Why GMO (GE) Foods Are Dangerous
The safety of GMO foods is unproven and a growing body of research connects these foods with health concerns and environmental damage. For this reason, most developed nations have policies requiring mandatory labeling of GMO foods at the very least, and some have issued bans on GMO food production and imports.
In Canada we do not.
- David Suzuki Foundation Dr. David Suzuki is a Canadian environmentalist.
GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) and GE (Genetically Engineered) are, for all intents and purposes, identical and interchangeable. North America tends to use GMO, Europe GE, usage varies in the rest of the world.
Simply put, the process involves taking genetic material from the DNA of one organism and inserting it into the DNA of another organism. The idea is to confer the benefit of the genetic material of the donor organism onto the receiving organism, thereby "improving" the recipient organism.
Opponents of GMOs call it "playing God." This seems excessive. Playing the Devil might be a more appropriate label. We will return to the labeling idea later.
The governments of the USA, Canada and a few other countries that tend to go along with whatever the US says are either supremely stupid or unspeakably corrupt. While both are highly negative, the shocking possibility exists that those same governments are both stupid and corrupt. That is shocking because, given the present staggering power of chemical giants such as Monsanto, little short of physical revolution may be considered to cause committed countries to back away from decisions that have harmed and will harm their own people.
This article will not attribute opinion to the results of scientific research. That has been done too often. The research has been done, the conclusions are public, but the chemical giants have managed to cover it up so successfully that the majority of people know little about them. Governments who have committed to allow GMOs are too embarrassed to admit their grievous mistakes, so remain silent. They fear litigation as a consequence of allowing harmful foods on the market. Millions of people are now in the process of destroying their health as a result.
This article will instead appeal to logic, to your sense of right and wrong, to what used to be known as common sense. GMOs are purely destructive over the long term, covertly destructive in the short term. Here's why.
Genetically modified seeds are engineered to withstand poisons. These poisons are spread over the land in which the seeds will grow, ostensibly to kill off pests and plants that would compete with the seed during the growing season.
You need to understand that these poisons are not selective. They are broad spectrum. That is, they kill everything, every living organism, every plant, every animal, every bacterium and other microbe in the soil they touch. As there are literally millions of microscopic organisms in every teaspoon of fertile soil, that is a massive amount of destruction.
Then the genetically modified seeds are planted. They sprout, they grow, they eventually produce food-like products you will find in your food market. The chemical companies claim the seeds carry none of the poisons with them to maturity. Research proves this is a lie. More recent research has found these poisons in the air people breathe and the water they drink.
So, prove it, you say, give us the research. No, I won't do that. Articles that provide support for their arguments based on "scientific research" can and often are embarrassingly biased, edited not to give all available evidence but to provide evidence to support the opinion expressed. The internet will give you the evidence if you search. This article will not give you one-sided evidence to support its claims.
Search "organic foods pros and cons." And "gmo foods" to start. Then "gmo damage."
Now to the logic or common sense part. It has been well known and documented for centuries, even millennia, that very small amounts of poison ingested over an extended period of time will eventually cause ill health, then death. Kings and emperors used to have tasters (or the chefs who prepared their meals) eat some of the food intended for the leaders before they indulged.
Some fine mysteries, such as by Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, showed how murderers killed their victims by giving them small amounts of poison over weeks, months, even years. Court records show how some people murdered others in similar ways today.
The very same companies that produce the seeds that can survive the assaults of poisons on fields in which they grow also produce the poisons themselves. Even today some governments are approving GMO seeds on which DDT (an insecticide banned in most countries decades ago) and components of Agent Orange (best known for killing countless innocent people in SE Asia during the Vietnam war, though people are still suffering and dying from it today) may be sprayed. Yes, you read that right.
Not only do they give permission for farm fields to be poisoned lifeless before seeds are planted, they are now giving permission for industrial farmers to spray poisons directly on the crops.
You decide, is that stupidity or corruption? Or both.
Ask yourself how much sense it makes for a human to take as a blood thinner a poison (warfarin) that in stronger doses kills rats, a fellow mammal. With all of the advice we receive about the importance of eating green leafy vegetables to keep us healthy and extend our lives, warfarin users must be careful of them because the vitamin K1 they contain interferes with warfarin's effectiveness as a blood thinner. Eating an extremely healthy food can harm a warfarin user.
At a time when health care costs soar dramatically to previously unimagined heights, governments are knowingly making more of their own citizens sick. It is known that those living today will be the first generation in centuries to live shorter lifespans than their parents. That prediction was made because of widespread obesity.
We may also expect it because of widespread poisoning of the foods we eat. Yet government food and drug agencies still call GMO foods safe in some countries.
Many of these same governments are refusing to allow food products with GMO ingredients to have labels clearly stating their GMO content. What would you call it? Consumers are not allowed to know if the food they buy and eat and feed to their children is unhealthy or toxic.
You have a choice about what you eat. Learn about it first or suffer the consequences. Those consequences could include not only a shorter lifespan, but years of ill health before you die. Nobody wants that.
Final note: chemical giant and the world's most powerful advocate of GMO seeds (it sells both single year seeds and Roundup, the poison that kills everything before its seeds are planted) Monsanto refuses to allow any GMO products or food components in its own staff canteen.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about cheap and easily implemented solutions to pervasive social problems. Yes, ill health from GMO food consumption is a serious social problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, March 24, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Nutrition vs. Big Pharma
Nutrition vs. Big Pharma
It's all in what we eat. Just as inadequate nutrition will cause our chromosomes to get shorter faster and younger, good nutrition can help us to boost our DNA to help us live longer and stronger and more active lives as we get older.
- "Why I Take Vitamin and Mineral Supplements"
There is no doubt, health is a very personal and controversial subject. Very personal because each person makes his or her own decision and choices about what to eat and what to avoid.
Controversial because those who take an interest in learning about health matters are battered from all sides with information, often conflicting with other information on the same subject.
The term "Big Pharma" is itself derogatory, used by those (especially by conspiracy theorists who believe pharmaceutical companies plan to keep everyone sick to maintain their profit margins) who advocate good nutrition over running to the doctor with each runny nose.
Many studies have shown that taking vitamin and mineral supplements does little or no good for health. Some even claim supplements can harm health. It should be noted that pharmaceutical companies (the international corporations that make drugs prescribed by doctors) have become skilled at hiding their sponsorship of supposedly independent scientific studies.
It has been said that producers of "real food" and food supplements of value can't afford to conduct the kinds of studies that big pharmaceutical companies can, which explains why they have so little support from scientific studies. Yet studies exist supposedly "proving" that supplements are useless and foods not enhanced by chemicals from big corporations such as Monsanto and Dow don't offer dependable product. If producers of 'real food' can't afford to conduct studies but Big Pharma and the chemical giants can, does that give you a clue about who is behind the negative studies?
The claim that advocates of good nutrition and big pharmaceutical companies are at war over health information you receive has merit. They are at war.
When a pharmaceutical company (or a study sponsored by one or more of them) claims that nutritional or vitamin supplements are not covered by law (technically they are not drugs, which are covered), thus their contents cannot be verified by their manufacturers, you have to think "conflict of interest." They have profit in mind at all times and the money to make the competition look weak or harmful through studies they sponsor covertly.
Nutritional supplements and vitamin supplements derive from nature, from plants that have grown and developed since long before humans inhabited the planet. Have you ever challenged a farmer to prove that each carrot he sells has the same nutritional value as each other carrot? Of course not.
Farmers are not the ones who claim the nutritional value of eating carrots. They leave that to health authorities who have studied the chemical components of carrots and how they affect the health of people. Nature is not consistent. The nutritional value of a carrot grown in one field may differ markedly from that of a carrot of similar size grown in an adjacent field.
No respectable health authority has ever advised people to eat only carrots. They advise people to eat a wide selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, including carrots and plants of other varieties, especially those with strong colours (they tend to have greater health benefits). Yet food and supplement "studies" take these out of context of the normal consumption and digestive systems and find results that make them look bad.
A person who paid attention only to the results of studies that in effect say it doesn't matter what you eat, it only matters whether or not you are sick, may believe that they can eat anything. If they do get sick, it's bad luck and drugs or (in extreme cases) a stay in a hospital will fix them up.
Now we can make the distinction between a healthy body and an unhealthy body. Note that you will likely not be able to tell by looking at someone whether their body is healthy or unhealthy. Nature has made us strong and fairly resistant to attacks by pathogens in our young (and therefore reproductive) years.
Once our reproductive years have passed, the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits begin to show. People don't get sick by accident or bad luck. Generally speaking, they get sick for a very good reason.
Unhealthy eating practices over several years result in an unhealthy body. An unhealthy body is vulnerable to attack by disease bacteria and viruses. The immune system of a healthy body will fight off these pathogens. The immune system of a healthy person will kill those bad guys.
But won't doctor-prescribed drugs do the same thing if you get sick? Yes, sort of. The number of drugs that will defeat viruses can be counted on your thumbs. The number of viruses that may attack your body is so large that it can't be counted. The common cold alone has about 200 viruses that cause you to "have a cold."
As to fighting bacteria, doctors have many drugs they can prescribe. If a doctor doesn't know exactly which bacterium has caused a disease you have, he will likely prescribe a broad spectrum antibiotic. That should get rid of the worst of the bacteria that are attacking you.
The trouble with that is that the antibiotic will also likely destroy most of your immune system. Your immune system, after all, depends almost entirely on its own collection of microbes in your gut, in your mouth and on every organ of your body. Antibiotics kill far more good bacteria--the ones that form the core of your immune system--then they kill harmful bacteria. The doctor takes credit only for killing the bad ones.
Pharmaceutical companies don't tell you that. They want you to believe that their drugs will kill the bad bacteria. After that, forget about other consequences. If you contract some other illness because you have no immune system to fight it off, the companies want you to believe that you simply have bad luck (take more drugs). But that's not true. You may simply have a knowledge deficit. And a naïve belief in the ability of your doctor and drugs to cure you of anything.
But drugs don't cure you. More often than not, they do you more harm than good.
Cancer, for example, is now considered by many outside the medical establishment to be a voluntary disease. That is, you have a choice to avoid cancer. If you eat properly. Same with heart disease and most of the other ailments people suffer from before they reach 90 years of age.
The purpose of this article is not to give you medical or nutritional advise. Its purpose is to get you to give direction to your thoughts about your ability to control your own health.
You make the choice to be healthy, especially past middle age (though ideally you should begin before that), or to be a medical patient and regular customer of Big Pharma. If you choose the latter, the companies will love you for it. They won't respect you, but they will love you because you will be one of the geese that lays golden eggs for them.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions that are cheap but effective, as well as hundreds of articles that are available on the internet. Yes, health is a big social problem in the world, not just in the west, but everywhere.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
It's all in what we eat. Just as inadequate nutrition will cause our chromosomes to get shorter faster and younger, good nutrition can help us to boost our DNA to help us live longer and stronger and more active lives as we get older.
- "Why I Take Vitamin and Mineral Supplements"
There is no doubt, health is a very personal and controversial subject. Very personal because each person makes his or her own decision and choices about what to eat and what to avoid.
Controversial because those who take an interest in learning about health matters are battered from all sides with information, often conflicting with other information on the same subject.
The term "Big Pharma" is itself derogatory, used by those (especially by conspiracy theorists who believe pharmaceutical companies plan to keep everyone sick to maintain their profit margins) who advocate good nutrition over running to the doctor with each runny nose.
Many studies have shown that taking vitamin and mineral supplements does little or no good for health. Some even claim supplements can harm health. It should be noted that pharmaceutical companies (the international corporations that make drugs prescribed by doctors) have become skilled at hiding their sponsorship of supposedly independent scientific studies.
It has been said that producers of "real food" and food supplements of value can't afford to conduct the kinds of studies that big pharmaceutical companies can, which explains why they have so little support from scientific studies. Yet studies exist supposedly "proving" that supplements are useless and foods not enhanced by chemicals from big corporations such as Monsanto and Dow don't offer dependable product. If producers of 'real food' can't afford to conduct studies but Big Pharma and the chemical giants can, does that give you a clue about who is behind the negative studies?
The claim that advocates of good nutrition and big pharmaceutical companies are at war over health information you receive has merit. They are at war.
When a pharmaceutical company (or a study sponsored by one or more of them) claims that nutritional or vitamin supplements are not covered by law (technically they are not drugs, which are covered), thus their contents cannot be verified by their manufacturers, you have to think "conflict of interest." They have profit in mind at all times and the money to make the competition look weak or harmful through studies they sponsor covertly.
Nutritional supplements and vitamin supplements derive from nature, from plants that have grown and developed since long before humans inhabited the planet. Have you ever challenged a farmer to prove that each carrot he sells has the same nutritional value as each other carrot? Of course not.
Farmers are not the ones who claim the nutritional value of eating carrots. They leave that to health authorities who have studied the chemical components of carrots and how they affect the health of people. Nature is not consistent. The nutritional value of a carrot grown in one field may differ markedly from that of a carrot of similar size grown in an adjacent field.
No respectable health authority has ever advised people to eat only carrots. They advise people to eat a wide selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, including carrots and plants of other varieties, especially those with strong colours (they tend to have greater health benefits). Yet food and supplement "studies" take these out of context of the normal consumption and digestive systems and find results that make them look bad.
A person who paid attention only to the results of studies that in effect say it doesn't matter what you eat, it only matters whether or not you are sick, may believe that they can eat anything. If they do get sick, it's bad luck and drugs or (in extreme cases) a stay in a hospital will fix them up.
Now we can make the distinction between a healthy body and an unhealthy body. Note that you will likely not be able to tell by looking at someone whether their body is healthy or unhealthy. Nature has made us strong and fairly resistant to attacks by pathogens in our young (and therefore reproductive) years.
Once our reproductive years have passed, the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits begin to show. People don't get sick by accident or bad luck. Generally speaking, they get sick for a very good reason.
Unhealthy eating practices over several years result in an unhealthy body. An unhealthy body is vulnerable to attack by disease bacteria and viruses. The immune system of a healthy body will fight off these pathogens. The immune system of a healthy person will kill those bad guys.
But won't doctor-prescribed drugs do the same thing if you get sick? Yes, sort of. The number of drugs that will defeat viruses can be counted on your thumbs. The number of viruses that may attack your body is so large that it can't be counted. The common cold alone has about 200 viruses that cause you to "have a cold."
As to fighting bacteria, doctors have many drugs they can prescribe. If a doctor doesn't know exactly which bacterium has caused a disease you have, he will likely prescribe a broad spectrum antibiotic. That should get rid of the worst of the bacteria that are attacking you.
The trouble with that is that the antibiotic will also likely destroy most of your immune system. Your immune system, after all, depends almost entirely on its own collection of microbes in your gut, in your mouth and on every organ of your body. Antibiotics kill far more good bacteria--the ones that form the core of your immune system--then they kill harmful bacteria. The doctor takes credit only for killing the bad ones.
Pharmaceutical companies don't tell you that. They want you to believe that their drugs will kill the bad bacteria. After that, forget about other consequences. If you contract some other illness because you have no immune system to fight it off, the companies want you to believe that you simply have bad luck (take more drugs). But that's not true. You may simply have a knowledge deficit. And a naïve belief in the ability of your doctor and drugs to cure you of anything.
But drugs don't cure you. More often than not, they do you more harm than good.
Cancer, for example, is now considered by many outside the medical establishment to be a voluntary disease. That is, you have a choice to avoid cancer. If you eat properly. Same with heart disease and most of the other ailments people suffer from before they reach 90 years of age.
The purpose of this article is not to give you medical or nutritional advise. Its purpose is to get you to give direction to your thoughts about your ability to control your own health.
You make the choice to be healthy, especially past middle age (though ideally you should begin before that), or to be a medical patient and regular customer of Big Pharma. If you choose the latter, the companies will love you for it. They won't respect you, but they will love you because you will be one of the geese that lays golden eggs for them.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions that are cheap but effective, as well as hundreds of articles that are available on the internet. Yes, health is a big social problem in the world, not just in the west, but everywhere.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Living Longer Means Living Healthier
Living Longer Means Living Healthier
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister (1874-1965)
Of course I want to live longer than my parents and grandparents.
With the exception of one grandfather who could not cope with financial tragedy during the First World War, so ended his own life, my parents and grandparents lived reasonable lifespans. For their times.
Their times were not my time, our time, your time and mine. Whereas those folks in the past were lucky to live beyond 80 years (most were lucky to reach age 40), my neighbours consider that anyone who dies before age 88 "died too young." That may be peculiar to where I live.
Many people who have reached and passed age 65 today expect to live to 100, some even well beyond that. A Canadian competitive swimmer of 105 years has forced competitive swimming organizations to create a new age category for people 105 to 109 years. Otherwise he would have to stop competing in competitions and he does not want to do that.
My parents both died of cancer. There was no cancer in our family before they died. My sister died too young, also of cancer. One of my grandmothers died of cancer. Cancer is now considered to be a voluntary disease. That is, you can avoid it if you know how, if you adopt an appropriate lifestyle. It can even be cured, though many still die from it because they don't know how to cure themselves or will not change if they do know. Some of us are devoted to our bad habits.
One of my grandfathers died of Alzheimer's. Another disease considered by many who study good health to be a voluntary disease. Although it has been shown to have a genetic component, that component can be overcome with diet and the right mental exercises. Bad health habits increase the risk hugely.
One grandmother died of heart disease. Another disease now considered to be voluntary. Heart disease is avoidable. Not with an unhealthy lifestyle and eating habits.
Why do doctors, hospitals and drug companies focus so much attention on these diseases, but have so limited success at curing them? Because their livelihoods depend on these people being repeat patients, regular customers. Is that cynical? Not when you consider the very real possibility of conflict of interest. The busier these people are, the more money they make. Doctors are small businesses and business depends heavily on a regular income stream.
Though only one of my immediate ancestors died by choice, the others all died because they did not know how to avoid practices that were, on reflection today, bound to give them an unhealthy lifestyle.
It could have been different for them if they had known how. I am determined that I will live longer than they did because I do know how.
One of the main causes of death in elderly people is that the gene strings (telomeres) get shorter with repetition over a long period of time and this means that genes intended to fight off various health problems may no longer be strong enough to do that. A good diet can actually help to lengthen the telomeres, perhaps extending life in the process.
Here's the catch. If I tell you, I could be legally liable for dispensing medical or health advice without an approved licence. Am I afraid of being sued, of being attacked by the medical establishment of my country? Frankly, yes. It's that bad. Medical associations and their Big Pharma supporters are constantly in court fighting those who want to dispense good health advice and cures for diseases.
I will tell you that the information you need to live longer is available on the internet. I will tell you that you should stick strictly with foods that grow in the ground or from plants that do. I will tell you that you will surely shorten your life by taking drugs, either prescribed by doctors or the bad illegal kind. Yes, there are good illegal kinds (illegal in some countries, not all), but you need to find that out for yourself.
The choice is yours. Of course you don't have time to research this stuff now. You are too busy. But you will have time when you are dying and unable to do much else but suffer.
If you don't mind a simple observation, that's too late.
When my time comes, I want to die of "natural causes." I want those natural causes to strike much later than they did for my immediate ancestors. And they will. Because I took the trouble to learn how to delay them. You can too.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of simple and cheap solutions to major problems. Yes, dying too young is a social problem and being feeble for the last decade or more of your life is another one. Healthy people do not have that problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister (1874-1965)
Of course I want to live longer than my parents and grandparents.
With the exception of one grandfather who could not cope with financial tragedy during the First World War, so ended his own life, my parents and grandparents lived reasonable lifespans. For their times.
Their times were not my time, our time, your time and mine. Whereas those folks in the past were lucky to live beyond 80 years (most were lucky to reach age 40), my neighbours consider that anyone who dies before age 88 "died too young." That may be peculiar to where I live.
Many people who have reached and passed age 65 today expect to live to 100, some even well beyond that. A Canadian competitive swimmer of 105 years has forced competitive swimming organizations to create a new age category for people 105 to 109 years. Otherwise he would have to stop competing in competitions and he does not want to do that.
My parents both died of cancer. There was no cancer in our family before they died. My sister died too young, also of cancer. One of my grandmothers died of cancer. Cancer is now considered to be a voluntary disease. That is, you can avoid it if you know how, if you adopt an appropriate lifestyle. It can even be cured, though many still die from it because they don't know how to cure themselves or will not change if they do know. Some of us are devoted to our bad habits.
One of my grandfathers died of Alzheimer's. Another disease considered by many who study good health to be a voluntary disease. Although it has been shown to have a genetic component, that component can be overcome with diet and the right mental exercises. Bad health habits increase the risk hugely.
One grandmother died of heart disease. Another disease now considered to be voluntary. Heart disease is avoidable. Not with an unhealthy lifestyle and eating habits.
Why do doctors, hospitals and drug companies focus so much attention on these diseases, but have so limited success at curing them? Because their livelihoods depend on these people being repeat patients, regular customers. Is that cynical? Not when you consider the very real possibility of conflict of interest. The busier these people are, the more money they make. Doctors are small businesses and business depends heavily on a regular income stream.
Though only one of my immediate ancestors died by choice, the others all died because they did not know how to avoid practices that were, on reflection today, bound to give them an unhealthy lifestyle.
It could have been different for them if they had known how. I am determined that I will live longer than they did because I do know how.
One of the main causes of death in elderly people is that the gene strings (telomeres) get shorter with repetition over a long period of time and this means that genes intended to fight off various health problems may no longer be strong enough to do that. A good diet can actually help to lengthen the telomeres, perhaps extending life in the process.
Here's the catch. If I tell you, I could be legally liable for dispensing medical or health advice without an approved licence. Am I afraid of being sued, of being attacked by the medical establishment of my country? Frankly, yes. It's that bad. Medical associations and their Big Pharma supporters are constantly in court fighting those who want to dispense good health advice and cures for diseases.
I will tell you that the information you need to live longer is available on the internet. I will tell you that you should stick strictly with foods that grow in the ground or from plants that do. I will tell you that you will surely shorten your life by taking drugs, either prescribed by doctors or the bad illegal kind. Yes, there are good illegal kinds (illegal in some countries, not all), but you need to find that out for yourself.
The choice is yours. Of course you don't have time to research this stuff now. You are too busy. But you will have time when you are dying and unable to do much else but suffer.
If you don't mind a simple observation, that's too late.
When my time comes, I want to die of "natural causes." I want those natural causes to strike much later than they did for my immediate ancestors. And they will. Because I took the trouble to learn how to delay them. You can too.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of simple and cheap solutions to major problems. Yes, dying too young is a social problem and being feeble for the last decade or more of your life is another one. Healthy people do not have that problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, January 27, 2014
How You and Your Doctor Could Be Destroying Your Immune System
How You and Your Doctor Could Be Destroying Your Immune System
Immune system (Wikipedia) The immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease. To function properly, an immune system must detect a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and distinguish them from the organism's own healthy tissue.
Note that the quote from Wikipedia (above) is so vague about what the immune system actually is that from reading it you have no idea what the immune system is. The rest of the page, indeed the rest of the sources on the internet, are equally vague. Okay, let's be honest, they're not just vague, they tell you nothing about what the immune system is.
Your doctor will tell you about vaccines that will help your immune system. Doctors never mention the small amounts of toxic additives (such as mercury) that are in the vaccines because "such tiny amounts can't do you any harm." They never mention that repeated doses of tiny amounts of toxins add up to something significant. If you read Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries you will better understand that. Killer toxins accumulate.
Your doctor may also give you antibiotics to help you get over an illness. He or she, only if asked, will tell you that the antibiotics will help your immune system overcome bad bacteria that are causing your illness. Antibiotics kill bacteria, that's their main function. Please remember that because it is very important to the purpose of this article.
We have such procedures as pasteurization of milk and irradiation of other food products that also kill bacteria and make the food "safe" to consume. Back in the late 18th century Louis Pasteur won numerous awards for his process for killing bacteria.
Over succeeding years bacteria and other microscopic organisms (now known as microbes) came to be known as "germs." Germs, everybody knew, were bad. If it was living and microscopic, so the generally accepted belief went, it was a germ, it was dangerous and it could do you harm. Medical science and pharmaceutical chemical companies were ready to come to the rescue. Doctors welcomed their chemical treatments with open arms.
Many health magazines and apparently reputable sources on the internet will tell you how to boost your immune system. They act as if taking the supplements or eating the right foods will have the same kind of effects on your immune system as exercising has on your physical strength and endurance. But they never tell you what the supplements or foods are actually boosting or affecting.
Here is the information they won't tell you, either because they don't know (most likely) or because they are afraid to tell you. Prepare yourself, I am not afraid.
You are not alone in your body. You will likely think of your body as consisting of billions or trillions of cells, each containing DNA that program every cell to do its respective job and proteins to tell the cells when to do each job and for how long. You may even know that some proteins code for cell death, for killing old cells so they don't hang around to cause you grief, so they may be flushed out by the back end of your digestive system.
You are more than that. Much more. The DNA in your cells contain remnants of DNA from bacteria, some of which used to cause people to die, but no longer do because our DNA adopted (co-opted them) to prevent them from doing harm to our human and pre-human ancestors. Your DNA even contains bits of genetic code from viruses, which also were adopted eons ago so our ancestors would not die from attacks by their ancestors.
Wait, there's more. Your stomach contains billions of bacteria. Good bacteria. How good? You could not digest food without them. Literally. Your intestines also contain billions of bacteria. Not the same bacteria because the stomach is very acidic (about 2 on the pH scale where 7 is neutral), while the pH of the intestines is about 9, making them the opposite of acidic, alkaline. The two environments are extremely different as you might imagine.
In fact, every organ of your body has bacteria all over it. Your skin is covered with good bacteria. Your mouth is coated with them. They protect you from invasion by diseases caused by bad bacteria and viruses. So when you use antibacterial soap and mouthwash that promise to make your skin and mouth perfectly clean, you are killing off the very same good bacteria that protect you. But don't worry, your doctor has drugs to help you when you get sick because you destroyed your body's natural protection. (That is sarcasm, in case you missed it.)
Back to those bacteria in your gut, your intestines. There are lots of them. Many many times more of them than you have cells in your whole body. You live in symbiosis with them. You can't survive without them. And they can't survive without you. They are your immune system, at least the biggest part of your immune system.
People of some tribes who live in areas where their diet lacks necessary nutrients or gut bacteria eat a particular kind of clay to get what they need. Chemical companies want us to kill bacteria that our bodies need. They want us to fear anything that is "dirty." That "dirt" could be what helps us to develop an healthy immune system.
Kill the good bacteria in your mouth and you kill what protects disease bacteria and viruses from entering your body through your mouth. Same with the bacteria in your nose, on your skin, and so on. The flu we hear about each year enters the body through the mouth or the nose. Antibiotics and other bacteria killers in mouthwash and nasal spray remove your ability to kill the invaders before they reach your blood stream.
Kill the good bacteria in your gut and you destroy your immune system. At the very least you disrupt it horribly. That's what antibiotics do. They kill billions of good bacteria that constitute your immune system as they kill the bad ones (if they can, which they often can't). Antibiotics kill bacteria, they don't distinguish between "good" and 'bad."
Should you get cancer (now considered a voluntary disease because, according to many researchers who are trying to be heard, but are being silenced, you can prevent it by eating a good diet), your oncologist will likely urge you strongly to take chemotherapy. Chemo kills bacteria, it kills your immune system. Ask anyone who has taken a full course of it and you will find that they have to take pills every day to account for the fact that they no longer have an immune system.
In healthy people, the immune system kills cancer cells. In unhealthy people whose bodies have allowed cancer cells to overwhelm the natural defences of the immune system, chemo destroys the rest of the immune system. Is it any wonder that a majority of medical doctors in the west would refuse chemo if they got cancer? Is it any wonder that an even bigger majority of oncologists (tumour specialists) would refuse chemo if they got cancer? Chemo patients have a shockingly low five year survival rate.
This is not to say that the medical system is out to kill you. The medical system, after all, is designed to treat sick bodies, bodies that have already been severely compromised for many years (in many cases) by an unhealthy lifestyle. Doctors treat broken people. By the time you go to your doctor with a problem that is serious, your natural protective defences have largely been destroyed. By you, not by your doctor.
Doctors have the unenviable task of trying to help severely damaged bodies, even though the patients themselves do not think of themselves in those terms. (I felt well and healthy until I went to my doctor.")
It is not the purpose of this article to give advice, either of a medical or of a health nature. If what you have just read means something, use it as motivation to learn more about your health and how to look after it. However, don't expect to find answers in a pill. There is no instant solution, no quick fix.
The solution to good health is in the food you eat. Healthy food. Deliciously tasty food if you prepare it properly. But that food may be harder to find than you think. Almost all fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables were treated, in the field or in a factory, with pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, antibiotics and preservatives that, you will learn, do exactly the opposite of what you want to happen in a healthy digestive system. You need to learn what food is healthy and where to find it.
As you launch your research, be prepared to find descriptions of the immune system that say nothing about those billions of good bacteria that protect you. It's part of how the medical system operates. For reasons unknown, it doesn't think you are smart enough to handle the truth. I believe you are, or you would not be reading this article.
You will find information about foods and even supplements that are known as probiotics. They are good guys. Anything known as prebiotic is food (usually vegetables and fruit) that the probiotic bacteria (the good guys that constitute your immune system) need to eat. No matter what foods you may find tasty, those immune system bacteria don't have taste buds, just nutritional needs.
Now I turn your health, especially in the last decades of your life, back over to you. If you eat properly, you may even be able to extend those years and be healthier than the doomsayers claim you will be in your old age. You can live longer, healthier and happier. Or, by making no change, you will not.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions in an age of problems, and hundreds of articles that are available on the internet. Search: "Bill Allin".
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Immune system (Wikipedia) The immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease. To function properly, an immune system must detect a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and distinguish them from the organism's own healthy tissue.
Note that the quote from Wikipedia (above) is so vague about what the immune system actually is that from reading it you have no idea what the immune system is. The rest of the page, indeed the rest of the sources on the internet, are equally vague. Okay, let's be honest, they're not just vague, they tell you nothing about what the immune system is.
Your doctor will tell you about vaccines that will help your immune system. Doctors never mention the small amounts of toxic additives (such as mercury) that are in the vaccines because "such tiny amounts can't do you any harm." They never mention that repeated doses of tiny amounts of toxins add up to something significant. If you read Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries you will better understand that. Killer toxins accumulate.
Your doctor may also give you antibiotics to help you get over an illness. He or she, only if asked, will tell you that the antibiotics will help your immune system overcome bad bacteria that are causing your illness. Antibiotics kill bacteria, that's their main function. Please remember that because it is very important to the purpose of this article.
We have such procedures as pasteurization of milk and irradiation of other food products that also kill bacteria and make the food "safe" to consume. Back in the late 18th century Louis Pasteur won numerous awards for his process for killing bacteria.
Over succeeding years bacteria and other microscopic organisms (now known as microbes) came to be known as "germs." Germs, everybody knew, were bad. If it was living and microscopic, so the generally accepted belief went, it was a germ, it was dangerous and it could do you harm. Medical science and pharmaceutical chemical companies were ready to come to the rescue. Doctors welcomed their chemical treatments with open arms.
Many health magazines and apparently reputable sources on the internet will tell you how to boost your immune system. They act as if taking the supplements or eating the right foods will have the same kind of effects on your immune system as exercising has on your physical strength and endurance. But they never tell you what the supplements or foods are actually boosting or affecting.
Here is the information they won't tell you, either because they don't know (most likely) or because they are afraid to tell you. Prepare yourself, I am not afraid.
You are not alone in your body. You will likely think of your body as consisting of billions or trillions of cells, each containing DNA that program every cell to do its respective job and proteins to tell the cells when to do each job and for how long. You may even know that some proteins code for cell death, for killing old cells so they don't hang around to cause you grief, so they may be flushed out by the back end of your digestive system.
You are more than that. Much more. The DNA in your cells contain remnants of DNA from bacteria, some of which used to cause people to die, but no longer do because our DNA adopted (co-opted them) to prevent them from doing harm to our human and pre-human ancestors. Your DNA even contains bits of genetic code from viruses, which also were adopted eons ago so our ancestors would not die from attacks by their ancestors.
Wait, there's more. Your stomach contains billions of bacteria. Good bacteria. How good? You could not digest food without them. Literally. Your intestines also contain billions of bacteria. Not the same bacteria because the stomach is very acidic (about 2 on the pH scale where 7 is neutral), while the pH of the intestines is about 9, making them the opposite of acidic, alkaline. The two environments are extremely different as you might imagine.
In fact, every organ of your body has bacteria all over it. Your skin is covered with good bacteria. Your mouth is coated with them. They protect you from invasion by diseases caused by bad bacteria and viruses. So when you use antibacterial soap and mouthwash that promise to make your skin and mouth perfectly clean, you are killing off the very same good bacteria that protect you. But don't worry, your doctor has drugs to help you when you get sick because you destroyed your body's natural protection. (That is sarcasm, in case you missed it.)
Back to those bacteria in your gut, your intestines. There are lots of them. Many many times more of them than you have cells in your whole body. You live in symbiosis with them. You can't survive without them. And they can't survive without you. They are your immune system, at least the biggest part of your immune system.
People of some tribes who live in areas where their diet lacks necessary nutrients or gut bacteria eat a particular kind of clay to get what they need. Chemical companies want us to kill bacteria that our bodies need. They want us to fear anything that is "dirty." That "dirt" could be what helps us to develop an healthy immune system.
Kill the good bacteria in your mouth and you kill what protects disease bacteria and viruses from entering your body through your mouth. Same with the bacteria in your nose, on your skin, and so on. The flu we hear about each year enters the body through the mouth or the nose. Antibiotics and other bacteria killers in mouthwash and nasal spray remove your ability to kill the invaders before they reach your blood stream.
Kill the good bacteria in your gut and you destroy your immune system. At the very least you disrupt it horribly. That's what antibiotics do. They kill billions of good bacteria that constitute your immune system as they kill the bad ones (if they can, which they often can't). Antibiotics kill bacteria, they don't distinguish between "good" and 'bad."
Should you get cancer (now considered a voluntary disease because, according to many researchers who are trying to be heard, but are being silenced, you can prevent it by eating a good diet), your oncologist will likely urge you strongly to take chemotherapy. Chemo kills bacteria, it kills your immune system. Ask anyone who has taken a full course of it and you will find that they have to take pills every day to account for the fact that they no longer have an immune system.
In healthy people, the immune system kills cancer cells. In unhealthy people whose bodies have allowed cancer cells to overwhelm the natural defences of the immune system, chemo destroys the rest of the immune system. Is it any wonder that a majority of medical doctors in the west would refuse chemo if they got cancer? Is it any wonder that an even bigger majority of oncologists (tumour specialists) would refuse chemo if they got cancer? Chemo patients have a shockingly low five year survival rate.
This is not to say that the medical system is out to kill you. The medical system, after all, is designed to treat sick bodies, bodies that have already been severely compromised for many years (in many cases) by an unhealthy lifestyle. Doctors treat broken people. By the time you go to your doctor with a problem that is serious, your natural protective defences have largely been destroyed. By you, not by your doctor.
Doctors have the unenviable task of trying to help severely damaged bodies, even though the patients themselves do not think of themselves in those terms. (I felt well and healthy until I went to my doctor.")
It is not the purpose of this article to give advice, either of a medical or of a health nature. If what you have just read means something, use it as motivation to learn more about your health and how to look after it. However, don't expect to find answers in a pill. There is no instant solution, no quick fix.
The solution to good health is in the food you eat. Healthy food. Deliciously tasty food if you prepare it properly. But that food may be harder to find than you think. Almost all fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables were treated, in the field or in a factory, with pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, antibiotics and preservatives that, you will learn, do exactly the opposite of what you want to happen in a healthy digestive system. You need to learn what food is healthy and where to find it.
As you launch your research, be prepared to find descriptions of the immune system that say nothing about those billions of good bacteria that protect you. It's part of how the medical system operates. For reasons unknown, it doesn't think you are smart enough to handle the truth. I believe you are, or you would not be reading this article.
You will find information about foods and even supplements that are known as probiotics. They are good guys. Anything known as prebiotic is food (usually vegetables and fruit) that the probiotic bacteria (the good guys that constitute your immune system) need to eat. No matter what foods you may find tasty, those immune system bacteria don't have taste buds, just nutritional needs.
Now I turn your health, especially in the last decades of your life, back over to you. If you eat properly, you may even be able to extend those years and be healthier than the doomsayers claim you will be in your old age. You can live longer, healthier and happier. Or, by making no change, you will not.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions in an age of problems, and hundreds of articles that are available on the internet. Search: "Bill Allin".
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Why I Take Vitamin and Mineral Supplements
Why I Take Vitamin and Mineral Supplements
Aside from vitamins D and K, we humans can’t make any of the vitamins we need to stay healthy.
- Carl Zimmer, "Vitamins’ Old, Old Edge", The New York Times, December 9, 2013
I gotta tell you, right at the top of my list would be taking vitamins. I know that over the years doctors have said they're ridiculous and all that. But I started taking my vitamins at an early age. And I take them every day. Every bloody day! So I think that's number one. For whatever reason, I feel active and pretty good at my age.
Regis Philbin, American media personality (b. 1931--that makes him age 82 )
Regis was active and full of life, even at age 80 when he finished his last "LIVE!" show on television. He holds the Guinness Book of Records title for "Most Hours on Camera."
I hadn't planned on becoming a single parent. Nobody does. More importantly, with two kids under age ten to support and care for by myself, I wasn't ready. I wasn't prepared. How could I feed three people when I had little idea how to prepare meals? I could hardly make toast and prepare canned soup.
Local supermarkets were helpful as they provided suggestions for combinations of foods I could assemble to make something resembling a meal. But how could I be certain I was providing my kids with full and balanced nutrition as I knew that growing children needed?
My solution was to find out what vitamin and mineral supplements would ensure that they and I had minimums of what we needed. That's how it began. If I at least provided foods my kids would eat and that was healthy, I didn't need to worry about balancing nutrition if they got the nutrients they needed. Which was good because my reading was suggesting this could be difficult as research at the time conflicted about what was right, good and balanced. And I didn't have much time to spare as a classroom teacher with 35 needy kids to manage.
One part has not changed. Research results still show great conflicts. Now I know to find out not just who conducted the research, but who paid for it. It made sense then and has proven so many times since that researchers tend to find results favourable to the companies that provided funding for the research. Researchers, now and then, always wanted more funding for more research when their current project ended. Follow the money and you often find yourself where you hoped not to be.
Studies funded by manufacturers of sugar or companies that make products that depend largely on sugar tend to conclude that sugar is not so bad for you. They stress the benefits of other nutrients. Large suppliers of fresh produce stress in their advertising that fresh is good, without noting that their products are often covered in pesticides, fertilizers and other growth stimulants that come straight from a chemical factory.
Monsanto, Dow, BASF and their like stress that the chemicals they make to put onto and into food products vanish shortly thereafter. They often forget to note research projects that have shown their products to be dangerous to human health and the environment.
As for GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms, also known as GEs, Genetically Engineered products, a term more popular in Europe), none of the chemical companies, none of the factory farms and none of the food suppliers point out that some 55 countries around the world have banned such products, deeming them risky to human health. And threatening to foods grown organically nearby through wind blows and other methods by which modified seeds are spread.
All of the above companies spend fortunes to see that laws forcing them to announce these additions to natural foods on labels never get passed. Why don't they want us to know? Because they have something they want to hide, something they don't want you to find out about, of course.
Packaged foods, whether in cans, bottles or other wrappings, tend to have preservative chemicals added to ensure they don't spoil on food market shelves. The trouble is that they don't "spoil" or break down in the human gut either, which is what we all desperately want to happen for digestion to work. Food that remains undigested in the gut or blood vessels is just plain dangerous.
Sometimes it's impossible to avoid products with ingredients we don't want, especially if the manufacturers have made sure the laws don't force them to put information important to consumers on their labels.
What's more, medical and health research (the dependable and honest variety) have shown in recent decades that our bodies need nutrients beyond what they would likely get from foods from the average food market. Why? If our ancestors didn't need these extra nutrients, why should we? Because most of us want to live many years longer than our ancestors did. And the diet of the average person is not prepared to accommodate or provide for those extra years.
And, sad to say, many of the foods we buy in stores is pre-treated before we get it that it has already lost most of its nutritive value. Milk that is pasteurized and now heated to high temperatures to help it last for weeks without spoiling is nothing like the milk your grandma served to her kids.
We all know about how cancer (breast, prostate and colorectal get the most publicity) is far more common now than ever before. Diabetes and obesity, almost rare in past decades, are so common now that doctors call them pandemics. Why are so many diseases more common now than years ago? What we eat--our diet--has changed dramatically. Our diet conforms more to what manufacturers want to sell us than what is best for our bodies to survive and thrive for eight or nine decades. Advertising makes sure we believe what we buy is good for us.
So how do we get the nutrients if we know what our bodies need? Often the only way to get some of them is through what we now call supplements. By the way, only a few decades ago people were told that we would all be eating pills or liquid meals in the 21st Century. Nobody was shocked by that news then, but many are alarmed by people taking pills and liquids that are not prescribed by a doctor now. Why? Big corporations don't make much money when we buy supplements instead of their drug products prescribed by their doctors.
You can see how my thinking on the subject of vitamin and mineral supplements (and now tablet supplements of other edible plant products) has evolved over the years. I have left what is perhaps the most important point to the last.
Why do we get old? What happens inside of us that makes us more vulnerable to disease, bone breakage and so on as we pass the formerly enforced age of retirement, 65? Why are we weaker and more vulnerable to attack by bacteria and viruses? While the answers may seem mysterious to those who have not kept up with research, they are becoming public, albeit slowly.
Our DNA is made up of chromosomes, each of which has many genes. Each cell of our body has these genes. As each cell dies off (most from daily to once a month), they are replaced by newly minted genes that carry the same genetic information. Almost. Over time, many decades for most of us, the tail ends of some of the chromosomes fail to be reproduced when new cells are formed in our bodies.
The tail ends of the chromosomes are called telomeres. These telomeres (they keep chromosomes from getting tangled up with each other) can get lost over countless reproductions. When that happens, parts of genes can be lost as well. With some genes and chromosomes not complete, our bodies are not as capable of defending themselves as they were when we were younger. That makes our body vulnerable to all sorts of things, including aging.
An enzyme called telomerase can add telomeres to the ends of chromosomes when they divide (reproduce). Our DNA, the stuff of life, can actually be improved by having telomerase add telomeres to our chromosomes over time. Okay, enough chemistry and biology.
We can actually improve our own DNA and prevent ourselves from aging too quickly (and dying too soon) if we know how to have our bodies create the telomerase that will fix up our DNA chromosomes. But how?
It's all in what we eat. Just as inadequate nutrition will cause our chromosomes to get shorter faster and younger, good nutrition can help us to boost our DNA to help us live longer and stronger and more active lives as we get older.
What foods or supplements can do that for you? Now that's when it gets hard to answer. First of all, the threat of litigation prevents me from providing easy answers. More importantly, each person is different and requires a different combination of nutrients. There is no one-size-fits-all.
Did it seem to you as if I just hit you and ran away there? I didn't mean to. The answers are not simple or easy to find. What works for me will not necessarily work for you. You will need to find your own answers, what works for you.
Fortunately, the internet has loads of resources that will help you if you want to dig in and do the research yourself. Just don't expect to find the solution in a single pill. There is no magic involved. This science is in its early stages, so no definitive answers are possible. But you can read to learn more.
At the end of this article are some resources to get you started with your reading about supplements.
Finally, a few notes about supplements:
(1) Almost all supplements contain fillers to give them size and colour. While making the tablets or capsules larger, thus seemingly more impressive (worth more) to the customer, they add nothing of benefit. Some claim the fillers could be harmful, though any decent researcher could find that even water can be harmful.
(2) A small number of studies have found that supplements are a waste of money, that they do nothing. Careful scrutiny of each study reveals that in every case the conditions or amounts of each supplement were arranged so that the results were inevitable. Example, if four of a tablet are necessary to accomplish some health benefit and only one tablet is given to test subjects, the results will inevitably show the supplement is ineffective, it doesn't work.
(3) Opponents of supplements, who often share a warm and friendly relationship with pharmaceutical companies, claim that all the necessary vitamins and minerals we need to be healthy are available in food. That is true. If a person eats the diet recommended by health authorities. But nobody does. In fact, "the typical American diet" that students of the subject read so much about is downright unhealthy. Supplements ensure that you don't miss anything you need, including trace minerals that are not in every vegetable and without which you could be unhealthy or die. Supplements lower your risk of dying younger and living a sad and dependent life in the final decades of your life.
(4) Supplements can do you harm of taken indiscriminately or to excess. As with anything else you put into your mouth, moderation is the key. Moderation, not elimination.
(5) Vegetarians and vegans may suffer problems with heart disease and with other body organs if they sustain a chronic shortage of vitamin B12 in their diet. The risk of these problems vanishes when they take B12 supplements.
(6) Some vitamin manufacturers will suggest doses far higher than you need (usually because they believe their vitamin is water soluble, thus you can't overdose). Remember, it's a supplement, not a main course.
(7) Most vitamin and mineral containers will recommend that you ask your doctor before beginning a new series of supplements. This is wise in case they might conflict with something you are already taking or with something in your system. If your doctor says you should not take any vitamin supplements, you may want to consider finding another doctor who is more interested in your health than in his or her income.
This short video is about extending life:
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/methionine-restriction-as-a-life-extension-strategy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=methionine-restriction-as-a-life-extension-strategy&utm_source=NutritionFacts.org&utm_campaign=4656d28168-RSS_VIDEO_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_40f9e497d1-4656d28168-22530037
or use this shorter version of the URL: http://tinyurl.com/lfb4w2v
A doctor specializing in nutrition delivers the goods
http://drhyman.com/blog/2013/11/18/setting-record-straight-supplements/#close
You can even heal tooth cavities or prevent them with proper nutrition
http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/how-to-heal-cavities-naturally.html
Vitamins and minerals to prepare the body to protect against Multiple
Sclerosis, Alzheimer's and many other diseases.
http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/terry-wahls.html
Human nutrition, the gut microbiome, and immune system: envisioning the future
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298082/
(This summarizes the relationship between diet/gut bacteria and health.)
Finally science writer Carl Zimmer with a bit of history of humans and vitamins
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/vitamins-old-old-edge.html?_r=0
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems as well as hundreds of articles, all available on the internet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Aside from vitamins D and K, we humans can’t make any of the vitamins we need to stay healthy.
- Carl Zimmer, "Vitamins’ Old, Old Edge", The New York Times, December 9, 2013
I gotta tell you, right at the top of my list would be taking vitamins. I know that over the years doctors have said they're ridiculous and all that. But I started taking my vitamins at an early age. And I take them every day. Every bloody day! So I think that's number one. For whatever reason, I feel active and pretty good at my age.
Regis Philbin, American media personality (b. 1931--that makes him age 82 )
Regis was active and full of life, even at age 80 when he finished his last "LIVE!" show on television. He holds the Guinness Book of Records title for "Most Hours on Camera."
I hadn't planned on becoming a single parent. Nobody does. More importantly, with two kids under age ten to support and care for by myself, I wasn't ready. I wasn't prepared. How could I feed three people when I had little idea how to prepare meals? I could hardly make toast and prepare canned soup.
Local supermarkets were helpful as they provided suggestions for combinations of foods I could assemble to make something resembling a meal. But how could I be certain I was providing my kids with full and balanced nutrition as I knew that growing children needed?
My solution was to find out what vitamin and mineral supplements would ensure that they and I had minimums of what we needed. That's how it began. If I at least provided foods my kids would eat and that was healthy, I didn't need to worry about balancing nutrition if they got the nutrients they needed. Which was good because my reading was suggesting this could be difficult as research at the time conflicted about what was right, good and balanced. And I didn't have much time to spare as a classroom teacher with 35 needy kids to manage.
One part has not changed. Research results still show great conflicts. Now I know to find out not just who conducted the research, but who paid for it. It made sense then and has proven so many times since that researchers tend to find results favourable to the companies that provided funding for the research. Researchers, now and then, always wanted more funding for more research when their current project ended. Follow the money and you often find yourself where you hoped not to be.
Studies funded by manufacturers of sugar or companies that make products that depend largely on sugar tend to conclude that sugar is not so bad for you. They stress the benefits of other nutrients. Large suppliers of fresh produce stress in their advertising that fresh is good, without noting that their products are often covered in pesticides, fertilizers and other growth stimulants that come straight from a chemical factory.
Monsanto, Dow, BASF and their like stress that the chemicals they make to put onto and into food products vanish shortly thereafter. They often forget to note research projects that have shown their products to be dangerous to human health and the environment.
As for GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms, also known as GEs, Genetically Engineered products, a term more popular in Europe), none of the chemical companies, none of the factory farms and none of the food suppliers point out that some 55 countries around the world have banned such products, deeming them risky to human health. And threatening to foods grown organically nearby through wind blows and other methods by which modified seeds are spread.
All of the above companies spend fortunes to see that laws forcing them to announce these additions to natural foods on labels never get passed. Why don't they want us to know? Because they have something they want to hide, something they don't want you to find out about, of course.
Packaged foods, whether in cans, bottles or other wrappings, tend to have preservative chemicals added to ensure they don't spoil on food market shelves. The trouble is that they don't "spoil" or break down in the human gut either, which is what we all desperately want to happen for digestion to work. Food that remains undigested in the gut or blood vessels is just plain dangerous.
Sometimes it's impossible to avoid products with ingredients we don't want, especially if the manufacturers have made sure the laws don't force them to put information important to consumers on their labels.
What's more, medical and health research (the dependable and honest variety) have shown in recent decades that our bodies need nutrients beyond what they would likely get from foods from the average food market. Why? If our ancestors didn't need these extra nutrients, why should we? Because most of us want to live many years longer than our ancestors did. And the diet of the average person is not prepared to accommodate or provide for those extra years.
And, sad to say, many of the foods we buy in stores is pre-treated before we get it that it has already lost most of its nutritive value. Milk that is pasteurized and now heated to high temperatures to help it last for weeks without spoiling is nothing like the milk your grandma served to her kids.
We all know about how cancer (breast, prostate and colorectal get the most publicity) is far more common now than ever before. Diabetes and obesity, almost rare in past decades, are so common now that doctors call them pandemics. Why are so many diseases more common now than years ago? What we eat--our diet--has changed dramatically. Our diet conforms more to what manufacturers want to sell us than what is best for our bodies to survive and thrive for eight or nine decades. Advertising makes sure we believe what we buy is good for us.
So how do we get the nutrients if we know what our bodies need? Often the only way to get some of them is through what we now call supplements. By the way, only a few decades ago people were told that we would all be eating pills or liquid meals in the 21st Century. Nobody was shocked by that news then, but many are alarmed by people taking pills and liquids that are not prescribed by a doctor now. Why? Big corporations don't make much money when we buy supplements instead of their drug products prescribed by their doctors.
You can see how my thinking on the subject of vitamin and mineral supplements (and now tablet supplements of other edible plant products) has evolved over the years. I have left what is perhaps the most important point to the last.
Why do we get old? What happens inside of us that makes us more vulnerable to disease, bone breakage and so on as we pass the formerly enforced age of retirement, 65? Why are we weaker and more vulnerable to attack by bacteria and viruses? While the answers may seem mysterious to those who have not kept up with research, they are becoming public, albeit slowly.
Our DNA is made up of chromosomes, each of which has many genes. Each cell of our body has these genes. As each cell dies off (most from daily to once a month), they are replaced by newly minted genes that carry the same genetic information. Almost. Over time, many decades for most of us, the tail ends of some of the chromosomes fail to be reproduced when new cells are formed in our bodies.
The tail ends of the chromosomes are called telomeres. These telomeres (they keep chromosomes from getting tangled up with each other) can get lost over countless reproductions. When that happens, parts of genes can be lost as well. With some genes and chromosomes not complete, our bodies are not as capable of defending themselves as they were when we were younger. That makes our body vulnerable to all sorts of things, including aging.
An enzyme called telomerase can add telomeres to the ends of chromosomes when they divide (reproduce). Our DNA, the stuff of life, can actually be improved by having telomerase add telomeres to our chromosomes over time. Okay, enough chemistry and biology.
We can actually improve our own DNA and prevent ourselves from aging too quickly (and dying too soon) if we know how to have our bodies create the telomerase that will fix up our DNA chromosomes. But how?
It's all in what we eat. Just as inadequate nutrition will cause our chromosomes to get shorter faster and younger, good nutrition can help us to boost our DNA to help us live longer and stronger and more active lives as we get older.
What foods or supplements can do that for you? Now that's when it gets hard to answer. First of all, the threat of litigation prevents me from providing easy answers. More importantly, each person is different and requires a different combination of nutrients. There is no one-size-fits-all.
Did it seem to you as if I just hit you and ran away there? I didn't mean to. The answers are not simple or easy to find. What works for me will not necessarily work for you. You will need to find your own answers, what works for you.
Fortunately, the internet has loads of resources that will help you if you want to dig in and do the research yourself. Just don't expect to find the solution in a single pill. There is no magic involved. This science is in its early stages, so no definitive answers are possible. But you can read to learn more.
At the end of this article are some resources to get you started with your reading about supplements.
Finally, a few notes about supplements:
(1) Almost all supplements contain fillers to give them size and colour. While making the tablets or capsules larger, thus seemingly more impressive (worth more) to the customer, they add nothing of benefit. Some claim the fillers could be harmful, though any decent researcher could find that even water can be harmful.
(2) A small number of studies have found that supplements are a waste of money, that they do nothing. Careful scrutiny of each study reveals that in every case the conditions or amounts of each supplement were arranged so that the results were inevitable. Example, if four of a tablet are necessary to accomplish some health benefit and only one tablet is given to test subjects, the results will inevitably show the supplement is ineffective, it doesn't work.
(3) Opponents of supplements, who often share a warm and friendly relationship with pharmaceutical companies, claim that all the necessary vitamins and minerals we need to be healthy are available in food. That is true. If a person eats the diet recommended by health authorities. But nobody does. In fact, "the typical American diet" that students of the subject read so much about is downright unhealthy. Supplements ensure that you don't miss anything you need, including trace minerals that are not in every vegetable and without which you could be unhealthy or die. Supplements lower your risk of dying younger and living a sad and dependent life in the final decades of your life.
(4) Supplements can do you harm of taken indiscriminately or to excess. As with anything else you put into your mouth, moderation is the key. Moderation, not elimination.
(5) Vegetarians and vegans may suffer problems with heart disease and with other body organs if they sustain a chronic shortage of vitamin B12 in their diet. The risk of these problems vanishes when they take B12 supplements.
(6) Some vitamin manufacturers will suggest doses far higher than you need (usually because they believe their vitamin is water soluble, thus you can't overdose). Remember, it's a supplement, not a main course.
(7) Most vitamin and mineral containers will recommend that you ask your doctor before beginning a new series of supplements. This is wise in case they might conflict with something you are already taking or with something in your system. If your doctor says you should not take any vitamin supplements, you may want to consider finding another doctor who is more interested in your health than in his or her income.
This short video is about extending life:
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/methionine-restriction-as-a-life-extension-strategy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=methionine-restriction-as-a-life-extension-strategy&utm_source=NutritionFacts.org&utm_campaign=4656d28168-RSS_VIDEO_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_40f9e497d1-4656d28168-22530037
or use this shorter version of the URL: http://tinyurl.com/lfb4w2v
A doctor specializing in nutrition delivers the goods
http://drhyman.com/blog/2013/11/18/setting-record-straight-supplements/#close
You can even heal tooth cavities or prevent them with proper nutrition
http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/how-to-heal-cavities-naturally.html
Vitamins and minerals to prepare the body to protect against Multiple
Sclerosis, Alzheimer's and many other diseases.
http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/terry-wahls.html
Human nutrition, the gut microbiome, and immune system: envisioning the future
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298082/
(This summarizes the relationship between diet/gut bacteria and health.)
Finally science writer Carl Zimmer with a bit of history of humans and vitamins
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/vitamins-old-old-edge.html?_r=0
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems as well as hundreds of articles, all available on the internet.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, September 02, 2013
Aliens Are Among Us And Available to Help Us and Our Planet
Aliens Are Among Us And Available to Help Us and Our Planet
I know some of my hypotheses sound rather extraordinary.
I may be a little weird, but I'd rather be weird and right than normal and wrong.
- Paul Stamets, scholar of ancient mycotechnology, owner of Fungi Perfecti
Paul Stamets is definitely not like you and me. He knows stuff. He knows how to clean up the land around Fukushima without burying millions of tons of contaminated dirt. He offered a method to clean up, naturally, the oil spill from Deep Horizon. Despite his proof, yes proof, no one in power took him seriously.
Frankly, after reading what I have about him, I would not be surprised if one day I learn that he has ways we can adapt to global warming and its inevitable consequences. (But not yet for that. Bear with me.)
This article is not about Stamets, but about the beings he cares about. You may think you know about these beings, but chances are you will be more than a little surprised.
When I was a kid (maybe when you were too) I was taught that everything could be divided into three categories: animal, vegetable or mineral. Everything we could think of fit into one of those three categories.
The beings I refer to are living things on our planet. Yet not animal, vegetable or mineral, by common definitions. These things may be more shocking, based on what they can do, than any you might have imagined. True, a few people have died over the years through contact with them, but the fault was with the ignorance of the people, not of the beings in question.
Note that these are not the vicious conquering type of aliens we have read about or seen in movies for decades in science fiction. They are about as friendly and helpful to humans as it's possible to be.
I never could figure out why humans thought of aliens from other worlds as conquerors who would destroy us and what we know. Would we do that if we sent a ship through space to another inhabited planet? Would our astronauts be expected to destroy any life they may find on Mars in coming decades? No.
Before we get to the names, descriptions and modus operandi of these alien creatures, I want you to try to imagine what you think aliens might look like. The fact is, we have no idea. We don't even know if we would recognize aliens as life forms if they did not conform to our sci-fi images. Remember, it was not that long ago that homo sapiens without white skin were considered to be subhuman, simpler life forms, with much lower intelligence than those with white skin. We really know very little about life of any kind.
Might an alien breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide? Ours do. At least some of them do. How would they move? On feet, hoofs, paws or flexible skin (think snakes), as we are familiar with? Ours don't. They have roots, at least some of them. They spread or "re-seed" as some plants do. In fact, one being in the west of the USA is so large that it lives in the ground under four contiguous states. No other living thing we know is that large.
Would it have a brain? Almost certainly. At least something we might consider a brain. In fact, some of our beings contain pathways inside that, under a microscope, look very similar to pathways of the human brain. Hmmm.
Might they engage in agriculture? Some of our creatures are known to feed trees, from which they later gain nutrients for themselves. In fact, evidence suggests that they have been known to provide extra nutrients for young trees that are suffering because they can't get enough sunlight because other nearby taller trees are blocking light from reaching them.
Might they create chlorophyll, as plants do? Ours don't. In fact, they might consume dying plants (as we do) to extract chlorophyll and other nutrients from them. Keep in mind that all life forms we know consume other life forms to continue their existence--every single one of them.
Some of our aliens live in a symbiotic relationship with plant life we are more familiar with. Some live in a symbiotic relationship with animal life we are familiar with.
You may even have some of our alien life forms in your refrigerator. In fact, health aficionados recommend them highly as extremely beneficial for your health. Not long ago they were considered junk, not worth eating, parasites to the plant world. How our thinking changes as we learn more.
Enough with the teasing. The aliens in your refrigerator are mushrooms. The dangerous ones are called toadstools. Both are fungi, a huge group now considered to be a Kingdom (like animals and vegetables) of their own. When you look at a mushroom in the ground, what you see is the fruit, what you eat is the fruit of the organism.
Fungi are now known to comprise an enormous Kingdom with some 1.5 million members. Among the more familiar ones are yeasts and molds. Yes, they do breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, like animals. Yes, some do have neural systems that look similar to that of human brains. They are subject to many of the same diseases as animals. Like animals, who lack the ability to make chlorophyll and to photosynthesize, they eat other forms of life.
Fungi are a diverse Kingdom. Some, such as yeast, are single cells. Others, like molds, are multicellular. And, yes, the largest known living being is under four states in the western USA. But don't plan a vacation to see it, it is underground. It feeds trees and it feeds off trees. Strange, huh? Kind of....alien.
If humans did the same sorts of things as some fungi, they would be said to be farming, acting in sympathetic or even empathetic ways to other beings, possibly altruistic. As it is, most people think of fungi as some kinds of strange plants.
To conclude, let's look at several ways in which fungi could help us to save our planet.
People have made use of fungi for thousands of years. Ötzi, the famous 5000 year old "Ice Man" whose body was discovered a few years ago, carried amadou with him. The spongy inner layer of the horse hoof fungus, amadou has been used for everything from making clothing (it feels and is worn like felt, and is as warm), as tinder for starting fires, for dressing wounds because of its antimicrobial properties, and for preserving foods.
Amadou is the first medicinal ever recorded. Hippocrates (he who created the Hippocratic oath, sworn by new medical doctors-- basically: first, do no harm) recorded it in 450 BCE as an anti-inflammatory. Of course you would not likely see it for sale today because it is available naturally on every continent and cheap to make (thus making it of no interest to drug manufacturers).
Agriculture
Soil could be enhanced with mycorrhizal fungi which would eliminate the need for toxic chemical fertilizers while improving crop yields.
Biofuels
Biodiesel made from mushrooms would require less soil and other resources than crops used at present. And mushrooms grow fast.
Environmental Cleanup
Petrochemicals and radiation could be removed from contaminated soil and water as mushrooms can break them down and absorb them. Slimy spike-cap mushrooms gobble up radioactive cesium-137, for example. Mushrooms will not harm the environment, rather they improve it. They would improve soil formerly contaminated with glyphosate.
Wastewater Filtration
Mushrooms could be used to clean runoff from storm drains, farms, logging roads or contamination from mines.
Pesticides
Select fungi could be used to kill off certain species of pests while remaining safe for others and not harming the ground in which they are grown.
Medicines
Carefully selected mushrooms could be used to make new antibiotics, antivirals, immune-boosting compounds and even chemotherapies. Agarikon mushrooms, for example, could be used to protect against bird flu, swine flu, even smallpox.
Forestry
Mushrooms could be used to symbiotically enhance growth of new forests or reforestation of clear-cut land. They help trees grow and, in turn, gain nutrients from the same trees.
Famine Relief
Mushrooms grow quickly, provide many essential nutrients and grow in almost any environment. They could be used to provide quick and fresh relief in disaster zones and refugee camps using just wood chips or saltwater-soaked straw as a starting medium.
Space Travel
Mushrooms could be used not only as freshly-grown food for space travelers, but also as materials for terraforming on new planets due to their ability to create new soil relatively quickly.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions for problems that affect every family and every community, but almost everyone believes they are simply consequences of modern society.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary Resource: "Mushroom Manifesto", by Kenneth Miller, Discover, July/August 2013]
I know some of my hypotheses sound rather extraordinary.
I may be a little weird, but I'd rather be weird and right than normal and wrong.
- Paul Stamets, scholar of ancient mycotechnology, owner of Fungi Perfecti
Paul Stamets is definitely not like you and me. He knows stuff. He knows how to clean up the land around Fukushima without burying millions of tons of contaminated dirt. He offered a method to clean up, naturally, the oil spill from Deep Horizon. Despite his proof, yes proof, no one in power took him seriously.
Frankly, after reading what I have about him, I would not be surprised if one day I learn that he has ways we can adapt to global warming and its inevitable consequences. (But not yet for that. Bear with me.)
This article is not about Stamets, but about the beings he cares about. You may think you know about these beings, but chances are you will be more than a little surprised.
When I was a kid (maybe when you were too) I was taught that everything could be divided into three categories: animal, vegetable or mineral. Everything we could think of fit into one of those three categories.
The beings I refer to are living things on our planet. Yet not animal, vegetable or mineral, by common definitions. These things may be more shocking, based on what they can do, than any you might have imagined. True, a few people have died over the years through contact with them, but the fault was with the ignorance of the people, not of the beings in question.
Note that these are not the vicious conquering type of aliens we have read about or seen in movies for decades in science fiction. They are about as friendly and helpful to humans as it's possible to be.
I never could figure out why humans thought of aliens from other worlds as conquerors who would destroy us and what we know. Would we do that if we sent a ship through space to another inhabited planet? Would our astronauts be expected to destroy any life they may find on Mars in coming decades? No.
Before we get to the names, descriptions and modus operandi of these alien creatures, I want you to try to imagine what you think aliens might look like. The fact is, we have no idea. We don't even know if we would recognize aliens as life forms if they did not conform to our sci-fi images. Remember, it was not that long ago that homo sapiens without white skin were considered to be subhuman, simpler life forms, with much lower intelligence than those with white skin. We really know very little about life of any kind.
Might an alien breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide? Ours do. At least some of them do. How would they move? On feet, hoofs, paws or flexible skin (think snakes), as we are familiar with? Ours don't. They have roots, at least some of them. They spread or "re-seed" as some plants do. In fact, one being in the west of the USA is so large that it lives in the ground under four contiguous states. No other living thing we know is that large.
Would it have a brain? Almost certainly. At least something we might consider a brain. In fact, some of our beings contain pathways inside that, under a microscope, look very similar to pathways of the human brain. Hmmm.
Might they engage in agriculture? Some of our creatures are known to feed trees, from which they later gain nutrients for themselves. In fact, evidence suggests that they have been known to provide extra nutrients for young trees that are suffering because they can't get enough sunlight because other nearby taller trees are blocking light from reaching them.
Might they create chlorophyll, as plants do? Ours don't. In fact, they might consume dying plants (as we do) to extract chlorophyll and other nutrients from them. Keep in mind that all life forms we know consume other life forms to continue their existence--every single one of them.
Some of our aliens live in a symbiotic relationship with plant life we are more familiar with. Some live in a symbiotic relationship with animal life we are familiar with.
You may even have some of our alien life forms in your refrigerator. In fact, health aficionados recommend them highly as extremely beneficial for your health. Not long ago they were considered junk, not worth eating, parasites to the plant world. How our thinking changes as we learn more.
Enough with the teasing. The aliens in your refrigerator are mushrooms. The dangerous ones are called toadstools. Both are fungi, a huge group now considered to be a Kingdom (like animals and vegetables) of their own. When you look at a mushroom in the ground, what you see is the fruit, what you eat is the fruit of the organism.
Fungi are now known to comprise an enormous Kingdom with some 1.5 million members. Among the more familiar ones are yeasts and molds. Yes, they do breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, like animals. Yes, some do have neural systems that look similar to that of human brains. They are subject to many of the same diseases as animals. Like animals, who lack the ability to make chlorophyll and to photosynthesize, they eat other forms of life.
Fungi are a diverse Kingdom. Some, such as yeast, are single cells. Others, like molds, are multicellular. And, yes, the largest known living being is under four states in the western USA. But don't plan a vacation to see it, it is underground. It feeds trees and it feeds off trees. Strange, huh? Kind of....alien.
If humans did the same sorts of things as some fungi, they would be said to be farming, acting in sympathetic or even empathetic ways to other beings, possibly altruistic. As it is, most people think of fungi as some kinds of strange plants.
To conclude, let's look at several ways in which fungi could help us to save our planet.
People have made use of fungi for thousands of years. Ötzi, the famous 5000 year old "Ice Man" whose body was discovered a few years ago, carried amadou with him. The spongy inner layer of the horse hoof fungus, amadou has been used for everything from making clothing (it feels and is worn like felt, and is as warm), as tinder for starting fires, for dressing wounds because of its antimicrobial properties, and for preserving foods.
Amadou is the first medicinal ever recorded. Hippocrates (he who created the Hippocratic oath, sworn by new medical doctors-- basically: first, do no harm) recorded it in 450 BCE as an anti-inflammatory. Of course you would not likely see it for sale today because it is available naturally on every continent and cheap to make (thus making it of no interest to drug manufacturers).
Agriculture
Soil could be enhanced with mycorrhizal fungi which would eliminate the need for toxic chemical fertilizers while improving crop yields.
Biofuels
Biodiesel made from mushrooms would require less soil and other resources than crops used at present. And mushrooms grow fast.
Environmental Cleanup
Petrochemicals and radiation could be removed from contaminated soil and water as mushrooms can break them down and absorb them. Slimy spike-cap mushrooms gobble up radioactive cesium-137, for example. Mushrooms will not harm the environment, rather they improve it. They would improve soil formerly contaminated with glyphosate.
Wastewater Filtration
Mushrooms could be used to clean runoff from storm drains, farms, logging roads or contamination from mines.
Pesticides
Select fungi could be used to kill off certain species of pests while remaining safe for others and not harming the ground in which they are grown.
Medicines
Carefully selected mushrooms could be used to make new antibiotics, antivirals, immune-boosting compounds and even chemotherapies. Agarikon mushrooms, for example, could be used to protect against bird flu, swine flu, even smallpox.
Forestry
Mushrooms could be used to symbiotically enhance growth of new forests or reforestation of clear-cut land. They help trees grow and, in turn, gain nutrients from the same trees.
Famine Relief
Mushrooms grow quickly, provide many essential nutrients and grow in almost any environment. They could be used to provide quick and fresh relief in disaster zones and refugee camps using just wood chips or saltwater-soaked straw as a starting medium.
Space Travel
Mushrooms could be used not only as freshly-grown food for space travelers, but also as materials for terraforming on new planets due to their ability to create new soil relatively quickly.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions for problems that affect every family and every community, but almost everyone believes they are simply consequences of modern society.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary Resource: "Mushroom Manifesto", by Kenneth Miller, Discover, July/August 2013]
Thursday, August 08, 2013
I Don't Want to Write This (or how to survive a bad food supply)
I Don't Want to Write This (or how to survive a bad food supply)
With obesity and diabetes reaching epidemic proportions, we all know the dangers of relying on processed foods. In his book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food giants Hooked Us, journalist Michael Moss explains how industry scientists combine these three elements, which essentially act like drugs, to hook consumers the same way the cigarette industry hooks smokers on nicotine.
- Libby Znaimer, "What's Cooking", Zoomer, May 2013
I don't want to write this because I dislike giving advice to people who have no interest in hearing advice and who will suspect that I have ulterior motives for writing it. I have no motive, other than to relieve my conscience about not passing along information that will save lives and make extended lives healthier.
However, I feel compelled to write this because the jury has returned, opinions from well educated and experienced professionals are in print, scientific journals have confirmed it by printing peer reviewed studies. The food we eat, the food we are offered by a large majority of food stores, the food we are brainwashed into believing is healthy and we will enjoy, will eventually ruin our health.
Further, when your health is damaged sufficiently, you will turn to doctors who will give you drugs to "cure" you, but will not. In fact, they will make you into a dependant patient who will feel the need to return to their offices regularly. Or you will become very ill and require aggressive surgery and drugs, then you will die. Before you die you will think to yourself "Why did I have this bad luck?"
It's not bad luck, but bad management. You believed what you were told was correct about health, by people who cared so little for you that they would suck the very last coin from you before you expire.
Let's get a few things straight now. You will not die from eating processed foods. You will not die from eating fruits and vegetables laced with pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals. You will not die from eating genetically modified foods (generally known as GMOs or GEs). At least not in the immediate future. That's what the health authorities care about. That is all they care about.
You may live an increasingly unhealthy life with increased disease risks and health problems you and your doctors can't account for. You may die a decade or more sooner than you would have if you had consumed a healthy balance of foods. The last decade of your extended life (people are living longer now) may be with severely compromised health, requiring you to be in an environment with health care professionals around constantly.
You also won't die soon from eating red meat or stuff you carefully grilled on that stainless steel masterpiece on your back deck. You may eventually develop cancer from eating them, but you will likely consider it your bad luck.
Health care professionals at the top levels now consider that the generations of people who are young enough to be working today will be the first in centuries to live shorter lifespans than their predecessors. That reduced lifespan could be ten years, maybe more. They admit to that.
They point to such obvious factors as diabetes and obesity, which everyone can see. They may add to the confusion by pointing out that these occur in almost every culture in every part of the world. They will not point out that these problems are avoidable through careful diet selections. They will also not point out that these problems have increased markedly as each of the cultures adopted a Western diet.
Why would they not point out these factors, as doing so could save lives and allow many people to live free of disease? Because their jobs depend on their keeping their mouths shut. A good way to lose your job and cause your reputation to be destroyed is to tell audiences that the food they eat will kill them sooner than necessary and cause them to live in poor health for many years before they die. Especially when that food is approved by government health authorities.
Who would do such a thing? What people or corporations wield such power?
Walk down the aisles of your local supermarket. In the aisles with prepackaged foods, the same manufacturers' name will appear repeatedly. If the brand names are not similar, the corporations that own those brands and whose names are not so obvious on the labels are few. Those foods all contain preservatives which do the exact opposite in your body as you want them to do, but exactly as the manufacturers want them to do while the food is sitting on shelves (you want food to break down inside of you, not remain "fresh.". Those corporations hold great power.
So, it's obvious that we should all pick foods from the fresh produce aisles, right? That used to be true. Not so much today.
Big power mongers like Monsanto, Dupont and Dow Chemicals control a shockingly large piece of the fresh food marketplace. Monsanto, for example, ("If there was one word to explain what Monsanto is about, it would have to be farmers") sells a "herbicide" called Roundup that kills every living thing, even microscopic life, in the ground it touches. Those who spray it must wear HAZMAT (hazardous materials) suits and masks. Anyone who breathes it will suffer severe health problems. Studies have proven this. It's public information. Monsanto admits this.
When farm fields are sanitized with Roundup, the farmer must then buy seeds from Monsanto, as only seeds originating with Monsanto will grow in the fields. No seeds grown one year may be saved to plant another year, because they will not grow and because it would be illegal (yes, laws support one-year-only seeds--in fact, Monsanto receives large grants each year from governments). While these genetically modified seeds are growing, they are sprayed with even more chemicals to prevent pests (read: other living things) from harming the plants.
Monsanto claims that the foods grown from its seeds, from poisoned ground, will be good for you. For hundreds of years it has been known that when poisons are ingested in tiny amounts, they accumulate until they eventually kill the person. Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Agatha Christie detective stories depended heavily on such plots. Eat a tiny amount of poison enough times and you will die.
Somehow, Monsanto has made health authorities believe that not just Roundup, but foods grown in fields laced with Roundup and other chemical poisons (pesticides) applied later are safe to consume. One shot of it kills bugs, but many shots of it will poison you. How's that for power?
The corporation even convinced the US Congress to include a non-conforming amendment to a bill it passed on a completely different subject (operating expenses for government agencies) to protect Monsanto from attacks against it by individual states or individuals. Power. Unbelievably immense power.
Who would put forward such an amendment? No one knows. It was added, quite legally, anonymously. Devastating power.
Most of the fresh foods offered for sale in the produce section of your food market have been touched by poisons of some sort, many of them several times.
But they won't kill you. At least not quickly. Over a few decades? No one has proven anything yet in court. Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie have no place in courtroom evidence and no living people have the money behind them to challenge these corporations in court. The corporations have deeper pockets than most of us could imagine.
However, Monsanto's GMOs have been banned in 55 countries (so far). The governing bodies of these countries actually looked at the facts relating to these products, and (more importantly) to the consequences of using them in their respective countries. Countries that have allowed GMOs have not examined the subject with such scrutiny. In the USA, one FDA official (decision maker) is a former lawyer for Monsanto.
[As an aside, as I was researching this topic I searched my Facebook homepage for references to Monsanto, references I know provided links to studies posted elsewhere, references I remembering reading on that page. Not a single post with Monsanto in the title or text was still there. The only remaining references to Monsanto were where the name was incorporated into a photo. In other words, Monsanto has the power to control Facebook.]
I'm not asking you to believe what I wrote above. It would take too long to give references to everything (longer than you would want to read). I am asking you to do some research yourself on these topics. Your health, your life, your ability to have a decent life in your final years all depend on your knowing what you put into your mouth. Choose to learn now, or later, the hard way.
Ask yourself why so many "new" diseases have cropped up among humans but not among other animals. Ask yourself why things like autism, asthma and diabetes are rampant now, but were extremely rare when you were a child.
If you want a place to start, read "Top 10 Most Unhealthy, Cancer-Causing Foods" at realfarmacy.com
If you want to stay up to date with small daily doses of information, sign up for short five-a-week videos by Dr. Michael Greger, M.D. at nurtitionfacts.org (http://tinyurl.com/lh7rbgt) Dr. Greger provides evidence from scientific studies for every claim he makes. Lots of them. Be prepared to look at the food you eat now differently when you hear his messages.
It's up to you. The welfare of your future health will depend on what you eat today. Your health can change without giving you due notice. You won't know about your bad health until an emergency, when you are already broken.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around, Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions. Yes, bad food choices that impact health and longevity are social problems. They affect everyone.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
With obesity and diabetes reaching epidemic proportions, we all know the dangers of relying on processed foods. In his book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food giants Hooked Us, journalist Michael Moss explains how industry scientists combine these three elements, which essentially act like drugs, to hook consumers the same way the cigarette industry hooks smokers on nicotine.
- Libby Znaimer, "What's Cooking", Zoomer, May 2013
I don't want to write this because I dislike giving advice to people who have no interest in hearing advice and who will suspect that I have ulterior motives for writing it. I have no motive, other than to relieve my conscience about not passing along information that will save lives and make extended lives healthier.
However, I feel compelled to write this because the jury has returned, opinions from well educated and experienced professionals are in print, scientific journals have confirmed it by printing peer reviewed studies. The food we eat, the food we are offered by a large majority of food stores, the food we are brainwashed into believing is healthy and we will enjoy, will eventually ruin our health.
Further, when your health is damaged sufficiently, you will turn to doctors who will give you drugs to "cure" you, but will not. In fact, they will make you into a dependant patient who will feel the need to return to their offices regularly. Or you will become very ill and require aggressive surgery and drugs, then you will die. Before you die you will think to yourself "Why did I have this bad luck?"
It's not bad luck, but bad management. You believed what you were told was correct about health, by people who cared so little for you that they would suck the very last coin from you before you expire.
Let's get a few things straight now. You will not die from eating processed foods. You will not die from eating fruits and vegetables laced with pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals. You will not die from eating genetically modified foods (generally known as GMOs or GEs). At least not in the immediate future. That's what the health authorities care about. That is all they care about.
You may live an increasingly unhealthy life with increased disease risks and health problems you and your doctors can't account for. You may die a decade or more sooner than you would have if you had consumed a healthy balance of foods. The last decade of your extended life (people are living longer now) may be with severely compromised health, requiring you to be in an environment with health care professionals around constantly.
You also won't die soon from eating red meat or stuff you carefully grilled on that stainless steel masterpiece on your back deck. You may eventually develop cancer from eating them, but you will likely consider it your bad luck.
Health care professionals at the top levels now consider that the generations of people who are young enough to be working today will be the first in centuries to live shorter lifespans than their predecessors. That reduced lifespan could be ten years, maybe more. They admit to that.
They point to such obvious factors as diabetes and obesity, which everyone can see. They may add to the confusion by pointing out that these occur in almost every culture in every part of the world. They will not point out that these problems are avoidable through careful diet selections. They will also not point out that these problems have increased markedly as each of the cultures adopted a Western diet.
Why would they not point out these factors, as doing so could save lives and allow many people to live free of disease? Because their jobs depend on their keeping their mouths shut. A good way to lose your job and cause your reputation to be destroyed is to tell audiences that the food they eat will kill them sooner than necessary and cause them to live in poor health for many years before they die. Especially when that food is approved by government health authorities.
Who would do such a thing? What people or corporations wield such power?
Walk down the aisles of your local supermarket. In the aisles with prepackaged foods, the same manufacturers' name will appear repeatedly. If the brand names are not similar, the corporations that own those brands and whose names are not so obvious on the labels are few. Those foods all contain preservatives which do the exact opposite in your body as you want them to do, but exactly as the manufacturers want them to do while the food is sitting on shelves (you want food to break down inside of you, not remain "fresh.". Those corporations hold great power.
So, it's obvious that we should all pick foods from the fresh produce aisles, right? That used to be true. Not so much today.
Big power mongers like Monsanto, Dupont and Dow Chemicals control a shockingly large piece of the fresh food marketplace. Monsanto, for example, ("If there was one word to explain what Monsanto is about, it would have to be farmers") sells a "herbicide" called Roundup that kills every living thing, even microscopic life, in the ground it touches. Those who spray it must wear HAZMAT (hazardous materials) suits and masks. Anyone who breathes it will suffer severe health problems. Studies have proven this. It's public information. Monsanto admits this.
When farm fields are sanitized with Roundup, the farmer must then buy seeds from Monsanto, as only seeds originating with Monsanto will grow in the fields. No seeds grown one year may be saved to plant another year, because they will not grow and because it would be illegal (yes, laws support one-year-only seeds--in fact, Monsanto receives large grants each year from governments). While these genetically modified seeds are growing, they are sprayed with even more chemicals to prevent pests (read: other living things) from harming the plants.
Monsanto claims that the foods grown from its seeds, from poisoned ground, will be good for you. For hundreds of years it has been known that when poisons are ingested in tiny amounts, they accumulate until they eventually kill the person. Sherlock Holmes mysteries and Agatha Christie detective stories depended heavily on such plots. Eat a tiny amount of poison enough times and you will die.
Somehow, Monsanto has made health authorities believe that not just Roundup, but foods grown in fields laced with Roundup and other chemical poisons (pesticides) applied later are safe to consume. One shot of it kills bugs, but many shots of it will poison you. How's that for power?
The corporation even convinced the US Congress to include a non-conforming amendment to a bill it passed on a completely different subject (operating expenses for government agencies) to protect Monsanto from attacks against it by individual states or individuals. Power. Unbelievably immense power.
Who would put forward such an amendment? No one knows. It was added, quite legally, anonymously. Devastating power.
Most of the fresh foods offered for sale in the produce section of your food market have been touched by poisons of some sort, many of them several times.
But they won't kill you. At least not quickly. Over a few decades? No one has proven anything yet in court. Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie have no place in courtroom evidence and no living people have the money behind them to challenge these corporations in court. The corporations have deeper pockets than most of us could imagine.
However, Monsanto's GMOs have been banned in 55 countries (so far). The governing bodies of these countries actually looked at the facts relating to these products, and (more importantly) to the consequences of using them in their respective countries. Countries that have allowed GMOs have not examined the subject with such scrutiny. In the USA, one FDA official (decision maker) is a former lawyer for Monsanto.
[As an aside, as I was researching this topic I searched my Facebook homepage for references to Monsanto, references I know provided links to studies posted elsewhere, references I remembering reading on that page. Not a single post with Monsanto in the title or text was still there. The only remaining references to Monsanto were where the name was incorporated into a photo. In other words, Monsanto has the power to control Facebook.]
I'm not asking you to believe what I wrote above. It would take too long to give references to everything (longer than you would want to read). I am asking you to do some research yourself on these topics. Your health, your life, your ability to have a decent life in your final years all depend on your knowing what you put into your mouth. Choose to learn now, or later, the hard way.
Ask yourself why so many "new" diseases have cropped up among humans but not among other animals. Ask yourself why things like autism, asthma and diabetes are rampant now, but were extremely rare when you were a child.
If you want a place to start, read "Top 10 Most Unhealthy, Cancer-Causing Foods" at realfarmacy.com
If you want to stay up to date with small daily doses of information, sign up for short five-a-week videos by Dr. Michael Greger, M.D. at nurtitionfacts.org (http://tinyurl.com/lh7rbgt) Dr. Greger provides evidence from scientific studies for every claim he makes. Lots of them. Be prepared to look at the food you eat now differently when you hear his messages.
It's up to you. The welfare of your future health will depend on what you eat today. Your health can change without giving you due notice. You won't know about your bad health until an emergency, when you are already broken.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around, Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions. Yes, bad food choices that impact health and longevity are social problems. They affect everyone.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Is Higher Intelligence A Handicap?
Is Higher Intelligence A Handicap?
"I always appear smarter when I dress up in my giant nipple costume. I know this because I'll overhear people say things like, "At least he's not a complete boob." - Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me
Setting aside the wisdom and wit of the quote, let's look at what people mean when they think of "higher intelligence." Give it a thought yourself.
In general, it's fair to say that there is no widely accepted consensus on a definition for intelligence, let alone that of a superior nature.
In fact, it is now more commonly believed that there are many kinds of intelligence. Some can't even be measured. Some people claim there are kinds of intelligence among us that are not generally recognized because we can't describe them.
Characteristics we once called inbred talents, such as for certain kinds of art, music, architecture or poetry, now are often considered as forms of intelligence. People with brain abilities to tune into energies science doesn't yet acknowledge have mysterious kinds of intelligence.
My interest in intelligence is more like raw intellect. My version evaluates intelligence in terms of the number of different problems or emotional demands a person is able to entertain at once.
People of low intelligence are often believed (by those with higher levels) to be the happiest people. They only deal with one problem or challenge or emotional difficulty at a time. One is manageable. If you had only one problem to deal with at a time each day, you could likely cope with it. Whether these people can only grasp one problem at a time or whether they choose to deal with them one at a time is unknown.
Even if your one problem were how to achieve world peace, you could take the time to ponder the matter, without allowing it to overtake your ability to cope.
Highly intelligent people have the ability to accept that they have many different problems to deal with (or that need to be addressed) at the same time. They know they can get the car repaired by taking it to a repair shop, if only they could arrange the time. The problems they try to manage run from there to saving the environment.
They know that devising a solution and a plan for implementation for achieving world peace can come if they can find time to consider the problem and possible tactics, strategies and solutions, plus the downstream consequences of each, will take time and a great deal of thought.
They also know that they will be able to survive loss of job or separation from a loved one, but it will take time and the ability to devise and implement a strategy that will eventually return their lives to something close to what they believe is necessary for their personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
Toss a passel of other common human problems into the mix and the total can become unmanageable. Any number of problems a person considers to be more than they can manage leads to the potential for emotional breakdown. A person who is capable of perceiving only one or two problems at a time may therefore be better able to cope with them than a person who can perceive many problems all at once.
If a person of higher intelligence is able to perceive many problems at once, from the simple and personally manageable within a short period of time, to major personal upheavals and community, national or world problems, it stands to reason that such a person will be at a decided disadvantage in comparison with others of lower intelligence.
That disadvantage should be considered no less significant than any other handicap. Even knowing they have many problems to address becomes a burden in itself. To make matters worse, invisible handicaps are always harder to deal with because they can't be easily seen or understood by others. Invisible handicaps are never recognized by society as real problems that need real solutions.
In other words, a highly intelligent person who has the ability to perceive many problems at once not only has each of those problems to consider, he also has the lack of understanding of those close to him and his community as an additional burden.
How important do you consider achieving world peace to be? If you ignore it because you consider the problem unsolvable and yourself incapable of addressing it anyway, perhaps you are not burdened with the handicap of super high intelligence.
I consider achieving world peace solvable. I have trouble finding a plan that may be implemented without the help of a massive number of others who think like me. There's a problem (reaching a critical mass) you may never have considered.
Being super smart is no walk in the park, except in the minds of people who only experience high intelligence from a distance.
From cracked.com: 5 Unexpected Downsides of High Intelligence
1. You're More Likely to Be Self-Destructive
2. You're More Likely to Believe Bullshit
3. You're More Likely to Lie
4. You're Less Likely to Pass On Your Genes
5. You're Probably a Night Owl -- And That's a Bad Thing
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions. As popular a concept as achieving world peace is, the major problem is finding enough people to work toward implementing a plan.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
"I always appear smarter when I dress up in my giant nipple costume. I know this because I'll overhear people say things like, "At least he's not a complete boob." - Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me
Setting aside the wisdom and wit of the quote, let's look at what people mean when they think of "higher intelligence." Give it a thought yourself.
In general, it's fair to say that there is no widely accepted consensus on a definition for intelligence, let alone that of a superior nature.
In fact, it is now more commonly believed that there are many kinds of intelligence. Some can't even be measured. Some people claim there are kinds of intelligence among us that are not generally recognized because we can't describe them.
Characteristics we once called inbred talents, such as for certain kinds of art, music, architecture or poetry, now are often considered as forms of intelligence. People with brain abilities to tune into energies science doesn't yet acknowledge have mysterious kinds of intelligence.
My interest in intelligence is more like raw intellect. My version evaluates intelligence in terms of the number of different problems or emotional demands a person is able to entertain at once.
People of low intelligence are often believed (by those with higher levels) to be the happiest people. They only deal with one problem or challenge or emotional difficulty at a time. One is manageable. If you had only one problem to deal with at a time each day, you could likely cope with it. Whether these people can only grasp one problem at a time or whether they choose to deal with them one at a time is unknown.
Even if your one problem were how to achieve world peace, you could take the time to ponder the matter, without allowing it to overtake your ability to cope.
Highly intelligent people have the ability to accept that they have many different problems to deal with (or that need to be addressed) at the same time. They know they can get the car repaired by taking it to a repair shop, if only they could arrange the time. The problems they try to manage run from there to saving the environment.
They know that devising a solution and a plan for implementation for achieving world peace can come if they can find time to consider the problem and possible tactics, strategies and solutions, plus the downstream consequences of each, will take time and a great deal of thought.
They also know that they will be able to survive loss of job or separation from a loved one, but it will take time and the ability to devise and implement a strategy that will eventually return their lives to something close to what they believe is necessary for their personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
Toss a passel of other common human problems into the mix and the total can become unmanageable. Any number of problems a person considers to be more than they can manage leads to the potential for emotional breakdown. A person who is capable of perceiving only one or two problems at a time may therefore be better able to cope with them than a person who can perceive many problems all at once.
If a person of higher intelligence is able to perceive many problems at once, from the simple and personally manageable within a short period of time, to major personal upheavals and community, national or world problems, it stands to reason that such a person will be at a decided disadvantage in comparison with others of lower intelligence.
That disadvantage should be considered no less significant than any other handicap. Even knowing they have many problems to address becomes a burden in itself. To make matters worse, invisible handicaps are always harder to deal with because they can't be easily seen or understood by others. Invisible handicaps are never recognized by society as real problems that need real solutions.
In other words, a highly intelligent person who has the ability to perceive many problems at once not only has each of those problems to consider, he also has the lack of understanding of those close to him and his community as an additional burden.
How important do you consider achieving world peace to be? If you ignore it because you consider the problem unsolvable and yourself incapable of addressing it anyway, perhaps you are not burdened with the handicap of super high intelligence.
I consider achieving world peace solvable. I have trouble finding a plan that may be implemented without the help of a massive number of others who think like me. There's a problem (reaching a critical mass) you may never have considered.
Being super smart is no walk in the park, except in the minds of people who only experience high intelligence from a distance.
From cracked.com: 5 Unexpected Downsides of High Intelligence
1. You're More Likely to Be Self-Destructive
2. You're More Likely to Believe Bullshit
3. You're More Likely to Lie
4. You're Less Likely to Pass On Your Genes
5. You're Probably a Night Owl -- And That's a Bad Thing
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions. As popular a concept as achieving world peace is, the major problem is finding enough people to work toward implementing a plan.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Bet You Didn't Know This About Coffee
Bet You Didn't Know This About Coffee
While tea was the leading hot drink for hundreds of years, coffee has rapidly overtaken tea over the past few decades. No one has yet produced a convincing reason why.
Few places in the world have an equal balance of tea and coffee consumption. One always dominates. Maybe the reason has to do with advertising by coffee companies. One company, Swiss multinational Nestlé, has been particularly effective with advertising for its nutritional, snacks and health foods. Nestlé controls over 25 percent of coffee production in the world.
Most people know coffee for its caffeine. Tea also has caffeine, though not as much, especially compared with brewed coffee. Caffeine was long thought to be nothing but a mild stimulant. Today it is treated almost like a drug in itself because of the way coffee stimulates some people, relaxes others and actually enhances the effects of other products such as pain killers.
Some may think of caffeine in terms of the popular energy drinks on the market. Energy (I use the term loosely) from coffee was used in energy bars by the Galla nomads of Ethiopia. They ground up coffee beans, then mixed them with animal fat as an energy snack some time in the first millennium.
A thousand years ago Arab traders brought coffee beans home from Africa and boiled them to produce a drink called qahwa, which translates as "that which prevents sleep."
Most people would not consider using coffee for health purposes. German physician Max Gerson did, in the 1930s. He promoted the use of coffee in enemas, to detoxify the liver, stimulate the metabolism and even to cure cancers.
While the National Cancer Institute, the US government's main agency for cancer research, says that Gerson's claims are unsupported, and the American Cancer Society warns that illness or death could result from use of contaminated coffee enema equipment, it hasn't deterred Prince Charles. The British monarchy's heir apparent has raved about coffee enemas. Amazon.com sells DIY kits for coffee enemas.
Spoilers have searched for decades for ways in which coffee could be bad for the health. They were disappointed in 2011 when the Harvard School of Public Health reported after a huge study (48,000 men over 22 years) that men who drank six cups or more of coffee a day had a 60 percent lower rate
of dying from prostate cancer.
Sweden's Lund University supported the distaff side in 2008 when it reported a study showing that drinking coffee lowers the risk of breast cancer for women with the relatively common gene variant CPY1A2, which helps to metabolize estrogen and coffee.
The Swedish team got even more attention with its report that women with the gene variant who drank three cups or more a day of coffee tended to have smaller breasts.
The following year researchers at UK's Durham University reported that students who drank three cups or more each day were three times more likely to hear voices and have out-of-body experiences.
J.S. Bach expressed his love for coffee in a cantata. With libretto by Christian Friedrich Henrici, the Kaffeekantate was first performed in Leipzig, Germany in the early 1730s.
If that seems strange, check out some of the words of the soprano part. "Father, don't be so severe!/ If I can't drink/ My bowl of coffee three times daily/ Then in my torment I will shrivel up/ Like a piece of roast goat." Kind of makes you want to watch that one play out, doesn't it?
Americans show their devotion to coffee by spending $40 billion on it each year. Over the world, people consume close to 1.6 billion cups each day.
Starbucks may be best known for its coffee concoctions. Their grande (or medium) 16-ounce coffee has an amount of caffeine equivalent to 9.5 cans of Coke. Yup, that in one "medium" cup.
Coffee's greed for water goes far beyond what goes into each cup. Including all the water needed to grow and process the beans, one cup of java requires about 4,700 ounces, or 37 gallons.
Coffee is grown on mountainsides, with just certain conditions. Change those conditions and coffee plants won't grow. Highland forests in Ethiopia and South Sudan, where most wild coffee grows, may disappear as the planet warms, according to researchers at London's Royal Botanic Gardens. However, domesticated coffee production will be safe for a while.
Safe, that is, from warming. Not necessarily from disease. 70 percent of coffee consumed today is produced from variants of the wild Arabica, or Coffea arabica, the wild bean that stores most of the genetic information needed to re-engineer coffee plants to produce beans under different conditions. Industrial coffee monocultures are as much at risk from one unanticipated disease as every other monoculture of agriculture.
One coffee grows already decaffeinated. Coffea charrieriana, found in Cameroon, is the only variety known to grow without the stimulant.
Elephants love coffee cherries, the fruit that surrounds the seeds we roast and drink. But don't send them away. A smooth and caramel tasting variety of coffee is made from beans that made their way all the way through the elephant's digestive system. Pre-hulled seeds are harvested from the dung. But wait, there's more. Elephant dung coffee beans have been known to sell for as much as $500 a pound. Yes, with two zeroes.
Don't worry about coffee making your breath smell bad. Tel Aviv University researchers revealed, in 2009, that adding coffee to a dish of saliva actually inhibited the growth of a bacterium that causes bad breath.
Now, if you will excuse me, it's time for my coffee break.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow kids who develop well in all ways, not just intellectually.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary information source: Discover, April 2013]
While tea was the leading hot drink for hundreds of years, coffee has rapidly overtaken tea over the past few decades. No one has yet produced a convincing reason why.
Few places in the world have an equal balance of tea and coffee consumption. One always dominates. Maybe the reason has to do with advertising by coffee companies. One company, Swiss multinational Nestlé, has been particularly effective with advertising for its nutritional, snacks and health foods. Nestlé controls over 25 percent of coffee production in the world.
Most people know coffee for its caffeine. Tea also has caffeine, though not as much, especially compared with brewed coffee. Caffeine was long thought to be nothing but a mild stimulant. Today it is treated almost like a drug in itself because of the way coffee stimulates some people, relaxes others and actually enhances the effects of other products such as pain killers.
Some may think of caffeine in terms of the popular energy drinks on the market. Energy (I use the term loosely) from coffee was used in energy bars by the Galla nomads of Ethiopia. They ground up coffee beans, then mixed them with animal fat as an energy snack some time in the first millennium.
A thousand years ago Arab traders brought coffee beans home from Africa and boiled them to produce a drink called qahwa, which translates as "that which prevents sleep."
Most people would not consider using coffee for health purposes. German physician Max Gerson did, in the 1930s. He promoted the use of coffee in enemas, to detoxify the liver, stimulate the metabolism and even to cure cancers.
While the National Cancer Institute, the US government's main agency for cancer research, says that Gerson's claims are unsupported, and the American Cancer Society warns that illness or death could result from use of contaminated coffee enema equipment, it hasn't deterred Prince Charles. The British monarchy's heir apparent has raved about coffee enemas. Amazon.com sells DIY kits for coffee enemas.
Spoilers have searched for decades for ways in which coffee could be bad for the health. They were disappointed in 2011 when the Harvard School of Public Health reported after a huge study (48,000 men over 22 years) that men who drank six cups or more of coffee a day had a 60 percent lower rate
of dying from prostate cancer.
Sweden's Lund University supported the distaff side in 2008 when it reported a study showing that drinking coffee lowers the risk of breast cancer for women with the relatively common gene variant CPY1A2, which helps to metabolize estrogen and coffee.
The Swedish team got even more attention with its report that women with the gene variant who drank three cups or more a day of coffee tended to have smaller breasts.
The following year researchers at UK's Durham University reported that students who drank three cups or more each day were three times more likely to hear voices and have out-of-body experiences.
J.S. Bach expressed his love for coffee in a cantata. With libretto by Christian Friedrich Henrici, the Kaffeekantate was first performed in Leipzig, Germany in the early 1730s.
If that seems strange, check out some of the words of the soprano part. "Father, don't be so severe!/ If I can't drink/ My bowl of coffee three times daily/ Then in my torment I will shrivel up/ Like a piece of roast goat." Kind of makes you want to watch that one play out, doesn't it?
Americans show their devotion to coffee by spending $40 billion on it each year. Over the world, people consume close to 1.6 billion cups each day.
Starbucks may be best known for its coffee concoctions. Their grande (or medium) 16-ounce coffee has an amount of caffeine equivalent to 9.5 cans of Coke. Yup, that in one "medium" cup.
Coffee's greed for water goes far beyond what goes into each cup. Including all the water needed to grow and process the beans, one cup of java requires about 4,700 ounces, or 37 gallons.
Coffee is grown on mountainsides, with just certain conditions. Change those conditions and coffee plants won't grow. Highland forests in Ethiopia and South Sudan, where most wild coffee grows, may disappear as the planet warms, according to researchers at London's Royal Botanic Gardens. However, domesticated coffee production will be safe for a while.
Safe, that is, from warming. Not necessarily from disease. 70 percent of coffee consumed today is produced from variants of the wild Arabica, or Coffea arabica, the wild bean that stores most of the genetic information needed to re-engineer coffee plants to produce beans under different conditions. Industrial coffee monocultures are as much at risk from one unanticipated disease as every other monoculture of agriculture.
One coffee grows already decaffeinated. Coffea charrieriana, found in Cameroon, is the only variety known to grow without the stimulant.
Elephants love coffee cherries, the fruit that surrounds the seeds we roast and drink. But don't send them away. A smooth and caramel tasting variety of coffee is made from beans that made their way all the way through the elephant's digestive system. Pre-hulled seeds are harvested from the dung. But wait, there's more. Elephant dung coffee beans have been known to sell for as much as $500 a pound. Yes, with two zeroes.
Don't worry about coffee making your breath smell bad. Tel Aviv University researchers revealed, in 2009, that adding coffee to a dish of saliva actually inhibited the growth of a bacterium that causes bad breath.
Now, if you will excuse me, it's time for my coffee break.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow kids who develop well in all ways, not just intellectually.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
[Primary information source: Discover, April 2013]
Monday, April 01, 2013
Are We Forcing Ourselves Into Extinction?
Are We Forcing Ourselves Into Extinction?
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.
- E. O. Wilson
We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up.
- Bruce Babbitt
No one could doubt that humans are the most advanced, the best developed, the most intelligent, the most creative and inventive species ever to have graced the earth.
Well, almost no one. Actually, I do. Remember, who granted us that title? We assumed that there were no other species in the race.
True, we have language, which no other species seems to have in the same form. But many animal species and several plant species have been shown to communicate among themselves. Not with us. We can neither understand their communication nor communicate with them in ways they understand. Yet they understand each other, as has been proven by science.
We have imaginations, a characteristic in which we take great pride, one that has given us art, literature, music in their various forms. Neanderthals are now known to have made cave paintings in France. We don't know about non-human species because they do not express themselves the way we do. So we assume they are not as smart or as developed as us.
It was long thought that we had emotions that no other species had, or even could appreciate. We now know that many animals have emotions. Some plants have also been shown to have at least some emotions. Some we now know can communicate fear to others nearby when they are about to be harmed, not just when they are harmed, but before they are actually harmed.
Elephants communicate with each other over many kilometres at sound levels below the range that humans can detect. Whales have been observed apparently communicating with others of their kind over one thousand kilometres away. We humans actually hear only within a tiny range of air vibrations. We have little idea about non-human communication in frequencies we can't hear.
We don't know for certain if any creatures on the planet, animals or plants, hear or communicate at frequencies beyond what we consider normal (for us).
I dare say that few people would include rocks (minerals) if asked what kinds of life exist on earth. Why? Because they don't know. Trees and other plants, in general, exist in life dimensions much different from what we know, much slower. Rocks, which are known through continental "drift" to move and interact with each other, may well have a form of life that is so different from our own that we can't detect it because we move at a much faster pace.
Let me ask you this? What is the largest life form on earth today? Not the elephant. The blue whale? There is a fungus under several of the states in the USA east of the Rockies. One continuous life form, larger than whole states. If you didn't know that, what else might exist around you that you know little about? Literally millions of people live right above that fungus.
One of my favourite birds is the ruby-throated hummingbird. The ones that visit my verandah flap their wings around 950 times a minute. Faster than any of us could see clearly. They move around so quickly that no other bird or animal could catch them. They live about three years. The giant tortoise of the Galapagos moves so slowly that people don't want to wait to see where they go. They live about 400 years. Animals as diverse as these live at different life rates, some might say in different dimensions.
We determine intelligence by the form of intelligence best exemplified by the people who devise the intelligence tests. Humans are the "most intelligent" creatures on earth because we make up the tests. IQ tests of the past were shown to be shockingly biased in favour of the culture of the people who devised the tests. Thus people of Africa, for example, fared badly on them because they did not share a similar background to the devisors of the tests.
How intelligent are other animals? Only now are we learning that dolphins, some birds and some land animals are more intelligent that we thought. How do we know? We gave them tests that we could do, so if they could do them they must be intelligent.
How would you measure the intelligence of a giant sequoia tree? They live for hundreds of years (the oldest known as about 2200 years old). They must know something to live that long. Something we don't.
How might you measure the intelligence of the Rock of Gibraltar? Never mind, no one would believe you even if you had a guess.
What we humans most excel at is arrogance and hubris. We are very poor at learning from others who know more than us. Yet we are ready to criticize others who know less, who make mistakes, or even who have opinions different from our own. Dogs and cats that many of us have as pets know how to get what they want better than the humans who claim to "own" them. They ask, in their own way, but humans just expect those around them to understand, maybe by instinct.
What does this have to do with us causing our own extinction?
Charles Darwin claimed in his theory of evolution that survival depended on the ability to adapt (not to fitness, as many reports have falsely noted). Our ancestors were remarkable at adapting, spreading over the millennia to virtually every habitable corner of the planet. From the frozen Arctic to the Sahara Desert to the rain forests of the Amazon, our ancestors adapted to conditions and thrived in each one of them.
Their descendants still live in these harsh environments. But since they adopted western styles of life, they have also developed western diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and obesity. They have adapted the wrong way, just as we in developed countries have adapted in ways that will harm our own health.
More importantly, we now depend on developments in medical science and technology to save us, while we stubbornly stick with our unhealthy lifestyles. We believe that medicine will heal us, while it can only relieve symptoms. Healthy bodies don't get sick.
More countries than ever before in history have the ability to annihilate billions of us with nuclear weapons. North Korea doesn't get its way with others, so it cancels the agreement it signed at the end of the Korean War and threatens any country that refuses to give it its way. In response, the US does not offer to talk out the problems, instead choosing to boost its own missile defence, threatening to wipe out North Korea, claiming that if North Korea fires a nuclear missile it would be suicide.
Does that sound like civilized countries that have progressed into a safe and peaceful existence in the 21st Century?
We tend to believe the politicians we elect will look after our welfare, even though we are aware that they can be bought by industry. We believe the food we buy at the market is safe, while it is almost impossible to find even fresh fruits and vegetables that are not laced with pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides. Or genetically modified in ways that help the chemical companies that created them than us, the consumers.
We force ourselves to live stressful lives to earn money we believe we need to make us comfortable and happy. Yet as soon as we get more, we want even more than that. We know we need to de-stress, to relax, to chill out, but we claim we don't have time (the irony of that misses most of the people who should be aware of it). When that leads to an unhealthy body and illness, we turn to doctors and drugs (see above).
We believe that we are powerful enough to change the climate of the world, though we are unable to influence any one part of the weather when trouble comes our way. We worry about warming raising the average temperature of the atmosphere by half a degree, but show little interest in the 300,000 chemicals that industries put into our waterways or the half million chemicals they put into the air we breathe. We drink the water and bathe in it, we breathe the air, but that seems to matter little to us.
We believe that technology (or God, in some cases) will save us from destruction at the last minute. Yet we have no evidence that either is possible. We can't even imagine what a solution might be.
Evolution says that homo sapiens will be succeeded by a more advanced species, and we will subsequently pass from existence. Could that happen? History suggests that our species might cease to exist one day. But it will not likely be succeeded by a more advanced species. We would certainly kill it off before it had a chance to multiply.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for grandparents, parents and teachers who want to know what their children need and when they need it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.
- E. O. Wilson
We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up.
- Bruce Babbitt
No one could doubt that humans are the most advanced, the best developed, the most intelligent, the most creative and inventive species ever to have graced the earth.
Well, almost no one. Actually, I do. Remember, who granted us that title? We assumed that there were no other species in the race.
True, we have language, which no other species seems to have in the same form. But many animal species and several plant species have been shown to communicate among themselves. Not with us. We can neither understand their communication nor communicate with them in ways they understand. Yet they understand each other, as has been proven by science.
We have imaginations, a characteristic in which we take great pride, one that has given us art, literature, music in their various forms. Neanderthals are now known to have made cave paintings in France. We don't know about non-human species because they do not express themselves the way we do. So we assume they are not as smart or as developed as us.
It was long thought that we had emotions that no other species had, or even could appreciate. We now know that many animals have emotions. Some plants have also been shown to have at least some emotions. Some we now know can communicate fear to others nearby when they are about to be harmed, not just when they are harmed, but before they are actually harmed.
Elephants communicate with each other over many kilometres at sound levels below the range that humans can detect. Whales have been observed apparently communicating with others of their kind over one thousand kilometres away. We humans actually hear only within a tiny range of air vibrations. We have little idea about non-human communication in frequencies we can't hear.
We don't know for certain if any creatures on the planet, animals or plants, hear or communicate at frequencies beyond what we consider normal (for us).
I dare say that few people would include rocks (minerals) if asked what kinds of life exist on earth. Why? Because they don't know. Trees and other plants, in general, exist in life dimensions much different from what we know, much slower. Rocks, which are known through continental "drift" to move and interact with each other, may well have a form of life that is so different from our own that we can't detect it because we move at a much faster pace.
Let me ask you this? What is the largest life form on earth today? Not the elephant. The blue whale? There is a fungus under several of the states in the USA east of the Rockies. One continuous life form, larger than whole states. If you didn't know that, what else might exist around you that you know little about? Literally millions of people live right above that fungus.
One of my favourite birds is the ruby-throated hummingbird. The ones that visit my verandah flap their wings around 950 times a minute. Faster than any of us could see clearly. They move around so quickly that no other bird or animal could catch them. They live about three years. The giant tortoise of the Galapagos moves so slowly that people don't want to wait to see where they go. They live about 400 years. Animals as diverse as these live at different life rates, some might say in different dimensions.
We determine intelligence by the form of intelligence best exemplified by the people who devise the intelligence tests. Humans are the "most intelligent" creatures on earth because we make up the tests. IQ tests of the past were shown to be shockingly biased in favour of the culture of the people who devised the tests. Thus people of Africa, for example, fared badly on them because they did not share a similar background to the devisors of the tests.
How intelligent are other animals? Only now are we learning that dolphins, some birds and some land animals are more intelligent that we thought. How do we know? We gave them tests that we could do, so if they could do them they must be intelligent.
How would you measure the intelligence of a giant sequoia tree? They live for hundreds of years (the oldest known as about 2200 years old). They must know something to live that long. Something we don't.
How might you measure the intelligence of the Rock of Gibraltar? Never mind, no one would believe you even if you had a guess.
What we humans most excel at is arrogance and hubris. We are very poor at learning from others who know more than us. Yet we are ready to criticize others who know less, who make mistakes, or even who have opinions different from our own. Dogs and cats that many of us have as pets know how to get what they want better than the humans who claim to "own" them. They ask, in their own way, but humans just expect those around them to understand, maybe by instinct.
What does this have to do with us causing our own extinction?
Charles Darwin claimed in his theory of evolution that survival depended on the ability to adapt (not to fitness, as many reports have falsely noted). Our ancestors were remarkable at adapting, spreading over the millennia to virtually every habitable corner of the planet. From the frozen Arctic to the Sahara Desert to the rain forests of the Amazon, our ancestors adapted to conditions and thrived in each one of them.
Their descendants still live in these harsh environments. But since they adopted western styles of life, they have also developed western diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and obesity. They have adapted the wrong way, just as we in developed countries have adapted in ways that will harm our own health.
More importantly, we now depend on developments in medical science and technology to save us, while we stubbornly stick with our unhealthy lifestyles. We believe that medicine will heal us, while it can only relieve symptoms. Healthy bodies don't get sick.
More countries than ever before in history have the ability to annihilate billions of us with nuclear weapons. North Korea doesn't get its way with others, so it cancels the agreement it signed at the end of the Korean War and threatens any country that refuses to give it its way. In response, the US does not offer to talk out the problems, instead choosing to boost its own missile defence, threatening to wipe out North Korea, claiming that if North Korea fires a nuclear missile it would be suicide.
Does that sound like civilized countries that have progressed into a safe and peaceful existence in the 21st Century?
We tend to believe the politicians we elect will look after our welfare, even though we are aware that they can be bought by industry. We believe the food we buy at the market is safe, while it is almost impossible to find even fresh fruits and vegetables that are not laced with pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides. Or genetically modified in ways that help the chemical companies that created them than us, the consumers.
We force ourselves to live stressful lives to earn money we believe we need to make us comfortable and happy. Yet as soon as we get more, we want even more than that. We know we need to de-stress, to relax, to chill out, but we claim we don't have time (the irony of that misses most of the people who should be aware of it). When that leads to an unhealthy body and illness, we turn to doctors and drugs (see above).
We believe that we are powerful enough to change the climate of the world, though we are unable to influence any one part of the weather when trouble comes our way. We worry about warming raising the average temperature of the atmosphere by half a degree, but show little interest in the 300,000 chemicals that industries put into our waterways or the half million chemicals they put into the air we breathe. We drink the water and bathe in it, we breathe the air, but that seems to matter little to us.
We believe that technology (or God, in some cases) will save us from destruction at the last minute. Yet we have no evidence that either is possible. We can't even imagine what a solution might be.
Evolution says that homo sapiens will be succeeded by a more advanced species, and we will subsequently pass from existence. Could that happen? History suggests that our species might cease to exist one day. But it will not likely be succeeded by a more advanced species. We would certainly kill it off before it had a chance to multiply.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for grandparents, parents and teachers who want to know what their children need and when they need it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, March 21, 2013
I know Why Our Universe Seems to Be Expanding When It Should Be Getting Smaller
I know Why Our Universe Seems to Be Expanding When It Should Be Getting Smaller
Even if we cannot look beyond our universe, we might still be able to detect signs of another universe if, sometime in the distant past, it came careering into ours, leaving behind vestiges of that crash for some wily observers to pick up on.
- Steve Nadis, "When Universes Collide", Discover, December 2012
To start, let's make it clear that no one knows the extent of our own universe. We in the Milky Way galaxy are near one side of it. We only estimate where we think the far side is (thus how big the universe is) by measuring light that we believe travelled from its far side to reach us.
From this we also estimate the age of our universe (time since the Big Bang) at 13.8 billion years. Did that light bend, as Einstein predicted, on its long route? Would we have a way to tell if it did? Would bending of the light (or other radiation) affect measurements? When calculating distances, we tend to think of linear measurements, not measurements that bend.
If light from distant parts of the universe bends along its route, how can we calculate linear dimensions of our universe? Is everything bent consistently or does the bending vary from location to location? As you can see, what we know for certain is far less than physicists would have us believe by their confident statements.
By definition,"universe" should mean "everything that exists anywhere." That is simply not enough any more. The imaginations of cosmologists and other physicists who study what is "out there" far beyond what we can see or even detect, to learn more, have stretched even farther out.
M-theory, known more generally as String Theory, predicts that 11 dimensions and multiple universes are possible. "Possible" because these fit with the complicated and convoluted mathematics. (In physics, math rules. Anything that can't be proven by mathematics tends to be denied as non-existent.)
It follows, within the theory if not within reality, that multiple universes raise the possibility that two could collide. Or, as they are mostly composed of nothingness interspersed with a few trillions of stars and planets, one might pass right through another.
If one universe were to pass through another, how might that play out? In general, there is so much space between stars that the likelihood of one smashing into another is low. But not out of the question completely. Cars and trucks on highways are not supposed to crash into each other either.
Might one smashup account for asteroids, or even planets, in our own solar system? Might the various fields such as gravity be so upset that stars might be pulled away so they paired up with other stars as binary systems?
Physicists have calculated that this long after the Big Bang our universe should be coming back together, contracting, due to the slowing down of the stretching and the influence of gravity and perhaps other forces that want to bring the universe back to a unity.
But that is not happening. Our universe is mysteriously expanding still, even faster than ever before, except during the first short period of time after the Big Bang. Physicists have conjectured dark matter (dubious evidence so far) and dark energy (still mostly in the imagination) to account for the mystery.
We know that matter of the kind we know is subject to laws of physics, such as gravity and centrifugal force. But dark matter supposedly need not be confined by such laws. Disconnect, illogical, right? And what kind of matter would not reflect light, at all? We don't even have any evidence that dark matter has a gravitational effect on the matter we are more familiar with.
Using the Kepler observatory/telescope in space, astronomers can now locate planets in distant star systems. But the system has so far not been able to identify anything that could be called dark matter. So far the hundreds of planets they have located are ordinary star satellites that reflect light, but the light can't be seen because it is too dim and they planets are too far away.
What if, millions of years ago, two universes began to pass through each other? We can't see the far side of our own universe. What we can see and measure seems to be expanding rather that contracting. What is more, it seems to be accelerating its expansion, not slowing down.
What if the expansion physicists are measuring is really the other universe moving away from our own? Our universe could have slowed, stopped or reversed direction, while the other universe gives the impression that the whole is expanding. We couldn't tell because we look at so little of it at one time. Could physicists tell the difference between evidence from two different universes if they saw it? Or might they just use mathematics to devise some other explanation they can accept because it fits their belief set?
Not likely they could differentiate one universe from another. A majority of physicists still prefer to believe that only one universe exists, our own. Why not consider other possibilities?
Job security. Academics put their positions at risk when they publicly support any suggestion that goes against the tide of the establishment. Remember how the careers of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann imploded after they revealed they had successfully created power by cold fusion in 1989, but others later found it could not using the same method? (Today cold fusion is being studied and explored frantically in many labs and facilities around the world.)
Let me leave you with this. Might a second universe passing through our own account for ghosts, reports of space aliens, experiences of people in different dimensions and many other phenomena we can't explain?
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow balanced lives, not skewed by over-emphasis on intellectual or physical development.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Even if we cannot look beyond our universe, we might still be able to detect signs of another universe if, sometime in the distant past, it came careering into ours, leaving behind vestiges of that crash for some wily observers to pick up on.
- Steve Nadis, "When Universes Collide", Discover, December 2012
To start, let's make it clear that no one knows the extent of our own universe. We in the Milky Way galaxy are near one side of it. We only estimate where we think the far side is (thus how big the universe is) by measuring light that we believe travelled from its far side to reach us.
From this we also estimate the age of our universe (time since the Big Bang) at 13.8 billion years. Did that light bend, as Einstein predicted, on its long route? Would we have a way to tell if it did? Would bending of the light (or other radiation) affect measurements? When calculating distances, we tend to think of linear measurements, not measurements that bend.
If light from distant parts of the universe bends along its route, how can we calculate linear dimensions of our universe? Is everything bent consistently or does the bending vary from location to location? As you can see, what we know for certain is far less than physicists would have us believe by their confident statements.
By definition,"universe" should mean "everything that exists anywhere." That is simply not enough any more. The imaginations of cosmologists and other physicists who study what is "out there" far beyond what we can see or even detect, to learn more, have stretched even farther out.
M-theory, known more generally as String Theory, predicts that 11 dimensions and multiple universes are possible. "Possible" because these fit with the complicated and convoluted mathematics. (In physics, math rules. Anything that can't be proven by mathematics tends to be denied as non-existent.)
It follows, within the theory if not within reality, that multiple universes raise the possibility that two could collide. Or, as they are mostly composed of nothingness interspersed with a few trillions of stars and planets, one might pass right through another.
If one universe were to pass through another, how might that play out? In general, there is so much space between stars that the likelihood of one smashing into another is low. But not out of the question completely. Cars and trucks on highways are not supposed to crash into each other either.
Might one smashup account for asteroids, or even planets, in our own solar system? Might the various fields such as gravity be so upset that stars might be pulled away so they paired up with other stars as binary systems?
Physicists have calculated that this long after the Big Bang our universe should be coming back together, contracting, due to the slowing down of the stretching and the influence of gravity and perhaps other forces that want to bring the universe back to a unity.
But that is not happening. Our universe is mysteriously expanding still, even faster than ever before, except during the first short period of time after the Big Bang. Physicists have conjectured dark matter (dubious evidence so far) and dark energy (still mostly in the imagination) to account for the mystery.
We know that matter of the kind we know is subject to laws of physics, such as gravity and centrifugal force. But dark matter supposedly need not be confined by such laws. Disconnect, illogical, right? And what kind of matter would not reflect light, at all? We don't even have any evidence that dark matter has a gravitational effect on the matter we are more familiar with.
Using the Kepler observatory/telescope in space, astronomers can now locate planets in distant star systems. But the system has so far not been able to identify anything that could be called dark matter. So far the hundreds of planets they have located are ordinary star satellites that reflect light, but the light can't be seen because it is too dim and they planets are too far away.
What if, millions of years ago, two universes began to pass through each other? We can't see the far side of our own universe. What we can see and measure seems to be expanding rather that contracting. What is more, it seems to be accelerating its expansion, not slowing down.
What if the expansion physicists are measuring is really the other universe moving away from our own? Our universe could have slowed, stopped or reversed direction, while the other universe gives the impression that the whole is expanding. We couldn't tell because we look at so little of it at one time. Could physicists tell the difference between evidence from two different universes if they saw it? Or might they just use mathematics to devise some other explanation they can accept because it fits their belief set?
Not likely they could differentiate one universe from another. A majority of physicists still prefer to believe that only one universe exists, our own. Why not consider other possibilities?
Job security. Academics put their positions at risk when they publicly support any suggestion that goes against the tide of the establishment. Remember how the careers of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann imploded after they revealed they had successfully created power by cold fusion in 1989, but others later found it could not using the same method? (Today cold fusion is being studied and explored frantically in many labs and facilities around the world.)
Let me leave you with this. Might a second universe passing through our own account for ghosts, reports of space aliens, experiences of people in different dimensions and many other phenomena we can't explain?
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow balanced lives, not skewed by over-emphasis on intellectual or physical development.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, March 03, 2013
Just How Wise Is Homo Sapiens?
Just How Wise Is Homo Sapiens?
Homo sapiens
: The modern species of humans. Archaic forms of Homo sapiens probably evolved around 300,000 years ago or earlier in Africa, and anatomically modern fossils are known from about 100,000 years ago. All humans now living belong to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. The closest living relative of Homo sapiens is the chimpanzee. Neanderthals in Europe and Solo man in Asia are usually classed as archaic humans. Though archaic humans belong to the same species as modern humans, not all archaic groups or populations are necessarily ancestral to Homo sapiens sapiens. According to certain models of human evolution, modern humans replaced archaic populations throughout Asia and Europe after migrating out of Africa in comparatively recent times.- The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005
How wise are you if you didn't know the proper name of your own species, Homo sapiens sapiens? Don't feel insulted, there is a point here.
What does the species name mean?
Homo - Latin for man, human (the scientific name always begins with a capital letter, even if it is written as H. sapiens)
sapiens - Latin for wise (Sapiens is both singular and plural, not always plural as many assume because it ends with s)
So the human subspecies to which you belong is technically called "wise, wise man." No doubt the additional "wise" is intended as an intensifier.
It will come as no surprise to you to learn that our species name was given to us by a man (not by any other animal). The man, Carl Linnaeus, was born in southern Sweden, in 1707.
Linnaeus, botanist, zoologist and physician, is known as the father of taxonomy. That means giving names to organisms, not stuffing dead animals.
No doubt Linnaeus was wise. Those with whom he consulted in his professional and personal lives were surely wise. Or at least knowledgeable, for their time. But how wise is the species he called super-wise, across the full spectrum of people? Linnaeus lived in an environment surrounded by wise men, and presumably wise women whose wisdom was not as well recognized or acknowledged. (How wise is that?)
In reaction to a post I made on Facebook recently, which included the name of our species, a Facebook friend who lives in Rwanda, Africa, commented "hahahah homo sapiens are unwise because they think their wisdom is to kill each other,hate each other,..." Humans are, generally speaking, the only species that kills for reasons other than food or defence.
We have been known to kill for sport (think of the Beothuk, of Canada, the true "red men," who were hunted to extinction). We kill in acts of genocide, infanticide, patricide, matricide, murder and in support of our religions, our tribes and our nations. We kill, in some cases, because we are told by our leaders or commanders to kill. Let's not forget suicide, another act of killing that is almost unknown elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
How super-wise is that? Or even just wise? Despite all that killing, our species is expanding so fast that we add another billion people to the planet every few years. Human population now is five times what it was 100 years ago. How? Mostly by slowing down the rates of death from disease and childbirth.
Our ancestors adapted so well that from our genetic beginnings in east Africa (genetic Adam about 150,000 years ago, genetic Eve about 120,000 years ago--each of us can date ourselves genetically back to one or the other of them) we now populate almost every chunk of land on the planet, no matter its climate or other forms of life used for food.
No doubt we have been successful by adapting. But how many of our ancestors were actually wise enough to help their peers with these adaptations? Not many. Only after we had settled most of the world's land mass did we reproduce enough to gain the power of numbers we have today.
How many among us are wise today? We have television shows that broadcast activities some of us do that are not just dangerous, but downright stupid. Many of those acts of stupidity are scripted, planned, choreographed.
Many people today risk their lives doing things that are not just dangerous to health, but risky to their lives. All to get attention or money. Our species is unique, for certain, in that way. Wise?
Our species is especially known for its tool making and use and for its written knowledge. These are relatively recent in human history, comprising no more than 2% of the time we have existed. How many of us have actually created a tool, or could use one unknown to us previously without training with a manual or by watching others? How many of us have actually read any number of the millions of books that sit lonely in our libraries?
We have entire industries based on values that were created from nothing by people who knew how to make money by exploiting naiveté and stupidity. For example, the fashion industry that creates items of clothing that are titillating or ugly, items that may well only be worn once though they cost thousands of dollars to buy. It's not as if these could be donated to clothing collections for the poor.
We have giant pharmaceutical companies that cater to people who live unhealthy lives, selling them drugs that guarantee to keep them enslaved to drugs until they die. And giant agribusinesses that create many foods so unhealthy that they feed customers constantly to the pharmaceutical companies.
These industries are all enormously wealthy. And powerful enough that they can influence governments to create laws or regulations that allow them to function and to put those who oppose them into prison or ruin their reputations.
I am not saying these industries should not exist. I am saying their customers could hardly be called wise. We could teach people to be wiser. But we don't. How wise is that?
If a rabbit created a system of taxonomy, I have no doubt that rabbits would be at the top of the scale of development. Impossible? How would you know? You can't even communicate with rabbits. Rabbits might be the most sophisticated animals species on the planet, but we would not know it because we have already dubbed ourselves the most highly developed.
Think about it. They are cute, cuddly, they love to have sex, they have no trouble finding food for themselves or shelter for their families and they can withstand any weather in any climate. Can you say that about yourself?
Before you accept our self-ordained title as the smartest, most developed and most sophisticated animal on the planet, drive to a supermarket and watch people jockeying for the parking places closest to the door, even if the space is designated for people with handicaps and they aren't. Or follow a few people down the aisles and watch how they position their carts as they gaze over goods on shelves.
Homo sapiens sapiens. Just a name. Don't take it too seriously. Other animals and plants are probably laughing at us and we don't even know it.
Among our brightest and best educated fellow humans are those who want to visit planets in other star systems. Not a single one of these people can communicate in the language of any other living things on this planet.
Yet a few of them have learned many words in human languages.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow up well balanced as well as just smart.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Homo sapiens
: The modern species of humans. Archaic forms of Homo sapiens probably evolved around 300,000 years ago or earlier in Africa, and anatomically modern fossils are known from about 100,000 years ago. All humans now living belong to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. The closest living relative of Homo sapiens is the chimpanzee. Neanderthals in Europe and Solo man in Asia are usually classed as archaic humans. Though archaic humans belong to the same species as modern humans, not all archaic groups or populations are necessarily ancestral to Homo sapiens sapiens. According to certain models of human evolution, modern humans replaced archaic populations throughout Asia and Europe after migrating out of Africa in comparatively recent times.- The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005
How wise are you if you didn't know the proper name of your own species, Homo sapiens sapiens? Don't feel insulted, there is a point here.
What does the species name mean?
Homo - Latin for man, human (the scientific name always begins with a capital letter, even if it is written as H. sapiens)
sapiens - Latin for wise (Sapiens is both singular and plural, not always plural as many assume because it ends with s)
So the human subspecies to which you belong is technically called "wise, wise man." No doubt the additional "wise" is intended as an intensifier.
It will come as no surprise to you to learn that our species name was given to us by a man (not by any other animal). The man, Carl Linnaeus, was born in southern Sweden, in 1707.
Linnaeus, botanist, zoologist and physician, is known as the father of taxonomy. That means giving names to organisms, not stuffing dead animals.
No doubt Linnaeus was wise. Those with whom he consulted in his professional and personal lives were surely wise. Or at least knowledgeable, for their time. But how wise is the species he called super-wise, across the full spectrum of people? Linnaeus lived in an environment surrounded by wise men, and presumably wise women whose wisdom was not as well recognized or acknowledged. (How wise is that?)
In reaction to a post I made on Facebook recently, which included the name of our species, a Facebook friend who lives in Rwanda, Africa, commented "hahahah homo sapiens are unwise because they think their wisdom is to kill each other,hate each other,..." Humans are, generally speaking, the only species that kills for reasons other than food or defence.
We have been known to kill for sport (think of the Beothuk, of Canada, the true "red men," who were hunted to extinction). We kill in acts of genocide, infanticide, patricide, matricide, murder and in support of our religions, our tribes and our nations. We kill, in some cases, because we are told by our leaders or commanders to kill. Let's not forget suicide, another act of killing that is almost unknown elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
How super-wise is that? Or even just wise? Despite all that killing, our species is expanding so fast that we add another billion people to the planet every few years. Human population now is five times what it was 100 years ago. How? Mostly by slowing down the rates of death from disease and childbirth.
Our ancestors adapted so well that from our genetic beginnings in east Africa (genetic Adam about 150,000 years ago, genetic Eve about 120,000 years ago--each of us can date ourselves genetically back to one or the other of them) we now populate almost every chunk of land on the planet, no matter its climate or other forms of life used for food.
No doubt we have been successful by adapting. But how many of our ancestors were actually wise enough to help their peers with these adaptations? Not many. Only after we had settled most of the world's land mass did we reproduce enough to gain the power of numbers we have today.
How many among us are wise today? We have television shows that broadcast activities some of us do that are not just dangerous, but downright stupid. Many of those acts of stupidity are scripted, planned, choreographed.
Many people today risk their lives doing things that are not just dangerous to health, but risky to their lives. All to get attention or money. Our species is unique, for certain, in that way. Wise?
Our species is especially known for its tool making and use and for its written knowledge. These are relatively recent in human history, comprising no more than 2% of the time we have existed. How many of us have actually created a tool, or could use one unknown to us previously without training with a manual or by watching others? How many of us have actually read any number of the millions of books that sit lonely in our libraries?
We have entire industries based on values that were created from nothing by people who knew how to make money by exploiting naiveté and stupidity. For example, the fashion industry that creates items of clothing that are titillating or ugly, items that may well only be worn once though they cost thousands of dollars to buy. It's not as if these could be donated to clothing collections for the poor.
We have giant pharmaceutical companies that cater to people who live unhealthy lives, selling them drugs that guarantee to keep them enslaved to drugs until they die. And giant agribusinesses that create many foods so unhealthy that they feed customers constantly to the pharmaceutical companies.
These industries are all enormously wealthy. And powerful enough that they can influence governments to create laws or regulations that allow them to function and to put those who oppose them into prison or ruin their reputations.
I am not saying these industries should not exist. I am saying their customers could hardly be called wise. We could teach people to be wiser. But we don't. How wise is that?
If a rabbit created a system of taxonomy, I have no doubt that rabbits would be at the top of the scale of development. Impossible? How would you know? You can't even communicate with rabbits. Rabbits might be the most sophisticated animals species on the planet, but we would not know it because we have already dubbed ourselves the most highly developed.
Think about it. They are cute, cuddly, they love to have sex, they have no trouble finding food for themselves or shelter for their families and they can withstand any weather in any climate. Can you say that about yourself?
Before you accept our self-ordained title as the smartest, most developed and most sophisticated animal on the planet, drive to a supermarket and watch people jockeying for the parking places closest to the door, even if the space is designated for people with handicaps and they aren't. Or follow a few people down the aisles and watch how they position their carts as they gaze over goods on shelves.
Homo sapiens sapiens. Just a name. Don't take it too seriously. Other animals and plants are probably laughing at us and we don't even know it.
Among our brightest and best educated fellow humans are those who want to visit planets in other star systems. Not a single one of these people can communicate in the language of any other living things on this planet.
Yet a few of them have learned many words in human languages.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want their children to grow up well balanced as well as just smart.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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