Physicians for Informed Consent Publishes Comprehensive Analysis of U.S. COVID-19 Infection-Fatality Rate by Age Group

Why The Climate Emergency is now The Methane Emergency

Atmospheric CO2 Levels Haven’t Been This High in 800,000 Years: NOAA

Rare blood clot syndrome from AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has high mortality rate

Restless and Relentless Minds: Thinking as a “Species out of Context”

The Most Monstrously Overstimulated Economy & Markets Ever

Economists must grapple with climate tipping points before it’s too late

Bombshell UK Data Destroys Entire Premise for Vaccine Push

FDA Stealth Approval of mRNA Technology through Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccines, No Core Safety Evaluation

What is ISIS-K? Two terrorism experts on the group behind the deadly Kabul airport attack and its rivalry with the Taliban

Trust the Science? CDC Counts People Dying Within 14 Days of Jab as “Unvaccinated”

 ‘Ultra-Vaxxed’ Israel Sees Huge Surge in Covid as ‘Experts’ Avoid the Only Logical Conclusion

Today’s Videos:

1. Aldous Huxley and Brave New World: The Dark Side of Pleasure

2. The Prison of Narcissism – Eckhart Tolle

3. THIS IS MY LIFE, LET ME LIVE IT

Eating one hot dog can cost you 36 minutes of your healthy life – study

University of Michigan, August 24, 2021

Even small dietary changes can help you live healthier and longer. According to researchers from the University of Michigan eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of your life, while a serving of nuts can help you gain 26.

The team evaluated over 5,800 foods, ranking them by their nutritional disease burden to humans as well as their impact on the environment. They found that substituting 10 percent of daily caloric intake from beef and processed meats for a mix of fruits, vegetables, nuts, or seafood could reduce the dietary carbon footprint by a third, and allow people to gain 48 healthy minutes per day.

Katerina Stylianou, Director of Public Health Information and Data Strategy at the Detroit Health Department and part of the research team from U-M said that dietary recommendations lack specific and actionable direction to motivate people to change their behavior. They also rarely do dietary recommendations to address environmental impact. (Related: Health Basics: Is there any food in our food?)

Developing a new nutritional index for food

The study is based on a new epidemiology-based nutritional index called Health Nutritional Index (HENI), which the researchers developed in collaboration with a nutritionist from Nutrition Impact, LLC.

HENI calculates the net beneficial or detrimental health burden in minutes associating them with the serving of food consumed.

The index was adapted from the Global Burden of Disease, an index that associates single food choices with disease mortality and morbidity. For HENI, the researcher used the 15 dietary risk factors and disease burden estimates and combined them with the nutrition profiles of the food consumed in the U.S. Food with positive scores and healthy minutes to life, while those with negative scores are associated with outcomes considered detrimental.

The researchers also evaluated the environmental impact of foods by utilizing a method that assesses their life cycle impact — from production, processing, manufacturing, preparation or cooking, consumption and waste — and added improved assessments for water use and human health damages. They also developed scores for 18 environmental indicators, which took into account detailed food recipes and food waste.

Finally, the researchers classified foods into three color zones based on their combined nutritional and environmental performances.

On one end of the spectrum is the green zone, which represents food recommended to increase in one’s diet as they are both nutritionally beneficial and have low environmental impacts like nuts, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and seafood.

The opposite end of the spectrum is the red zone, which has foods that have considerable nutritional or environmental impacts. The red zone’s nutritional impact is primarily driven by processed meats and environmental impacts are driven by beef, pork, lamb as well as processed meats. This indicates that processed meats are the worst from a health perspective. Beef, pork and lamb all make major negative impacts from an environmental perspective as well.

Results aren’t black and white, but dietary changes urgent

The researchers acknowledged that the range of all indicators can vary substantially. They pointed out that nutritionally beneficial foods may not always generate the lowest environmental impact, and indicated that the study findings are not necessarily black and white.

Based on their findings, the researchers believe that the most negatively impactful foods on health and the environment include high processed meat, beef, shrimp, pork, lamb and greenhouse-grown vegetables.

The most nutritionally beneficial foods, on the other hand, include field-grown fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, and some seafood.

Olivier Jolliet, senior author of the paper and professor of environmental health sciences at UMich’s School of Public Health, shared: “The urgency of dietary changes to improve human health and the environment is clear. Our findings demonstrate that small targeted substitutions offer a feasible and powerful strategy to achieve significant health and environmental benefits without requiring dramatic dietary shifts.”

Study suggests resveratrol or alpha ketoglutarate may partially retard effects of high fat diet on metabolic function

National Research Institute of Animal Production (Poland), August 13, 2021

According to news reporting from Balice, Poland, research stated, “The aim of this study was to examine the impact of different dietary interventions started at middle age on the metabolic phenotype and gene expression profiling in the hypothalamus.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from National Research Institute of Animal Production: “One-year old rats were fed either a control diet, high-fat diet (HFD), HFD supplemented with resveratrol (HFD+RESV), or HFD supplemented with a-ketoglutarate (HFD+AKG). A 6-week HFD feeding led to significant changes in concentrations of plasma glucose, insulin, lipids, and thyroid hormones. Moreover, 32% of the 84 analyzed genes correlated with aging were differentially expressed compared to the control group, with the largest functional class being related to inflammatory response. Dietary RESV ameliorated the changes in plasma glucose, total cholesterol, and triiodothyronine concentrations induced by HFD feeding and significantly downregulated 60% of the surveyed genes compared to the control group, resulting in a major molecular shift compared to HFD alone. In contrast, AKG supplementation did not affect the metabolic phenotype, but prevented the gene expression pattern caused by HFD consumption, mimicking the effects observed in the control group.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “HFD feeding induces metabolic dysfunction and age-related genetic alterations in the hypothalamus of middle-aged rats, while dietary RESV or AKG may partially retard these effects, even though these compounds act in a different and specific manner.”

More Exercise linked to less severe Covid-19

Kaiser Permanente Health Center, August 19, 2021

According to a new study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, people who exercised regularly and then tested positive for Covid-19 were less likely to experience more severe outcomes.

Patients with Covid-19 who were “consistently inactive” were 226% more likely to be hospitalized, 173% more likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), and 149% more likely to die in the study when compared to the most active people in the study – those who exercised 150 minutes or more every week. Importantly, even those who do not meet the 150 minutes or more per week threshold still experienced significant benefits compared to those who said they exercise 10 minutes or less per day.

“We strongly believe the results of this study represent a clear and actionable guideline that can be used by populations around the world to reduce the risk for severe Covid-19 outcomes, including death,” said study author Deborah Rohm Young, PhD.

Heart attacks in young adults are related to unhealthy lifestyles, not just family history

Bremin Institute for Heart and Circulation Research (Germany) 24 Aug 2021: 

Young heart attack victims are more likely to be smokers, obese, and have high blood pressure or diabetes compared to their peers,according to research presented at ESC Congress 2021.1 The study shows that while parental history of a premature heart attack is linked with heart events at a young age, it is not the only contributing factor.

“The findings underline the importance of preventing smoking and overweight in children and adolescents in order to reduce the likelihood of heart disease later in life,” said study author Professor Harm Wienbergen of the Bremen Institute for Heart and Circulation Research, Germany.

“Understanding the reasons for heart attacks in young adults is important from a societal perspective due to their employment and family responsibilities,” he continued. “However, there are limited data on the predictors of heart events in this group.”

The case-control study compared the clinical characteristics of consecutive patients admitted to hospital with acute myocardial infarction at 45 years of age or younger with randomly selected individuals from the general population in the same geographic region in Germany. Cases and controls were matched according to age and gender.

A total of 522 patients were enrolled from the Bremen STEMI registry and 1,191 matched controls were identified from the German National Cohort (NAKO).

The proportion of active smokers was more than three-fold higher in the young heart attack group compared to the general population (82.4% vs. 24.1%; p<0.01). Patients were more likely to have high blood pressure (25.1% vs. 0.5%; p<0.01), diabetes (11.7% vs. 1.7%; p<0.01) and a parental history of premature heart attack (27.6% vs. 8.1%; p<0.01) compared to their peers. Patients were more often obese, with a median body mass index (BMI) of 28.4 kg/m2 compared to 25.5 kg/m2 for controls (p<0.01). In contrast, the proportion consuming alcohol at least four times a week was higher in the general population (11.2%) compared to heart patients (7.1%; p<0.01).

The researchers analysed the independent risk factors for the occurrence of acute myocardial infarction at 45 years of age or younger. The analysis was adjusted for age, sex, high blood pressure, diabetes, active smoking, body mass index, alcohol consumption, years of school education, and birth in Germany.

Having hypertension was associated with an 85-fold odds of a heart attack aged 45 or under. The corresponding odds of a premature heart attack associated with active smoking, diabetes mellitus, parental history and obesity (BMI 30 kg/m2 or above) were 12, 5, 3 and 2. Alcohol consumption was associated with a lower odds of heart attack at a young age with an odds ratio of 0.3.

Professor Wienbergen said: “Our study shows that smoking and metabolic factors, such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity, are strongly associated with an increased likelihood of premature acute myocardial infarction. A protective effect of moderate alcohol consumption has been described by other studies2 and is confirmed in the present analysis of young patients.”

He concluded: “Our study suggests that family history is not the only predisposing factor for early heart attacks. The findings add impetus to the argument that young people should be educated about why it is important to avoid smoking and have a healthy body weight.”

Tai Chi practice and change in exercise habits in survivors of acute coronary syndromes: Is mindfulness a possible mechanism?

Medical School of Brown University, August 23, 2021

Mechanisms by which mind-body practice may improve exercise behaviors in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) are unknown.

Purpose

To identify predictors of exercise behaviors developed in response to a tai chi intervention.

Methods

We conducted an exploratory analysis using data from a pilot study of tai chi for physically inactive patients with CHD. We used Latent Class Analysis to identify patterns of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) (accelerometry-assessed, average min/week) over the 9-month study period. Logistic regression was used to evaluate associations between MVPA patterns and changes in exercise self-efficacy (Self-efficacy for exercise scale), social support (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support), resilience (Brief Resilience Survey), and mindfulness (Five Facets of Mindfulness) at 6 months.

Results

Data supported a 3-class model over time: 31% of participants were in class 1 (high and sustained MVPA, > 200 min/week), 21% were in class 2 (low and decreasing MVPA, < 100 > 50 min/week), and 48% in class 3 (low and stable MVPA, < 50 min/week). Higher mindfulness scores at 6 months were associated with a high and sustained MVPA pattern (b = 1.89, SE = 0.15, p = .01). Social support was inversely associated with low and decreasing MVPA (b = -0.72, SE = 0.34, p = .04). No associations were noted with the other factors.

Conclusions

Improvements in mindfulness were associated with a distinct high and sustained MVPA pattern. Although only hypothesis-generating, these findings suggest that improvements in mindfulness skills could be a mechanism for the possible effect of Tai Chi in the promotion of MVPA.

Commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals make people angry, violent and more likely to kill, researchers discover

University of California, August 24, 2021

While touted as being nothing short of a miracle for preventing heart attacks and stroke, a new study says statins may cause some pretty scary side effects including “aggressive, violently jealous, suicidal or even homicidal behavior.”
Researchers from the University of California found a link between statins and aggression, particularly in postmenopausal women over 45-years-old. Interestingly, women who were innately calm exhibited the most aggressive behavior when on statins.

A separate study out of Pennsylvania State University found that women taking birth control pills were more jealous (to the point of violence) towards their partners.

Men, on the other hand, were much less likely to exhibit “large increases in aggression,” says professor Beatrice Golomb, who led the statin research.

Statins not just for lowering cholesterol, but also used for acne, asthma and birth control

Published in the journal PLOS One, the study suggests that lower levels of cholesterol in the brain could be to blame for aggressive behavior, as the waxy fat-like substance enables brain cells to communicate, and can be adversely affected when lowered.

Proof of this lies in the case of violent prison inmates, many of which have lower levels of brain cholesterol.

“Professor Golomb says statins raise testosterone and cause sleep problems, which could tend to make people prone to irritability and aggression,” The Daily Mail reports.

Golomb has uncovered several cases in which individuals acted aggressive and violent after taking statins, including one instance in which a 59-year-old man, who had no prior history of violence, began chasing his wife, threatening to kill her. Six weeks after quitting the drug he returned to his “normal, placid self.”

David Healy, professor of psychiatry at Bangor University and an expert in the field of dangerous side-effects caused by common drugs, found that with the statin Lipitor, there were 310 reports of aggression and violence and 62 reports of homicidal behavior.

There were 309 reports of irritability, 256 reports of personality change and 68 of paranoia.

In terms of psychological effects, the only consequences of statins listed are memory loss, confusion and amnesia, but there’s absolutely no mention of suicidal and homicidal behavior.

The lack of information on, or rather the intent to hide, the more serious side-effects of statins is seriously concerning considering the number of Americans on the drug is about to be greatly increased under the new guidelines.

Believing Leisure is Wasteful Reduces Happiness

Researchers find the benefits of free time depend on our beliefs about it

Rutgers University, August 24, 2021

While many – from Aristotle to the Dalai Lama – have opined on the state of human happiness, a new Rutgers-led study finds that utter contentment depends, at least in part, on believing that leisure activities are not a waste of time.

The findings from four studies appear in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

“While work can impart meaning and a sense of purpose in life, leisure, such as time with family and friends, hobbies and exercise, is what makes our lives happy and healthy,” said lead author Gabriela Tonietto, an assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick. “But not everyone sees value in time spent on leisure. Many hold a general belief that these activities are an unproductive use of time – at the cost of their own happiness. We find that believing leisure is wasteful causes time spent on leisure to be less enjoyable.”

According to the study, thinking of leisure as wasteful prevents us from enjoying our leisure pursuits – especially purely pleasure activities such as hanging out with friends, watching TV and just relaxing.

More goal-oriented leisure activities, like exercise and meditation, tend to feel productive and so are still enjoyed whether or not people see value in their leisure.

The results show that those who do not enjoy pleasure-driven activities are more depressed, anxious and stressed. The findings suggest happiness may be driven not only by whether people engage in leisure, but whether they find value in what they are doing.

In one part of the study, the researchers asked 302 people to recall what they did for Halloween, how much they enjoyed the holiday and their attitudes toward leisure in general. Those who believe leisure is wasteful enjoyed their Halloween less, especially when they engaged in activities like going to a party compared to other activities that might be fun but might also fulfill responsibilities, like trick or treating with their kids.

In another part of the study, participants read a news article meant to convince the reader that leisure is wasteful, unproductive or productive.

Next they watched the “Best Funny Cat Videos 2019” and were asked how much they enjoyed it. Those who believed that leisure is wasteful or unproductive didn’t enjoy watching the video as much as those who thought leisure time was productive and important.

The researchers suggest that people who think leisure is wasteful relate it to instances where it is used to procrastinate at the expense of work or necessary tasks. Sometimes, reseachers say, leisure is used to waste time, but most of the time, leisure is valuable.

“Attitudes can be difficult to change, so it may not be possible to shift beliefs about leisure overnight,” said Tonietto. “For those who think of leisure as wasteful, focusing on the productive ways that individual leisure activities can serve their long-term goals can help.”

The research was conducted in collaboration with researchers from The Ohio State University and Harvard University