Health & Fitness

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and most mainstream media, what we have now is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”¹

According to the official narrative, 99% of COVID-19 deaths and 95% of COVID-related hospitalizations are occurring among the unvaccinated. In a July 16, 2021, White House press briefing,² CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky claimed “over 97% of people who are entering the hospital right now are unvaccinated.”

But as reported by Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle,” “that statistic is grossly misleading,”³ and in an August 5, 2021, video statement, Walensky inadvertently revealed how that 95% to 99% statistic was created.

Grossly Misleading Data Manipulation

As it turns out, to achieve those statistics, the CDC included hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021. It does not include more recent data or data related to the Delta variant, which is now the most prevalent strain in circulation. The problem is, the vast majority of the United States population was unvaccinated during that timeframe.

January 1, 2021, only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots,⁴ and as of June 15, 48.7% were fully “vaccinated.”⁵ Keep in mind that you’re not “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after your second dose (in the case of Pfizer or Moderna), which is given six weeks after your first shot. This is according to the CDC.⁶

So, those receiving an initial dose in June, for example, won’t be “fully vaccinated” until eight weeks later, sometime in July or August.

By using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated, the CDC is now claiming we’re in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” in an effort to demonize those who still have not agreed to receive this experimental gene modification injection.

Selective Pressure Promotes Emergence of New Variants

Here’s what Canadian viral immunologist and vaccine researcher Dr. Byram Bridle told Ingraham about the claim that we’re in a pandemic of the unvaxxed, and that the unvaccinated are hotbeds for dangerous variants:

“Absolutely, it’s untrue to be calling this a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And it’s certainly untrue … that the unvaccinated are somehow driving the emergence of the novel variants. This goes against every scientific principle that we understand.

The reality is, the nature of the vaccines we are using right now, and the way we’re rolling them out, are going to be applying selective pressure to this virus to promote the emergence of new variants. Again, this is based on sound principles.

We have to look no further than … the emergence of antibiotic resistance … The principle is this: If you have a biological entity that is prone to mutation — and the SARS-CoV-2, like all coronaviruses is prone to mutation — and you apply a narrowly focused selective pressure that is nonlethal, and you do this over a long period of time, this is the recipe for driving the emergence of novel variants.

This is exactly what we’re doing. Our vaccines are focused on a single protein of the virus, so the virus only has to alter one protein, and the vaccines don’t come close to providing sterilizing immunity.

People who are vaccinated still get infected, it only seems particularly good at blunting the disease, and what that tells you therefore is that these vaccines in the vast majority of people are applying a nonlethal pressure, narrowly focused on one protein, and the vaccine rollout is occurring over a long period of time. That’s the recipe for driving variants.”

Natural Immunity Offers Far Superior Protection

Bridle also explains why natural immunity offers robust protection against all variants, whereas vaccine-induced immunity can’t. When you acquire the infection naturally, your body develops antibodies against ALL of the viral proteins whereas the COVID shots only trigger antibodies against one, namely the spike protein.

As mentioned above, when you have antibodies against just one of the viral proteins, the virus only needs to mutate that one protein in order to evade your immune system. When you have natural immunity, on the other hand, your antibodies will recognize all parts of the virus, so even if the spike protein is mutated, your body will recognize other parts of the virus and mount an attack against those.

That SARS-CoV-2 works the same way other viruses do was shown in a Nature Reviews Immunology study⁷ by Alessandro Sette and Shane Crotty, published in October 2020. The study, “Cross-Reactive Memory T Cells and Herd Immunity to SARS-CoV-2” argued that naturally-acquired immunity against SARS-CoV-2 is potent, long-lasting and very broad in scope, as you develop both antibodies and T cells that target multiple components of the virus and not just one.

If we are to depend on vaccine-induced immunity, as public health officials are urging us to do, we’ll end up on a never-ending booster treadmill. Boosters will absolutely be necessary, as the shot offers such narrow protection against a single protein of the virus. Already, data around the world show vaccine-induced protection is waning rapidly in the face of new variants, and Moderna has publicly stated that the need for additional boosters is expected.⁸

How Dangerous Is the Delta Variant?

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Delta variant is both more transmissible and more dangerous than the original virus and previous variants. July 4, 2021, he told NBC News:⁹

“It is more effective and efficient in its ability to transmit from person to person. And studies that we've seen where they have been the variant that's dominated in other countries, it's clear that it appears to be more lethal in the sense of more serious — allow you to get more serious disease leading to hospitalization, and in some cases leading to deaths.”

In a June 29, 2021, interview,¹⁰ Fauci called the Delta variant “a game-changer” for unvaccinated people, warning it will devastate the unvaccinated population while vaccinated individuals are protected against it.

Remember, Fauci is not a clinician and has never treated someone infected with SARS-CoV-2. Other health experts and practicing physicians who treat COVID-19 patients disagree with Fauci’s claims, arguing that not only is the Delta variant not more dangerous, it’s certainly not more dangerous for the unvaccinated.

As reported by Ingraham in June 2021 (video above), there’s an evolutionary genetics theory called Muller’s Ratchet, which states that as an outbreak starts to peter out, the virus tends to mutate into a more transmissible form, but at the same time it grows weaker, causing far less serious infection. According to epidemiologist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, this is exactly what we’re seeing. He told Ingraham:

“The good news is on the 18th of June, the United Kingdom presented their 16th report¹¹ on the mutations — and they’re doing a great job, much better than our CDC — and what they demonstrated is that the Delta is more contagious but it’s far less deadly, far less worrisome. In fact, it’s a much weaker virus than both the U.K. [Alpha] and the South African [Beta] variants.”

Spike Mutations Render Vaccinated Vulnerable to Delta

Importantly, the Delta variant contains three different mutations, all in the spike protein. This, McCullough explains, allows this variant to evade the immune responses in those who have received the COVID jabs — but not those who have natural immunity which, again, is much broader. In a June 30, 2021, appearance on Fox News (video above), McCullough stated:¹²

“It is very clear from the UK Technical Briefing¹³ that was published June 18th that the vaccine provides no protection against the Delta variant. It’s a very mild variant.

Whether you get the vaccine or not, patients will get some very mild symptoms like a cold and they can be easily managed … Patients who have severe symptoms or at high risk, we can use simple drug combinations at home and get them through the illness. So, there’s no reason now to push vaccinations.”

Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer Brian Hooker, Ph.D., has echoed McCullough’s sentiments. The Defender quotes Hooker:¹⁴

“What we’re seeing is virus evolution 101. Viruses like to survive, so killing the host (i.e. the human who is infected) defeats the purpose because killing the host kills the virus, too. For this reason, new variants of viruses that circulate widely through the population tend to become more transmissive but less pathogenic. In other words, they will spread more easily from person to person, but they will cause less damage to the host.

The vaccine focuses on the spike protein, whereas natural immunity focuses on the entire virus.

Natural immunity — with a more diverse array of antibodies and T-cell receptors — will provide better protection overall as it has more targets in which to attack the virus, whereas vaccine-derived immunity only focuses on one portion of the virus, in this case, the spike protein. Once that portion of the virus has mutated sufficiently, the vaccine no longer is effective.”

Real-World Data Show Most of Infected are Fully ‘Vaccinated’

Real-world data from areas with high COVID jab rates show the complete converse of what media, the CDC and White House officials are telling us. In addition to the British Technical Briefing No. 16,¹⁵ cited above, we have additional data from Israel, Scotland, Massachusetts and Gibraltar:

While those who benefit from keeping the pandemic going would like you to cower in fear at the thought of the Delta variant, there’s really no evidence that it’s any worse than the original. It’s more transmissible, yes, but far less dangerous, as its primary symptoms are that of a regular cold.

According to Harvard and Stanford professors, the actual number of Americans dying from or with COVID-19 are actually at an all-time low, so alarmism is uncalled for.²⁴

And, as for viral social media posts by doctors and nurses claiming hospitals are overflowing with unvaccinated COVID patients, don’t believe them. Most are bots. We’ve repeatedly seen evidence that fearmongering is being spread not by real people but by fake accounts run by artificial intelligence. This includes blue check accounts. Here’s a sampling of recent bot farm tweets trying to scare everyone:²⁵

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

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

Don’t Fear It, Just Treat It

In closing, remember there are several different treatment protocols for COVID-19 that appear just as effective for variants as for the original virus, including the following:

• Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance’s I-MASS Prevention and At-Home Treatment protocol
• The FLCCC’s I-MASK+ Prevention and Early Outpatient Treatment protocol
• The FLCCC’s I-RECOVER management protocol for long-haul COVID-19 syndrome
• Nebulized hydrogen peroxide for prevention and treatment of COVID-19, as detailed in Dr. David Brownstein’s case paper²⁶ and Dr. Thomas Levy’s free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” Levy believes nebulized hydrogen peroxide can also be an invaluable strategy for combating spike protein toxicity²⁷ because, in addition to being a powerful antiviral, it will also augment and speed up cellular healing, in part by improving oxygenation

from Articles https://ift.tt/3g2p9Ic
via IFTTT

People can tell themselves that they didn’t see where things have been heading for the last 17 months, but they did. They saw all the signs along the way. The signs were all written in big, bold letters, some of them in scary-looking Germanic script. They read … “THIS IS THE ROAD TO TOTALITARIANISM.”

I’m not going to show you all those signs out again. People like me have been pointing them out, and reading them out loud, for 17 months now. Anyone who knows anything about the history of totalitarianism, how it incrementally transforms society into a monstrous mirror image of itself, has known since the beginning what the “New Normal” is, and we have been shouting from the rooftops about it.

We have watched as the New Normal transformed our societies into paranoid, pathologized, authoritarian dystopias where people now have to show their “papers” to see a movie or get a cup of coffee and publicly display their ideological conformity to enter a supermarket and buy their groceries.

We have watched as the New Normal transformed the majority of the masses into hate-drunk, hysterical mobs that are openly persecuting “the Unvaccinated,” the official “Untermenschen” of the New Normal ideology.

We have watched as the New Normal has done precisely what every totalitarian movement in history has done before it, right by the numbers. We pointed all this out, each step of the way. I’m not going to reiterate all that again.

I am, however, going to document where we are at the moment, and how we got here … for the record, so that the people who will tell you later that they “had no clue where the trains were going” will understand why we no longer trust them, and why we regard them as cowards and collaborators, or worse.

Yes, that’s harsh, but this is not a game. It isn’t a difference of opinion. The global-capitalist ruling establishment is implementing a new, more openly totalitarian structure of society and method of rule. They are revoking our constitutional and human rights, transferring power out of sovereign governments and democratic institutions into unaccountable global entities that have no allegiance to any nation or its people.

That is what is happening … right now. It isn’t a TV show. It’s actually happening. The time for people to “wake up” is over. At this point, you either join the fight to preserve what is left of those rights, and that sovereignty, or you surrender to the “New Normal,” to global-capitalist totalitarianism.

I couldn’t care less what you believe about the virus, or its mutant variants, or the experimental “vaccines.” This isn’t an abstract argument over “the science.” It is a fight … a political, ideological fight. On one side is democracy, on the other is totalitarianism. Pick a fucking side, and live with it. Anyway, here’s where we are at the moment, and how we got here, just the broad strokes.

It’s August 2021, and Germany has officially banned demonstrations against the “New Normal” official ideology. Other public assemblies, like the Christopher Street Day demo (pictured below), one week ago, are still allowed. The outlawing of political opposition is a classic hallmark of totalitarian systems. It’s also a classic move by the German authorities, which will give them the pretext they need to unleash the New Normal goon squads on the demonstrators tomorrow.

In Australia, the military has been deployed to enforce total compliance with government decrees … lockdowns, mandatory public obedience rituals, etc. In other words, it is de facto martial law. This is another classic hallmark of totalitarian systems.

In France, restaurant and other business owners who serve “the Unvaccinated” will now be imprisoned, as will, of course, “the Unvaccinated.” The scapegoating, demonizing, and segregating of “the Unvaccinated” is happening in countries all over the world. France is just an extreme example. The scapegoating, dehumanizing, and segregating of minorities — particularly the regime’s political opponents — is another classic hallmark of totalitarian systems.

In the UK, Italy, Greece, and numerous other countries throughout the world, this pseudo-medical social-segregation system is also being introduced, in order to divide societies into “good people” (i.e., compliant) and “bad” (i.e., non-compliant).

The “good people” are being given license and encouraged by the authorities and the corporate media to unleash their rage on the “the Unvaccinated,” to demand our segregation in internment camps, to openly threaten to viciously murder us. This is also a hallmark of totalitarian systems.

And that, my friends, is where we are. We didn’t get here overnight. Here are just a few of the unmistakable signs along the road to totalitarianism that I have pointed out over the last 17 months.

June 2020 … The New (Pathologized) Totalitarianism	August 2020 … The Invasion of the New Normals
October 2020 … The Covidian Cult	November 2020 … The Germans Are Back!
March 2021 … The New Normal (Phase 2)	March 2021 … The “Unvaccinated” Question
May 2021 … The Criminalization of Dissent	June 2021 … Manufacturing New Normal “Reality“

And now, here we are, where we have been heading all along, clearly, unmistakably heading … directly into The Approaching Storm, or possibly global civil war. This isn’t the end of the road to totalitarianism, but I’m pretty sure we are in the home stretch. It feels like things are about to get ugly. Very ugly. Extremely ugly.

Those of us who are fighting to preserve our rights, and some basic semblance of democracy, are outnumbered, but we haven’t had our final say yet … and there are millions of us, and we are wide awake.

So pick a side, if you haven’t already. But, before you do, maybe look back at the history of totalitarian systems, which, for some reason, never seem to work out for the totalitarians, at least not in the long run. I’m not a professional philosopher or anything, but I suspect that might have something to do with some people’s inextinguishable desire for freedom, and our willingness to fight for it, sometimes to the death.

This kind of feels like one of those times. Sorry for going all “Braveheart” on you, but I’m psyching myself up to go get the snot beat out of me by the New Normal goon squads tomorrow, so I’m a little … you know, overly emotional. Seriously, though, pick a side … now … or a side will be picked for you.

About the Author

C.J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing and Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. His dystopian novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant.

Volumes I and II of his Consent Factory Essays are published by Consent Factory Publishing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated Content, Inc. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org.

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

Gary Nunn explores what effect media and marketing is having on the so-called vaccine-hesitant.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/3sk69tG

Body+Soul meets the cast of ladies gracing our screens for The Bachelor 2021.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/3AtQOK4

Men are able to forge successful careers as professional NRL players, but their female counterparts have to work other jobs as their time playing football is part-time. Millie Boyle hopes that will change soon.

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

We speak to the experts on how to help your pet be more relaxed and resilient through the lockdowns.

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

We speak to leading STEM experts about why it is important women pursue careers in those industries.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/2VmTz0S

Despite the fact it literally sustains a life that cannot fend for itself, breastfeeding in public is still taboo. On World Breastfeeding Week, we examine how we can do better in supporting new mums.

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

The Australian Dental Association shares its key tips to keep your smile for life, for Dental Health Week 2021. 

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/3Adguu2

Anthropologists predicted this: relationships being severed due to differing views on vaccines. Jennifer Aniston is among those who have cut some people from their lives. 

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

Pre-mRNA splicing in a subset of human short introns is governed by a distinct mechanism involving a new splicing factor, new research finds.

from Top Health News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/3mkeI71

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.

from Articles : Hormones, Weight Management https://ift.tt/3tVodK4
via IFTTT

By Ron Rosedale, M.D.

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.

from Articles : Hormones, Weight Management https://ift.tt/3lV9cp2
via IFTTT