A new study helps to explain how leptin, a hormone produced by fat tissue, influences your motivation to eat.
The researchers described for the first time a collection of leptin-responsive neurons in the brain's lateral hypothalamic area (LHA). Those LHA neurons feed directly into the mesolimbic dopamine system, which controls the rewarding properties assigned to things.
The study therefore adds to growing evidence that leptin doesn't turn your appetite on and off just by controlling whether you feel hungry or full. It can also make you want food more or less regardless of hunger.
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It is amazing how the little twists and turns of researchers can have such a profound impact on what we generally come to realize as “scientific truth.” Let me share a recent fascinating example of how this impacted one of the most powerful hormones in your body.
The Ob mouse is a strain of mouse that has a genetic mutation that makes it obese and unhealthy. It has been used for many years as a model of obesity to do research on, though the reason that it was obese had eluded scientists.
This changed when, in 1994, Jeffrey Friedman discovered that this mouse lacked a previously unknown hormone called leptin, and when it was injected with leptin it became thin, vibrant, and very healthy within weeks. This made headlines around the world, "the cure for obesity found" and pharmaceutical companies started tripping over themselves with trillion dollar signs in their eyes to be the first to genetically manufacture leptin on a large-scale.
This did not last long. When people were tested for leptin, it was found that, unlike the Ob mouse, they did not lack leptin; on the contrary almost all overweight and obese people have excess leptin.
These people were "leptin resistant" and giving extra leptin did little good.
The financial disappointment was extreme and scientists working for pharmaceutical companies said that leptin wasn't important anymore since they could not find a drug to control it, and therefore the industry couldn't make money on it. To make big money in medicine one needs a patent and this generally means remedies which are not commonly or easily available -- that are not natural.
This illustrates two extremely unfortunate principles in modern medicine; only those therapies that will make lots of money (generally for the pharmaceutical industry or hospitals), ever get pursued and then taught to physicians (since most of medical education after medical school takes place by drug reps), and these therapies, almost by definition, will be unnatural.
This inhibition of extremely important knowledge is not only unfortunate, it is deadly, and is exemplified by how few people, including doctors, know anything about leptin, though I would consider it to be the most important chemical in your body that will determine your health and lifespan.
Two Hormones that are Vital for Optimal Health
Each and every one of us is a combination of lives within lives. We are made up of trillions of individual living cells that each must maintain itself. Even more significantly, the cells must communicate and interact with each other to form a republic of cells that we call our individual self.
Our health and life depends on how accurately instructions are conveyed to our cells so that they can act in harmony. It is the communication among the individual cells that will determine our health and our life.
The communication takes place by hormones. Arguably therefore, the most important molecules in your body that ultimately will decide your health and life are hormones.
Many would say that genes and chromosomes are the most important molecules, however once born your genes pretty much just sit there; hormones tell them what to do. Certainly, the most important message that our cells receive is how and what to do with energy, and therefore life cannot take place without that.
The two most important hormones that deliver messages about energy and metabolism are insulin and leptin.
Metabolism can roughly be defined as the chemistry that turns food into life, and therefore insulin and leptin are critical to health and disease. Both insulin and leptin work together to control the quality of your metabolism (and, to a significant extent, the rate of metabolism).
Insulin works mostly at the individual cell level, telling the vast majority of cells whether to burn or store fat or sugar and whether to utilize that energy for maintenance and repair or reproduction. This is extremely important as we shall see, for on an individual cell level turning on maintenance and repair equates to increased longevity, and turning up cellular reproduction can increase your risk of cancer.
Leptin, on the other hand, controls the energy storage and utilization of the entire republic of cells allowing the body to communicate with the brain about how much energy (fat) the republic has stored, and whether it needs more, or should burn some off, and whether it is an advantageous time nutritionally-speaking for the republic --you-- to reproduce or not.
What Exactly is Leptin?
Leptin is a very powerful and influential hormone produced by fat cells that has totally changed the way that science (real science, outside of medicine) looks at fat, nutrition, and metabolism in general.
Prior to leptin's discovery, fat was viewed as strictly an ugly energy storage depot that most everyone was trying to get rid of. After it was discovered that fat produced the hormone leptin (and subsequently it was discovered that fat produced other very significant hormones), fat became an endocrine organ like the ovaries, pancreas and pituitary, influencing the rest of the body and, in particular, the brain.
Leptin, as far as science currently knows, is the most powerful regulator that tells your brain what to do about life's two main biological goals: eating and reproduction. Your fat, by way of leptin, tells your brain whether you should be hungry, eat and make more fat, whether you should reproduce and make babies, or (partly by controlling insulin) whether to "hunker down" and work overtime to maintain and repair yourself.
I believe I could now make a very convincing and scientifically accurate statement that that rather than your brain being in control of the rest of your body, your brain is, in fact, subservient to your fat -- and leptin.
In short, leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let your brain know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it. Therefore, leptin may be "on top of the food chain" in metabolic importance and relevance to disease.
How Leptin Regulates Your Weight
It has been known for many years that fat stores are highly regulated. It appeared that when one tried to lose weight the body would try to gain it back. This commonly results in "yo-yo" dieting and in scientific circles one talks about the "set point" of weight. It has long been theorized that there must be a hormone that determines this.
Science points now to leptin as being that hormone.
In our ancestral history, it was advantageous to store some fat to call upon during times of famine. However, it was equally disadvantageous to be too fat. For most of our evolutionary history, it was necessary to run, to obtain prey and perhaps most importantly, to avoid being prey. If a lion was chasing a group of people it would most likely catch and eliminate from the gene pool the slowest runner and the one who could not make it up the tree -- the fattest one.
Thus, fat storage had to be highly regulated and this is done, as is any regulation, through hormones, the most significant being leptin.
If a person is getting too fat, the extra fat produces more leptin which is supposed to tell the brain that there is too much fat stored, more should not be stored, and the excess should be burned.
Signals are therefore sent to an area of the brain in the hypothalamus (the arcuate nucleus) to stop being hungry, to stop eating, to stop storing fat and to start burning some extra fat off.
Controlling hunger is a major (though not the only) way that leptin controls energy storage. Hunger is a very powerful, ancient, and deep-seated drive that, if stimulated long enough, will make you eat and store more energy. Asking somebody to not eat, to voluntarily restrict calories even though they are hungry, is asking the near impossible. The only way to eat less in the long-term is to not be hungry, and the only way to do this is to control the hormones that regulate hunger, the primary one being leptin.
How Leptin Resistance Leads to Disease
More recently, it has been found that leptin not only changes brain chemistry, but can also "rewire" the very important areas of the brain that control hunger and metabolism. I'm not aware of any other chemical in the body that has been shown to accomplish this "mind bending" event.
This has really caught the attention of the scientific community. Further studies have now shown that leptin, or more correctly the inability of the body to properly hear leptin’s signals, in other words leptin resistance, plays significant if not primary roles in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, reproductive disorders, and perhaps the rate of aging itself.
It helps to control the brain areas that regulate thyroid levels and the sympathetic nervous system which also has huge impacts on blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and aging. Leptin's stimulatory effect on the sympathetic nervous system also helps determine the adrenal stress response including cortisol levels.
Leptin May Be Even More Critical Than Insulin
The importance of insulin in health and disease is becoming well-known. Aside from its obvious role in diabetes, it plays a very significant role in hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
I was one of the first to speak publicly to doctors about insulin’s critical role in health well over a decade ago (see the transcribed talk Insulin and its Metabolic Effects) and I am even more convinced now.
However leptin may even supersede insulin in importance, for new research is revealing that in the long run glucose and therefore insulin levels may be largely determined by leptin.
It had been previously believed that the insulin sensitivity of muscle and fat tissues were the most important factor in determining whether one would become diabetic or not. Elegant new studies are showing that the brain and liver are most important in regulating a person’s blood sugar levels especially in type 2 or insulin resistant diabetes.
It should be noted again that leptin plays a vital role in regulating your brain’s hypothalamic activity which in turn regulates much of a person’s "autonomic" functions; those functions that you don't necessarily think about but which determines much of your life (and health) such as body temperature, heart rate, hunger, the stress response, fat burning or storage, reproductive behavior, and newly discovered roles in bone growth and blood sugar levels.
Another very recent study reveals leptin's importance in directly regulating how much sugar that the liver manufactures via gluconeogenesis.
Many chronic diseases are now linked to excess inflammation such as heart disease and diabetes. High leptin levels are very pro-inflammatory, and leptin also helps to mediate the manufacture of other very potent inflammatory chemicals from fat cells that also play a significant role in the progression of heart disease and diabetes. It has long been known that obesity greatly increased risk for many chronic diseases including heart disease and diabetes, but no one really knew why.
Leptin appears to be the missing link.
Could Leptin Also Affect How Fast You Age?
Leptin will not only determine how much fat you have, but also where that fat is put. When you are leptin resistant you put that fat mostly in your belly, your viscera, causing the so-called "apple shape" that is linked to much disease. Some of that fat permeates the liver, impeding the liver's ability to listen to insulin, and further hastening diabetes.
Leptin plays a far more important role in your health than, for instance, cholesterol, yet how many doctors measure leptin levels in their patients, know their own level, even know that it can be easily measured, or even what it would mean?
Leptin appears to play a significant role in obesity, heart disease, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, inflammatory diseases and cancer. These are the so-called "chronic diseases of aging".
Could it perhaps affect the rate of aging itself?
The Biology of Aging
Scientists who study the biology of aging are beginning to look at that question. There are two endeavors, two drives that life has been programmed, since its inception, to succeed at and to succumb to. These are to eat and to reproduce.
If every one of our ancestors had not succeeded in eating and reproducing we would not be here, and this paper would be moot. All of your morphological characteristics from your hair to your toenails are designed to help you succeed at those two activities. That is what nature wants us to do. Nature's purpose is not necessarily to have you live a long and healthy life, but to perpetuate the instructions, the genes that tell how to perpetuate life.
Even so-called "paleolithic" diets, though undoubtedly far better than what is generally eaten today, were not necessarily designed by nature to help us live a long and healthy life but, at best, to maximize reproduction. Nature appears to not care much about what happens to us after we have had a sufficient chance to reproduce. That is why we die.
But there are clues as to how to live a long and healthy life. And that brings us once again to fat--and leptin.
It takes energy to make babies; lots of it. Energy was and always will be a coveted commodity. Nature, and evolution, hates wasting it. It makes no sense to try and make babies when it appears that there's not enough energy available to successfully accomplish that goal.
Instead, it seems that virtually all living forms can "switch gears" and direct energy away from reproduction and towards mechanism that will allow it to "hunker down" for the long haul and thus be able to reproduce at a future more nutritionally opportune time. In other words nature will then let you live longer to accomplish its primary directive of reproduction.
It does this by up regulating maintenance and repair genes that increase production of intracellular antioxidant systems, heat shock proteins (that help maintain protein shape), and DNA repair enzymes. This is what happens when you restrict calories (without starvation) in animals, and that has been shown convincingly for 70 years to greatly extend the life span of many dozens of species. Thus, there is a powerful link between reproduction, energy stores, and longevity.
Genetic studies in simple organisms have shown that that link is at least partially mediated by insulin (which in simple organisms also functions as a growth hormone), and that when insulin signals are kept low, indicating scarce energy availability, maximal lifespan can be extended--- a lot; several hundred percent in worms and flies.
Glucose is an ancient fuel used even before there was oxygen in the atmosphere, for life can burn glucose without oxygen; it is an anaerobic fuel. The use of fat as fuel came later, after life in the form of plants soaked the earth in oxygen, for you cannot burn fat without oxygen.
The primary source of energy stores in people by far is fat, as many unfortunately are all too aware of. The primary signal that indicates how much fat is stored is leptin, and it is also leptin that allows for reproduction, or not.
It has long been known that women with very little body fat, such as marathon runners, stop ovulating. There is not enough leptin being produced to permit it. Paradoxically, the first pharmaceutical use of leptin was recently approved to give to skinny women to allow them to reproduce.
Leptin’s Role in Improving Your Metabolism
Leptin also is instrumental in regulating body temperature, partly by controlling the rate of metabolism via its regulation of the thyroid.
Metabolic rate and temperature has long been connected with longevity. Almost all mechanisms that extend lifespan in many different organisms result in lower temperature. Flowers are refrigerated at the florist to extend their lifespan. Restricting calories in animals also results in lower temperature, reduced thyroid levels, and longer life.
It should be noted that reduced thyroid levels in this case are not synonymous with hypothyroidism. Here, the body is choosing to lower thyroid hormones because the increased efficiency of energy use and hormonal signaling (including perhaps thyroid) is allowing this to happen.
Anything will dissolve faster in hot water than cold water. Extra heat will dissolve, disrupt and disorganize. This is not what I try to do to make someone healthy. It is commonly advised to "increase metabolism" and increase "thermogenesis" for health and weight loss.
Yet how many of you would put a brand of gasoline in your car that advertised that it would make your engine run hotter? What would that do to the life of your car? It is not an increase in metabolism that I am after; it is improved metabolic quality.
That will be determined at the quality of your leptin signaling.
If it is poor, if you are insulin and leptin resistant, your metabolism is unhealthy and high in what I call "metabolic friction". If you then increase its rate you will likely accelerate your demise. To increase the quality of your metabolism you must be able to properly listen to insulin and especially to leptin.
If your fasting blood serum level of leptin is elevated you are likely leptin resistant and you will not be healthy unless you correct it.
How Do You Become Leptin Resistant?
This is the subject of much research. I believe people become leptin-resistant by the same general mechanism that people become insulin-resistant; by overexposure to high levels of the hormone.
High blood glucose levels cause repeated surges in insulin, and this causes one's cells to become "insulin-resistant" which leads to further high levels of insulin and diabetes. It is much the same as being in a smelly room for a period of time. Soon, you stop being able to smell it, because the signal no longer gets through.
I believe the same happens with leptin. It has been shown that as sugar gets metabolized in fat cells, fat releases surges in leptin, and I believe that those surges result in leptin-resistance just as it results in insulin-resistance.
The only known way to reestablish proper leptin (and insulin) signaling is to prevent those surges, and the only known way to do that is via diet and supplements.
As such, these can have a more profound effect on your health than any other known modality of medical treatment.
When leptin signaling is restored, your brain can finally hear the message that perhaps should have been delivered decades ago; high leptin levels can now scream to your brain that you have too much fat and that you better start burning some off for your life is in danger.
Your brain will finally allow you access into your pantry that you have been storing your fat in. Your cells will be fed the food from that fat and they will be satisfied. They will not know whether that food came from your belly fat or from your mouth; nor will they care. They will be receiving energy that they need and will not have to ask for more. You will not be hungry.
This also makes counting calories irrelevant, for the calories that you put into your mouth today are not necessarily what your cells will be eating; that will be determined primarily by leptin. Whether or not you put food into your mouth, your cells will be eating, and if they cannot eat fat they must eat sugar.
Since little sugar is stored, that sugar will be had by making you crave it, or by turning the protein in your muscle and bone into sugar. This contributes in a major way to weakness and osteoporosis. Whether or not this lean tissue wasting happens is determined by your capacity, or incapacity, to burn fat, and that is determined by your ability to listen to leptin.
A strategic diet that emphasizes good fats and avoids blood sugar spikes coupled with targeted supplements (as recommended in my Rosedale Diet and Dr. Mercola’s Take Control of Your Health), will enhance insulin and leptin sensitivity so that you can once again hear their music, allowing your life to be the symphony it was meant to be.
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The tech giant has unveiled new technology that uses artificial intelligence to help identify skin, hair, and nail conditions based on images uploaded by users.
Prompted by a recent alarming rise in cases of colorectal cancer in people younger than 50, an independent expert panel has recommended that individuals of average risk for the disease begin screening exams at 45 years of age instead of the traditional 50.
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Scientists examining the remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany have found the first evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes, driven by the disease, may have conferred immunity on later generations of people from the region.
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Eating a Western diet impairs the immune system in the gut in ways that could increase risk of infection and inflammatory bowel disease, according to a new study.
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In sports, it is common practice to apply ice to sore muscles in order to reduce inflammation. However, a new study on mice has revealed that icing severe muscle injuries may actually prolong the healing process. The results indicate that cooling the injury makes it difficult for macrophages to enter the damaged cells in order to repair them.
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Classic computers use binary values (0/1) to perform. By contrast, our brain cells can use more values to operate, making them more energy-efficient than computers. This is why scientists are interested in neuromorphic (brain-like) computing. Physicists have used a complex oxide to create elements comparable to the neurons and synapses in the brain using spins, a magnetic property of electrons.
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A branch of artificial intelligence (AI), called machine learning, can accurately predict the risk of an out of hospital cardiac arrest -- when the heart suddenly stops beating -- using a combination of timing and weather data.
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In a study of low-income, urban youth in the U.S., researchers found that students exposed to Photovoice, an educational intervention, experienced greater improvements in STEM-capacity scores and environmental awareness scores compared to a group of youth who were not exposed to the activity. The results suggest that the Photovoice activities may be associated with improved learning outcomes.
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A new study is causing fresh doubts about the safety of genetically modified crops. The research found Bt toxin, which is present in many GM crops, in human blood.
Bt toxin makes crops toxic to pests, but it has been claimed that the toxin poses no danger to the environment and human health; the argument was that the protein breaks down in the human gut. But the presence of the toxin in human blood shows that this does not happen.
India Today reports:
“Scientists ... have detected the insecticidal protein ... circulating in the blood of pregnant as well as non-pregnant women. They have also detected the toxin in fetal blood, implying it could pass on to the next generation.”
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According to Dr. Peter McCullough, vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and known for being one of the top five most-published medical researchers in the United States, COVID-19 vaccines are killing “huge numbers” of people and the government is simply ignoring it.
In a video interview with investigative journalist and founder of Liberty Sentinel, Alex Newman, McCullough says the U.S. government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and health agencies around the world have all committed to vaccinating the global population while sitting on data showing the COVID-19 “vaccines” are turning out to be the most lethal vaccines ever created.
Safe Treatments Suppressed in Favor of Dangerous ‘Vaccines’
McCullough, who also has a master’s degree in public health, has provided testimony in three different Senate hearings, sharing the treatments he used to help patients recover from COVID-19 and avoid hospitalization. He summarizes his protocol in the interview.
These strategies are also detailed in “Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Infection,” published in the January 2021 issue of the American Journal of Medicine.1 He was also a consulting editor of “A Guide to Home-Based COVID Treatment.”2
During a recent Texas state Senate Health and Human Services Committee hearing, McCullough noted that, according to available data, early treatment could have prevented up to 85% of COVID-19 deaths.3 Early at-home treatment also minimizes the spread, as the amount of time you’re infectious can be reduced from two weeks to about four days.
Yet, despite being inexpensive and readily available, early treatments have all been censored and suppressed, apparently in order to secure this global mass vaccination campaign. In fact, as McCullough notes, there’s been no clarified guidance on COVID treatment at all, not even hospital protocols.
The entire focus of our health agencies has been on masking, lockdowns and waiting for a gene therapy “vaccine.” The results have been devastating. Five months into the mass vaccination campaign, more than 10,000 in the U.S. and European Union have already died after getting the shots. Any other vaccine would have been pulled from the market by now.
Shocking Stats Show Just How Dangerous COVID ‘Vaccines’ Are
For example, in 1976, the U.S. government vaccinated 45 million people against pandemic swine flu. The entire program was canceled after reports of just 53 deaths, according to Fox News.4 Note: The number of deaths reported after the 1976 inoculation program varies from three to 53, depending on the source.5,6,7
Now, health authorities are shrugging off more than 3,800 deaths8 after COVID-19 vaccination as either coincidental or inconsequential. Think about that. Five months into the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, we’re looking at a death toll that is 7,000% greater than during the swine flu vaccination campaign, which was canceled after the vaccine was deemed too risky.
The COVID-19 “vaccine” is also on a level of magnitude more dangerous than the seasonal flu vaccine. As reported by McCullough, on average, there are 20 to 30 deaths reported following the seasonal flu vaccine, which is given to about 195 million Americans each year.9
Compare that to these novel COVID-19 gene therapies. So far, an estimated 124 million Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and the death count is already at 3,837, as of April 30, 2021.10
Worse, it appears the vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) is backlogged by about three months,11 so this is likely to be a serious undercount. Even if VAERS was fully caught up, it would be an undercount, as only 1%12,13 to 10%14 of adverse events after vaccination are ever reported. So, in reality, we might be looking at anywhere from 38,370 to 383,700 COVID vaccine-related deaths.
A third comparison can be made against vaccines as a whole. As reported by Tucker Carlson,15 May 6, 2021, the COVID-19 shots have already resulted in more deaths than all available vaccines combined from mid-1997 until the end of 2013 — a period of 15.5 years.
No Other Vaccine Has Harmed This Many
In a recent report, the Israeli People Committee (IPC), a civilian body of health experts, similarly concluded that “there has never been a vaccine that has harmed as many people.” The Committee received 288 reports of death following COVID-19 vaccination, 90% of which occurred within 10 days. According to this report (translated from Hebrew):16
“According to Central Bureau of Statistics data during January-February 2021, at the peak of the Israeli mass vaccination campaign, there was a 22% increase in overall mortality in Israel compared with the previous year.
In fact, January-February 2021 have been the deadliest months in the last decade, with the highest overall mortality rates compared to corresponding months in the last 10 years.
Amongst the 20-29 age group the increase in overall mortality has been most dramatic. In this age group, we detect an increase of 32% in overall mortality in comparison with previous year.
Statistical analysis of information from the Central Bureau of Statistics, combined with information from the Ministry of Health, leads to the conclusion that the mortality rate amongst the vaccinated is estimated at about 1: 5000 (1: 13000 at ages 20-49, 1: 6000 at ages 50-69, 1: 1600 at ages 70+).
According to this estimate, it is possible to estimate the number of deaths in Israel in proximity of the vaccine, as of today, at about 1000-1100 people.”
CDC Denies Lethal Risks
The contrast in the government’s response to COVID-19 vaccine deaths compared to the 1976 swine flu pandemic vaccination campaign is “alarming,” McCullough says.
February 19, 2021, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement saying there were “no safety problems” with Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA injections.17 Of the 113 deaths reported at that time, none was deemed to be related to the vaccines.
Then, in May 2021, after reviewing 1,600 deaths reported to VAERS with an unnamed group of U.S. Food and Drug Administration doctors, the CDC declared that none of the deaths was related to the vaccine — this despite 24% of deaths have occurred within 48 hours of injection, and 16% within 24 hours. The problem is that it would take several months to investigate that many deaths, so the likelihood that this was a thorough investigation is slim to none.
“It is impossible for unnamed regulatory doctors without any experience with COVID-19 to opine that none of the deaths were related to the vaccine,” McCullough tells Newman.
“So, I think this was effectively a scrubbing, like we’ve seen elsewhere … We’re sitting on, right now, the biggest number of vaccine deaths [and] there’s been tens of thousands of hospitalizations, all attributable to the vaccine, and [we’re still] going strong.”
The reason you’re not hearing any negative news about these “vaccines” is because major media networks and stakeholders in COVID-19 vaccines have formed a “trusted news credibility coalition” that seeks to prevent any negative information about COVID vaccines to get into the popular media “because they’re concerned about vaccine hesitancy,” McCullough says.
Suppression of Concerning VAERS Data Underway
As of April 30, 2021, 3,837 people have died, and 16,014 people have reported serious injuries and disabilities following COVID-19 injections.18 Among these deaths were two 15-year-olds and one 16-year-old. There were also 235 reports or miscarriage or premature birth as of April 30, 2021.19
You can check the latest statistics yourself using openvaers.com.20 So-called fact checkers are of course working overtime to quell rumors about the trends showing in the VAERS data.
A recent fact-check article21 by The Post and Courier quotes unnamed, obscure experts stating that dying from the COVID-19 vaccine “isn’t an outcome people should worry about,” and that “despite misinformation shared on social media that sources a federal vaccines safety database” — meaning the VAERS database — “there is no proof of any patients having died as a result of taking a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States.”
PolitiFact also recently blew off VAERS as a “breeding ground for misinformation.”22 It warned social media posts reporting VAERS data are not to be trusted, as VAERS “reports are not verified” and “are not enough to determine whether a vaccine causes a particular adverse event.”
While both of those statements are true, PolitiFact fails to address the glaring problem that both the CDC and the FDA, which run VAERS jointly, are ignoring clearly emerging trends of harm. The Defender contacted the CDC March 8, 2021, with a list of questions about the vaccine injury reports, and as of May 11 — 64 days later — had received no reply.23
“[VAERS] is the only place where America, policy makers and others, are going to get a fair shake in understanding safety,” McCullough says. He points out that more than 80 colleges and any number of employers are now implementing mandatory COVID vaccination, and the only way for them to understand what the implications of that decision might be is to review the VAERS data. They’re not going to get any clues elsewhere, thanks to the universal suppression of information.
Overall, it appears the entire mission of VAERS and other such databases is being tossed aside. The system’s primary goal is to “detect new, unusual or rare vaccine adverse events” as a way to monitor the safety of vaccines.
As noted by McCullough, after five reported deaths where a medical product is suspected of being involved, the FDA will issue a black box warning — a notice to consumers warning them that the drug might cause death. At around 50 suspicious deaths, the product is pulled off the market.
The system is clearly failing if every single report of serious injury or death, including all the ones occurring within hours and in people with no underlying health problems, are simply written off as coincidence. It’s simply not believable.
EU Reports More Than 7,700 Deaths
Signs of lethal risks are also evident in data from the European Union, where the EudraVigilance system had received 7,766 reports of death after COVID vaccination as of April 17, 2021.24
Of these, Pfizer’s mRNA injection accounted for the largest number of deaths at 4,293, followed by Moderna with 2,094 deaths, AstraZeneca with 1,360 deaths and Johnson & Johnson with 19 deaths. As noted by McCullough:
“In my professional opinion, the safest vaccine on the market was the J&J vaccine, and that was pulled for very rare blood-clotting events. We had 7 million people vaccinated but the estimates are for the other two vaccines available [Pfizer and Moderna], the blood-clotting rates are probably 30 times that of J&J, and these others are going strong.”
Active Vaccine Surveillance Is Months Away
The FDA has also admitted that its analysis of vaccine safety data will be delayed for weeks, if not months. Right as the pandemic hit, they were in the process of transitioning from its Post-Licensure Rapid Immunization Safety Monitoring (PRISM) network, which was used to track side effects from the pandemic H1N1 vaccine, into a new system called the Biologics Effectiveness and Safety System (BEST).
In the meantime, they’re relying on a patchwork of passive reporting systems, including VAERS, the Vaccine Safety Datalink and a phone-based self-reporting system called v-safe.
Since all of these are based on voluntary self-reporting, they can miss potentially lethal and unanticipated reactions. By the end of March 2021, only 6.4% of all vaccinated individuals had enrolled in v-safe, for example,25 which means a vast majority aren’t being surveilled for side effects.
While BEST will be an active surveillance system capable of examining data from 100 million people and actually compare rates of adverse events between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals to detect trends, we are months away from this kind of analysis.
In the meantime, people continue to die, and for no good reason, considering the lethality of COVID-19 is on par with seasonal influenza for most age groups.26,27,28,29,30
Signs of Malfeasance Abound
At this point, the list of evidences of malfeasance is exceedingly long. For a rundown of several key issues, see the peer-reviewed paper “COVID-19: Restoring Public Trust During a Global Health Crisis — An Evidence-Based Position Paper to Ensure Ethical Conduct.”31
In it, the author substantiates McCullough’s allegations of rampant, wanton misconduct among public health officials, the active suppression of safe and effective treatments, and pandemic measures being implemented based on incorrect assumptions and outright lies.
As noted by McCullough in the featured interview, advertisements for COVID-19 vaccines were launched in violation of law before FDA licensing was complete. The initial studies had not even been completed. To this day, none of the COVID-19 “vaccines” has been licensed.
They only have emergency use authorization (EUA), and there’s no possible way for anyone to assure their safety. All of these facts are why they’re completely optional, and legally cannot yet be made mandatory, even though many schools and businesses are attempting to do that.
McCullough also stresses that in the COVID-19 vaccine trials, both the vaccinated groups and control groups had a less than 1% infection rate, which is about as low as it gets, in terms of risk. What this means is the overall public health impact of COVID-19 vaccination is also bound to be less than 1% — in other words, meaningless.
He also points out that around the world, we’re now seeing about 60% of active COVID-19 cases being in fully vaccinated individuals. In McCullough’s own practice, the COVID-19 patients he saw in the two weeks before this interview, about 60% were fully vaccinated, and there’s no difference in disease presentation between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
Death Tally May Spike During Fall and Winter
While the death toll from COVID-19 vaccines is already at a historical level, I fear it may shoot far higher as we move through fall and winter. The reason for this is because one of the greatest wild cards of these vaccines is antibody‐dependent enhancement (ADE) or paradoxical immune enhancement (PIE).
Fall and winter are the seasons in which most coronavirus infections occur, be it SARS-CoV-2 or other coronaviruses responsible for the common cold. If ADE does turn out to be a common problem with these injections, then vaccinated individuals may in fact turn out to be at significantly higher risk of severe COVID-19 and a potentially lethal immune reaction due to pathogenic priming.
Another potential risk is that of Th2 immunopathology, a form of cell-based enhancement in which a faulty T cell response triggers allergic inflammation. This condition may in some cases overlap with ADE, and can, like ADE, be life-threatening.34
In my view, there are still so many potential avenues of harm and so many uncertainties, I would encourage everyone to do your homework, keep reading and learning, weigh the potential pros and cons, ignore all pressure tactics and take your time when deciding whether to get any of these COVID-19 gene therapies.
If you or someone you love has already received a COVID-19 vaccine and are experiencing side effects, be sure to report it, preferably to all three of these locations:35
Healthy teenagers have been hospitalized,1 and at least one death in a teen has been reported,2 following experimental COVID-19 vaccinations being distributed under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) granted to vaccine manufacturers by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The adverse events are especially tragic since COVID-19 has a 99.997% survival rate among children and teens,3 making the necessity of vaccination highly questionable.
One of the risks of receiving an experimental medical procedure like a COVID-19 vaccine is that each person who participates is part of the experiment. Unexpected adverse reactions can and do occur, even with vaccines that have been in use for decades.
Often, the reactions may be mild, including symptoms such as headaches, muscle pain, chills and fever, but in other cases, the reactions may be severe, debilitating and even deadly.
As of April 30, 2021, 3,837 reports of death were submitted to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).4 Past investigations have shown only between 1%5 and 10%6 of adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS, which is a passive, voluntary reporting system, so the actual number could be much higher. One study funded by the U.S. government and published in 2011 found that less than 1% of vaccine adverse events are ever reported to VAERS.7
After Shot, Healthy Teen Develops Blood Clots in the Brain
April 21, 2021, 17-year-old Everest Romney of Draper, Utah, received a COVID-19 vaccine. The next day, his neck became swollen and he developed severe headaches, which persisted for days. “He could not move his neck without the assistance of his hands,” his mother, Cherie Romney, told ABC 4 News.8
Everest’s pediatrician initially said the neck symptoms were due to a pulled muscle, but Everest also developed a fever, prompting his mother to push for answers.
The pediatrician prescribed antibiotics and a neck brace, suggesting it may be due to an injury from the basketball Everest plays, but Cherie pushed for a CT scan after migraines continued for more than a week, which revealed two blood clots in his brain and a third on the outside of his brain.
After spending time in the intensive care unit, Everest was discharged but swelling persisted in his eyes and they’re not sure what the future will bring. “The hardest thing was I let him get that shot. And he was healthy and well before,” Cherie said. “But you question it, you can’t help but question it when it all goes wrong … It was pretty awful.”9
18-Year-Old Hospitalized With Blood Clots After COVID Shot
Emma Burkey, an 18-year-old from the Las Vegas area, also developed blood clots in her brain following a COVID-19 vaccine. She received the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine March 20, 2021, and was put into a medically induced coma within two weeks due to seizures and blood clots in her brain.
She is making a recovery in a rehabilitation center, but Bret Johnson, Burkey’s minister who was asked to act as spokesman, told Fortune, “We don’t know what’s going to happen with Emma, how long it will it take for her to return to a normal life.”10
April 13, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would pause the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. following reports of six cases of rare and severe blood clots called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) combined with low blood platelet levels (thrombocytopenia). One death was reported as a result.11
Together, the condition is known as thrombosis-thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). At least nine more cases were reported to VAERS between April 13 and April 23, 2021, all in women between the ages of 18 and 59.12
The experimental Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine uses a human adenovirus vector to deliver double-stranded DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into cells, similar to the AstraZeneca/Oxford University experimental COVID-19 vaccine, which uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vector.13
May 10, 2021, an expert panel in Norway recommended that both AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccines be dropped from the country’s vaccination campaign due to the risk of blood clots.14
Denmark has also rejected Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for the same reason,15 while in the U.S. the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lifted the pause on the shot and recommended use of the vaccine should resume, stating, “At this time, the available data suggest that the chance of TTS occurring is very low, but the FDA and CDC will remain vigilant in continuing to investigate this risk.”16
However, they did add a warning of the risk in their “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers,” which states:17
“Blood clots involving blood vessels in the brain, abdomen, and legs along with low levels of platelets (blood cells that help your body stop bleeding), have occurred in some people who have received the Janssen [Johnson & Johnson] COVID-19 Vaccine. In people who developed these blood clots and low levels of platelets, symptoms began approximately one to two-weeks following vaccination.
Most people who developed these blood clots and low levels of platelets were females ages 18 through 49 years. The chance of having this occur is remote. You should seek medical attention right away if you have any of the following symptoms after receiving Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine:
Shortness of breath
Chest pain
Leg swelling
Persistent abdominal pain
Severe or persistent headaches or blurred vision
Easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin beyond the site of the injection
These may not be all the possible side effects of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine. Serious and unexpected effects may occur.”
COVID Vaccine-Related Death of Teen Reported to VAERS
Another devastating report in VAERS states that a 15-year-old boy from Colorado, with no preexisting conditions or allergies, died from cardiac failure two days after receiving Pfizer’s experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.18
In an interview with Yahoo News, Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the Immunization Safety Office at the CDC, was quick to brush off the report, stating:19
“Anyone can make a report, and the information is not verified. If classified as serious, the CDC follows up to get medical records. Some of these reports might be true adverse reactions that are caused by the vaccine, and some of these reports are coincidental health events and not related to the vaccine at all … The benefits of vaccination far outweigh any risks from vaccination.”
At least five deaths have been reported to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccination in the 6- to 17-year-old category.20 Thirteen additional reports of life-threatening injury or permanent disability have also been reported in this age group.21 Despite the unknown and potentially deadly risks, COVID-19 vaccines are being tested on children as young as 6 months old.22
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine are leading Moderna’s clinical trial of a COVID vaccine for children 6 months to 12 years old, which is being conducted on 6,750 children at 90 sites in the U.S. and Canada. But as noted by Dr. Inci Yildirim, associate professor of pediatrics (infectious diseases) at Yale School of Medicine:23
“A clinical trial for a children’s COVID-19 vaccine requires the consideration of many additional factors. Children are not little adults. As children grow and develop, their immune system grows and develops. A 16-month-old is not the same as a 16-year-old. They are both children, but their capacity to respond to the vaccines is not the same.”
Victims Looking for Help With Medical Bills, Unlikely to Get It
Burkey, the teen who ended up in an induced coma after vaccination due to blood clots and seizures, has medical bills of $513,000, and that’s just the first round.24 In the U.S., COVID-19 vaccine makers already have something of a "free pass" when it comes to vaccine injury liability and lawsuits under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, passed in 2005 and amended in 2020.25
In 1986, the U.S. Congress created a federal no-fault vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) as an administrative alternative to a lawsuit for injuries and deaths caused by vaccines recommended by the CDC for children in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.26
Over a period of 30 years, that law was weakened with congressional amendments and federal agency rulemaking, as well as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011 that effectively removed all liability from vaccine manufacturers.
Contested vaccine injury claims filed under the 1986 Act are adjudicated by special masters in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., and there is a trust fund out of which claims are paid, sparing insurance companies representing vaccine makers and vaccine providers from costly payouts for vaccine injuries and deaths.27 Only injury claims for vaccines routinely recommended by the CDC may be heard in this “vaccine court” created in the 1986 Act.
However, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims will not be involved in ruling in contested COVID-19 vaccine injury claims. The previously mentioned PREP Act, which was passed by Congress in 2005 and amended in 2020 with plenty of pharmaceutical industry influence, will separately deal with COVID-19 vaccine injury claims routed through the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. As noted by Fortune:28
“The Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, run by an obscure office within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, covers medical costs and lost wages not paid by insurance. Some 445 claims had been filed as of April 26 for adverse reactions to either vaccines or treatments, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA], which runs the program.”
Of these 445 COVID-19 related claims, about one-quarter are linked to vaccines, and so far no payouts have been received. While HRSA stated that no claims have been compensated because they don’t have all of the required information, the program has a notoriously low rate of compensation.
In the last decade, only 39 of nearly 500 claims filed under the PREP Act have received federal compensation, most often from reactions caused by the H1N1 vaccine.29 The bottom line, sadly, is this, as noted by Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center:
“Already wealthy drug companies were given at least $9 billion from the government to develop experimental COVID vaccines in record breaking time,30 shaving five to 10 years off the normal vaccine development, testing and licensing process.31,32
But that wasn’t enough. Congress also handed companies a liability shield from lawsuits whenever the product government paid them to produce fails to work as advertised or a person is hurt by using it.33
If you or a loved one dies or is permanently injured by an experimental or soon-to-be FDA licensed COVID vaccine, you cannot sue the drug company who made it, even if there is evidence the company could have made it less reactive or more effective.”
A new study helps to explain how leptin, a hormone produced by fat tissue, influences your motivation to eat.
It is amazing how the little twists and turns of researchers can have such a profound impact on what we generally come to realize as “scientific truth.” Let me share a recent fascinating example of how this impacted one of the most powerful hormones in your body.
A new study is causing fresh doubts about the safety of genetically modified crops. The research found Bt toxin, which is present in many GM crops, in human blood.
