The Gary Null Show Notes – 01.10.23

Videos:

  1. BOMBSHELL docs reveal Covid-19 COVER-UP goes straight to the top | Redacted with Clayton Morris – Whiselblower Sasha Latypova
  2. My Apology Letter Regarding My Friendship with Jordan Peterson (THE SAAD TRUTH_1365)
  3. Harari: “With this kind of surveillance [under the skin], (you can detect dissent). I mean, you watch the big President, the big leader, give a speech on television — the television could be monitoring you and knowing whether you’re angry or not just by analyzing the cues.”
  4. ‼️MacDonald Brainwashed‼️ (Tom words of wisdom) – The Rap

Eating almonds daily boosts exercise recovery molecule by 69% among ‘weekend warriors’

Appalachian State University, January 6, 2023

For those who exercise regularly, eating almonds each day might be the ideal new year’s resolution. A randomized controlled trial in Frontiers in Nutrition showed that female and male participants who ate 57g almonds daily for one month had more of the beneficial fat 12,13-dihydroxy-9Z-octadecenoic acid (12,13-DiHOME) in their blood immediately after a session of intense exercise than control participants. This molecule, a so-called oxylipin (oxidized fat) is synthetized from linoleic acid by brown fat tissue, and has a beneficial effect on metabolic health and energy regulation.

Corresponding author Dr. David C Nieman, a professor and director of the Appalachian State University Human Performance Laboratory at the North Carolina Research Campus, said, “Here we show that volunteers who consumed 57g of almonds daily for one month before a single ‘weekend warrior’ exercise bout had more beneficial 12,13-DiHOME in their blood immediately after exercising than control volunteers. They also reported feeling less fatigue and tension, better leg-back strength, and decreased muscle damage after exercise than control volunteers.”

The clinical trial involved 38 men and 26 women between the ages of 30 and 65, who didn’t engage in regular weight training. Approximately half were randomized to the almond diet group, and the other half to the control group, who daily ate a calorie-matched cereal bar. The researchers took blood and urine samples before and after the four-week period of dietary supplementation. Performance measures included a 30 second Wingate anaerobic test, a 50 meter shuttle run test, and vertical jump, bench press, and leg-back strength exercises. Additional blood and urine samples were taken immediately after this 90 minute session of ‘eccentric exercise’ and daily for four days afterwards. 

As expected, the 90 minute exercise led to an increase in the volunteers’ self-reported feeling of muscle damage and muscle soreness, as well as an increased POMS score, indicating self-reported decreased vigor and increased fatigue, anxiety, and depression.

The exercise also resulted in transient elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and MCP-1 in the blood, consistent with minor muscle damage. However, these changes in cytokines were equal in the almond and cereal bar groups.

Importantly, immediately after exercise, the concentration of the beneficial 12,13-DiHOME was 69% higher in blood plasma of participants in the almond group than in participants in the control group. 12,13-DiHOME is known to increase the transport of fatty acid and its uptake by skeletal muscle, with the overall effect of stimulating metabolic recovery after exercise.

The reverse pattern was found for another oxylipin, the mildly toxic 9,10-Dihydroxy-12-octadecenoic acid (9,10-diHOME), which was 40% higher immediately after exercise in the blood of the control group than in the almond group. Unlike 12,13-DiHOME, 9,10-diHOME has been shown have negative effects on overall health and the body’s recovery to exercise.

Nieman and colleagues concluded that daily consumption of almonds leads to a change in metabolism, downregulating inflammation and oxidative stress from exercise and enabling the body to recover faster.

“We conclude that almonds provide a unique and complex nutrient and polyphenol mixture that may support metabolic recovery from stressful levels of exercise. Almonds have high amounts of protein, healthy types of fats, vitamin E, minerals, and fiber. And the brown skin of almonds contains polyphenols that end up in the large intestine and help control inflammation and oxidative stress,” said Nieman.

Omega-3 supplements can prevent childhood asthma

Copenhagen University Hospital, December 29, 2022

Taking certain omega-3 fatty acid supplements during pregnancy can reduce the risk of childhood asthma by almost one third, according to a new study from the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC) and the University of Waterloo.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that women who were prescribed 2.4 grams of long-chain omega-3 supplements during the third trimester of pregnancy reduced their children’s risk of asthma by 31 per cent. Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which include eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are found in cold water fish, and key to regulating human immune response.

“We’ve long suspected there was a link between the anti-inflammatory properties of long-chain omega-3 fats, the low intakes of omega-3 in Western diets and the rising rates of childhood asthma,” said Professor Hans Bisgaard of COPSAC at the Copenhagen University Hospital. “This study proves that they are definitively and significantly related.”

The testing also revealed that women with low blood levels of EPA and DHA at the beginning of the study benefitted the most from the supplements. For these women, it reduced their children’s relative risk of developing asthma by 54 per cent.

“The proportion of women with low EPA and DHA in their blood is even higher in Canada and the United States as compared with Denmark. So we would expect an even greater reduction in risk among North American populations,” said Professor Stark. “Identifying these women and providing them with supplements should be considered a front-line defense to reduce and prevent childhood asthma.”

“Asthma and wheezing disorders have more than doubled in Western countries in recent decades,” said Professor Bisgaard. “We now have a preventative measure to help bring those numbers down.”

Currently, one out of five young children suffer from asthma or a related disorder before school age.

Study shows gardening may help reduce cancer risk, boost mental health

University of Colorado at Boulder, January 6, 2023

The first-ever, randomized, controlled trial of community gardening found that those who started gardening ate more fiber and got more physical activity—two known ways to reduce risk of cancer and chronic diseases. They also saw their levels of stress and anxiety significantly decrease.

The findings were published in The Lancet Planetary Health.

“These findings provide concrete evidence that community gardening could play an important role in preventing cancer, chronic diseases and mental health disorders,” said senior author Jill Litt, a professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at CU Boulder.

“No matter where you go, people say there’s just something about gardening that makes them feel better,” said Litt, who is also a researcher with the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.

Some small observational studies have found that people who garden tend to eat more fruits and vegetables and have a healthier weight. But it has been unclear whether healthier people just tend to garden, or gardening influences health.

Only three studies have applied the gold standard of scientific research, the randomized controlled trial, to the pastime. None have looked specifically at community gardening.

To fill the gap, Litt recruited 291 non-gardening adults, average age of 41, from the Denver area. More than a third were Hispanic and more than half came from low-income households.

The gardening group received a free community garden plot, some seeds and seedlings, and an introductory gardening course through the nonprofit Denver Urban Gardens program and a study partner.

By fall, those in the gardening group were eating, on average, 1.4 grams more fiber per day than the control group—an increase of about 7%.

The authors note that fiber exerts a profound effect on inflammatory and immune responses, influencing everything from how we metabolize food to how healthy our gut microbiome is to how susceptible we are to diabetes and certain cancers.

While doctors recommend about 25 to 38 grams of fiber per day, the average adult consumes less than 16 grams.

“An increase of one gram of fiber can have large, positive effects on health,” said co-author James Hebert, director of University of South Carolina’s cancer prevention and control program.

The gardening group also increased their physical activity levels by about 42 minutes per week. Public health agencies recommend at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week, a recommendation only a quarter of the U.S. population meets. With just two to three visits to the community garden weekly, participants met 28% of that requirement.

Study participants also saw their stress and anxiety levels decrease, with those who came into the study most stressed and anxious seeing the greatest reduction in mental health issues.

The study also confirmed that even novice gardeners can reap measurable health benefits of the pastime in their first season. As they have more experience and enjoy greater yields, Litt suspects such benefits will increase.

Researchers shed light on how exercise preserves physical fitness during aging

Joslin Diabetes Center, December 6, 2023

Proven to protect against a wide array of diseases, exercise may be the most powerful anti-aging intervention known to science. However, while physical activity can improve health during aging, its beneficial effects inevitably decline. The cellular mechanisms underlying the relationship among exercise, fitness and aging remain poorly understood.  

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center investigated the role of one cellular mechanism in improving physical fitness by exercise training and identified one anti-aging intervention that delayed the declines that occur with aging in the model organism. Together, the scientists’ findings open the door to new strategies for promoting muscle function during aging.  

“Our data identify an essential mediator of exercise responsiveness and an entry point for interventions to maintain muscle function during aging.” 

That essential mediator is the cycle of fragmentation and repair of the mitochondria, the specialized structures, or organelles, inside every cell responsible for producing energy. Mitochondrial function is critical to health, and disruption of mitochondrial dynamics  the cycle of repairing dysfunctional mitochondria and restoring the connectivity among the energy-producing organelles — has been linked to the development and progression of chronic, age-related diseases, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.  

“As we perceive that our muscles undergo a pattern of fatigue and restoration after an exercise session, they are undergoing this mitochondrial dynamic cycle,” said Blackwell, who is also acting section head of Immunobiology at Joslin. “In this process, muscles manage the aftermath of the metabolic demand of exercise and restore their functional capability.” 

“We determined that a single exercise session induces a cycle of fatigue and physical fitness recovery that is paralleled by a cycle of the mitochondrial network rebuilding,” said first author Juliane Cruz Campos, a postdoctoral fellow at Joslin Diabetes Center. “Aging dampened the extent to which this occurred and induced a parallel decline in physical fitness. That suggested that mitochondrial dynamics might be important for maintaining physical fitness and possibly for physical fitness to be enhanced by a bout of exercise.”  

Finally, the researchers tested known, lifespan-extending interventions for their ability to improve exercise capacity during aging. Worms with increased AMPK — a molecule that is a key regulator of energy during exercise which also promotes remodeling of mitochondrial morphology and metabolism — exhibited improved physical fitness. They also demonstrated maintenance of, but not enhancement of, exercise performance during aging. Worms engineered to lack AMPK exhibited reduced physical fitness during aging as well as impairment of the recovery cycle. They also did not receive the age-delaying benefits of exercise over the course of the lifespan.  

Nighttime electronic device use lowers melatonin levels

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, December 24 2022. 

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science published the findings researchers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital of a suppressive effect for evening use of light-emitting electronic devices on sleep and melatonin secretion.

“Electronic devices emit light that is short-wavelength-enriched light, which has a higher concentration of blue light — with a peak around 450 nm — than natural light,” explained lead author Anne-Marie Chang. “This is different from natural light in composition, having a greater impact on sleep and circadian rhythms.” 

Twelve healthy adults were randomized to read a light-emitting eBook or a printed book in dim room light approximately four hours before bedtime for five evenings. At the end of the five day period, participants switched their assignments. Blood samples collected during portions of the study were analyzed for melatonin levels.  Sleep latency, time and efficiency were assessed via polysomnography. 

eBook reading was associated with more time needed to fall asleep and less rapid eye movement sleep in comparison with reading a printed book. Evening melatonin levels were suppressed by an average of 55.12% in eBook readers, while those who read printed books had no suppression. Compared to printed book reading, the onset of melatonin release in response to dim light occurred 1 ½ hours later the day following reading of an eBook.

“Our most surprising finding was that individuals using the e-reader would be more tired and take longer to become alert the next morning,” Dr Chang reported. “This has real consequences for daytime functioning, and these effects might be worse in the real world as opposed to the controlled environment we used.” 

“We live in a sleep-restricted society, in general,” she added. “It is important to further study the effects of using light-emitting devices, especially before bed, as they may have longer term health consequences than we previously considered.”

Iron deficiency anemia associated with hearing loss

Penn State University, December 29, 2022

In a study published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Kathleen M. Schieffer, B.S., of the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pa., and colleagues examined the association between sensorineural hearing loss and conductive hearing loss and iron deficiency anemia in adults ages 21 to 90 years in the United States.

Approximately 15 percent of adults report difficulty with hearing. Because iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is a common and easily correctable condition, further understanding of the association between IDA and all types of hearing loss may help to open new possibilities for early identification and appropriate treatment. For this study, using data obtained from deidentified electronic medical records from the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa., iron deficiency anemia was determined by low hemoglobin and ferritin levels for age and sex in 305,339 adults ages 21 to 90 years; associations between hearing loss and IDA were evaluated.

Of the patients in the study population, 43 percent were men; average age was 50 years. There was a 1.6 percent prevalence of combined hearing loss (defined as any combination of conductive hearing loss [hearing loss due to problems with the bones of the middle ear], sensorineural hearing loss, deafness, and unspecified hearing loss) and 0.7 percent prevalence of IDA. Both sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL; when there is damage to the cochlea or to the nerve pathways from the inner ear to the brain) (present in 1.1 percent of individuals with IDA) and combined hearing loss (present in 3.4 percent) were significantly associated with IDA. Analysis confirmed increased odds of SNHL and combined hearing loss among adults with IDA.

“An association exists between IDA in adults and hearing loss. The next steps are to better understand this correlation and whether promptly diagnosing and treating IDA may positively affect the overall health status of adults with hearing loss,” the authors write.