The After Time: The Future of Civilization After COVID-19

In this special episode of the Science Salon podcast, the last of 2020, Dr. Michael Shermer offers some reflections on 2020, starting with race and the Black Lives Movement, putting it into perspective from other books he read this year, along with podcast guests who appeared in 2020, such as Shelby Steele (in Science Salon # 139). Dr. Shermer recently read Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste and Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Anti-Racist, and offers some thoughts on them, along with other issues competing for our attention of ills troubling society, including class conflicts, income inequality, lack of education, anti-Semitism, far-left illiberalism, far-right xenophobia and bigotry, and religious indoctrination. Everyone thinks that their particular focus is the only one that matters, but broad reading can put each into perspective. Dr. Shermer then reads his essay of the podcast title (originally published on August 31, 2020 in The American Scholar and expanded on here and in an upcoming issue of Skeptic magazine).

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Waste Milk Could Be Used To Capture Carbon Emissions Out Of The Air

 from The Optimist Daily

The premise of carbon capture technologies is simple: remove the greenhouse gas from the air and store it somewhere safe or turn it into something useful. So far, though, developing such technologies at scale has proved rather tricky. One of the main challenges has been finding the right material that can bind to carbon atoms released into the atmosphere.

But scientists at Clarkson University claim that they have recently discovered a promising — though unsavory — candidate that can do the job well: waste milk. The unpleasant-sounding research, which was published in the journal Advanced Sustainable Systems, has the potential to not only help us control carbon emissions but also prevent food waste that often contributes to them.

An estimated 50 million gallons of perfectly-good surplus milk goes to waste every year.Instead of pouring it down the drain, the Clarkson researchers found milk to be a good source of activated carbons — the porous material that sticks to carbon. Since so much of it is wasted, milk is both cheaper than other sources explored as well as more environmentally friendly.

“Powdered milk can be converted into advanced activated carbons with the right porosity and surface chemistry to adsorb the CO2,” said study coauthor Mario Wriedt, “allowing much better control than with the current materials used for this process, like coconut shells or coal.”

Using waste milk to help advance carbon capture technologies seems like the perfect opportunity for dairy farms to reduce their infamous footprints of greenhouse gases. At the same time, it could also help increase farmers’ incomes as they would be able to sell more of their products.

Psychological Risks with COVID‑19 Vaccines

 BY ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW & KATE MACKRILL

The news media have an important role to play in the current race to vaccinate enough people in the United States and around the world, so that we can reach the all-important goal of attaining herd immunity — the key threshold whereby a sufficient number of people have been inoculated and are immune to infection. When that tipping point is reached, person to person infection is expected to become much less likely. By current projections, American immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci projects that the United States could reach the early stages of herd immunity by late March, 2021.¹ The biggest impediment to attaining it is what the World Health Organization describes as “vaccine hesitancy” — the reluctance of people to get vaccinated. Even before the pandemic, the WHO was warning that vaccine hesitancy was a significant threat to world health.²

A major problem in maintaining public confidence in the safety of the vaccines that are being rolled out are reports of allergic reactions in health care workers shortly after being inoculated. The first reports appeared in England and involved two persons with a history of allergic reactions. More recently, two patients in Alaska were affected and more can be expected. Health authorities have been quick to point out that none of these cases were life-threatening. […]

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The Big 3 Rules of Breathing: Nose, Belly, Exhale, Repeat

 by Brian Johnson, from the Optimizer E-zine

In our last couple editions, we've talked about your breathing. How about a quick look at the THREE simple rules of optimal breathing? Here they are:
   1. Breathe through your nose
   2. Into your belly
   3. And exhale slightly longer than you inhaled

1 + 2 + 3 = Magic. How about a quick inventory then a closer look? First, the quick inventory:

   1. You breathing through your nose? (Most people don't. Go look around and/or in the mirror. Do you see a mouth gaping open?)
   2. Do you breathe deeply (yet calmly) into your belly? (Most people don't—especially if you breathe through your mouth!)
   3. And, is your exhale slightly longer than your inhale? (This is the fastest way to relax!)

Now, for the closer look:

Rule #1. Breathe Through Your Nose (EXCLUSIVELY!) When? All day. Every day. (Including while sleeping and training.) Why? Here's the basic idea.

– First: Your nose filters, humidifies and conditions air in ways your mouth simply can't.

– Second: Know that we NEVER used to breathe through our mouths except for the most extreme instances of physical exertion. (Think: Lion chasing you.)

– Third: When you breathe through your mouth, you tend to "over-breathe" via short, shallow, fast breaths that disrupt the oxygen to carbon dioxide levels in your body. Although it might sound weird, it's the CARBON DIOXIDE that actually gets the oxygen out of your red blood cells and into your tissues and organs and you need to slow down your breathing (via your nose!) to get the CO2 right and, as a result, the O2 where you want it.

Rule #2. Breathe into Your Belly Fill up the lower part of your lungs. Flex your most underappreciated and underutilized muscle in your body. Get your diaphragm rocking!! Note: Don't take "big" breaths via your mouth into your chest. Take nice, mellow, quiet, DEEP breaths into your belly. Repeat. All day. Every day.

Rule #3. Exhale Slightly Longer than You Inhale. This is the fastest way to flip the flip the vagal switch and turn on your parasympathetic nervous system and R E L A X. Whenever you think about it: Exhale longer than you inhale. Squeeze your diaphragm. Get all that air out. Why? Well, did you know that breathing is responsible for 70% (!!!) of your body's detoxification? Elimination and sweat only take care of 30%. (Kinda surprising, eh?)

But, guess what? If you're not breathing right, you're not detoxifying fully. And, of course, you're not fueling your cells properly. Enter: Compromised vitality and increased potential of getting all the things you don't want.

Therefore: Nose. Belly. Exhale. Now that you know, Practice. Practice. Practice.

How about a nice, deep, calm breath? In through your nose... Down into your belly... Out through your nose with a nice, long exhale. Ah...Here's to your Optimal Breathing!

It’s About Time!

by Marlene Harris, NSCA, CSCS 

Here’s what a health expert on the local morning news had to say about what we could be doing to protect ourselves.
   1). Get 7-9 hrs sleep daily: I suspect you’ve heard this one before. Much like your cell phone, your body can’t function well without proper recharging.
   2). Avoid/reduce processed foods (as in junk & fast foods): As we know, these foods offer no nutritional benefit and can contribute to inflammation in the body—both undesirable situations if you’re trying stay healthy and avoid viral attacks.
   3). Increase fresh vegetable and fruit intake: You’ve heard this one aplenty before too. Low in calories, high in nutrients and micro-nutrients that can block and/or crush viral invaders, more and more research is singing the praises of this often-ignored aspect or proper nutrition. Berries, broccoli, kale, & other leafy greens were specifically mentioned.
   4). Make liberal use of herbs and seasonings in your cooking: Specifically mentioned were garlic, Italian seasonings, onion, turmeric, black pepper, and ginger. Many herbs and seasonings have anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.
   5). Sufficient/extra vitamin support: Yupper, it’s that micro-nutrient thing again. Vitamins C and D were specifically mentioned.
   6). Physical activity: Being that you’re reading this, I suspect I don’t need to elaborate on this one, so we’ll call it “enough said”.
   7). Get 20-30 min sunshine daily: Another time-honored mantra of health advice. Nothing new here either, but how often is this advice followed?

In sum, a few thoughts:
   1). We’ve all heard these bits of advice before, many, many times. How much better off might we be as a nation if we actually put them into practice, even if the attempts are modest?
   2). We’ve read/heard numerous articles about each of these topics. Mostly in singular it seems. However, put it all together and you get what? A healthy lifestyle…which leads me to ask: shouldn’t we be doing all this anyways, as normal courses of action?
   3). The news report that offered all this advice was the first one I’ve seen in a major news reportthat specifically said “do this stuff to bolster your immune system against COVID-19” since this whole event started. Better late than never, but not seeing this type of content, and often, seems like a glaring omission on the part of the news media.
   4). One final note: after the news segment on ways to preserve and enhance our health there was a commercial break. Remember items 2 & 3 on the list? Among the ads were pitches for fast food and junk food.

Garlic Power To Lower Lead Levels?

By Michael Greger, MD, NutritionFacts.org.

There are so-called chelation drugs that can be taken for acute, life-threatening lead poisoning. However, for lower grade, chronic lead poisoning, such as at levels under 45 μg/dL, there were no clear guidance as to whether these chelation drugs were effective. 

When they were put to the test, the drugs failed to bring down lead levels long term. Even when they worked initially, the lead apparently continued to seep from the patients’ bones, and, by the end of the year, they ended up with the same lead levels as the sugar pill placebo group. It was no surprise, then, that even though blood lead levels dipped at the beginning, the researchers found no improvements in cognitive function or development.

Since much of lead poisoning is preventable and the drugs don’t seem to work in most cases, that just underscores the need “to protect children from exposure to lead in the first place.” Despite the medical profession’s “best intentions to do something to help these kids…drug therapy is not the answer.” Yes, we need to redouble efforts to prevent lead poisoning in the first place, but what can we do for the kids who’ve already been exposed?
What about dietary approaches? Plants produce phytochelatins.

All higher plants possess the capacity to synthesize compounds that bind up heavy metals to protect themselves from the harmful effects, so what if we ate the plants? “Unlike other forms of treatment (e.g., pharmacotherapy with drugs), nutritional strategies carry the promise of a natural form of therapy that would presumably be cheap and with few to no side effects.” Reviews of dietary strategies to treat lead toxicity say to eat lots of tomatoes, berries, onions, garlic, and grapes, as they are natural antagonists to lead toxicity and therefore should be consumed on a regular basis. Remember those phytochelatins? Perhaps eating plants might help detoxify the lead in our own bodies.

These natural phytochelatin compounds work so well that we can use them to clean up pollution. For example, the green algae chlorella can suck up lead and hold onto it, so what if we ate it? If it can clean up polluted bodies of water, might it clean up our own polluted bodies? We don’t know, because we only have studies on mice, not men and women. There are simply few human studies to guide us.

However, one study did have some direct human relevance; looking at the effect of garlic on lead content in chicken tissues. The purpose was to “explore the possible use of garlic to clean up lead contents in chickens which”—like all of us on planet Earth—“had been exposed to lead pollution and consequently help to minimize the hazard” of lead-polluted chicken meat.

It worked! As you can see at 1:59 in my video Best Food for Lead Poisoning: Garlic, feeding garlic to chickens reduced lead levels in the “edible mass of chicken” by up to 75% or more. Because we live in a polluted world, even if you don’t give the chickens lead and raise them on distilled water, they still end up with some lead in their meat and giblets, but, if you actively feed them lead for a week, the levels get really high. When you give them the same amount of lead with a little garlic added, however, much less lead accumulates in their bodies.

What’s even more astonishing is that when researchers gave them the same amount of lead—but this time waited a week before giving them the garlic—it worked even better. “The value of garlic in reducing lead concentrations…was more pronounced when garlic was given as a post-treatment following the cessation of lead administration”—that is, after the lead was stopped and had already built up in their tissues. We used to think that “the beneficial effect of garlic against lead toxicity was primarily due to a reaction between lead and sulfur compounds in garlic” that would glom on to lead in the intestinal tract and flush it out of the body.

However, what the study showed is that garlic appears to contain compounds that can actually pull lead not only out of the intestinal contents, but also out of the tissues of the body, so the “results indicate that garlic contain chelating compounds capable of enhancing elimination of lead,” and “garlic feeding can be exploited to safeguard human consumers by minimizing lead concentrations in meat….”

If garlic is so effective at pulling lead out of chickens’ bodies, why not more directly exploit “garlic feeding” by eating it ourselves? There had never been a study on the ability of garlic to help lead-exposed humans until 2012.

The study was a head-to-head comparison of the therapeutic effects of garlic versus a chelation therapy drug called D-penicillamine. A group of 117 workers exposed to lead in the car battery industry were randomly assigned into 1 of 2 groups and, 3x a day for 1 month, either got the drug or 1/8 of a teaspoon of garlic powder compressed into a tablet, which is about the equivalent of 2 cloves of fresh garlic.

As expected, the chelation drug reduced blood lead levels by about 20%—but so did the garlic. The garlic worked just as well as the drug and, of course, had fewer side effects. “Thus, garlic seems safer clinically and as effective,” but saying something is as effective as chelation therapy isn’t necessarily the whole story. Remember that chelation drugs can lower blood levels in chronic lead poisoning, but they don’t actually improve neurological function.

After treatment with garlic, significant clinical improvements in neurological functioning were seen, including less irritability, fewer headaches, and improvements in reflexes and blood pressure. These improvements were not seen in the drug group after treatment with the chelation therapy drug. As such, garlic was safer and more effective. “Therefore, garlic can be recommended for the treatment of mild-to-moderate lead poisoning.

There are also some human studies on vitamin C. Check out Can Vitamin C Help with Lead Poisoning?.

Food As Medicine: Science Says: “Wow! It Works!”

from Brian Johnson’s “Optimizer” e-zine

In our last couple of editions, we talked about the wisdom of addressing root causes of health issues rather than merely treating the symptoms of those issues. Now I'm ready to deliver on my promise to share the underlying research on food prescriptions that Dr. Mark Hyman shares in his brilliant book Food Fix. Note: If you want to understand one of (if not, as Mark says THE) fundamental ways to change the world, read this book.

So, let's flip open our copies of the book to page 56. The good Dr. Hyman tells us: "Not too long ago a group of doctors and public health experts at Massachusetts General Hospital noticed something striking: Many of the patients who routinely showed up in the emergency room requiring the most medical services were also the patients who seemed to be the most nutritionally vulnerable. They were patients with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and other largely food-related chronic diseases. For hospitals and health insurers, these are among the highest-cost, highest-need patients. Working with a local nonprofit group called Community Services, the doctors decided to launch a study to see whether providing these patients with nutritious meals would have an impact on their health care outcomes."

Dr. Mark continues: "The researchers recruited Medicaid and Medicare patients and split them into groups that either received nutritious meals or did not receive nutritious meals. What the study found was astonishing. The patients who had nutritious meals had fewer hospital visits, ultimately resulting in a 16 percent reduction in their health care costs, and that was after deducting meal expenses. The average monthly medical costs for a patient in the nutrition group shrank to about $843—much lower than the roughly $1,413 in medical costs for each patient in the control group."

Pause for a moment and reflect on that. Provide people with nutritious food and, even after accounting for the cost of that food, your health care costs decline by a notable 16%. Now 16% may not seem like much, but let’s put that in perspective, if we could take 16% off the projected 95 TRILLION DOLLARS we will spend in the US alone over the next 35 years, that would save us 15.2 TRILLION DOLLARS.

Of course, that's just the economic impact. Consider the Energy and quality-of-life impact those nutritious meals created for the patients and their families.

Dr. Mark continues: "Another group of public health experts in Philadelphia studied what happened when a nonprofit group called the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance (MANNA) delivered healthy meals to people with diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. Over twelve months, the patients in the nutritious meal group visited hospitals half as often as a control group and stayed for 37% less time. Ultimately, their health care costs plummeted more than 50%, or $12,000 a month per patient.

According to the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, the sickest 5% of patients account for 50% of overall health care costs in the United States. This means that providing healthy meals to the sickest provides a big return on investment. The problem is that insurance will pay for expensive hospital stays but not for food that could literally save billions in health care costs. This must change."

I typed that last part with a sigh. It was impossible for me not to recall the sugar-laden, processed-food dominated food tray my brother sent to me during one of HIS hospital stays as he was fighting cancer. Not only does insurance not cover prescriptions for healthy food, but the very place we go to heal ourselves often serves some of the WORST foods on the planet. This must change. Starting with our own food choices. TODAY.