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LOA Daily

The Gary Null Show Notes - 07.09.21

  1. Misinformation and Mythology and the Mainstream Media

  2. Big Pharma Firms Spent More Enriching Investors Than on R&D: Report 

  3. America’s Accountability Problem

  4. Study on Electromagnetism of Vaccinated Persons in Luxembourg

  5. America’s Obsession With Self-Help

  6. Five million deaths a year caused by global climate related abnormal temps

  7. How College COVID Vaccine Mandates Put Students In Danger

  8. More than a billion seashore animals may have cooked to death in B.C. heat wave, says UBC researcher

  9. Study Shows Deadly Northwest Heatwave Would’ve Been ‘Virtually Impossible’ Without Climate Crisis

  10. 17,503 DEAD, 1.7 Million Injured (50% SERIOUS) Reported in European Union’s Database of Adverse Drug Reactions for COVID-19 Shots

    Today’s Videos:

    1. Twitter Censors Science | Kate Wand

    2.  The Cost of Denial Experts

    Higher plasma/serum levels of lutein, zeaxanthin associated with lower risk of Alzheimer disease

    PLA Rocket Force Characteristic Medical Center (China), July 6, 2021

    According to news reporting from Beijing, People’s Republic of China, research stated, “Multiple lines of evidence indicate protective effects of carotenoids in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, previous epidemiological studies reported inconsistent results regarding the associations between carotenoids levels and the risk of AD.”

    The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research, “Our study aims to evaluate the associations of six major members of carotenoids with the occurrence of AD by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis. Following PRISMA guidelines, a comprehensive literature search of PubMed, Web of Science, Ebsco, and PsycINFO databases was conducted, and the quality of each included studies was evaluated by a validated scoring systems. Standardized mean differences (SMD) with 95%confidence intervals (CI) were determined by using a random effects model. Heterogeneity was evaluated by I2 statistics. Publication bias was detected using funnel plots and Egger’s test. Sixteen studies, with 10,633 participants were included. Pooled analysis showed significantly lower plasma/serum levels of lutein (SMD = -0.86, 95%CI: -1.67 to -0.05, p = 0.04) and zeaxanthin (SMD = -0.59; 95%CI: -1.12 to -0.06, p = 0.03) in patients with AD versus cognitively intact controls, while a-carotene (SMD = 0.21, 95%CI: -0.68 to 0.26, p = 0.39), b-carotene (SMD = 0.04, 95%CI: -0.57 to 0.65, p = 0.9), lycopene (SMD = -0.12, 95%CI: -0.96 to 0.72, p = 0.78), and b-cryptoxanthin (SMD = -0.09, 95%CI: -0.83 to 0.65, p = 0.81) did not achieve significant differences. Of six major members of carotenoids, only lutein and zeaxanthin concentrations in plasma/serum were inversely related to the risk of AD.”

    According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “More high-quality longitudinal studies are needed to verify these findings.”

    This research has been peer-reviewed.

    Dancing with music can halt most debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease

    Study shows participating in weekly dance training improves daily living and motor function for those with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s

    York University (Canada), July 7, 2021

    A new study published in Brain Sciences today, shows patients with mild-to-moderate Parkinson’s disease (PD) can slow the progress of the disease by participating in dance training with music for one-and-a-quarter hours per week. Over the course of three years, this activity was found to reduce daily motor issues such as those related to balance and speech, which often lead to social isolation.

    Joseph DeSouza, senior author, principal investigator and associate professor in the Department of Psychology at York University and PhD candidate Karolina Bearss, found people with Parkinson’s (PwPD) who participated in weekly dance training, had less motor impairment and showed significant improvement in areas related to speech, tremors, balance and rigidity compared to those who did not do any dance exercise. Their data showed significant improvements in experiences of daily living, which include cognitive impairment, hallucinations, depression and anxious mood such as sadness. The study showed overall that non-motor aspects of daily living, motor experiences of daily living, motor examination symptoms and motor complications did not show any impairment across time among the dance-trained PwPD group compared to PwPD who do not dance.

    The study is the first of its kind to follow PwPD over a three-year period during weekly dance participation with music, providing additional information regarding the nature of progression of motor and non-motor PD symptoms.

    “The experience of performing and being in a studio environment with dance instructors appears to provide benefits for these individuals,” said DeSouza. “Generally, what we know is that dance activates brain areas in those without PD. For those with Parkinson’s disease even when it’s mild motor impairment can impact their daily functioning — how they feel about themselves. Many of these motor symptoms lead to isolation because once they get extreme, these people don’t want to go out. These motor symptoms lead to further psychological issues, depression, social isolation and eventually the symptoms do get worse over time. Our study shows that training with dance and music can slow this down and improve their daily living and daily function.”

    The goal of the research was to create a long-term neurorehabilitation strategy to combat the symptoms of PD. In the study, researchers looked at how a multi-sensory activity, (like dance with music learning) which incorporated the use and stimulation of several sensory modalities in the dance environment including vision, audition, tactile perception, proprioception, kinesthesia, social organization and expression, olfactory, vestibular and balance control — may influence many of the mood, cognitive, motor and neural challenges faced by PwPD.

    Researchers followed collected data from PwPD over three-and-a-half years while they learned choreography over the first year and performed it, that is designed to be adaptable to the disease stage and current symptoms for PwPD.

    In the study, 16 participants with mild-to-moderate PD (11 males, five females) with an average age of 69, were tested between October 2014 and November 2017. They were matched for age and severity of disease. Each participant took part in a 1.25-hour dance class at Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS) and Trinity St. Paul’s church locations. Dancers participated in dance exercises which provided both aerobic and anaerobic movements. This group was then compared to 16 non-dance PwPD participants (the reference group) chosen from a larger PwPD cohort from the Parkinson’s Progression Marker Initiative (PPMI), a longitudinal research project funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) and related funding partners. 

    Classes began with live music accompaniment during the seated warm-up, followed by barre work, and ended with moving across the floor. All participants learned choreography for an upcoming performance. Researchers recorded videos, conducted paper and pen questionnaires of all participants and performed statistical analyses.

    “Dance is so complex, it’s a multi-sensory type of environment,” said Bearss. “It incorporates and stimulates your auditory, tactile, visual and kinesthetic senses and adds an interactive social aspect. Regular exercise does not offer these aspects. There’s so much more to dance.”

    Researchers will next examine what occurs in the brain immediately before and after a dance class to determine what neurological changes take place. 

    “Currently there is no precise intervention with PD and usual remedies are pharmacological interventions, but not many options are given for alternate exercises or additional interventions to push their brains,” said DeSouza. “Hopefully this data will shed light on additional therapies for this group and be used in the treatment process. There may be changes in the brain that occur with dance with music, but more research is necessary.”

    Men with low testosterone more likely to die from Covid-19

    San Raffaele University Hospital (Italy), July 7, 2021

    Men with symptomatic Covid-19, who were found to have low testosterone following admittance to hospital, were more likely to become severely ill and die from the disease, new research has shown.

    The study, carried out in Milan during the first wave of coronavirus in 2020, found that the lower the levels of testosterone, the higher the likelihood that male patients would need intensive care, be intubated on a ventilator and remain in hospital over a longer period. Their likelihood of dying increased six-fold. 

    The findings are being presented at the European Association of Urology congress, EAU21, which runs this week from July 8-12.

    Professor Andrea Salonia and his colleagues at the San Raffaele University Hospital in Milan compared 286 male Covid patients, who came to the emergency department, with 305 healthy male volunteers, who attended hospital to give blood between Feb and May 2020.

    The team checked both patients and volunteers for levels of male hormones, including testosterone. Testosterone is measured in nanomoles per litre (nmol/l) and 9.2 or below is deemed the threshold for low testosterone, termed hypogonadism.

    Nearly 90 per cent of the patients had testosterone below this level, compared to just 17 per cent of the healthy volunteers. Furthermore, testosterone levels in the patients were also significantly below the threshold, averaging around 2.5 nmol/l.

    Those patients who had mild symptoms or were admitted to hospital had slightly higher testosterone levels (between 3-4 nmol/l) than those admitted to ICU or those who died of the disease (just 0.7-1.0 nmol/l).

    Even when age, pre-existing conditions and body mass index (BMI) were taken into account, the differences in hormonal profiles and clinical outcomes were still stark.

    Professor Salonia, a specialist in urology and endocrinology at San Raffaele Hospital, says:

    “At the start of the Covid pandemic, we were seeing far more men than women coming to hospital and suffering very severe forms of the disease. We immediately thought this might be related to male hormone levels, particularly testosterone.

    “But we never expected to see such a high proportion of Covid patients with these extremely low levels of testosterone, in comparison to a similar group of healthy men. The relationship is very clear: the lower the testosterone, the higher the severity of the condition and likelihood of death. I’ve never seen anything like it in my 25 years in the field.”

    Because the team does not have data on the testosterone levels in the patients before they contracted Covid-19, they cannot say whether low testosterone was a pre-existing long-term condition that exacerbated the disease or whether it was caused by the SARS-COV2 virus.

    However, other research has shown that some receptors for the virus, including the enzyme TMPRSS2, are linked to male hormones and that the virus reduces the number of Leydig cells in the body, which produce testosterone 

    “We simply don’t have the data to know which came first in these patients, the low testosterone levels or the Covid,” explains Professor Salonia. “Testosterone does play a role in protecting men from disease. However, it’s also possible that the virus itself is able to induce an acute reduction in testosterone levels, which then predisposes these men to a worse outcome. We’re now following up these patients over a longer time period, to see how their hormone levels change over time, so we can try and answer these questions.”

    The annual EAU congress is Europe’s biggest urology conference, bringing together clinicians, scientists and patients to discuss the latest research and medical developments linked to the urinary tract and male reproductive system. EAU21 takes place virtually this year, due to Covid restrictions.

    Professor Jens Sonksen, a member of the EAU Executive, said: “The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had a tremendous impact on global health since the virus first started spreading in early 2020. We have learned a lot about the virus and possible health consequences from COVID-19 since those early days, but there is much still to learn. This is highlighted by this new research, which found a surprisingly low level of total testosterone in men with COVID-19 compared to healthy controls. Symptomatic COVID-19 patients with low testosterone were also more likely to become critically ill from COVID-19. Additional research on potential impacts from COVID-19 on men’s health is definitely needed.”

    Lower exposure to UVB light may increase colorectal cancer risk

    University of California at San Diego, July 5 2021

    Inadequate exposure to UVB light from the sun may be associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, particularly in older age groups, according to a study using data on 186 countries, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health.

    Researchers at the University of California San Diego, USA investigated possible associations between global levels of UVB light in 2017 and rates of colorectal cancer for different countries and age groups in 2018.

    The authors found that lower UVB exposure was significantly correlated with higher rates of colorectal cancer across all age groups from 0 to over 75 years in people living in the 186 countries included in the study. The association between lower UVB and risk of colorectal cancer remained significant for those aged above 45 after other factors, such as skin pigmentation, life expectancy and smoking were taken into consideration. Data on these factors were available for 148 countries. 

    The authors suggest that lower UVB exposure may reduce levels of vitamin D. Vitamin D deficiency has previously been associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer. Future research could look directly at the potential benefits on colorectal cancer of correcting vitamin D deficiencies, especially in older age groups, according to the authors.

    Raphael Cuomo, co-author of the study said: “Differences in UVB light accounted for a large amount of the variation we saw in colorectal cancer rates, especially for people over age 45. Although this is still preliminary evidence, it may be that older individuals, in particular, may reduce their risk of colorectal cancer by correcting deficiencies in vitamin D.”

    The authors used UVB estimates obtained by the NASA EOS Aura spacecraft in April 2017 and data on colorectal cancer rates in 2018 for 186 countries from the Global Cancer (GLOBOCAN) database. They also collected data for 148 countries on skin pigmentation, life expectancy, smoking, stratospheric ozone (a naturally-occurring gas that filters the sun’s radiation) and other factors which may influence health and UVB exposure from previous literature and databases. Countries with lower UVB included Norway, Denmark and Canada, while countries with higher UVB included United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Nigeria, and India.

    The authors caution that other factors may affect UVB exposure and vitamin D levels, such as vitamin D supplements, clothing and air pollution, which were not included in the study. They also caution that the observational nature of the study does not allow for conclusions about cause and effect and more work is needed to understand the relationship between UVB and vitamin D with colorectal cancer in more detail.

    Curcumin improves regulatory T Cells in colitis 

    Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (China), July 2, 2021

    According to news reporting originating from Nanchang, People’s Republic of China, research stated, “To explore the probable pathway by which curcumin (Cur) regulates the function of Treg cells by observing the expression of costimulatory molecules of dendritic cells (DCs). Experimental colitis was induced by administering 2, 4, 6-trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)/ethanol solution.”

    Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from the Jiangxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, “Forty male C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into four groups: normal, TNBS + Cur, TNBS + mesalazine (Mes) and TNBS groups. The mice in the TNBS + Cur and TNBS + Mes groups were treated with Cur and Mes, respectively, while those in the TNBS group were treated with physiological saline for 7 d. After treatment, the curative effect of Cur was evaluated by colonic weight, colonic length, weight index of the colon, and histological observation and score. The levels of CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ T cells (Treg cells) and costimulatory molecules of DCs were measured by flow cytometry. Also, related cytokines were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Cur alleviated inflammatory injury of the colonic mucosa, decreased colonic weigh and histological score, and restored colonic length. The number of Treg cells was increased, while the secretion of TNF-alpha, IL-2, IL-6, IL-12 p40, IL-17 and IL-21 and the expression of costimulatory molecules (CD205, CD54 [ICAM-1], TLR4, CD252[OX40 L], CD256 [RANK] and CD254 [RANK L]) of DCs were notably inhibited in colitis mice treated with Cur.”

    According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Cur potentially modulates activation of DCs to enhance the suppressive functions of Treg cells and promote the recovery of damaged colonic mucosa in inflammatory bowel disease.”

     

    Could ketogenic diet be helpful with brain cancer?

    Wake Forest School of Medicine, July 7, 2021

    A modified ketogenic diet may be worth exploring for people with brain tumors, according to a new study published in the July 7, 2021, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The diet is high in fat and low in carbohydrates. 

    The small study found that the diet was safe and feasible for people with brain tumors called astrocytomas. All of the people had completed radiation treatment and chemotherapy. The diet led to changes in the metabolism in the body and the brain. The study was not designed to determine whether the diet could slow down tumor growth or improve survival. 

    “There are not a lot of effective treatments for these types of brain tumors, and survival rates are low, so any new advances are very welcome,” said study author Roy E. Strowd, MD, MS, MEd, of Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. 

    “These cancer cells rely on glucose, or sugar, to divide and grow. Since the ketogenic diet is low in sugar, the body changes what it uses for energy–instead of carbohydrates, it uses what are called ketones. Normal brain cells can survive on ketones, but the theory is that cancer cells cannot use ketones for energy.”

    The study involved 25 people with astrocytomas. They followed a type of ketogenic diet, the modified Atkins diet with intermittent fasting, for eight weeks. The diet includes foods such as bacon, eggs, heavy cream, butter, leafy green vegetables and fish. Participants met with a dietician at the start of the study and then every two weeks. Five days a week they followed the modified Atkins diet, which combined carbohydrate restriction with high amounts of fats. Two days a week they fasted, eating up to 20% of their recommended daily calorie amount. 

    The main goal of the study was to see if people were able to follow the diet with no serious side effects. A total of 21 people completed the study, and 48% followed the diet completely, according to their food records. But urine tests showed that 80% of the people reached the level where their body was primarily using fats and protein for fuel, rather than carbohydrates. 

    The diet was well-tolerated. Two people had serious side effects during the study–one was not related to the diet and one was possibly related. 

    By the end of the study, changes in the metabolism in the body and the brain were seen. Hemoglobin A1c levels, insulin levels, and fat body mass all decreased. Lean body mass increased. Specialized brain scans that detect changes in brain metabolites showed an increase in concentrations of ketones and metabolic changes in the tumor. 

    “Of course more studies are needed to determine whether this diet can prevent the growth of brain tumors and help people live longer, but these results show that the diet can be safe for people with brain tumors and successfully produce changes in the metabolism of the body and the brain,” Strowd said. 

    A limitation of the study is that study team members provided a high amount of contact with participants, which may not be feasible in a larger study or in routine clinical care.

    Spearmint extract may enhance reaction time, focus and agility: Human data

    Kemin Human Nutrition and Health, June 30, 2021

    Daily supplements spearmint (Mentha spicata L.) extract may support cognition and enhance physical performance in young, healthy individuals, says a new study.

    Ninety days of supplementation with 900 mg per day was associated with significant improvements in results obtained with the Makoto Arena, a unique tool that measures reaction time to stimuli, mental focus and hand-eye, foot-eye coordination.

    Data from a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel study with 142 recreationally-active men and women indicated that those supplemented with Neumentix showed improved reaction time after seven days, and improved focus and agility after 30 days, compared to placebo.

    “These data confirm previous work, and show that this extract’s cognitive benefits are accompanied by improved physical performance thus providing further support for Neumentix as a safe and natural nootropic,” wrote researchers from the MusclePharm Sports Science Institute and Kemin in their abstract, presented at the International Society of Sports Nutrition annual conference recently.

    Led by Paul Falcone from the MusclePharm Sports Science Institute, the researchers randomly assigned 142 young, healthy men and women (average age of 27) to receive either 900 mg per day of extract or placebo for 90 days.

    Six stationary, lateral, and multi-directional tests were performed at the Makoto Arena II near Chicago at the start of the study, and again after 7, 30, and 90 days.

    Results showed that participants in the spearmint group showed improved reaction time in a stationary test of choice reaction performance as early as 7 days, while improvements in hit rate in both stationary and multi-directional choice reaction performance testing were observed at 30 days. The improvements were still present at 90 days, said the researchers.