Health & Fitness

TikTok user and surrogate @mom_11203 has shared her story of how the biological parents of the twins she gave birth to 14 months ago still haven’t come to pick up their children… and she hasn’t even heard from them in 50 days.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/WxQ805K

A study has found that aged black garlic (ABG) in addition to dietary changes can lower diastolic blood pressure in male participants.^1,2 This is not the first study to show that garlic has health benefits. Garlic has been recognized for centuries, including references in Sumerian clay tablets that date 2600 B.C.³ In ancient Egypt, garlic was given to the working class to support heavy labor and in the first Olympic Games, athletes used garlic to increase their stamina.

Garlic has also been used in traditional Chinese medicine for digestion and to treat diarrhea and worm infestations. In India, garlic was used to promote general healing and treat fatigue, digestive issues, heart disease and arthritis. Researchers writing in the Journal of Nutrition⁴ observed that several cultures came to the same conclusion about the role that garlic plays in health and disease. They went on to write:⁵

“With the onset of the Renaissance, increasing attention was paid in Europe to the medical uses of plants. A leading physician of the 16th Century, Pietro Mattioli of Siena, wrote widely, and his work was translated into several other languages. He prescribed garlic for digestive disorders, infestations with worms and renal disorders, as well as to help mothers during difficult childbirth.

In England, however, garlic remained the food of the working classes, a view that did not prevent the wealthier English from enjoying the therapeutic properties of garlic, i.e., it was recommended for constipation, toothache, dropsy, animal bites and the plague.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,⁶ 47% of U.S. adults have high blood pressure. This is currently defined as systolic pressure greater than 130 milligrams of mercury (mmHg) or diastolic pressure greater than 80 mmHg. Data show that consuming ABG may have an impact on people with high blood pressure.⁷

Aged Black Garlic Helps Lower Diastolic Blood Pressure

According to the researchers,⁸ eating aged garlic has demonstrated improvement in different cardiovascular disease risk factors. The extent of the benefits is related to the aging process and the chemical compounds found in garlic.

The objective of the study was to analyze how daily intake of ABG extract with standardized S-allyl-L-cysteine (SAC) impacted cardiovascular risk factors in people who had moderate hypercholesterolemia and followed dietary recommendations.

The researchers engaged 67 people in a double-blind, crossover, sustained and controlled intervention study. The participants all consumed 250 mg per day of a combination of SAC/AGE or a placebo for six weeks. They underwent a three-week washout period and continued for the next six weeks with the opposite intervention.

At the end of the study, the researchers found that certain cardiovascular disease risk biomarkers were reduced in those taking the ABG extract. This included a reduction in diastolic blood pressure of 5.85 mmHg as compared to those taking the placebo, especially in men with diastolic blood pressure over 75 mmHg.⁹

Rosa M. Valls, Ph.D., from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain, and one of the researchers, commented in an article in Medscape, "The observed reduction in DBP (diastolic blood pressure) by ABG extract was similar to the effects of dietary approaches, including the effects of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet on BP.”¹⁰

The authors noted that past research studies had not focused on ABG, but rather on other types of aged garlic and had a method or design weaknesses. During the study, researchers found that 96.5% of the group adhered to the protocol and there were no adverse events reported. The differences in diastolic blood pressure were not found at three weeks, but were statistically significant at six weeks.

According to Medscape, the scientists wrote that systolic blood pressure elevation also influences cardiovascular risk outcomes and both systolic and diastolic blood pressure independently influence heart disease events. From the data, they concluded:¹¹

"Thus, reducing DBP by 5 mm Hg results in a 40% lower risk of death from stroke and a 30% lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease or other vascular death.”

Garlic Has Heart and Blood Sugar Benefits

Garlic not only affects blood pressure but has been known to have a positive impact on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, which include atherosclerosis, thrombosis and diabetes.¹² Garlic exerts an antimicrobial effect¹³ and has strong antioxidant properties¹⁴ that support health and stimulate the immune function. Research also demonstrates that aged garlic is a more potent antioxidant than fresh cloves.¹⁵

Additionally, garlic powder has demonstrated a protective effect on the elastic properties of the aorta in elderly adults. The aorta is the largest artery in the body, which exits directly from the heart. Aortic stiffness is commonly found in aging and is associated with an increased risk of heart attack, heart failure, stroke and heart disease.¹⁶ However, one study¹⁷ found that elderly patients who took garlic powder had an attenuated response in aortic stiffness.

A second study¹⁸ showed those taking 2 grams of fresh garlic increased plasma concentrations of nitric oxide (NO). This is a soluble gas your body makes from the amino acid L-arginine. Although it's a free radical, it's also an important biological signaling molecule required for normal endothelial function¹⁹ and to protect your mitochondria.²⁰

NO is also a potent vasodilator²¹ that promotes healthy blood flow for efficient oxygenation of your tissues and organs and aids in the removal of waste and carbon dioxide. Additionally, it improves brain neuroplasticity²² by improving oxygenation in the somatomotor complex, an area of the brain often affected in the early stages of dementia.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,²³ more than 37 million people living in the U.S. have diabetes. Type 2 diabetes tends to develop more frequently in people over age 45 and can present with few symptoms. One of those symptoms is elevated blood sugar.

As your cells are exposed to higher amounts of glucose, they become insulin resistant. However, insulin is required to move glucose from the blood into the cells. One way to help control blood sugar levels is to retain more insulin in the bloodstream. Yet, up to 80% is removed on the first pass through the liver,²⁴ which reduces the amount of insulin available for use.

Research has found that compounds in garlic prevent this metabolism of insulin, and thus free up more of it for your body.²⁵ Animal studies have been used to evaluate the effect of one garlic compound, alliin, on blood sugar. In one study,²⁶ mice were given drinking water with and without alliin for eight weeks.

There was no change in body weight, energy or fat deposits, but those drinking water with alliin demonstrated increased insulin sensitivity and a better lipid profile. Researchers believe this may also be attributed to the compound's ability to modulate intestinal gut microbiota.

Organosulfur Compounds Contribute to the Power of Garlic

Organosulfides are phytochemicals commonly found in garlic and onion. Epidemiological studies have found these compounds have an anti-carcinogenic effect in an experimental model.²⁷ These are a subclass of sulfur that is found throughout the environment and a necessary component of enzymes, proteins and vitamins.²⁸

The exact mechanism organosulfur compounds use in protecting cells is not clear. It is known that they modulate activity to inhibit the formation of DNA adducts,²⁹ or segments of DNA bound to potentially cancer-causing chemicals.³⁰ Organosulfur compounds have also demonstrated activity against cellular proliferation in tumors that may be mediated by starting apoptosis.³¹

The sulfur compounds also have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and antimicrobial properties.³² They are linked to a decrease in the synthesis of cholesterol in the liver,³³ which reduces the total cholesterol level. In a test tube, they inhibit platelet aggregation,³⁴ which potentially can reduce the risk of thrombotic events including stroke and pulmonary embolism, and protect your cardiovascular system.

Garlic Benefits Gut, Brain and Memory

One study,³⁵ presented at the American Physiological Society's 2019 annual meeting by researchers at the University of Louisville, added credence to garlic’s status as a superfood and powerful medicinal properties. The study involved 24-month-old mice, which is the equivalent of 56 and 69 years in humans.

Some mice received an allyl sulfide, which led to improved long and short-term memory and healthier gut bacteria, as compared to control mice that didn't receive the supplement. Mice taking the garlic compound also had higher gene expression of neuronal derived natriuretic factor (NDNF),³⁶ which is a gene required for memory consolidation.

Reduced expression of NDNF may be linked to cognitive decline. One study author commented in a press release, "Our findings suggest that dietary administration of garlic containing allyl sulfide could help maintain healthy gut microorganisms and improve cognitive health in the elderly.”³⁷

The link between gut bacteria and neurological health is not new. Data show people with dementia have a different makeup of gut microbiota as compared to those without. Research in the journal Protein & Cell explained that:³⁸

“… gastrointestinal tract microbiota are directly linked to dementia pathogenesis through triggering metabolic diseases and low-grade inflammation progress. A novel strategy is proposed for the management of these disorders and as an adjuvant for psychiatric treatment of dementia and other related diseases through modulation of the microbiota (e.g. with the use of probiotics)."

Research data also supports the use of aged garlic extract (AGE) to improve short-term recognition memory and relieve neuroinflammation in animals with Alzheimer's-like disease.³⁹ This study used fresh garlic that was aged to create the extract and produce SAC, which is found in far greater quantities in aged garlic and black fermented garlic than in raw garlic. AGE may also protect the brain in other ways, including:⁴⁰

• Protect against neurodegenerative conditions
• Prevent brain injury following ischemia
• Protect neuronal cells against apoptosis
• Preventing β-amyloid-induced oxidative death

Researchers in the journal Nutrients also explained that treatment with AGE or S-allyl cysteine “has been shown to prevent the degeneration of the brain's frontal lobe, improve learning and memory retention, and extend life span."⁴¹ The same extract may increase gut microbial richness and diversity after just three months.⁴² Fresh garlic has also shown a promise to improve memory function, including one animal study where garlic increased memory retention.⁴³

Garlic Fights Infections and Cancer

As mentioned above, garlic and onions contain phytochemicals that have demonstrated anticarcinogenic effects. One population-based study in Puerto Rico⁴⁴ was conceived when it was noted that there was a lower rate of breast cancer on the island as compared to the mainland.

Researchers from the University at Buffalo were looking for evidence to associate eating onions and garlic with the prevention of breast cancer. They found an inverse relationship between intake and the risk of lung, prostate and stomach cancers that had previously been established.

The lead researcher, Gauri Desai, said in a press release,⁴⁵ "We found that among Puerto Rican women, the combined intake of onion and garlic, as well as sofrito, was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer." Sofrito is a foundational tomato-based sauce commonly used in Puerto Rican dishes.

The final data revealed that “those who consumed sofrito more than once a day had a 67% decrease in risk as compared to women who never ate it.” Desai⁴⁶ pointed out that it was the total amount of onions and garlic the women ate that provided the protective effect and not the sofrito alone.

Data have also shown that garlic is a natural antiviral and antibacterial, and food researchers have suggested that extracts could be used when preparing hamburgers to reduce the growth of staphylococcus aureus in the burgers.⁴⁷ While it can be used as flavoring, it also has antibacterial properties against some gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.

Antiviral Properties of Garlic Supplements

Garlic also has a long history of being tested against viruses. One study in 1985⁴⁸ demonstrated that garlic had activity against influenza B and herpes simplex. A human trial with 146 participants carried out during flu season showed those using garlic supplements were less likely to get sick and if they did get sick, recovered faster. Those using a placebo were more likely to get sick more than once in a 12-week period.

In a historical review of the literature, it was found garlic is active against several viruses, including flu, the common cold, HIV, herpes types I and II and rhinovirus.⁴⁹ Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Vietnamese scientists⁵⁰ validated the antiviral properties of garlic and showed two of the most common organosulfur compounds found in garlic essential oil had activity against SARS-CoV-2.

The researchers wrote that the results of the lab study “suggest that the garlic essential oil is a valuable natural antivirus source, which contributes to preventing the invasion of coronavirus into the human body.”⁵¹

One Turkish study⁵² published later in the pandemic wrote that garlic influences the release of leptin from adipose tissue, which helps regulate satiety and plays a role in boosting inflammatory cytokines. They concluded that garlic may help “repress the production and secretion of proinflammatory cytokines as well as an adipose tissue-derived hormone leptin having the pro-inflammatory nature.”⁵³

It is difficult to go wrong when eating garlic. But, if you're not fond of the pungent flavor or want a further boost to the health effects, consider black garlic, which is produced by fermenting whole bulbs of fresh garlic in climate-controlled conditions. Even garlic haters may like the taste of ABG. Writing in the journal Molecules, researchers noted that ABG is a garlic preparation “with a sweet and sour taste and no strong odor.”⁵⁴

When you choose fresh garlic, be aware the cloves must be crushed or chopped to stimulate the release of an enzyme, which in turn catalyzes the formation of allicin. To activate the medicinal properties, compress the clove with a spoon or finely chop it before swallowing.

Tests show you can reduce the following unpleasant breath odor by chewing a raw apple, mint leaves or lettuce.⁵⁵ Now you can eat garlic to your heart's content without worrying about offending others.

from Articles https://ift.tt/Mt1sAzT
via IFTTT

By now, you’ve probably heard that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created a Disinformation Governance Board to oversee what information is and isn’t “truthful.”¹ This includes information relating to elections.² It’s so incredibly Orwellian, you’d think it was pure fiction, yet here we are. It’s real.

This “Ministry of Truth” will reportedly operate under and receive funding from the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), created by President Biden to “curb radicalization in the U.S.”³ It appears those in the Biden administration must have thought "1984" was an instruction manual rather than a warning.

Known Disinformation Spreader Made Head of Truth Ministry

Heading up this new “Ministry of Truth” is Nina Jankowicz,⁴ a “Russian disinformation expert” who in her spare time makes a fool of herself singing made-up show tunes about disinformation and erotic Harry Potter songs⁵ on TikTok.

As noted by both Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and Jimmy Dore of “The Jimmy Dore Show” in the videos above, Jankowicz is qualified to do absolutely nothing. Independent journalist Glen Greenwald also highlighted Jankowicz’s obvious lack of real credentials in a May 4, 2022, Substack article:⁶

“The concept of ‘anti-disinformation expert’ is itself completely fraudulent. This is not a real expertise but rather a concocted title bestowed on propagandists to make them appear more scholarly and apolitical than they are ...

There is no conceivable circumstance in which a domestic law enforcement agency like DHS should be claiming the power to decree truth and falsity ... The purpose of Homeland Security agents is to propagandize and deceive, not enlighten and inform.

The level of historical ignorance and stupidity required to believe that U.S. Security State operatives are earnestly devoted to exposing and decreeing truth is off the charts … That nobody should want the U.S. Government let alone Homeland Security arrogating unto itself the power to declare truth and falsity seems self-evident.”

Surprisingly enough, even mainstream news outlets have pointed out Jankowicz’s role in the spreading of disinformation and outright lies. For example, as reported by the British Daily Mail:⁷

“The Russia disinformation expert previously called the laptop of President Joe Biden's son Hunter a 'Trump campaign product.' This is causing questions over Jankowicz's ability to accurately judge disinformation now that several sources have come out confirming the validity of Hunter's laptop ...

When stories about Hunter Biden's laptop started emerging, several outlets, social media sites and left-leaning disinformation experts claimed that it was just misinformation coming from Trump and others on the right.

In an October 2020 report, Jankowicz shared her skepticism of the contents of the laptop and the claims it belonged to Hunter. 'We should view it as a Trump campaign product,' she told the New York Daily News at the time. Twitter repeatedly took down the Hunter Biden laptop story and prevented it from being spread on the platform.”

In one October 2020 tweet, she referred to the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “fairytale.”⁸ Jankowicz was also among those who insisted Trump had colluded with Russia to win the presidency in 2016, a claim we now know is patently false. In reality, it was Hillary Clinton and allies who colluded to fabricate this false narrative and derail Trump’s presidency.⁹

Over the past couple years, we’ve repeatedly seen how information censored on the grounds that it was “misinformation” turned out to be factual and true. In early 2020, YouTube betrayed its founding principles and started censoring and banning anything that contradicted the World Health Organization’s stance on COVID-19.

Yet, time and again, the WHO turned out to be wrong.¹⁰ No organization is infallible, and the WHO has a long history of corruption that makes its ability to discern what’s best for public health all the more suspect. Twitter followed suit, axing health experts, scientists and respected journalists like Tess Lawrie, Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Alex Berenson and many more.¹¹

Jankowicz’s Hostile Stand Against First Amendment Rights

Jankowicz has also publicly opposed the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, saying free speech is bad for “marginalized communities.” Shortly after Elon Musk announced his takeover of Twitter, she told NPR:¹²

“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities ...

We need the platforms to do more, and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well … the U.K. has an online safety bill that's being considered right now where they're trying to make illegal this currently, quote, ‘awful but lawful content’ that exists online where people are being harassed.”

Lack of censorship on social media will make abuse against marginalized groups worse, she claims. At the same time, she insists that “a HUGE focus” of the new disinformation board will be “protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.”¹³

This is clearly Orwellian doublespeak, where what’s being said is the complete opposite of reality. How can you have a board dedicated to dictating “truth,” which means censoring “untruth,” while simultaneously protecting free speech? Either all viewpoints are allowed, or only one viewpoint is permitted, and if only one viewpoint is tolerated, then there’s clearly no free speech.

In her book, “How to Lose the Information War,” she also criticized Poland’s efforts to eliminate rampant online censorship of conservatives on social networks by forming a Ministry of Digital Affairs.

In other words, she wants conservative views to be censored, not just in the U.S., but everywhere. In that book, she also called on the U.S. government to regulate and conduct oversight of people who disagree with the Democratic party on Twitter. As noted by Carlson, that’s likely why she was selected in the first place.

>>>>> Click here <<<<<

Not surprisingly, then, Jankowicz has expressed “dismay” at Musk’s decision to no longer censor posts discussing potential fraud in the 2020 election.¹⁴ Interestingly, in a September 2020 tweet, she defined the term “color revolution” and “why the U.S. isn’t a candidate for one.”¹⁵

In it, she noted that “Believe it or not, sometimes people get fed up with having their voices silenced for decades,” but she then insisted that a color revolution isn’t possible in the U.S. because “we are not an autocracy,” and color revolutions only occur in oppressive autocracy regimes.

Given an Inch, They’ll Take a Mile

Others disagree with that assessment. As noted by former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (video above), every dictatorship and autocracy has had a ministry of truth, a department of propaganda. And Biden just joined them.

Gabbard also accurately points out that the government has been working with media and Big Tech to censor for some time already. We’ve become increasingly aware of this covert backdoor influence over the past two years. Now, however, they’re formalizing that influence, which is, by the way, completely unconstitutional.

Moreover, the scary truth here is that the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” could cover absolutely anything. As noted by Carlson in the featured video, the DHS has not actually defined or given any clues as to what mis- or disinformation actually is.

“Would you declare war on a country you couldn’t name?” Carlson asks. “Would you sentence someone to death for a crime you couldn’t describe? Of course you wouldn’t, not if you were a sane and decent person. Because you can’t have justice without precise definitions ...

But they’re not defining the core concept, the heart of what is effectively a new law enforcement agency. Maybe that is because [U.S. secretary of homeland security, Alejandro] Mayorkas doesn’t want justice, and neither does the president he serves. They want power. And to get power, they plan to control what you think.”

Carlson points out that the DHS has now publicly admitted they intend to punish people for merely thinking “the wrong way,” even if they’ve committed no actual crime worthy of judicial intervention. In short, anyone who disagrees with the Biden administration is now an enemy of the state. As noted by Carlson:

“You can’t make any of this up. It’s too grotesque. Would you believe a novel with this plot? No, you wouldn’t, but it’s happening, and that’s the bad news. The good news is, everyone involved in Joe Biden’s Ministry of Information is a buffoon. They may be evil, but they’re also ridiculous.”

He then airs one of Jankowicz’s undignified TikTok videos, where she’s singing about disinformation. “This is now one of our top law enforcement officials,” he dryly notes. Jankowicz has also, ironically, accused Republicans of dealing in “highly emotional rhetoric,” which proves nothing except the fact that she’s read George Orwell’s “1984” more than once.

In fact, Democrats accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing so regularly, you can be near-assured that any accusation is a veiled admission at this point. And, in his report, Carlson reviews how Jankowicz is guilty of this exact behavior. Carlson also points out that her falsehoods have by no means been inconsequential.

Her disinformation helped presidential candidate Biden to lie about an incredibly important story — Hunter’s laptop — that could have altered the outcome of the presidential election, had it been up for public discussion. Jankowicz has never apologized for dismissing what was in fact truthful, and neither has anyone else who insisted the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

An International Coordination Effort to Censor Free Speech

Now, some have pointed out that this Disinformation Governance Board didn’t come into existence until Musk bought Twitter, promising to turn it into a free speech platform.^16,17 However, other evidence strongly indicates there’s international coordination taking place.

In mid-April 2022, the European Union approved new rules aimed at policing Big Tech platforms. As reported by the Financial Times:¹⁸

“The EU will force Big Tech companies to police content online more aggressively after approving a major piece of legislation that sets the rules for the first time on how companies should keep users safe on the internet ...

Leading tech groups will be forced to disclose to EU regulators how they are tackling disinformation and war propaganda in order to curb the spread of fake information — an effort that has gained fresh momentum since the Russian invasion of Ukraine ... Countries such as the U.S., Canada and Singapore are expected to follow with similar rules in the coming months.”

Some of the language used to describe this EU legislation sounds good — for example, it will ban the targeting of internet users based on personal information such as gender, religion and sexual preferences, and terms and conditions must be clearly understandable even to children.

However, there are also many reasons to suspect that these regulations will end up serving as a springboard for government-directed censorship. Among them is the fact that the EU is supporting the proposal to make the WHO into a global health authority, and the WHO, in turn, is setting up its own censorship network.

A key player in that network is NewsGuard,¹⁹ which entered into a partnership with the WHO in August 2020.²⁰ As reported by Carlson, NewsGuard has also received funding from the U.S. Pentagon to blacklist any site that publishes “misinformation” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Time to Draw a Line in the Sand

Clearly, the shocking censorship we experienced during the COVID pandemic was only the beginning. It’s going to include all kinds of information. The creation of a DHS Disinformation Governance Board is truly a watershed moment in history, and we cannot allow it to stand. As noted by Carlson in the featured video at the top of this article:

“Just to be clear, this is a nightmare unfolding in slow motion. But this is the point where we’re just going to have to draw the line. No, Joe Biden, you cannot have a federally funded ministry of truth. And no, Nina Jankowicz can’t run it. Period. It’s not your country ... and you don’t get to do this to a free people. Period. This can’t happen.”

>>>>> Click here <<<<<

May 1, 2022, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a bill to immediately defund and terminate the Disinformation Governance Board. In an interview with Fox News, Boebert said:²¹

“This kind of stuff is terrifying. We in Congress have the power of the purse. It is our duty to shut down this department immediately. I’m calling on leadership in the Republican Party — Leader McCarthy, Whip Scalise, and others — to join me in calling for this department to be shut down and defunded.

No tax dollars should go to where Biden can use the power of the federal government to silence truthful stories like Big Tech did with the Hunter Biden story. Democrats took [Orwell’s book ‘1984’] not as a warning, but as a guide.

This is really a department of propaganda. To say that the federal department has a say in what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s truth and what’s not — this is a very dangerous place that we’ve come to.”

from Articles https://ift.tt/hKXCRua
via IFTTT

This article was previously published November 6, 2019, and has been updated with new information.

If you have arthritis, chances are you've been offered steroid injections. Unfortunately, mounting research suggests this treatment may actually do far more harm than good — even in the short term.

The first recorded use of steroids can be traced to 1930, when an extract of animal adrenocortical tissue was used to counteract human adrenal failure.¹ After more than a decade of testing and research, the first patient with rheumatoid arthritis was treated with steroids.

The results were impressive, and it wasn't long before the drug was prescribed to other patients with arthritis. In 1950, the first oral and intra-articular (joint) formulations were used. Today, steroids can be administered either topically through a cream or ointment, orally or by injection.²

While delivery systems may differ, steroids work by inhibiting the production of inflammatory chemicals, thereby reducing symptoms associated with inflammation, be it systemic or in a precise area such as a joint.

By the 1960s, many toxic side effects and withdrawal symptoms were becoming well-known, and withdrawal protocols had already been formulated.³ To this day, scientists continue to discover harmful effects.

Three of the most common side effects, even from short term use, are osteoporosis (reduced bone density), cataracts and an increased risk of diabetes. However, more serious effects such as life-threatening sepsis (blood poisoning) have also been reported.

Single Steroid Injection Results in Massive Bone Loss

In an October 2019 article⁴ in The Atlantic, Dr. James Hamblin recounts the disturbing case of a young woman who, after giving birth, complained of pain in her hip. A steroid injection was administered to help with the pain after an X-ray revealed a small amount of fluid in the joint, which can be a sign of inflammation.

Six months later, the woman, now unable to walk, came back to the hospital. Imaging revealed the entire head of her femur was now gone, necessitating a total hip replacement.

While her doctor, Dr. Ali Guerrmazi at the Boston Medical Center, didn't know exactly how it happened, he suspected the bone loss might be related to the steroid injection. As noted by Hamblin:⁵

"This is not a typical suspicion. Doctors have long considered a single injection of steroids — the type that come from the adrenal glands and modulate the body's stress response — to be a pretty harmless way to temporarily relieve pain in a joint.

The worst-case scenario was that the shot didn't help the pain … As a specialist in joint pain, Guermazi has done thousands of steroid injections over decades of work. He has trained other doctors as he was trained: to believe that the injections are safe as long as they aren't overused.

But now he has come to believe that the procedure is more dangerous than he knew. And he and a group of his Boston University colleagues are raising a warning flag for doctors and patients alike."

Steroid Shots Can Make Joints Worse

Guermazi and colleagues recently published the results of a study^6,7,8 in which the outcomes of 459 patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the hip or knee who were treated with steroids were evaluated. Patients received between one and three intra-articular corticosteroid (IACS) injections (median 1.4 injections) for their OA.

In 8% of these cases, the injection ended up causing complications that made the joint worse.⁹ Hips appear to be far more prone to damage from the injections than knees, as adverse effects were observed in 10% of those with OA in the hip compared to 4% of those with OA in the knees.¹⁰ According to the authors:¹¹

"Four main adverse joint findings have been structurally observed in patients after IACS injections: accelerated OA progression, subchondral insufficiency fracture, complications of osteonecrosis, and rapid joint destruction, including bone loss."

Of these, accelerated OA progression was the most common, accounting for 6% of adverse effects; 0.9% experienced subchondral insufficiency fracture, 0.7% experienced osteonecrosis and 0.7% had rapid joint destruction and bone loss.

They also cite other research¹² showing intra-articular corticosteroid injections more than doubled the cartilage volume loss compared to placebo (−0.21 millimeters versus −0.10 mm), while having no impact on knee pain at two-year follow-up.

Evidence to Support Steroid Use Is Lacking

A 2015 meta-analysis¹³ that looked at 27 trials for arthritis of the knee also concluded that the quality of the evidence in support of steroids was low and, overall, inconclusive. According to the authors, "A single trial included in this review described adequate measures to minimize biases and did not find any benefit of intra-articular corticosteroids."

What's more, the evidence suggests the effects of steroids decrease over time, and this particular analysis found "no evidence that an effect remains six months after a corticosteroid injection." As Guermazi told Hamblin:¹⁴

"The unfortunate thing is that there is no pharmaceutical treatment for osteoarthritis. All the guidelines tell you to lose weight, exercise, and improve lifestyle. Those are the treatments."

Hamblin continues:¹⁵

"[Guermazi] and his colleagues emphasized that two groups in particular should be cautious: young patients and anyone with pain that seems dramatically worse than might be expected (based on the history, imaging, and physical exam).

Such disproportionate pain suggests a subtle problem that, perhaps, is being overlooked. Adding steroids to the mix could only make things worse, or delay an important finding. This may well have been the case for the young mother Guermazi treated.

A tiny stress fracture could have been invisible in the X-ray. It would have required treatment by keeping weight off the leg. Instead, with steroids or a placebo creating some sense of relief, the woman felt able to walk on the hip, precipitating the collapse of the bone."

The fact of the matter is that steroid injections have been suspected of triggering bone loss for quite some time now. In 2006, animal research¹⁶ revealed a strong link between steroid use and osteoporosis.

The conclusion of the study revealed that although the steroid cortisone appears to inhibit the ability of osteoclasts to dismantle old bones in genetically normal mice, the inability of the skeletal structure to renew itself may cause bones to weaken dramatically. Senior author Dr. Steven L. Teitelbaum, Messing professor of pathology and immunology commented:¹⁷

"High-dose cortisone is the second most common cause of osteoporosis, and we currently have no real treatment for this serious side effect. Given how frequently these drugs are used to treat many different conditions, that's a major clinical problem."

Knee Steroid Shots Are No More Effective Than Placebo

Similarly, a 2017 study¹⁸ published in JAMA presented convincing evidence that use of corticosteroid injections for osteoarthritis of the knee causes a gradual loss of knee cartilage over time and appears to be no more effective than placebo in terms of relieving knee pain.

In this study, a group of 140 men and women over the age of 45 who suffered from painful knee OA were randomly assigned injections of either a corticosteroid or a saline placebo. Those receiving a corticosteroid were injected with 40 milligrams (mg) of triamcinolone acetonide.

The intra-articular injections were administered every three months for two years. The effects of the shots were tracked via pain questionnaires and physical ability tests, as well as annual bone and joint magnetic resonance imaging. Neither the study participants nor the staff administering the shots knew which patients were receiving placebos.

At the conclusion of the study, there was no noticeable difference between the two groups in terms of joint pain and stiffness. Both groups performed equally well in terms of standing from a seated position and walking. As reported by the authors:¹⁹

"Among patients with symptomatic knee OA, two years of intra-articular triamcinolone, compared with intra-articular saline, resulted in significantly greater cartilage volume loss and no significant difference in knee pain. These findings do not support [steroid shots] for patients with symptomatic knee OA."

Significant Risks Found With Short-Term Steroid Use

Aside from the possibility of serious bone loss, other significant health risks have also been found. For example, a study^20,21,22 published in The BMJ in 2017, which evaluated data from more than 1.5 million people enrolled in nationwide health care insurance revealed disconcerting effects.

One in 5 patient reports indicated they had filled a short-term prescription for steroids during the three-year study period. Nearly half of those who used steroids were prescribed a "dosepak" where the drugs are prepackaged and labeled for daily use. These "dosepaks," also called "burstpaks," are designed to deliver the highest dose on the first day and taper the dose over the following five days.

In addition to a higher risk of suffering a broken bone, patients who took a short "burst" of steroids also had a higher risk of a blood clot or life-threatening sepsis. This increased risk lasted for up to 90 days after the steroid use had stopped.

The results prompted the researchers to call for better education for physicians and patients about the potential risks. In a press release, lead author Dr. Akbar Waljee said:²³

"Although physicians focus on the long-term consequences of steroids, they don't tend to think about potential risks from short-term use. We see a clear signal of higher rates of these three serious events within 30 days of filling a prescription.

We need to understand that steroids do have a real risk and that we may use them more than we really need to. This is so important because of how often these drugs are used."

Other Dangers of Long-Term Steroid Use

The dangers of long-term steroid use are well documented. Unfortunately, sometimes physicians and patients believe that steroids are the only option available to reduce painful symptoms. However, the long-term effects of the medication may in many cases outweigh the benefits of treatment, depending on the condition.

Of those who were prescribed steroids in The BMJ study described above, nearly half received the drug for diagnoses related to back pain, allergies or respiratory infections.²⁴ Steroids are also commonly prescribed for other health conditions, including lupus, systemic vasculitis (blood vessel inflammation), myositis (muscle inflammation) and gout.²⁵

The underlying commonality in a majority of conditions for which steroids are prescribed is inflammation. Whether from disease, illness or injury, the intent behind the use of steroids is to lower inflammation, thereby reducing symptoms.

But, steroids are not the only option, and may not be your best option, for lowering inflammation. Since adding hormones (steroids) to your body alters the delicate balance of your natural hormones, the addition can cause a long list of reversible and/or irreversible changes, including the following:^{26,27,28,29,30,31,32}

Stomach ulcers	Increased facial hair
Increased risk of heart disease	Genital yeast infections and oral thrush
Reduced bone density and osteoporosis	Gastrointestinal bleeding
Thinning skin and stretch marks	Increased appetite and weight gain
Metabolic syndrome	Higher risk of infection
Cognitive deficits and impaired memory	Cataracts
Insomnia	Glaucoma
Puffy "moon face"	Hypomania, hyperactivity, depression or psychosis
Urinary tract infections	Suppressed adrenal gland hormone secretion
Slow-healing wounds	High blood sugar and diabetes
Fluid retention	Acne
Night sweats	Increased blood pressure

Steroid Withdrawal

If you do choose to use steroids for an extended period of time, you also need to know that stopping the drug abruptly may trigger adverse and potentially even lethal effects, depending on how long you've been taking the medication. Symptoms associated with steroid withdrawal include:³³

Weakness and fatigue	Decreased appetite
Nausea and/or vomiting	Body aches and/or joint pain
Weight loss	Abdominal pain and/or ileus (the temporary arrest of intestinal peristalsis)
Diarrhea	Low blood pressure
Dizziness	Low blood sugar
Fever	Mental changes such as depression, mood swings and suicidal thoughts
Dehydration	Headache
Shaking	Skin rash
Changes in menstrual cycle	Elevated calcium levels and/or electrolyte imbalance

Corticosteroids simulate the natural hormone cortisol, released by your adrenal glands. When you add corticosteroids your body has not produced, it may shut down the production of your own hormone.

These changes in the balance to your natural secretion may be the result of taking doses greater than your natural production.³⁴ As you discontinue the drug, you can experience withdrawal symptoms.

These symptoms may be managed through a structured and coordinated drug withdrawal program, to help reduce withdrawal symptoms. The severity of your symptoms will be related to how long you took steroids, the dose and the taper schedule used.³⁵

Safer Alternatives

In specific instances, your medical treatment may necessitate the use of steroids. However, I believe steroids are prescribed far too frequently for conditions that may be addressed with other, much safer options.

In many cases, you may prevent the use of steroids by incorporating lifestyle strategies that naturally reduces inflammation in your body. So, before you resort to steroids, consider implementing a few of the following suggestions first, to see if you can achieve relief:

Curcumin — Curcumin is one of the ingredients in the spice turmeric and microactive technology helps improve absorption. Curcumin helps to balance excitatory and inhibitory cytokines (substances secreted by your immune system that have an effect on other cells). Many human trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of curcumin to reduce inflammation.36 The supplement is also well tolerated, without adverse side effects, even at high dosages.37

Eliminate foods that promote inflammation — Foods that significantly contribute to the inflammatory response in your body include virtually all processed foods, sugars, gluten, processed seed (vegetable) oils (trans fats) and alcohol. Lectins can also cause problems if you're sensitive to them. Seed oils are likely the worst offender for most and need to be highest on the priority list for removing.

Eat foods that reduce inflammation — To reduce chronic inflammation, it's important to address your overall diet. Foods that help reduce inflammation are typically high in antioxidants and healthy fats. Examples include green tea, vegetables, bone broth, avocado and coconut oil. To help you get started, I suggest following my free optimized nutrition plan, which starts at the beginner phase and systematically guides you step-by-step to the advanced level. As a general rule, I recommend replacing processed foods with whole, organic foods as much as you can. It is especially important to avoid processed vegetable oils and sugars. If you hope to optimize your health, you must have a regular source of high-quality, unprocessed fats. Check out my book, "Fat for Fuel" for more tips on how to incorporate more healthy fats into your diet.

Stay well-hydrated — When dehydrated, your cells are not able to function optimally and have a more difficult time eliminating toxins, so be sure to stay well-hydrated. As a general rule, drink to quench your thirst. A helpful guide to gauge your hydration is to look at the color of your urine. Urine that is a light, straw yellow color is typically a sign of being fully hydrated.

Exercise and keep active every day — Exercise helps lower stress and improves the quality of your sleep, both of which will lower your levels of inflammation. Exercise also improves your heart and lung function, flexibility and range of motion. According to the Mayo Clinic, exercise is especially crucial if you have knee pain.38 Lack of exercise can make your joints even more painful and stiff. As noted by Dr. Kim Stearns, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic:39 "We say motion is lotion — the more you move, the more your body lubricates itself. When you've been sitting or lying around, fluid in the joints doesn't move. The more active you are, the more your joints lubricate themselves." Nonexercise movement is also important. Ideally, you’ll want to keep moving as much as possible throughout the day. A worthy goal is to limit your sitting to three hours or less. If you have joint pain, there are a few factors to consider with respect to exercise. Particularly if your pain worsens with movement, you want to take care to not strain a significantly unstable joint. Pain during movement is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of OA. If you've already developed knee OA, you'll most certainly want to incorporate exercises that strengthen the quadriceps muscle at the front of your thigh. Instead of running or other high-impact exercise, you will more likely enjoy and benefit from non-weight-bearing exercises such as bicycling or swimming. Should you experience pain for more than one hour after exercising, you either need to slow down or choose a different form of exercise. As needed, you may want to work with a physical therapist or qualified personal trainer who can help develop a safe set of activities for you.

Optimize your weight — If you are overweight, consider pairing exercise with a healthy diet to bring some relief to your joints. A 2013 study40 revealed overweight and obese adults with knee OA who followed an intensive diet and exercise program experienced less pain and better function than those who pursued just diet or exercise alone. Dr. Aman Dhawan, an orthopedic sports-medicine specialist at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, suggests any loss of weight will translate into tremendous improvements in your joint pain and function:41 "There is good data to support getting rid of excess weight because it does improve pain in the joints of the lower extremities, as well as decreases your risk of getting arthritis, or of having it progress. The joints carry the weight of our bodies, so the less stress you put on them, the longer they will stay healthy."

Practice stress reduction — Science demonstrates that stress increases the inflammatory response in your body. Meditation, yoga, exercise and deep breathing are all ways to help reduce stress. One of my favorite methods is the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), which uses gentle tapping on acupuncture points on your head and upper body to help you clear your mind and accomplish your goals. You can learn more about EFT for stress in this video:

Get quality sleep — Getting eight hours of quality sleep is important to your health for many reasons, not the least of which is that it will help reduce inflammation in your body.

Essential oil and aromatherapy — There are many uses for essential oils, from lifting your mood to helping reduce inflammation.

Detoxify in the sauna — Although there is more than one way to help your body detoxify (which is important for lowering inflammation), using a near-infrared sauna may be among the easiest and most cost effective.

Platelet-rich plasma therapy — Platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapy releases growth factors that can help heal and strengthen areas of the human body, including knee joints. Research published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine42 investigated the effects of PRP when applied to patients with OA in both knees. At six weeks and three months, the knees treated with one or two PRP injections saw a reduction in pain and stiffness, and experienced improved function. At the six-month mark, positive results from PRP diminished, but knee pain and function were still better than before treatment.

from Articles https://ift.tt/ol2LCbO
via IFTTT

Researchers at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, Sydney have discovered an enzyme that could help to identify babies who are more at risk of developing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/1VoKw8r

Gremlin mode, activated.

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/kY28Pcv

Published author, coach and Pinterest creator Aubrey Daquinag bleeds every month - and she’s not afraid to tell you about it.

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

Lydia Ko has been praised for her refusal to buy into stigmatism around menstruation. 

from Health | body+soul https://ift.tt/pbN6yJO

In this interview, Ari Whitten, a return guest, discusses his latest book, “Eat for Energy: How to Beat Fatigue, Supercharge Your Mitochondria, and Unlock All-Day Energy.”

Whitten has also written an excellent book about infrared light exposure or photobiomodulation as a healing modality, called “The Ultimate Guide to Red Light Therapy: How to Use Red and Near-Infrared Light Therapy for Anti-Aging, Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, Performance, and Brain Optimization.”

As you might guess, the focus of his latest book is fatigue, and the foundational core for addressing that is to improve mitochondrial energy production. Your circadian rhythm also plays an important role. Whitten explains the premise of the book:

“It's a collection of science-based strategies as far as what to eat, how to eat and when to eat, that can be tied in with any particular dietary pattern that you've already adopted. So, I'm not asking if you're paleo or vegan or keto or Mediterranean. I'm not asking you to change that.

It’s dozens of strategies that you can incorporate into the dietary pattern of your choosing. So, I feel like it's a really key piece of the puzzle for a lot of people. They can just immediately plug in with pretty minimal effort and get big results ...

In the last 100 years, we’ve seen massively accelerating risks of dozens of diseases, and that is not the result of everybody being a unique individual and responding randomly to what's going on. It’s not that everybody's genetics just decided to express lots of disease.

It's because the modern world changed in very fundamental ways, as far as diet, the modern lifestyle, as far as being sedentary, being in climate-controlled offices, losing all these forms of hormetic stressors, sleeping less, disrupting our circadian rhythm — these are the main drivers of pretty much all of these different chronic diseases.

And the answer isn't to treat everybody as a unique individual and pretend like we don't know all of these universal factors that are the actual root cause drivers of these diseases. It's to address the foundation of these root cause drivers of diseases. That's where you have to start.”

A New Understanding of Mitochondria

In high school and college biology courses, we're taught to think of mitochondria as mindless energy generators that take in the food we eat, mostly carbs and fats, and then pump out cellular energy in form of the ATP. However, in the past five to 10 years, we’ve gained a whole new understanding of mitochondria, largely thanks to the work of Dr. Robert Naviaux, who runs a mitochondrial medicine lab at the University of California, San Diego.

“Naviaux, I think, is one of the most brilliant scientists and has created one of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine in the last century, arguably. He figured out that mitochondria have a second role, other than energy production, and that is in cellular defense.

In his words, mitochondria are the central hub of the wheel of metabolism. They are not just energy producers, but also environmental sensors, and they are constantly sampling the environment around them, figuring out what's going on in the body.

And, basically, they're asking one fundamental question: Are we under attack? Is there something we need to defend against? And this is the big key — these dual roles of energy production and cellular defense are mutually exclusive. So, to the degree that mitochondria are picking up on some dangers that are present, they turn down the dial on energy production.

And if the mitochondria are turning down the dial on energy production, subjectively on a macro level, us as an organism, a collection of trillions of these cells filled with mitochondria, feel the symptom of fatigue. We can think of our energy levels as largely a function of the degree to which our mitochondria are detecting the presence of dangers or threats in the body.”

Common threats your mitochondria might be responding to if you feel fatigued include oxidative stress, poor nutrition, environmental toxins, psychological stress and sleep deprivation, just to name a few.

What’s Your Resilience Threshold?

Most if not all stressors can be boiled down to oxidative stress, reactive nitrogen species, inflammation and purinergic signaling (a situation in which energy molecules leak out of the cell). Even something like psychological stress can cause this kind of reaction. But whether the stressor is serious enough to cause fatigue depends on your resilience threshold. What wipes one person out might not affect another.

“I like to think of fatigue as having two fundamental causes,” Whitten says. “One is all of these different kinds of environmental and lifestyle stressors. The other thing that interplays with, and is often left out by a lot of people, is what is happening at the cellular level inside of your body.

And the key thing to understand here is that our cells can either be filled with big, strong mitochondria, and lots of them, or weak, fragile, shrunken, broken, dysfunctional mitochondria, and very few of them.

It’s been shown in research that mitochondrial capacity declines by about 10% with each decade of life. If you look at older people, they generally have somewhere between 50% to 75% lower mitochondrial capacity than a young person.

But it's not a natural function of aging, because we know from other research that when they look at mitochondrial capacity of healthy 70-year-olds, who are lifelong athletes, they don't have lower mitochondrial capacity than an adult at 40 years old.

What that tells us is the loss of mitochondria is not a function of aging, per se. It's a function of lack of hormetic stress in your life. Mitochondria have to be challenged and stimulated in order to stay big and strong.”

Other Factors That Influence Your Energy Levels

While mitochondrial dysfunction is a central issue in fatigue, other factors also come into play, including:

• Low muscle mass — Greater muscle mass contributes to metabolic flexibility and health, because muscle acts as a sink for glucose, thereby reducing your risk of insulin resistance. Low muscle mass, on the other hand, is a leading contributor to early death, and it’s a major contributor to low energy and fatigue
• Elevated blood sugar and insulin resistance — This primarily goes back to a poor diet high in processed foods and constant grazing throughout the day. Eating a whole food diet and implementing TRE can go a long way toward normalizing your insulin and blood sugar
• Lack of hermetic stress such as insufficient amounts of exercise
• Stress
• Poor gut health

How Your Diet Influences Your Energy Level

Naturally, your diet has a central influence on your energy level. One key driver of low energy and ill health is excessive omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) intake. LA contributes to insulin resistance, obesity and chronic inflammation, and as mentioned earlier, when mitochondria detect inflammation, they dial down energy production to shift resources toward self-defense.

High LA consumption has also been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and many other chronic diseases. Processed food, which is not only high in LA but also sugar, can also considerably impact your energy levels by impairing your hormone regulation.

Circadian Rhythm Disruption Is a Common Culprit

According to Whitten, arguably one of the most important things you can do to improve your energy level is to optimize your circadian rhythm by consistently going to bed and rising in the morning at the same times. Another crucial factor is to get plenty of daytime sunlight exposure and to minimize artificial light exposure at night. As explained by Whitten:

“The circadian clock in your brain learns to distinguish what is day and what is night based on the differences in light intensity, along with the color of the wavelengths of that light. When you start your morning in indoor environments, under indoor lighting, looking at screens, and end your day in indoor environments with indoor lighting, looking at screens, you don't have a big [light intensity] differential.”

Your circadian rhythm is also influenced by nutrient sensors throughout your body. While you use light to optimize the central clock in your brain, you use nutrition to optimize the peripheral clocks and sync them with the central clock. One way to do this is through time-restricted eating (TRE), where you eat all your meals within a six- to 10-hour window.

The Importance of Sun Exposure

Light deficiency is another extremely common cause for fatigue. Sun exposure triggers vitamin D production, which is important, but it also has many other functions and benefits that can directly impact your energy level.

For example, the vast majority of melatonin, some 95%, is produced in your mitochondria in response to sunlight (specifically red near-infrared light, which is what provides warmth). Melatonin is a potent anti-inflammatory, so sunlight allows you to target oxidative stress right where it’s needed the most.

“Melatonin is absolutely vital for protecting your mitochondria from harm and preventing them from accumulating damage as you age,” Whitten says. But swallowing melatonin is useless for this, as oral melatonin cannot reach the mitochondria.

Sunlight also allows for the conversion of retinol (vitamin A) to retinoids, which is crucial for the function of vitamin D, and interacts with your malanocortin system, which involves alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone that helps regulate inflammation and appetite.

Sunlight also creates a surge of nitric oxide, which helps normalize your blood pressure and reduce your cardiovascular disease risk. Whitten cites a Swedish study that showed women with the lowest sun exposure had a cardiovascular disease risk equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes per day. Red and infrared light also have a long list of other health benefits.

Importantly, red and infrared light directly stimulate ATP production at the mitochondria level. These wavelengths also create a transient increase in reactive oxygen species, which are signaling molecules that instruct the mitochondria to grow bigger and stronger.

Red and infrared wavelengths also stimulate tissue-specific growth factors. So, in muscle cells, it increases insulin-like growth factor 1, which is a key growth factor for muscle growth. In your thyroid, it stimulates growth factors that help regenerate thyroid gland tissue in the brain.

In your skin, fibroblasts are stimulated by red and near-infrared light to increase collagen production. So, essentially, red and infrared light act as signals that trigger growth and regeneration at the cellular level, throughout your whole body.

“Our biology has evolved for millions of years to require adequate sun exposure in order to express normal health,” Whitten says. “Just to function normally, we require these different bioactive wavelengths and red and infrared light ...

We know that hermetic stress, that doing exercise, doesn't just protect the cells and the mitochondria from harm from exercise. It protects against a broad range of other stressors.

So, having a body that does exercise, that's fit, protects you from oxidative damage that might occur from psychological stress or sleep deprivation or environmental toxins — things that are totally unrelated to the initial source of that hermetic stress that led to those adaptations.

I think what we have with melatonin is probably something that's very similar. This is something critical for protecting our mitochondria from a broad range of, basically, every type of stressor. You got to have those melatonin levels charged up, and that's a function of exposing your body to light.”

The Antiaging, Energy-Boosting Benefits of Methylene Blue

Methylene blue is the parent molecule for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, an off-patent drug commonly used to treat not only malaria but also COVID-19. Interestingly enough, this molecule has been shown to have antiaging benefits when used topically. There’s even a new cosmetics brand that uses it in their formulas. While it has a blue tint, when mixed with a carrier oil it does not stain your skin blue. According to Whitten, methylene blue:

“... has profound antiaging effects, anti-wrinkle effects and protects that skin from damage. It has mitochondrial protective effects ... it’s neuroprotective, combats neurological disease and improves long-term brain health. It can also help increase energy ...

It's worth mentioning that there are some contraindications, there are some interactions with certain drugs that can be dangerous. Definitely, SSRIs [are contraindicated]. There's also a strange medical condition called G6PD [that it’s contraindicated for].”

Methylene blue also contains important copper enzymes called ceruloplasmin, which acts as a copper storage in your body. Copper is extremely important from mitochondrial energy production, and methylene blue forms a buffer to oxidation, which allows the copper to work better.

More Information

To learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of “Eat for Energy: How to Beat Fatigue, Supercharge Your Mitochondria, and Unlock All-Day Energy.” The book addresses several foundational nutritional causes of fatigue and how to fix it, including:

The influence of your circadian rhythm and how to optimize it via nutrition

TRE and how to sync your eating window with your waking-sleeping cycle

Calorie stacking — how stacking more of your daily calories towards the earlier part of the day results in increased energy levels (in part by enhancing neurotransmitters and hormones that are synced with the circadian rhythm)

How to optimize your body composition

How to optimize your gut health

Superfoods and supplements to optimize energy levels

You can also learn more by tuning into his popular podcast, “The Energy Blueprint,” where every week he delves into a wide variety of health promoting strategies.

>>>>> Click Here to Order <<<<<

from Articles https://ift.tt/gk8cFPC
via IFTTT

This article was previously published August 4, 2019, and has been updated with new information.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, is a chemical worthy of attention, in part because no other pesticide or herbicide has come even close to its "intensive and widespread use."¹ The data on just how much glyphosate is sprayed in the U.S. is mind boggling, and adds up to over 1.6 billion kilograms (3.5 billion pounds) applied since 1974.

This represents 19% of the glyphosate used globally during that time, and the majority (two-thirds of glyphosate applied from 1974 to 2014) was applied in just 10 years.² Glyphosate should catch your attention because it's turning up virtually everywhere — in breastmilk, water,³ disposable diapers⁴ and honey, for starters.

It caught the attention of Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for another reason entirely.

I caught up with Seneff at an autism event in Atlanta, Georgia, called The Autism Community in Action (TACA). She's been a champion for helping to understand how glyphosate is an issue, and she presented some of her new findings at the conference, where I recorded the interview above.

Seneff has been studying glyphosate for years and has become hooked on determining what makes this ubiquitous chemical so toxic:

"Glyphosate is an absolutely fascinating molecule. I've become hooked on it so to speak. And I just love the research; I love the puzzle. And glyphosate is the mother of all puzzles in my opinion. I believe I'm zeroing in on the mechanism of toxicity, and it's unique to glyphosate, and insidious and cumulative.

So, it's extremely dangerous in the sense that it doesn't bowl you over. You get small exposures to glyphosate all day long in your food, in the air, in the water, probably breathing the air from the gasoline tank. We don't know. But it's pervasive in the environment so we can't avoid it. And the United States has the highest … we use the most glyphosate per person per capita in this country."

Is Glyphosate Causing Chronic Diseases?

According to Seneff, the increase in glyphosate usage in the U.S., as well as in Canada, is extremely well correlated with the concurrent increase in the incidence of multiple diseases, including breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, thyroid cancer, liver cancer, bladder cancer and myeloid leukemia.⁵

"[B]oth of those countries have a lot of heart health issues, high Autism rates, lots of autoimmune diseases, food allergies; Alzheimer's is going up dramatically. Of course, diabetes, obesity, all these things are going up dramatically in our population," Seneff says.

"We don't know why. We see that glyphosate is perfectly correlated with many of these diseases. It's also going up exactly in step with these diseases, and there's many, many plots that I've put together in collaboration with other people."

Research scientist Anthony Samsel is one of Seneff's coauthors, and together they've suggested that one of the ways glyphosate is harmful is via disruption of glycine homeostasis. Glyphosate has a glycine molecule as part of its structure (hence the "gly" in glyphosate). Glycine is a very common amino acid your body uses to make proteins.

Samsel and Seneff believe your body can substitute glyphosate and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) into peptides and proteins, which results in damaged peptides and proteins being produced. According to Seneff:

"I believe that in certain proteins, in certain spots, glyphosate is able to get into the protein by mistake in place of the amino acid glycine. And, to understand that glyphosate is a complete glycine molecule, it's a perfect match to glycine, except that it has extra materials stuck onto its nitrogen atom.

… [T]he protein that's going to recognize glycine in order to put it into DNA has to leave the nitrogen atom outside of its pocket because the nitrogen has to hook up with the next amino acid. So, the fact that the nitrogen has some stuff on it doesn't matter to it. It says, 'Oh, I have to fit exactly glycine very tightly.'

Glycine is the smallest amino acid. And in order to distinguish glycine from all the other amino acids all I need to do is make sure that I make a tiny space that fits only glycine …

Glyphosate will fit because it's a perfect glycine molecule. Except the nitrogen is sticking outside of that pocket so that it could hook. So the extra stuff on nitrogen is not constrained. This is important because I think a lot of people think, 'Oh, it can't happen.'"

Glycine also plays a role in quenching inflammation, and is used up in the detoxification process. As a result of glyphosate toxicity, many of us may not have enough glycine for efficient detoxification.

That being said, glyphosate causing glycine disruption is a highly controversial issue, as it’s theoretical in nature, not proven. But, it makes a lot of sense, in part due to the shikimate pathway.

Seneff also addresses glyphosate as a glycine analogue, and how it gets incorporated into proteins by mistake, in her paper,⁶ "Glyphosate's Synergistic Toxicity in Combination with Other Factors as a Cause of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Origin," published in the International Journal of Environmental Research. This paper also offers support for many of the statements made by Seneff in this interview.

Glyphosate Disrupts the Shikimate Pathway

Glyphosate inhibits the shikimate pathway, which is involved in the synthesis of the essential aromatic amino acids phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan.⁷

"Super, super important," Seneff says. "[These amino acids are] … not only part of the building blocks of proteins which would already be pretty drastic, but they're also precursors to all the neurotransmitters. Dopamine, serotonin, melatonin, melanin. Skin tanning agent. They're also precursors to certain B vitamins like folate and I think niacin."

While the shikimate pathway is absent in human and animal cells, this pathway is present in the gut bacteria of mammals, including humans. So, by way of your gut bacteria, glyphosate wields a significant influence on human health. For instance, Seneff says, "Sleep disorder is one of the diseases that's going up exactly in step with glyphosate usage on corn crops, because of the melatonin problem I suspect, in part."

In addition, glyphosate moves to both the growing points and storage structures (including roots and seeds) of plants to target EPSP synthase, which prevents production of certain amino acids and diverts energy from essential plant processes. This is a key point as far as glycine disruption goes. Seneff says:

"… [I]t makes more and more sense the more I study, first of all, from the standpoint of which enzymes get disrupted by glyphosate.

And, I can find these glycine places where it would substitute in a cell, including, of course, EPSP synthase, which is the enzyme that … I started with … because EPSP synthase is the enzyme in the shikimate pathway that glyphosate disrupts, famously disrupts. They know that. And they've studied it. There's lots of papers on it. It's very, very interesting."

The Glycine and Myosin Connection

So, according to Seneff, glyphosate is basically a glycine molecule with a side chain attached to the nitrogen atom, and even though it's a modified glycine molecule, it's still glycine. This is why it can replace the regular amino acid glycine in your system. Unfortunately, it's now toxic.

"Getting back to this EPSP synthase," Seneff says, "it's really fascinating … the way they discovered the version of EPSP synthase that they insert into the GMO crops … so they make these Roundup Ready crops glyphosate-resistant. And they do that by inserting a bacterial version of EPSP synthase … and that bacterial version has alanine instead of glycine at that spot."

To understand why this is so important, certain proteins must have glycine in order to work properly. If you change the glycine into alanine by adding one extra methyl group, it ruins the protein. Seneff mentions a recent paper by DowDuPont, which talks about using CRISPR gene-editing technology to make plants glyphosate resistant by tweaking glycine residue.⁸

"This is absolutely terrifying," Seneff says. "They knew, 'First we've got to get rid of glycine.' And then that takes a hit on the enzyme. The enzyme doesn't work as well because it's got alanine there. It's got that extra methyl group that's in the way, the same problem that glyphosate causes."

Myosin, in turn, is a good example of a protein that needs glycine to work properly, which could be disrupted by glyphosate. Myosin is an important contractor protein to move the feces through the gut, but if it gets mutated it can no longer contract. Seneff adds:

"[I]f myosin gets paralyzed you're going to get peristalsis. You're going to get small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) because things get backed up. You get a lot of problems with your gut because the myosin is not able to contract. You get constipation of course. And these are all connected to autism, these problems.

And so I think the myosin in the gut is being poisoned by the glyphosate in the same way that the EPSP synthase in the shikimate pathway is being poisoned. Because of this glycine at this place where phosphate is supposed to bind sets up a beautiful environment for throwing glyphosate in place of glycine in the protein itself."

Glyphosate also causes sulfate deficiency "in so many ways," Seneff says, "it's almost like it's a perfect storm," and impairs the heme pathway.

Solutions for Glyphosate Toxicity

As the realities of glyphosate toxicity grow, there are steps you can take to protect yourself, starting with limiting your exposure by eating organic or biodynamically grown food as much as possible. Consuming organic, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar is another strategy, as it contains acetobacter, which can break down glyphosate.

"We make salad dressing [with apple cider vinegar]," Seneff says. "We have salad for dinner and I think it can actually help you to break down whatever glyphosate is in your mouth, because it will get right to work turning glyphosate into useful phosphorous. It completely gets rid of it."

Seneff also suggests eating garlic and cruciferous vegetables, which are good sources of sulfur. Glycine supplementation may also be a good option to help detoxify glyphosate. To eliminate glyphosate, you need to saturate your body with glycine.

Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, who is a specialist in metal toxicity and its connection to chronic infections, recommends taking 1 teaspoon (4 grams) of glycine powder twice a day for a few weeks and then lower the dose to one-fourth teaspoon (1 gram) twice a day. This forces the glyphosate out of your system, allowing it to be eliminated through your urine.

Collagen is naturally rich in glycine, but if going this route, I recommend looking for organic grass fed collagen only. Organic bone broth is another excellent source of glycine-rich collagen.

from Articles https://ift.tt/LwaUzZu
via IFTTT