Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 05 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Health & Wellness
Map

Magnify

Our lost microbial diversity - the guts of hunter gatherers

Jen Viegas
The Seeker
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:24 UTC
hunter gatherer

Young male member of the Hadza indigenous people of north-central Tanzania.
The gut ecosystems of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania vary seasonally with their diets, and include beneficial microbes that the guts of urban dwellers lack.

The Hadza are a small group of hunter-gatherers inhabiting Tanzania's Rift Valley. While they number just over 1000, fewer than 200 adhere to a traditional lifestyle that includes a diet mainly composed of just five items: meat, berries, a fruit called baobab, tubers, and honey.

Since the Hadza lifestyle does not include refrigerators or supermarkets, their diet fluctuates according to the seasons. This might not be a bad thing, as studies consistently show that these people tend to live long and healthy lives without the use of modern medicine. New research suggests one important reason why this might be the case.

Comment: Dr. Justin Sonnenburg: Is a disrupted gut microbiome at the root of modern disease?

      Read More...
Seismograph

Studies show what happens to the human body when we walk barefoot

Arjun Walia
Collective Evolution
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 15:58 UTC
grounding
© Scientific Research Publishing
The picture above represents Improved facial circulation (right image) after 20 minutes of grounding, as documented by a Speckle Contrast Laser Imager (dark blue=lowest circulation; dark red=highest circulation).
Grounding, or 'earthing,' as some people call it, involves placing your feet directly on the ground without shoes or socks as a barrier. The logic behind this practice relates to the intense negative charge carried by the Earth. This charge is electron-rich, theoretically serving as a good supply of antioxidants and free-radical destroying electrons.

Dr. James Oschman, a PhD in biology from the University of Pittsburgh and an expert in the field of energy medicine, notes:
Subjective reports that walking barefoot on the Earth enhances health and provides feelings of well-being can be found in the literature and practices of diverse cultures from around the world. For a variety of reasons, many individuals are reluctant to walk outside barefoot, unless they are on holiday at the beach. (source)

Comment: Read more about how Staying in tune with the Earth's pulse is key to our wellbeing:

      Read More...
Health

A revolutionary revisioning: Natural autoimmunity as the master conductor of homeostasis


Green Med Info Research Group
Thu, 17 Aug 2017 13:30 UTC
What if everything we thought we knew about autoantibodies, which are pathologically elevated in autoimmune diseases, was wrong? Rather than a biomarker of deranged immunoregulation, novel research is uncovering that antibodies directed against self are an essential physiological phenomena, mandatory for homeodynamics.

human cells
How Microbiology Distorted the Foundations of Immunology

Through the lens of applied microbiology, a discipline which informed the inception of immunology, the immune system has been fashioned as the armed forces, vigilant against hostile intrusion. In fact, that the founders of immunology were microbiologists such as Paul Ehrlich and Louis Pasteur enabled the persistence of a framework whereby the immune cells were conceived as sentinels or alerted border guards, on the offensive against microbial invasion. Thus, as articulated by Poletaev and colleagues in their recent review, "'Microbiological' thinking, namely its idea of war against aliens, has persisted in minds for decades due to the fact that generations of immunologists have been educated by microbiologists" (1, p. 221).

However, when imagined through the foundations of physiology and pathophysiology, a dramatically divergent view of the immune system emerges. In fact, over a century ago, Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff incorporated Darwinian logic into a theory suggesting that the objective of the immune system is not war against non-self, but rather ""harmonization of self," or even ontogenetic creation of multi-cellular organism" in the face of environmental and internal challenges (1, p. 221).
      Read More...
Health

High intensity exercise releases bursts of endorphins

Joe Battaglia
Prevent Disease
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 13:07 UTC
Take the stairs whenever you can – both a form of incidental and HIIT exercise.
Researchers in Finland have found that when you're working out, the level of endorphins released in the brain directly correlates to the intensity of exercise you're doing. That's a good thing for people doing high intensity interval training, or HIIT, because HIIT can be miserable.

The results were published in Neuropsychopharmacology.

Scientists believe exercise-induced endorphin release may in part be the body's way of motivating a person to power through activities that are no fun, but good for you. The new study, conducted at the University of Turku, shows that the popular (but miserable) high-intensity interval training leads to a burst of endorphin released into the brain, which the researchers speculate alleviates some of the physical and emotional stress caused by the awful, high-intensity exercise. A lower-tempo, less demanding, traditional and entirely reasonable one-hour aerobic routine, sadly, has no similar effect.

What Is HIIT?

HIIT is usually 30-60 minutes long. It switches between high intensity exercises to small active breaks. By making the body work hard, rest for a small amount of time, and then work hard again, it's able to grow stronger than just doing the same level of intensity for a prolonged period of time.

Comment:

      Read More...
Pills

Over 75K French thyroid patients petition against new drug formulation


The Connexion
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 20:43 UTC
pills

New version of drug causing serious side effects, say users.

A free helpline number (French only) has been set up to assist thyroid patients in France concerned by side effects from taking a revised version of the drug Levothyrox.

The drug is among the most prescribed in France, with three million users with thyroid problems or cancer.

Doctors and health authorities have tried to reassure patients about the new drug. Professor Jean-Christophe Lifante, thyroid specialist at Lyon-Sud hospital, told Le Parisien: "There may be side effects on some patients, but we must calm the controversy because the majority of them are only temporary."

The National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM), which set up the helpline, said "the new formula has been demonstrated to be bioequivalent to the old formula" and that "this bioequivalence is the guarantee of identical effectiveness and safety".

However, many users are not convinced by ANSM's claims and say they have had serious side effects since the drug was first marketed at the end of March. These include dizzyness, headaches, memory loss, extreme fatigue and worse.

"We are facing a major crisis," said Chantal L'Hoir, founder of the AFMT (French Association of Thyroid Patients).

Comment: The benefits and advantages of taking natural, whole thyroid appear to be lost on the Big Pharma company making this evil drug. Or, maybe not. They just know they can't make a pile of money off something that is not patented and so, humanity suffers on at the hands of evil drug makers.

      Read More...
Megaphone

Hearing voices? Your brain may just be better able to pick up hidden sounds

April McCarthy
Prevent Disease
Wed, 23 Aug 2017 18:16 UTC
hearing voices
Researchers in the United Kingdom say they've discovered that such individuals use unusual skills when their brains process sound and that such 'voice-hearers' may be able to detect disguised speech-like sounds more quickly and easily than folks who had never had a voice-hearing experience. It suggests their brains tend more readily to detect meaningful speech patterns in ambiguous sounds.

Misophonics have shown distinctive brain activity whenever they hear their trigger sounds, but authors say that hearing voices are another part of the brain's tuning in mechanisms.

Said lead author Dr. Ben Alderson-Day, from Durham University's Hearing the Voice project: "These findings are a demonstration of what we can learn from people who hear voices that are not distressing or problematic. It suggests that the brains of people who hear voices are particularly tuned to meaning in sounds, and shows how unusual experiences might be influenced by people's individual perceptual and cognitive processes."

The findings lend insight into the brain processes of voice-hearers and could help researchers find better ways to help people who find the voices troubling. The U.K. study involved people who hear voices -- or, auditory verbal hallucinations -- but otherwise have no mental health problems.
      Read More...
Brain

Brain regeneration: Why it's real & how to do it

Sayer Ji
Green Med Info
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 18:02 UTC
the brain
Have you ever wished you could regenerate those brain cells you sacrificed in college? Do you fear that your aging brain is in a perpetual state of decline? Medical science is being rewritten to show that we CAN improve the health of our brain, and that repairing damage is not only possible, it's something anyone can do.

It is a commonly held misconception that the brain is beyond repair. Even the medical establishment has asserted that once we kill brain cells, they are gone forever. The fact is, the brain can repair itself, and as science is now proving, there is real benefit to simple practices that can help keep our brains sharp and elastic throughout our lifetime.

Rewriting the Story of Brain Health

The field of cognitive neuroscience is relatively new - only around one hundred years old - so it's no surprise that we are constantly arriving at a newer and better understanding of how the neural circuitry of the human brain supports overall brain functioning.

For most of those one hundred years, it was believed that once damaged, the brain could not regenerate. Brain cells were finite, and any loss or injury would be suffered as a deficiency for the rest of that person's life. This created a false belief that the brain is essentially in a perpetual state of decline.
      Read More...
Health

Vitamin C found to regulate the action of leukemia stem cells

Heather Callaghan
Natural Blaze
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 17:51 UTC
vitamin C
The life of a stem cell is still a mystery to scientists. Stem cells are the pervasive cells that "seed" new cancer cells, feed fatal tumors and often evade treatment. But recent research is intrigued with the effects of vitamin C on leukemia stem cells.

A new study from the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) has found that stem cells take up unusually high levels of vitamin C, which then regulates their function and suppresses the development of leukemia.

Dr. Sean Morrison, the Director of CRI said:
We have known for a while that people with lower levels of ascorbate (vitamin C) are at increased cancer risk, but we haven't fully understood why. Our research provides part of the explanation, at least for the blood-forming system.
The trick for learning about stem cell metabolism is for scientists to find a large enough of them to study - but it's apparently rare to find them in each tissue of the body.

Yet, this study broke ground in that development with new techniques they write about in the recently published study in Nature. Incredibly, the researchers can now routinely measure metabolite levels in rare cell populations such as stem cells.
      Read More...
Biohazard

France: Nine dogs dead as Loire river algae worsens


The Connexion
Fri, 25 Aug 2017 16:58 UTC
river dog

Two more dogs have died since the bacteria was officially confirmed.
More dogs have died after coming into contact with contaminated water from the Loire river in Maine-et-Loire.

The river, which was last week confirmed as containing cyanobacteria from algae - namely the oscillatoria and formidium bacteria - has been especially affected this summer, threatening the safety of normal riverside activities such as fishing, swimming, and dog-walking.

So far, 12 dogs have been reported as affected by respiratory and neurological problems after swimming in or drinking the river water, with nine dead so far across the department.

One other pet dog death in the Indre-et-Loire is also being linked to the algae, marking two more dog deaths in total since the bacteria was first confirmed last week.

Although the phenomenon has previously been seen in the Landes and in Brittany, it has reached unprecedented levels in Maine-et-Loire this year.

The algae is known to grow on rocks on river beds, and in the right weather conditions - including in high temperatures - can come to the surface and become dangerous.

Pets and other small animals are especially at risk of death, but humans in significant contact with the bacteria can also suffer from skin irritation, stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhoea, fever, angina, muscular pain, mouth sores, and liver damage.
      Read More...
Shoe

Health experts state that Brits are in the midst of a laziness epidemic

Ben Spencer
Daily Mail
Wed, 23 Aug 2017 21:31 UTC
sleeping man
© Getty Images
Almost half of over 16s are so sedentary they do not even manage a ten-minute walk once per day, according to heath bosses.
Britain is in the grip of an 'inactivity epidemic', with nearly half of adults failing to go for a brisk walk even once a month.

Health bosses say 45 per cent of over-16s are so sedentary they do not manage the health-boosting ten-minute walk.

Public Health England (PHE) officials are especially worried about more than 6 million inactive people aged between 40 and 60 who are putting their busy lives ahead of their health.

In a major change of strategy, they said inactive people should start aiming simply to get out for a short walk each day - rather than the more ambitious 150 minutes of exercise a week that has dominated NHS advice for years.

They said the British population was 20 per cent less active now than in the 1960s, and the average person walked 15 miles less a year than they did just two decades ago.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts