Health & Fitness

03/06/21

Why intermittent fasting could be the key to having more energy

Astrocytes derived from patients with bipolar disorder malfunction

Cells called astrocytes derived from the induced pluripotent stem cells of patients with bipolar disorder offer suboptimal support for neuronal activity. This malfunction can be traced to an inflammation-promoting molecule called interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is secreted by astrocytes. The results highlight the potential role of astrocyte-mediated inflammatory signaling in the psychiatric disease, although further investigation is needed.

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Physics camp has proven benefits for high school girls

Vision impairment is associated with mortality

Will You Obey the Criminal Authoritarians?

In 1962, in a now infamous experiment shown in the video above, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram tested the limits of human obedience to authority. The study administrator instructed the study subjects — the "teachers" — to give electric shocks to a student.

The "student" was actually an actor, but the study subjects were unaware of this, and complied with the demands to shock him whenever he gave an incorrect response to a question. Even as the student moaned, begged for the shocks to stop and ultimately stopped responding, the subjects obeyed the authority figure in the room and issued painful electric shocks.

The subjects were clearly uncomfortable with the task at times, but still continued, showing that people may carry out heinous acts when ordered to do so by authorities because they feel less responsible for the behavior in this capacity.¹

With societal norms rapidly changing, and an increasingly authoritative environment emerging, it raises the question of whether or not the public will continue to blindly obey criminal authoritarians, no matter the consequences.

'An Order Is an Order'

The Milgram experiment was conducted following the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who used the Nuremberg defense, or "befehl ist befehl," which translates to "an order is an order." The Milgram experiment clearly showed that people would act against their own judgment and harm another person to extreme lengths simply because they were told to do so.

The subjects first experienced a 45-volt shock themselves — so they would know what it felt like — then administered the shocks in increasing intervals. They were labeled from 15 to 450 volts — from slight shock all the way up to "extreme intensity shock," "danger: severe shock," and the strongest voltage, "XXX." According to Gregorio Billikopf Encina with the University of California:²

"In response to the supposed jolts, the 'learner' (actor) would begin to grunt at 75 volts; complain at 120 volts; ask to be released at 150 volts; plead with increasing vigor, next; and let out agonized screams at 285 volts.

Eventually, in desperation, the learner was to yell loudly and complain of heart pain. At some point the actor would refuse to answer any more questions. Finally, at 330 volts the actor would be totally silent — that is, if any of the teacher participants got so far without rebelling first."

Ultimately, 65% of the subjects continued through the study and administered the maximum voltage level, even though they knew it was wrong. Encina noted:

"Participants demonstrated a range of negative emotions about continuing. Some pleaded with the learner, asking the actor to answer questions carefully. Others started to laugh nervously and act strangely in diverse ways. Some subjects appeared cold, hopeless, somber, or arrogant. Some thought they had killed the learner.

Nevertheless, participants continued to obey, discharging the full shock to learners. One man who wanted to abandon the experiment was told the experiment must continue. Instead of challenging the decision of the experimenter, he proceeded, repeating to himself, 'It's got to go on, it's got to go on."

The Milgram experiment was later criticized for being unethical and in the U.S. studies that cause subjects serious distress were later banned. However, similar studies in Europe confirmed the results, suggesting that people will willingly and blindly obey authoritarian orders, especially if they feel disconnected from their actions.³

We Must Not Surrender to Lockdowns

Case in point: lockdowns. The initial lockdowns were intended to flatten the COVID-19 curve, but even after that happened, lockdowns continued, sometimes two and three times. With each lockdown, society grew more distant, more accepting of isolation and, often, more fearful.

"The first lockdown felt novel; this one — the third — feels onerous," Brendan O'Neill, editor of spiked, wrote. "The first encouraged us to remove ourselves from society but to still think and behave as members of society: Sign up to be an NHS volunteer, deliver medicines to the old, phone a mate and check if he's OK. This one discourages all forms of social connection."⁴

What began as a feeling of coming together with a shared hope that soon we'd be back to rubbing shoulders and shaking hands has morphed into a culture of fear, O'Neill argues, that has us looking at others as vectors of disease rather than human beings:⁵

"The shift from paying lip service to social solidarity to encouraging the populace to think of itself as diseased represents a victory for the degraded view of humanity gifted to us by the culture of fear.

The government's early move from encouraging people to take responsibility for limiting their social interactions to using older methods of terror to ensure compliance with lockdown measures confirmed the culture of fear's reduction of people from citizens to be engaged with to problems to be managed."

Once COVID-19 dwindles, and talk of the pandemic is no longer making headlines, the threat of the "New Normal" will remain — and in many ways it represents an even bigger threat than physical disease. As O'Neill writes:⁶

"Those who underestimate the culture of fear will be ill-prepared for these future battles. They will have a tendency to surrender to the New Normal. The rest of us should stand firm, even in the face of smears and wilful misrepresentations, and continue to recognise and confront the real and debilitating consequences that fear has on everyday life and on humanity's future."

What We Lose Is Exponentially Harder to Get Back

It's essential that your Constitutional rights and civil liberties be safeguarded against unlawful government overreach. Yet many are willingly giving up freedoms that, once gone, may be difficult, if not impossible, to get back. Vaccine passports are just one example.

By showing proof that you've received a COVID-19 vaccine, through a digital certificate or app on your phone, the hope is that you can once again board an airplane and travel freely, attend a concert or enjoy a meal in your favorite restaurant, just like you used to.

Except, being required to present your "papers" in order to live your life isn't actually freedom at all — it's a loss of personal liberty that you once had, one that disappeared right before your eyes and one that's setting the stage for increased surveillance and erosion of your privacy.

"Once your civil liberties are lost, they are difficult to regain," the Bozeman Daily Chronicle pointed out. "While it is the duty of government to protect the health and welfare of society, this must be balanced against the potential permanent loss of individual liberties."⁷ But right now we're facing a battle of freedom versus tyranny.

"No constitutional right is secure if it conflicts with the orthodoxy of the day," the Bozeman Daily Chronicle continued. "To governments it often is not a question of policy but an exercise of power to order submission to restrictions that obviate fundamental freedoms."⁸

Long Term Lockdowns Are Child and Elder Abuse

Public acknowledgment of the harms of lockdowns is still lacking, even as anecdotal reports are pouring in of children and teenagers who have committed suicide over the stress and isolation the lockdowns have caused.⁹

A Penn State news release highlighted the tragedy, with Dr. Taranjeet Jolly, a psychiatrist at Penn State Health's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, stating, "'We've seen an upsurge in really bad suicide attempts' — and the pandemic is likely behind that increase," the press release goes on to say.¹⁰

Children and adolescents with existing mental health issues may be particularly vulnerable to being pushed "over the edge" due to social isolation during the pandemic, Jolly said, adding that family dysfunction and parents' worries — about finances, health and news — trickling down to children also adds to the risks.

Older adults are also struggling, including those who faced lockdowns while living in a long-term care facility. Deprived of social interaction, family visits, meals with friends and activity, many lost the will to live, with loved ones describing accelerated health declines.

"I don't think she's deteriorating I know she is," Judith Gimbel told AARP about her 95-year-old mother living in an assisted living facility in New Jersey. "She's dying a slow death in there."¹¹

For those with loved ones suffering from dementia and living in memory care facilities, the lockdown can be especially traumatic, as their loved ones may not understand their absence or know why they're in quarantine. Social isolation is also a known detriment to people with dementia.

"The whole issue of isolation is huge right now," Doug Pace, director of mission partnerships for the Alzheimer's Association, told National Geographic. "Loneliness, helplessness and boredom, we know, is something that, even in normal times, can really affect the quality of life of someone with dementia."¹²

A report by the Well Being Trust (WBT) and the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in Family Medicine and Primary Care estimated that up to 75,000 people may die during the COVID-19 pandemic from drug or alcohol misuse and suicide — so-called "deaths of despair."¹³

Are Important Lessons From History Being Forgotten?

The book “Five Chimneys” is a Holocaust memoir written by Olga Lengyel, who was kept as a prisoner in Auschwitz. She describes the nightmare of experimental drugs and vaccines being tested on prisoners and white powder sprinkled on food to interfere with hormones and fertility.

The German company Bayer is specifically mentioned for sending vials of drugs without labels to be used in the experiments, some of which included sterilization and sex changes. Given their crimes against humanity, it’s shocking that a company like Bayer is still around today and, not only that, but is a major force in the food industry, having acquired Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion.¹⁴

As poignantly noted in the video above, it’s essential to pay attention and learn from the mistakes and lessons of history, lest we be doomed to repeat them.

COVID Accelerated Plans to Take Away Everything, Even Rights

Top political figures and Big Tech leaders are using the common refrain that the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to "reset" and "build back better." "Build back better" is a tagline of sorts for the Great Reset, and though this is being played off as a new initiative, it's simply a rebranding of terms for technocracy and the old "New World Order."

An elite oligarchy is behind this technocratic plan to govern society through technology, programmed by scientists and technicians and automated through the use of artificial intelligence, rather than through democratically elected politicians and government leaders.

The current pandemic is being used as a justification for the movement, but the agenda has nothing to do with your health and everything to do with a long-term plan to monitor and control the world through technical surveillance. Part of the "new normal" dictum is that you will own nothing and be happy.

The unstated implication is that the world's resources will be owned and controlled by the technocratic elite, and you'll have to pay for the temporary use of absolutely everything. Nothing will actually belong to you. All items and resources are to be used by the collective, while actual ownership is restricted to an upper stratum of social class.

And, the wealth transfer has already begun. Most big businesses are coming out of the lockdowns largely unscathed, and in most cases with radically increased profits. Contrast this with the 48% of small businesses that are challenged with the threat of closing permanently.¹⁵

Meanwhile, as millions of people struggle with unemployment and financial insecurity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the richest have gotten even richer. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), in partnership with Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), published a report highlighting what they call America's "pre-existing condition": extreme wealth inequality.¹⁶

IPS is regularly updating U.S. unemployment and billionaire wealth during the pandemic, which shows the great divide among the wealthy and the majority of Americans. A number of striking inequalities are revealed by the report, such as:¹⁷

Jeff Bezos's fortune increased by $25 billion from January 1, 2020 to April 15, 2020; his wealth surge alone is greater than Honduras' Gross Domestic Product, which was $23.9 billion in 2018
From January 1, 2020 to April 10, 2020, the wealth of 34 of the richest U.S. billionaires increased tens of millions of dollars; eight of them had their net worth rise by more than $1 billion
U.S. billionaire wealth increased 1,130% from 1990 to 2020; U.S. median wealth grew by 5.37% during the same period

Master Manipulators

The transfer of wealth from average people to the richest through a planned economic collapse is ongoing, but due to masterful manipulation, most are unaware that this is occurring. Public deception is now being carried out at a mass scale, being led and organized by the PR firm the Publicis Groupe.

Publicis is a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a "reset" of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life. As such, Publicis appears to be playing an important role, coordinating the suppression of information that runs counter to the technocratic narrative.

The role of the free press is to counter industry propaganda, but that role has been effectively subverted through advertising, as news outlets rarely report on something that might damage their advertisers.

Publicis has ties to the drug industry, banking industry, NewsGuard/HealthGuard, educational institutions, Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Bing, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, global technocratic institutions like the World Health Organization, national and global NGOs and dominating health websites like WebMD and Medscape.

These connections, taken together, explain how certain views can be so effectively erased while other agendas are pushed forward. Often, it's simply a matter of "linguistic warfare."

Take Russell conjugation, which refers to a linguistic concept defined by Bertrand Russell in 1948. It's a form of spin, in which the factual meaning of words or a phrase remain the same but the emotional connotation is changed depending on which words are used.¹⁸

Take, for instance, "iron-willed" versus "pigheaded" or "snitch" versus "whistleblower." By altering words, you create a completely different perception of the same thing. The same concept is being used by the Great Reset agenda with phrases like "reinventing capitalism"¹⁹ and "build back better."

But the very purpose of "building back better" is to do away with what was once "normal" and replace it with something different that benefits an elite few. Wealthy technocrats, however, will not redistribute their own wealth during the reset, but will only continue to grow their financial empires as the rest of the world consents to giving up their privacy and ownership of everything, including their rights.²⁰

Thinking back to the Milgram experiment, the question then becomes, when tested, who will you obey — your own moral compass, commonsense and reason or a criminal authority?

The Choice Is Yours

It is vital to understand that the vast majority of information you are exposed to in mainstream media is carefully designed propaganda crafted from nearly two decades of stolen personal data collected from you.

This data is then run through very sophisticated and advanced deep learning algorithms that are then able to accurately predict what will trigger your emotions to achieve their desired behavior.

As I have carefully identified in many previous articles, this plan will result in progressive loss in your freedom and liberty that eventually results in tyranny and slavery. So, be ever vigilant and seek the truth so you can understand reality well enough to distinguish between fact and a fictional narrative that promises to offer you liberation but, rather, eventually enslaves you.

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Probiotics to Help Combat COVID

Clinical trials are currently underway to determine if probiotics can help reduce the severity of COVID-19 and improve recovery, as your gut microbiota plays an important role in your overall health. In the past months, doctors and researchers have also discovered that people with poor gut health have a higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19.

As well as influencing digestion and immunity, scientists have discovered you have a gut-brain axis and a gut-lung axis. The gut-brain axis has bidirectional communication, through which microbiota help regulate brain function.

For example, a study¹ published in 2017 found Bifidobacterium breve strain A1 helps to reduce cognitive dysfunction that is normally induced by amyloid-beta in Alzheimer's disease.

In another study,² researchers found a connection between an imbalanced gut microbiome and the development of amyloid plaques in the brain. More recently, researchers have discovered that there is also a gut-lung axis,³ which supports the role your microbiota plays in your immune system, both locally and systemically.

Although your gut and lungs are anatomically distinct, there is growing evidence that communication between the systems helps maintain homeostasis of your immune system. Building on this knowledge, researchers are now investigating a potential and likely link between the health of your gut microbiome and the potential risk for more severe illness from COVID-19.⁴

Poor Gut Health Is Connected to Severe COVID-19

A review of more than 1,000 patient records showed those who presented at admission to the hospital with gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and suspected COVID-19 infection had worse outcomes than those without GI symptoms. The review was done at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and ranked patients with a score of zero to three.

Even after adjusting for comorbidities, demographics and other clinical symptoms, the results held. One of the researchers from Rush University spoke with a journalist from MedPage Today, saying:⁵

"We knew that GI symptoms could be part of the infection but we did not know if they made a difference and conferred higher risk. So we wanted to look into the impact of initial GI symptoms to see if they might coincide with more serious disease and we found that those with GI symptoms also had established risk factors for severity, such as older age, diabetes, obesity, and hypertension."

Of the patients evaluated, 22.4% reported experiencing at least one GI symptom, the most common of which was nausea and vomiting. Researchers also found those with GI symptoms had a higher body mass index, a higher prevalence of diabetes and high blood pressure, and were older. Although this group had a higher rate of ICU admission and intubation, the study did not look at the mortality rate.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention⁶ has also found that while the symptoms of COVID-19 will vary, over the course of the illness many people experience respiratory symptoms, fever, loss of taste and smell and gastrointestinal symptoms. This indicates GI symptoms are among those commonly reported to the CDC.

SciTech Daily⁷ reports that autopsy results and studies have suggested a sizable number of people with severe COVID-19 also have gastrointestinal problems. A paper published in January 2021, suggests the GI symptoms that predict severe COVID-19 are triggered by poor gut health.⁸

Heenam Stanley Kim, Ph.D., from Korea University examined the evidence and proposes that gut dysbiosis can exacerbate the severity of the infection.⁹ This hypothesis is supported by a review of several studies since the start of the pandemic, which also demonstrated that a lack of microbial diversity is associated with more severe disease.¹⁰

An early study of patients admitted to Stanford health care from March 4 to March 24, 2020, also found 31.9% of the patients had GI symptoms on admission.¹¹

Poor Microbiome Diversity Increases Risk of Illness

The links between poor gut microbiota and chronic diseases were made long before COVID-19. One of the underlying factors affecting the diversity of your gut microbiome is a Western diet that is characterized by a high intake of processed foods and sugar and a low intake of fruits and vegetables.¹²

This combination increases chronic inflammation and is associated with several highly prevalent chronic diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. Kim began analyzing studies and making connections when he realized that countries with good medical infrastructures were among the hardest hit.

These countries ate a Western diet low in fiber, and he says that “a fiber-deficient diet is one of the main causes of altered gut microbiomes and such gut microbiome dysbiosis leads to chronic diseases.”¹³

This dietary pattern promotes an inflammatory response in the body and is associated with a sharp rise in “Western diseases.”¹⁴ One observational study of 1,000 healthy men and women found that eating processed foods leads to a significant reduction in gut microbiome diversity.¹⁵

Older age is also associated with reduced diversity of your gut microbiota. When compared to healthy adults, researchers hypothesize this difference may contribute to the development of chronic diseases.¹⁶ The changes in gut microbiome with age may be linked to changes in diet and lifestyle and medication use.

As more information was gathered about the progress of COVID-19, scientists identified groups of individuals with comorbidities that were at higher risk for severe disease. It appears one underlying factor between the groups of people who experience severe illness may be poor gut health.

Dr. Giancarlo Ceccarelli, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Rome, and colleagues, provided probiotics to 70 patients who tested positive for COVID-19.¹⁷ The results of their research were published in Frontiers in Medicine. The control group received hydroxychloroquine, antibiotics and the immunosuppressive drug tocilizumab, either alone or in combination.

The experimental group received the same therapy with the addition of an oral multistrain probiotic. Within 72 hours, diarrhea in those treated with the probiotic was in remission as compared to less than half of the control group.

Additionally, the intervention lowered the risk of developing respiratory failure eightfold and those in the control group had a higher risk of mortality. Ceccarelli commented on the results of the study:¹⁸

"Our preliminary results evidenced an improved survival rate and a lower risk of transfer to an intensive resuscitation for patients supplemented with the probiotic compared with those on standard treatment only. The gut bacteria have a long-reaching immune impact on the pulmonary immune system.

Our results stress the importance of the gut-lung axis in the control of the COVID-19 illness. Bacteriotherapy could represent an additional option for this severe disease."

Probiotics Are a Potential Therapeutic Approach to COVID-19

Kim notes¹⁹ that dysbiosis in the gut microbiota may be the underlying factor that allows SARS-CoV-2 to access the otherwise well-protected cells of your intestinal lining. Ultimately, this allows the virus to leak into the body and affect internal organs, which may explain multiorgan dysfunction in those who are severely ill with the disease.

Kim proposes your gut health may be a critical factor that predicts symptom development. The reduced diversity in bacteria in those with severe COVID-19 includes bacterial families that produce butyrate. This is a short-chain fatty acid that is crucial to reinforcing the gut barrier function.

The resulting leaky gut from an altered microbiota may contribute to these gastrointestinal symptoms and allow the virus access to your internal organs.²⁰ SARS-CoV-2 interacts with ACE2 enzymes found on the surface of many of these organs. This mediates the entry into the host cells and replication, which ultimately damages the tissue and promotes the severity of the illness.

In addition to protecting mucosal barrier function and inhibiting invasion of pathogenic bacteria, there are indications that your gut microbiota have a direct impact on bacteria in the lungs.²¹ Following sepsis, researchers have found an abundance of Bacteroides sp. in the lungs, which may indicate that the composition of your gut microbiome could be a predictive tool.

The first trial has started in Canada, but doctors in China have been using probiotics with other treatments for COVID since February 2020.²² The goal of the PROVID-19 randomized control trial²³ is to evaluate whether probiotics could be a treatment option to reduce the duration and symptoms of patients who have tested positive for the virus and are not hospitalized.

A pilot study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong was accepted for publication in Gastroenterology.²⁴ Researchers collected data from 150 patients with COVID-19 and 1,500 healthy individuals. The microbiome information was compared, after which they created a supplement of prebiotics and bifidobacterium strains.

The paper revealed only that “significantly more patients who received the formula achieved symptom resolution and a reduction in pro-inflammatory immune markers than those who had standard care.”

Probiotics Need Prebiotics to Flourish

The formulation the Chinese scientists developed increases the potential that beneficial bacteria will grow in your gut microbiome by also providing the nutrients they need to flourish. Prebiotics and probiotics are immunomodulatory.²⁵ In other words, they both stimulate and suppress the immune system, which helps maintain homeostasis in the system.

After an evaluation of the current and past research demonstrating the powerful effect that your gut microbiome has on the immune system in combination with the current knowledge that this microbiome plays in the development of severe COVID-19, one scientist wrote:²⁶

“In the event of a failure to produce a vaccine, it is believed that the best approach to fight COVID-19 infection is by improving the immune system using probiotics and prebiotics that have the potential to minimize the inflammation caused by COVID-19 infection.”

These are strategies you can begin to implement immediately without the need for a prescription from your doctor. Studies have confirmed that a high intake of sugar will increase the abundance of harmful bacteria in the gut, while at the same time simultaneously reduce the population of beneficial bacteria.²⁷

Beneficial bacteria help to reinforce the gut barrier function and mitigate the effects of endotoxins released by harmful bacteria. Inulin is one type of water-soluble fiber found in asparagus, garlic, leeks and onions. The following whole foods help add prebiotic fiber to your diet and improve the health of your microbiome, thus improving your overall health:^28,29

Asparagus	Banana	Beetroot
Breast milk	Burdock root	Cashews
Chicory root	Couscous	Fennel bulb
Garlic	Green peas	Jerusalem artichokes
Jicama	Konjac root	Leeks
Nectarines	Onion	Persimmon
Pistachios	Pomegranate	Savoy cabbage
Seaweed	Shallots	Snow peas
Tamarillo

Fermented Foods Are Flavorful and Often High in Fiber

Historically, the primary reason for fermenting was to preserve food. Over time, many cultures incorporated fermented foods into their daily diets, and some were credited with a selection of foods they shared with the world. For example, Japanese natto, Korean kimchi and German sauerkraut are popular in many areas outside their respective places of origin.³⁰

The health benefits associated with fermented foods are many. In fact, the yogurt industry has used the growing interest in probiotics to advertise their products. While store-bought yogurt does have probiotic bacteria, it is also rich in sugar that feeds the harmful bacteria in your gut. This is just one reason why grocery store yogurt is typically not beneficial.

In the U.S., it’s becoming more popular to eat fermented foods at home. Yet, preparing them is largely a lost art. Probiotic-rich food, such as fermented vegetables, will boost the population of beneficial bacteria, which then reduce the potentially pathogenic colonies. Making your own yogurt at home is an easy way to start with fermented foods.

To make yogurt at home you only need a high-quality starter culture and raw, grass fed milk. You'll find simple step-by-step instructions in “Benefits of Homemade Yogurt Versus Commercial.” You can also experiment with fermenting almost any vegetable. Cucumbers (pickles) and cabbage (sauerkraut) are among the most popular. Although it might seem intimidating at first, once you have the basic method down, it’s not difficult.

In the video below, I review how to do this. As I discuss in “Tips for Fermenting at Home,” there are several steps you can take to make the process a little easier. Begin with fresh, organic ingredients and be sure to wash them properly under cold running water. The idea is to remove bacteria, enzymes and other debris as this can affect the outcome.

Choose glass Mason jars with self-sealing lids. Most fermented vegetables will need to be covered with brine. I recommend using a vitamin K2-rich starter culture dissolved in celery juice. Allow the jars to sit in a relatively warm area for several days. The temperature should ideally be around 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

During the summer months, vegetables are typically finished in three to four days. In the winter, they may need up to seven days. The only way to tell when the fermentation process is complete is to open the jar and have a taste.

When you're happy with the flavor and consistency, move the jars into the refrigerator. Refrigeration will slow fermentation and the vegetables can keep for many months. Remember not to eat out of the jar because you’ll contaminate the rest of the batch with the bacteria from your mouth. Make sure the vegetables are covered with brine before replacing the lid.

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