The Center for Energy Medicine

Native Remedies

Energy Doc — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:25:35 +0000

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ADD/Concentration (1-12 yrs)	Hyperthyroidism
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Allergies	Immune System Booster
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Asperger’s Syndrome	Liver
Asthma	Memory Problems
Autism	Menopause Relief
Bad Breath	Motion Sickness
Bladder Infection, UTI	Muscle Pain Relief
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Cholesterol	Prostate/BPH
Constipation	Psoriasis
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Depression	Sexual Performance – Women
Detox Drops	Sleep Problems
Diabetes	Stop Smoking
Digestive Disorders	Throat and Tonsil
Eczema, Skin Irritation	Thyroid
Energy	Urinary Tract Infection, UTI
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Thiamine ‘reverses kidney damage

Energy Doc — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:21:59 +0000

Doses of vitamin B1 (thiamine) can reverse early kidney disease in people with type 2 diabetes, research shows.
The team from Warwick University tested the effect of vitamin B1, which is found in meat, yeast and grain, on 40 patients from Pakistan.
The treatment stopped the loss of a key protein in the urine, the journal Diabetologia reports.
Charity Diabetes UK called the results “very promising” – but said it was too early for any firm conclusions.
The latest findings build on earlier work by the Warwick University team, showing that many diabetes patients have a deficiency of thiamine.
According to the researchers, this cheap and readily available supplement could benefit most people with diabetes – both type 1 and type 2 – as between 70% and 90% of people with diabetes are thiamine deficient.
In diabetes the small blood vessels in the body can become damaged.
We would not advise that people look to vitamin supplements to reduce their risk of kidney complications at this stage
Dr Iain Frame of Diabetes UK
When the blood vessels that supply blood to the kidneys are involved, the kidneys stop working correctly and important proteins, such as albumin, are lost from the blood into the urine.
A third of the patients in the study saw a return to normal urinary albumin excretion after being treated with high dose (300mg) thiamine taken orally each day for three months.
The experts say thiamine works by helping protect cells against the harmful effects of the high blood sugar levels found in diabetes.
Lead researcher Professor Paul Thornalley said: “This is the first study of its kind and suggests that correcting thiamine deficiency in people with diabetes with thiamine supplements may provide improved therapy for early-stage kidney disease.”
They plan more work to confirm their findings.
Dr Iain Frame of Diabetes UK said: “Diabetes UK hopes a large clinical trial will be possible as results so far are very promising.
“However, we would like to stress that it’s still too early to come to any firm conclusions about the role of vitamin B1 and we would not advise that people look to vitamin supplements to reduce their risk of kidney complications at this stage.”
A person should be able to get all the thiamine they need from a normal healthy diet.

Finding May Solve Riddle of Fatigue in Muscles

Energy Doc — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:04:54 +0000

By GINA KOLATA
One of the great unanswered questions in physiology is why muscles get tired. The experience is universal, common to creatures that have muscles, but the answer has been elusive until now.
Scientists at Columbia say they have not only come up with an answer, but have also devised, for mice, an experimental drug that can revive the animals and let them keep running long after they would normally flop down in exhaustion.
For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks, principal investigator of the new study. A popular theory, that muscles become tired because they release lactic acid, was discredited not long ago.
In a report published Monday in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells control muscle contractions. But when muscles grow tired, the investigators report, tiny channels in them start leaking calcium, and that weakens contractions. At the same time, the leaked calcium stimulates an enzyme that eats into muscle fibers, contributing to the muscle exhaustion.
In recent years, says George Brooks of the University of California, Berkeley, muscle researchers have had more or less continuous discussions about why muscles fatigue. It was his work that largely discredited the lactic-acid hypothesis, but that left a void.
What did make muscles tired?
The new work in mice, Dr. Brooks said, “is exciting and provocative.” It is a finding that came unexpectedly from a very different line of research. Dr. Marks, a cardiologist, wanted to discover better ways to treat people with congestive heart failure, a chronic and debilitating condition that affects an estimated 4.8 million Americans.
Its hallmark is a damaged heart, usually from a heart attack or high blood pressure. Struggling to pump blood, the heart grows, sometimes becoming so large that it fills a patient’s chest. As the disease progresses, the lungs fill with fluid. Eventually, with congested lungs and a heart that can barely pump, patients become so short of breath that they cannot walk across a room. Half die within five years.
In his efforts to understand why the heart muscle weakened, Dr. Marks focused on the molecular events in the heart. He knew the sequence of events. As the damaged heart tries to deal with the body’s demands for blood, the nervous system floods the heart with the fight or flight hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, that make the heart muscle cells contract harder.
The intensified contractions, Dr. Marks and his colleagues discovered, occurred because the hormones caused calcium to be released into the heart muscle cells’ channels.
But eventually the epinephrine and norepinephrine cannot stimulate the heart enough to meet the demands for blood. The brain responds by releasing more and more of those fight or flight hormones until it is releasing them all the time. At that point, the calcium channels in heart muscle are overstimulated and start to leak.
When they understood the mechanisms, the researchers developed a class of experimental drugs that block the leaks in calcium channels in the heart muscle. The drugs were originally created to block cells’ calcium channels, a way of lowering blood pressure.
Dr. Marks and his colleagues altered the drugs to make them less toxic and to rid them of their ability to block calcium channels. They were left with drugs that stopped calcium leaks. The investigators called the drugs rycals, because they attach to the ryanodine receptor/calcium release channel in heart muscle cells. The investigators tested rycals in mice and found that they could prevent heart failure and arrhythmias in the animals. Columbia obtained a patent for the drugs and licensed them to a start-up company, Armgo Pharma of New York. Dr. Marks is a consultant to the company.
It hopes to start testing one of the drugs for safety in patients in the spring, but the tests will not be at Columbia because of the university and investigators’ conflicts of interest. In the meantime, Dr. Marks wondered whether the mechanism he discovered might apply to skeletal muscle as well as heart muscle. Skeletal muscle is similar to heart muscle, he noted, and has the same calcium channel system. And heart failure patients complain that their muscles are extremely weak.
“If you go to the hospital and ask heart failure patients what is bothering them, they don’t say their heart is weak,” Dr. Marks said. “They say they are weak.”
So he and his colleagues looked at making mice exercise to exhaustion, swimming and then running on a treadmill. The calcium channels in their skeletal muscles became leaky, the investigators found. And when they gave the mice their experimental drug, the animals could run 10 to 20 percent longer.
Then, collaborating with David Nieman, an exercise scientist at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., the investigators asked whether the human skeletal muscles grew tired for the same reason, calcium leaks.
Highly trained bicyclists rode stationary bikes at intense levels of exertion for three hours a day three days in a row. For comparison, other cyclists sat in the room but did not exercise.
Dr. Nieman removed snips of thigh muscle from all the athletes after the third day and sent them to Columbia, where Dr. Marks’s group analyzed them without knowing which samples were from the exercisers and which were not.The results, Dr. Marks said, were clear. The calcium channels in the exercisers leaked. A few days later, the channels had repaired themselves. The athletes were back to normal.
Of course, even though Dr. Marks wants to develop the drug to help people with congestive heart failure, hoping to alleviate their fatigue and improve their heart functions, athletes might also be tempted to use it if it eventually goes to the market.
The odds are against this particular drug being approved, though, cautions Dr. W. Robb McClellan, a heart disease researcher at U.C.L.A.
“In heart failure, there are three medications that improve mortality, but there have probably been 10 times that many tested,” he said.
Even if the first drug that prevents calcium leaks does not work in patients, Dr. McClellan added, the important advance is to understand the molecular events underlying fatigue. “Then,” he said, “you can design therapies.”
So the day may come when there is an antifatigue drug.
That idea, “is sort of amazing,” said Dr. Steven Liggett, a heart-failure researcher at the University of Maryland. Yet, Dr. Liggett said, for athletes “we have to ask whether it would be prudent to be circumventing this mechanism.”
“Maybe this is a protective mechanism,” he said. “Maybe fatigue is saying that you are getting ready to go into a danger zone. So it is cutting you off. If you could will yourself to run as fast and as long as you could, some people would run until they keeled over and died.”

Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success

Energy Doc — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:27:39 +0000

By ALAN FINDER
LOS ALTOS, Calif. — “Can we take a look at your backpack?”
Ana Homayoun repeats that question countless times a day. No, she does not screen airline passengers or work security at a basketball arena.
Ms. Homayoun is a tutor. She helps teenagers with subjects like math and science, but she particularly specializes in teaching boys how to become more organized.
One afternoon in her cozy office suite in this affluent suburb south of San Francisco, she asked John Ferrari, 14, to go through a two-inch stack of papers he pulled from his backpack. He sorted through the papers, placing them in separate piles — writing, spelling, vocabulary, tests — to bring order to his loose-leaf binder.
“Oh, here’s my class schedule, what a relief,” said John, an eighth grader.
A moment later, he stumbled across something even more valuable. “I have to turn this in tomorrow,” John said. “It’s the name I want on my diploma.”
With girls outperforming boys these days in high school and college, educators have been sparring over whether there is a crisis in the education of boys. Some suggest the need for more single-sex schools, more male role models or new teaching techniques. Others are experimenting with physical changes in classrooms that encourage boys to move around, rather than trying to anchor them to their seats.
But as they debate, high-priced tutors and college counselors have jumped into the fray by charging as much as $100 an hour and up to bring boys to heel.
The tutors say their main focus is organizational skills because boys seem generally to have more difficulty getting organized and multitasking than girls do.
And so private counselors in places as diverse as Chicago, New York City, Sarasota, Fla., and Bennington, Vt., who guide juniors and seniors in applying to college, have devised elaborate systems — from color-coded, four-month calendars that mark dozens of deadlines to file boxes that students must take to each session.
Donna Goldberg began working with students in Manhattan on how to get organized 17 years ago. Her inspiration was her own son, then in seventh grade. Mrs. Goldberg was astonished to learn that he had not been turning in any homework.
“He opened his backpack, which was really a black hole, and he said, ‘Here it is,’ ” she said. He had not understood that in seventh grade he was responsible for handing in his homework, instead of waiting to be asked.
Some educators think the tutors are on the right track, whether or not there is science to back them up. “The guys just don’t seem to develop the skills that involve organization as early,” said Judith Kleinfeld, a psychology professor at the University of Alaska and founder of the Boys Project, a coalition of researchers, educators and parents to address boys’ problems.
Mrs. Goldberg, Ms. Homayoun and other private tutors say boys must learn not only how to organize, but also how to manage their time and even how to study.
Robert Gittings, a sixth grader, has been coming weekly to work with Ms. Homayoun since September. He, too, is asked to empty his backpack, and on one visit, cheerfully removed a vast collection of textbooks, binders, workbooks, paperback books and hardcover library books.
Most of the binders were orderly and reasonably neat. But there was a stack of papers from science, nearly an inch thick, that needed to be sorted.
“Do you have homework for tonight?” Ms. Homayoun asked.
He replied, “We have a work sheet.” But it was not in the homework section of the science binder or in his daily planner.
Then Robert remembered where he put it. From a side pocket of his backpack, he pulled a sheet of paper that has been folded into a tiny rectangle.
Ms. Homayoun laughed and said gently, “Maybe we should put that in the homework section?”
Ms. Homayoun opened her business, Green Ivy Educational Consulting, not long after graduating from Duke University in 2001. She created her organizational system — basically an elaboration of the ways she studied in high school — after she began tutoring six years ago.
“I would ask, What’s the class that troubles you the most?” she said. “I would ask to see the binder, and it would always be the messiest.”
She requires her clients to have a three-ring, loose-leaf binder for each academic subject, to divide each binder into five sections — notes, homework, handouts, tests and quizzes, and blank paper — and to use a hole puncher relentlessly, so that every sheet of school-related paper is put into its proper home.
Students must maintain a daily planner; they are required to number the order in which they want to do each day’s homework and draw a box next to each assignment, so it can be checked off when completed.
Homework must be done in a two-hour block in a quiet room, with absolutely no distractions: no instant messaging, no Internet, no music, no cellphone, no television.
While some girls need help getting organized, at least three-quarters of her students are boys, Ms. Homayoun said. Girls usually adopt her methods more quickly.
“Girls pick up on this much faster,” said Ms. Homayoun, 28, who has a relaxed but firm manner and a gift for diplomacy with teenagers and their parents. “Boys, you still have to be on them for a while. They’re not going to pick up on it immediately. You have to roll with it.”
Two seniors arrived for weekly appointments, expecting to complete their college applications and file them online. But the tutor discovered that one boy left out sections of basic personal information on his application, while the other missed a requirement for three short essays by the University of Virginia. Each was disappointed that there was more work to do.
“Sorry,” she consoled one. “It’s like thinking you’ve finished a marathon and finding out you have three miles left.”
With guidance and constant follow-up, boys can make significant progress, Ms. Homayoun said. Ernie McMillan, 17, a high school senior who has been working with her since the summer before his junior year, is one example. He created orderly binders, kept on top of his daily planner, took notes while reading and even agreed to eliminate distractions during homework.
In the spring of his sophomore year, Mr. McMillan had a 2.8 grade-point average, a B-minus. After working with Ms. Homayoun, he raised his average to 3.1 in the first semester of his junior year. Last spring, he brought it up to 3.5, a B-plus.
“I was really happy about that,” he said. “I always thought I could do it, and I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. I just needed that backing, that structure. I was turning in my assignments on time. I was working ahead on my classes. I was organized in a way I never had been before.”
Mr. McMillan stopped for a moment, before adding, “She totally reworked my backpack, too.”
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Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Microwave-popcorn fumes a home hazard?

Energy Doc — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:50:23 +0000

By MARCUS KABEL
The Associated Press
Consumers, not just factory workers, may be in danger from fumes from buttery flavoring in microwave popcorn, according to a warning letter to federal regulators from a doctor at a leading lung-research hospital.
A pulmonary specialist at Denver’s National Jewish Medical and Research Center has written to federal agencies to say doctors there believe they have the first case of a consumer who developed lung disease from the fumes of microwaving popcorn several times a day for years.
“We cannot be sure that this patient’s exposure to butter-flavored microwave popcorn from daily heavy preparation has caused his lung disease,” said Dr. Cecile Rose. “However, we have no other plausible explanation.”
The July letter, made public Tuesday by a public-health policy blog, refers to a potentially fatal disease commonly called popcorn lung that has been the subject of lawsuits by hundreds of workers at food factories exposed to chemicals used for flavoring.
In response to Rose’s finding, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association issued a statement Tuesday recommending that its members reduce “to the extent possible” the amount of diacetyl in butter flavorings they make. It noted that diacetyl is approved for use in flavors by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
One national popcorn manufacturer, Weaver Popcorn, of Indianapolis, said last week it would replace the butter-flavoring ingredient because of consumer concern. Congress also has been debating new safety measures for workers in food-processing plants exposed to diacetyl.
The FDA said in an e-mail it is evaluating Rose’s letter and “carefully considering the safety and regulatory issues it raises.”
Fred Blosser, spokesman for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said it is the first case the institute has seen of lung disease apparently linked to popcorn fumes outside the workplace.
The occupational-safety arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is working on a response to the letter.
William Allstetter, spokesman for National Jewish Medical, confirmed the letter was sent by Rose, a specialist in occupational and environmental lung diseases and director of the hospital’s Occupational and Environmental Medicine Clinic.
In the letter, Rose acknowledged it is difficult to confirm through one case that popping buttered microwave popcorn at home can cause lung disease.
However, she said she wanted to alert regulators of the potential public-health implications.
Rose said the patient, a man she wouldn’t identify, consumed “several bags of extra-butter-flavored microwave popcorn” every day for several years.
He described progressively worsening respiratory symptoms of coughing and shortness of breath. Tests found his ability to exhale was deteriorating, Rose said, although his condition seemed to stabilize after he quit making microwave popcorn.
She said her staff measured airborne levels of diacetyl in the patient’s home when he cooked the popcorn. The levels were “similar to those reported in the microwave-oven exhaust area” at the quality-assurance unit of the popcorn plant where the affected employees worked, she said.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

Laws of Nature, Source Unknown

Energy Doc — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:44:38 +0000

By DENNIS OVERBYE
“Gravity,” goes the slogan on posters and bumper stickers. “It isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law.”
And what a law. Unlike, say, traffic or drug laws, you don’t have a choice about obeying gravity or any of the other laws of physics. Jump and you will come back down. Faith or good intentions have nothing to do with it.
Existence didn’t have to be that way, as Einstein reminded us when he said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Against all the odds, we can send e-mail to Sri Lanka, thread spacecraft through the rings of Saturn, take a pill to chase the inky tendrils of depression, bake a turkey or a soufflé and bury a jump shot from the corner.
Yes, it’s a lawful universe. But what kind of laws are these, anyway, that might be inscribed on a T-shirt but apparently not on any stone tablet that we have ever been able to find?
Are they merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don’t know and that most scientists don’t seem to know or care where they come from?
Apparently it does matter, judging from the reaction to a recent article by Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and author of popular science books, on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.
Dr. Davies asserted in the article that science, not unlike religion, rested on faith, not in God but in the idea of an orderly universe. Without that presumption a scientist could not function. His argument provoked an avalanche of blog commentary, articles on Edge.org and letters to The Times, pointing out that the order we perceive in nature has been explored and tested for more than 2,000 years by observation and experimentation. That order is precisely the hypothesis that the scientific enterprise is engaged in testing.
David J. Gross, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, told me in an e-mail message, “I have more confidence in the methods of science, based on the amazing record of science and its ability over the centuries to answer unanswerable questions, than I do in the methods of faith (what are they?).”
Reached by e-mail, Dr. Davies acknowledged that his mailbox was “overflowing with vitriol,” but said he had been misunderstood. What he had wanted to challenge, he said, was not the existence of laws, but the conventional thinking about their source.
There is in fact a kind of chicken-and-egg problem with the universe and its laws. Which “came” first — the laws or the universe?
If the laws of physics are to have any sticking power at all, to be real laws, one could argue, they have to be good anywhere and at any time, including the Big Bang, the putative Creation. Which gives them a kind of transcendent status outside of space and time.
On the other hand, many thinkers — all the way back to Augustine — suspect that space and time, being attributes of this existence, came into being along with the universe — in the Big Bang, in modern vernacular. So why not the laws themselves?
Dr. Davies complains that the traditional view of transcendent laws is just 17th-century monotheism without God. “Then God got killed off and the laws just free-floated in a conceptual vacuum but retained their theological properties,” he said in his e-mail message.
But the idea of rationality in the cosmos has long existed without monotheism. As far back as the fifth century B.C. the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras and his followers proclaimed that nature was numbers. Plato, a few hundred years later, envisioned a higher realm of ideal forms, of perfect chairs, circles or galaxies, of which the phenomena of the sensible world were just flawed reflections. Plato set a transcendent tone that has been popular, especially with mathematicians and theoretical physicists, ever since.
Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate from the University of Texas, Austin, described himself in an e-mail message as “pretty Platonist,” saying he thinks the laws of nature are as real as “the rocks in the field.” The laws seem to persist, he wrote, “whatever the circumstance of how I look at them, and they are things about which it is possible to be wrong, as when I stub my toe on a rock I had not noticed.”
The ultimate Platonist these days is Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In talks and papers recently he has speculated that mathematics does not describe the universe — it is the universe.
Dr. Tegmark maintains that we are part of a mathematical structure, albeit one gorgeously more complicated than a hexagon, a multiplication table or even the multidimensional symmetries that describe modern particle physics. Other mathematical structures, he predicts, exist as their own universes in a sort of cosmic Pythagorean democracy, although not all of them would necessarily prove to be as rich as our own.
“Everything in our world is purely mathematical — including you,” he wrote in New Scientist.
This would explain why math works so well in describing the cosmos. It also suggests an answer to the question that Stephen Hawking, the English cosmologist, asked in his book, “A Brief History of Time”: “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Mathematics itself is on fire.
Not every physicist pledges allegiance to Plato. Pressed, these scientists will describe the laws more pragmatically as a kind of shorthand for nature’s regularity. Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, put it this way: “A law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception.”
Plato and the whole idea of an independent reality, moreover, took a shot to the mouth in the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. According to that weird theory, which, among other things, explains why our computers turn on every morning, there is an irreducible randomness at the microscopic heart of reality that leaves an elementary particle, an electron, say, in a sort of fog of being everywhere or anywhere, or being a wave or a particle, until some measurement fixes it in place.
In that case, according to the standard interpretation of the subject, physics is not about the world at all, but about only the outcomes of experiments, of our clumsy interactions with that world. But 75 years later, those are still fighting words. Einstein grumbled about God not playing dice.
Steven Weinstein, a philosopher of science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, termed the phrase “law of nature” as “a kind of honorific” bestowed on principles that seem suitably general, useful and deep. How general and deep the laws really are, he said, is partly up to nature and partly up to us, since we are the ones who have to use them.
But perhaps, as Dr. Davies complains, Plato is really dead and there are no timeless laws or truths. A handful of poet-physicists harkening for more contingent nonabsolutist laws not engraved in stone have tried to come up with prescriptions for what John Wheeler, a physicist from Princeton and the University of Texas in Austin, called “law without law.”
As one example, Lee Smolin, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, has invented a theory in which the laws of nature change with time. It envisions universes nested like Russian dolls inside black holes, which are spawned with slightly different characteristics each time around. But his theory lacks a meta law that would prescribe how and why the laws change from generation to generation.
Holger Bech Nielsen, a Danish physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and one of the early pioneers of string theory, has for a long time pursued a project he calls Random Dynamics, which tries to show how the laws of physics could evolve naturally from a more general notion he calls “world machinery.”
On his Web site, Random Dynamics, he writes, “The ambition of Random Dynamics is to ‘derive’ all the known physical laws as an almost unavoidable consequence of a random fundamental ‘world machinery.’”
Dr. Wheeler has suggested that the laws of nature could emerge “higgledy-piggledy” from primordial chaos, perhaps as a result of quantum uncertainty. It’s a notion known as “it from bit.” Following that logic, some physicists have suggested we should be looking not so much for the ultimate law as for the ultimate program..
Anton Zeilinger, a physicist and quantum trickster at the University of Vienna, and a fan of Dr. Wheeler’s idea, has speculated that reality is ultimately composed of information. He said recently that he suspected the universe was fundamentally unpredictable.
I love this idea of intrinsic randomness much for the same reason that I love the idea of natural selection in biology, because it and only it ensures that every possibility will be tried, every circumstance tested, every niche inhabited, every escape hatch explored. It’s a prescription for novelty, and what more could you ask for if you want to hatch a fecund universe?
But too much fecundity can be a problem. Einstein hoped that the universe was unique: given a few deep principles, there would be only one consistent theory. So far Einstein’s dream has not been fulfilled.Cosmologists and physicists have recently found themselves confronted by the idea of the multiverse, with zillions of universes, each with different laws, occupying a vast realm known in the trade as the landscape.
In this case there is meta law — one law or equation, perhaps printable on a T-shirt — to rule them all. This prospective lord of the laws would be string theory, the alleged theory of everything, which apparently has 10500 solutions. Call it Einstein’s nightmare.
But it is soon for any Einsteinian to throw in his or her hand. Since cosmologists don’t know how the universe came into being, or even have a convincing theory, they have no way of addressing the conundrum of where the laws of nature come from or whether those laws are unique and inevitable or flaky as a leaf in the wind.
These kinds of speculation are fun, but they are not science, yet. “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” goes the saying attributed to Richard Feynman, the late Caltech Nobelist, and repeated by Dr. Weinberg.
Maybe both alternatives — Plato’s eternal stone tablet and Dr. Wheeler’s higgledy-piggledy process — will somehow turn out to be true. The dichotomy between forever and emergent might turn out to be as false eventually as the dichotomy between waves and particles as a description of light. Who knows?
The law of no law, of course, is still a law.
When I was young and still had all my brain cells I was a bridge fan, and one hand I once read about in the newspaper bridge column has stuck with me as a good metaphor for the plight of the scientist, or of the citizen cosmologist. The winning bidder had overbid his hand. When the dummy cards were laid, he realized that his only chance of making his contract was if his opponents’ cards were distributed just so.
He could have played defensively, to minimize his losses. Instead he played as if the cards were where they had to be. And he won.
We don’t know, and might never know, if science has overbid its hand. When in doubt, confronted with the complexities of the world, scientists have no choice but to play their cards as if they can win, as if the universe is indeed comprehensible. That is what they have been doing for more than 2,000 years, and they are still winning.

Sticky molecule may hold key to nerve disorders

Energy Doc — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:50:48 +0000

Thu Nov 29, 2007 2:42 PM ET
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON (Reuters) – A sticky molecule previously linked to inflammation also helps seal vital insulation around peripheral nerves, making it a potential target for new drugs against nerve disorders, scientists said on Thursday.
The latest research suggests the molecule, known as JAM-C, could be a key player in regulating the way nerves work.
In genetically modified mice without the adhesion molecule, the myelin insulation sheath protecting nerves deteriorates and the animals experience faulty nerve firing, muscle weakness and a shortened stride, researchers reported in the journal Science.
The team also found that nerves of patients with certain peripheral nerve disorders had defective JAM-C.
Taken together, the findings suggest the molecule is a key player in regulating the structure and function of peripheral nerves and its malfunction may cause a number of illnesses.
JAM-C, which was discovered only recently, is already being studied as a target for new medicines involved in inflammation and as a possible route to fight cancer, since it seems to help tumors form new blood vessels.
“This finding opens up yet another area that this molecule should be investigated in — but it’s very early days,” Sussan Nourshargh, professor of microvascular pharmacology at Barts and The London School of Medicine, said in an interview.
Nourshargh made the discovery of the molecule’s role in peripheral nerves by accident, while investigating blood vessels. Her team then collaborated with scientists at Imperial College London, University College London, Cancer Research UK and the University of Geneva to advance the work further.
There are more than 100 kinds of peripheral nerve disorders affecting approximately one in 20 people. They often afflict people with existing diseases like diabetes and lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease.
Symptoms include numbness, pain, tingling, muscle weakness and sensitivity to touch. Problems often start gradually and steadily get worse.
Nourshargh said the new molecule was not found in the central nervous system and was therefore unlikely to play a role multiple sclerosis.
JAM-C seems to work by sealing off the insulation in the critical gaps between so-called Schwann cells, which produce the myelin layers that wrap around nerve cells.
(Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Paul Casciato)

Broccoli Sprouts, Cabbage, Ginkgo Biloba And Garlic: A Grocery List For Cancer Prevention

Energy Doc — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:42:06 +0000

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2005) — In the high-tech 21st century, the most rudimentary natural products continue to reveal exciting ant-cancer properties to scientists, offering people relatively simple ways to help protect themselves from the disease.
Five studies presented today during the American Association for Cancer Research’s 4th annual Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting in Baltimore, Md., add to the arsenal of research that shows adding certain vegetables and herbs to the diet can prevent or, in some cases, halt the growth of cancer.
Moreover, it is not just a matter of mechanical prevention, such as adding fiber to the diet to maintain digestive health. This research deals with the chemical interactions between compounds found in foods and the body’s cells and DNA, and it shows that the addition of these foods to the diet can reap benefits at any stage of life.
Broccoli Sprouts Relieve Gastritis in H. pylori Patients; May Help Prevent Gastric Cancer (Abstract #3442)
Broccoli sprouts may not be a culinary favorite for some, but their chemical properties are becoming increasingly popular among those interested in preventing cancer.
In the latest series of studies, a team from Japan has found that a diet rich in broccoli sprouts significantly reduced Helicobacteri pylori (H. pylori) infection among a group of 20 individuals. H. pylori is known to cause gastritis and is believed to be a major factor in peptic ulcer and stomach cancer.
“Even though we were unable to eradicate H. pylori, to be able suppress it and relieve the accompanying gastritis by means as simple as eating more broccoli sprouts is good news for the many people who are infected,” said Akinori Yanaka from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, lead investigator of the study.
Scientists are focusing on the anti-cancer properties of a chemical derived from broccoli sprouts called sulforaphane. Among other things, this chemical has the ability to help cells defend against oxidants, the highly reactive and toxic molecules that damage DNA and kill cells, leading potentially to cancer. Previously, researchers working with H. pylori discovered that sulforaphane acts against the bacterium in vitro, alleviating gastritis in H. pylori-infected mice through its antioxidant activity.
None of these findings had been tested in people, however, until the Yanaka-led team added broccoli sprouts (the plant at its youngest and most sulforaphane-rich, just two or three days old) to the diet of 20 individuals infected with H. pylori. Another group of 20 infected with the bacterium received alfalfa spouts instead of broccoli sprouts. Each received 100 grams of fresh sprouts daily for two months.
“We wanted to test alfalfa spouts together with broccoli sprouts,” Yanaka explained, “because the chemical constituents of the two plants are almost identical.”
However, the way in which they differ is significant. Broccoli sprouts contain 250 milligrams of sulforaphane glucosinolate per 100 grams per serving, whereas alfalfa sprouts contain neither sulforaphane nor sulforaphane glucosinolate.
Glucosinolates occur in cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli and cabbage, and are broken down enzymatically into sulforaphane and a variety of other, biologically active compounds when damage occurs to the plant–that is, by cutting or chewing it.
The presence of H. pylori was assessed by performing urea breath tests and evaluating H. pylori-specific stool antigen. The degree of gastritis was evaluated by measuring the level of pepsinogen in the blood. Pepsinogen is also an indicator of gastric atrophy. These tests were performed just before adding broccoli and alfalfa sprouts to the diet, and at one and two months after starting the dietary regimen. Following two months’ consumption of 100 grams of broccoli sprouts per day, patients showed significantly less H. pylori and markedly decreased pepsinogen. Alfalfa sprouts had no effect, and the broccoli failed to eliminate H. pylori completely. Two months after eliminating broccoli sprouts from the diet, H. pylori and pepsinogen returned to pre-test levels in the subjects.
“The data suggest strongly that a diet rich in sulforaphane glucosinolate may help protect against gastric cancer, presumably by activating gastric mucosal anti-oxidant enzymes that can protect the cells from H. pylori-induced DNA damage,” Yanaka concluded.
Broccoli Sprout-extract Protects Against Skin Cancer from UV Light in High-risk Mice (Abstract #2597)
Eat it or wear it? That is the question.
If you ask Albena T. Dinkova-Kostova, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, she will likely answer “both.”
In the laboratory of Paul Talalay, M.D., who first reported the indirect antioxidant properties of sulforaphane, the compound derived from cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, Dinkova-Kostova and her colleagues applied broccoli sprout extract to the skin of hairless mice, and found it counteracted the carcinogenic response to ultraviolet light exposure.
Mice from a strain characterized by post-weaning hair loss were exposed to a dose of UV light comparable to what a person would get sunbathing at the beach on a clear day, twice a week for 20 weeks. After irradiation, broccoli sprout extracts containing either a low or high dose of sulforaphane were applied to the backs of the mice, five days a week for 11 weeks. Acetone (known commonly as the ingredient in nail polish remover) was used as the vehicle for delivering the sulforaphane, and it alone was applied on the control group. At the conclusion of the study period, 100 percent of the control mice had developed cancerous skin tumors.
The incidence and number of tumors was reduced by half, however, in the mice receiving the high dose of broccoli sprout extract. The rate of tumor reduction was less among the low-dose recipients, but even in their case, some benefit was observed.
“We weren’t looking for a sunscreen effect,” Dinkova-Kostova is quick to point out. “The sulforaphane-containing extract was applied after the period of regular exposure to ultra-violet light. That’s more relevant, since most people receive some sun damage to their skin in childhood, particularly adults who grew up before effective sunscreen lotions were developed.”
Previous research has shown that sulforaphane boosts protective and detoxifying reactions in cells, inactivating carcinogens and reactive oxygen intermediates that contribute to the disease by damaging DNA. As in other studies involving the anti-cancer potential of sulforaphane, Dinkova-Kostova’s group notes that broccoli sprouts contain much more of the compound than adult broccoli.
“Our findings suggest a promising strategy for skin cancer prevention after exposure to UV light,” Dinkova-Kostova said.
Change in Diet at Any Age May Help Protect Against Breast Cancer (Abstract #3697)
Many find it to be the perfect companion to hot dogs and sausage, but new studies suggest that sauerkraut may have another beneficial side effect — it may protect women from breast cancer.
Results from the U.S. component of the Polish Women’s Health Study are showing an association between cabbage and sauerkraut consumption, and a constituent called glucosinolate, and a lower risk of breast cancer. The influence seemed to be highest among women who consumed high amounts beginning in adolescence and throughout adulthood.
“The observed pattern of risk reduction indicates that the breakdown products of glucosinolates in cabbage may affect both the initiation phase of carcinogenesis–by decreasing the amount of DNA damage and cell mutation–and the promotion phase–by blocking the processes that inhibit programmed cell death and stimulate unregulated cell growth,” said Dorothy Rybaczyk- Pathak, Ph.D., from the University of New Mexico.
Pathak, along with colleagues from Michigan State University and the National Food and Nutrition Institute of Warsaw, Poland, evaluated the diet of Polish immigrants to the United States, living in Chicago and surrounding Cook County, Ill., and the Detroit, Mich., metropolitan area. Women with higher rates of raw- or short-cooked cabbage and sauerkraut consumption, three or more servings per week, compared to those who consumed less than one serving a week, had a significantly reduced breast cancer risk.
Like broccoli, cabbage is a cruciferous vegetable–its flowers are in the shape of a cross–and a member of the Brassica family, which includes broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, collard greens and cauliflower. These plants contain glucosinolates and the enzyme myrosinase which, when broken down by chewing or cutting, release several biologically active products which previous studies have shown to possess anti-carcinogenic properties.
Pathak began the study by wondering why the breast cancer risk of Polish women rose three-fold after they immigrated to the United States. She hypothesized that dietary changes were among the environmental factors contributing to this rapid increase in risk. In Poland, where abundance of food is a recent phenomenon, women traditionally eat an average of 30 pounds of cabbage and sauerkraut per year, as opposed to just 10 pounds per year among American women. Moreover, Polish women traditionally eat more raw cabbage and sauerkraut, in salads, or short-cooked, as a side dish.
She observed the lowest rate of breast cancer among women who consumed high amounts of raw- or short-cooked cabbage during adolescence, but found that high consumption during adulthood provided a significant protective effect for women who had eaten smaller quantities of this vegetable during adolescence. Cabbage cooked a long time, such as in hunter’s stew, cabbage rolls and pierogi, had no bearing on breast cancer risk.
Possible Chemoprevention of Ovarian Cancer by the Herbal, Ginkgo Biloba (Abstract #3654)
Researchers in Boston, led by Drs. Bin Ye and Daniel Cramer of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have developed new laboratory and epidemiological evidence that demonstrates, for the first time, that ginkgo biloba appears to lower the risk of developing ovarian cancer.
In a population-based study which involved more than 600 ovarian cancer cases and 640 healthy, matched controls, women who took ginkgo supplements for six months or longer were shown to have a 60 percent lower risk for ovarian cancer.
Ye and his colleagues found that ginkgo, echinacea, St. John’s Wort, ginseng, and chondroitin were the most commonly used herbals among study participants. A further analysis of the data showed that ginkgo was the only herb linked to ovarian cancer prevention. The preventive effect was more pronounced in women with non-muncious ovarian cancers, with data showing that ginkgo may reduce the risk of this type of ovarian cancer by 65-70 percent. “Among the mixture of ginkgo chemicals,” said Ye, “we found laboratory evidence that ginkgolide A and B–terpene compounds–are the most active components contributing to this protective effect.”
Ye’s team, which included scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard Medical School, Boston University and Linden Bioscience, next took the evidence demonstrated by their population studies to the laboratory. In vitro experiments showed that a low dosage of ginkgolide caused ovarian cancer cells to stop growing. They observed significant cell cycle blockage in non-mucinous ovarian cancer cells. Ginkgolides appeared to be less effective against the mucinous type of ovarian cancer cells.
“While the detailed mechanism of ginkgo action on ovarian cancer cells is not yet well understood,” Ye explained, “from the existing literature it most likely that ginkgo and ginkgolides are involved in anti-inflammation and anti-angiogenesis processes via many extra- and intra-cellular signal pathways. In the future, these findings could potentially offer a new strategy for ovarian cancer prevention and therapy, using the active forms of ginkgolides.”
Ovarian cancer is the most deadly of all gynecological cancers. It is called a “silent killer” because most cases are discovered only in very advanced stages.
Changing Genes: Garlic Shown to Inhibit DNA Damaging Chemical in Breast Cancer (Abstract #2543)
Legend suggests that garlic may ward off evil spirits, such as vampires. Now scientists are finding that garlic, or a flavor component of pungent herb, may help ward off carcinogens produced by meat cooked at high temperatures.
Cooking protein-rich foods like meats and eggs at high temperatures releases a chemical called PhIP, a suspected carcinogen. Epidemiological studies have shown that the incidence of breast cancer is higher among women who eat large quantities of meat, although fat and caloric intake and hormone exposure may contribute to this increased risk.
Diallyl sulfide (DAS), a flavor component of garlic, has been shown to inhibit the effects of PhIP that, when biologically active, can cause DNA damage or transform substances in the body into carcinogens.
Ronald D. Thomas, Ph.D., and a team of researchers at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee hypothesized that PhIP enhances the metabolism of the enzymes linked to carcinogenesis. They further suggested that the diallyl sulfide derived from garlic might counter this activity.
“We treated human breast epithelial cells with equal amounts of PhIP and DAS separately, and the two together, for periods ranging from three to 24 hours,” said Thomas. “PhIP induced expression of the cancer-causing enzyme at every stage, up to 40-fold, while DAS completely inhibited the PhIP enzyme from becoming carcinogenic.”
The finding demonstrates for the first time that DAS triggers a gene alteration in PhIP that may play a significant role in preventing cancer, notably breast cancer, induced by PhIP in well-done meats.
Thomas noted that no studies have shown a link between cooking vegetables and fruits and PhIP, regardless of the method used.
Founded in 1907, the American Association for Cancer Research is a professional society of more than 24,000 laboratory, translational, and clinical scientists engaged in all areas of cancer research in the United States and in more than 60 other countries. AACR’s mission is to accelerate the prevention and cure of cancer through research, education, communication, and advocacy. Its principal activities include the publication of five major peer-reviewed scientific journals: Cancer Research; Clinical Cancer Research; Molecular Cancer Therapeutics; Molecular Cancer Research; and Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. AACR’s Annual Meetings attract nearly 16,000 participants who share new and significant discoveries in the cancer field. Specialty meetings, held throughout the year, focus on the latest developments in all areas of cancer research.
Adapted from materials provided by American Association for Cancer Research.
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Parallel universes exist – study

Energy Doc — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:02:26 +0000

Sep 23 11:33 PM US/Eastern
Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as “one of the most important developments in the history of science”.
The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.
In Everett’s “many worlds” universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out – in its own universe.
A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.
It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly – and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.
Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Dr Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, said: “This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science.”
According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles occupy nebulous “superposition” states, in which they can have simultaneous “up” and “down” spins, or appear to be in different places at the same time.
Observation appears to “nail down” a particular state of reality, in the same way as a spinning coin can only be said to be in a “heads” or “tails” state once it is caught.
According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by “wave functions” representing a set of multiple “probable” states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options.
The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.
© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2007, All Rights Reserved.

Humans are Biological Beings

Energy Doc — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:39:11 +0000

This essay is addressed to all the people in the world, including “food scientists,” farmers, “food industry” giants, and just plain old ordinary human beings.
Somewhere along the way in the last century, an idea entered the world – an erroneous idea – that man was capable of screwing around with Mother Nature and getting it right. This idea is captured in the slogan “better living through chemistry,” a slogan given to us by DuPont* in 1939, a time when it seemed that fledgling science really might help solve the problems of this planet, feed the masses, cure diseases, make our lives better. Scientists have certainly experimented away on us, “progressing” from creating our foods in the laboratory to now gene-tampering with our foods, so that with each decade we have moved further and further away from natural food sources. Foods on our supermarket shelves contain lists of chemicals, not real food. They contain non-food additives, preservatives, fillers, colors, false tastes and smells which, taken together, look like food, but are not food and do not nourish us.
[*DuPont is a multi-product chemical company, making everything from explosives and munitions to Teflon, herbicides, refrigerants, high-tech coatings, nonwoven fibers, and much more. The phrase “better living through chemistry” was dropped from their company slogan in 1980. The use of that phrase in this essay does not specifically reference DuPont, but all modern industrial activity based on similar thinking.]
Today, some 60 or 70 years later, it is very clear that “better living through chemistry” has actually turned out to be one of the worst ideas ever conceived. We have poisoned the planet with our industrial chemicals, in exchange for which we now have more “stuff,” but we are not living better (although we are living longer). We are actually very unhealthy through much of that longer lifespan. We are far more unhealthy than our grandparents. Our obese, autistic, ADD, allergic, asthmatic and diabetic populations are enormous, way out of proportion to our total population. We are cancerous, hypertensive, mentally ill, prone to heart disease, ulcers, and new mystery neurological conditions which are likely the result of enviro-toxins created by synergistic combinations of chemicals in our environment that have been ignorantly unleashed upon us by those “better living through chemistry” geniuses, who were so smart they didn’t have a clue what they were doing.
Somewhere along the way in this march to the scientific/chemical future we forgot that we are natural biological beings, that our bodies, our physical vehicles, are entirely natural to this earth, as natural – and in the SAME way – as a squirrel or a bird. Our bodies have an innate chemistry that cannot be successfully subjected to manipulation, although our “food scientists” and “chemists” have tried to manipulate it. The result of those manipulations is disease, imbalances in our guts, our blood, and our brains.
Where did we get the idea that our body, a natural biological system, could be fed unnatural, non-biological ingredients through our food, air, and water, and that it would somehow be able to transmute those unnatural substances, hundreds of which are poisons, into the ingredients that create health?
Where did we get the idea that we are somehow NOT natural? Even if one accepts the idea that we are genetically engineered beings, our biology is still Earth biology. We come out of this planet. We are in sync with this planet. We need the natural substances of this planet in order to survive in a state of health.
Where is the evidence that science has been able to achieve anything positive in regard to our physical beings, other than mechanical manipulations? Sure, medical science can give you a titanium hip, but it absolutely does not understand how the chemistry of the body works. Most doctors don’t know anything at all about nutrition. They don’t know what foods are good or bad for you. They don’t know what makes people healthy. They don’t know how the body heals itself. They invent products that will eliminate a woman’s menstrual cycle but have no idea how body chemistry will be affected by this disruption of natural hormone balances. The whole-body system is a precisely balanced mechanism that they don’t understand. Science now tells us that menopause is a “condition,” when it is actually a phase in the process of the body’s biological life, just as puberty is. Neither of those things is a “condition.” Both are natural periods of transformation, metamorphosis, when we move from one stage of life to another in the unfolding of our biological pattern that is millions of years old.
In our search for everlasting youth, an unnatural state, we deny the wisdom of the body and try to force it into unnatural chemical arrangements through drugs and therapies that are antagonistic to the body. In the end they all fail because the processes of nature are more intelligent, cohesive, balanced, and intricate than anything scientific tinkerers will ever be able to conceive. The tinkerers never get it right. That’s why there are so many ridiculous side effects to modern medicines – because they didn’t get it right, and they won’t get it right. It is unbelievable to think that a nasal spray, that is meant to relieve your allergy symptoms but may also give you a nasal fungus or cataracts, is the best our science can do! It is foolish to put faith in these experiments. That’s all they are: multi-million dollar experiments with our health.
Nature has it right. What we need to do is develop a holistic understanding of the wisdom of nature, not by taking it apart in the laboratory and thinking that by identifying the individual components we then understand what makes it work. That has never been the right answer. The complex synergies of natural chemistries are tossed out the window in that approach. No one understands them. We are only left with the mistakes of the laboratory, the partial solutions, and the terrible side effects, because this kind of chemistry always gets it wrong.
Despite the fact that scientists now know all this, as I look around I see us continuing to try to move further and further from nature. This is a mistake. There is nowhere to go, especially if what we have seen so far from “better living though chemistry” is any indication of our success in this regard. The further we move from nature, the more wrong we get it. Time has not improved the statistics. We don’t get it right in 2007 any more often than we did in 1939. Hasn’t anyone noticed this? There is something basically wrong with our scientific and chemical thinking. It’s the wrong road, which, of course, is why so many of science’s answers are wrong, meaning unsuccessful, partial or total failures – our “food science,” our pharmaceuticals, our industrial chemicals, etc., which only “succeed” by causing failures somewhere else – in the environment, our health, our minds and bodies.
Examples: The folderol and argument about whether Red Dye #2 is harmful to humans; all the arguments made by the “food industry” that preservatives, sodium nitrite, are good for you; mercury in our children’s vaccines; fluoride and chlorine in our water; aspartame; pesticide residues in food – clearly none of this is natural and cannot nourish a natural living system, i.e., a human body.
Has The Matrix and cyber-think mislead us into believing that we can put outlets in our heads, wire our brains, plug into our computers and become cyborgs? Well, OK, but what do cyborgs eat?
Our bodies are not garbage converters. Our bodies are not the DeLorian vehicle from Back to the Future that converts garbage to energy. It doesn’t work that way. That is pure fantasy. No amount of tinkering will make it work that way. The only thing that results from tinkering is imbalance. Our bodies have a precise chemistry that only works in pre-set ways, and only produces health when specific natural nutritional components are supplied to it. There is no other way it works. It baffles me why “chemists” and “scientists” don’t understand this. Nothing good has resulted for our physical beings from “better living through chemistry,” so why do we continue down this path? Why are there still arguments about any of this?
Every time one arrives at the big “Why?” question which seems to defy common sense, as in this case, the usual answer is that someone is heavily monetarily invested in an erroneous path and will continue on that path because it makes money, no matter how erroneous the path is or how much harm is done to humans. This of course is completely illogical, but money will always make its own rationalizations and excuses and is not very often traveling in company with common sense. So it is entirely up to the individual to understand this issue and make choices that defy the system, the science, and the chemists. Your great-grandmother understands it better than these geniuses do.
The best possible thing every person on this planet can do is to eat organic foods, grow your own if you can, buy them even though they are more expensive. Avoid GM foods of all kinds. Avoid all pre-packaged, time-saving foods whose ingredients you cannot pronounce or are not natural. Drink distilled water. Try not to breathe.
It is my hope that some individuals will revise their thinking on this issue, become natural humans again and think of themselves that way, which re-establishes a loving connection with the Earth rather than being divorced from and in conflict with it. It is my hope that these “new humans” will actively lobby against all governmental support of the unnatural substances that the food and pharmaceutical industries continue to come up with.
You are a natural biological being. Honor that. Do not follow any advice from anyone that violates this principle!
In health,
Francesca Caigatti
(Francesca has no credentials of any kind other than being an educated, intelligent, living being on this Earth.)