HEARING VOICES IS A SIGN OF A WELL-TUNED BRAIN

If you start to hear voices, don't worry.  That's the sound of a well-organized brain say researchers from Durham, England.  Many folks will hear voices at night as they lie their head down to go to bed.  While others hear voices throughout the day, but these episodes are sporadic and fleeting.  It is not a sign of a mental illness.  In fact, "it’s a clue that a person’s brain is simply well-tuned to many sounds."

DURHAM, England — Hearing voices may not be a sign of mental illness as much as it’s a clue that a person’s brain is simply well-tuned to many sounds. A new study finds that healthy people who hear voices have differently-wired brains that find speech patterns in other sounds.

Researchers from Durham University studied brain-response differences between two groups of people — those who have experienced hearing voices (auditory verbal hallucinations) and those who have never mistaken other sounds for speech. Participants in the study included 17 people with typical responses to sounds and 12 people who have experienced hearing voices, but do not have any mental health problems.

Can hearing voices be a good thing? A new study finds that people who are not mentally ill, but often hear speech in sounds may actually have a special skill that comes from having a differently-wired brain than the rest of us.

Participants underwent an MRI brain scan while listening to hidden speech sounds, known as sine-wave speech. Sine-wave speech to the untrained ear would sound something like birdsong or alien-type noises. Typically, people are able to make out these sounds only after they have been clued in to listen for them or taught to decode the hidden speech sounds. After people are trained, though, they can detect simple sentences within the sounds, such as “The clown had a funny face.”

Researchers found that less than half of those with typical listening skills noticed the hidden speech while 75 percent of the voice-hearers picked it up.

“It suggests that the brains of people who hear voices are particularly tuned to meaning in sounds,” says lead author Dr. Ben Alderson-Day in a university release.

Researchers were surprised that the voice-hearers had such strong neural responses to the sounds with hidden speech. Even before being told to listen for hidden speech, voice-hearers reported hearing the voices in the sounds. They found speech-like sounds faster and more easily than those who have never experienced the phenomenon of hearing voices.

“We did not tell the participants that the ambiguous sounds could contain speech before they were scanned, or ask them to try to understand the sounds. Nonetheless, these participants showed distinct neural responses to sounds containing disguised speech, as compared to sounds that were meaningless,” adds co-author Dr. Cesar Lima.

The authors believe this shows that the brains of voice-hearers are more perceptive to the hidden meanings in sounds. The areas of the brain that control attention were quickly activated in the brains of voice-hearers when they were exposed to hidden speech compared to when they were listening to vague sounds.

“These findings are a demonstration of what we can learn from people who hear voices that are not distressing or problematic,” says Alderson-Day.

Between 5 and 15 percent of the population has occasionally had the experience of hearing voices. Although not everyone who hears voices has a mental health problem, it is commonly associated with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Researchers hope their findings could someday help scientists and clinicians find better ways to help those who are troubled by the voices they hear.

Be sure to protect your brain nonetheless.

PATIENTS DYING IN CORRIDORS OF BRITAIN'S SOCIALIZED HEALTH SYSTEM

h/t Robert Wenzel @ EconomicPolicyJournal

By George Pickering

“Patients dying in hospital corridors.” So went the headline which appeared on the BBC’s website last week, detailing the newest outrages which have emerged from Britain’s crisis-beset healthcare system. This most recent revelation came as a result of an open letter sent to the prime minister by 68 senior doctors, offering details of the inhuman conditions which have become common in the National Health Service’s hospitals.

The letter, which collected statistics from NHS hospitals in England and Wales, found that in December alone over 300,000 patients were

made to wait in emergency rooms for more than four hours before being seen, with thousands more suffering long waits in ambulances before even being allowed into the emergency room. The letter further noted that it had become “routine” for patients to be left on gurneys in corridors for as long as 12 hours before being offered proper beds, with many of them eventually being put into makeshift wards hastily constructed in side-rooms. In addition to this, it was revealed that around 120 patients per day are being attended to in corridors and waiting rooms, with many being made to undergo humiliating treatments in the public areas of hospitals, and some even dying prematurely as a result. One patient reported that, having gone to the emergency room with a gynecological problem which had left her in severe pain and bleeding, a lack of treatment rooms led hospital staff to examine her in a busy corridor, in full view of other patients.

While it’s tempting to believe that these extreme cases must be a rare occurrence, the fact is that such horror stories have become increasingly the norm for a socialised healthcare system that seems to be in a permanent state of crisis. Indeed, as the NHS entered the first week of 2018, over 97% of its trusts in England were reporting levels of overcrowding so severe as to be “unsafe.”

Almost as predictable as the regular emergence of new stories of this kind is the equally unwavering refusal of British commentators to consider that the state-run monopoly structure of the system itself might be to blame. Many, including the prime minister herself, have pointed to the spike in seasonal illnesses such as the flu at this time of year, to distract from the more fundamental flaws of the system. However, officials from Public Health England recently went so far as to openly dismiss this as a major cause of the current healthcare crisis, clarifying that current levels of hospital admissions due to the flu are “certainly not unprecedented.” The aging of the population, and local councils’ failure to provide more non-hospital care have also been blamed.

By far the most commonly suggested remedy, however, is simply to inject more taxpayers’ money into this failing system. Indeed, the belief that Britain’s perpetual healthcare crisis is solely the result of funding cuts by miserly Conservative politicians is so widespread that it is almost never challenged, least of all by the trusted experts within the system itself, many of whom stand to benefit from increased funding.

However, the popular caricature of the NHS as suffering from chronic underfunding is simply a myth. In fact, even when adjusting for inflation, it is clear that government funding to the NHS has been increasing at an extraordinary rate since the turn of the millennium, much more quickly than during the early years which its supporters look back on so fondly.

Indeed, under the Conservative government of 2015–16, almost 30% of Britain’s public services budget was spent on its monopoly healthcare system, compared with around 11% in the NHS’s first decade.

One commonly heard soundbite from supporters of the current system is that the Conservatives have allowed healthcare spending to slump to historically low levels; all it would take to return the NHS to the levels of success it supposedly previously enjoyed would be to increase its funding back to the same level it previously enjoyed, or so they say.  However, to believe such a statement one would have to make two separate misinterpretations of the statistics, both so basic that they would strike shame into even the dullest high school math students: firstly, it is not the absolute amount of spending on the NHS which has fallen under the Conservative-led governments of 2010–18, but merely the rate at which spending is continuing to increase, even when adjusting for inflation. Second, the only reason that the rate of increase seems to have fallen is because of how disproportionately high it had been been under the infamously spendthrift Labour governments of 1997–2010.

Not only is the NHS not underfunded, but it suffers from dismally low efficiency in terms of healthcare bang per buck compared with similarly developed countries. This suggests that no matter how much its funding is increased, the current set-up is prone to chronically waste that money away.

To overcome these problems, reforms to the fundamental nature of the system itself are desperately needed, to increase the economic freedom of healthcare providers in the UK as well as the freedom of choice of consumers. In short, as long as British healthcare is organised as a taxpayer-funded state monopoly it will continue to fail, just as the other nationalised monopolies of the 1970s failed. To get to a point where the British public would even consider reforms of that kind, however, would require the breaking of a taboo that has defined the past 70 years of British politics.

George Pickering is the Almoayyad Fellow in Residence at the Mises Institute this summer, and is a student of economic history at the London School of Economics.

The above originally appeared at Mises.org.

CANADIAN WAIT TIME TO SEE A NEUROLOGIST: 4.5 YEARS

Canadian Health Care is "Free" But Rationed by Long Wait Times, e.g., a 4.5 YEAR estimated wait time to see a neurologist in Ontario! #Insanity pic.twitter.com/UHljzjvhNX

— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) January 21, 2018

STATE LICENSURE: "IF YOU CONTROL WHO PRACTICES THE PROFESSION, YOU CONTROL HOW IT'S PRACTICED"

h/t Steve Bartin

Wow!  At the 7:10 mark, Anahad O'Connor's NYT's September 12, 2016 article on how the sugar industry shifted the blame on bad health to fat.  They paid off researchers to downplay the link between sugar and heart disease.  According to Greg Glassman, owner of CrossFit, says that the ACSM, American College of Sports Medicine, has influential ties to Coca Cola who has influence on university studies and reports about the "not so bad" effects of sugar or transfer the culprit on heart disease to fat.  

"MRI REVEALED SURGEON HAD LEFT A SCALPEL IN [ARMY VETERAN'S] ABDOMEN 4 YEARS EARLIER"

I find this to be absolutely incredible.  What, the surgeon completes an exhaustive surgery, leaves a scalpel in someone's gut, turns and walks to wash up after telling his staff to "Okay, stitch him up"?  Is that how it went down?  

Some surgeries are necessary, no doubt.  But I wonder how many you could avoid if you maintained a broad spectrum of vital nutrient compounds, day after day, meal after meal?  I wonder.  Check out what happened to veteran, Glen Turner, and then check out the products at the bottom of this post.  Thanks for reading.

HARTFORD, Conn. - An Army veteran says an MRI revealed that a surgeon had left a scalpel in his abdomen four years earlier.

Glenford Turner, 61, of Bridgeport, went to the West Haven VA with abdominal pain last April when the surprising discovery was made, according to his lawyer. Turner required surgery to remove the scalpel, and last week filed suit against the Veterans Administration.

"Xrays revealed the presence of an abandoned scalpel inside Mr. Turner's body. Doctors confirmed that is was the scalpel knife used during Turner's radical prostatectomy - performed four years earlier at the West Haven VA," attorney Joel Faxon of New Haven said in a statement Monday announcing the lawsuit.

Administrators at the VA Connecticut Healthcare's West Haven campus could not be reached Monday, which was a federal holiday.

In the lawsuit, Turner says he underwent a robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy at the West Haven VA on Aug. 30, 2013. He returned to the VA hospital on March 29, 2017, for an MRI after complaining of dizziness and long-term abdominal pain, Faxon said.

"The imaging study was abruptly halted when Mr. Turner began to experience severe, worsened abdominal pain," and subsequent X-rays revealed the scalpel, Faxon said.

The instrument was removed in an operation in April 2017.

Faxon described the incident as "an incomprehensible level of incompetence." The suit seeks unspecified compensatory damages, and claims Turner suffered pain, additional surgery, hospitalization, prolonged rehabilitation, medical expenses and lost work time.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut called the allegations "egregious" and said he's asking the VA for a detailed explanation of what happened.

Visit The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) at www.courant.com

Stay healthy, my friends with these and this. 

TOXINS IN WATER SUPPLIES ARE ASSESSED INDIVIDUALLY, NOT IN TOTAL AND NOT OVER A LIFETIME

A friend of mine loves to complain about how the free market allows bad players and profit-seeking outfits to do whatever they please with regard to their product or service and hide much of the truth about these through clever advertisement or outright omission.  This is a fact of life, and one reason why online journalists are a source of valuable facts and information.  I try.  But the free market also makes us smarter.  We learn pretty quick what is good, bad, and absolutely ugly.  And once we know, we can abstain from a product or a service or even a person.  This is the virtue of a free market--it makes consumers smarter.  

Take water, for example.  We drink bottled water to avoid excess copper or rust or chlorine.  Or so we think.  Until we learn that municipal water supplies in one city are bottled and shipped for sale in other cities without batting an eye at the contaminants in the water.  People learn.  We adjust.  Sometimes too late, after we get sick, not Montezuma's Revenge sick, but a low-grade health sick, like fatigue.  And only to find out later that some other chemical has found its nefarious way into our water supply.  Find ways of shortening that learning curve.  But we need water as toxic as it might be.  There are remedies, however, that I point to below, ones that comes from the premiere nutritional compound guy, Bill Sardi.  But first, this report by Matt Agorist from Natural Blaze.  

We've known about the deliberate and legal poisoning of the water supply by cities and counties with flouride, but radioactive isotopes?  That's new.  Government agencies cooking the books?  That's not new.  But it seems that all reports about heavy chemicals in the water are problematic since the reports tend to focus on a single chemical and fail to look at the accumulative effect from decades of a combination of metals.  However, this fact is not overlooked by Bill Sardi.

ACCUMULATED/COMBINED HAZARD OVER TIME  

However, one of the problems with assessment of toxins in drinking water supplies is that they are considered individually, not in total, and not over a lifetime.

Metallic mineral accumulation can produce adverse effects in biology.  For example, the accumulation of chromium VI in plants has been shown to inhibit the production of chlorophyll. [Chemosphere Oct 2000] 

The accumulated heavy metals burden (chromium, cadmium, lead and arsenic) in drinking water in Bangladesh exceeds safe limits. [Environmental Nanotechnology, Monitoring & Management May 2016]  One study in Pakistan reveals chromium VI sample of 1.313 milligrams per liter of water but total of all minerals tested (cadmium, lead, nickel, zinc, iron, copper and chromium VI) amounted to 4.214 milligrams per liter. [Journal Pharmaceutical Sciences & Research 2015] 

Some heavy metals can be stored in organs like the liver and brain where they accumulate and wreak havoc later in life.  Chromium VI accumulates in all organs in laboratory mice. [Toxicological Profile for Chromium] 

The combined accumulation of heavy metals (antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, cerium, chromium, cobalt, copper, gallium, gold, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, platinum, silver, tellurium, thallium, tin, uranium, vanadium, and zinc, 23 total) in the human body over time is a cause for concern.  [Interdisciplinary Toxicology June 2014; International Journal Physical Sciences 2007]

Fish consumption is the greatest contributor to total heavy metal accumulation in the human body.  [International Research Journal Public Environmental Health July 2014]

Most heavy metals accumulate in the liver, kidney and gills of fish where they can cause functional disturbances. [Soil & Water Pollution Monitoring 2006]  

In fact, the gradual lifetime accumulation of metallic minerals after full growth is achieved in males and with the cessation of menstruation in females is postulated the chief accelerator of aging itself. [Knowledge of Health; Longevinex.com; Resveratrol News]  

Bottom line, the potential health hazard posed by chromium VI in drinking water is overstated.  The total accumulated metallic mineral load over a lifetime needs to be considered in the maintenance of human health.  It is best for adults to include mineral controlling molecules in their diets and food supplements to slow or reverse aging.  Some food supplements provide an array of these metal chelators. [Longevinex]

It is funny how most of us believe that much of what we take to be the free market in groceries and food is literally killing us, and government is the faithful handmaiden in seeing this result brought to its fruition.  

By Matt Agorist from the Natural Blaze.  

h/t Lew Rockwell

Matt Agorist alerts us to a damning report that effects 170 million Americans.

A damning report from the Environmental Working Group has just revealed that drinking water for more than 170 million Americans in all 50 states contains radioactive elements that are shown to cause cancer. Not only does the report expose the deadly levels of radiation but it also shows that officials have been actively covering it up.

The investigations looked at tests from 22,000 utilities in all 50 states between 2010 to 2015.  He points out that only a small percentage of water supplies exceeded toxic levels, but that their standards or legal radiation limits are "more than 40 years old."  So, what, he's calling for government upgrades?  Good luck.  The tests, however, when measurd by the more stringent standards set in Caliornia back in 2006 that "nearly 100 percent of tested water supplies failed," making places like "Flint, Michigan look like child’s play."  

Omitting what the percentage is, Matt Agorist acknowledges that “Most radioactive elements in tap water come from natural sources, but that doesn’t take away the need to protect people through stronger standards and better water treatment,” said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG’s senior science advisor for children’s environmental health."  I am not saying that this is not serious, but maybe there are bigger fish to fry, particularly when I read in the very next paragraph that "The problem is only getting worse, too."  How can it get worse than radiation?  When it comes to political appointees, which regrettably is what his article to turns to.  Politics, which is so fashionable these days, effectively discredits his message.  

EWG reports, the government has long kown about this problem and has covered it up by fudging the numbers. Now, one of the people who admitted to fudging the numbers has just been nominated to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, or CEQ. 

The nominee, Kathleen Hartnett White, admitted in a 2011 investigation by Houston’s KHOU-TV that if utility tests found radiation levels over the EPA limit, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would subtract the test’s margin of error to make it appear the water met federal standards. In some cases, this meant that Texans whose tap water posed the extraordinarily elevated lifetime cancer risk of 1 in 400 were not informed of the danger.

So, what, Argonist's article is about government incompetence?  Okay, then what is the solution?  You got it: a different government appointment. 

AGORIST CHASES POLITICS; DROPS HEALTH CONCERNS              Matt Agorist's concern is less about radiation or water contaminants than it is about partisan appointees.  And that all we need to do is rely on a more effective federal government agent, and certainly not one who seems to have political connections, to fix the problem for us 170 million Americans.  But has government ever been a solution to any of our problems?  There was Erin Brokovich who found poisonous contaminants in Hinkley, California's water supply.  There is the ongoing, rarely-to-be-challenged fluoride medicated water in municipal supplies across the country.  There is an issue with lead, with Chromium VI, and others.  Perhaps if we were to grade government protection or monitoring of our water supply, it would earn an epic fail.  But which chemical is the most toxic and the one we should look to avoid against all others?  Chlorine, according to Bill Sardi.  

Is tap water safe to drink?  Well, yes, kinda.  Tap water has measured levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, nickel, other heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, and other industrial chemicals including perchlorate (rocket fuel). In fact, analysis of 59 small streams in the U.S. found the anti-diabetic drug metformin in almost all of them even though only trace amounts were found. [Daily Mail UK Oct 3, 2016]

One of the most toxic chemicals known, chlorine, is added to water to kill off pathogenic bacteria, fungi and amoeba.  Without chlorinated water, diseases like dysentery, cholera and typhoid ran rampant in populations.  Water chlorination is one of the great advances in public hygiene.  However, chlorinated water does increase the lifetime risk of developing bladder and rectal cancer, where it pools into greater concentrations. [Scientific American]

And there is this, "Long-term exposure to chlorinated drinking water (30-40 years) increases the risk of colon cancer."

Water is important, no doubt.  In fact, when it comes to colon cancer, water is decisive in fending off that disease.  

Drinking water reduces the risk of colon cancer in men. Men who consume the most water have a 92% lower risk of rectal cancer compared to men who drink less water.

Drink water, but avoid chlorine, long-term consumption of chlorine.  As to Chromium VI and chlorine, there are nutritional remedies--vitamin C, N-acetyl cysteine, reserveratrol, and garlic.  Include these in your diet.  

The major dietary antioxidant that counters chromium VI toxicity is vitamin C.  Vitamin C reduces 90% of the oxidative threat posed by chromium VI.  [Carcinogenesis 1992]  The published reports validating the effectiveness of vitamin C in reduction of abolishment of DNA damage caused by chromium VI is abundant. [Environmental Health PerspectivesSept 1994; Journal Applied Toxicology Nov 2005;Molecular Medicine Reports July 2013]

N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), available as a dietary supplement, is well established as an antidote to chromium VI poisoning. [Journal Pharmaceutical Biomedical Analysis Jan 2016; PLoS One Sept 2014; Free Radical Medicine Biology Dec 2013]

The red wine molecule resveratrol is also cited as a molecule that protects against chromium VI toxicity by activation of internal enzymatic antioxidants in the body (glutathione, catalase, superoxide dismutase). [Toxicology Applied Pharmacology 2016]

Garlic ingestion is an well-documented approach to negating the toxic effects of chromium VI. [Journal Basic Clinical Physiology & Pharmacology 2009; Journal Applied Toxicology Oct 2008]  The key molecule in garlic is allicin [International Journal Environmental Research Public Health Sept 2008], which is easily destroyed by stomach acid unless a garlic clove is crushed prior to ingestion allowing an enzyme (alliinase) to yield allicin, or by consumption of a unique alkalinized garlic pill that assuredly produces allicin. [Garlinex]

ESTROGEN REPLACEMENT, NOT CALCIUM SUPPLEMENTS, DESCREASES OSTEOPOROSIS BONE FRACTURES BY 25% to 50%.

Opinion: Can your hip replacement kill you? https://t.co/4DIQApdHrL

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 13, 2018

Metal to bone, even in dentistry or especially in dentistry, can be horrific.  So why not take care now to stem the tide on that prospect?  Fewer and fewer things are inevitable in this world thanks to science.  It is true that a hip replacement can save a life.  And can keep people productive and active.  I don't really know.  I know only one person who has had a hip replacement.  Check out Stephen Tower's experience with his hip replacement done in 2006.

When Stephen Tower’s right hip gave out in 2006, he asked his surgeon to implant an artificial one — specifically, a metal-on-metal hip called the ASR XL, made by Johnson &Johnson. He knew what he was talking about: As an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Tower specializes in complex hip replacements. But what he knew wasn’t enough to protect him from a defect in the device.Five years after his surgery, and in excruciating pain, Dr. Tower underwent more surgery, this time to have the device replaced.

When the surgeon sliced into his hip, what he saw looked like a crankcase full of dirty oil. Tissue surrounding the hip was black. Cobalt leaking from the ASR hip had caused a condition called metallosis, destroying not only local muscle, tendons and ligaments, but harming Dr. Tower’s heart and brain as well. 

That can't be good.  So to avoid this problem down the line, be sure to keep your bones strong.  But with what?  Calcium?  Hardly, particularly for post-menopausal women.  This fact made me blink

Strangely, modern medicine acts as if it is baffled and dumbfounded when it is commonly reported that arteries calcify at a rate that correlates with loss of calcium from bone. This is called the "calcification paradox." There is no paradox, except in the minds of ill-informed physicians.

Wow.  As our limbs grow thinner and we lose bone, the calcium does not exit the body; it only transfers to our arteries, hardening them.  Ouch.  But there is an antidote for this: vitamin D3.

From that same Bill Sardi article, he writes

Estrogen sends a signal for calcium to be held in bones. Without that signal, calcium slowly exits bone and is deposited in arteries. The risk for heart disease rises by 360% with the onset of menopause. Calcium released from bone is deposited in arteries, which causes loss of elasticity, inability to control blood pressure, and eventual blood clots or calcium plaque that can block a coronary artery that feeds the heart oxygen. This arterial blockage is called a heart attack.

The point is that post-menopausal women do not want to be supplementing with calcium.  Instead, supplement with estrogen. 

Calcium supplementation in menopause is futile. Studies do show calcium supplementation helps to slow down the loss of calcium from bone, but there is no gain in bone density. On a net sum basis, calcium is still being lost from bone.

Why don't women simply replace estrogen? 

The answer to the above question is that women have literally been frightened away from estrogen replacement without adequate scientific evidence. This is despite the fact that estrogen replacement decreases the incidence of osteoporotic bone fractures by 25% to 50%.  Instead, doctors now prescribe alternate medications to inhibit bone loss (Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel) which produce abhorrent side effects such as esophageal erosion, stomach irritation and even jaw-bone damage.

Hormone replacement therapy reduces bone turnover, increases bone mineral density (BMD), and decreases vertebral fracture rates by approximately 40%, even in women over 70 years of age.

It will come as a surprise to learn that abandonment of hormone replacement therapy in 2002 was a false alarm. Investigators were recently surprised by the "enormous discrepancy they found between the belief that hormones are dangerous and the lack of supporting data."

BREAD, RICE, PASTA, CEREAL INCREASE RISK OF DEATH BY 28%; DIETS HIGHER IN FAT REDUCE MORTAL RISK BY 23%

Let's start with a stunning statement.

And now the final blow–the carbohydrate-rich diet that became the nation’s food guideline, leads to an early death.  As I write this column today a newly published study carried this news headline: “Death by Carbohydrates.” Yes, higher carbohydrate intake (bread, rice, pasta, cereal) increases the risk for death by 28% while diets higher in fat reduce mortal risk by 23%.

So if you eat breakfast cereal or toast with your bacon and eggs, pasta or rice for dinner on a daily basis, you're raising your risk of death by 28%?  Ouch. 

I eat rice.  On occasion.  As of late, on more than one occasion.

I don't eat breakfast cereal.  Who needs the added sugar?  But nor do I eat shredded wheat.

I don't eat pasta any more, but I do eat sandwiches.  Boy, do I eat sandwiches.  I hate this.  There are days, perhaps too many days, where I rush and am not able to prepare a meal at home.  So I eat out.  It is almost impossible to find healthy solutions on the go.  Maybe, just maybe a Whole Foods kale salad, but there isn't really a Whole Foods store in your immediate vicinity.  

So the path to health, the path to life is to get rid of breakfast cereals, rice, pasta, and bread from your home.  Don't quibble.  Just do it.  There are excellent substitutes.  Ground up greens.  Not to a pulp but shred it to the size of rice.  

Okay, now let's take a look at the rest of Sardi's article, titled "Mind Bending Drugs for Psycho Diets."

It's this "higher carbohydrate intake [of] bread, rice, pasta, cereal" that Sardi calls the American diet.  The statistic above illustrates how this American diet increases death by 28%.  But before you get there, you'll suffer from some terribly debilitating conditions--depression, forgetfulness, overweight (maybe obesity), fatigue, and other ailments--that reduce your productivity and your life to levels of mediocrity only public high schools are familiar with.  

When we're young, we're not taught to think about our diet.  As kids, whatever our parents put in front of us we would eat . . . more or less.  And when we're independent, we eat what our parents weened us on--pizza, spaghetti, oatmeal, bacon and eggs, soft drinks, milk.  In short, we did as we were wordlessly told.  As young men and women, the effects of this American diet did not immediately register.  We're going along.  We're moving along.  We were making progress.  Until we're hit with something.  That's when the accumulative effect of a psycho diet works its destruction.  Actually, before some event, for the havoc that this American diet reeks on our minds is the whole point of Sardi's article.  It destroys the gut and the mind.  So decision-making is hazardous.  Uncertainty raises stress.  Life can be a ride and a hell.  Sardi explains

There is such a thing as a mental depression diet.  It’s called the American diet.  In response, physicians hand out anti-depressant pills making patients dependent on these pills for the remainder of their lives when their calorie-rich/nutrient poor diet is causing their problems.  Where does depression/anxiety emanate from? Not the brain but the intestines, what is now called the gut-brain axis.  In a misdirection, mood-altering drugs directly target neurotransmitters in the brain.

Then there is this

Altered gut bacteria early in life, particularly from over-use of antibiotics that literally sterilize the gut, and modern sugar-laden carbohydrate-rich diets by virtue of their generation of low-grade chronic inflammation, increase the risk for a depressed mood and eventually losing one’s mind later in life.

There is a whole class of antidepressant drugs called serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s) that increase serotonin levels in the brain.  Gut bacteria (microbiota) control serotonin.  The SSRI fluoxetine (Prozac) is itself an antibiotic that kills gut bacteria.

So the depression/anxiety emanates from the gut-brain axis in the intestines.  And antibiotics kill gut bacteria.  Let this be a lesson to those who don't know this.  If you put your aging mom or dad in the hospital, and the idiot doctor wants to put her on a regimen of antibiotic IV, something "harmless" until they can run more tests, know that you're unwittingly be coerced into being an accomplice in your father or mother's death.  And see how that will sit you with for the next 5 years. What's my point?  Stay away from doctor-prescribed antibiotics.  The only antibiotic you should take is nature's powerul antibiotic, garlic.  

Therefore, that should be the first place to consider.  Be careful what you put in your gut.  The goal is to use foods that build a healthy brain.

In particular, high blood levels of an undesirable blood protein called homocysteine, are associated with mental decline, depression and other brain disorders (B vitamins are the antidote for this).

The diet is loaded with natural antidepressants – for example, blueberries, grapes, pomegranates.  Many of these anti-depressant fruits and vegetables contain molecules like quercetin, catechin and resveratrol that control homocysteine and bind to iron and copper, major culprits in the onset of age-related brain disease and depression.

Okay, so avoid bread, pasta, rice, and cereals, and replace them with phytonutrients found in fruits and vegetables.  Could it be any simpler?  

Keep reading.  

Be sure to check out Sardi's list at the end of where he points you everso specifically to effective nutritional remedies.  

THE OPPOSITE OF ADDICTION IS NOT SOBRIETY; THE OPPOSITE OF ADDICTION IS CONNECTION

A MUST-LISTEN INTERVIEW ON ADDICTION

Interview is from Tom Woods Show.

Here are my notes . . . 

Anslinger was riding the fear of Latinos, a lot of parallels of today, “If you smoke cannabis you will murder your family with an axe.”  This was the reason why cannabis was banned.  

90% of crack and heroin users do not become addicted, leaving 10% or less of those who do use these drugs become addicted.  

Chemical hooks theory.  Patients recovering from serious injuries are put on heroin drugs in hospitals but they never get addicted.  If heroin is addictive, why are these folks not getting addicted?  The chemical hooks theory took place following a lab experiment with a rat.  A rat was placed in a cage with two cups–one with water only, the other laced with heroin.  Placed all by itself, the rat almost always preferred the heroin-laced water.  It’s not the drug that causes addiction, it’s the isolation.  Rat Park: lots of colored balls, other rats, lots of sex.  In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water.  They don’t use it very much.  In the 1970s, scientists came along and pointed out that you put the rat all alone in an empty cage, where it’s got nothing to do except use these drugs, what would happen if we did this differently?  So he built a cage that he called Rat Park. 

The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection.  Places where addiction is highest is where suffering is highest.  Not a coincidence that the current addiction crisis spiked after 2008.  Core of addiction is trying to avoid pain, trying not to be present in your life.  Fundamental errors in the war on drugs.  One solution is to get rid of the drugs.  Can’t do that; they even appear in prisons.  If you could do that, that’s not the core of the problem.  War on Drugs says you stop addiction by inflicting more pain on addicts.  He gives the example of a woman in prison in Arizona where she is humiliated.  Stopping addiciton by afflicting more punishment on them.  Punishment makes suffering worse, and therefore makes addiction worse. 

Here is 

 

And here is

Marcia Powell, 48, was baked in 106-degree heat for 4 hours under Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a disciple of Harry Anslinger.  A woman cooked in a cage in Arizona kept getting arrested.  Judged by the courts to be mentally incompetent.  She was trying to kill herself, and the guards to stop her from doing that put her in an outdoor cage.  Exposed to the desert sun.  Prison guards said they forgot about her.  She screamed, she begged for water, and by the time they called for an ambulance, she had been cooked.  No one was ever criminally punished for what happened to Marcia Powell.  Because when you dehumanize someone with an addiction problem so deeply, you can brazenly murder someone with an addiction problem and it just doesn’t matter, it doesn’t get counted.  

To remedy a few addictions, see Bill Sardi's list:

Myricetin, a molecule from the Asian raisin tree, has been shown to block the cell receptor in the brain responsible for addiction to alcohol.

One of Myricetin's benefits is indicated in Alzheimer's.  Interesting.

Researchers at UCLA tested various molecules and found one that magnanimously blocked the cell (GABA) receptor on the surface of brain cells that produces alcohol craving.  [Acta Pharmacologica Sinica Aug 2014; Neurochemical Research June 2014]

N-acetyl cysteine, a sulfur compound, has been shown to reduce behavioral addictions such as gambling and physical addictions such as smoking. [Journal Clinical Psychiatry Jan 2014]

Zinc supplementation may be beneficial for those individuals who are hooked on opoid drugs (Fentanyl, morphine, Oxycontin, etc.). [Substance Abuse Treatment Prevention Policy Aug 4, 2015]

Carvacrol from oil of oregano is effective in beating back fungal overgrowth (Candida species) that creates sugar craving. [European Journal Clinical Microbiology Infectious Disease Jan 2011]

Zinc and magnesium may be helpful in reducing nicotine addiction among heavy smokers. [Addiction Research & Therapy 2012]