Health & Fitness

Creating an oasis for her family in the Southern Highlands - Phoebe Burgess talks to Stellar on all things country living, turning a new page and motherhood.

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

More than three decades of scientific research suggests that repeatedly telling children that they are especially smart or talented leaves them vulnerable to failure, and fearful of challenges.

Children raised this way develop an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem less important than seeming smart; challenges, mistakes, and effort become threats to their ego rather than opportunities to improve.

However, teaching children to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life. This results in “mastery-oriented” children who tend to think that intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work.

This can be done by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. Talking about math geniuses who were born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who developed amazing skills over time creates a growth mind-set.

from Articles : Hormones, Children's Health https://ift.tt/3swcpxQ
via IFTTT

More than 80 percent of schools in America use toxic pesticides as a preventative measure, whether it‘s needed or not.

Mark Lame, an entomologist and professor at Indiana University‘s School of Public and Environmental Affairs, believes this is an entirely unnecessary practice that carries more risks than benefits to students and faculty.

The most widely used pesticides are, in fact, nerve poisons. They cause uncontrolled nerve firing, and disrupt the delicate hormone systems.

The link between pesticide exposure and health problems in children is already well established. Research has connected these endocrine-disrupting pesticides to health problems such as ADHD, autism, and infertility -- all of which are on the rise.

Professor Lame says pest problems are better managed through an integrated approach -- by preventing the conditions that attract pests into school facilities in the first place.

Lame serves as a consultant for schools around the country, helping them reduce the toxic load by implementing his Integrated Pest Management (IPM) process.

Science Daily July 21, 2007

from Articles : Hormones, Children's Health https://ift.tt/3m1SKn4
via IFTTT

The dynamics of the neural activity of a mouse brain behave in a peculiar, unexpected way that can be theoretically modeled without any fine tuning, suggests a new paper by physicists.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3mYeVuU

One of the characteristic hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the buildup of amyloid-beta plaques in the brain. Most therapies designed to treat AD target these plaques, but they've largely failed in clinical trials. New research upends conventional views of the origin of one prevalent type of plaque, indicating a reason why treatments have been unsuccessful.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/32sgtU8

Fibromyalgia, characterized by chronic, widespread pain is an often-debilitating condition that primarily affects women. While as many as 10 million Americans have fibromyalgia, its cause remains a mystery.

Brain scans of fibromyalgia patients have offered hard evidence that the pain they experience is indeed real — mainly because their threshold for tolerating pain impulses is substantially lower than that of most individuals. But the mechanism causing this lowered pain threshold is still unknown.

Some experts, such as Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined fibromyalgia's diagnostic guidelines, believe fibromyalgia is mainly a physical response to mental and emotional stress.

But while stress and emotions may indeed play an important role, more recent research shows fibromyalgia patients tend to have severe inflammation in their body, including their nervous system and brain.

Signs and Symptoms of Fibromyalgia

Diagnosis can be a challenge, but the updated case definitions of fibromyalgia, issued in 2010 and later simplified in 2012, claim to correctly diagnose about 83 percent of cases.¹ Originally, the condition was thought to be a peripheral musculoskeletal disease. Today, fibromyalgia has become increasingly recognized as a neurobiological problem causing central pain sensitization.

Unfortunately, there are currently no laboratory tests available for diagnosing fibromyalgia, so physicians primarily depend on patient histories, reported symptoms and physical exam findings. Classic symptoms of this condition include:

Conventional treatment typically involves some form of pain medication, and perhaps psychotropic drugs like antidepressants. I don't recommend either as they fail to address the cause of your problem. Many fibromyalgia sufferers also do not respond to conventional painkillers, which can set in motion a vicious circle of overmedicating on these dangerous drugs.

Brain Inflammation — Another Hallmark of Fibromyalgia

Using PET imaging, a recent investigation² by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden revealed the presence of widespread brain inflammation in patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia.^3,4

Earlier research⁵ conducted at Karolinska Institutet also discovered high concentrations of cytokines (inflammatory proteins) in the cerebrospinal fluid, suggesting fibromyalgia patients have inflammation in their nervous system as well.⁶

The team at Massachusetts General Hospital, meanwhile, has previously shown that neural inflammation, and glial cell (immune cells) activation specifically, plays a role in chronic back pain. Animal studies have also offered evidence for the hypothesis that glial cell activation can be a cause of chronic pain in general.⁷

Here, they found that when glial cells in the cerebral cortex were activated, the more aggressive the activation, the greater the fatigue experienced by the patient. As reported by Medical Life Sciences:⁸

"The current study first assessed fibromyalgia symptoms in patients using a questionnaire. A PET tracer was then used, that is, a radioactive marker which binds a specific protein called translocator protein (TSPO) that is expressed at levels much above the normal in activated glial cells, namely, astrocytes and microglia …

[G]lial activation was found to be present at significantly higher levels in multiple brain areas in patients who had fibromyalgia than in controls. Glial cell activation causes inflammatory chemicals to be released, which cause the pain pathways to be more sensitive to pain, and promote fatigue …

One area showing higher TSPO binding in direct proportion to the self-reported level of fatigue was the cingulate gyrus, an area of the brain linked to emotional processing. Previous research has reported that this area is inflamed in chronic fatigue syndrome."

Brain Inflammation Linked to Loss of Brain Cells

In related news, German researchers investigating inflammation mechanisms in the brain have found that as mice get older and regulation of inflammatory responses become increasingly impaired, they start losing brain cells.⁹

Interestingly, the cannabinoid receptor type 1 (CB1), which produces the "high" in response to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana, also helps regulate inflammatory reactions in your brain. In short, chronic brain inflammation is in part driven by the CB1 receptors' failure to respond. To understand how this works, you need to know a little bit about how microglial cells work.

Microglial cells are specialized immune cells found in your central nervous system, including your spinal cord and brain. These immune cells respond to bacteria and are responsible for clearing out malfunctioning nerve cells. They also signal and recruit other immune cells when needed and trigger the inflammatory response when necessary.

Problems arise when the inflammatory response becomes dysregulated and overactive. In the brain, the inflammation can easily damage healthy brain tissue. The "brake signal" that instructs glial cells to stop their inflammatory activity is endocannabinoids, and the endocannabinoids work by binding to certain receptors, including CB1 and cannabinoid receptor type 2 (CB2).

Immune Cells Communicate and Influence Inflammatory Response Using Endocannabinoids

Curiously, microglial cells have virtually no CB1 and very few CB2 receptors, yet they still react to endocannabinoids. The present study was designed to investigate this puzzling riddle. As it turns out, there's a type of neuron that does contain a large number of CB1 receptors, and it appears that it is the CB1 receptors on these specific neurons that control microglial cell activity.

In other words, it appears microglial cells do not communicate with nerve cells directly; rather, they release endocannabinoids, which then bind to CB1 receptors found in nearby neurons. These neurons in turn communicate directly with other nerve cells. So, the brain's immune response is regulated in an indirect manner rather than a direct one.

Now, what happens with age is that your natural production of endocannabinoids decreases, which then leads to impaired immune response regulation and chronic inflammation. As noted by coauthor Dr. Andras Bilkei-Gorzo:¹⁰

"Since the neuronal CB1 receptors are no longer sufficiently activated, the glial cells are almost constantly in inflammatory mode. More regulatory neurons die as a result, so the immune response is less regulated and may become free-running."

Earlier research¹¹ by this same team found that THC can help restore cognitive function in older brains, and the current study also hints at THC-containing cannabis may have valuable neuroprotective benefits in older people by quelling brain inflammation and preventing loss of brain cells. As the study was done on mice, further research is needed to confirm that the same mechanisms apply to humans, but it's compelling nonetheless.

Are You Living an Inflammatory Lifestyle?

Your diet can either promote or decrease inflammation. For example, foods that increase the inflammatory response in your body include:

• Sugar, especially processed corn syrup
• Synthetically produced trans fats
• Processed vegetable and seed oils, high in oxidized omega-6 fat
• Processed meats
• Refined carbohydrates

Meanwhile, marine-based omega-3 fats have powerful anti-inflammatory effects, and are crucial for healthy brain function in general. Antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables are also important for controlling inflammation, as is optimizing your vitamin D to a level of 60 to 80 ng/mL, ideally through sensible sun exposure.

In addition to anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties, vitamin D receptors appear in a wide variety of brain tissue, and researchers believe optimal vitamin D levels may enhance important chemicals in your brain and protect brain cells by increasing the effectiveness of glial cells that help nurse damaged neurons back to health.

A number of ubiquitous chemicals have also been implicated in inflammation, so if you struggle with fibromyalgia you'd be wise to take a close look at your choice of foods, household and personal care products. As mentioned earlier, getting enough high-quality sleep is another key treatment component for fibromyalgia.

Ketogenic Diet Massively Decreases Brain Inflammation

Research¹² published last year suggests ketogenic diets — which are high in healthy fats and low in net carbs — are a particularly powerful ally for suppressing brain inflammation, as ketones are powerful HDAC (histone deacetylase inhibitors) that suppress the primary NF-κB inflammatory pathway.

As explained by Medical Xpress,¹³ the defining moment of the study¹⁴ came when the team "identified a pivotal protein that links the diet to inflammatory genes, which, if blocked, could mirror the anti-inflammatory effects of ketogenic diets."

A ketogenic diet changes the way your body uses energy, converting your body from burning carbohydrates for energy to burning fat as your primary source of fuel. When your body is able to burn fat, your liver creates ketones, which burn more efficiently than carbs, thus creating far less reactive oxygen species and secondary free radicals that can damage your cellular and mitochondrial cell membranes, proteins and DNA.

Animals (rats) used in this study were found to have reduced inflammation when the researchers used a molecule called 2-deoxyglucose (2DG) to block glucose metabolism and induce a ketogenic state, similar to what would occur if you followed a ketogenic diet. By doing this, inflammation was brought down to levels near those found in controls.

Suppressing Inflammation Improves Pain

Senior study author Dr. Raymond Swanson, a professor of neurology at UCSF and chief of the neurology service at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, commented on the results, saying:

"I was most surprised by the magnitude of this effect, because I thought ketogenic diets might help just a little bit. But when we got these big effects with 2DG, I thought wow, there's really something here.

The team further found that reduced glucose metabolism lowered a key barometer of energy metabolism — the NADH/NAD+ ratio — which in turn activated a protein called CtBP that acts to suppress activity of inflammatory genes."

The study also pointed out that a ketogenic diet may relieve pain via several mechanisms, similar to the ways it's known to help epilepsy.

"Like seizures, chronic pain is thought to involve increased excitability of neurons; for pain, this can involve peripheral and/or central neurons. Thus, there is some similarity of the underlying biology," the authors stated, adding:

"A major research focus should be on how metabolic interventions such as a ketogenic diet can ameliorate common, comorbid and difficult-to-treat conditions such as pain and inflammation."¹⁵

Cyclical Ketosis for Optimal Health

Eating a ketogenic diet doesn't have to be complicated or painful. My book "Fat for Fuel" presents a complete Mitochondrial Metabolic Therapy (MMT) program, complemented by an online course created in collaboration with nutritionist Miriam Kalamian, who specializes in nutritional ketosis.

The course, which consists of seven comprehensive lessons, teaches you the keys to fighting chronic disease and optimizing your health and longevity. In summary, the MMT diet is a cyclical ketogenic diet, high in healthy fats and fiber, low in net carbs with a moderate amount of protein.

The cyclical component is important, as long-term continuous ketosis has drawbacks that may actually undermine your health and longevity. One of the primary reasons to cycle in and out of ketosis is because the "metabolic magic" in the mitochondria actually occurs during the refeeding phase, not during the starvation phase.

Ideally, once you have established ketosis you cycle healthy carbs back in to about 100 to 150 grams on days when you do strength training. MMT has a number of really important health benefits, and may just be the U-turn you've been searching for if you're struggling with a chronic health condition. You can learn more by following the hyperlinks provided in the text above.

Address Emotional Contributors

Since fibromyalgia is a chronic condition, it becomes emotionally challenging in addition to the physical challenges it imposes on your life. Having a game plan to deal with your emotional well-being is especially important if you suffer from any chronic disease.

If you have fibromyalgia, you might be able to trace it back to a triggering event, or you might not. Any traumatic experience has the potential to linger in your mind for a lifetime. You can have the perfect diet, the perfect exercise routine, and an ideal life; but if you have lingering unresolved emotional issues, you can still become very sick.

A tool that can help release this emotional sludge is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). If you are a regular reader of my newsletter, this won't be an unfamiliar term to you. EFT is a form of bioenergetic normalization. If you have fibromyalgia, this is something that is going to be extremely helpful. You can do this yourself, at home, and it takes just a few minutes to learn. For a demonstration, see the video above.

from Articles : Fibromyalgia https://ift.tt/2RY3F1l
via IFTTT

Chronic pain is a pervasive issue and fibromyalgia is a very common form. It is a chronic condition whose symptoms include muscle and tissue pain, fatigue, depression, and sleep disturbances.

Recent data suggests that central sensitization, in which neurons in your spinal cord become sensitized by inflammation or cell damage, may be involved in the way fibromyalgia sufferers process pain.

Certain chemicals in the foods you eat may trigger the release of neurotransmitters that heighten this sensitivity.

Although there have been only a handful of studies on diet and fibromyalgia, the following eating rules can’t hurt, and may help, when dealing with chronic pain.

Limit Sugar as Much as Possible. Increased insulin levels will typically dramatically worsen pain. So you will want to limit all sugars and this would typically include fresh fruit juices. Whole fresh fruit is the preferred method for consuming fruit products.

If you are overweight, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, you will also want to limit grains as much as possible as they are metabolized very similarly to sugars. This would also include organic unprocessed grains. Wheat and gluten grains are the top ones to avoid.

Eat fresh foods. Eating a diet of fresh foods, devoid of preservatives and additives, may ease symptoms triggered by coexisting conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

It’s also a good idea to buy organic food when possible, as it’s best to avoid pesticides and chemicals. However, fresh is best. So if you have to choose between local, fresh, non-organic and organic but wilting – go with fresh, and clean properly.

Avoid caffeine. Fibromyalgia is believed to be linked to an imbalance of brain chemicals that control mood, and it is often linked with inadequate sleep and fatigue. The temptation is to artificially and temporarily eliminate feelings of fatigue with stimulants like caffeine, but this approach does more harm than good in the long run. Though caffeine provides an initial boost of energy, it is no substitute for sleep, and is likely to keep you awake.

Try avoiding nightshade vegetables. Nightshade vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant may trigger arthritis and pain conditions in some people.

Be Careful with Your Fats. Animal based omega-3 fats like DHA and EPA have been touted as a heart-healthy food, and they may help with pain, as well. They can help reduce inflammation and improve brain function. At the same time, you want to eliminate all trans fat and fried foods, as these will promote inflammation.

Use yeast sparingly. Consuming yeast may also contribute to the growth of yeast fungus, which can contribute to pain.

Avoid pasteurized dairy. Many fibromyalgia sufferers have trouble digesting milk and dairy products. However, many find that raw dairy products, especially from grass fed organic sources, are well tolerated.

Cut down on carbs. About 90 percent of fibromyalgia patients have low adrenal functioning, which affects metabolism of carbohydrates and may lead to hypoglycemia.

Avoid aspartame. The artificial sweetener found in some diet sodas and many sugar-free sweets is part of a chemical group called excitotoxins, which activate neurons that can increase your sensitivity to pain.

Avoid additives. Food additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG) often cause trouble for pain patients. MSG is an excitatory neurotransmitter that may stimulate pain receptors; glutamate levels in spinal fluid have been shown to correlate with pain levels in fibromyalgia patients.

Stay away from junk food. Limit or eliminate fast food, candy, and vending-machine products. In addition to contributing to weight gain and the development of unhealthy eating habits, these diet-wreckers may also irritate your muscles, disrupt your sleep, and compromise your immune system.

from Articles : Fibromyalgia https://ift.tt/1wN9XCc
via IFTTT

How and what you eat has radically changed over the past few decades with the all-consuming rise of the supermarket. But what price are you paying for this homogenized, cheap and convenient food? This video investigates how supermarkets have affected the food on your plate, and reveals the telltale signs that the food you buy may not have been grown in the way you think.

from Articles : Fibromyalgia https://ift.tt/3v79wVQ
via IFTTT

Researchers have detected abnormalities in the brains of people with fibromyalgia, a chronic condition whose symptoms include muscle pain and fatigue.

Some researchers have suggested that the pain of fibromyalgia is the result of depression, but the new study suggests otherwise. The abnormalities were independent of anxiety and depression levels.

Researchers evaluated 20 women diagnosed with fibromyalgia and 10 healthy women without the condition who served as a control group. The researchers performed brain imaging called single photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT.

The imaging showed that women with the syndrome had "brain perfusion" -- blood flow abnormalities in their brains. The abnormalities were directly correlated with the severity of disease symptoms.

An increase in blood flow was found in the brain region known to discriminate pain intensity.

from Articles : Fibromyalgia https://ift.tt/3vbtoqH
via IFTTT

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS) is a condition in which people are highly sensitive to electromagnetic fields. In an area such as a wireless hotspot, they experience pain or other symptoms.

People with EHS experience a variety of symptoms including headache, fatigue, nausea, burning and itchy skin, and muscle aches. These symptoms are subjective and vary between individuals, which makes the condition difficult to study, and has left experts divided about the validity of such claims.

More than 30 studies have been conducted to determine what link the condition has to exposure to electromagnetic fields from sources such as radar dishes, mobile phone signals and, Wi-Fi hotspots.

from Articles : Fibromyalgia https://ift.tt/1bYDXku
via IFTTT

A new study shows that markers of fear recall differ between men and women, but in a hormone-dependent manner.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3e9F85F

Using a new single-cell technique, researchers have uncovered a way to understand the programming behind how stem cells make particular cell types. The research uncovered new genes that program stem cells to make the dendritic cells that kick-start the immune response. By uncovering this process, the researchers hope they will be able to find new immunotherapy treatments for cancer, and plan to expand this technique in other areas such as discovering new drug targets.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3dvR2I1

Is it the difficulty of a task that determines whether or not students are stressed when working on it? Biologists working in biology didactics set out to find out the answers; to this end, the team used questionnaires and measured the heart rate in 209 test participants.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3mTMNZy

Recently, researchers have been studying whether shorter variations of HIIT, involving as little as 4-min of high intensity exercise per session (excluding a warm up and cool down), also improve health. A new review paper collates a decade's worth of research on the topic of this so-called low-volume high HIIT for health.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3mXqsKY

Despite surgery and subsequent treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, the majority of patients experience recurrence of malignant brain tumors. Researchers have shown in cells in culture that an ion pump can deliver drugs more accurately, which gives less severe adverse effects in chemotherapy.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3uZ5H44

Even the mention of parasites can be enough to make some people's skin crawl. But to recent UC Santa Barbara doctoral graduate Dana Morton these creepy critters occupy important ecological niches, fulfilling roles that, in her opinion, have too often been overlooked.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3alHsFz

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, does not infect brain cells but can inflict significant neurological damage, according to a new study of dozens of deceased patients.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2OXeKmV

A person who owns a car or who has a college education may be less vulnerable to COVID-19, according to an analysis of cases in Tehran, Iran, one of the early epicenters of the pandemic. While such variables do not inherently lower a person's risk, they do indicate an infrastructure of protection that persists despite how densely populated a person's district might be.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3aly7O1

Nick Hudson, an actuary and private equity investor, co-founded Pandemics ~ Data & Analytics (PANDA) in response to the many threats to civil rights and freedoms that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic response. While media and public health institutions have engaged in a campaign of smoke and mirrors — one that is perpetuating paralyzing fear, needlessly, to this day — data and facts don’t lie.

Hudson and his team at PANDA, which include a data analyst, economist, medical doctors, big data analyst and public health experts, are using live data¹ and open science to empower the public to exercise freedom of choice and preserve free societies.²

Hudson spoke at the inaugural BizNews Investment Conference in March 2021, and his keynote address is above. He explains the ugly truth about COVID-19, which is that the world is being crippled by fear due to a false narrative. Anyone who challenges that narrative is being labeled as a lunatic, a menace or a danger to society, which is furthering the repression and unjustified fear.

Bringing COVID-19 Truth to Light

George Washington famously said, “Truth will ultimately prevail where there are plans taken to bring it to light.”³ With that in mind, Hudson saw the “seeds of a great tragedy” being planted with the false COVID-19 narrative, and has made it a mission to get the truth out. So, what is the reality about the pandemic? According to Hudson:⁴

A virus that presents high risk to few and negligible risk to most hit some regions	Few are susceptible to severe disease
There are several available treatments	Asymptomatic people are not major drivers of disease
Lockdowns and mask mandates haven’t worked and instead caused great harm	The vulnerable were hurt instead of helped

The misinformation has been spewed from the beginning, including by World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In a March 3, 2020, media briefing, he stated, “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”⁵

But according to Hudson, the 3.4% represents case fatality rate (CFR), which is the number of deaths from COVID-19 divided by the number of cases of COVID-19, while the 1% is infection fatality rate (IFR), or the number of deaths divided by all infected individuals.

“By conflating these two separate points (CFR and IFR),” Hudson said, “Tedros was effectively lying.” Quantitative scientist John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, calculated the IFR for COVID-19 in a review of 61 seroprevalence studies, which was a median of 0.23%, and 0.05% in people younger than 70.⁶

Based on this, the IFR for COVID-19 is lower than that of the flu. And wouldn’t you know it, in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial published March 26, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and colleagues wrote that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza.”⁷

The media have suppressed this fact, Hudson noted, along with the fact that there’s a 1,000 times difference in mortality among those younger than 19 and those older than 70 — something that should have been taken into account in the pandemic response.

Is COVID-19 Really a ‘Novel Virus’?

Further inflaming widespread fear is the idea that COVID-19 is a “novel virus,” which makes it sound like it’s something humans have never encountered before. But is it really? According to Hudson:

“The reality is that the coronavirus is a very close relative, not even a separate subspecies, a very close relative of the 2003 SARS virus. There are seven related coronaviruses known to cause disease in humans, probably many others, and four of them are in general circulation.

Annual, global circulation. So the naming of this disease is terribly inconsistent. This is really a rose by any name, SARS. A variant of SARS. It’s not novel.”

One study even found that 81% of people not exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were still able to mount an immune response against it, which “suggests at least some built-in immune protection from SARS-CoV-2 …”⁸

Nonetheless, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 pandemic, stated that “a majority of the world’s population is susceptible to infection from this virus.”⁹ This is the first of two key elements that, Hudson said, lead to “homosapienophobia” — the idea that everyone is dangerous until proven healthy.

The idea of universal susceptibility to COVID-19 is nonsense, Hudson noted, as was demonstrated early on with the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Among the 3,711 passengers and crew onboard the Diamond Princess, 712 (19.2%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and of these 46.5% were asymptomatic at the time of testing. Of those showing symptoms, only 9.7% required intensive care and 1.3% (nine) died.¹⁰

PANDA data also showed that, starting in February 2021, there was not universal susceptibility to the virus. Their data showed cumulative COVID-19 deaths per million people. In Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania, the population fatality rate was 112 per million compared to 710 per million in Europe and the Americas.

As for Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania, Hudson said, “the population fatality rate there almost isn’t an epidemic. In a typical year, they’d have 10,000 deaths per million from all causes.”

Fear Mongering Over Asymptomatic Spread

The second element that enables the doctrine of “everyone being a danger” to continue is the idea of asymptomatic spread driving disease. “I was absolutely aghast to find out the poor quality of the science” behind it, Hudson said.

One of the seminal papers involved one woman who reportedly infected 16 colleagues while she was asymptomatic.¹¹ The study was widely used to suggest that asymptomatic spread was occurring, but controversy later ensued over whether the woman was actually asymptomatic when the others were infected or if she was symptomatic and being treated for flu-like symptoms at the time.¹²

In June 2020, Kerkhove also made it very clear that people who have COVID-19 without any symptoms “rarely” transmit the disease to others. But in a dramatic about-face, WHO then backtracked on the statement just one day later. June 9, 2020, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s emergencies program, quickly backpedaled Van Kerkhove’s statement, saying the remarks were “misinterpreted or maybe we didn’t use the most elegant words to explain that.”¹³

“It’s utter, utter nonsense,” Hudson said, adding that Fauci also stated in January 2020, “asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person.”¹⁴

A JAMA Network Open study later found, in December 2020, that asymptomatic transmission is not a primary driver of infection within households.¹⁵ A study in Nature Communications also found "there was no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced close contacts."¹⁶

Lockdown Madness

The myth of widespread asymptomatic spread is what was used to justify worldwide lockdowns of healthy people. “Bruce Aylward will go down in history as a criminal of immense stature,” Hudson said, referring to Aylward’s role as the head of a WHO team that visited Wuhan, China, and concluded lockdowns were working to stop COVID-19 spread.¹⁷

“He takes a delegation to China, spends a few days, then comes back and says everyone should follow China’s response, the doctrine of universal susceptibility,” Hudson said. Yet, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic official guidelines for pandemic response plans recommend against large-scale quarantine of the healthy.

In fact, WHO wrote that during an influenza pandemic, quarantine of exposed individuals, entry and exit screening and border closure are “not recommended in any circumstance.”¹⁸

Likewise, in 2021 a study published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation found no significant benefits on COVID-19 case growth in regions using more restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as mandatory stay‐at‐home and business closure orders (i.e., lockdowns).¹⁹

Data compiled by PANDA also found no relationship between lockdowns and COVID-19 deaths per million people. The disease followed a trajectory of linear decline regardless of whether or not lockdowns were imposed.

What isn’t a lie, however, is that lockdowns cause a great deal of harm. Infant mortality, poverty, starvation and joblessness are on the rise, as are delays in medical treatment and diagnosis, psychological disorders among youth, suicide and deaths of despair.

Education has been disrupted for an estimated 1.6 billion children, Hudson said, and a survey of 2,000 U.S. adults revealed that 1 in 6 Americans started therapy for the first time during 2020. Nearly half (45%) of the survey respondents confirmed that the COVID-19 pandemic was the driving reason that triggered them to seek a therapist’s help.²⁰ According to Hudson:

“Perhaps the hardest thing for me to swallow about all of this is in undergraduate epidemiology, it is a well-known finding that when you are confronted with a disease with sharp edge graduation, as you are with coronavirus, measures to generally suppress the spread of the disease have the effect, reliably, of shifting the disease burden onto the vulnerable, who we should be protecting. They worsen coronavirus mortality.”

Mask Rhetoric Is Misleading

It’s been touted that face masks are essential to stopping the spread of COVID-19 and could save 130,000 lives in the U.S. alone.²¹ But in 2019, the World Health Organization analyzed 10 randomized controlled trials and concluded, “there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”²²

Only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on mask usage and COVID-19 transmission, and it found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.²³

You may remember that in the early days of the pandemic, face masks were not recommended for the general public. In February 2020, Christine Francis, a consultant for infection prevention and control at WHO headquarters, was featured in a video, holding up a disposable face mask.

She said, “Medical masks like this one cannot protect against the new coronavirus when used alone … WHO only recommends the use of masks in specific cases.”²⁴ As of March 31, 2020, WHO was still advising against the use of face masks for people without symptoms, stating that there is “no evidence” that such mask usage prevents COVID-19 transmission.²⁵

But by June 2020, the rhetoric had changed. Citing “evolving evidence,” WHO reversed their recommendation and began advising governments to encourage the general public to wear masks where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult.²⁶ Yet that same day, June 5, 2020, WHO published an announcement stating:²⁷

“At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a similar about-face on mask usage, citing a study of two hair dressers in Missouri, who were reportedly symptomatic with COVID-19 and styled 139 clients’ hair.

None of the clients tested positive for COVID-19, which the CDC suggested was because they and the stylists wore masks.²⁸ Hudson believes, however, that the customers were probably young and not susceptible to the virus in the first place.

Another study published in the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases stated, “We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility.”²⁹

PANDA data also showed no differences in transmission in states with mask mandates and those without. Still, health officials are now advising you should double or triple up on masks to make them work better.

Vaccines Being Sold as a Ticket to Freedom

People who stand to make countless billions out of COVID-19 vaccines are now selling them as a ticket to freedom, Hudson states:

“How convenient that we now have a logic that tells us that we need to vaccinate 7.8 billion people for a disease that has a mean survival rate of 99.95% for people under the age of 70. The profiteering here is naked. It is transparent.”

It’s a sad situation when teenagers, who aren’t at high risk, are lining up for vaccines just to get their freedoms back, he adds. When you add in all the other inconsistencies and lies — PCR tests that are not capable of diagnosing infectiousness, inflated death numbers, restrictions on travel, media propaganda and arbitrary rules, like the CDC’s recent change in physical distancing in classrooms from 6 feet to 3 feet³⁰ — it’s as though we’re living in an Orwellian reality.

With looming vaccine passports, the loss of personal liberties is at an unprecedented level, while people are generally “enslaved by fear” — fear of infection or reinfection, “long COVID,” resurgence and mutant variants. “The underpinnings of our civilization are under threat,” Hudson noted, and we have a choice. “We’ve been pushed up against a precipice, will we be pushed off or will we push back?”

He urges people to support the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for “focused protection” and finding a middle ground between locking down an entire economy and just “letting it rip.” As of April 4, 2021, the declaration has collected 41,890 signatures from medical practitioners and over 13,796 signatures from medical and public health scientists.³¹

In addition, the declaration is open for public signatures and has collected 764,089 from concerned citizens around the world. The website allows you to read and sign the declaration, answers many frequently asked questions, shares the science behind the recommendations and explains how the declaration was written.

PANDA also published a protocol for reopening society “to provide a road map out of the damaging cycle of lockdowns.”³² Hudson quoted Nelson Mandela, who stated courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. We all need to strive for courage and support awareness campaigns aimed at stopping the harmful narrative, relieving fear and protecting future freedom.

from Articles https://ift.tt/3ahMxi5
via IFTTT

Widespread mask usage has been virtually useless during the COVID-19 pandemic,¹ but mandates were rolled out in countries worldwide nonetheless. Many of the mandates included a caveat that you must wear a mask unless you can maintain a 6-foot distance, or social distancing, from others. This meant that if you were outdoors, you could forgo wearing a mask in most cases and still be in compliance with mandates.

March 30, 2021, however, Spain’s Ministry of Health announced a new law, published in the Official State Gazette (BOE),² that would remove the social distancing component, making masks mandatory in all public spaces, even if no one else is around — including when sunbathing at the beach or swimming in the ocean.³

While face masks were already mandatory in public and outdoor spaces when keeping a distance of 1.5 meters (3.2 feet) or more wasn’t possible, the updated rule suggests that mask usage is mandated at all times:⁴

“People from the age of six and older have the obligation to wear masks [...] on public streets, in outdoor spaces and in any closed space that has a public use or is open to the public.”

The law also leaves no room for regional governments to make exceptions to the rules, such as at the beach. Previously, certain regions made exceptions to mask mandates at the beach or swimming pools.⁵

Backlash Ensues From Tourism Industry

With the tourism industry already reeling from the pandemic, the restrictive mask mandate would only worsen problems in Spain while offering only an illusion of “safety.” EL PAÍS, a daily newspaper in Spain, reported that the mask mandate change went largely unnoticed until they flagged it, reporting:⁶

“The obligation to keep mouths and noses covered in public spaces, including the beach and swimming pool, will undoubtedly put a number of tourists off coming to Spain, according to industry pundits who point out that businesses were not consulted on the measure.

‘We are going through the kind of hell that threatens to wipe out thousands and thousands of jobs and businesses,’ says José Luis Zoreda, vice-president of Exceltur, the main lobby group for Spanish tourism — a sector which accounted for 12% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) prior to the health crisis. ‘And now they want to turn the beaches into open-air field hospitals.’”

Wearing a mask in an outdoor area, even when others are far away, defies common sense and reason. Likewise, wearing a mask while swimming — assuming you were able to keep it on, which isn’t likely — could pose a drowning risk, not to mention, would the mask even work if it were soaking wet?

Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns, “Do not wear a mask when doing activities that may get your mask wet, like swimming at the beach or pool. A wet mask can make it difficult to breathe and may not work as well when wet.”⁷

Spain Backtracks on Beach Mask Mandate

Just days after releasing the new rules that would require masks to be worn at the beach, the Spanish Ministry of Health proposed revisions that would allow people to forgo a mask at the beach if they are swimming, playing a sport or resting in a fixed spot, and maintaining a distance of 1.5 meters from other people.⁸

A number of regional governments had already suggested that they would defy the initial orders, including the Balearic Islands, which stated masks would not be mandatory at area beaches and swimming pools. According to EL PAÍS:⁹

“… [I]n Andalusia the tension was palpable. Juan Marín, the deputy premier of the southern region, said he did not understand ‘this type of decisions that get made without consulting with the regions.’ And sources in the governments of Catalonia and the Canary Islands said that their legal services are already analyzing the law to determine their next steps.”

Yet, the back-and-forth passage of arbitrary health rules as policy is becoming so common that it’s hard to know what’s “allowed” from one day to the next. So, wearing a mask while walking along the shoreline of a beach in Spain is necessary for public health, but if you’re playing a sport it’s not?

The CDC is similarly confusing, with a recent change allowing physical distancing in classrooms to go from 6 feet to 3 feet.¹⁰ If SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is spread via aerosolized droplets, which research suggests,¹¹ such droplets remain in the air for at least three hours and can travel over long distances of up to 27 feet.¹²

This further adds to the likelihood that cloth masks do little to stop you from getting COVID-19. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons explained:¹³

“The preponderance of scientific evidence supports that aerosols play a critical role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Years of dose response studies indicate that if anything gets through, you will become infected. Thus, any respiratory protection respirator or mask must provide a high level of filtration and fit to be highly effective in preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”

Masks at the Beach Are a Pollution Nightmare

Masks are a ticking time bomb when it comes to pollution, and wearing them at the beach provides direct access to the ocean. It’s estimated that 129 billion face masks are used worldwide each month, which works out to about 3 million masks a minute. Most of these are the disposable variety, made from plastic microfibers.¹⁴

Ranging in size from 5 millimeters (mm) to microscopic lengths, microplastics, which include microfibers, are being ingested by fish, plankton and other marine life, as well as the creatures on land that consume them (including humans¹⁵).

Mask pollution may end up being even worse than that from plastic bottles because while about 25% of plastic bottles are recycled, “there is no official guidance on mask recycle, making it more likely to be disposed of as solid waste,” researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University stated. “With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat ...”¹⁶

When the masks become weathered in the environment, they can generate a large number of microsized polypropylene particles in a matter of weeks, then break down further into nanoplastics that are less than 1 mm in size.

Because masks may be directly made from microsized plastic fibers with a thickness of 1 mm to 10 mm, they may release microsized particles into the environment more readily — and faster — than larger plastic items, like plastic bags. Most disposable face masks contain three layers — a polyester outer layer, a polypropylene or polystyrene middle layer and an inner layer made of absorbent material such as cotton.

In the environment, sunlight and heat are not enough to degrade the polypropylene, which is left to persist and accumulate in the environment.¹⁷

Multiple Studies Show Masks Are Ineffective

Spain’s choice to make their mask mandate even more restrictive is especially puzzling given the evidence that masks are ineffective. Only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on mask usage and COVID-19 transmission, and it found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.¹⁸

You may also remember that in the early days of the pandemic, face masks were not recommended for the general public. In February 2020, Christine Francis, a consultant for infection prevention and control at WHO headquarters, was featured in a video, holding up a disposable face mask.

She said, “Medical masks like this one cannot protect against the new coronavirus when used alone … WHO only recommends the use of masks in specific cases.”¹⁹ As of March 31, 2020, WHO was still advising against the use of face masks for people without symptoms, stating that there is “no evidence” that such mask usage prevents COVID-19 transmission.²⁰

But by June 2020, the rhetoric had changed. Citing “evolving evidence,” WHO reversed their recommendation and began advising governments to encourage the general public to wear masks where there is widespread transmission and physical distancing is difficult.²¹ Yet that same day, June 5, 2020, WHO published an announcement stating:²²

“At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”

Dr. Jim Meehan, an ophthalmologist and preventive medicine specialist also compiled a number of studies showing the use of masks is highly questionable:²³

Is Wearing a Mask ‘Better Than Nothing’?

There’s a myth that wearing a mask makes sense if there’s even a chance that it can protect you from getting sick from COVID-19 — a disease with an average survival rate of 99.74%.³⁰ This is because mask wearing itself can be harmful with longer term ramifications that are only beginning to be understood.

Germany's first registry recording the experience children are having wearing masks³¹ used data on 25,930 children, revealing 24 physical, psychological and behavioral health issues that were associated with wearing masks.³² They recorded symptoms that:³³

“… included irritability (60%), headache (53%), difficulty concentrating (50%), less happiness (49%), reluctance to go to school/kindergarten (44%), malaise (42%), impaired learning (38%) and drowsiness or fatigue (37%).”

They also found 29.7% reported feeling short of breath, 26.4% being dizzy and 17.9% were unwilling to move or play.³⁴ Hundreds more experienced “accelerated respiration, tightness in chest, weakness and short-term impairment of consciousness.”

Another potential issue that’s rarely talked about is the fact that when you wear a mask, tiny microfibers are released, which can cause health problems when inhaled. The risk is increased when masks are reused. This hazard was highlighted in a performance study to be published in the June 2021 issue of Journal of Hazardous Materials.³⁵

Meanwhile, mask mandates represent another erosion of freedom, one that further “normalizes” the notion that people are sick unless proven healthy and that it’s acceptable to be forced to cover your face just to go about your daily life, even when you’re outdoors and away from others. Maybe even while you’re swimming.

The public narrative is building prejudice against people who refuse to wear masks or get an experimental vaccine, such that some are now fearful of people who aren’t masked or those who choose not to get vaccinated. 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, no matter the consequences.

from Articles https://ift.tt/3dqdMsP
via IFTTT