DRIVING MORE THAN 2 HOURS/DAY . . . LOWERS IQ, ESPECIALLY IN MIDDLE-AGED DRIVERS

Okay, the New York Post has this article running, which was picked up by Drudge.  And anyone who has ever driven for a living--Uber, taxi, CDL, or long commutes in your own car or as a courier--these guys know all about how driving long periods of time destroys health.  Now there's proof.  Actually, there's always been proof, just that . . . well, you get the picture.  Bad for your health, but also bad for your brain.  Not good!

        Spending a lot of time driving may actually put your brain in reverse.

Not good.  Why?  How bad is it?  It's bad.  

A new British study found that spending more than two hours a day behind the wheel steadily lowers IQ, especially in middle-aged drivers, according to the Sunday Times of London.

Talk about a dagger through my heart.  What's the remedy?  Move. Movement. Exercise.  Get up off your heiny.

Driving is physically and mentally sedentary and can cause stress and fatigue, all factors in brain decline, experts told the newspaper.

“Staying mentally and physically active helps keep our brains healthy, so it is not surprising,” researcher Rosa Sancho said.

CHONDROITIN SULFATE REVERSES HEART DAMAGE

"heart and blood vessel disease could be reversed and prevented with natural molecules, particularly chondroitin sulfate."

I started this blog as a way to learn how through food to maximize daily intake of nutrients.  I did so because I thought that all of the claims about supplements were hype, and that too much of the supplement ingredients were either synthetics and substitutes and not something particularly nutritionally valuable.  But I was wrong.  It doesn't mean that my original intention to learn about how to maximize my daily nutritional profile was wrong.  On the contrary.  But there are just too many factors that play a role in getting the best nutrition you can.  

One is age.  I am over 50 now and my body is not producing certain fluids or hormones that I did when I was 22.  Stomach acid, meaning Hydrochloric Acid, is less.  That means that digestion is reduced.  And absorption of nutrients also declines.  What's the answer?  If nutrient absorption is a problem, it can't be easily or readily resolved simply by eating more or doubling down on the servings of carrots or broccoli for example.  We've got to account for calories.  And it should be known by now, for anyone who's read nutritional literature at all over the last 20 years, that calorie restriction is one of the main paths to living longer.  Now these paths toward life extension are not the same paths toward looking good or doing well. Something else or something other is required for that.  So how does one proceed? Well, to repair the first problem of absorption a few things should be considered.  One is betaine hydrochloride.  Zinc Carnosine also works.  But there is a single product that perhaps resolves low stomach acid as well as a host of other gastro-intestinal issues.  And that product is Garligest.  

Okay, so there is one problem solved or at least managed with a great deal of effectiveness and satisfaction. 

What else? 

Well, it depends.  It depends if you're a woman, a man, a woman of 32 or a man of 91.  It depends if you live in Toronto or in Los Angeles.  So lots of things to consider.  Having said that, you can check this list to see what kind of deficiencies that might need correction for you.  You'll notice that I am not recommending food choices in this article; instead, I am recommending supplements as advised by Bill Sardi.  I just think that these products do better.  

Several months ago I read up on zinc and could not believe what is it is capable of doing and how a zinc deficiency can wreak havoc on so many parts of our biology.  See here and here.  It's that latter article where I learned of Abram Hoffer, M.D. Ph.D and his use of zinc in his Vitamin C cancer treatments.  Linus Pauling is the guy who is most noted for observing the positive benefits of Vitamin C on cancer.  The irony is that Pauling didn't have the success that Hoffer did, the doctor who added zinc and other nutrients to his Vitamin C treatments.  So zinc is important. It helps regrow the Thymus Gland.  So there's that.  But it also helps with blood vessels: all of them--capillaries, veins, and arteries.  So take zinc.  I tried zinc acetate early last year and my chest swelled with vigor and health.  I thought "Is that the zinc that's doing that?"  Turns out yes!  For zinc repairs the Thymus gland which sits right in front of the heart.  

Vitamin C is excellent when you're under stress. 

Vitamin D should be taken everyday.

Vitamin E is excellent for blood vessels. 

The preferred form of Selenium is Seleno Excell.

Want to stave off Alzheimer's disease and keep your brain from shrinking?  First, stay off anti-depressants and take the fat soluble B1, Thiamine, called Benfotiamine.

Chondroitin Sulfate repairs heart tissue following a heart attack, stroke, or ischemic event.  See Dr. Lester Morrison's excellent efforts in that regard. And that's Chondroitin Sulfate, divorced from Glucosamine.  Bill Sardi tags Morrison as "The Man Who Cured Heart Disease Naturally."  And as one of the most astute and specific writers, Bill Sardi does not use words lightly.  Sardi writes

His name: Dr. Lester Morrison.

His qualifications: Director and Research Professor, Institute for Arteriosclerosis Research, Loma Linda University, School of Medicine.

Author: Coronary Heart Disease and the Mucopolysaccharides (1974, Charles C. Thomas)

In 1982 Dr. Morrison wrote: "I am Lester Morrison MD, and I have been a doctor for over 50 years. Much of that time has been devoted to finding a way to stop heart disease, which killed my mother, my father and several other members of my family and remains the number one killer in the U.S. and other developed countries."

Dr. Morrison provided compelling evidence in the 1960s that heart and blood vessel disease could be reversed and prevented with natural molecules, particularly chondroitin sulfate. This was over 20 years prior to the advent of the first cholesterol-reducing statin drug, Mevacor (1987).

Dr. Morrison writes that his ideas involving heart disease went back as far as 1942. He first began is his research using natural molecules to heal damaged hearts and arteries.

Dr. Morrison’s research was published in no less than 8 different medical journals. He began his studies in the 1940s, working with choline, a natural component of lecithin.

Here are the results (below) of an early study published in the American Heart Journal. Lecithin was later to become an important component in Dr. Morrison’s Heart Saver Program. (Dr. Morrison’s book for the lay public by this title can still be purchased.)

Comparison of Survival Rates: Choline (Lecithin) Patients with coronary thrombosis (blood clots in the heart) after 3 years 115 patients Deaths with choline 115 patients Deaths without choline 14 35 Source: American Heart Journal, July—August, p. 729, 1949
He later conceived of the idea that gelatinous material, then known as mucopolysaccharides, today known as glycosaminoglycans, could heal damaged hearts and arteries. His work involved chondroitin sulfate, a molecule that is a normal component of the connective tissue in the body. Dr. Morrison calls it "the glue of life."

He noted that chondroitin is the "coronary artery’s first line of defense against invasion by foreign substances," such as cholesterol, bacteria and tumor cells. Chondroitin contributes to the elasticity of the blood vessels.  

I find this stuff fascinating if for no other reason than this healing mechanism was known when my parents got married way back in the 1940s.  And yet people are trying to figure out what works, what doesn't, and what causes the greatest risks.  It's known already.  For heart muscle, take Chondroitin Sulfate.  

Find Chondroitin Sulfate here. 

Food is certainly more pleasurable.  But due to stress at work, environmental stresses, biological stresses, or stress of any kind, if we are running deficiencies it seems to me prudent to supplement with something more than an extra serving of broccoli.

Prolotherapy Treats Low Back Pain

 A little about Dr. Thomas Dorman, MD.

Thomas Dorman, M.D., of the Paracelsus Clinic in Federal Way, Washington, died unexpectedly on March 10, 2009, my birthday. He was 72. A most articulate individualist and patriot, Tom was born in British Kenya, where his father was a coffee merchant and during WWII helped supply travel documents for Jews escaping the Nazis. When communist Jomo Kenyatta came to power, the family moved to Israel, where Tom attended high school and later served in a parachute regiment during the 1967 war. Tom went to college in Liverpool and medical school in Edinburgh, and practiced in Canada before moving to America.

He had a newsletter, called Fact, Fiction and Fraud in Modern Medicine.  Unable to find his newsletters archived except for one or two.  Here's one on colonics.   

What follows are my notes from the interview below: 

1837, the idea of provoking scarring to strengthen tissue arose from a famous Parisian surgeon named Valpo.  This was taken over to America in the 1920s and 1930s.  The first article on prolotherapy, then called sclero -therapy, was published in 1936 by Earl Gedney of Philadelphia.  Learned by the Osteopaths.  Came into the medical arena in the 1950s by George Hacket who coined prolotherapy: Growth and treatment, a positive concept.   

h/t Lew Rockwell

He knew how to treat musculoskeletal conditions.  He learned too that

It has to do with nutrition.  His practice is entirely holistic.  He uses nutrition and prolotherapy.  

Who is a candidate?  He doesn't like the word candidate.  The people who benefit are people who've not benefitted from chiropractors.  He loves chiropractors.  Shocking that the medical industry isn't interested in this. 

Ask a physician what a pelvis does and the typical answer is that it's a birth canal and it's a device for hanging on muscles and ligaments.  That's a wrong answer.  

The right answer is the pelvis is a mechanical transducer of the forces of locomotion.  The human being when healthy is more efficient than any other creature, much more efficient than a horse or a dog or . . . .  We learned from the mechanics of he pelvis why it is that people are subject to this.  Typical scenario is a person who has a fall sometime later his back goes out by which he means his sudden accession/ascension pain from an unexpected movement he's very often deformed in posture and in severe pain that can be corrected manually.  But when it keep recurring, the ligaments are weakened and by prolotherapy we provoke restrengthening.  This is how these people are cured.  People can be turned around so that people's back won't go out anymore?  Absolutely. 

Cure back pain?  That's what he means.  9 out of 10 people when diagnosed are either cured or 70% improved.  These numbers are confirmed time and again.  Functionally back to normal with nominal pain.  

Typical

8 treatments cure a very large man after 2 months.  He'd been a delivery man and he was able to go back to work.  The guy was big and gave Dr. Dorman a very big hug.  It was embarrassing.  The man, filled with gratitude, was crying.

UPDATE:  There was a follow-up to Lew's post from Dr. Gary North here:

Writes Gary North:

Lew:

I sent my wife to Dornam in 2000. She was having terrible hip pain. He cured her through one weekly injection for ten weeks.

The same injections were used by another physician in 1983 to help her with her almost immobile arm.  They also helped me with my lower back pain 30 years ago.

The simple treatment was developed by Dr. Milne Ongley of Australia, who also treated my wife in 1983.  The AMA did not approve.  No more back surgeries! He is still treating patients In Mexico.

I find this stuff fascinating. 

VITAMIN B3, NIACIN

"One of the most potent forms of vitamin B3 stops the aging process of organs"

Having grown up active and sport-minded, looking to drugs or medicines to enhance one's ability was the greatest offense to tenacity and talent I'd ever known. And though into middle age, I can still bring a game of basketball even to youngsters; I am grateful, however, to the value of restorative medicine that comes in a pill, er, capsule.  Vitamin E is remarkable for wound healing.  I witnessed this first-hand with a cut on the back of my hand.  I cut open the E capsule and squeezed its contents onto my hand and in two days the wound had almost healed.  Incredible.  Truly.  

Then I learned of E's internal benefits.  It improves circulation and heals vessels and organs internally.  To what degree, how much is needed, whether it repairs all organs and vessels is hard to know . . . at least for me since I am no doctor. 

Then I leaned of B17's anti-cancer effects.  

Then I learned of zinc's ability to regrow the Thymus, the master gland of our immunity that sits right behind the heart.  You can learn all sorts of things on the internet!

Now I read about the power of B3.  What can it do?  Stop organs from aging.  Seriously.  What doses, what form of B3 is required has yet to be known, but I would definitely give this a try at least. 

HealthySustainableLiving has this to say: 

One of the most potent forms of vitamin B3 stops the aging process of organs and can only be described as restorative. Nicotinamide riboside is naturally produced in our bodies and studies continue to validate its effectiveness in preventing disease and regenerating cells.

When I read that I thought, okay, prove it.  I've heard terrific things about Nitric Oxide too as well as Benfotiamine.  Anytime distinctions are made concerning prevailing wisdom, either to debunk or illuminate I am all for. HealthySustainableLiving offers this in its review of the study.   

B3 is one of eight B vitamins. It is also known as niacin (nicotinic acid) and has 2 other forms, niacinamide (nicotinamide) and inositol hexanicotinate, which have different effects from niacin.

B Vitamins are good for us.  We all know this.  But what forms of B do we get on a daily basis through our food or supplement industry?  Do you know?  Not everyone does.  

An earlier study reviewed at Cell.com involved researchers at Harvard University and the University of NSW, Sydney. Published in the scientific journal Cell, the landmark paper was one of the first to provide valuable insights into Nicotinamide's brain performance and anti-aging.

Okay, now that's promising.  Nicotinamide provides enhanced brain function as well as anti-aging abilities.  Nicotinamide riboside is a chemical precursor to B3.  

Nicotinamide riboside is naturally produced in our bodies. It’s a chemical compound which acts as a precursor to vitamin B3.

WHY THE FUSS OVER NICOTINAMIDE RIBOSIDE?

Here's why.  

Nicotinamide riboside has been linked to a number of surprising and powerful benefits. Foods high in Nicotinamide include Brewer's Yeast, Sunflower Seeds, Raw Peanuts and Beets. Interestingly Beet Juice & Yeast have been shown to have remarkable cancer killing attributes. Possibly due to the sugars in the beets causing a beneficial form of fermentation to occur with the B vitamins in the Brewer's Yeast.

Read the rest of the article below.

Now a team of researchers at EPFL's Laboratory of Integrated Systems Physiology (LISP), headed by Johan Auwerx, has unveiled even more of its secrets. An article written by Hongbo Zhang, a PhD student on the team, published in Science and describes the positive effects of NR on the functioning of stem cells. These effects can only be described as restorative.

As mice, like all mammals, age, the regenerative capacity of certain organs (such as the liver and kidneys) and muscles (including the heart) diminishes. Their ability to repair them following an injury is also affected. This leads to many of the disorders typical of aging.

Mitochondria: also useful in stem cells

Hongbo Zhang wanted to understand how the regeneration process deteriorated with age. To do so, he teamed up with colleagues from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and universities in Canada and Brazil. Through the use of several markers, he was able to identify the molecular chain that regulates how mitochondria -- the "powerhouse" of the cell -- function and how they change with age. The role that mitochondria play in metabolism has already been amply demonstrated, "but we were able to show for the first time that their ability to function properly was important for stem cells," said Auwerx.

Under normal conditions, these stem cells, reacting to signals sent by the body, regenerate damaged organs by producing new specific cells. At least in young bodies. "We demonstrated that fatigue in stem cells was one of the main causes of poor regeneration or even degeneration in certain tissues or organs," said Hongbo Zhang.

This is why the researchers wanted to "revitalize" stem cells in the muscles of elderly mice. And they did so by precisely targeting the molecules that help the mitochondria to function properly. "We gave nicotinamide riboside to 2-year-old mice, which is an advanced age for them," said the researcher. "This substance, which is close to vitamin B3, is a precursor of NAD+, a molecule that plays a key role in mitochondrial activity. And our results are extremely promising: muscular regeneration is much better in mice that received NR, and they lived longer than the mice that didn't get it."

Scientists have long used NAD+ as a powerful anti-aging tool. While trying to find a cure for aging, scientists increased the levels of NAD+ within the mitochondria. The mitochondria responded by increasing their performance and energy, which effectively neutralizes the effects of aging.

Specifically, nicotinamide riboside effectively delays early- and late-stage disease progression, by robustly inducing mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle and brown adipose tissue, preventing mitochondrial ultrastructure abnormalities and [mitochondrial DNA] deletion formation.

A breakthrough for regenerative medicine

Parallel studies have revealed a comparable effect on stem cells of the brain and skin. "This work could have very important implications in the field of regenerative medicine," said Auwerx. "We are not talking about introducing foreign substances into the body but rather restoring the body's ability to repair itself with a product that can be taken with food." This work on the aging process also has potential for treating diseases that can affect--and be fatal--in young people, like muscular dystrophy (myopathy).

So far, no negative side effects have been observed following the use of NR, even at high doses. But caution remains the byword when it comes to this elixir of youth: it appears to boost the functioning of all cells, which could include pathological ones. Further in-depth studies are required.

Further reading here and here.

"The free market is a system of cost-cutting through mass production."

from Gary North . . .

 

The free market is a system of cost-cutting through mass production. Profits rise as costs fall and prices fall. The difference is volume.

The most famous model is Henry Ford's auto assembly system. Now it has come to medicine a century after it came to auto manufacturing.

A friend of mine had knee replacement surgery three years ago. 

The physician said it would take 81 minutes. It did . . . exactly. That means that the operation was capable of being mass produced. One man did five a day.

[One doctor completed five gall bladder surgeries a day.] Each surgery cost the patients many thousands of dollars.

Anything this routine can be routinized even more.

This is coming to a hospital near you. Medicare will force it by cutting payments to physicians for routine surgery. Heart bypass surgery is routine.

After about 20 years of assembly line surgery will come the next step: robots--just like in the auto industry. It may not take that long.