Friday, January 1, 2016

"GM salmon . . . [has] already shown that they . . . easily contaminate other fish populations"

The debate on food seems matched only by the fascist debate on climate. In my best Colonel Schultz voice, "You vill accept that CO2 drives up temperatures," though the evidence and trends suggest, no, prove otherwise.  Just as Global warming is forced down our throats with threats to any dissenters, a position that receives the same hostilities as that of a Holocaust denier, we are being squeezed to believe that genetically modified foods are just as healthy as the real thing. I don't know about you, but even farm-raised fish has a terrible smell. And smell and taste both are indicators of nutrient-dense foods.  Talapia is one of the worst offenders.  I have literally gotten sick and weak from eating farm-raised salmon at one off-brand store.  And when I have examined the seafood section in a Vons store in Brea, CA I get almost nauseous looking at the meat that does not teem with nutrients and benefits of omega 3s.
AquaBountya lab that genetically modifies its salmon, was very covert in its development of genetically modified salmon, eliciting a lawsuit [from] the Canadian government for producing GM salmon eggs, imported from facilities in Panama.  
 I wonder why. 
Now that the FDA has deemed GM salmon ‘safe for sale,
how will you know if your store [carries] it, [given that] the FDA does not require labeling? AquaBounty’s answer is vague.
That's an excellent question.  So now the man, the customer, the buyer of fish is being treated the same way that the city water departments treats its tax-paying residents--by feeding them a chemical agent, fluouride, without their consent.  Now, fish buyers will get the same treatment from a flourishing of genetically modified fish hatcheries or labs that sell GM salmon that requires no labeling.  How then will the customer know what he is getting--Frankenfood or the real thing?  He won't.
“It is too early to discuss commercialization plans, but there are several paths to market that are being considered,” AquaBounty spokesperson Dave Conley told Civil Eats. [1]
How about the path that satisfies the customer?  Do customers prefer their salmon to come pureed into a finely ground, watery paste?  It doesn't seem like these GM outfits really care.  They are desperate to con a public into thinking that fish doesn't have to be fish to be fish.  That fish don't have to be fished from the sea or the lake or the river to be fish. The GM boys are magicians.  And I for one want none of their magic.
Your grocery store, farmers or fish market won’t have to tell you whether or not you are purchasing GM fish. According to the “voluntary guidelines for GMO labeling” the FDA proposed when it approved the salmon last week, that decision will be left entirely up to the companies selling the fish.
Let's see, so we'll be paying for wild caught but won't know if we get farm raised, GMO, or wild caught?  Is that it?  I think the customer will become remarkably savvy.  He can point to several things about the fish to determine whether it is wild caught or not.  Generally, farm raised salmon is brighter in color from added food coloring.  The fish often smells fishy. The fishier the smell means that it is raised on farms with bad smelling GMO feed.
Stores like Costco have vowed that ‘for now’ they aren’t planning on selling the GM fish, but as Food & Water Watch assistant director Patty Lovera says, the odds that companies will disclose this information are incredibly low. In fact, she has yet to see a food company do so. “The practical effect of voluntary labeling is no labeling.”
CostCo "vows" not to sell GM fish but without labelling how will the customer know?  Does he merely rely on the promise of a large retailer?
There are a few ways to minimize the possibility of eating GM fish, though. Aside from demanding that your grocery store disclose whether or not it is selling the genetically modified variety, the country-of-origin (COOL) label required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has to say where the salmon comes from. Many retailers also label if salmon is farm-raised or wild caught.
Problem with relying on labeling is the government, i.e., the FDA, has given a pass to most food manufacturers.  Labeling is no longer required, particularly with beef.  

This makes no sense.
Though the GM salmon (supposedly grown in captivity), have already shown that they could easily contaminate other fish populations, even brown trout, if you purchase wild caught fish that is NOT grown in Panama, the chances that you’ll be eating GM fish should significantly decrease.
Out of sight, out of mind.  The salmon is all mixed in with other species of salmon--GM, wild caught, and farm-raised. 
Furthermore, if the salmon has been processed and added to other ingredients, like salmon spread or a salmon burger, it is more likely to have been grown with GM salmon.
As of today, according to Center for Food Safety analyst, Jaydee Hanson, the only commercially-grown salmon in Panama is genetically modified.
AquaBounty maintains that its GE salmon will be “traceable.”

Sources:
[1] KQED

Thursday, December 31, 2015

"WTO . . . threatened to allow Mexico and Canada to hit the U.S. with more than $1 billion in tariffs"

Given the fact that the reach of climate change politics is global, and that much of it is run by the international communists, I do not have a soft spot in my heart for the global warming agenda.  I think that it serves sinister agendas and not the ones propagandized in the media.  For a full account of my opinion on that score, please see the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.  It's excellent.  It's free.  

On the issue of labelling, I think it's important because of accountability.  I mean it makes no sense really.  Do you think that Microsoft would reject labelling or Marlboro or Nike or Chevrolet?  Hardly.  But apparently the WTO has all the muscle over all the farmers here, Mexico, and Canada.  So the next time you go to the grocery store to get your burger meat or New York steak or T-Bone you won't know if came from Guadalajara, Montreal, or Chicago beef.  Some people are okay with this.  Are you?  

from Blacklisted News.  Check it out.
Some very meaty decisions out of Washington appear to be unhealthy for consumers and the environment.
First, Congress and President Barack Obama teamed up to repeal mandatory country-of-origin labeling for pork and beef products. The labeling requirements were eliminated through an attachment to the omnibus budget bill passed by Congress and signed by Obama earlier this month.
The move was prompted by threats from the World Trade Organization (WTO), which threatened to allow Mexico and Canada to hit the U.S. with more than $1 billion in tariffs if it continued to require beef and pork labeling for foreign producers. The WTO said the labels discriminate against meat from animals raised and slaughtered outside the United States.
The labeling repeal wasn’t the only action by Congress affecting the beef industry. Lawmakers renewed a provision that prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring greenhouse gas emission reports from livestock producers, which are one of the country’s largest sources of methane and carbon dioxide. Livestock producers account for about 15% of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, more than come from automobiles.
The legislation means the U.S. government has no way of keeping track how much cattle and dairy farms are contributing to global warming. The government does collect reports from 41 other sectors of the economy, “making the meat industry the only major source of greenhouse gases in the country excluded from filing annual reports,” according to Reveal News.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
U.S. Gives Meat Producers a Pass on Climate Change Emissions (by Nathan Halverson, Center for Investigative Reporting)

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Aloe Vera and Kidney Health



"kidney failure . . . isn’t . . . noticeable until the organs lose at least 75% of their function."
Aloe vera juice is a clear liquid derived from the leaves of the Aloe barbadensis plant. Aloe vera juice contains many nutrients and displays both antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. Kidney disease has a number of causes and manifestations and sometimes ends in kidney failure if not properly remedied. Kidney failure is life threatening and a medical emergency often requiring kidney dialysis. Consult with your doctor about fluid intake and the pros and cons of aloe vera if you have kidney problems.
Aloe Vera Juice
Aloe vera is a species of succulent plant that thrives in arid climates. Juice and a gel-like substance can be derived from its leaves. Aloe vera juice is applied to external wounds because of its antiseptic and anti-inflammatory effects, but it can also be consumed internally for medicinal purposes such as combating infections, purifying the blood and mitigating gastrointestinal upset, according to the book “Medical Herbalism: The Science Principles and Practices of Herbal Medicine” by David Hoffman. Aloe vera juice contains a variety of biologically active compounds.
Medicinal Compounds
Aloe vera juice contains minerals, vitamins, sugars, enzymes, lignins, saponins and anthraquinones, all of which impact your body. According to the “Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine,” lignins allow deep penetration of tissues, saponins exhibit antimicrobial properties, anthraquinones are analgesic and combat pain and compounds called indole acetic acid and gibberellin account for the anti-inflammatory and wound healing behavior of aloe vera juice.
Kidney Disease
According to a survey published in a 2007 edition of the “Journal of the American Medical Association,” kidney disease is one of the top causes of death in the United States, affecting an estimated 13 percent of Americans. However, only one in 10 people know they have kidney failure, because the disease isn’t usually noticeable until the organs lose at least 75 percent of their function. Common symptoms of kidney failure include high blood pressure, malaise and nausea due to toxin and waste buildup in the blood, kidney pain, hormonal disruption and edema.
Aloe Vera and Kidney Disease
According to a study published in a 2004 edition of the “Indian Journal of Experimental Biology,” aloe vera extracts protected the kidneys of rats from significant degenerative effects associated with type 2 diabetes. These degenerative effects were diminished in the kidney tissue of diabetic animals given glibenclamide and aloe leaf gel and pulp extracts.
Caution

MedlinePlus warns that high doses of aloe latex have been linked to kidney failure and other serious conditions. Aloe gel or juice is the clear substance found in the inner part of the aloe leaf, whereas aloe latex is yellow and comes from just under the plant's skin. Some aloe products are made from the whole crushed leaf, so they contain both gel and latex. Consult with your primary care physician before supplementing with aloe vera products.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

"Extra fat within the abdomen can displace the stomach . . ."

I thought I would post this because I've known a few folks who've had hernia operations, and had they had this information prior to listening to their doctors they may not have gone through with the operation. Just as all surgeries weaken the tissue and organ operated on, so will hernia surgery weaken the abdomen. You don't want this, since so many functions we take for granted are under the direction of the abdomen and intestines. Think of what the diaphragm does. It regulates breathing and oxygen absorption. This is too important of a function for health. Don't take it for granted. Just because you are able to breathe and you do breathe does not necessarily mean that you're breathing to your fullest. Like everything else in your life you want high performance. It's why you seek certain foods at the grocery store or when you select certain restaurants to eat at. Don't skimp on your health and well-being either.
The points made in this slideshow are pretty good even if you don't have a hernia. I like Ayurvedic medicine. It is gentle. Ayurvedic herbs were the first ones I'd heard of to help with stress outside of the B Vitamins. Also, I'd had an Ayurvedic massage almost 12 years ago and could not believe the energy it generated throughout my body. I did go back months later for a second Ayurvedic massage but it didn't have the same effect. And the cost back then 2002 of $100 was prohibitive for me. Still, that was a great memory.

I do not know which vitamins would benefit a hernia.  I would guess that probiotics in the form of yogurt would help.  Problem is is that if you're a tough guy who has always been around construction, maintenance, lifting, or sports, you're going to find this a bit disappointing.  But maybe you could have watched out for your stomach and your intestines a little better.  Still, the video is worth the few minutes of your time.  One detail from the slideshow that caught my attention was that 27% of men get hernias, whereas only 3% of women get them.  Get that.  It's men who are doing all the lifting. I hope I am not overstating it.  And if it has no relevance to your, perhaps you can pass it on to a friend or family member who may benefit from it now . . . or later.  Obviously, I wish you the best health possible.  It's one reason why I make these posts.  Information does not hurt.  And this site is not a bad source for healthful resources.

The idea of customized and custom-fitted truss was excellent.  I could not imagine any better physical support than a bilateral hernia belt.  Find them at Amazon. These support belts will push an inguinal hernia back into its proper position in the intestinal wall.  This is a viable option if the hernia is reducible.  How can one know if it is reducible?  What are the signs of reducibility?  The hernia support belt should be fitted while standing so that it can accommodate any of the usual positions you assume in normal activity.  The truss must be specifically designed for your particular hernia rather than purchasing a generic drug store truss which may hinder circulation in the abdomen and legs.




EXERCISE YOUR ABDOMEN
To exercise your abdomen, simply lie on your back on the floor with your feet flat on the floor and your knees raised.  Keeping your shoulders on the floor, lift your buttocks and back.  Hold it for a second.  Repeat this exercise 10 times per session.

DIAPHRAGM
Tone the diaphragm.  A diaphragm too tight from stress needs relaxing.  Massage helps with this, but this exercise is also immediately beneficial, requires no appointment, and costs nothing but your time and effort.  A diaphragm with a weakened opening will require tightening.  Yoga breathing and relaxation techniques can help with both tightening and relaxation.  Not bad.

Always try diaphragmatic breathing.  The procedure is simple.  Lie down with both knees bent and feet close to the buttocks.  Feel relaxed.  Put both hands lightly on the abdomen and concentrate the attention on this area.  Now breathe in gently, pushing the abdomen up under the hands at the same time until no more air can be inhaled.  Then relax, breathing out through the mouth with an audible sighing sound and allow the abdominal wall to sink back.  The shoulders and chest should remain at rest throughout.

SMOKING
If you smoke, stop.  Nicotine weakens the muscles of the abdomen.  And chronic coughing can worsen or even cause a hernia.  

DIET
Roughage.  Eat plenty of roughage.  The slideshow depicts bread products as roughage.  I can think of more nutritious roughage.  It does state to avoid fatty and fried foods.  Hmm.  Mayb for the duration required to heal the hernia, but I would guess that fatty foods, foods with good saturated fats, would be good for you.  Fried foods I absolutely agree to avoid those.  Though they are delicious, the fried oils wreak havoc on the intestines.  Avoid foods that induce flatulence, like milk and carrots, as these can contribute to a strangulated hernia.    

Eat numerous small meals everyday rather than a few large ones.  Don't lie down or bend over within two hours of a meal.  Food gets trapped in pockets.  Avoid spicey foods, fried foods, and those that are hard to digest.  They also delay the stomach's emptying time.  Avoid hard fiber such as oats. Didn't realize that oats were hard fiber.  Compared to what?  He recommends rice.

Stay away from alcohol, caffeinated and fizzy drinks.

BED/SLEEP (5:57 minute-mark)
Raise your bed at the head end.  Don't support your head with extra pillows for this can increase pressure on the abdomen.

LIFTING & BENDING
Avoid lifting heavy weights.  If you do need to lift things, lift by bending your knees into a squatted position and lift with your legs, not with your back.

BODY WEIGHT (6:32 minute mark)
Lose weight if you are overweight.  Extra fat within the abdomen can displace the stomach, pushing it upward through the aperture in the diaphragm in the case of a hiatus hernia.  Hiatal Hernias involve the diaphragm.  Inguinal Hernia involves the groin.  Abdominal hernias occur at the abdominal wall.

CLOTHING
Avoid wearing tight clothes around your chest or abdomen.  They put pressure on the stomach.

TEAS
Herbal remedies.  1/4 cup of Aloe Vera juice in the moring and again at night. Very beneficial home remedy for hernia.

FOOD REMEDY
Rice has been shown to be beneficial for hiatus hernias.  Use buttermilk and banana and rice is a good treatment for the burning associated with a hiatus hernia.


FIND AYURVDEDIC PHYSCIANS IN THE LOS ANGELES AREA HEREHERE AND HERE.


Saturday, December 19, 2015


". . .phytochemicals stress our bodies in a way that leaves us stronger."  

". . . evidence has mounted to suggest that antioxidant vitamin supplements, long assumed to improve health, are ineffectual."

Illustration by John Hendrix
by Moises-Velasquez Manoff via Nautilus.

You probably try to exercise regularly and eat right. Perhaps you steer toward “superfoods,” fruits, nuts, and vegetables advertised as “antioxidant,” which combat the nasty effects of oxidation in our bodies. Maybe you take vitamins to protect against “free radicals,” destructive molecules that arise normally as our cells burn fuel for energy, but which may damage DNA and contribute to cancer, dementia, and the gradual meltdown we call aging.

Warding off the diseases of aging is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. But evidence has mounted to suggest that antioxidant vitamin supplements, long assumed to improve health, are ineffectual. Fruits and vegetables are indeed healthful but not necessarily because they shield you from oxidative stress. In fact, they may improve health for quite the opposite reason: They stress you.

That stress comes courtesy of trace amounts of naturally occurring pesticides and anti-grazing compounds. You already know these substances as the hot flavors in spices, the mouth-puckering tannins in wines, or the stink of Brussels sprouts. They are the antibacterials, antifungals, and grazing deterrents of the plant world. In the right amount, these slightly noxious substances, which help plants survive, may leave you stronger.
Eating food from plants that have struggled to survive toughens us up as well.
Parallel studies, meanwhile, have undercut decades-old assumptions about the dangers of free radicals. Rather than killing us, these volatile molecules, in the right amount, may improve our health. Our quest to neutralize them with antioxidant supplements may be doing more harm than good.

The idea that pro-oxidant molecules are always destructive is “oversimplified to the point of probably being wrong,” says Toren Finkel, chief of the center for molecular medicine at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. “Oxidants may be a primordial messenger of stress in our cells, and a little bit of stress, it turns out, may be good for us.”

Although far from settled, a wave of compelling science offers a remarkably holistic picture of health as a byproduct of interactions among people, plants, and the environment. Plants’ own struggle for survival— against pathogens and grazers, heat and drought—is conveyed to us, benefitting our health. This new understanding begins, in part, on a treadmill.

In the mid-20th century, as modern medicine seemed poised to vanquish the infectious diseases of yore, some scientists turned to the degenerative diseases associated with aging. Attention fell on a class of molecules called “reactive oxygen species,” or ROS. These volatile substances could damage DNA. Degenerative diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, often showed evidence of “oxidative stress,” suggesting that ROS spurred disease.

Oddly, our mitochondria, the energy factories of our cells, emitted ROS naturally. So degenerative disease seemed to stem in part from our own metabolic function: Your mitochondria “burned” fuel, emitted this toxic exhaust, and inadvertently set the limits on your existence. That was the working hypothesis, at any rate.

Experiments on rats and worms showed that reactive oxygen species, such as hydrogen peroxide, tear atoms from other molecules, destroying them in the process. That can be problematic when those molecules are DNA, our cellular instruction manual. We produce native antioxidants, such as the molecule glutathione, to counteract this pro-oxidant threat. They react with ROS, neutralizing the pro-oxidants before they can damage important cellular machinery.

When scientists blocked rodents’ ability to manufacture these protective molecules, lifespan declined. Observational studies, meanwhile, suggested that people who regularly ate vitamin-laden fruits and vegetables were healthier. So were people with higher levels of vitamins E and C in their blood.

Vitamins were strongly antioxidant in test tubes. So the ROS theory of aging and disease rose to prominence. You could slow aging, it followed, by neutralizing free radicals with antioxidant pills. A supplement industry now worth $23 billion yearly in the U.S. took root.

But if those ROS were so harmful, some scientists asked—and the basic design of our (eukaryote) cells was over 1 billion years old—why hadn’t evolution solved the ROS problem? At the same time, scientists began finding that exercise and calorie restriction increased lifespan in animals. Both elevated ROS. According to the ROS model of aging, animals that exercised and fasted should have died younger. But they lived longer.
For Michael Ristow, a researcher of energy and metabolism at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the inconsistencies became impossible to overlook. In worms, he found that neutralizing those allegedly toxic ROS reduced lifespan, so he designed a similar experiment in humans.

He had 39 male volunteers exercise regularly over several weeks; half took vitamin supplements before working out. The results, published in 2009, continue to reverberate throughout the field of exercise physiology, and beyond. Volunteers who took large doses of vitamins C and E before training failed to benefit from the workout. Their muscles didn’t become stronger; insulin sensitivity, a measure of metabolic health, didn’t improve; and increases in native antioxidants, such as glutathione, didn’t occur.

Exercise accelerates the burning of fuel by your cells. If you peer into muscles after a jog, you’ll see a relative excess of those supposedly dangerous ROS—exhaust spewed from our cellular furnaces, the mitochondria. If you examine the same muscle some time after a run, however, you’ll find those ROS gone. In their place you’ll see an abundance of native antioxidants. That’s because, post-exercise, the muscle cells respond to the oxidative stress by boosting production of native antioxidants. Those antioxidants, amped up to protect against the oxidant threat of yesterday’s exercise, now also protect against other ambient oxidant dangers.

Contrary to the ROS dogma, Ristow realized, the signal of stress conveyed by the ROS during exercise was essential to this call-and-response between mitochondria and the cells that housed them. To improve health, he figured, perhaps we shouldn’t neutralize ROS so much as increase them in a way that mimicked what happened in exercise. That would boost native antioxidants, improve insulin sensitivity, and increase overall resilience.

Ristow called this idea “mitohormesis.” The term “hormesis” came from toxicology (“mito” was for mitochondrion). It describes the observation that some exposures generally considered toxic can, in minute amounts, paradoxically improve health. For instance, minuscule quantities of X-ray radiation, a known carcinogen, increases the lifespan of various insects.
Hormesis may be most easily grasped when considering exercise. Lift too much weight or run too long, and you’ll likely tear muscle and damage tendons. But lift the right amount and run a few times a week, and your bones and muscles strengthen. The intermittent torque and strain increases bone mineralization and density. Stronger bones may better tolerate future shocks that might otherwise cause fractures.

In his experiment, Ristow saw that vitamin supplements interrupted this sequence of stress followed by fortification, probably because they neutralized the ROS signal before it could be “heard” elsewhere in the cell. By interfering in the adaptive response, vitamins prevented the strengthening that would have otherwise followed the stress of physical exertion. Antioxidant supplementation paradoxically left you weaker.
Vitamins are necessary for health. And supplements can help those who are deficient in vitamins. Insufficient vitamin C, for instance, causes scurvy, which results from defective collagen, a protein in connective tissue.

Among other functions, vitamin C aids collagen synthesis.  But the primary role of vitamins in our body, according to Ristow and others, may not be antioxidant. And the antioxidant content of fruits and veggies does not, he thinks, explain their benefits to our health. So what does?

Mark Mattson, Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, has studied how plant chemicals, or phytochemicals, affect our cells (in test tubes) for years. The assumption in the field has long been that, like vitamins, phytochemicals are directly antioxidant. But Mattson and others think they work indirectly. Much like exercise, he’s found, phytochemicals stress our bodies in a way that leaves us stronger.
Plants, Mattson explains, live a stationary life. They cannot respond to pathogens, parasites, and grazers as we might—by moving. To manage the many threats posed by mobile life, as well as heat, drought, and other environmental stresses, they’ve evolved a remarkable number of defensive chemicals.
Health doesn’t result solely from the instructions your genome contains, but your relationship with the world.
We’re familiar with many components of their arsenal. The nicotine that we so prize in tobacco slows grazing insects. Beans contain lectins, which defend against insects. Garlic’s umami-like flavor comes from allicin, a powerful antifungal. These “antifeedants” have evolved in part to dissuade would-be grazers, like us.

Mattson and his colleagues say these plant “biopesticides” work on us like hormetic stressors. Our bodies recognize them as slightly toxic, and we respond with an ancient detoxification process aimed at breaking them down and flushing them out.

Consider fresh broccoli sprouts. Like other cruciferous vegetables, they contain an antifeedant called sulforaphane. Because sulforaphane is a mild oxidant, we should, according to old ideas about the dangers of oxidants, avoid its consumption. Yet studies have shown that eating vegetables with sulforaphane reduces oxidative stress.

When sulforaphane enters your blood stream, it triggers release in your cells of a protein called Nrf2. This protein, called by some the “master regulator” of aging, then activates over 200 genes. They include genes that produce antioxidants, enzymes to metabolize toxins, proteins to flush out heavy metals, and factors that enhance tumor suppression, among other important health-promoting functions.

In theory, after encountering this humble antifeedant in your dinner, your body ends up better prepared for encounters with toxins, pro-oxidants from both outside and within your body, immune insults, and other challenges that might otherwise cause harm. By “massaging” your genome just so, sulforaphane may increase your resistance to disease.

In a study on Type 2 diabetics, broccoli-sprout powder lowered triglyceride levels. High triglycerides, a lipid, are associated with an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. Lowering abnormally elevated triglycerides may lessen the risk of these disorders. In another intervention, consuming broccoli sprout powder reduced oxidative stress in volunteers’ upper airways, likely by increasing production of native antioxidants. In theory, that might ameliorate asthmatics’ symptoms.

Elevated free radicals and oxidative stress are routinely observed in diseases like cancer and dementia. And in these instances, they probably contribute to degeneration. But they may not be the root cause of disease. According to Mattson, the primary dysfunction may have occurred earlier with, say, a creeping inability to produce native antioxidants when needed, and a lack of cellular conditioning generally.

Mattson calls this the “couch potato” problem. Absent regular hormetic stresses, including exercise and stimulation by plant antifeedants, “cells become complacent,” he says. “Their intrinsic defenses are down-regulated.” Metabolism works less efficiently. Insulin resistance sets in. We become less able to manage pro-oxidant threats. Nothing works as well as it could. And this mounting dysfunction increases the risk for a degenerative disease.

Implicit in the research is a new indictment of the Western diet. Not only do highly refined foods present tremendous caloric excess, they lack these salutary signals from the plant world—“signals that challenge,” Mattson says. Those signals might otherwise condition our cells in a way that prevents disease.

Another variant of the hormetic idea holds that our ability to receive signals from plants isn’t reactive and defensive but, in fact, proactive. We’re not protecting ourselves from biopesticides so much as sensing plants’ stress levels in our food.

Harvard scientist David Sinclair and his colleague Konrad Howitz call this xenohormesis: benefitting from the stress of others. Many phytonutrients trigger the same few cellular responses linked to longevity in eukaryotic organisms, from yeasts to humans. Years of research on Nrf2 in rodents suggest that activating this protein increases expression of hundreds of health-promoting genes, including those involved in detoxification, antioxidant production, control of inflammation, and tumor suppression.
In the dance between animals and plants, there’s true mutualism. “We’re in this together, the plants and us.”
Sinclair studies another class of native proteins, called sirtuins, associated with health. They’re triggered by exercise and also, Sinclair contends, a molecule called resveratrol, found in grape skins and other plants. “It’s too coincidental that time and time again these molecules come out of nature that have the surprising multifactorial benefit of tweaking the body just the right way,” Sinclair says.

They’re not all antifeedants, he argues. Plants churn these substances out when stressed, prompting further adaptations to the particular threat, be it drought, infestation by grazing insects, or excessive ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

For grazers, these stress compounds in plants may convey important information about environmental conditions. So grazers’ ability to “perceive” these signals, Sinclair argues, likely proved advantageous over evolutionary time. It allowed them to prepare for adversity. A grape vine stressed by fungi churns out resveratrol to fight off the infection. You drink wine made from those grapes, “sense” the harsh environmental conditions in the elevated tannins and other stress compounds, gird your own defenses, and, in theory, become more resistant to degenerative disease.

One implication is that modern agriculture, which often prevents plant stress with pesticides and ample watering, produces fruits and vegetables with weak xenohormetic signals. “I buy stressed plants,” Sinclair says. “Organic is a good start. I choose plants with lots of color because they are producing these molecules.” Some argue that xenohormesis may explain, at least in part, why the Mediterranean diet is apparently so healthful. It contains plants such as olives, olive oil, and various nuts that come from hot, dry, stressful environments. Eating food from plants that have struggled to survive toughens us up as well.

Philip Hooper, an endocrinologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, points out that plant-animal relationships are often symbiotic, and communication goes both ways. One example of direct plant-to-animal, biochemical manipulation comes from the coffee bush. Flowering plants compete with one another for the attention of pollinators, such as bees. Coffee bushes seem to gain advantage in this “marketplace” by using caffeine. The drug excites pollinators’ neurons, etching the memory of the plant’s location more deeply in their brains. Some think that biochemical tweaking increases the probability that the pollinator, which faces a panoply of flower choices, will return to that particular coffee bush.

In the dance between animals and plants, says Hooper, “I think there’s true mutualism. We’re in this together, the plants and us.”

While xenohormesis is a compelling idea, it remains unproven. Barry Halliwell, a biochemist at the National University of Singapore, and an expert on antioxidants, has seen the dietary fads, from vitamins to fiber, come and go. He says the hormetic and xenohormetic ideas are plausible, but not certain. Various studies suggest that people who consume a lot of fruits and vegetables have healthier lifestyles generally. Those people probably go easy on the junk food, which alone may improve health.
Even within the hormetic idea, Halliwell sees the attempts to bore down on the individual chemicals as problematic. “That’s worked very well in pharmacology, but it hasn’t worked at all well in nutrition,” he says. He doesn’t think any single phytonutrient will explain the apparent health-promoting benefits of fruits and veggies. “Variety seems to be good,” he says. That critique speaks to a larger problem: It’s often unclear how lab research on simple organisms or cell cultures will translate, if at all, into recommendations or therapies for genetically complex, free-living humans.

What works in genetically uniform organisms, or cells, living in highly controlled environments, does not necessarily work in people. Human studies on resveratrol in particular have yielded contradictory results. Proper dosage may be one problem, and interaction between the isolates used and particular gene variants in test subjects another. Interventions usually test one molecule, but fresh fruits and vegetables present numerous compounds at once. We may benefit most from these simultaneous exposures.

The science on the intestinal microbiota promises to further complicate the picture; our native microbes ferment phytonutrients, perhaps supplying some of the benefit of their consumption. All of which highlights the truism that Nature is hard to get in a pill.

These caveats aside, research into xenohormesis reminds us that we are not at the complete mercy of our genetic inheritance. Genes matter, but health depends in large part on having the right genes expressed at the right time—and in the right amount. If our genome is a piano, and our genes are the keys, health is the song we play on the piano. The science on hormesis, the stresses that may keep us strong, provides hints about what kind of song we should play. Keep the body conditioned with regular exercise. Keep your cells’ stress-response pathways intermittently engaged with minimally processed, plant-based food.

These recommendations end up sounding rather grandmotherly—if your grandmother was a spartan, no-nonsense peasant who lived off the land. But the underlying thrust contradicts assumptions about the need to protect oneself from hardship. Certain kinds of difficulty, it turns out, may be required for health. That’s because health doesn’t result solely from the instructions your genome contains, but from your relationship with the wider world. Resilience isn’t completely inherent to your body; it’s cultivated by outside stimuli. And some of those stimuli just happen to be mildly noxious, slightly stressful chemicals in plants.

Moises Velasquez-Manoff is a science writer and author of An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases. He lives in California.