Videos:

1. ‘NO WITNESS CHECK’ Jim Jordan Dr0p Hammer on Biden’s aide after FOOLISH request at hearing (START @ 4:47)

2. ‘You Refer To Yourself As A Professor’: Dan Bishop Grills Stanford Prof On Free Speech Threats (5:22)

3. Kat Cammack Is Stunned By Democratic Witness’s Response At Weaponization Committee Hearing (4:58)

4. ‘YOU MADE FBI POLITICAL’ Watch Josh Hawley UNLEASH HELL on Merrick Garland For His Attack on Parents (10:57)

5. ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU FIRE HER’ Matt Gaetz BRUTALLY DEMOLISH Biden Witness For RIDICULOUS ‘Racist Hire’ (11:36)

6. Elena Interview 

Can olives help guard against dementia?

Goethe University (Germany), March 30, 2023

The Mediterranean diet has been heralded as a boon to health and as effective protection against a variety of maladies, including dementia. A new study looks at the ability of a very specific part of the diet — the olive — to protect against neurological symptoms like memory loss.

As percentage of the Mediterranean diet in terms of mass and volume, olives are likely well below other important foods like beans, greens and tomatoes. But olives are a common food item throughout Southern Europe, and scientists at Goethe University Frankfurt, in Germany, believe nutritional components inside the fruit may prevent or even reverse Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

“We found changes to the power houses of nerve cells (mitochondria), which change early on in Alzheimer’s disease,” explained Gunter Eckert, a food chemist and lecturer at the Goethe. “The most active compounds should then demonstrate in a mouse model of the disease that they can improve brain function.”

“We are tested the hypothesis that certain polyphenols from olives slow down disease processes in the brain, improve mitochondrial dysfunction and, as a result, provide evidence to suggest they protect against Alzheimer’s disease,” Eckert said.

Previous work has shown a correlation between olive oil consumption and diminished rates of dementia.

“Extra-virgin olive oil-derived oleocanthal associated with the consumption of Mediterranean diet has the potential to reduce the risk of AD or related neurodegenerative dementias,” a report concluded.

Study finds centenarians possess unique immunity that helps them achieve exceptional longevity

Boston University School of Medicine & Tufts Medical Center, March 31, 2023

There are approximately 30 trillion cells in a human body and our health is predicated on them properly interacting with and supporting each other, with the immune system playing a particularly pivotal role. One of the defining characteristics of aging is a decline in the proper functioning of our immune system. Centenarians, a rare population of individuals who reach 100 years or more, experience delays in aging-related diseases and mortality which suggests their immune systems remain functional into extreme old age.

Led by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine and Tufts Medical Center, a new study finds centenarians harbor distinct immune cell type composition and activity and possess highly functional immune systems that have successfully adapted to a history of sickness allowing for exceptional longevity. These immune cells may help identify important mechanisms to recover from disease and promote longevity.

“Our data support the hypothesis that centenarians have protective factors that enable to recover from disease and reach extreme old ages,” said lead author Tanya Karagiannis, Ph.D., at Tufts Medical Center.

“We assembled and analyzed what is, to our knowledge, the largest single-cell dataset of centenarian subjects that allowed us to define unique features of this population that support the identification of molecular and lifestyle factors contributing to their longevity,” explained senior author Stefano Monti, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine at the School of Medicine.

To identify immune-specific patterns of aging and extreme human longevity, the researchers performed single cell sequencing on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs)—a broad category of immune cells circulating in the blood—taken from seven centenarians enrolled in the New England Centenarian Study, one of the largest studies of long-lived individuals in North America.

Their analysis confirms observations made in previous studies of aging and identifies novel cell type-specific compositional and transcriptional changes that are unique to centenarians and reflect normal immune response.

According to the researchers, when people are exposed to infections and recover from them, their immune system learns to adapt, but this ability to respond declines as we age.

“The immune profiles that we observed in the centenarians confirms a long history of exposure to infections and capacity to recover from them and provide support to the hypothesis that centenarians are enriched for protective factors that increase their ability to recover from infections,” said senior author Paola Sebastiani, Ph.D., at Tufts Medical Center.

The researchers believe these findings provide a foundation to investigate mechanisms of immune resilience likely contributing to extreme longevity as a target for healthy aging therapeutics. “Centenarians, and their exceptional longevity, provide a ‘blueprint’ for how we might live more productive, healthful lives. We hope to continue to learn everything we can about resilience against disease and the extension of one’s health span.

Can yoga help those experiencing depression, anxiety or PTSD?

University of North Carolina, March 9, 2023

A recent study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that while there are some promising benefits to using yoga, there isn’t yet enough evidence to support the practice as a standalone solution for improving mental health and well-being.

“I really wanted to know if yoga is something we should be suggesting to people who have post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression, or anxiety or various traumas. What does the evidence really say?,” said Rebecca Macy, a researcher who works with violence and trauma survivors who headed up the study at the UNC School of Social Work.

For their study, Macy and her colleagues analyzed 13 literature reviews to conduct a meta-review of 185 articles. Overall, the researchers found that yoga holds potential promise for helping improve anxiety, depression, PTSD and/or the psychological consequences of trauma at least in the short term.

The study, published  in the journal Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, also suggested that clinicians and service providers consider recommending yoga as an intervention in addition to other “evidence-based and well-established treatments,” including psychotherapy and medication.

“Even though I do think yoga is, in general, incredibly beneficial, I also think there needs to be a whole lot more education about how to use yoga specifically to treat survivors of trauma in order to be the most effective and helpful,” said Leslie Roach, a certified yoga instructor and massage therapist who co-authored the study. 

Macy and Roach are considering several possible future studies, including one that would examine the use of yoga within a rape crisis center or domestic violence shelter. However, because yoga is a holistic practice, researchers must be careful not to “undermine yoga’s approach,” Macy added.

Dried fruit proves plum choice for preventing bone loss, study finds

San Diego State University, March 23, 2023

A daily serving of dried plums may be sufficient enough to ward off bone loss in older women, a study has found.

The findings suggest the dried fruit provide an easy way of obtaining the necessary nutrients thought to prevent osteoporosis and inhibit bone breakdown characteristic of the condition.

The prevalence of age-related bone loss is greater in women than men , and in 25 to 30% of ageing women this loss results in major orthopaedic problems.

The new research is all the more compelling as women can lose up to 20% of their bone density during the five to seven years following menopause.

“Participants from our study maintained their bone mineral density by eating five to six dried plums per day, which is a very exciting finding as this can easily be achieved by snacking on dried plums or incorporating them into recipes.” said Dr Shirin Hooshmand, lead researcher on the study and associate professor at the School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences at San Diego State University.

A total of 48 women with low bone density aged 65–79 years old were randomly assigned into one of three treatment groups for six months: 50 g of dried plum; 100 g of dried plum; or control.

Total body, hip and lumbar bone mineral density (BMD) were evaluated at the beginning of the study and at six months.

Researchers found both doses of dried plum were able to prevent the loss of total body bone mineral density (BMD) compared to the control group.

TRAP-5b, a marker of bone resorption, decreased at three months and this was sustained at six months in both 50 and 100 g dried plum groups.

Among the functional foods shown to have bone-protective effects, dried plum is uniquely able to prevent and reverse bone loss in rat models of osteoporosis .

In human studies, a short-term clinical study  demonstrated 100 g/day of dried plum over three months improved biomarkers of bone formation in postmenopausal women.

Hooshmand’s team also carried out a 12-month study in which postmenopausal women consumed 100 g of dried plum daily. This study also demonstrated the ability of dried plum to completely prevent the loss of bone mineral density.

 

Self-harm less likely among young people who use melatonin

Karolinska Institutet, March 27 2023. 

A study reported in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry revealed a lower risk of self-harm among children and teenagers who were prescribed melatonin— a hormone produced by the body that initiates sleep—compared with the risks experienced prior to melatonin use.

“Given the established link between sleep problems, depression, and self-harm, we wanted to explore whether medical sleep treatment is associated with a lower rate of intentional self-harm in young people,” explained lead researcher Sarah Bergen, MS, PhD, of the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Karolinska Institutet.

The study included 25,575 males and females who received prescriptions for melatonin between the ages of 6 and 18 years. At least one psychiatric disorder had been diagnosed among 22,299 participants, including substance use, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, stress-related disorders, eating disorders, intellectual disabilities, autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and tic disorders. Participants were followed from one year prior to being prescribed melatonin through one year following the beginning of treatment. 

The researchers estimated the risks of self-harm for each participant by comparing the risk during the last unmedicated month with the risk that occurred within a year of melatonin treatment. They found a higher risk of self-harm prior to being treated with melatonin, particularly among adolescent girls with anxiety or depression. “This suggests that melatonin might be responsible for the reduced self-harm rates, but we cannot rule out that the use of other psychiatric medications or psychotherapy may have influenced the findings,” first author Marica Leone, PhD, commented. 

Mayo discovers high-intensity aerobic training can reverse aging processes in adults

Mayo Clinic, March 10, 2023

What type of training helps most, especially when you’re older — say over 65? A Mayo Clinic study says it’s high-intensity aerobic exercise, which can reverse some cellular aspects of aging. The findings appear in Cell Metabolism.

Mayo researchers compared high-intensity interval training, resistance training and combined training. All training types improved lean body mass and insulin sensitivity, but only high-intensity and combined training improved aerobic capacity and mitochondrial function for skeletal muscle. Decline in mitochondrial content and function are common in older adults.

The researchers emphasized an important finding: Exercise training significantly enhanced the cellular machinery responsible for making new proteins. That contributes to protein synthesis, thus reversing a major adverse effect of aging. However, adding resistance training is important to achieve significant muscle strength.

“We encourage everyone to exercise regularly, but the take-home message for aging adults that supervised high-intensity training is probably best, because, both metabolically and at the molecular level, it confers the most benefits,” says K. Sreekumaran Nair, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and senior researcher on the study. He says the high-intensity training reversed some manifestations of aging in the body’s protein function. 

Researchers tracked metabolic and molecular changes in a group of young and older adults over 12 weeks, gathering data 72 hours after individuals in randomized groups completed each type of exercise. General findings showed:

•    Cardio respiratory health, muscle mass and insulin sensitivity improved with all training. 

•    Mitochondrial cellular function declined with age but improved with training. 

•    Increase in muscle strength occurred only modestly with high-intensity interval training but occurred with resistance training alone or when added to the aerobic training. 

•    Exercise improves skeletal muscle gene expression independent of age. 

•    Exercise substantially enhanced the ribosomal proteins responsible for synthesizing new proteins, which is mainly responsible for enhanced mitochondrial function. 

Training has little effect on skeletal muscle DNA energy transfer but promotes skeletal muscle protein expression with maximum effect in older adults.