Sunday, July 22, 2018

ANY AMOUNT OF COFFEE IN YOUR DAY STAVES OFF MORBIDITY


I know you love the taste of coffee.  If it's not the taste, then it's the memories, and to be more specific, it is the times that you drink or the people you've shared a cup with that you quietly and wordlessly enjoy the aroma, the warmth, and that special memory.  Few things in the world can produce such an effect.  But know, too, that coffee is a diuretic.  What that means is that you're going eliminate fluids from your body, fluids that contain certain health-preserving nutrients.  So it's a trade-off.  Aren't most things? 
O, Headlines!
CNBC: “Drinking as many as eight cups of coffee a day could help you live longer, study says”
Time:  “Drinking Coffee May Help You Live Longer, Study Says”
Boston Globe: “Drinking Up to 8 Cups of Coffee Per Day Might Help You Live Longer, Study Says”
South China Morning Post: “Coffee May Help You Live Longer, Even If You Drink Eight Cups a Day, New Study Shows”
Science Alert: “8 Coffees a Day Means a Longer Life Than No Coffee, According to a 10-Year Study”
The burst of reports on the benefits of coffee feels more like a campaign than a newsworthy news story.  First, they’re not health reports.  Without a context, the headlines, like all headlines, are fantastic.  They are slogans in a campaign, like “Drink coffee, live longer.”  Or “Cups of Coffee helps you live longer.”  So coffee is slowly but consistently being pitched as a health or age-defying concoction with the added benefit of a caffeine jolt that restores you to youthful energies.  The coffee industry is hopped up on its own product.  It’s salesmanship not on caffeine but on steroids.  And we’ve even heard from Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Coffee guru.  I have no doubt that if you add fat—butter or coconut oil—to your coffee that you will feel a bigger and longer-lasting boost of energy than if you drank just a cup of black coffee.  So a new report was published by the The reporting is bad that to get to the truth of what the conclusions to the actual study said is like stepping through a minefield.  Here are the findings reported at JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association
Findings  This large prospective cohort study of a half million people found inverse associations for coffee drinking with mortality, including among participants drinking 1 up to 8 or more cups per day. No differences were observed in analyses that were stratified by genetic polymorphisms affecting caffeine metabolism.
The headlines above poorly represent the details of the findings in the British study.  You need to drink 8 cups of coffee to get the benefits.  Any amount of coffee per day staves off morbidity regardless of if a person metabolizes coffee quickly or slowly.  The states that participants consumed a range of coffee from 1 to 8 cups.  So any amount of coffee that you drink each day has protective effects against morbidity.  Morbidity is illness or near-death disease.  So all that the study shows is that coffee keeps a diseased person alive longer.  So in this light, coffee is beneficial.  It gives people with states of morbidity more time.  
Conclusions and Relevance  Coffee drinking was inversely associated with mortality, including among those drinking 8 or more cups per day and those with genetic polymorphisms indicating slower or faster caffeine metabolism. These findings suggest the importance of noncaffeine constituents in the coffee-mortality association and provide further reassurance that coffee drinking can be a part of a healthy diet.
Put in this context, coffee is not the elixir that the industry is trying to make it out to be.  The anti-aging and health market is booming and it is lucrative.  Have you seen the prices of some of these high-end products?  Try finding a boutique, quality vitamin for under $50; hell, under $100.  So by positioning itself as a healthful elixir, the coffee industry is sure to gain an increase in market share of the health and health food industry.  

The article at MSNBC starts like this.  
Drinking coffee could boost your chances of a longer life, research shows, even for those who consume as many as eight cups a day. 
Note the reference to excessive coffee drinking.  Why are 8 cups a health hazard for some, while drinking a few cups evidently healthy?  Long-term coffee consumption lowers the risk of death.
In a study of around half-a-million British adults, coffee drinkers were found to have a slightly lower risk of death over a 10-year follow-up period than non-coffee drinkers.
And it doesn't matter the form of coffee, whether it's instant or brewed ground coffee.  The interesting part of the study that I liked was that benefits were experienced in folks with metabolic problems.  That's kind of powerful news.  
The apparent longevity boost comes as yet another piece of good news for coffee lovers, with health benefits recorded in drinkers of instant, ground and decaffeinated coffee. The study is also the first of its kind to suggest health benefits in people with so-called genetic glitches affecting how their bodies react to caffeine.
My one concern and one that is even noted by the study is that coffee is not the health elixir that it's being reported as.  Yes, it contains anti-oxidants.  And, yes, as a diuretic it can help to leach excessive, unbound iron in your blood.  But as a diuretic, it not only leaches unbound iron, which is a healthy function particularly in men over 40, but it also leaches vitamins B, C, and others.  If one is a regular coffee drinker, it is important to take magnesium, for coffee hardens blood vessels; the magnesium helps to relax them.  So coffee can block the metabolism of certain foods and vitamins.  Coffee is a chelator.  So if someone wants to rid themselves of excess unbound iron, coffee is not a bad way to go.  But know, too, that you'll be interfering with nutrient absorption from foods and vitamins.  
Health experts warned people should not start drinking coffee, or increasing their intake, for medical reasons. They also warned too much coffee for women during pregnancy could be harmful.
Personally, I don't trust all of the government-sponsored health organizations, like JAMA or NCI, the American Cancer Society, and others.  It's always better to go with folks who are immersed in health supplements and very specific, highly targeted nutritional compounds to treat specific conditions.  You can do your own reading and should.  Your productive life is at stake.  Plus, there is so little accountability from doctors, so their incentive to do a good, professional job.  Take your health into your own hands.  

HEALTH BENEFITS
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) used data from people taking part in a genetic study called the U.K. Biobank. The participants of that study volunteered to give blood and answer detailed health and lifestyle questions.
For the latest study, published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Internal Medicine, NCI researchers analyzed information provided by approximately 500,000 people, who answered questions about coffee consumption, smoking and drinking habits, medical history and more. 
If you're going to drink coffee, you'll need to take nutritional supplements, all of them--A, B, C, D, E, and minerals like zinc, magnesium, and a little calcium.  The reason is that coffee leaches nutrients, so be forewarned.  Bill Sardi explains this process:  
The problem of thiamin deficiency may be traced to another daily practice, the consumption of coffee, tea or beer. Many millions of people consume coffee or tea at the same time they take their morning multivitamin. What's the problem with tea or coffee? They contain tannins (bitter parts) that alter vitamin B1 and render it uselessSulfite preservatives, as found in wine, are another antagonist to B1. Alcohol also interferes with B1 absorption. In fact, about 30-80% of alcohol users have low circulating levels of B1. The lesson here is not to take vitamin B1 pills with coffee, tea or alcohol. 
Another author, SFGate, argues the same point. 
Coffee, tea, cola and other caffeine-containing drinks and foods have a mildly diuretic effect on your body. Moderate consumption of caffeine should present no problem for people with well-balanced diets that supply all the nutrients their bodies need to function properly. However, because B vitamins are water soluble and are flushed out of the body through excretion, heavy caffeine users may need to supplement with B-complex vitamins to compensate for nutrients lost through diuresis. Naturopathic doctor Linda Page, author of “Healthy Healing,” says excessive caffeine consumption hits your body’s stores of thiamine particularly hard. 

Preceding those remarks, the SFGate author explains that 
B vitamins play a key role in converting the foods you eat into energy, but unhealthy diet choices, too much stress and certain drugs can rob you of their vital benefits. Although they are available in wide array of animal- and plant-based foods, B vitamins are water soluble and cannot be stored in body tissue. As a consequence, you must renew your supply each day and avoid the forces that can rapidly deplete them from your body. 
A poor diet AND caffeine strip your body of these important nutrients.  So you'll want to ask yourself, how can coffee, a diuretic that leaches key nutrients from your body also extend life?  

Saturday, July 21, 2018

CALORIE-RESTRICTED DIET . . . DOUBLES THE LIFESPAN AND HEALTHSPAN

Hope springs eternal.
The Washington Times reports that scientists were able to reverse the graying of hair on mice and smooth the wrinkles of the same critter.  And with this result, it is advanced that the treatment will work on humans.  Maybe.  Good luck bringing this to market.  
Science has made mice look good by reversing age-related wrinkles and hair loss at the genetic level. Humanity could get a similar make-over in the future.
They introduced a specific gene mutation on a test mouse, which prompted a change in profound appearance. Within four weeks, the mouse had developed wrinkled skin and extensive, visible hair loss. When regular function was restored within the gene by turning off the culprit mutation, the mouse returned to a previous life of smooth skin and luxurious fur only two months later — deemed “indistinguishable” from a healthy mouse of the same age.
“To our knowledge, this observation is unprecedented,” said Keshav Singh, a professor of genetics who led the study.
“This mouse model should provide an unprecedented opportunity for the development of preventive and therapeutic drug development strategies to augment the mitochondrial functions for the treatment of aging-associated skin and hair pathology and other human diseases in which mitochondrial dysfunction plays a significant role,” Mr. Singh said in a statement.
Wrinkled skin and hair loss are hallmarks of aging. What if they could be reversed?” asked researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — who appear to have accomplished that feat, according to the research team. 
Oh, I see.  So what we've learned, then, is that to reverse aging one needs to repair the mitochondrial function.  But we already have that capability.  And for a little pushback on the study cited above, let it be known that the most important concern when it comes to reversing aging is not gene mutation, as was conducted in the experiment, but "rather the dynamic ability of genes to make proteins."
While gene mutations only account for ~2% of all disease, most chronic age-related disease doesn’t involve faults in gene structure but rather the dynamic ability of genes to make proteins (called gene expression or gene silencing) which is referred to as epigenetics.  
Sardi adds that
. . . inherited gene mutations may be inevitable and produce single-gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell, muscular dystrophy or Huntington’s disease.  But aging and its accompanying diseases (diabetes, arthritis, cancer, heart, brain and liver disease) are modifiable. 
I'll add two more points by Sardi on an anti-aging compound.
The diet, namely a calorie-restricted diet, practiced daily or intermittently, doubles the lifespan and healthspan [my emphasis] of lower forms of life (fruit flies, roundworms, and mice).  Or a molecular mimic (i.e. anti-aging pill) may target the same genes as food deprivation and provide a shortcut to allay the ravages of aging.   
. . .  
In other words, what would taken a lifetime to achieve in a laboratory mouse was exceeded by 9-fold in just 12 weeks.  Eighty-two percent (82%) of the same 832 longevity genes were switched in the same direction (on or off) as a limited calorie diet by the resveratrol matrix (Longevinex®), which is a commercially available nutraceutical.  That is the closest anyone has come to a molecular mimic of a calorie-restricted diet. 
But get Sardi's Longevinex.  It's one of the few Resveratrol products that's actually been tested.  

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

CHIN-UP / PULL-UP BARS: KNOW THE STRESS WEIGHTS & HOW LONG THEY LAST


My main concern with using these chin-up/pull-up bars over the door is one, that the unit will mark up the wall, which the presenter affirms in this video at the 2:15 mark. Two, I don't want any unit to damage any structure of the door and its frame.  And three, I don't want the unit itself to come apart or exposing a weak stress point from overuse.  All it takes is one story to make you cautious about using these portable fitness units.  

The key consideration when buying a chin-up/pull-up bar is to know how much weight they can hold.  

I personally learned from a friend of an incident where he was using an in-home dip equipment that looked more like an old man's walker, but it was an effective dip station.  Least that's what I thought when I tried it.  But about a year later, he had an incident where the station collapsed on him and he fell onto to the floor with full weight distributed directly on the knees.  Ouch.  So, find out what the weight limits are.  Find out how long they last.  If it's two years, at least you're better off knowing that than not; you can take precautions.  Makes no sense to be working out, building muscle, gaining strength only to get an injury from using the station.  Particularly, on a dip rack, some folks will do different kinds of exercises if space permits.  Some will dip with their legs bent.  Some will do leg lifts.  Just be aware of the kinds of movement that your station will allow.   The newer models, like the one seen below, seem to be constructed with safety in mind.  The one here almost looks like it's a one-piece.  It isn't.  They come in several pieces that require assembly.  

The price on these chin-up/pull-up bars is reasonable.  Price alone shouldn't be everything when you're considering your physical health.  Be sure the station is safe, functional, and know its stress weights before you buy it.  The product description for the dip station above says that it supports 350 lbs.  Is that enough?  If you doing leg lifts on it, is the 350-pound stress test exactly what you need?  Write to the owner.  Check it out. 

EXERCISE PREVENTS AND TREATS MUSCULOSKELETAL INJURIES

NEIL THANEDAR: IS THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT [ACTUALLY] THERE?


The Tom Woods Show notes.
Labdoor.com.  Find out which supplements are best, where they rank, and their effectiveness.  
Here is Neil Thanedar's Twitter page.  Find his blog here.  Consumers value transparency where transparency breeds trust, and so companies are responding to this trend.  
Labels don't tell you that there's lead in the product.  FDA's testing system is reactive.  
FDA tests pharmaceuticals for safety and effectiveness. 
FDA tests for neither safety nor effectiveness of nutritional supplements.
There’s no mercury.  Found products where the probiotics actually died and less than 1% of the probiotics were still IN the product.  
11:43.  Neil Thanedar asks THE pertinent question:
Is the active ingredient there?
Lots of categories of products have lied.  
Fish oils say its’s1000mgs actually 800mgs
No lead, arsenic. 
Protein powder says 20 grams of protein when there’s only 5 or 10 grams per scoop. 

Worked with companies to do failure analysis or recall investigations and product development.  Spent a lot of time reverse engineering products.  That’s a service to those businesses.  It hit him rather than work with one company at a time, could he scale it up?  And tell people what products they should buy before they come in the store.  
Products that are failing?  @ 14-minute mark:
We've seen herbal supplements where the company is just lying.  There's no active ingredient, zero active ingredients in the product.  This is crazy.  It's literally just a sugar pill.  And then even worse than that we've found some of those products because they're just a sugar pill will have a bacteria on top of that.  So they have no active ingredient and they have the contamination.  So many categories . . . right?  Fish oil has those problems where the product can go rancid. 
Shelf-life issue.  How long did the mfg let it sit in the warehouse before it was shipped?  Everyone defers to expiration dates.  Protein powder had lead and arsenic contamination--2 or 3 scoops.  Accumulation of heavy metals.  Creatine is the same way.  If you're going to take a product every single day.  The difference between high and low-quality product can make a big difference.  
He trusted bigger brands when he started.  
No correlation between price and quality or brand and quality.  It comes down to a specific day or product to someone delivering a 
How many companies actually make their own product?  Amazon or Alibaba, they buy it from someone else, put their label on it, and sell their product on Amazon.  A white label relationship or changing someone's label?  Bigger risk of counterfeit product in the latter case.  Don't know where the products are coming from.  The final company doesn't know and they often don't care. 
Gov't holds a press conference.  Everyone attends, and they get the word out.  
How does Neil work? 
He uses the press too.  Do you know what's really in your supplements?
No one is doing this product testing.  Who is going to do it?  Turns out that it is him.  
FDA doesn't overpromise.  People have a lazy assumption on testing.  There is this general sense that our safety is being looked after.  The realization that no one is actually doing this and do something about it is astounding.  
21:35.  The system isn't really built for consumer awareness or education.  It's built to reduce liability.    

Dr. Barry Sears' Omega 3's are pretty good.  His claim is
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