"If you force the world's hungry to forego GMO foods because you think they're Frankenfoods, then you are the monster."


h/t Robert Wenzel @ TargetLiberty

GMOs are Frankenfood? 

The most tested products in agricultural history.  They're no riskier than any conventional plant technique.  GMOs could save the world.  End Vitamin A deficiency.  Much bigger yields.  Save biological diversity.  But if you force the world's hunger to do the same, you are the monster.

“If for humanitarian reasons we wish to help people fleeing persecution, there is still no need to release them into the general population of susceptible individuals."

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, is criticizing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for allowing refugees to enter the United States without screening and treatment for latent tuberculosis.

Seven of the agency’s own public health experts said such screening and treatment “would potentially save millions of dollars and contribute to United States TB elimination goals” in a research article published in December.

“Admitting people who might cause an epidemic makes no sense whatsoever from a public health standpoint,” Orient tells Breitbart News.

“It suggests that those who favor it do not care about the cost in suffering, death, and expense to Americans,” Orient says, adding she agrees with the public health experts currently or formerly employed at the CDC who concluded that screening of refugees for latent tuberculosis and successful treatment of those who test positive for the disease prior to their entry into the country is the proper public health policy for the United States.

Keep reading . . .

"In Science it's not a sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it." 

Fluoridation toxicity has already been established.  What's required now is to fight, to lead a letter-writing campaign against each municipal that allows it in its water.

Fluoride is an endocrine disrupter.  Has an adnormal affect on endocrine functions.  Fluoride disrupts thyroid function.

Fluoride in your water violates our rights to abstain from any treatment.  You know this already.  This documentary does a good job of presenting the argument that you're already familiar with.  Enjoy.

h/t Lew Rockwell

Busy Person = Better Brain

From the UK's Independent's Will Worley.

Busy people may have better-functioning brains in old age than those who are less busy, scientists have suggested.

A healthily busy lifestyle is associated with improved cognitive function, the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study found, particularly when it comes to working memory, reasoning and vocabulary. 

However, the scientists were not able to say if the heightened brain function is caused by being busy, or vice versa. 

A total of 330 volunteers aged between 50 and 89 filled in questionnaires for the project, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. The volunteers also completed a series of neuropsychological tests which measured their cognitive performance. 

Denise Park, the director of the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, said she was surprised at how little research had been carried out on the subject, given that being too busy "seems to be a fact of modern life for so many".

And while the research was not affected by an individual’s level of education and age, Ms Park said that a link had been discovered between busy lifestyles and superior processing speed of the brain, working memory, reasoning and vocabulary.

In particular, there was a strong association between busyness and memory - specifically, the ability to remember certain events in the past.

Sara Festini, lead author of the study, said: "We show that people who report greater levels of daily busyness tend to have better cognition, especially with regard to memory for recently learned information."

However, the results also raised further questions – such as whether being busy improves cognitive function or if people with heightened neurological characteristics simply tend to be busier people. 

The researchers hypothesised another possibility: That busier people, by the nature of their lifestyles, have more opportunities to learn through the wider variety of situations they find themselves in, which results in stimulating cognition. 

"Living a busy lifestyle appears beneficial for mental function, although additional experimental work is needed to determine if manipulations of busyness have the same effect," said Dr Festini.

While being overly busy can lead to conditions like chronic stress, other experts have supported the claim that a healthy level of busyness can also be important for mental health. Doctors often instruct patients with depression to keep busy to try to distract themselves from their condition.

Clinical psychotherapist Dr Nikki Webber told Medical Daily: “Isolation is a leading contributing factor to depression and leading a busy lifestyle can offer more opportunities to connect to others, which many people underestimate the need for.”

"Fasting is a challenge to your brain."

Love this quote, "Humans live on one-quarter of what they eat.  On the other three quarters live their doctor." 
 Dr. Mark Mattson above explains the benefits not only to your overall health but also to brain health of fasting.  Huh.  Who would have thought?

In almost all things established in politics, economics, history, and whatnot, what I love most is questioning conventional wisdom.  This presentation does just that.  

The presentation begins by questioning the conventional wisdom of eating three meals plus one or two snacks a day.  One, who set this regimen?  And two, who benefits financially?  To answer the second question I would think that the food industry benefits, no?  I mean wouldn't it get people addicted to, well, food, all kinds of food from snacks to cereals to fruits even vegetables?  And even if one is not addicted to the foods, they can easily be keyed into the oversold benefits of different kinds of foods and be thinking about food, about getting to the grocery store, about preparing and cooking their next meal which if done three times a day including snacks is only minutes away.  

Why is it that the normal diet is three meals a day plus snacks? It isn’t that it’s the healthiest eating pattern, now that’s my opinion but I think there is a lot of evidence to support that.  There are a lot of pressures to have that eating pattern, there’s a lot of money involved. The food industry—are they going to make money from skipping breakfast like I did today? No, they’re going to lose money. If people fast, the food industry loses money.  What about the pharmaceutical industries? What if people do some intermittent fasting, exercise periodically and are very healthy, is the pharmaceutical industry going to make any money on healthy people?  

That should be an eye-opener.  Do you really need those three meals plus snacks?  Hmm.  Maybe.  I know that Barry Sears' Zone Diet recommends three meals, light but functional meals mind you (and who also understands calorie restrictions--hence, the smaller sized meals), plus two snacks in his diet.  I should I know.  I studied it and followed it religiously until all the benefits, at least for me, plateaued.  But I still observe many aspects of his Zone Diet.  I still try to keep my hormones in balance with a low protein profile, a higher healthy fat content, and vegetable enzymes to break proteins down and enhance digestion. 

One of the key points that Dr. Mattson makes above is that "fasting twice a week could significantly lower the risk of developing both Parkinson’s   and Alzheimer’s disease."  Okay, this should stand out as news to anyone, I mean anyone concerned about their long-term health. I wonder if one of the reasons that people who are very ill or injured tend to eat less or don't want to eat at all.  And folks who are healthier tell them, "Well, you've got to eat."  Ah, no, I don't. 

The benefits of fasting to the brain are impressive.

Fasting does good things for the brain, and this is evident by all of the beneficial neurochemical changes that happen in the brain when we fast. It also improves cognitive function, increases neurotrophic factors, increases stress resistance, and reduces inflammation.

Fasting is a challenge to your brain, and your brain responds to that challenge by adapting stress response pathways which help your brain cope with stress and risk for disease. The same changes that occur in the brain during fasting mimic the changes that occur with regular exercise. They both increase the production of protein in the brain (neurotrophic factors), which in turn promotes the growth of neurons, the connection between neurons, and the strength of synapses.

Challenges to your brain, whether it’s intermittent fasting [or] vigorous exercise . . . is cognitive challenges. When this happens neuro-circuits are activated, levels of neurotrophic factors increase, that promotes the growth of neurons [and] the formation and strengthening of synapses. . . .

Fasting can also stimulate the production of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus. He also mentions ketones (an energy source for neurons), and how fasting stimulates the production of ketones and that it may also increase the number of mitochondria in neurons. Fasting also increases the number of mitochondria in nerve cells; this comes as a result of the neurons adapting to the stress of fasting (by producing more mitochondria).

By increasing the number of mitochondria in the neurons, the ability for nerons to form and maintain the connections between each other also increases, thereby improving learning and memory ability.

Intermittent fasting enhances the ability of nerve cells to repair DNA.  

Remarkable. 

Think about what this means.  You eat less you'll do better following an illness and injury.  Eat less.  A lot less.  And when you do eat, eat functional foods.  Think bone broth for recovery.  

Mattson refers to Upton Sinclair's essay, called The Fasting Cure.  Give a read.