The Gary Null Show Notes – 03.15.23

VIDEOS:

1.“It’s Bullsh*t!” – Did The Government LIE About The Unemployment Rate? (3:00)
2. DR MICHAEL YEADON : MUST SEE INTERVIEW: WE HAVE BEEN LIED TO ABOUT EVERY PART OF THE COVID PANDEMIC (1:21)
3.‘Censorship Industrial Complex’: Twitter Files Journalist Michael Shellenberger Issues Dire Warning (5:50)
4.New Emails Indicate Dr. Fauci Prompted Publication To Suppress Lab-Leak Theory: GOP Lawmaker (6:08)
5.Mediaite SMEARS Jimmy Dore For Telling Truth About Ukraine N@zis (START @ 0:28)
6. A compilation of Yuval Noah Harari talking about crazzy stuff. (4:29)

Study Reveals Anthocyanins in Strawberries Improve Insulin Resistance

Center for Nutrition Research, Illinois Institute of Technology, March 3, 2023

According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), diabetes causes more deaths a year than breast cancer and AIDS combined.  Food plays an important role in the life of a diabetic and the ADA identifies berries, including strawberries, as one of the top ten superfoods for a diabetes meal plan because they are low in sugar, packed with vitamins, antioxidants and dietary fiber. 

A new study* published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Nutrition found that anthocyanin-rich strawberries may improve insulin sensitivity.  Insulin resistance (IR) is a hallmark of metabolic syndrome and a risk factor for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Typically, after a meal, the pancreas produces an appropriate amount of insulin to usher glucose from the bloodstream into the cells. People with IR have built up a tolerance to insulin, so the pancreas must churn out extra insulin to coax blood sugar into the cells. Over time, this process can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Researchers observed the effect of anthocyanins on the postprandial insulin response of 21 obese adults with insulin resistance. Subjects were served a typical ‘Western-style’ meal high in carbohydrates and fat plus a beverage that contained freeze-dried whole strawberry powder. The beverages were controlled for fiber, and the amount of strawberry powder ranged from 0 grams to 40 grams (equivalent to 3 cups of fresh strawberries). When subjects drank the most concentrated beverage, they didn’t produce as much insulin as when they drank the least concentrated versions. In other words, they didn’t need as much insulin to metabolize their meal after drinking the anthocyanin-rich strawberry shake.

While the exact mechanisms are unclear, strawberry anthocyanins may alter insulin signaling at a cellular level.

Naturally low in sugar (just 7 grams), strawberries provide a unique combination of essential nutrients, dietary fiber and phytochemicals.  One serving of eight medium strawberries is just 45 calories and provides more vitamin C per serving than orange and 140% of the daily value.  Additionally, strawberries are a good source of fiber (3 grams), folate and potassium, along with a variety of health-promoting phytochemicals.  Clinical research suggests that eating a serving of eight medium strawberries a day may improve heart health, help manage diabetes, support brain health, and reduce the risk of some cancers. 

Olive oil polyphenol supplementation associated with better exercise performance

Anglia Ruskin University (UK), March 10 2023. 

A study reported in a special issue of the journal Nutrients found improvement in aspects of exercise performance among men and women who received high polyphenol olive water, a byproduct of olive oil production, compared with a placebo.

“For a long time, I’ve been interested in the exercise benefits of polyphenols, such as those derived from cherries and beetroot,” commented lead author Justin Robins, who is an Associate Professor in Health & Exercise Nutrition at Anglia Ruskin University in England. “To gain similar benefits from olives you would have to consume large quantities daily, which isn’t realistic, so we were keen to test this concentrated olive fruit water.” 

The study included 29 active participants of an average age of 42 years who were given a placebo or 28 milliliters of an organic olive fruit water phytocomplex high in the antioxidant hydroxytyrosol for 16 days. Aerobic exercise tests that assessed respiratory and other parameters were conducted before and after the treatment period. 

“Ours is the first study to investigate the use of this olive fruit water in an exercise setting and we found that 16 days of supplementation could have a positive influence on aerobic exercise, most notably at submaximal levels,” Dr Roberts announced. “We found that reduced oxygen cost and improved running economy, as well as improvements in acute recovery, indicate it could potentially benefit those who are undertaking regular aerobic exercise training.”

Common cold may give children immunity against COVID-19, reveals study

Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), University of Bern (Switzerland), University of Oslo (Norway),  March 14, 2023

During the pandemic, medical doctors and researchers noticed that children and adolescents infected with COVID-19 became less ill than adults. A possible explanation for this is that children already had a prior level of immunity to COVID-19 provided by memory T cells generated by common colds.

After studying unique blood samples from children taken before the pandemic, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now identified memory T cells that react to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

A possible explanation for this immunity in children is that they already had colds caused by one of the four coronaviruses causing seasonal common cold symptoms. This could stimulate an immune response with T cells able to also react to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2.

This new study reinforces this hypothesis and shows that T cells previously activated by the OC43 virus can cross-react against SARS-CoV-2.

“These reactions are especially strong early in life and grow much weaker as we get older,” says the study’s corresponding author Annika Karlsson, research group leader at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. “Our findings show how the T-cell response develops and changes over time and can guide the future monitoring and development of vaccines.”

The results indicate that the memory T-cell response to coronaviruses develops as early as the age of two. The study was based on 48 blood samples from two- and six-year-old children, and 94 samples from adults between the ages of 26 and 83. The analysis also included blood samples from 58 people who had recently recovered from COVID-19.

“Next, we’d like to do analogous studies of younger and older children, teenagers and young adults to better track how the immune response to coronaviruses develops from childhood to adulthood,” says Marion Humbert, postdoctoral researcher currently at the Department of Medicine Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, joint first author with Anna Olofsson, doctoral student at the Department of Laboratory Medicine.

The paper is the result of a collaborative study among researchers at Karolinska Institutet, the universities of Bern (Switzerland), Oslo (Norway) and Linköping University (Sweden). The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ozone pollution is linked with increased hospitalizations for cardiovascular disease

Xi’an Jiaotong University (China), March 10, 2023

The first evidence that exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) ozone limit is associated with substantial increases in hospital admissions for heart attack, heart failure and stroke is published in European Heart Journal. Even ozone levels below the WHO maximum were linked with worsened health.

“During this three-year study, ozone was responsible for an increasing proportion of admissions for cardiovascular disease as time progressed,” said study author Professor Shaowei Wu of Xi’an Jiaotong University, China.

“It is believed that climate change, by creating atmospheric conditions favoring ozone formation, will continue to raise concentrations in many parts of the world. Our results indicate that older people are particularly vulnerable to the adverse cardiovascular effects of ozone, meaning that worsening ozone pollution with climate change and the rapid aging of the global population may produce even greater risks of cardiovascular disease in the future.”

This study examined the association between ambient ozone pollution and hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease. 

During the study period, the two databases covered approximately 258 million people across the 70 cities, equivalent to more than 18% of China’s population. The types of cardiovascular disease included coronary heart disease, stroke and heart failure, plus subtypes such as angina, acute myocardial infarction, acute coronary syndrome, ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke.

Daily eight-hour maximum average concentrations of ozone, fine particulate matter(PM2.5), inhalable particles (PM10), sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide were obtained for each city from the China National Urban Air Quality Real-time Publishing Platform.

During the study period, there were 6,444,441 hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease in the 70 cities and the average daily eight-hour maximum ozone concentration was 79.2 μg/m3. Exposure to ambient ozone was associated with increased hospital admissions for all cardiovascular diseases studied except hemorrhagic stroke, independent of other air pollutants. For example, each 10 μg/m3rise in the two-day average eight-hour maximum ozone concentration was associated with a 0.40% increase in hospital admissions for stroke and 0.75% for acute myocardial infarction.

Professor Wu said, “Although these increments look modest, it should be noted that ozone levels may surge to higher than 200 μg/m3 in summer, and these increases in hospitalizations would be amplified by more than 20 times to over 8% for stroke and 15% for acute myocardial infarction.”

3.42%, 3.74% and 3.02% of hospitalizations for coronary heart disease, heart failure and stroke, respectively, were attributable to ozone pollution. When each year was analyzed separately, the proportions rose with time. For coronary heart disease, ozone was responsible for 109,400 of 3,194,577 admissions over three years.

Depression is more than a mental disorder—it affects the whole body 

University of Granada (Spain), March 1, 2023

An international team of researchers led by the University of Granada (UGR) has scientifically proven for the first time that depression is more than a mental disorder—it causes important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease, since it affects the whole organism.

The results of this work, published in the renowned Journal of Clinical Psychiatry magazine, could explain the significant association that depression has with cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and why people suffering from depression die younger. At the same time, this research may help finding new therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of depression.

The lead author of this work is Sara Jiménez Fernández, Ph.D. student at the UGR and psychiatrist at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit at Jaén Medical Center (Jaén, Spain). The co-authors are the UGR Psychiatry professors Manuel Gurpegui Fernández de Legaria and Francisco Díaz Atienza, in collaboration, among others, with Christoph Correll from the Zucker Hillside Hospital (New York, USA).

This research is a meta-analysis of 29 previous studies involving 3961 people, and it’s the first detailed work of its kind about what happens in the bodies of people suffering from depression. It studies the imbalance between the individual increase of various oxidative stress parameters (especially malondialdehyde, a biomarker to measure the oxidative deterioration of the cell membrane) and the decrease in antioxidant substances (such as uric acid, zinc, and the superoxide dismutase enzyme).

The researchers have proven that after receiving the usual treatment against depression, the patients’ malondialdehyde levels are significantly reduced, to the point that they are indistinguishable from healthy individuals. At the same time, zinc and uric acid levels increase until reaching normal levels (something that does not occur in the case of the superoxide dismutase enzyme).

 Grape seed protects against damaging effects of chemo while boosting its effectiveness 

University of Adelaide (Australia), February 24 2023.  

The journal PLOS ONE presented the findings of researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia of a protective benefit for grape seed extract against one of the damaging effects of chemotherapy known as mucositis. The condition is characterized by inflammation and ulceration of the gastrointestinal tract that particularly the affects the mouth and small intestine.

Dr Ker Yeaw Cheah and colleagues divided 64 rats to receive one of three doses of grape seed extract or water for a period of eight days, during which time the animals were injected with the chemotherapy drug 5-fluorouracil or saline. On the day after the end of the treatment period, the animals were examined for the presence of intestinal damage and inflammation.

In comparison with rats that received 5-fluorouracil alone, those that received grape seed had less intestinal damage and up to 55% less inflammation. When grape seed was administered with 5-fluorouracil to cultured human colon cancer cells, the drug’s ability to inhibit cancer growth was boosted by 26% in comparison to drug treatment alone.

“This is the first study showing that grape seed can enhance the potency of one of the major chemotherapy drugs in its action against colon cancer cells,” announced Dr Cheah, who is a researcher at the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. “Our experimental studies have shown that grape seed extract reduced chemotherapy-induced inflammation and damage and helped protect healthy cells in the gastrointestinal tract. While this effect is very promising, we were initially concerned that grape seed could reduce the effectiveness of the chemotherapy . . . In contrast, we found that grape seed extract not only aided the ability of chemotherapy to kill cancer cells, but was also more potent than the chemotherapy we tested at one concentration.”

“Unlike chemotherapy, grape seed appears to selectively act on cancer cells and leave healthy cells almost unaffected,” she observed.