercise, sleep, all those things,” Malhotra says. “But it wasn't happening.”

To fill the information gap, Malhotra began writing. Initially, he wrote a series of articles for British newspapers. He also got the opportunity to speak about this on Sky News.

“I made it very clear. I said, ‘Listen, there's a chance at some point we're all going to get this virus, and we want to make sure that we're in the best position to be able to deal with it, so that we don't get sick from it when it happens.’

I think I was probably, maybe, the only doctor who had the opportunity to say that in a mainstream media, probably in the world, at that time; I think no one else had said it.”

As more data became available, Malhotra’s writings turned into “The 21 Day Immunity Plan.” Malhotra also had the opportunity to share information with the U.K. Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, and by the time the book was finished, Prime Minister Boris Johnson came out saying something needs to be done, on a policy level, about the obesity epidemic.

That said, we don’t have to have government policies in place to personally implement these lifestyle strategies. The information is available. It’s well-documented, noncontroversial and relatively simple to do. Surprisingly, Malhotra’s message has been largely well-received, and hasn’t been censored to the extent that many others have.

Unfortunately, we’re still fighting against a tsunami of dietary misinformation and false advertising on a daily basis, which makes it difficult to really get this message out and make it stick. “If every day the government was putting out a message saying, ‘Metabolic health is the key,’ then we would have a really big impact,” Malhotra says.

Most People Have Poor Metabolic Health

The central thesis of Malhotra’s book is that we have a pandemic of metabolic inflexibility or metabolic ill health. There are five primary parameters of metabolic ill health, which include having:

1. A large waist circumference
2. Prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes
3. Prehypertension or hypertension (high blood pressure)
4. High blood triglycerides
5. Low HDL cholesterol

If you have all of those five parameters within the normal ranges, you are in good metabolic health. Having three or more abnormal parameters is indicative of metabolic syndrome. Metabolic inflexibility can further be divided into two primary subsets, namely:

Metabolic Syndrome Triples COVID-19 Fatality Risk

Malhotra notes:

“The data from COVID-19 shows the highest risks of death and hospitalization are in people with metabolic syndrome, not obesity. Obesity probably doubles your risk of death, but with metabolic syndrome, it's around a 3.5 times increased risk of death — more than threefold — and about five times the risk of hospitalization if you get COVID-19.

So that is the major problem. And the reason why that's important is it also affects many, many people. This is why BMI [body mass index], to be honest, I think should be thrown out; I mean, it's useless, it's outdated.

We should be looking at metabolic health, because up to 40% of people with a so called normal BMI, who may be told they've got a healthy weight, actually are metabolically unhealthy. That's a huge proportion of people, and there are disparities depending on which ethnicity you're from.

But the basic problem with BMI, which is a calculation based upon your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared, is it doesn't take into consideration your body fat percentage, your muscle mass, your ethnicity …

It misses a huge group of people who are probably vulnerable and could institute lifestyle changes to help themselves if they were advised to do so. But a lot of them aren't being advised because they're being told they’ve got a healthy weight.

If everybody knew their metabolic health markers and were then given advice to do things about it, then, as I point out in the book, within a few weeks you'd probably notice significant changes. Of course, it's going to vary from person to person.

With regard to vitamin D, it is again something we've ignored for a long time. In the U.K., a significant proportion of people are either deficient or severely deficient in vitamin D, and it has such an important role in immune function. Most cell receptors in your body have vitamin D receptors, and it is involved in enhancing both innate and adaptive immunity.”

The bottom line is you need to have the five metabolic parameters listed above within the normal ranges, and you need an optimal blood level of vitamin D, which is now thought to be between 40 ng/mL and 60 ng/mL.

“There was a study in Indonesia that showed that in people hospitalized with COVID-19 — those who had severe vitamin D deficiency versus those that had normal ranges of vitamin D in their blood — there was a tenfold difference in death rates, which is extraordinary. So, [vitamin D] certainly has a very important role to play,” Malhotra says.

“The ideal scenario is to get vitamin D from sunlight because it actually stays in your bloodstream longer. But, certainly, at least through the winter months, you should be taking a supplement. And I think the good thing about that is it's cheap …

I suspect getting good health actually is going to come from just eating real food, and being out in nature, and doing more exercise, and reducing our stress, and social connection; all of those things, I think, are the key to longevity and good quality of life.”

How to Improve Your Metabolic Health

So, just how do you improve those five metabolic parameters? Malhotra addresses this in his book, of course. In summary, to optimize your metabolic health and reverse metabolic syndrome, you’ll want to:

As noted by Malhotra:

“Combining all those together — that synergy of the diet and all the other lifestyle factors — has profound and rapid effects on health. So that's where we need to change the narrative.

One of the bits of advice to start with is what you should cut out ultraprocessed food and low quality carbs. At least go cold turkey for a few weeks. You may reintroduce them or have them as occasional treats, but this should not be making up the bulk of your calorie consumption.

That is really where we need to start. If you cut that out, then you will also automatically reduce your refined carbs, sugar and omega-6 oils. All of those things are going to be significantly reduced from your diet.”

Time-Restricted Eating Schedule Boosts Metabolic Health

In his book, Malhotra also recommends implementing a time-restricted eating schedule or intermittent fasting where you limit your eating to a window of, ideally, six to eight hours a day.

“My cousin, who lives in California, struggled for most of his childhood and early adulthood as being particularly overweight,” Malhotra says. “Now, he's probably the slimmest and maybe the fittest member of the whole family because he changed his diet.

He is religious with his time-restricted eating. I mean, he does it every day, and now he's literally got a flat stomach, he's in optimal metabolic health and it's amazing. But he told me it took time for him to really see the massive benefits of it. It took about a year to get rid of the last bit of fat around his belly.”

More Information

To learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of Malhotra’s book, “The 21 Day Immunity Plan.” It’s an easy read that emphasizes and summarizes the core lifestyle basics you need to understand and apply to improve your metabolic health, which in turn will reduce your risk of complications should you come down with symptomatic COVID-19 illness. Social Media info for Dr. Malhotra can be found on his site at doctoraseem.com.

from Articles https://ift.tt/2T6F4cy
via IFTTT

In this interview, social justice and anti-GMO advocate Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses her book, "Oneness Vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom," which she co-wrote with her son, in which she argues that the ultra-wealthy elite are responsible for a majority of the environmental, financial and health crises currently facing us.

In reality, it's really about the 0.001% — the small number of billionaires and centibillionaires who have become ultra-rich over the past 30 years or so. Most of them didn't exist before globalization. The 1% is just a useful metaphor for the ruling elite that the publisher thought would be easier to communicate.

One of the key players is, no surprise, Bill Gates, whose wealth and "philanthropic" efforts have garnered him unprecedented influence over agriculture and global health policies that threaten food security and human health.

"I was in Paris for the climate summit, and I've been doing this UN Summit since the Earth summit in '92. I've been doing the Biodiversity Convention, drafting of clauses, including Article 19.1, which basically required biosafety and assessment of GMOs. So, I was very surprised that, for the first time, the billionaires were on the stage with the heads of state," she says.

The Ongoing Transfer of Wealth

One of the "solutions" to climate change offered by this billionaire club was geoengineering, which in reality is no solution at all. As noted by Shiva, if the climate is already changing for the worse, engineering temperatures, deflecting sunlight, dumping iron fillings on the ocean and chemicals in the sky, and creating artificial volcanoes, you're simply creating additional problems without solving the original one.

At the end of the August 2020 update of the book, she also discusses COVID-19, and how this engineered pandemic has catalyzed the transfer of wealth to the rich. While global lockdowns have decimated small businesses and left many to struggle financially, the rich have amassed fantastic profits.

"The 2008 crisis was very clearly about deregulation of the financial economy," she says. "It was about collateral, it was about taking securities, bundling up risk, and then the system totally collapsed because it was really trading in fictions. But I've been working on the economy, because I started to work on the seed in 1987.

Companies wanted to own and patent life. That's how my journey on GMO started. But they also wanted to change the trade laws. They wanted to own seed as their creation. They wanted an intellectual property treaty in the GATT. I first heard this in a 1987 [United Nations] meeting.

That's when I decided: a) I would save seeds, b) I would keep track of the GATT and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The antiglobalization movement grew out of that, and the International Forum on Globalization. We shut down WTO in Seattle, which shows the power of the people. We will not allow this lie of seed being Monsanto's invention.

I worked with our [Indian] parliament, I worked with our government to write laws. Article 3G [says] seeds are not inventions. This is what has prevented Monsanto from ripping off Indian farmers even more than they did. They've been taken to court now for the illegal collection of technology fees …

Basically, what we have today is this transfer of wealth. Monsanto's behavior is also the big tech's behavior. Do they produce anything? No. They only collect rents on digital platforms. They're rent collectors …

I saw the seed issue with Monsanto. I said, 'Here they are collecting rents from seed, which they didn't make. Then we won't let them own it.' In effect, whether it's Amazon or Gates, they're basically rent collectors. What they've done with this pandemic is literally create a closed economy, which depends on them and their rent collection."

The eight-minute video below provides a sobering summary of the massive wealth transfer that has occurred in 2020 thanks to pandemic lockdowns, during which small businesses were forced to close while giant multinational companies were allowed to stay open and thereby monopolize the market. The end result is the largest transfer of wealth in modern history.

The End of Democracy

Shiva goes on to review how India mobilized against Walmart's encroachment, which threatened to destroy local businesses. The COVID-19 lockdowns, however, have prevented the same kind of mobilization against the tech and retail giants.

As local businesses around the world have had to close their doors for months on end, Amazon.com's power has exploded. Amazon is even encroaching on grocery suppliers.

"I was just reading a paper, that the super wealthy in the U.S. have transferred $50 trillion to themselves [over the past 30 years; the globalization period] … While they rob you of your job, they're still extracting [money from] you for that forced software program on digital payments, for software programs on … digital education.

Poor Indian children, who could afford a universal education, now cannot afford education because their parents have no smartphones. So, we are seeing an engineered imposition of an economy. A healthy economy grows as an evolution with choices, with justice, with equity …

True economies would say, 'Here is what I bring. If my digital [currency is] better than your cash, choose it. Is my forced vaccination better than your immunity? Make your choice.' The minute choice is removed from people's life, democracies stop. When the choice is removed from our conditions of being, our conditions of living, then life is threatened …

What is globalization but deregulation of commerce? It is knocking down every law that was put in place by democratic societies for the protection of the environment, the protection of health, the right to education, the rights of workers. Now that's what's being targeted."

In India, they recently eliminated all labor laws, and they're trying to remove the Farmers' Rights Act, as well as environmental laws. This is what allows for the transfer of wealth to happen, Shiva says.

The End Game

As explained by Shiva, all of these companies are essentially rent collectors. Facebook turns our minds into a raw material that is then capitalized upon. "Gates is particularly vicious because through the Gates Foundation, he pretends to be doing philanthropy," she says.

But with every philanthropic endeavor, he carves out new colonies from which he can collect new rents and make new investments. "That's why no matter how much he gives, he gets richer and richer," Shiva says. "A genuine giver would get poorer."

In her book, she explains how, without Gates, there would be no commercial gene editing, for example, which is the new GMO. He created a company called Editas Medicine Inc. to facilitate the patenting of these new climate-resilient plants, with which they aim to create new medicines. "He will do biofortification to solve the nutrition problem. He is particularly vicious," she says. As for what the ultimate goal might be, Shiva says:

"The first thing is, of course, they want to use their money-making tools to make more money. So, it is a dictatorship of the technology balance. That's why people should be paying a lot more attention to the violent imposition of digitalization.

A lot of my friends, who never studied the roots of these violence systems, who never understood that agrichemicals came from Hitler's concentration camps and that the agrichemical industry is the poison cartel responsible for the genocide, they're continuing that genocide.

Technologies as tools of domination and exploitation are not neutral. A lot of progressive think, 'More digitalization, more democracy.' How can a surveillance economy be an enlargement of your freedom? You have to have the systems in place, the regulations in place, the choices in place to be able to make these technologies a servant and not your master."

The Global Merger

They also want to merge all of these various industries together — agriculture, technology and finance. Shiva recounts how, in 2016, India banned all cash and made digital transactions compulsory. In short order, "90% of poor people lost their savings, their incomes," she says, as small, local economies evaporated. Meanwhile, the wealthy elites also control the world's economy via their asset funds.

"Corporations don't own themselves anymore. Even the corporations are owned by the billionaires, the same BlackRocks, the same Vanguards control every big company, Coca-Cola to McDonald's to Boeing. Look at anything in the world, it's the billionaire money and their asset management funds.

Last year, BlackRock increased its wealth from $1 trillion to $7 trillion, which means the billionaires increased their wealth. During the lockdown, they invaded even more deeply into the Amazon and became richer.

So, these investment asset management funds are the billionaires' wealth, and it is increasing. That is merging with IT and information technology and the tech barons, and it's merging with biotechnology and the chemical industry.

That's why they're talking about digitalization of agriculture — farming without farmers and, worse, food without food. One of the big pushes of Gates and Silicon Valley is into fake food."

As noted by Shiva, while Big Biotech claims GMOs will save your health and protect the planet, these pesticide-laden plants are in fact doing the complete opposite.

We Are the Throwaways

There's also the issue of social justice. She cites Gandhi, who said that if you're in doubt about what the right thing to do is, "bring the face of the most vulnerable person to your mind's eye and do what is good for them." If you think it will harm them more, don't do it.

"They deliberately want to get rid of large parts of humanity," Shiva says. "First through hunger, then through sickness. They want a digital economy, they want a sick economy. Otherwise, you wouldn't be spending all your time on Big Pharma; you'd spend your time making sure that the smaller farmer doesn't get destroyed …

On a planetary scale, we are seeing these irresponsible, greedy, indifferent, callous men bring the world, and humanity, to a brink. That's why we have to act and find creative ways …

All of these tech barons who have taken over the economy, hiding behind the virus, are all jumping into life sciences. Google has a new life sciences division. This will be the final defeat of Mother Nature, At a time [when] the world is waking up to the rules of nature and healthy bodies, healthy ecosystems, an eco-healthy planet, they're still carrying on the Colonial franchise of defeating Mother Nature."

The Great Economic Reset

None of these things is coming out of left field. They've been carefully planned for many decades. We now see clear evidence that a "great economic reset" is in the works, which will transition everything over to digital currencies.

As noted by Shiva, the industrial revolution shifted our mindset to one where we thought of nature as dead. The result was ecological destruction and the fragmentation of society. The coming economic reset is basically part of an effort to further manipulate and shift our mental framework toward something wholly unnatural. Shiva says:

"In India, they attacked and are still attacking organic and created something called the Zero-Budget Natural Farming … What they're basically doing is giving big loans to the state, which then gives fat loans to the farmer. In the meantime, Gates is mining farm data.

He's getting people placed in the homes of farmers to mine data. Then they'll create algorithms to sell that data back. But all of this is now being reduced to carbon in the soil. You'll get zero % for what you grow. You can get no needs of yours met through food and fodder, but we will allow you to trade in the global market on the carbon in your soil, and that's what would keep you alive. This whole financialization of nature is one aspect.

The second aspect in the great reset is to redo the economy to make it look like those who are now disposable throwaway people deserved it. They created the language of competition.

[When I was writing] my epilogue, I had just received Microsoft's patent, [which] basically reduces human beings to users. Our brain activity is tapped into in various ways. Everyone wants to have smart wear these days. I should call it spyware. That data goes through algorithms. Those algorithms will decide what [we are worthy of and] Bitcoins will be allocated to us.

But every child born is born worthy. Every member of society has equal human rights. So, they're undoing everything we've put in place on humanity, on human rights, on democracy. This is where we need to be alert.

I think the whole issue of the pandemic and the lockdown was useful for them for two reasons. One, they could get everyone afraid. Second, they could get everyone distracted while they took over the economy, they took over our minds. They basically transferred all the remaining wealth to themselves."

More Information

To learn more, please listen to the interview in its entirety, and be sure to pick up a copy of "Oneness Vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom." You can also find more details about Shiva's work on Navdanya.org.

"I personally feel that this assault is coming at a time when, in India and the world, there's a new rising of consciousness of the planet and its living systems, of our health and our living systems, and the connection between our health and the health of the planet. At this point … it needs a lot of brutal violence to impose. So, to the extent they can keep the virus as their shield to hide behind, they will."

I agree with Shiva when she says that rather than allowing COVID-19 fear-mongering take over our lives, we need to look at the infrastructures of life, humanity, democracy, economy and taxation, "and start thinking about who's taking them away from us."

"You have to protect that which you treasure," she says. "Freedom and life are what are being taken right now … We have to resist fear and we have to resist hate. We are thinking beings; let us use the minds we've been given and let us rebuild community.

Again, I don't think the 6-foot distancing is by accident. Why do they use the words 'social distancing' rather than 'physical distancing'? Six feet is a physical measure. They … want us to forget that being a human being means being in community. They want us to be users of gadgets.

We must be community. We must remember that we are interrelated to the rest of life on Earth and to society. That's why we have to be talking [about how to] rebuild regenerative economies … I think we lost a lot of time thinking the only issue was energy, how energy is produced. We lost two decades of how food is produced.

I really believe that if people start becoming aware that eating good food is the single most important [strategy for health], and growing food in the right way is the single most important part to regeneration of the planet, this will rebuild community …

I think we need to start doing homework to say, 'Where's the wealth going? How should the tax flow look? How is our money going to make the billionaires richer? How can they keep extracting more money out of us?

How is our public money the new subsidy to create the infrastructure for greed, rather than be the public resources to create the infrastructure of life, of care and of solidarity? … What in our current legal framework can stop this hemorrhaging of public money to move upwards to the billionaires?

These are foundational issues. Who are we as human beings? How will we live in the future? What is the future we will create long after the robber barons are gone, because they were there in the 1930s and we learned how to get rid of them. If there's one project we should have, it's strategies to get rid of the robber barons, whatever it takes …

I don't think we have the luxury to be hopeless. Hope is something you must cultivate on a daily basis. Cultivating hope is cultivating resistance. Cultivating hope is cultivating the strategy."

from Articles https://ift.tt/2ThJhul
via IFTTT