Whole Foods; The answer to most American health problems

It looks like Carnivore Diet advocate Paul Salidino is joining forces with other whole foods advocates to push for change in the ways American food is made toxic through processing with toxic chemicals that are banned from foods in many other countries. IMO, this can't come soon enough. Our food supply has been debased for far too long. Don't believe me? This video is just scratching the surface. And there is still plenty of work ahead to create meaningful change. But if we don't do it, things won't change.

Life Lessons From 100-Year-Old Americans Who Didn't Expect To Live So Lo...

I loved this. So much of what they say makes sense to me.

#1 Best AT HOME Test to Predict Longevity

This video also addresses maintaining muscle mass as you get older, which is so important to maintaining good health as you age.

WARNING! Legs Weaken First: 3 Exercises Every Senior Must Do

I like the way he explains that it's not just for maintaining strength and balance, but also how and why it's beneficial for your overall metabolic health. And how it's way easier than having to go to a gym for workouts.

Alkaline VS Acid pH in the human body; which is better, and why

I've been struggling with a number of health issues, including joint inflamation flares, arthritis, brainfog, etc. Following a Carnivore-type diet has helped, but I've also been using a morning routine of having a fresh squeezed Lemon every morning, with a 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate (baking soda) to make my body's PH more alkaline than acid. This article explains the benefits of keeping your bodies PH toward the alkaline side:

The Alkaline Diet: Is There Evidence That an Alkaline pH Diet Benefits Health?

This review looks at the role of an alkaline diet in health. Pubmed was searched looking for articles on pH, potential renal acid loads, bone health, muscle, growth hormone, back pain, vitamin D and chemotherapy. Many books written in the lay literature on the alkaline diet were also reviewed and evaluated in light of the published medical literature. There may be some value in considering an alkaline diet in reducing morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases and further studies are warranted in this area of medicine. [...]

It goes into quite a bit of detail, lots of useful information. And a good primer for the basics of pH, what it does in human physiology, how it interacts with other elements. And why it's important.

 Also see the benefits of lemons:

  

     

Autism; how to talk about it?

For a variety of reasons, I think I've been that way my whole life, though it was undiagnosed in my childhood. I think I'm now what they call "high functioning" autistic, which just means I've gotten really good at hiding it, to the point where people think I'm neuro-typical, not neuro-divergent. And when I get over-stressed beyond my limits, everyone wonders what's wrong with me? Because they haven't a clue I've been coping all along, just squeeking by, passing for neuro-typical.

I Don’t ‘Have Autism’ —I’m Autistic. Here’s Why That Matters

As more and more people acknowlege whatever degree of autism they may be expriencing... the language to talk about it, will continue to expand. Which is what I think the above-linked article is getting at. It's food for thought, for those who are dealing with it, in themselveres or those that they know. 

Some people with Autism are never professionally assesed or identified as children, and are now adults that may be struggling with some issues.  If now, as an adult, you think you might be one of those people, you might find these links of interest:

https://www.additudemag.com/autism-spectrum-disorder-in-adults/

https://www.healthline.com/health/aspergers-symptoms-in-adults#takeaway

On-line tests. They don't prove or disprove autism, but if you get a high score, it might mean you could benefit from having a professional assesment done:

https://www.aspergerstestsite.com/75/autism-spectrum-quotient-aq-test/

https://musingsofanaspie.com/2012/11/20/taking-the-aspie-quiz/

Temple Grandin was a woman who was high up on the autism spectrum.  As a child, she failed to learn how to talk, and just made beeping noises instead.  Doctor's told her parents that she was severely mentally retarded, and would have to spend the rest of her life in an mental institution.

Her mother said that was nonsense, that her daughter just needed some extra help.  She and hired a speech therapist to help her daughter learn how to make words and speak.  It worked, but Temple still had many other challenges to face.  Fortunately, she had a supportive family, and eventually became a researcher and college professor.  The movie about her life, was quite inspiring.  Here is the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpkN0JdXRpM

Dan Jones, is a hypnotherapist, author, and an autism expert/advocate who has written extensively about his own autism and autism generally, as well as hypotherapy and learning hypnosis.  He has much material available online, including a youtube channel, and the Kindle version of his books are very affordable on Amazon.  His website is here:

https://danjoneshypnosis.com/

His interest in hypnosis, and desire to learn how to hypnotize, helped him understand his own autism better, and how to cope with it, and lead him to becoming a professional hypnotherapst and hypnosis teacher.     

Woman Destroyed Her Kidneys (in 2 months) By Taking Common Vitamin

Actually, the video talks about 5 different vitamins you have to be careful not to overdue, especially if you have kidney disease, but sometimes even if you don't have kidney disease.  It's good stuff to know.

The Refreshing Frankness of the Younger Generation

     

Coffee on a Carnivore Diet: Is It OK? The Best Coffee and Alternatives

Coffee on a Carnivore Diet: Is It OK? The Best Coffee and Alternatives:

Can I drink coffee on a Carnivore diet? If yes, what are the best kinds of coffee in Carnivore? If not, what are the best coffee alternatives? [...]

I've been on a variation of the carnivore diet for about a month now. My version, includes lemons, limes, oranges, apples, and blueberries. I recently added bananas, so I can make smoothies using A2 milk, A2 yougurt, blueberries and bananas. I have an under-performing thyroid, and bananas offer support.

I've also continued to drink morning coffee, with butter and oil (Bulletproof Coffee), which I've done for years. But I'm thinking about eliminating it for a while, or altering the coffee receipe. This article was helpful in making decisions about that.

Carnivore AND Keto Flatbread - make it with only 3 INGREDIENTS!

How to reverse diabetes (longer version)

How to reverse diabetes (short summary)

The Real Causes of Gout, and Practical Solutions

I've been struggling with gout for years. There is so much contridictory information out there, about gout and it's causes. These videos by Dr. Kim, make more sense than many things I've seen. It seems like sound, relatively easy advice to follow, so it's my current guide on the subject:





I've already been doing some of these things, but I think it's a question of finding the right balance, and keeping an eye on the larger picture, of how many things work together.

     

Drunkenness is not disinhibition.Drunkenness is myopia.

Social and cultural effects on drinking alcohol, and behavior:

Drinking Games
How much people drink may matter less than how they drink it.

[...] Steele and his colleague Robert Josephs’s explanation is that we’ve misread the effects of alcohol on the brain. Its principal effect is to narrow our emotional and mental field of vision. It causes, they write, “a state of shortsightedness in which superficially understood, immediate aspects of experience have a disproportionate influence on behavior and emotion.”

Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground even more salient and the thing in the background disappear. That’s why drinking makes you think you are attractive when the world thinks otherwise: the alcohol removes the little constraining voice from the outside world that normally keeps our self-assessments in check.

Drinking relaxes the man watching football because the game is front and center, and alcohol makes every secondary consideration fade away. But in a quiet bar his problems are front and center—and every potentially comforting or mitigating thought recedes. Drunkenness is not disinhibition. Drunkenness is myopia.

Myopia theory changes how we understand drunkenness. Disinhibition suggests that the drinker is increasingly insensitive to his environment—that he is in the grip of an autonomous physiological process. Myopia theory, on the contrary, says that the drinker is, in some respects, increasingly sensitive to his environment: he is at the mercy of whatever is in front of him. [...]

     

Covid-19: it's not your grandfather's Influenza. In fact, it's not Influenza.

The Covid 19 Pandemic is frequently compared to the Influenza pandemic of 1918-1920. But is the comparison correct? Corona viruses are not the same as Influenza viruses.

What Does Disappearing Immunity To Covid-19 Mean For A Vaccine?

[...] SARS-CoV-2 is broadly similar to the four coronaviruses that cause about one third of all common colds. Each year, the same four viruses infect us the world over, sweeping the Northern Hemisphere from December to February; south of the Equator from May to July; and in the tropics, year-round. These waves of infection, which with rare exceptions cause minor symptoms only, have repeated year in and year out since the discovery of the virus in the 1960s. The ability of this coronavirus quartet to persist absent alteration is highly unusual. Influenza infections occur annually, too, but the dominant strains differ each time to evade the population’s protective and persistent immune responses.

In the 1970s two independent teams of medical researchers conducted experiments to determine whether or not the same coronavirus strain might reinfect and give a cold to the same person. Volunteers who were deliberately exposed to the virus contracted colds and recovered. A year later, they were again exposed to the same virus—and again were infected and developed cold symptoms. These experiments established that protective immunity to the cold-causing coronavirus is short-lived.

I call this phenomenon "get it and forget it,” and it describes the interaction between these viruses and our immune systems that is so unique. Confronted with a cold-causing coronavirus, our bodies evidently forget that we were infected at all. For us, this leaves us susceptible to annual colds, which are generally harmless but a nuisance besides. For the viruses, this is a winning strategy, as it rids them of the need to change to survive. At present, we don’t understand coronaviruses in sufficient detail to know why our immunity to them so short-lived.* What we do know is that if SARS-CoV-2 behaves as its coronavirus cousins do, Covid-19 is sure to become a seasonally recurring pandemic. [...]

Studies Report Rapid Loss of COVID-19 Antibodies
The results, while preliminary, suggest that survivors of SARS-CoV-2 infection may be susceptible to reinfection within weeks or months.

This is not Influenza. Is this going to keep circulating around, like the common cold corona viruses? God I hope not.
     

How our sleep patterns change throughout our lives, and how to cope with the changes

And don't I know it. This article explains a lot:

Sleep Patterns Make Steep Changes During Your Life

[...] MIDLIFE SLEEP CRISIS

A lot of accomplished people claim not to need a lot of sleep. Household arts maven Martha Stewart purports to get only four hours a night. So does Tonight Show host Jay Leno. Napoleon, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Salvador Dali and Leonard da Vinci didn’t get much shut-eye either. So television journalist Pamela Wallin, who also averages only four hours a night, is in august company. “I’ve been an insomniac for as long as I can remember,” says Wallin, a Saskatchewan native who lives in Toronto. “I’ve tried herbal remedies and chamomile tea. I avoid prescription drugs because I can’t afford to lose my sharpness the next day.” Ultimately, Wallin regards her chronic insomnia as something she just has to live with. “If I needed more sleep,” she reasons, “I probably wouldn’t have gotten done what I have done in my life.”

Sixty-two per cent of Americans experience a sleep problem a few nights a week, according to a National Sleep Foundation study released last month. Two-thirds say sleepiness interferes with their concentration. “We should really get nine or 10 hours of sleep,” says psychologist Coren. “But we’re only getting seven. Sleep is not something we value.” Family stresses, the frenetic pace of life and poor bedtime habits all contribute to an epidemic of sleeplessness. Among modern complications: the wired world. “I know people who have a fax machine at the foot of their bed with a little bleeper so they can get up in the middle of the night to read their faxes,” says Coren. “The pressure to lead a 24-hour life is getting worse.”

At least many poor sleepers know they need help. About 2,000 people a year use the sleep clinic at UBC run by psychiatrist Jon Fleming. Thirty-five per cent of them complain of insomnia, a disorder that often runs in families. Others attend the clinic because of sleep apnea (troubled breathing) and narcolepsy (an overwhelming desire to sleep), among other sleep disorders. “The causes of insomnia are legion,” says Fleming. “It can be caused by psychiatric conditions or drug and alcohol abuse. But the leading cause is stress.” When Vancouver children’s bookstore owner Phyllis Simon can’t sleep, she gets out of bed for a while and writes a list of all the things she has to do. “I try to transfer my anxieties to the list. Then I’ll make myself a cup of warm milk.”

But waking up in the middle of the night and then going back to sleep – – as Simon sometimes does — can be harder on cognition than not sleeping at all, says University of Montreal psychiatrist Roger Godbout. “Your performance the next day will be worse than if you stay up all night,” he explains. While insomnia may lead to fuzzy thinking, those who short-circuit sleep by working long hours could also be compromising their physical health. Research at the University of Chicago shows adults who get fewer than seven hours of sleep are more prone to diabetes, high blood pressure and endocrine dysfunction.

Women also report more sleep problems than men — a consequence, often, of their biology. Just before menstruation, says Toronto Western Hospital sleep researcher Helen Driver, “there is a withdrawal of hormones that triggers poor sleep.” Entering menopause doesn’t make it better. Thirty-six per cent of menopausal women polled by the National Sleep Foundation said hot flashes interfered with their night’s rest. Sleep investigators are becoming more aware of the effects of the female hormones, estrogen and progesterone, says Driver. “Progesterone,” she says, “interacts with a receptor in the brain that seems to have sleep-inducing qualities.” [...]

I used the "Midlife Stage" as an excerpt for this blogpost, because that is about where I am at now. But the entire article starts with infancy, childhood, teen years, all the way through to old age. Something for everyone! Read the whole thing, for embedded links and advice for improving your sleep, whatever stage you may be in.
     

When are we going to STOP the insanity that is the useless Daylight Savings Time?

I'm serious. It seems to do more harm than good:

Daylight Saving Time is hot garbage
End the madness!

When Benjamin Franklin proposed Daylight Saving Time — he invented it — it was a joke. These days, it's more like a practical joke we play on ourselves every single year. It's time to end this dumb prank once and for all.

[...]

Proponents of DST will tell you that it saves energy. This is because a study in the 1970s found a 1 percent benefit to energy use in Daylight Saving Time. You may notice, though, that the 1970s are now 40 years ago, and energy consumption has changed somewhat in the interim. More recent research shows no difference in energy usage in places where it doesn't go into effect, compared to places observing DST. A few studies suggest Daylight Saving Time actually means more energy is used, rather than less. Take, for example, this 2008 paper that looks at southern Indiana: DST actually increases electricity demand to the tune of $9 million a year in Indiana alone. [...]

The article goes on to describe the affects of sleep deprivation, and the spike in the number of car accidents and accidents at work that occur for six weeks after DST kicks in. There are many, many embedded links to support what she says; the author really did her homework. Read the whole thing for embedded links, the history of DST, Ben's joke, and more.
     

Death rates rise for middle aged white Americans

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds

[...] The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” wrote two Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, in a commentary to the Deaton-Case analysis to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Wow,” said Samuel Preston, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on mortality trends and the health of populations, who was not involved in the research. “This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”

Dr. Deaton had but one parallel. “Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” he said.

In contrast, the death rate for middle-aged blacks and Hispanics continued to decline during the same period, as did death rates for younger and older people of all races and ethnic groups.

Middle-aged blacks still have a higher mortality rate than whites — 581 per 100,000, compared with 415 for whites — but the gap is closing, and the rate for middle-aged Hispanics is far lower than for middle-aged whites at 262 per 100,000.

David M. Cutler, a Harvard health care economist, said that although it was known that people were dying from causes like opioid addiction, the thought was that those deaths were just blips in the health care statistics and that over all everyone’s health was improving. The new paper, he said, “shows those blips are more like incoming missiles.”

Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case (who are husband and wife) say they stumbled on their finding by accident, looking at a variety of national data sets on mortality rates and federal surveys that asked people about their levels of pain, disability and general ill health.

Dr. Deaton was looking at statistics on suicide and happiness, skeptical about whether states with a high happiness level have a low suicide rate. (They do not, he discovered; in fact, the opposite is true.) Dr. Case was interested in poor health, including chronic pain because she has suffered for 12 years from disabling and untreatable lower back pain.

Dr. Deaton noticed in national data sets that middle-aged whites were committing suicide at an unprecedented rate and that the all-cause mortality in this group was rising. But suicides alone, he and Dr. Case realized, were not enough to push up overall death rates, so they began looking at other causes of death. That led them to the discovery that deaths from drug and alcohol poisoning also increased in this group.

They concluded that taken together, suicides, drugs and alcohol explained the overall increase in deaths. The effect was largely confined to people with a high school education or less. In that group, death rates rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education.

It is not clear why only middle-aged whites had such a rise in their mortality rates. Dr. Meara and Dr. Skinner, in their commentary, considered a variety of explanations — including a pronounced racial difference in the prescription of opioid drugs and their misuse, and a more pessimistic outlook among whites about their financial futures — but say they cannot fully account for the effect. [...]

Read the whole thing for more details, embedded links and more.

I think key to this is the fact that it's affecting whites with only a high school education or less. The job market is particularly tough for them, and their coping skills are likely less resilient. They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. The article goes on to talk about physical pain issues rising in this demographic, also. The combined health and financial problems, with a pessimistic attitude and substance abuse issues, may be proving lethal.

Of course there are those who are quick to say it's merely the Death of White Privledge; Whitey is finding out what it's like to be poor, and can't cope. That authors' agenda isn't mine, I prefer a bit more scientific objectivity. I include the link merely because it's a narrative we are going to hear more and more, as everything continues to get more and more racialized and radicalized.

I think the article about Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case that I've excerpted from here is more objective, and therefor more balanced.

Here is a link to readers comments about the study:
Readers React to Rising Death Rates of Middle-Aged White Americans.

Since the same demographic in other industrialized countries is NOT dying at such an increased rate, I would suggest that the difference is, that many other countries have a permanent unemployed class, that receives better, permanent unemployment benefits and health care. The same demographic here does not, which explains why they gravitate to Bernie Sanders: They want the government to take care of them, European style. Is that the same as the "End of White Privledge"? You decide.

This will be a growing issue as the automation of job tasks continues and jobs continue to disappear. What is to be done with the growing pool of unemployed people, not just here, but globally? It's one of the major challenges we face in the coming Brave New Word.
     

The Best Place to Live

10 best places to live in the world: Where does the U.S. fall on the list?

Norway has done it again.

The Land of the Midnight Sun was named as the best place to live in the world for the 12th year in a row in the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report.

Released today, the report includes an index that ranks 188 countries according to livability. Each country was given a score based on data in three areas: life expectancy, education and income-standard of living. [...]

I was a bit surprised by the #2 spot. Weather was not included in the ranking, but #2 has good climate as well, making it even more attractive.

Can you guess which country was picked as the worst?
     

Dementia levels not getting worse

If we are to believe what this article says:

Dementia levels 'are stabilising'

The proportion of people living with dementia is levelling-off in parts of western Europe, a report says.

The University of Cambridge study shows the proportion of elderly people with the condition in the UK has fallen, contrary to predictions that cases would soar.

Improvements in health and levels of education might be protecting people from the disease, the scientists said.

Charities warned there was no guarantee the improvements would continue.

The report, in the Lancet medical journal, analysed twinned dementia studies that were conducted in the same way, but decades apart.

Data from the Netherlands, UK, Spain and Sweden showed that the proportion of people with the condition had stabilised over the periods covered by the studies - which ranged from nearly 20 years to almost 30. But in the UK and among Spanish men, it had fallen.

In the UK, the data from 1991 suggested that 8% of over-65s would have dementia in 2011, yet the team in Cambridge said the figure was in fact 6%.

It means there are around 670,000 people with the condition rather than the 850,000 figure regularly cited.
Improved health

An ageing population should have led to more people living with dementia. However, lead researcher Prof Carol Brayne said the expected rise "had not occurred".

She told the BBC News website: "Effectively it has stabilised rather than gone up.

"The age-specific prevalence has gone down so even though the population has got older, the number [of patients with dementia] has stayed the same." [...]

The article goes on to look a possible reasons why. The current generation of old people are generally wealthier and better educated than their parents and grandparents were, are more health-conscious and take advantage of advances in medical knowledge and health advice. Read the whole thing for more.