Sugar: The Sweet Truth and the Big Fat Deception
Obesity and chronic disease are more complicated than we've been led to believe

Dr. Syed Haider
Sugar: the demonisation of a product or ...
Sugar gets demonized a lot. I used to demonize it too.

Robert Lustig is a famous pediatric endocrinologist and physician researcher specialized in obesity, who, ever since his video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth went viral on Youtube in 2009, has been on a crusade against sugar (I wondered who funds him and could not figure it out).

He was instrumental in helping formulate the 2009 American Heart Association’s strict guidelines on added sugar: no more than 100 calories per day for women (6 teaspoons) and 150 for men (9 teaspoons).

Meanwhile this graph recently made the rounds calling into question the correlation between sugar intake and obesity:

Image
Sugar intake, while still much higher than historic norms, had been plummeting for over a decade by the time Lustig went viral with his anti-sugar message in 2009, yet obesity rates continued climbing as though nothing had changed.

So what’s going on here? Is sugar really the primary cause of obesity, or just one of many rising causes? Or is it more complicated?

I’ve found that some people feel best when they eat a lot of carbs. Not just a temporary sugar high, but truly better health all around.

There’s a whole subculture of Ray Peat aficionados who had often spent years on low carb, no sugar diets and felt terrible - until they started eating more sugar, often in the form of whole food carbs, but also added refined sugar.

On the other hand there are probably many more people who have been heavily addicted to sugar their entire lives, also feel terrible, and quitting sugar and carbs seems to make all the difference to their health.

Meanwhile, historically, most human societies have gotten by just fine with a significant amount of carbohydrates in their diets, without obesity - just look at the US, we ate less refined sugar 70 years ago, but still dramatically more than any other civilization in human history, and we were not anywhere near as obese or unhealthy as we are today.

Sugar Consumption in the US Diet
Maybe that sorta plateau between 1920 and 1980 was just the furthest limit of sugar consumption we could possibly sustain without blowing up into human balloons?

That’s certainly a reasonable possibility. Looking at this zoomed out graph you can see that what looked like a precipitous drop earlier, just looks like a dent in the long term uptrend now.

But there’s another subculture of biohackers and optimizers that has found themselves going from sugar intolerant to sugar tolerant.

Some people have found that when they correct their metabolic dysfunction and remain lean for long enough, they no longer have to be as strict as they used to in order to avoid regaining excess weight or re-triggering type 2 diabetes.

They can seemingly miraculously eat a normal amount of carbs and sugar again.

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What could explain these seeming outliers? And could this be something we could all aspire to?

It may be that sugar intolerance (weight gain, diabetes) is just a superficial problem manifesting due to some deeper dysfunction.

The best candidate for this deeper dysfunction is vegetable seed oils.

This toxic trash was never used before in human history, until debt driven fiat monetary inflation made it necessary for governments to identify cheaper cooking oils.

The reason it was never used before was that it tasted and smelled repulsive.

As nature intended: you see vegetable seeds are not meant to be eaten. At the most they're meant to pass through an animal’s digestive tract and be planted in the earth to propagate the plant species. So unlike the sweet fruits that plants “want” animals to consume from them, the seeds are very bitter.

Bitterness is a useful signal to animals: it means this is toxic, don’t eat it. If you do you’ll be sorry, it will make you sick.

The only way we could make the oils that came from crushing those seeds seemingly fit for human consumption was by complex industrial processes involving heavy machinery and a lot of chemicals to deodorize and sanitize the sludge that had previously only been used by sane people to grease the wheels of other machines.


Now, what we eat for fat is of the utmost importance because fat is what we use to make the chemical messengers called hormones, and even more importantly it’s like the cement in a city: every single cell wall is built out of fat.

The right kinds of healthy traditional fats from animals and fruits, like olive and coconut oils, will create cell walls with just the right amount of pliability, stability and durability.

Whereas cell walls constructed out of vegetable seed oils create the wrong kind of cell walls.

This changes the function of cells, their ability to respond to their environmental/chemical signals and to produce their own signaling compounds.

The other problem is that the seed oils are inherently unstable and inflammatory, they develop harmful trans fats and carcinogenic chemicals like acrolein within them due to their processing, and they tend to “oxidize” other normal oils around them, so in a way they “infect” other fats and spread their inflammatory dysfunction.

Some seed oils are labelled “heart healthy” because they are particularly high in omega 3s, like canola.

However the other problems far outweigh the supposed benefits of the omega 3 consumption (and even the omega 3s themselves should be called into question when eaten in refined isolation from the living food matrix of the fish or plants they originated within.

Chris Masterjohn has done some great work suggesting that high dose Omega 3s taken as supplements are initially anti-inflammatory, but later lead to a pro-inflammatory state.

We need to consider that acute inflammation isn’t bad, and chronic inflammation is not the root dysfunction causing chronic illness. What is triggering the chronic inflammation is the real problem, so simply reducing the inflammation, while it reduces symptoms, is not a solution. It is standing in the way of the solution, and likely increasing the foothold the problem has within you, since the body’s immune response is being hampered).



So it’s entirely possible that the original metabolic sin is the consumption of seed oils, leading to leptin resistance (spurring appetite), and then insulin resistance (with carb sensitivity) - both of these leading to visceral fat accumulation, weight gain and all other chronic diseases.

There are other chemical “obesogens,” particularly pesticides, plastics, and xenoestrogens, that tend to make us fat and sick, but none are consumed in the tremendous quantities that seed oils are.

What makes the problem particularly insidious is that it takes as much as 2 years after stopping seed oil consumption to fully clear the seed oils out of most of the body’s cells and then discover to your surprise that you can tolerate carbs and sugars again without going down the slippery slope of weight gain and chronic disease.

So, certainly many people need to start with low carb because they do not tolerate carbs at the moment. Carbs do contribute to their weight problem right now. But I consider that only half the battle.

While strictly avoiding carbs, apparently healthy function may be recovered, but resilience won’t not be, until you can once again tolerate an appropriate amount of carbs.

It’s not possibly to determine what’s appropriate without first getting healthy by detoxing from seed oils, chemicals, chronic infections/infestations, and heavy metals and then seeing what you can tolerate and feel optimal eating.

For most people it’s probably not the minuscule amounts allowed on a ketogenic diet. and for many people it could be much higher carb intake than they might expect.

Paul Saladino became famous with the social media username “Carnivore MD,” which he still uses, but he has long since evolved to eating 300+ grams a day of what he considers healthy carbs from minimally processed fruits, honey and milk.

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He initially felt great on an all meat diet, but after some years began to deteriorate significantly until he added back carbs.

People who experiment with the other extreme on vegan diets often experience a similar journey of initial profound improvements in chronic disease followed by worsening a few short years later.

Doing what’s required to get better is hard enough without the trial and error, which is why people save a lot of time and money when they just go straight to someone who knows what they’re doing.

My choice for people who want an all natural approach that works better than any other alternative, is Hakim Shabaz Ahmed, which is why he now works closely with us at mygotodoc.com/hakim. I can confidently say he is the best in the world at healing people at the deepest levels, because he began with himself and then fine tuned his approach on hundreds of people around the world who were so desperate they had no option but to follow his often difficult to implement advice.



But what’s difficult becomes easy when you’re certain it will work and not just waste your time and effort. If you can become convinced that after a short but difficult path you’ll achieve everything you ever wanted, it’s relatively easy to decide to pursue it. Doubts are what stand in the way of most people, so it’s a good thing Hakim Shabaz is good at dispelling them. His confidence shines through when he speaks, and he will usually be able to tell patients things about themselves that he should have no way of knowing, because of not only intuition, but a deep understanding of underlying principles, which reveal connections most people don’t even know exist.

https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/sugar-the-sweet-truth-and-the-big

Correcting Vitamin Imbalances From Long Periods of Over-Supplementing Specific Micronutrients
A, D, E, K, copper/zinc, B complex, selenium/iodine, calcium/magnesium. Also: sunlight, plankton, and your ever-changing, easy-swap microbiome.

Dr. Syed Haider
What are plankton?
Plankton
Answered a bunch of questions in the livestream Q&A this week, including on long haul shortness of breath, gut issues, methylene blue, how to deal with reactivated viruses, HBOT and muscle cramps. It airs every Wednesday at noon EST (unless I’m traveling) and the recording can also be found on Twitter, YouTube and Rumble (though the entire stream doesn’t always make it through on Rumble).

The first question was on vitamin imbalances, and it deserves a deeper dive than what I was able to do during the stream:

“Doctor Haider mentioned that after us all being on C,D, Zinc, Quercetin, etc....that we are all probably needing A,E and the B vitamins as well. Do we need to just switch to a good multi vitamin or add in the A,E and B's?”

The reason this question came up is because I’ve said that many people took high doses of Vitamin D and zinc for months to years during the pandemic scare, which may have left them deficient in A, E, K and copper.

So there are 4 fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E and K (which has important subtypes: K1, crucial for clotting, and K2, necessary for proper calcium metabolism and bone mineralization. K2 is Dr Weston Price’s “X-Factor” that he identified as being absent in industrial diets that led to improper tooth and jaw development).

It’s generally thought that humans don’t convert K1 from plants into K2, which primarily comes from animal sources like butter. This may or may not be true, but it’s safest to just eat butter, especially grass-fed butter, and for a high-heat cooking oil, you can easily separate the oil from the small amount of solids present to make clarified butter at home.

The important point in terms of vitamin imbalances is that if you make a point of over-consuming particular fat-soluble vitamins, it may block the absorption of the others, so that over time you may develop a deficiency in the ones you are not supplementing. And the same may happen between zinc and copper.

Chris Masterjohn, who first identified K2, has some interesting articles discussing why he believes Vitamin A balances out high doses of Vitamin D to prevent D toxicity.

I added vitamin K2 to my bestseller IMMUNITY [Vitamins] because of a similar concern. The IMMUNITY [vitamins] was a riff on the popular pandemic supplement stack touted by the late Dr. Zev Zelenko who recommended Vitamins C, D, Zinc and Quercetin. The C and D were immune boosting antivirals, and the Quercetin was a “zinc ionophore” that increased the transfer of zinc into cells where it also had a powerful antiviral effect.


The problem I saw was that the quercetin was poorly absorbed without the addition of bromelain, and vitamin D would increase the uptake of calcium which requires K2 to tell it where to go in the body (bones and teeth). Like Masterjohn I thought it likely that most people living in modern industrialized countries were very deficient in K2.

Even if it turns out the body can convert K1 from plants to K2, most people don’t even get a lot of K1 from plants. As for K2 from animal products like butter, many people don’t eat enough butter to begin with, let alone the high quality grass fed butter that’s rich in K2.

So I added bromelain and K2 because there was just enough room in the formulation to accommodate them and I considered those the two most important additions I could make.

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I would have liked to have added vitamins A, E, and copper as well as magnesium (most diets seem to be deficient in this as well which is necessary for hundreds of chemical reactions), but we had already reached the tipping point on price. I wanted to keep it affordable and around the same price as competitors who had not even added the Vitamin K2 and Bromelain. I also saw it as a short term immune booster rather than a long term daily multivitamin type product. I also thought most people were deficient in C and D, and I don’t remember if I was initially even aware of the zinc/copper issue (doctors famously get only a few hours of nutrition training in med school after all, though even that is probably worse than none, given the quality of mainstream nutrition advice). Regardless, I wouldn’t have thought it was a problem for a short term supplement.

Fast forward a couple years and I hear that some people have been taking these supplements every day just in case.

Now without evaluating each person individually I can’t say if that’s a good thing or not. It all depends on the specifics of their body and situation, but what I can say is that generally speaking it is optimal to get micronutrients from food, and it may be more important than we could even realize given our modern pseudoscientific assumptions, experimental blinders and overall myopia.

If we think of everything in terms of information, the body is a super supercomputer (each and every cell is a supercomputer) that processes information from the external and internal environment at all times. That information comes in many forms: light, sound, thought, emotion, food, water, air, temperature, humidity, etc. We process massive amounts of information every minute that we are not even aware of.


Showing only the known and mapped metabolic pathways in the human body, to display these clearly the photo is usually printed out on an 8 foot x 12 foot poster. In December 2004 Romero and colleagues wrote in Gene Biology: “Of the 1,653 metabolic enzymes, 622 are assigned to a pathway in HumanCyc (comprehensive database of known human metabolic pathways), and the remainder are not assigned to any pathway; we expect that in the future some of the latter group of enzymes will be assigned to some known human pathways not yet in HumanCyc, and to some human pathways that remain to be discovered.”
To make this all happen internal cellular processes occur at astonishing speeds: mitochondrial motors rotate faster than jet engines, molecules of glucose move at 250 miles per hour inside of cells, and a typical protein molecule will “tumble” around a cell at 60 million RPM). Visualizations like the one below have to remove 99.99% of what would be present to let you see the 0.01% they are focusing on, and slow things down 1,000 to a million times or more, so you can make sense of anything. For example the still image before you play the video shows a kinesin motor protein that looks like a pair of feet dragging a giant vesicle down a microtubule pathway. In the video it’s lumbering along, but in reality it’s high stepping it 100 times a second.



Our mitochondria, which are the energy power houses of our cells, vary their energy production processes based on the quality of the sunlight and the temperature, which signifies what time of year it is, so that the optimal food for you at any time is what is growing locally. If you’re in a cold place where fruit doesn’t grow in the winter, it would be optimal for your metabolism and health to avoid eating fruit carted in from the tropics. Eating locally and seasonally will provide your body with the food information it has prepared itself to receive based on local environmental conditions.

The food encodes complex information within a living matrix.

Nutrients and bioactive compounds in food act as signals, influencing metabolism, growth, and gene expression. Hormonal responses, gut microbiome interactions, and phytochemicals play key roles in this communication. Dietary patterns and environmental factors, like seasonal variations, affect metabolic processes and health. Poor dietary signals can lead to chronic diseases.

So refining out isolated units like vitamin D from fish oil that was extracted from fish meat and organs could have unexpected effects on our physiology.

Vitamin D naturally comes from whole foods like fatty fish or our own body makes it using dietary cholesterol and external sunlight. The vitamin D in the ocean originates in plankton that also make it from cholesterol and sunlight, and form the base of a food chain that concentrates D. So vitamin D is a distilled form of the energy of the sun. That energy taken out of context may be harmful. When vitamin D is made in our skin from sunlight, we also receive many other beneficial effects from that sunlight, which alter our physiology. Various wavelengths of light change the characteristics of our blood and mitochondria, and sunlight (especially in the morning, but also throughout the day) helps set our circadian rhythms. The important effects of the sun aside from the creation of vitamin D are encoded in the fish, just as they are in us. If we consume the entire fish we benefit from all the other information, and it affects our physiology in a comprehensive way. If we refine out the vitamin D and take it in the absence of all the other information that usually comes with it, there are bound to be imbalances created.

So the best way to get vitamin D is probably from sunlight, unless you’re in an environment where that’s impossible like up north in the winter, when UVB doesn’t make it through the atmosphere, in which case you should probably: a. get plenty of sun in the summer so you have adequate D stores to tide you over, and b. eat fatty fish through the winter to top up along the way.


Another exception to the rule
Same goes for all the vitamins and mineral. Get them from food or natural sources whenever possible and leave supplements for last minute emergency situations.

Vitamin A is found in beef liver, which also has high amounts of many B vitamins. Vitamin E can be found in nuts, salad greens, avocados, and asparagus. As mentioned earlier K1 is present in greens and K2 in grass fed butter (also very high in emu oil). Copper and zinc can be found in shellfish, organ meats and beans.

Eating “nose to tail” is one way to get everything the body needs because an animal like a cow (or even a fish, which is why tiny sardines with the head on are so great) basically has everything the human body needs, and any specific nutrients that are especially necessary for a particular organ will be found concentrated in that organ, so whatever your brain needs will also be found in an animal brain, same for the heart, liver, kidneys, etc. You can also find powder supplements forms of all these, but the real food is always preferable.

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As an overview here are some of the vitamin imbalances we’ve already discussed along with other common ones to watch out for:

Vitamin D and Vitamin K2

Vitamin D: High doses of vitamin D can increase calcium absorption.

Vitamin K2: Insufficient vitamin K2 can lead to improper calcium metabolism, causing calcium to deposit in soft tissues instead of bones, potentially leading to vascular calcification.

Vitamin A and Vitamin D

Vitamin A: Excessive vitamin A can interfere with the action of vitamin D.

Vitamin D: An imbalance between vitamin A and D can affect bone health, as these vitamins work synergistically to regulate calcium levels.

Zinc and Copper

Zinc: High doses of zinc can interfere with copper absorption.

Copper: Deficiency in copper can lead to issues such as anemia, weakened immune function, and cardiovascular problems.

Vitamin E and Vitamin K1

Vitamin E: High doses of vitamin E can interfere with vitamin K function, affecting blood clotting.

Vitamin K1: Deficiency can lead to bleeding disorders due to impaired clotting.

Calcium and Magnesium

Calcium: Excessive calcium intake can lead to magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium: Adequate magnesium is needed for proper calcium metabolism. Imbalance can affect muscle function and cardiovascular health.

Iron and Zinc

Iron: High iron levels can interfere with zinc absorption.

Zinc: Zinc deficiency can impair immune function and wound healing.

B Complex

Many B vitamins use similar pathways and transport mechanisms for absorption in the intestines. Excessive amounts of one vitamin can saturate these pathways, reducing the absorption of others. For example high doses of folic acid (vitamin B9) can compete with vitamin B12 for absorption, at the same time folate can potentially mask the vitamin B12 deficiency by correcting B12 deficiency induced megaloblastic anemia without addressing neurological damage that can also be caused by B12 deficiency.

B vitamins often act as co-factors for the same enzymes in metabolic reactions involved in energy production, DNA synthesis, and neurotransmitter function. An imbalance in one vitamin can disrupt the optimal functioning of these enzymes, affecting the levels of other B vitamins. For example excessive vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) can saturate certain metabolic pathways leading to increased functioning of enzymes that also require vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and vitamin B3 (niacin), leading to available stores of vitamins B2 and B3 being used up, leading to their deficiency in other necessary reactions. A similar imbalance can occur when over supplementing vitamins B3 or B2.

Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids

Omega-3: Excessively high intake of omega-3 fatty acids can reduce the body’s ability to use omega-6 fatty acids properly due to their competition for the same enzymes.

Selenium and Iodine

Selenium: High selenium levels can negatively affect thyroid function if iodine is deficient.

At mygotodoc.com we run Chris Masterjohn’s comprehensive functional vitamin panels occasionally for interested patients, but it seems to me that the complexity involved inside the body, along with the inherent inaccuracy of nutritional testing, combine to create a very difficult time for those trying to interpret patient test results and provide actionable insights.

Masterjohn’s protocols are publicly available for anyone to interpret their own tests and anyone who has reviewed them will notice that there are a lot of ifs, ands and buts sprinkled throughout. Long story short: you won't usually find any definitive answers there. And what definitive answers you may think you have found could turn out to be wrong. We might misunderstand what the bodies getting at by itself creating and perpetuating a particular “deficiency” or “excess” in our best interest given the impossibly toxic situation it’s in.

With a deep wholistic approach it’s rare to need much if any testing because the signs pointing you in the direction you need to go are more obvious at the macroscopic than the microscopic scale.

No one reads those signs like my colleague Hakim Shabaz Ahmed and in his vast clinical experience with patients it’s become clear that the best way to uncover your own optimal dietary needs is to first get yourself really healthy and then you will notice very clearly how various foods make you feel and which ones your body is asking for at a particular time in your life (it can vary based not only on you, but on what you’re doing and going through at a particular time). Both stages: the getting really healthy part and then the optimizing foods part go a lot faster with an expert guide.



One final note: Hakim Shabaz suspects the body and microbiome may be even more flexible than anyone suspects, capable of not only interconverting similar nutrients like K1 to K2, but also very dissimilar micronutrients and minerals. There is some interesting buried research from the late 19th century that seems to back this up (we’re working on an article on this topic).

We do know that the right bacteria can create perhaps anything we might want or need, which highlights the importance of avoiding the indiscriminate use of broad spectrum antibiotics which have destroyed the microbial diversity of many modern peoples. Maybe we should all visit some jungle tribes once in awhile to gather what they're still carrying with them. Of course every environment has its own unique challenges that intact microbiomes will be perfectly attuned to. We may just need to meticulously avoid antibiotics long enough and optimize our personal habits (food, sun, sleep, EMF exposures, comprehensive detoxification, etc), to allow the beneficial microbes in our environment to recolonize us. If anyone still has them it’s most likely to be those who are still particularly healthy and impervious to modern diseases. It might be a good idea to make friends with as many of those people as you can so whatever beneficial microbes they have can rub off on you too.

This idea might sound silly and you might think you need a stool transplant, but the research shows microbial transfers actually happen all the time and our microbiome is incredibly responsive and can change rapidly:

(F)armers have a different microbiome than city workers58…the oral microbiota of sailors is significantly altered by their occupational activities, so that after 120 days at sea, they show a five-fold reduction in alpha diversity and an increase (in) Streptococcus59... Finally, couples who physically interact have a more similar microbiota than people who share the same living quarters but do not physically interact14, indicating that physical interaction influence microbial sharing and hence microbiome similarity, highlighting the effects of social interaction on the microbiome.
(Gilbert 2020)


https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/correcting-vitamin-imbalances-from

Boiled water changes flouride into flourine, making it more potent....

Anyone cooking their vegetables with tap water?

Join us: HISTORY

‘Sign of Things to Come’: Singapore Approves 16 Insects for Human Food

Singapore has approved 16 insects as food for humans — becoming the latest country to authorize insect products for human consumption, in what The Guardian described as a move that “paves the way for plates to become wrigglier, leggier and more sustainable” and as “a sign of things to come.”

In a July 8 announcement, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved the 16 insects, which include silkworm pupa and mealworm, “With immediate effect.”

“These insects and insect products can be used for human consumption or as animal feed for food producing animals,” the SFA stated.

Countries and entities such as the United Kingdom (U.K.), Australia and the European Union (EU) have already approved some insects for human consumption. However, in the U.S. existing regulations contain few references specifically addressing insects.

This regulatory gap has enabled an ecosystem of “alternative protein” startups to enter the insect food market — with the backing of figures such as Bill Gates and government agencies including the United Nations (U.N.) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation.

“The United Nations Food And Agricultural Organisation (FAO) continues to promote insect consumption as an environmentally friendly way to get protein in your diet — for both humans and their livestock,” The Guardian reported.

Proponents of insects as food for humans, including the FAO, argue this will help combat climate change, as insects produce a smaller carbon footprint than traditional livestock. But critics challenge this view.

“The justification for insects is to produce protein using fewer inputs: to save the planet by reducing climate change, methane from cows, less pollution,” internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender. “But just because it is protein doesn’t mean it’s good for us.”

Nass cited parasites that could be spread by insects, difficulties in digesting insects, and common allergies to chitin — commonly found on the exoskeleton of insects.

According to Nass, lax U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, under which many insects can be classified as “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS), “means they don’t require testing” and enables the FDA to “look the other way.” This has opened the door for insect foods to reach consumers.

“How long will it take before we learn whether these foods are safe? It could take generations,” Nass said.

“Advocates for mass consumption of insect-based foods would like you to believe that bugs have been a reliable source of protein for thousands of years,” said Seamus Bruner, author of “Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life.”

Bruner, who also is director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, told The Defender:

“While that is true, malnutrition and disease were also endemic and life expectancies were dramatically lower than they are today. The truth is that beef, pork, poultry and other animal-based foods are the most efficient and healthy sources of protein. These climate fanatics pushing insect-based foods are scaring people into adopting less healthy diets.”

Dutch journalist Elze van Hamelen told The Defender that using insect ingredients for pet food also poses a risk to public health, citing a 2019 study that found parasites in 244 of 300 insect farms and pet stores that were investigated.

“Feeding pets with parasite-infested insects, especially pets that do not have the physiology to digest bugs, may not be such a good idea,” van Hamelen said.

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda,” told The Defender, “The insect craze is intimately connected to the U.N.’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

Rectenwald cited two SDGs: SDG 2, “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” and SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.”

“’Sustainability’ is code language for coerced reductions in consumption and forced behavioral modifications,” Rectenwald said.

Nass said the U.N., along with the World Economic Forum (WEF), “promote the so-called SDGs, which can supposedly be met if we change our diet.” Yet, “We don’t see the WEF or U.N. attendees eating insects at their meetings.”

Nass suggested that one reason behind the shift to insects as food is “to cause emotional harm: to degrade, debase, downgrade human beings” and that beef is “being demonized,” potentially to “weaken the species.”

“The idea seems to be to get rid of small producers and create a fully industrialized system of food production that Cargill, ConAgra, PepsiCo will profit from,” she added.

“Bill Gates claims his investments in alternative proteins are to save the planet,” Bruner said. “What he does not say is that they are part of a strategy to monopolize the protein industry — for profit — as he lobbies to ban animal-based competition.”

Insect Firms in Singapore ‘Educating’ Children About Insects as a Food Source

The 16 insects Singapore’s SFA has approved include “various species of crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, mealworms and silkworms,” The Straits Times reported. According to The Guardian, foods containing insects must clearly label this on the packaging, “to indicate the true nature of the product.”

The Straits Times reported that local restaurant chain House of Seafood is already “cooking up a menu of 30 insect-infused dishes to give customers more choice,” while other firms have begun “educating consumers” — including children — about insects as a food source for humans.

The report cited the example of Altimate Nutrition which, “While waiting for SFA’s regulatory approval … conducted workshops and educational sessions at almost a hundred schools, from pre-schools to institutes of higher learning.”

Surveys conducted after the program found that about 80% of students would be willing to try the insects after they are approved, The Straits Times reported.

But Bruner said other factors are likely at play in Singapore.

“The WEF — perhaps the largest driving force behind so-called ‘alternative proteins’ — frequently touts Singapore’s compliance with Agenda 2030, so the decision to prioritize insect-based foods is not surprising,” he said.

EU, U.K., Australia and Other Countries Approve Insects for Consumption

Authorities in the EU, U.K. and Australia, among other countries, have also approved certain insects for human consumption.

Brussels Signal cited Ermolaos Ververis, scientific officer for the European Food Safety Authority Novel Foods Team, who said the EU has authorized six insects: “Alphitobius diaperinus larvae products, dried mealworms, whole and ground yellow mealworms, whole and ground Grasshoppers, whole and ground crickets, and partially defatted Whole Cricket Powder.”

Eight applications are still pending in the EU, where according to EU regulations, foods containing insects must be clearly labeled.

Brussels Signal reported that under Horizon Europe, a European Commission — the executive branch of the EU funding program for research and innovation — “insect-based proteins are considered one of the key areas of research.”

U.K. authorities have approved four insects for human consumption — yellow mealworm, house cricket, banded cricket and black soldier fly, as “novel foods,” while Australia has approved three species: two varieties of mealworm and a cricket.

According to the FAO, there are more than 1,900 “edible insect species.” However, insects don’t appear to be included in the FAO’s Codex Alimentarius — its international food safety guidelines.

‘Nudging’ the Public Toward Acceptance

Several studies, including a 2020 report by the European Consumer Organisation, a 2021 YouGov poll and a 2022 report by UBA, Germany’s environmental agency, suggest low demand among the public for consuming foods containing insects.

Other studies in 2020 and 2022 suggested people would be more willing to shift their attitudes after being told about the “environmental benefits” of eating insects.

The 2020 study suggested that “nudging” — a behavioral science concept supported by the National Science Foundation — could be used to this end. “As humans are a particularly social species, leveraging the social nature may prove particularly useful,” the study said.

In a 2021 European Food Safety Authority report, Giovanni Sogari, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Food and Drug at the University of Parma in Italy, suggested, “There are cognitive reasons derived from our social and cultural experiences, the so-called ‘yuck factor’, that make the thought of eating insects repellent to many Europeans. With time and exposure such attitudes can change.”

And Lies Hackelbracht, the owner of TOR Royal, an insect production company in Belgium, told Euronews in 2021, “When we are 9 billion people, it won’t be possible to let everybody eat meat, so we have to search for other possibilities with a lot of protein and it can be in plants, but it can also be in insects.”

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Featured image is from CHD

https://www.globalresearch.ca/singapore-approves-16-insects-human-food/5863915

https://donshafi911sars-cov-2.blogspot.com/2024/07/sign-of-things-to-come-singapore_29.html

Cured Meat: Curse or Cure?
Nitrites and Nitrates have been vilified, but they've been used for 1000s of years.

Dr. Syed Haider

I was never convinced meat was inherently unhealthy, but anti-meat propaganda did get me to avoid cured meat for years, then one day I realized that people have been curing meat for centuries, basically using the same method we use today - i.e. adding nitrogen in the form of nitrate to meat, which is converted by bacteria within the meat into nitrite. The nitrite acts as an antioxidant, dries out the meat and inhibits the growth of bacteria.

The Phoenicians, Romans and Ancient Greeks used various naturally occurring nitrate salts to cure their meat going back 1000s of years.

However, like so many other things that people have done for millennia, curing meat was singled out as harmful in the last century when Big Business and Big Government started to meddle with what people since time immemorial knew to be true about nutrition and health. Studies seemed to show a correlation between meat consumption, especially processed meats, and various chronic diseases. It was postulated that the harm came from nitrosamines that were formed by the combination of nitrites/nitrates with amino acids when the cured meat was cooked.

However there are some inconvenient holes in this theory.

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First nitrites & nitrates are much more common in plants than in meat. And many plants also contain amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, so cooking them should also form the supposedly harmful nitrosamines. Yet plants aren’t demonized like meat is.

We also need nitrites/nitrates to form nitric oxide, which is an essential signaling molecule and very important for vascular health. In fact nitrates are the name of an entire class of medications with nitrate in them, that are used for heart disease to increase the bodies nitric oxide levels.

People think hot dogs are unhealthy, but they still can't resist them
But perhaps the biggest reason this theory of nitrites/nitrates in meat being harmful holds no water is that our own bodies make far more of the supposedly harmful nitrosamines than we can ever possibly eat.

So basically it was a bad psyop all along that collapses under the most cursory examination (and yet there are so many of these types of dysinformation psyops out there no one has time to examine them all and they mostly go unnoticed).

If there is no coherent theoretical mechanism for harm and many different people have done it forever it’s likely that any signal you find in a study is from systemic bias (Ioannidis, 2005).

"Why Most Published Research Findings are False" Part III
There is clear anti-meat bias in the scientific establishment because the government funds most science and the government needs science that helps it to cover up and minimize the inflation it causes by printing too many dollars.

As inflation causes the prices of healthy food to climb and normal people can no longer afford it, the government is incentivized to convince everyone that it’s not actually good for you anyway, which is why in 1966 then US president Lyndon Johnson called the Surgeon General and said he needed some “science” showing that eggs were bad for you.

Shortly thereafter the media spread the myth that cholesterol and therefore eggs high in it, were bad. Many generations of Americans were thoroughly convinced that not only were cholesterol and saturated animal fats bad, but that cheap grains, seed oils and sugar were good.

So now I have a useful rule of thumb: if government funded science (most science nowadays) says anything it’s almost always, if not always, agenda driven, statistically manipulated garbage that is very likely to be in gross error.

A few minutes on the search engine of your choice is usually long enough to discover the truth, unless its a topic that really scares the establishment like an unusually effective therapy that threatens Big Pharma profits (I’ll be writing about one of those for heart disease soon so stay tuned and subscribe if you haven’t don’t do so already).

While nitrites and nitrates appear to be benign (and perhaps even health promoting via nitric oxide), it’s important to acknowledge that not all processed and preserved meats are created equal.

Many processed meats are of low quality, and contain various chemicals, unnatural preservatives, colorings and flavorings that should be avoided. Some can hardly be recognized as meat during their excessive processing (highly processed foods are generally acknowledged by everyone to be less healthy than minimally, traditionally processed ones). For example there is a famous video of pink sludge making it’s way through a large factory before it ends up as sliced deli meat. I for one don’t think my final meat product should begin it’s life as a liquid pink sludge.

Ham production screenshots from TikTok
So curing is fine, but what about the meat itself?

That was the broader psyop, of which the nitrite/nitrate controversy was but a side note.

The primary focus was on the saturated fat in meat and animal products like milk and butter.

But we now know for a fact that all the research was severely tainted. Early research by Alan Keys was clearly cherry picked to create a false narrative.

It’s since been pretty conclusively shown that saturated fat is healthy, dietary cholesterol does not usually influence blood cholesterol levels, and moreover blood cholesterol is not the cause of coronary artery disease. It’s actually the only solution some peoples bodies can find for their badly inflamed and damaged arteries, given the bad hand they’ve dealt themselves.

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People in “blue zones” who are purported to live longer than anyone else and were supposed to eat little meat, actually eat more meat than researchers let on. For example Okinawans eat more meat than their closest co-ethnic neighbors who live shorter lives. There’s evidence that groups like the 7th Day Adventists who say they don’t eat meat for religious reasons actually do. On Sardinia they don’t eat what the media portrays as a “Mediterranean Diet” - generally high in carbs and low in saturated fats. They actually eat more fish, meat, and full fat dairy products, while consuming relatively less grains than we’ve been led to believe.

But just because cured meat and meat in general isn’t inherently bad, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for a particular person either.

For example it may be better for many of the chronically ill to prioritize fatty fish over meat for their DHA content and other important nutrients. For someone who has overeaten Omega 6 rich seed oils for years they may not benefit from focusing on chicken or grain fed beef that is also rich in Omega 6 fats. For someone seriously depressed it’s usually best to avoid the meat of stressed out and depressed animals, because their psychological state also imbues their meat (stress hormones and water memory). For someone with cancer, its usually best to avoid anabolic foods like meat all together.

But in general, fresh or cured meat is an important part of a healthy, balanced diet and theres nothing wrong with enjoying it.



https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/cured-meat-curse-or-cure

https://donshafi911sars-cov-2.blogspot.com/2024/07/cured-meat-curse-or-cure-nitrites-and.html

SFA approves 16 insect species for food; companies gear up to offer new dishes and products
Cheryl Tan

House of Seafood is cooking up a menu of 30 insect-infused dishes to give customers more choice. ST PHOTOS: BRIAN TEO
SINGAPORE – Fancy some lychee balls with crispy chilli crickets or sushi with superworms?

The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said on July 8 that it has approved 16 species of insects for consumption.

The insects include various species of crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, mealworms and silkworms.

For industry players in Singapore, who have been gearing up for this moment by experimenting with and developing new insect-based recipes and products, the approval is a long-awaited one.

SFA began public consultations on the possibility of allowing 16 species of insects for consumption in 2022, The Straits Times reported then.

Insects have been touted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as a more sustainable alternative to meat, as they have high protein content and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions when farmed.

In April 2023, SFA said it would give the green light for these species to be consumed in the second half of 2023. This deadline was later pushed to the first half of 2024.

Already, at least two industry players – Singapore-based Future Protein Solutions and Asia Insect Farm Solutions – have decided to call it quits, as the long wait had thrown their business viability into question.

But other firms are persisting with their insect offerings.

Altimate Nutrition and House of Seafood, for instance, hope to roll their products out to the mass market.

Other firms are taking it slow, hoping to introduce insects into consumer diets gradually, such as by incorporating insect powder as an ingredient in protein bars.

A bevy of options

Mr Francis Ng, House of Seafood restaurant’s chief executive, is cooking up a menu of 30 insect-infused dishes to give customers more choice.

Of the 16 approved species, the restaurant will add superworms, crickets and silkworm pupae to some of its seafood dishes, such as salted egg crab.

Prior to the approval, the restaurant had been getting five to six calls daily inquiring about its insect-based dishes, Mr Ng said.

“Many of our customers, especially young people who are under 30 years old, are very daring. They want to be able to see the whole insect in the dish,” he added.

He anticipates that sales from insect-based dishes will increase his revenue by around 30 per cent.

Mr Javier Yip, founder of logistics company Declarators, has set up another business and secured a licence to import insects from farms in China, Thailand and Vietnam for sale in Singapore.

He will sell a range of bug snacks under the brand name InsectYumz. Several types of insect snacks will be available for a start, including original and tom yum-flavoured crickets and mealworms. There will also be cricket powder, which is a protein powder.

These items will soon be listed on his website and other e-commerce sites, as well as supermarkets and restaurants, he added.

Asked why he decided to venture into importing insects, Mr Yip said: “I enjoy eating them; in fact, the first time I tried an insect was at a shop in Tampines in the 1990s.”

As he runs a logistics company, Mr Yip feels he has the know-how and ability to import these insects into Singapore. He hopes to provide such snacks to those who might enjoy them, particularly young people.

Altimate Nutrition, which creates insect food products for humans, has sought to garner interest among younger people by educating consumers over the years.

Its main product offerings are cricket-infused protein bars, which come in a range of flavours, from strawberry to banana chocolate.

While waiting for SFA’s regulatory approval, the company conducted workshops and educational sessions at almost a hundred schools, from pre-schools to institutes of higher learning, said its co-founder, Mr Hiew Yuen Sheng.

“During our workshops, we targeted mostly young people who may be more adventurous when it comes to trying insects, and we educated them on the benefits of insects as a more sustainable protein source,” he said.

Surveys conducted after the programme found that around 80 per cent of students polled would be willing to try the insects after they are approved, he added.

Altimate Nutrition is hoping to launch its cricket protein bars at eco-friendly store Green Collective as soon as possible, to be the “first movers”, Mr Hiew said.

It is collaborating with various food and beverage players – for instance, it supplies House of Seafood with some of its bugs, and is working with Origin Bar to launch a cricket-based cocktail.

To carry out more research and development, Altimate Nutrition has formed a joint venture named ProteinInnovation with its supplier, Thai insect farm Global Bugs.

ProteinInnovation will look into growing crickets in the most productive, cost-effective way, and the collaboration will help Global Bugs to better tap the Singapore market, said Global Bugs co-founder and chief executive Kanitsanan Thanthitiwat.

“While there are many cricket farms in the Thai market, the challenge lies in determining who can produce the largest volume of crickets and in the most cost-effective way,” she said.

ProteinInnovation will be raising funds to build another high-tech cricket farm in Thailand, which is capable of growing around 200 tonnes of crickets a year – 20 times more than its current capacity.

The crickets will be bred, using automation, in little “boxes”, to alleviate manpower costs, and being modular, these can easily be scaled up, she added.

Other companies are waiting to test consumer reception before deciding on their launch plans.

Mr Aaron Chen, the chief executive of Werms, which currently sells insects such as crickets and mealworms as pet food, is waiting to see if there is any consumer demand for his insects, before deciding to offer them for human consumption.

While these insects are grown in a similar way – whether for humans or for pets – greater biosecurity measures will be needed if they are to be sold for human consumption. A new farm will also have to be set up to prevent cross-contamination, for example, and a new licence will be needed.

“While we can scale up rather quickly, there might be quite a bit of costs involved for us to venture into the edible insect market, so we’ll wait and see what happens,” he told ST.

Japanese start-up Morus is looking to launch a range of silkworm-based products here, targeting high-end restaurants and consumers, as they are high-income and health conscious, said Mr Ryo Sato, its chief executive.

Its products include a pure silkworm powder – which can be used as a food ingredient – along with matcha powder, protein powder and protein bars.

Given that Singaporean consumers do not have a history of consuming insects, Morus will also conduct more pop-up events and consumer workshops, Mr Sato said.

Once it is able to scale up and reduce costs of production, Morus will start focusing on the mass market, he added.

Currently, each 500g bottle of protein powder will cost $248, and can last for a month if consumed daily.

But its matcha powder will be priced more affordably, Mr Sato said, without specifying a price.

The company is also hoping to work with high-end restaurants, both in Singapore and other parts of South-east Asia and Europe, to integrate Morus’ silkworm-based products into their dishes, before targeting the mass market.

Food safety and labelling requirements

SFA said on July 8 that those intending to import or farm insects for human consumption or livestock feed must meet its guidelines, which include providing documentary proof that the imported insects are farmed in regulated establishments with food safety controls and are not harvested from the wild.

Insects not on SFA’s list of 16 will have to be evaluated to ensure that the species are safe for consumption, the agency said.

Companies selling pre-packed food containing insects will also have to label their packaging as such, so that consumers can make informed decisions on whether to purchase the product.

Insect products will also be subject to food safety testing. Those that do not meet SFA’s standards will not be allowed for sale.

More On This Topic


Crispy chilli crickets or salted egg crab with superworms, anyone? SFA has approved 16 species of insects to be sold as food here. Find out what's on the menu: https://str.sg/j6oV

My Nuseirat
"Only those who stand on the right side of history can read the signs"

vanessa beeley

I am sharing this powerful article written my Haider Eid for Mondoweiss. Haider was someone I met when in Gaza 2012/13.

I was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp and it made me who I am. The Nuseirat massacre will not be the last in Gaza, but like all massacres committed by colonialists, it will be a signpost in our long walk to freedom that will not be forgotten.

I was born in the Nuseirat refugee camp; all my siblings were born there too. My father, together with my sister and brother, are buried in two of its cemeteries. Almost the entire Eid clan still lives there, and those butchered by genocidal Israel’s killing machine are buried there. Hundreds of my students are from there. I know almost every single street of the camp; I am familiar with the faces of its residents, all of whom are refugees from towns and villages erased by apartheid Israel in 1948.

Nuseirat, one of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, has become a major component of my national and class consciousness, a place of both destitution and revolution. In the early 1970s, I was a small child when I heard of the clashes between the fida’iyyin, our supermen, and the Zionist “villains.” Stories of heroism and martyrdom in defense of the camp and a lost country called Falasteen were discussed by family, relatives, neighbors, and friends — all refugees from the south of the “Land of Sad Oranges,” as referred to by our intellectual giant, Ghassan Kanafani.

A connection was created by the village of Zarnouqa, from which my parents were expelled by Zionist thugs together with thousands of other villagers in 1948, and Nuseirat. The Zarnouqa/Nuseirat dialect became the correct form of spoken Arabic for me; its bortoqal (oranges), I was told, were the best in the whole wide world (sometimes the speaker would acknowledge “second to Jaffa’s”!) Those orange orchards were replanted around Nuseirat until apartheid Israel decided to uproot them all during the First Intifada of the late 1980s and early 90s.

I am writing this piece hours after genocidal Israel killed 274 and injured more than 400 beautiful Nuseiraties, many of whom are my relatives, friends, and students — only to rescue four of its captives. 64 of the victims were children, and 57 were women. Those who were brutally murdered were either going to or coming back from Camp Souk, having their breakfast, playing in the street, going to the Al Awda hospital, cooking food, and visiting relatives and friends, i.e., the timing was chosen carefully in order to kill as many people as possible.

When will genocidal Biden be satisfied? How many more children have to lose limbs, or be killed? How many mothers have to be murdered or lose their little ones in order to convince the colonial West, led by the United States, that it is time to have a ceasefire? Obviously, the 36,800 killed, including 15,000 children and 11,000 women, with more than 11,000 under the rubble, are not enough. How about the destruction of 70 percent of the entire Gaza Strip? The killing of hundreds of its academics, doctors, and journalists? The erasure of whole families from the civil registry? The closure of its 7 gates? The starving to death of those who refuse to leave or die?

No, not enough.

Gaza is being annihilated in real-time in front of the eyes of the world. In fact, Gaza has ushered in the beginning of the end of “human rights” as defined and monopolized by the colonial West. Neither the International Court of Justice nor the International Criminal Court or the United Nations General Assembly and its Security Council have been able to stop the genocide and protect my Nuseirat.

And why?

Only because some brown native Palestinians managed to break out of Gaza after over a decade and a half of living under a total land, air, and sea blockade in the largest open-air prison on earth! How dare they shatter Israel and the colonial West’s image of military invincibility

Nuseirat is a microcosm of the genocide. The lives of four white Ashkenazi Israelis are equivalent to the lives of 274 native mothers, doctors, and children. The white world is celebrating this “victory” regardless of the “collateral damage,” as long as the victims are not like “us,” the white gods of this unjust world.

The Nuseirat massacre is not a moment of victory after which Benjamin Netanyahu and his gang of fascist thugs can call it a day. There will be more massacres committed by the same bloodthirsty colonizers.

But Nuseirat, like all massacres committed by colonialists, whether in Algeria, South Africa, Ireland, or other settler colonies, will be a signpost in our long walk to freedom. Only those who stand on the right side of history can read the signs.

****

Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including articles published at Znet, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Open Democracy. He has published papers on cultural Studies and literature in a number of journals, including Nebula, Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Cultural Logic, and the Journal of Comparative Literature.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-145496850

The Silent Shame of Health Institutions
J.R. Bruning
For how much longer will health policy ignore multimorbidity, that looming, giant elephant in the room, that propagates and amplifies suffering? For how much longer will the ‘trend’ of increasing diagnoses of multiple health conditions, at younger and younger ages be rendered down by government agencies to better and more efficient services, screening modalities, and drug choices?

Multimorbidity, the presence of many chronic conditions, is the silent shame of health policy.

All too often chronic conditions overlap and accumulate. From cancer, to diabetes, to digestive system diseases, to high blood pressure, to skin conditions in cascades of suffering. Heartbreakingly, these conditions commonly overlap with mental illnesses or disorders. It’s increasingly common for people to be diagnosed with multiple mental conditions, such as having anxiety and depression, or anxiety and schizophrenia.

Calls for equity tend to revolve around medical treatment, even as absurdities and injustices accrue.

Multimorbidity occurs a decade earlier in socioeconomically deprived communities. Doctors are diagnosing multimorbidity at younger and younger ages.

Treatment regimens for people with multiple conditions necessarily entail a polypharmacy approach – the prescribing of multiple medications. One condition may require multiple medications. Thus, with multimorbidity comes increased risk of adverse outcomes and polyiatrogenesis – ‘medical harm caused by medical treatments on multiple fronts simultaneously and in conjunction with one another.’

Side effects, whether short-term or patients’ concerns about long-term harm, are the main reason for non-adherence to prescribed medications.

So ‘equity’ which only implies drug treatment doesn’t involve equity at all.

Poor diets may be foundational to the Western world’s health crisis. But are governments considering this?

The antinomies are piling up.

We are amid a global epidemic of metabolic syndrome. Insulin resistance, obesity, elevated triglyceride levels and low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and elevated blood pressure haunt the people queuing up to see doctors.

Research, from individual cases to clinical trials, consistently show that diets containing high levels of ultra-processed foods and carbohydrates amplify inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance. What researchers and scientists are also identifying, at the cellular level, in clinical and medical practice, and at the global level – is that insulin resistance, inflammation, oxidative stress, and nutrient deficiencies from poor diets not only drive metabolic illness, but mental illnesses, compounding suffering.

There is also ample evidence that the metabolic and mental health epidemic that is driving years lost due to disease, reducing productivity, and creating mayhem in personal lives – may be preventable and reversible.

Doctors generally recognise that poor diets are a problem. Ultra-processed foods are strongly associated with adult and childhood ill health. Ultra-processed foods are

‘formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, typically created by series of industrial techniques and processes (hence ‘ultra-processed’).’

In the USA young people under age 19 consume on average 67% of their diet, while adults consume around 60% of their diet in ultra-processed food. Ultra-processed food contributes 60% of UK children’s calories; 42% of Australian children’s calories and over half the dietary calories for children and adolescents in Canada. In New Zealand in 2009-2010, ultra-processed foods contributed to the 45% (12 months), 42% (24 months), and 51% (60 months) of energy intake to the diets of children.

All too frequently, doctors are diagnosing both metabolic and mental illnesses.

What may be predictable is that a person is likely to develop insulin resistance, inflammation, oxidative stress, and nutrient deficiencies from chronic exposure to ultra-processed food. How this will manifest in a disease or syndrome condition is reflective of a human equivalent of quantum entanglement.

Cascades, feedback loops, and other interdependencies often leave doctors and patients bouncing from one condition to another, and managing medicine side effects and drug-drug relationships as they go.

In New Zealand it is more common to have multiple conditions than a single condition. The costs of having two NCDs simultaneously is typically superadditive and ‘more so for younger adults.’

This information is outside the ‘work programme’ of the top echelons in the Ministry of Health:

Official Information Act (OIA) requests confirm that the Ministries’ Directors General who are responsible for setting policy and long-term strategy aren’t considering these issues. The problem of multimorbidity and the overlapping, entangled relationship with ultra-processed food is outside of the scope of the work programme of the top directorates in our health agency.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health’s top deputy directors general might be earning a quarter of a million dollars each, but they are ignorant of the relationship of dietary nutrition and mental health. Nor are they seemingly aware of the extent of multimorbidity and the overlap between metabolic and mental illnesses.

Neither the Public Health Agency Deputy Director-General – Dr Andrew Old, nor the Deputy Director-General Evidence, Research and Innovation, Dean Rutherford, nor the Deputy Director-General of Strategy Policy and Legislation, Maree Roberts, nor the Clinical, Community and Mental Health Deputy Director-General Robyn Shearer have been briefed on these relationships.

If they’re not being briefed, policy won’t be developed to address dietary nutrition. Diet will be lower-order.

The OIA request revealed that New Zealand’s Ministry of Health ‘does not widely use the metabolic syndrome classification.’ When I asked ‘How do you classify, or what term do you use to classify the cluster of symptoms characterised by central obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance?’, they responded:

‘The conditions referred to are considered either on their own or as part of a broader cardiovascular disease risk calculation.’

This is interesting. What if governments should be calculating insulin resistance first, in order to then calculate a broader cardiovascular risk? What if insulin resistance, inflammation, and oxidative stress are appearing at younger and younger ages, and ultra-processed food is the major driver?

Pre-diabetes and Type 2 diabetes are driven by too much blood glucose. Type 1 diabetics can’t make insulin, while Type 2 diabetics can’t make enough to compensate for their dietary intake of carbohydrates. One of insulin’s (many) jobs is to tuck away that blood glucose into cells (as fat) but when there are too many dietary carbohydrates pumping up blood glucose, the body can’t keep up. New Zealand practitioners use the HbA1c blood test, which measures the average blood glucose level over the past 2-3 months. In New Zealand, doctors diagnose pre-diabetes if HbA1c levels are 41-49 nmol/mol, and diabetes at levels of 50 nmol/mol and above.

Type 2 diabetes management guidelines recommend that sugar intake should be reduced, while people should aim for consistent carbohydrates across the day. The New Zealand government does not recommend paleo or low-carbohydrate diets.

If you have diabetes you are twice as likely to have heart disease or a stroke, and at a younger age. Prediabetes, which apparently 20% of Kiwis have, is also high-risk due to, as the Ministry of Health states: ‘increased risk of macrovascular complications and early death.’

The question might become – should we be looking at insulin levels, to more sensitively gauge risk at an early stage?

Without more sensitive screens at younger ages these opportunities to repivot to avoid chronic disease are likely to be missed. Currently, Ministry of Health policies are unlikely to justify the funding of tests for insulin resistance by using three simple blood tests: fasting insulin, fasting lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides), and fasting glucose – to estimate where children, young people, and adults stand on the insulin resistance spectrum when other diagnoses pop up.

Yet insulin plays a powerful role in brain health.

Insulin supports neurotransmitter function and brain energy, directly impacting mood and behaviours. Insulin resistance might arrive before mental illness. Harvard-based psychiatrist Chris Palmer recounts in the book Brain Energy, a large 15,000-participant study of young people from age 0-24:

‘Children who had persistently high insulin levels (a sign of insulin resistance) beginning at age nine were five times more likely to be at risk for psychosis, meaning they were showing at least some worrisome signs, and they were three times for likely to already be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia by the time they turned twenty-four. This study clearly demonstrated that insulin resistance comes first, then psychosis.’

Psychiatrist Georgia Ede suggests that high blood glucose and high insulin levels act like a ‘deadly one-two punch’ for the brain, triggering waves of inflammation and oxidative stress. The blood-brain barrier becomes increasingly resistant to chronic high insulin levels. Even though the body might have higher blood insulin, the same may not be true for the brain. As Ede maintains, ‘cells deprived of adequate insulin ‘sputter and struggle to maintain normal operations.’

Looking at the relationship between brain health and high blood glucose and high insulin simply might not be on the programme for strategists looking at long-term planning.

Nor are Directors General in a position to assess the role of food addiction. Ultra-processed food has addictive qualities designed into the product formulations. Food addiction is increasingly recognised as pervasive and difficult to manage as any substance addiction.

But how many children and young people have insulin resistance and are showing markers for inflammation and oxidative stress – in the body and in the brain? To what extent do young people have both insulin resistance and depression resistance or ADHD or bipolar disorder?

This kind of thinking is completely outside the work programme. But insulin levels, inflammation, and oxidative stress may not only be driving chronic illness – but driving the global mental health tsunami.

Metabolic disorders are involved in complex pathways and feedback loops across body systems, and doctors learn this at medical school. Patterns and relationships between hormones, the brain, the gastrointestinal system, kidneys, and liver; as well as problems with joints and bone health, autoimmunity, nerves, and sensory conditions evolve from and revolve around metabolic health.

Nutrition and diet are downplayed in medical school. What doctors don’t learn so much – the cognitive dissonance that they must accept throughout their training – is that metabolic health is commonly (except for some instances) shaped by the quality of dietary nutrition. The aetiology of a given condition can be very different, while the evidence that common chronic and mental illnesses are accompanied by oxidative stress, inflammation, and insulin resistance are primarily driven by diet – is growing stronger and stronger.

But without recognising the overlapping relationships, policy to support healthy diets will remain limp.

What we witness are notions of equity that support pharmaceutical delivery – not health delivery.

What also inevitably happens is that ‘equity’ focuses on medical treatment. When the Ministry of Health prefers to atomise the different conditions or associate them with heart disease – they become single conditions to treat with single drugs. They’re lots of small problems, not one big problem, and insulin resistance is downplayed.

But just as insulin resistance, inflammation, and oxidative stress send cascading impacts across body systems, systemic ignorance sends cascading effects across government departments tasked with ‘improving, promoting, and protecting health.’

It’s an injustice. The literature solidly points to lower socio-economic status driving much poorer diets and increased exposures to ultra-processed food, but the treatments exclusively involve drugs and therapy.

Briefings to Incoming Ministers with the election of new Governments show how ignorance cascades across responsible authorities.

Health New Zealand, Te Whatu Ora’s November 2023 Briefing to the new government outlined the agency’s obligations. However, the ‘health’ targets are medical, and the agency’s focus is on infrastructure, staff, and servicing. The promotion of health, and health equity, which can only be addressed by addressing the determinants of health, is not addressed.

The Māori Health Authority and Health New Zealand Joint Briefing to the Incoming Minister for Mental Health does not address the role of diet and nutrition as a driver of mental illness and disorder in New Zealand. The issue of multimorbidity, the related problem of commensurate metabolic illness, and diet as a driver is outside scope. When the Briefing states that it is important to address the ‘social, cultural, environmental and economic determinants of mental health,’ without any sound policy footing, real movement to address diet will not happen, or will only happen ad hoc.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, Te Hiringa Mahara’s November 2023 Briefing to Incoming Ministers that went to the Ministers for Health and Mental Health might use the term ‘well-being’ over 120 times – but was silent on the related and overlapping drivers of mental illness which include metabolic or multimorbidity, nutrition, or diet.

Five years earlier, He Ara Ora, New Zealand’s 2018 Mental Health and Addiction enquiry had recognised that tāngata whaiora, people seeking wellness, or service users, also tend to have multiple health conditions. The enquiry recommended that a whole of government approach to well-being, prevention, and social determinants was required. Vague nods were made to diet and nutrition, but this was not sufficiently emphasised as to be a priority.

He Ara Ora was followed by 2020 Long-term pathway to mental well-being viewed nutrition as being one of a range of factors. No policy framework strategically prioritised diet, nutrition, and healthy food. No governmental obligation or commitment was built into policy to improve access to healthy food or nutrition education.

Understanding the science, the relationships, and the drivers of the global epidemic, is ‘outside the work programmes’ of New Zealand’s Ministry of Health and outside the scope of all the related authorities. There is an extraordinary amount of data in the scientific literature, so many case studies, cohort studies, and clinical trials. Popular books are being written, however government agencies remain ignorant.

In the meantime, doctors must deal with the suffering in front of them without an adequate toolkit.

Doctors and pharmacists are faced with a Hobson’s choice of managing multiple chronic conditions and complex drug cocktails, in patients at younger and younger ages. Ultimately, they are treating a patient whom they recognise will only become sicker, cost the health system more, and suffer more.

Currently there is little support for New Zealand medical doctors (known as general practitioners, or GPs) in changing practices and recommendations to support non-pharmaceutical drug treatment approaches. Their medical education does not equip them to recognise the extent to which multiple co-existing conditions may be alleviated or reversed. Doctors are paid to prescribe, to inject, and to screen, not to ameliorate or reverse disease and lessen prescribing. The prescribing of nutrients is discouraged and as doctors do not have nutritional training, they hesitate to prescribe nutrients.

Many do not want to risk going outside treatment guidelines. Recent surges in protocols and guidelines for medical doctors reduce flexibility and narrow treatment choices for doctors. If they were to be reported to the Medical Council of New Zealand, they would risk losing their medical license. They would then be unable to practice.

Inevitably, without Ministry of Health leadership, medical doctors in New Zealand are unlikely to voluntarily prescribe non-drug modalities such as nutritional options to any meaningful extent, for fear of being reported.

Yet some doctors are proactive, such as Dr Glen Davies in Taupo, New Zealand. Some doctors are in a better ‘place’ to work to alleviate and reverse long-term conditions. They may be later in their career, with 10-20 years of research into metabolism, dietary nutrition, and patient care, and motivated to guide a patient through a personal care regime which might alleviate or reverse a patient’s suffering.

Barriers include resourcing. Doctors aren’t paid for reversing disease and taking patients off medications.

Doctors witness daily the hopelessness felt by their patients in dealing with chronic conditions in their short 15-minute consultations, and the vigilance required for dealing with adverse drug effects. Drug non-compliance is associated with adverse effects suffered by patients. Yet without wrap-around support changing treatments, even if it has potential to alleviate multiple conditions, to reduce symptoms, lower prescribing and therefore lessen side effects, is just too uncertain.

They saw what happened to disobedient doctors during Covid-19.

Given such context, what are we to do?

Have open public discussions about doctor-patient relationships and trust. Inform and overlay such conversations by drawing attention to the foundational Hippocratic Oath made by doctors, to first do no harm.

Questions can be asked. If patients were to understand that diet may be an underlying driver of multiple conditions, and a change in diet and improvement in micronutrient status might alleviate suffering – would patients be more likely to change?

Economically, if wrap-around services were provided in clinics to support dietary change, would less harm occur to patients from worsening conditions that accompany many diseases (such as Type 2 diabetes) and the ever-present problem of drug side-effects? Would education and wrap-around services in early childhood and youth delay or prevent the onset of multimorbid diagnoses?

Is it more ethical to give young people a choice of treatment? Could doctors prescribe dietary changes and multinutrients and support change with wrap-around support when children and young people are first diagnosed with a mental health condition – from the clinic, to school, to after school? If that doesn’t work, then prescribe pharmaceutical drugs.

Should children and young people be educated to appreciate the extent to which their consumption of ultra-processed food likely drives their metabolic and mental health conditions? Not just in a blithe ‘eat healthy’ fashion that patently avoids discussing addiction. Through deeper policy mechanisms, including cooking classes and nutritional biology by the implementation of nourishing, low-carbohydrate cooked school lunches.

With officials uninformed, it’s easy to see why funding for Green Prescriptions that would support dietary changes have sputtered out. It’s easy to understand why neither the Ministry of Health nor Pharmac have proactively sourced multi-nutrient treatments that improve resilience to stress and trauma for low-income young people. Why there’s no discussion on a lower side-effect risk for multinutrient treatments. Why are there no policies in the education curriculum diving into the relationship between ultra-processed food and mental and physical health? It’s not in the work programme.

There’s another surfacing dilemma.

Currently, if doctors tell their patients that there is very good evidence that their disease or syndrome could be reversed, and this information is not held as factual information by New Zealand’s Ministry of Health – do doctors risk being accused of spreading misinformation?

Government agencies have pivoted in the past 5 years to focus intensively on the problem of dis- and misinformation. New Zealand’s disinformation project states that

Disinformation is false or modified information knowingly and deliberately shared to cause harm or achieve a broader aim.
Misinformation is information that is false or misleading, though not created or shared with the direct intention of causing harm.
Unfortunately, as we see, there is no division inside the Ministry of Health that reviews the latest evidence in the scientific literature, to ensure that policy decisions correctly reflect the latest evidence.

There is no scientific agency outside the Ministry of Health that has flexibility and the capacity to undertake autonomous, long-term monitoring and research in nutrition, diet, and health. There is no independent, autonomous, public health research facility with sufficient long-term funding to translate dietary and nutritional evidence into policy, particularly if it contradicted current policy positions.

Despite excellent research being undertaken, it is highly controlled, ad hoc, and frequently short-term. Problematically, there is no resourcing for those scientists to meaningfully feedback that information to either the Ministry of Health or to Members of Parliament and government Ministers.

Dietary guidelines can become locked in, and contradictions can fail to be chewed over. Without the capacity to address errors, information can become outdated and misleading. Government agencies and elected members – from local councils all the way up to government Ministers, are dependent on being informed by the Ministry of Health, when it comes to government policy.

When it comes to complex health conditions, and alleviating and reversing metabolic or mental illness, based on different patient capacity – from socio-economic, to cultural, to social, and taking into account capacity for change, what is sound, evidence-based information and what is misinformation?

In the impasse, who can we trust?

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Author

J.R. Bruning is a consultant sociologist (B.Bus.Agribusiness; MA Sociology) based in New Zealand. Her work explores governance cultures, policy and the production of scientific and technical knowledge. Her Master’s thesis explored the ways science policy creates barriers to funding, stymying scientists’ efforts to explore upstream drivers of harm. Bruning is a trustee of Physicians & Scientists for Global Responsibility (PSGR.org.nz). Papers and writing can be found at TalkingRisk.NZ and at JRBruning.Substack.com and at Talking Risk on Rumble.

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https://brownstone.org/articles/the-silent-shame-of-health-institutions/

Destroying Super Immunity & Getting Rid of That Annoying Cough
Dr. Syed Haider

I made it through multiple upper respiratory illnesses affecting my wife and kids over the last year without getting sick myself.

The biggest difference maker seemed to be spending a lot of time outdoors in sunny Puerto Rico.

It’s not just about the vitamin D that you get in the afternoons, it’s also about the lack of blue light toxicity you get the rest of the day from glass filtered indoor sunlight (or artificial lights).

Blue light in the visible spectrum needs to be balanced by the naturally present infrared and UV spectrum in natural sunlight. Unfortunately both are blocked by typical window glass.


Anyway, my long run of seemingly bulletproof immunity came to an inglorious end when I finally succumbed to what had been plaguing my nuclear family for a couple weeks: it began with a tickle in my throat, then progressed to a mild sore throat, stuffy and runny nose, bad a cough, and fatigue. It was rough going for a day or two. Hard to sleep with all the coughing.

My post mortem analysis of what went wrong: I visited family overseas, where they live in an apartment full of artificial light and not much direct sun. I did my best to get outside, but couldnt do it anywhere near as much as I used to at home. Then (perhaps more or less important?) I started including once a week “stress test days” (nee cheat days) on my carnivore diet. That turned into a general laxity during my regular carnivore diet days, including eating out and being exposed to ubiquitous seed oils.

Then one day I was enjoying my meat dish at a local restaurant and decided spur of the moment (always a mistake) to try the side dish I would have normally skipped. Unfortunately it was probably the worst possible side I could have indulged in: a nightshade veggie bomb comprising tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and various kinds of peppers.

Nightshade vegetables are notoriously toxic (despite mainstream claims that the toxins are neutralized by cooking), especially for those with a history of autoimmune disease, or leaky gut. They are also problematic for anyone with a history of allergic disorders or MCAS. It doesn’t help that traditional methods of picking and preparation that minimized the toxicity for otherwise healthy people are no longer followed.

Pin on Hold the tomato
Almost immediately after consuming this side dish I started to feel that first tickle in my throat and it was a slow downhill roll from there. Took 2-3 days, during which I had enough of a chance to head it off with some high dose vitamin C, but I’m one of those people who usually prefers to let nature take its course (maybe don’t do this in our current environment of repeated COVID infections, with all the problems they can bring).

Once the illness got started I began to notice very clearly that what I ate had an almost immediate impact on how I felt. I think it probably required the sensitization of having been strictly carnivore for weeks beforehand.

Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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I could tell when I ate high histamine fruits or vegetables that my symptoms would worsen significantly, I might get an instant headache, stuffy nose, worsening cough, fatigue, dizziness, and even occasional anger outbursts that had plagued me before the carnivore experiment.

All these can be due to histamine intolerance. When you’re sick or already exposed to something that lowers your histamine tolerance, adding histamine-containing foods or those that tend to liberate histamine is just added fuel for the fire.

Histamine Intolerance Doctor Gilbert AZ
Anyway this has been going around (not surprising since it is winter). Some people get bad diarrhea, for others it’s the cough that’s the worst.

If you treat this early in the first day or two you can usually cut it short within the first week. If not then many people end up being somewhat under the weather for a couple weeks and the unlucky ones have lingering symptoms for many weeks. It’s not necessarily anything new, it happened before COVID too. Now people are hyperaware of it, and for good reason, because the current iterations are often due to the COVID bioweapon which damages every organ system.

Whether or not COVID was diagnosed you can usually treat a cough heavy post viral syndrome with key lifestyle changes like avoiding airway irritants (eg use an air filter) low or even no carb (but first try a good quality medicinal honey 1-3 teaspoons dissolved in warm water 1-3 times a day), avoiding trigger foods, plenty of direct sunlight, good sleep; supplements from mygotostack.com like vitamin C, D, zinc, quercetin, turmeric, nigella sativa; and prescription meds from mygotodoc.com like: ivermectin and LDN (we can’t prescribe codeine for cough online since its a controlled substance).

Other effective treatments include IV vitamin C, IV ozone, HBOT, or what’s easier and nearly as effective: a home oxygen concentrator a couple hours a day,

However one of the best and most underappreciated ways to get rid of a lingering non productive (dry) cough is simple breathwork.

That’s because it’s not always just a persistent infection or inflammation that leads to a persistent cough, it may be that, but it is also often a disordered breathing pattern that can develop after just a couple days of illness. This pattern becomes imprinted on the nervous system and can be hard to shake. The longer you leave it unaddressed the longer it may continue. The more you cough the more likely you are to keep coughing, and the less you cough the more likely you are to stop coughing.

Now, when most people think of breathwork they think of deep breathing exercises. But deep breathing is usually a trigger for a coughing fit rather than any kind of solution (during my long COVID illness I also found it can also worsen anxiety).

The real fix for a persistent cough (and anxiety) due to a disordered nervous system is often in breathing less, while becoming aware of the impending urge to cough and trying to head it off and suppress it.

Practitioners of the Buteyko breathing method have a great exercise for stopping a persistent dry cough.

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When you feel the urge to cough you press your hand over your mouth, swallow and hold your breath for 5 seconds while telling yourself you don’t need to cough. Then start breathing slow and shallow through the nose, keeping your hand over your mouth. Imagine the air going in one nostril and out the other in a circle (obviously this is not actually happening it just helps keep the breathing light and not irritating to the throat, partly a psychological phenomenon).

Do this whenever you feel the urge to cough during the day, and you’ll see that it often works rather well and makes you more aware of what triggers the coughing. Unless there is something more serious going on (don’t nocebo yourself, just assume there is not) it usually only takes 1-3 days of this to retrain your nervous system and end the cough for good.

You can also check out other Buteyko and pranayama yoga breathing methods (like alternate nostril breathing) for stopping a cough on YouTube:


If there is residual inflammation, often manifested by a post nasal drip irritating the throat leading to coughing fits (easy to test if you have this, just lie down flat and see if you start coughing, or get worse, within a minute or so), it’s also important to avoid trigger foods that raise histamine or lead your own body to release histamine.

Some common ones include: the nightshades I mentioned (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, all peppers), bananas, strawberries, mangoes, citrus fruits, avocado, chocolate, dairy, preserved or canned meats and fish, leftover meat and fish, lentils, beans, alcohol, tea, coffee and there may be some that are individual specific (think of any foods that in small or large quantities have caused you problems in the past).

If you don’t go low or no carb, then also avoid grains until better as they tend to be pro inflammatory.

Fish oil supplements have a short term anti-inflammatory effect that may lead to a longer term proinflammatory outcome. I’m not clear on all the science and implications here, but you can check out Chris Masterjohn’s work on the topic. Generally speaking it seems to be fine to eat fatty fish for the Omega 3s, but most people should probably avoid the high dose supplementation currently recommended by some groups.

Another key lifestyle measure that works great for the post nasal drip is lifting your head at night using 2-3 pillows (or a wedge pillow - also helps with chronic reflux), and even propping yourself up against the headboard or wall behind your bed. Might be uncomfortable at first, but it’s better than a night of hacking up your lungs.

Manage Acid Reflux & more: EZsleep Wedge| EQUANIMO
I’ve also used pieces of chewed and softened licorice root to help cover up the irritating sensation of a post nasal drip while sleeping.

Using a neti pot a few times a day may also help with this, and you can add things like turmeric, hydrogen peroxide, iodine, or just go with the usual salt water flush.

If there is a persistent infection then more drastic measures will be needed including the IV methods mentioned above, and you can consider nebulization of peroxide.

Promising studies have been done on more exotic methods of relieving a cough such as nebulizing honey, drinking a mixture of honey and coffee syrup dissolved in water, and inhaling a very dilute mixture of capsaicin (from cayenne peppers - which can help with both cough and post nasal drop, and other than snorting or otherwise breathing it in, you can also mix it with honey or water and take it orally as an antihistamine).

Finally, the most powerful herb I know of for insomnia and anxiety is the sedative-hypnotic mulungu bark, and it is also effective in treating various kinds of coughs.

Let me know below if you’ve gotten sick this winter, and what you swear by to get better, especially what works for a prolonged dry nagging cough.

https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/destroying-super-immunity-and-getting

https://telegra.ph/Destroying-Super-Immunity--Getting-Rid-of-That-Annoying-Cough-03-20

The Ultimate mRNA/Spike Detox?
Whole Blood/Plasma Donation or Chinese Bloodletting

Dr. Syed Haider
Hijama Cupping Therapy Kiya hai aur is k Faiyday? Roman Urdu main Parhain
The mRNA shots deliver toxic lipid nano particles (LNPs), whole spike mRNA, fragments of mRNA and trigger the production of spike protein and antibodies to the same, and possibly fragments of spike protein (see this substack).

Furthermore both LNPs and spike protein trigger the creation of microclots in blood vessels.

There are methods for detoxing from spike protein - for example you can take enzymes like bromelain to digest the spike protein, it can be bound up and more easily removed by taking ivermectin, you can induce autophagy to destroy it by fasting, cold and heat therapies and with supplements like resveratrol and spermidine.

For microclots you can break them down with blood thinners like aspirin and enzymes like nattokinase and serrapeptase.

But what about the mRNA and LNPs? How can those be removed?

Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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The mRNA shot components are taken up by cells throughout our bodies, but also found free floating in our blood, where they join other toxins, including horrific forever chemicals like dioxins, but also many other normal blood components including antibodies, proteins like albumin, red blood cells, white cells, platelets, fats, vitamins and minerals.

Most of these blood components, except for red blood cells, can passively or actively diffuse out of the blood into our organs and tissues.

Active diffusion means energy is involved in the process as when infection fighting white cells actively migrate out of the blood into tissues where they have been attracted by inflammatory messaging molecules.

With active diffusion particles can be moved from an area of lower concentration to an area of higher concentration - something that cannot happen without adding energy to the transport process.

Passive diffusion means no energy is involved, and the substance in question simply diffuses down a concentration gradient from an area of higher concentration to an area of lower concentration, until the concentrations equalize in all areas - think of smoke or cooking smells diffusing out of the kitchen to fill the whole house.


So when substances like LNPs carrying mRNA enter the blood they will passively diffuse out into other tissues until the concentrations in the blood and those other tissues equalize.

If a substance is removed from the blood, what is still in tissues will then diffuse back into the blood until the concentration in blood and tissues equalizes again - at a lower level than before, because there is less total left in the body.

Repeatedly removing a substance from the blood would eventually deplete the whole body stores of that substance down to zero, unless it were being replaced from the outside (like the natural components of blood from diet and supplements).

1000s of patients around the world have flocked to specialized centers that perform a procedure called H.E.L.P. apheresis in the hopes of filtering out microclots, free circulating spike protein and mRNA from their bloodstreams.

I spoke with Dr Beate Jaeger for the free online Long COVID Reset Summit about her work with over 1500 long COVID and Vax injured patients, using both H.E.L.P. as well as prescription anticoagulants like plavix and heparin.

She reported that with H.E.L.P. apheresis 95-99% of patients showed some degree of benefit and over 80% had very significant improvements or even complete reversal of symptoms.


In one of the most remarkable and fast turnarounds she saw someone who had been confined to a wheelchair get up for the first time after a session.

H.E.L.P. apheresis is a specialized version of the more general apheresis procedure which is a simple technology for separating blood components.

Specifically H.E.L.P. stands for: “heparin-mediated extracorporeal low-density lipoprotein (LDL) fibrinogen precipitation”.

Essentially a heparin infused filter aids in removal of LDL cholesterol, lipoprotein (a) (levels are far more predictive for heart disease than traditional cholesterol tests) and the clotting protein fibrinogen from the blood of patients.

Historically this was used for patients with high cholesterol that couldn’t be adequately managed with statins and other traditional lipid lowering therapies.

Now it has been repurposed to help remove microclots and spike protein, which binds to the heparin.

Unfortunately there are only 1 or 2 centers that perform this in the US for long COVID and Vax injuries, and just a handful around the world.

The procedure is also expensive - usually at least $1500 per treatment and often many treatments are required.

Now, the heparin filter may be particularly helpful for binding spike protein, but there is a far more accessible technology called plasmapheresis (AKA plasma donation) which may work similarly.

Plasmapheresis uses a centrifuge to separate our whole blood by weight from heaviest to lightest component into: red cells, white blood cells, platelets and a mix of everything else - termed plasma.

Blood components, including plasma, white blood cells, platelets and red blood cells
The plasma is removed while the blood cells and platelets are remixed with sterile salt water (at the same concentration as normal blood salt levels and added to the cells because the plasma component takes all the liquid and salt with it) and infused back into the person.

Plasmapheresis (again the exact same procedure as plasma donation) is used therapeutically in a wide range of medical conditions wherein a toxic component (eg an autoimune antibody) is present in the blood.

These conditions include Guillaine Barre Syndrome, Myesthenia Gravis, idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, hashimotos encephalopathy, multiple sclerosis, myeloma, severe systemic lupus erythematosis (SLE), ap[lastic anemia, acute liver failure, burn shock, complex regional pain syndrome, severe pemphigus vulgaris, stiff-person syndrome, thyroid storm, systemic amyloidosis and many more.

Of most interest here is the usefulness of plasmapheresis for treating systemic amyloidosis, a disease caused by the buildup of amyloid protein throughout the body, because spike protein toxicity also includes the creation of amyloid inside microclots as well as outside the vasculature.

There are few contraindications to plasmapheresis including allergies to the common blood thinner heparin (since the tubing is heparinized to avoid blood clotting), low blood calcium levels and ACE inhibitor use within 24 hours.

Possible side effects are minimal and can include low electrolytes levels including low blood calcium and magnesium (which may require replacement), hypothermia since blood is hot and that heat is removed from the body, and an increased tendency to bleed due to removal of clotting proteins.

But in general it is a very safe procedure that is conducted on both healthy and ill people daily throughout the world.

So if everything but the blood cells and platelets are removed we would expect that any toxins would be removed from the blood whether they be circulating forever chemicals, LNPs, mRNA, unwanted antibodies (eg autoantibodies), heavy metals, etc.

At the same time we would be removing some vitamins and minerals, so if this procedure was done frequently you would want to be sure you focused on a highly nutrient dense diet as well as appropriate supplementation.

Plasma donation is either free or at some private centers reimbursed at $20-$50 per procedure, because it is sold and used to create medical products.

Depending on the center donations can be given as often as twice weekly or as little as 6 times a year, and each donation can remove as much as 800ml of plasma.

Alternatively whole blood donations are only possible every 56 days. In a whole blood donation, nothing is separated or reinfused, you just remove about 500ml of whole blood.

You'll Decide: Reality-Based Fiscal Policy Or Bloodletting - Colorado Pols
Bloodletting has actually been used as a therapeutic procedure for millennia throughout the world (perhaps most notoriously it’s been suspected by medical historians that physicians may have killed George Washington by overdoing it during his final deathbed illness).

There are many different ways it has been done including by leeches and wet cupping (tiny nicks made in the skin covered by suction cups that draw blood out).

Dean Mouscher is an advanced clinical acupuncturist in Illinois who performs and teaches traditional techniques of blood letting for ameliorating the toughest to treat medical conditions.

His methods are described in his popular manual, The Complete Guide to Chinese Medicine Bloodletting.

He explained in a comment on the last post about removing forever chemicals like dioxins that the location of bloodletting may actually be more important than the amount of blood removed:

“…as an acupuncturist I use many modalities in my practice, but none comes close to the magical efficacy of bloodletting. Chinese Medicine Bloodletting is different from the old Western bloodletting as it is based on taking small amounts of blood from exactly the right point, rather than pints from the cubital fossa. As it happens, Chinese medicine has bloodletting points specifically for detox, right on the scapula.”

Wet (HIJAMA) Cupping - Holistic Buddha
This is very interesting, because you would expect that in a structure as complex as the human body, toxins would concentrate in certain areas, so removing blood from those areas might be far more effective (and less draining) than removing large amounts from elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly there have been no studies that I could find of bloodletting, plasma donation, or even H.E.L.P. apheresis for either mRNA shot detoxification or Long COVID.

The best we have to go on for now are Dr Beate Jaegers reports and although she is very interested in conducting formal research she doesn’t have the funding to do so.

The one study I could find that supported the use of whole blood and plasma donation for toxin removal was described in the last Substack on the Ohio train wreck toxic explosion, in this quote taken from a May 2022 Guardian article:

“A new study published in JAMA Network Open tracked PFAS levels in 285 Australian firefighters, who are regularly exposed to PFAS in firefighting foam and accrue high levels of the chemicals in their bodies. Over a year, one group of firefighters donated plasma every six weeks, another donated blood every 12 weeks, and a third group acted as a control.

“This randomized clinical trial showed that regular blood or plasma donations result in a significant reduction in serum PFAS levels for participants,” the study’s authors wrote. Blood donors reduced their PFAS levels by 10%, and plasma donors reduced theirs by 30%. Both groups maintained their reduction for at least three months post-trial. The study did not explore whether a reduction in PFAS in the blood necessarily leads to better health.”

Despite the lack of published evidence some long haulers and vax injured have tried plasmapheresis on themselves and reported impressive results, which are often immediate.

If you have done this yourself, know someone who has or have more data please drop me a line here on Substack, at my clinic site mygotodoc.com, or on Twitter: @drsyedhaider.

https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-ultimate-mrnaspike-detox


https://telegra.ph/The-Ultimate-mRNASpike-Detox-09-17

https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-ultimate-mrnaspike-detox-whole.html

What If Everything They’ve Been Telling You About Food Is… WRONG?
Vigilant NewsFebruary 2, 2024
By Brian Cates

The last 9 months have been an exceedingly strange journey for me.

While I had already figured out the FDA food pyramid was garbage and had watched in real-time as all the federal “medical” “health” “science” agencies played a direct role in suppressing accurate information on COVID-19 and C-19 origins, treatments, vaccines, etc., it took me the better of part of 3 years to begin critically and logically examining what these self-same propagandists disguised as ‘experts’ have been telling all of us about food and what supposedly comprises a healthy diet.


I’d struggled with my weight since I was a young man of 24. I am soon turning 60.

I’d spent the past few years talking about losing weight and the all the issues I was dealing with from lugging around over 100+ pounds of useless bodyfat.

But I was still eating 4-5 times a day, at least two of those meals being sizable. And though I cut down on the sweets and was eating what I was told were ‘healthy whole grains’, the weight not only refused to go down, it kept going up.

I would go through the same cycle several times from when I was around 26 to last year: Start working out religiously, while eating what I was told was mostly ‘healthy’ food. I’d add some muscle, my weight would drop maybe 20 pounds or so…and then after 3-4 months, hit the wall. No changes, and despite working out, the weight crept back up. Quit working out, gain all the weight back, a year goes by…then start the cycle again.

34 years or so I ran on this hamster wheel.

When this picture was taken, I’d just started writing for The Epoch Times in mid-2018. I was 350 pounds or so. Hadn’t weighed myself in a while. I was too scared to look anyway.

Image
I had just gone through the cycle again early last year.

Working out, eating the “healthy food” chock full of carbs, various forms of sugars and toxic seed oils & chemicals, etc., etc. Then in May, I quit again.

In late June, my stepmom visited me in my new house in Florida while I was on an RV tour around the US, and when she saw how I was living and eating, she read me the riot act. She kicked me in the ass and got me not only moving again, but that visit was also the catalyst I needed to go back and re-examine 35+ years of failure and why trying the same thing over and over again wasn’t working.

For years, people like me were told this was a willpower/laziness thing. You’re fat and you can’t lose the weight because you don’t eat right/work out hard enough or long enough, etc.

So I was mentally beaten down after exhausting myself on this hamster’s wheel as I was headed into decade #4 with the wrong programming in my head.

Overweight Man Tired after Training, with Hand on Forehead Against ...
But here’s the thing.

As a journalist, I’d just spent the last 3 1/2 years extensively and exhaustively covering how federal and state and county ‘health’ ‘medical’ and ‘science’ ‘experts’ had just engaged in a deliberate conspiracy to hide and censor true and accurate information from the American public.

Not to mention also covering the amount of gaslighting we were all being hit with following the blatant theft of the 2020 election from Donald Trump.

So at this time, in late June/early July of last year, I started my re-examination of around 35 years of failure with an intriguing thought:

**COULD IT BE** that the very same ‘health’ ‘medical’ & ‘science’ experts who’d just exposed and outed themselves as Big Pharma propagandists and business partners lying to us about COVID & many of the drugs involved in the treatment/prevention of infection…were also wrong or deliberately misleading us about….food?

Image
Could it possibly be….
One of the first things I realized, when I began examining what the federal ‘health’ ‘medical’ ‘science’ agencies tout as a ‘healthy’ diet, is that when they last changed the food pyramid in the early 1990’s, the rates of both obesity and diabetes exploded in this country as people began following this ‘expert’ advice.

As you can see from the graphs below, an already alarming rising trend suddenly shot dramatically upward in the early 1990s.

Image
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How bad has the obesity/diabetes/insulin resistance crisis gotten in the US?

It is now so bad they’ve coined a bullshit term – ‘prediabetes’ – to try to mask the deadly seriousness of the crisis. If you are diagnosed as ‘prediabetic,’ you ARE diabetic; it’s just that your insulin resistance hasn’t progressed to such an extent that they’ll officially call it ‘diabetes.’

Image
Or as actor Wilford Brimley would say:

Wilford Brimley Has Diabeetus - Misc - quickmeme
Insulin resistance leads directly to a massive amount of chronic health issues of which diabetes is only one.


By giving Americans the ‘expert’ advice that they needed to start chugging down ‘6-11 servings’ every day of ‘healthy whole grains’ and cook their food with seed oils while counseling them to also **reduce** the amount of meat and animal fats they were eating, Americans began ingesting way more carbohydrates and PUFA’s [that’s ‘polyunsaturated fatty acids, for those of you in Rio Linda…] every day than they’d been eating before.


And yet I recall for the past 30 years or so watching the popular culture health reporters scratch their heads and wondering what could possibly be causing the massive explosion of obesity and chronic illnesses, as well as the dropping testosterone and estrogen levels they were observing.


So the fact that the federal ‘health’ agencies caused much of the country to make a dramatic wrong turn that exacerbated the rising trends of obesity and chronic illness with their drastically wrong official ‘food pyramid’ in the early 1990s, caused me to wonder:

If they were giving the American public such rotten, terrible, horrible, no-good ‘expert’ instructions on what they should be eating every day, **what else** have they been telling us that is utter bullshit?

And the very first thing I stumbled over in this regard was the history of SEED OILS and how medical scientists doing animal experiments back in the 1890s/early 1900s quickly established that seed oils were toxic and harmful to growing and developing animals.

By the end of July last year, I was sharing the alarming stuff I was finding in my research with my readers on my Substack:

Image
You have to fully grasp this. They **knew** from animal experiments on rats and cows and horses and birds **exactly** what SEED OILS did to growing and developing animals.

Many of these experiments were carried out from the late 1880s through the 1910s. Experiment results were published in books, such as this one from scientist E.V. McCollum in 1918.



There was no mystery here. The results were established and easily observable.

And yet…what ended up happening over the next 100 years?

Government ‘health’ experts working hand-in-glove with Big Food corporations convinced most Americans to stop cooking their food with butter, lard, and tallow, and instead use the new ‘Crisco’ and other highly processed seed oils and margarine. Because they claimed these new processed products were ‘healthier’.

And because Americans back then were very trusting people who didn’t know their government was controlled by hidden corporations and interests out to make massive profits while not caring about their health, they followed this ‘expert’ advice from authority figures they were taught to trust.

From the 1920s through today, Big Food, working in conjunction with Big Government, began creating many new highly processed foods that contained large amounts of these seed oils and myriad toxic chemicals and food additives. Our American culture is now flooded with highly processed fake ‘food’ that didn’t exist even 100 years ago. And they are inventing new kinds of fake food every year.

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If they knew what seed oils would do to human beings who began eating them early in life, and ate them throughout their physical development and into adulthood – and evidence seems to suggest they did – then the only possible reason for them to do that would be to arrest the development of children, cause chronic illnesses throughout life, and ensure a premature death.

What I saw through my research was **deeply disturbing to me**.

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This can’t be just about profit motive, the fact they’d make a lot of MONEY creating new addictive processed sugar-and-carb-and-seed oil-filled foods. They had to also have seen the very real and OBVIOUS HARM they would be doing to their fellow citizens by introducing these heavily toxic and health-destroy products into the American food supply.

Not when you realize the wealthy elite who run everything in this fallen world behind the scenes are constantly wringing their hands and brainstorming about how to ‘fix’ the world’s overpopulation problem, think even the concept of human rights is a big funny hilarious joke, and that human rights don’t exist, just like God doesn’t exist.

They’ve always sat around at their big, important conferences in places like Davos and talked about culling the human herd like they’re ranchers planning for the next cattle drive. It’s just that they’re starting to get embarrassed that the cows are now spying on them in the barn and figuring out what they’re talking about, their plans for the rest of us.

What more clever way could be devised than convincing people to simply EAT themselves into chronic illnesses that will guide them expeditiously into an early grave?

The rise in life expectancy rates over the past 100 years is not because people are HEALTHIER overall.

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Far from it.

The rates rose because of medical advancements in keeping chronically ill people alive longer.

Were people not being tricked and misled into fattening themselves with constant insulin resistance and filling their bodies with toxins, most people would very likely be living into their upper 90s by now. Instead, life expectancy is dropping because the amount of toxic and unhealthy food Americans are eating is going up.

This cannot be overstated. With the medical/health/scientific advancements in knowledge and technology over the past 120 years, the only way this was allowed to happen and to become so widespread at this point millions of people are dying from easily preventable chronic illnesses is that…

…and I know some of you will struggle to accept this….

…the real owners of the world out there **wanted** this to happen. They demanded it.

There’s no way they don’t know. So if they know…and nothing’s been done to stop it? It’s not just about money. There’s what looks like an exceedingly nefarious agenda at work here.

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Sometimes in my more paranoid moments, I wonder if….

Nah. Couldn’t be….

Could it?

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Tastes like chicken!
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/W-JhfjGtlp8?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
So the first two things I discovered in my new research starting in the middle of last year:

1. The food pyramid was a massive ‘mistake’…or was it?

2. Seed Oils are toxic and harm human development and shorten the human lifespan Yet they were allowed to proliferate into the American food supply by accident…or was it really an ‘accident’?

Next, I discovered that the conventional ‘expert’ findings about animal fat were wrong.

For decades I’d been endlessly told and had read that too much dietary animal fat caused health/heart issues. Cut down dramatically on the red meat, the eggs, the butter, replace the fat with ‘healthy’ food…

And yet what do you actually **FIND** when you examine the medical research?

You find when people dramatically reduced their animal fat intake they still got FATTER and more CHRONICALLY ILL. After all, one of the biggest reasons for creating a ‘new and improved!’ food pyramid back in the early 1990s was to convince people to CUT the amount of meat and animal fat they were eating and replace them with ‘healthy’ carbs.

For people who were supposedly becoming more ‘healthy’ by following the new food pyramid’s ‘expert’ advice, Americans seemed to be getting fatter, heavier, and more unhealthy.

It’s been noticed for some time now that people in America in the 1940s and 1950s sure do look pretty darn healthy, even though we were constantly being told by our modern ‘health experts’ that those poor folks were eating WAY too much animal fats and red meat and eggs and [gasp!] butter.

I mean…there’s just NO WAY that Americans back then eating all that bad stuff were healthier than US today, right?



Why, that very idea would be absurd! They didn’t know any better! They didn’t have our advantages!

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Hey…maybe it’s time for us to stop, go back and look, and rethink this all out again…

Because SOMETHING clearly isn’t working.

We’re **supposed to be** far healthier than those poor fools back in the 1940s and 1950s…but we’re NOT.

Why is that?

If you commit yourself to finding the truth and facing it unflinchingly, no matter where it leads…you can find it.

The brutal truth is…people here in America have been misled. Just about EVERYTHING the ‘health’ and ‘diet’ ‘experts’ have been telling them all their lives is….SURPRISE!…wrong.

It’s not your fault. It is THEIR fault. They either didn’t know what they were talking about when they were teaching you how to eat, or they had a hidden agenda.

Either way…NOT YOUR FAULT.

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Its not that you lack willpower. Or that you’re lazy. Or that you don’t work out enough.

Its that what the ‘experts’ taught you about how to eat a proper diet wasn’t true. You were not getting accurate information.

You were steered towards unhealthy seed oil/sugar/carb-filled processed foods because authority figures you trusted gave you terrible advice.

You were given bad information by government and medical authority figures on 7 dietary subjects:

1. Cholesterol levels

2. Salt/mineral levels

3. Protein levels

4. Animal Fats

5. Fiber

6. Seed oils

7. Meal frequency

My research has led me to conclude that we need to go BACK to how our ancestors ate. A mostly meat diet where we do not eat large meals of highly processed fake foods several times a day with snacks in between.

We’re not designed to put food into our stomachs 3-6 times a day, constantly spiking our insulin levels and hormonal system, developing lifelong insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome-related chronic illnesses and diseases.

Especially not the kind of food we’re surrounded by in our popular culture, the highly over-processed stuff that didn’t exist 100 years ago that are now chock-full of toxic seed oils, sugars, and chemicals.

Sure, people back in the 1940s and 1950s were eating 3 squares a day, but look at **what** they were eating compared to what we are surrounded by now. Until around 120 years ago, most people lived on farms, and even if they didn’t, most of the food they ate came almost directly from a farm.

Have you heard stories about people who travel to Europe and visit places like France and Italy where they eat all the bread and pasta, drink all the wine they want, etc. and don’t get fat? Know why that is?

Because it’s ILLEGAL over there in many European countries to add in the toxic chemical crap they put into US processed food on this side of the pond. Look at the following links for just a HINT of how bad this issue is. Why are European governments taking better care of their people’s health than our supposedly superior US government?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-food-additives-banned-europe-making-americans-sick-expert-says/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/28/bread-additives-chemicals-us-toxic-america
https://foodrevolution.org/blog/banned-ingredients-in-other-countries/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/23/titanium-dioxide-banned-chemicals-carcinogen-eu-us
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So, when I began changing my diet again in 2023, I switched to a [O]ne [M]eal [A] [D]ay program [OMAD] where I ate only once time in every 24-hour period.

I adopted a 4-hour ‘feeding window’ from 4 pm to 8 pm.

I also cut out most of the processed foods I had been eating – including the Weight Watcher’s stuff. I increased the amount of meat I ate from around 1/3rd of my diet to 2/3rds.

From late June through early September, I went from 345 pounds [my stepmom made me get on the scale with her watching. I expected to see around 320. Ulp!] down to 320.

And then I got stuck. The weight stopped coming off and I fluctuated between 317 and 320 for around a month and a half.


Then my ‘little sister from another Mister,’ investigative journalist and head editor of Uncover DC, Tracy Beanz, shared some pictures and testimony about her husband William, who had lost over 160 pounds on a Carnivore Diet in one year. He not only lost a massive amount of unhealthy body fat, but he also had several chronic health issues evaporate.

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So….in early November, I decided to cut out the bread and the potatoes and the ‘healthy’ cereal I was still eating and stay only with raw milk and unpasteurized cheese for my carbs, and the rest of my diet was Amish-farm raised beef, bison, chicken, turkey, and fish with large brown eggs.

The weight started coming again…slowly. I went from 320 down to my current weight of 295. I’ve gone down to 293, but 295 is what I saw the last 2 times I weighed myself.

So. I learned a lot in the last 8 months. I wanted to share some of what I learned in this thread.

I am not telling or advising anyone to do what I’m doing. I’m providing information and asking for people to check this out for themselves and make up their own minds.

A key part of The Great Awakening is, I am convinced, teaching people how to get healthy and stay that way. And if people have been getting wrong and perhaps even deliberate disinformation from ‘health experts,’ the more people realize that and start reassessing what they’ve been told over the past few decades?

THAT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING.



https://vigilantnews.com/post/what-if-everything-theyve-been-telling-you-about-food-is-wrong/


https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/what-if-everything-theyve-been-telling.html

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 114: UN chief urges Western countries to restore funding to UNRWA
Thousands of Israelis protested in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem calling on Netanyahu to resign, while others attempt to block aid trucks from entering Gaza. Meanwhile, the UN sad it has suspended the employees who Israel alleges took part in October 7.

Mustafa Abu SneinehJanuary 28, 2024
Displaced Palestinians on the move after the Israeli army ordered Khan Younis camp residents to leave for Rafah near the Egyptian border, south of the Gaza Strip, January 26, 2024. (Photo: © Haitham Imad/EFE via ZUMA Press APA Images)
Displaced Palestinians on the move after the Israeli army ordered Khan Younis camp residents to leave for Rafah near the Egyptian border, south of the Gaza Strip, January 26, 2024. (Photo: © Haitham Imad/EFE via ZUMA Press APA Images)
Casualties

26,422+ killed* and at least 65,087 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
387+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
557 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 3,221 injured.**
*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 32,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

** This figure is released by the Israeli military.

Key Developments

UN chief says nine of 12 UNRWA employees accused by Israel of being involved in October 7 attack were suspended.
UN chief appeals to U.S. and “governments that have suspended their contributions to, at least, guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations.”
Palestinian who fled to Rafah says, “when I arrived here, I did not find a bite of food or a tent. I slept in the street under the rain…This is the hardest war. I witnessed all wars [in Gaza]. I’m 70 years old, this is the toughest of all.”
Palestinians bury 150 martyrs in yard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis as Israeli tanks lay siege to compound.
Gaza Ministry of Health says 30 bodies remain unidentified in mortuary as anyone who leaves or enters Nasser Hospital is at risk of being shot by Israeli forces.
Amal Hospital in Khan Yunis warns it has run out of oxygen due to ongoing siege imposed by Israeli forces for past week.
Hundreds of Israeli protestors attempt to block entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza from Karem Abu Salem crossing.
Israeli police disperse and arrest protestors in West Jerusalem calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.
Israeli forces hand body of Salim Nasser Abu Hajar from Tulkarm, after killing him in mid-December.
Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades says it detonated an explosive device in an Israeli infantry force in Qabatiya in northern West Bank.
UN chief urges U.S. to restore funding to UNRWA

The UN chief, Antonio Guterres, called on the U.S. and its European allies to restore the funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as millions in the Gaza Strip are in urgent need of humanitarian support.

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Guterres said that UNRWA would investigate the Israeli claim that 12 UN employees took part in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7.

Guterres added that nine of the 12 employees accused by Israel of being involved in the attack have been suspended. UNRWA employs 30,000 workers, 13,000 in Gaza, and the rest in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the occupied West Bank.

Since December 1949, it has operated schools, health clinics, food banks, and youth centers, among other humanitarian services essential to Palestinian refugees who were forcibly expelled from homes and towns by Zionist militias in 1948.

The U.S., Canada, Australia, and other European states are now pausing their funding to UNRWA.

“While I understand their concerns, I was myself horrified by these accusations, I strongly appeal to the governments that have suspended their contributions to, at least, guarantee the continuity of UNRWA’s operations,” Guterres said in a statement Saturday evening.

For second time since 2018, U.S. halts donations to UNRWA

The U.S. is the biggest donor to UNRWA, paying $153 million to the agency in 2023, and $343 million during 2022, according to UNRWA official figures.

Guterres said “the tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA, many in some of the most dangerous situations for humanitarian workers, should not be penalized. The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met.”

Israeli bombardment killed at least 152 UN workers in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

Prior to that, the U.S. has ended funding to UNRWA for almost three years. In 2018, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Washington is not going to donate the full sum of money pledged to UNRWA, accusing the agency’s institutions of being “irredeemably flawed.”

Trump’s decision was hailed by Israel and fit perfectly with the Likud ruling party’s agenda to end the cause of Palestinian refugees, who number in the millions and are still calling for their right to return to lands and homes occupied by Zionist militias in what became the present-day state of Israel.

A Likud lawmaker, Anat Berko, summoned the Israeli position at that time, telling CNN that “an end to UNRWA will bring an end to the ‘refugee forever’ status. We cannot solve any conflict with this definition of refugees. Humanitarian aid — yes. But UNRWA — no.”

UNRWA has been a lifeline for tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who sought shelter from Israeli bombardment in its facilities and schools.

UNRWA has also been a reliable and independent source to comprehend the plight of thousands of Palestinians who have endured constant Israeli bombardment, internet and telecommunications blackouts, and forced displacement since October.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel sat in the dock to face accusations of committing genocide, had cited and quoted UNRWA’s officials and reports during the hearings, and also during its ruling on Friday, which ordered Israel to “prevent genocidal actions” in Gaza.

‘I did not find a bite of food or a tent. I slept under the rain.’

Israel’s bombardment in the Gaza Strip has resulted in the displacement of almost two million Palestinians. Most of them were forced into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city bordering Egypt’s Sinai.

The Palestinian population in Gaza is made up of 80 percent refugees from 1948, and have now been displaced yet again 75 years later, reliving the trauma that their grandparents endured during the Nakba.

In Rafah, thousands of Palestinian families spent their Saturday in tents under heavy rains, cooking their meals on stoves, and digging channels to direct the flooded water away from their mattresses.

A Palestinian told Al-Jazeera Arabic while on a ladder fixing his tent with heavy-duty nylon tarps that his family had been displaced three times, from Gaza to Al-Nuseirat, to Khan Yunis, and now to Rafah.

Not every Palestinian could leave northern Gaza or Khan Younis, and many have now opted to build shelters on top the rubble of their levelled houses, using whatever material they could find amidst the rubble to shields themselves from the elements.

Oum Imad, a Palestinian resident of Abbsan town, told Wafa that she walked for three days to arrive in Rafah.

“When I arrived here, I did not find a bite of food or a tent. I slept in the street under the rain…I am accompanied by orphaned children, without a mother or father. This is the hardest war. I witnessed all wars [in Gaza]. I’m 70 years old, this is the toughest of all,” she said.

Palestinians bury relatives in Nasser Hospital as Israeli forces lay siege to Khan Younis

On Saturday evening, Palestinians buried 150 martyrs in the yard of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, as Israeli tanks laid siege to the facility.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that 30 bodies remain unidentified in the mortuary as anyone leaving or entering the Nasser Hospital is at risk of being shot by Israeli forces.

On Sunday, the ministry said that Israel committed 19 massacres in the Gaza Strip, killing 165 Palestinian martyrs and injuring 290 in the past 24 hours.

Israel killed 26,422 Palestinians and 65,087 people in the Gaza Strip since October.

“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads. The occupation prevents ambulances and civil defense crews from reaching them,” the ministry added on its Telegram channel.

The Nasser Hospital, the largest medical facility in southern Gaza, is facing “a severe and dangerous shortage of blood units, and many anesthesia drugs have run out,” the ministry said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) also warned on Sunday that the Amal Hospital in Khan Younis had run out of oxygen due to the ongoing siege imposed by Israeli forces for the past week.

Since Monday, Israeli forces have bombed several areas in the vicinity of the Al-Amal and Nasser Hospitals in Khan Younis. It also stormed the Al-Khair Hospital and arrested a number of medical staff. There are only 14 hospitals partially operating in the Gaza Strip, nine of which are in the south, and the rest are in northern Gaza.

Israeli artillery and military planes bombed several areas in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours. In north Gaza’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, an Israeli air strike killed eight Palestinians and injured dozens, according to Wafa news agency.

Israeli forces also bombed Al-Maghazi refugee camp, Khan Younis’s Batn Al-Sameen, Al-Malalha, and Jourat Al-Aqqad areas.

Protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; thousands march in Europe in support of Palestinians

On Sunday morning, hundreds of Israeli protestors attempted to block the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip from Karam Abu Salem crossing.

The protestors have called for the release of all Israeli captives in Gaza before allowing any aid trucks to enter. The protests are organized by the Order 9 movement, made up of the families of captives, settlers from the occupied West Bank, and Kibbutzniks. Attempts to block aid to Gaza by Order 9 have been growing since last week.

On Sunday, Israeli police dispersed and arrested some protestors in West Jerusalem, calling for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign. Tens of thousands of Israelis also protested in Tel Aviv, calling for an election and the release of captives in Gaza.

In the wake of South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, the mayor of Rishon Lezion, south of Tel Aviv, ordered the removal of the South African flag.

Meanwhile, in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of thousands of citizens marched on Saturday in demonstrations in several cities and capitals of Europe, including Berlin, Vienna, Denmark’s Odense, and Rotterdam, to name a few.

Israeli forces raid towns in West Bank, Palestinians detonate explosive device in Qabatiya

In the past 24 hours, Israeli forces arrested 22 Palestinians from the towns of Ramallah, Jenin, Burqin, Bethlehem, and Silwan.

Israeli forces handed the body of Salim Nasser Abu Hajar from the Shweika area, north of Tulkarem, after holding him for several weeks. Israeli forces shot Abu Hajar, 25, and arrested his brother near the village of Deir Al-Ghusoun, north of Tulkarem, on December 16, 2023.

On Sunday morning, Israeli forces stormed the village of Tayasir, east of Tubas, while on Saturday evening, Israeli forces stormed the villages of Beit Rima and Deir Ghassaneh, northwest of Ramallah, which were resisted by Palestinians.

Israeli forces were raiding the house of Othman Al-Assi to arrest his son Nader, who was not at home, and interrogated the family, Wafa reported.

Israeli forces also stormed the towns of Jenin and Qabatiya and clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters. In Qabatiya, the Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades said that it detonated an explosive device in an Israeli infantry force in the town.

BEFORE YOU GO – At Mondoweiss, we understand the power of telling Palestinian stories. For 17 years, we have pushed back when the mainstream media published lies or echoed politicians’ hateful rhetoric. Now, Palestinian voices are more important than ever.

Our traffic has increased ten times since October 7, and we need your help to cover our increased expenses.

Support our journalists with a donation today.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-114-un-chief-urges-western-countries-to-restore-funding-to-unrwa/

Everything to know about the Health Benefits of Beets
Some benefits of eating beets may include lower blood pressure and better athletic performance, among others. Eating beets raw or juicing and roasting them may be more beneficial than boiling them.

Beetroots, commonly known as beets, are a vibrant and versatile type of vegetable. They’re known for their earthy flavor and aroma. Many people call them a superfood because of their rich nutritional profile.

In addition to bringing a pop of color to your plate, beets are highly nutritious and packed with essential vitamins, minerals, and plant compounds, many of which have medicinal properties.

What’s more, they’re delicious and easy to add to your diet in dishes like balsamic roasted beets, hummus, fries, and salads, among many others.

Here are 9 evidence-based benefits of beets, plus some tasty ways to increase your intake.

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Beets boast an impressive nutritional profile.

They’re low in calories yet high in valuable vitamins and minerals. In fact, they contain a bit of almost all of the vitamins and minerals your body needs (1Trusted Source).

Here’s an overview of the nutrients found in a 3.5-ounce (100-gram) serving of boiled beetroot (1Trusted Source):

Calories: 44
Protein: 1.7 grams
Fat: 0.2 grams
Carbs: 10 grams
Fiber: 2 grams
Folate: 20% of the Daily Value (DV)
Manganese: 14% of the DV
Copper: 8% of the DV
Potassium: 7% of the DV
Magnesium: 6% of the DV
Vitamin C: 4% of the DV
Vitamin B6: 4% of the DV
Iron: 4% of the DV
Beets are particularly rich in folate, a vitamin that plays a key role in growth, development, and heart health (2Trusted Source).

They also contain a good amount of manganese, which is involved in bone formation, nutrient metabolism, brain function, and more (3Trusted Source).

Plus, they’re high in copper, an important mineral required for energy production and the synthesis of certain neurotransmitters (4Trusted Source).

Summary
Beets are loaded with vitamins and minerals yet low in calories and fat. They’re also a good source of several key nutrients, including folate, manganese, and copper.

Beets have been well studied for their ability to decrease elevated blood pressure levels, which are a major risk factor for heart disease (5Trusted Source).

In fact, some studies show that beetroot juice could significantly lower levels of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (6Trusted Source, 7Trusted Source).

The effect appears to be greater for systolic blood pressure, which is the pressure when your heart contracts, rather than diastolic blood pressure, which is the pressure when your heart is relaxed. Also, raw beets may exert a stronger effect than cooked ones (7Trusted Source, 8Trusted Source).

These blood-pressure-lowering effects are likely due to the high concentration of nitrates in this root vegetable. In your body, dietary nitrates are converted into nitric oxide, a molecule that dilates blood vessels and causes blood pressure levels to drop (9Trusted Source).

Beets are also a great source of folate. Although research has turned up mixed results, several studies suggest that increasing your intake of folate could significantly lower blood pressure levels (10Trusted Source).

However, keep in mind that beets’ effect on blood pressure is only temporary. As such, you need to consume them regularly to experience heart-health benefits over the long term (11Trusted Source).

Summary
Beets contain a high concentration of nitrates, which can help lower your blood pressure levels. This may lead to a reduced risk of heart disease and stroke.

Several studies suggest that dietary nitrates like those found in beets may enhance athletic performance.

Nitrates appear to affect physical performance by improving the efficiency of mitochondria, which are responsible for producing energy in your cells (12Trusted Source).

According to one review, beetroot juice could enhance endurance by increasing how long it takes to become exhausted, boosting cardiorespiratory performance, and improving efficiency for athletes (13Trusted Source).

Promisingly, beet juice has also been shown to improve cycling performance and increase oxygen use by up to 20% (14Trusted Source, 15Trusted Source).

It’s important to note that blood nitrate levels peak within 2–3 hours of consuming beets or their juice. Therefore, it’s best to consume them a couple of hours before training or competing to maximize their potential benefits (16Trusted Source).

Summary
Eating beets may enhance athletic performance by improving oxygen use and endurance. To maximize their effects, consume them 2–3 hours prior to training or competing.

Beets contain pigments called betalains, which possess a number of anti-inflammatory properties (8Trusted Source, 17Trusted Source, 18Trusted Source).

This could benefit several aspects of health, as chronic inflammation has been associated with conditions like obesity, heart disease, liver disease, and cancer (19Trusted Source).

One study in 24 people with high blood pressure found that consuming 8.5 ounces (250 mL) of beet juice for 2 weeks significantly reduced several markers of inflammation, including C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-a) (8Trusted Source).

Plus, an older 2014 study in people with osteoarthritis — a condition that causes inflammation in the joints — showed that betalain capsules made with beetroot extract reduced pain and discomfort (20).

Beetroot juice and extract have also been shown to reduce kidney inflammation in rats injected with toxic, injury-causing chemicals (17Trusted Source).

Still, more studies in humans are needed to determine whether enjoying beets in normal amounts as part of a healthy diet may provide the same anti-inflammatory benefits.

Summary
Beets may have a number of anti-inflammatory effects, although further research in humans is needed.

One cup of beetroot contains 3.4 grams of fiber, making beets a good fiber source (1Trusted Source).

Fiber bypasses digestion and travels to the colon, where it feeds friendly gut bacteria and adds bulk to stools (21Trusted Source).

This can promote digestive health, keep you regular, and prevent digestive conditions like constipation, inflammatory bowel disease (IBS), and diverticulitis (22Trusted Source, 23Trusted Source).

Moreover, fiber has been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including colon cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes (23Trusted Source, 24Trusted Source, 25Trusted Source).

Summary
Beets are a good source of fiber, which benefits your digestive health and reduces the risk of several chronic health conditions.

»MORE:Living with diabetes? Explore our top resources.
Mental and cognitive functions naturally decline with age, which can increase the risk of neurodegenerative disorders like dementia.

The nitrates in beets may improve brain function by promoting the dilation of blood vessels and thus increasing blood flow to the brain (26Trusted Source).

Particularly, beets have been shown to improve blood flow to the frontal lobe of the brain, an area associated with higher level thinking like decision making and working memory (27Trusted Source).

Furthermore, an older study in people with type 2 diabetes found that reaction time during a cognitive function test was 4% faster in those who consumed 8.5 ounces (250 mL) of beetroot juice daily for 2 weeks, compared with a control group (28Trusted Source).

However, more research is needed to determine whether beets could be used to improve brain function and reduce the risk of dementia among the general population.

Summary
Beets contain nitrates, which may increase blood flow to the brain and improve cognitive function. However, more research in this area is needed.

Beetroot contains several compounds with cancer-fighting properties, including betaine, ferulic acid, rutin, kaempferol, and caffeic acid (29Trusted Source).

Although more research is needed, test-tube studies have shown that beetroot extract can slow the division and growth of cancer cells (30Trusted SourceTrusted Source, 31Trusted Source, 32Trusted Source).

Several other studies have found that having higher blood levels of betaine may be associated with a lower risk of developing cancer (33Trusted Source, 34Trusted Source).

However, it’s important to note that most studies on the topic have used isolated compounds rather than beetroot. Therefore, further research on beetroot consumption as part of a well-rounded diet and cancer risk is needed.

Summary
Some studies show that certain compounds found in beets could have cancer-fighting properties. Still, further research is needed to better understand this potential connection.

Beets have several nutritional properties that could make them a great addition to a balanced diet.

First, they’re low in fat and calories but high in water, which can help balance your energy intake. Increasing your intake of low calorie foods like this root vegetable has also been associated with weight loss (35Trusted Source).

Furthermore, despite their low calorie content, they contain moderate amounts of protein and fiber. Both of these nutrients can make it easier to achieve and maintain a moderate weight (36Trusted Source, 37Trusted Source).

The fiber in beets may also support digestive health, decrease appetite, and promote feelings of fullness, thereby reducing your overall calorie intake (38Trusted Source).

Additionally, by including them in smoothies or other recipes, you can easily increase your intake of fruits and vegetables to improve the quality of your diet (39Trusted Source).

Summary
Beets have are high in water, moderate in fiber and protein, and low in calories. All of these properties can balance your energy intake and improve your diet quality.

Beets are not only nutritious but also incredibly delicious and easy to incorporate into your diet.

You can juice, roast, steam, or pickle them. For a convenient option, you can purchase them precooked and canned. You can even enjoy them raw, either sliced thinly or grated.

Choose beets that feel heavy for their size with fresh, unwilted green leafy tops still attached, if possible.

Because dietary nitrates are water-soluble, it’s best to avoid boiling beets if you’d like to maximize their nitrate content.

Are beets good for people with diabetes?

Here are some delicious and interesting ways to add more beets to your diet:

Salad. Grated beets make a flavorful and colorful addition to coleslaw or other salads. Try this recipe for Amazing Dressed Beets or a Beetroot, Orange, and Carrot Salad.
Dip. Beets blended with Greek yogurt and fresh garlic make a delicious, healthy, and colorful dip. Have a go at this Beetroot and Honey Lemon Houmous.
Juice. Fresh beetroot juice is typically better than store-bought versions, which can be high in added sugar and contain only a small amount of beets. Try this beetroot juice recipe, which uses carrot, apple, ginger, celery, and lemon for flavor
Soup: Borscht is a popular soup in Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia. Try this classic recipe or this beetroot and tomato variation.
Leaves. You can cook and enjoy fresh beet leaves similarly to how you’d use spinach. Get some ideas for cooking beet greens here.
Roasted. Wedge beetroots and toss them with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbs or spices of your choice. Then, roast them in a 400°F (205°C) oven for 15–20 minutes until they’re tender. Or try these Balsamic Roasted Beets.
Summary
Beetroot is a delicious and versatile vegetable that’s easy to add to your diet. If possible, choose beets that feel heavy for their size with green tops still attached.

Can you eat beets everyday?

It’s always best to follow a varied diet.

Eating a small amount of beetroot every day is unlikely to do any harm, but a high intake could lead to low blood pressure, red or black urine and feces, and digestive problems for anyone with a sensitivity to the nutrients. A high daily beet consumption may also mean you are not getting nutrients from other foods, however, so try to vary your diet.

Always speak with a doctor before making significant dietary changes.

Are beets a superfood?

Some people call beets a superfood because they are rich in essential nutrients.

Are beets anti-inflammatory?

Beets contain betalains, a natural coloring agent with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Some research suggests belatains may help reduce both symptoms and biological markers in the body related to inflammation (8Trusted Source, 17Trusted Source, 20).

Can beets boost your sexual health?

Beets contain nitrates and there is some evidence they may improve the body’s nitric oxide production (40Trusted Source).

The body needs nitric oxide to open the blood vessels that are necessary for getting and maintaining an erection. This may make them suitable for people with erectile dysfunction, although there is no scientific evidence to confirm this.

Can beets help with sexual function?

Beets are highly nutritious and loaded with health-promoting properties.

They can support the health of your brain, heart, and digestive system, are a great addition to a balanced diet, boost athletic performance, help alleviate inflammation, and possibly slow the growth of cancer cells.

Best of all, beets are delicious and easy to include in your diet. For example, they’re a great addition to salads, side dishes, smoothies, dips, and juices.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/benefits-of-beets#nutrients-and-calories

The Lion Diet Reset for Jumpstarting Your Healing Journey
Just red meat, salt and mineral water to wash it down.

Dr. Syed Haider
What do Lions Eat? - Discovery UK
I gained about 40 - 50 pounds during the pandemic primarily due to stress, poor sleep and too much sugar, then I lost it all by eating whole foods, sleeping well and walking 10,000-15,000 steps a day, then I gained some of it back by eating sugar again and slacking on sleep hygiene, though I mostly kept up the walking, which had become a morning habit (I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that for over 18 months now I’ve always averaged close to 10,000 steps a day over any 6 month period (the health app in my phone)).

Meanwhile a friend of mine who had benefited greatly from the carnivore diet in the past, but fell off the wagon and had been trying to get back on for awhile had been encouraging me for some time to be his accountability partner on a diet change journey so finally I decided to take the plunge.

From personal experience I know very well that the hardest hill to climb is that initial decision to make a change for the better. After you’ve truly made a commitment to change, sustaining it is not nearly as hard.

You also find many complementary healthy changes suddenly become easier to implement. It feels like there is a “good boy” template in the subconscious and an opposing “bad boy” one, though that term carries other perhaps conflicting (perhaps not) connotations.

What I mean is that all the things I’ve collected throughout my life that I consider good healthy behaviors tend to creep back sooner or later once I decided to get healthier and take the first steps towards better health.

Similarly if I cheat unexpectedly, that single “bad” choice has usually led to most of the good I was doing falling apart and me going back to all the old bad ways.

In order to circumvent this tendency I’m planning to build in some flexibility in the form of “cheat” days, but I don’t think it’s helpful to think of them as cheat days, in fact I think it only serves to make it likely that your subconscious considers them a “bad” thing.

The key to success and sustainability is to consider them a good thing instead, think of them more as health/metabolic/recovery hormetic stress tests, that are preplanned and executed as a key part of a healthy lifestyle protocol (hormesis: low dose stressor is beneficial, high dose is harmful. Applies to exercise, sunlight, water, food, homeopathy, pharmacology, herbology, even many so called chemical toxins - the dose makes the poison and all).

The goal is not only to regain good health but to regain maximal resilience and ability to sustain that good health in the face of challenging situations where you can’t sleep properly, or eat properly or exercise the way you usually do, or you’re exposed to toxic blue light for prolonged periods, or someone close to you passes away, or you lose a job, etc.

Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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I’m one of those people who can eat a dozen cupcakes if I’m feeling stressed out, but if I stop eating sugar entirely I don’t have any cravings for it. Moderation is impossible, but abstinence is easy. So maybe I’m addicted, or maybe I’m just populated by microbes that depend on sugar.

I did a 5 day carnivore reset before my initial weight loss journey started perhaps 18 months ago now, and I was amazed to see that I had no sugar cravings for a couple of months afterwards. Literally for the first time in my life sugar bombs survived in my house for over 48 hours. We had a tub of ice cream that was not finished for a month, which would have been as likely as a pig flying before that.

But after that period of a couple months I gradually lost my indifference to sweets and then eventually went back to full on sweet-tooth, cookie-monster mode, which was a big part of my eventual downfall later.

My weight loss also stalled out before I got really lean, I felt way better, looked away better, at least in clothes, but I was probably still carrying an extra 30 pounds of fat internally - the visceral fat - which, though invisible to the naked eye, is the worst kind for your health.

Carnivore seems to most people to be like an extreme overreaction to the vegan movement, and perhaps it is culturally an immune reaction of sorts, but it pays to consider what the proponents of the diet say.

One of the most telling arguments in favor is that plants are trying to kill you.

Losing my finger to a 'meat eating' plant? - YouTube
Plants like all living things, would prefer to stay alive, and are in a life or death struggle with those who would kill them.

Since they can’t run away or fight off their predators, they primarily rely on poisoning them, and animals have developed finely tuned senses that let them know if there is a poison present - it tastes bad, usually very bitter, and the usual reaction is to spit it out (and wash your mouth out), the way a baby will when you try to feed them broccoli or Brussel sprouts.

Most non-human mammals that are herbivores or omnivores are only evolutionarily optimized to digest a small selection of plants in their environment.

Human civilizations first of all domesticated and bred plants to make them more palatable, and then developed intricate methods of neutralizing and predigesting plants via soaking, sprouting, culturing and cooking plant foods to make them less toxic, though we can’t entirely eliminate all toxins even with these complicated traditional procedures (hormesis argues the remaining toxins are probably beneficial stressors, and there are other beneficial phytonutrients too).

Modern manufacturing eschews all that traditional wisdom for quick production methods that leave the lectins, oxalates, phtyates, tannins, hormone disruptors, and nutrient blockers intact.

But even if someone took appropriate care to use traditional methods of food preparation, and also made sure to use seasonal ingredients, and combined them in the traditional recipes that made use of various complementary ingredients, they would still be left with some degree of plant poisons in their diet.

I was shocked to learn that every plant in the grocery store has dozens of known carcinogens, and plants produce phytotoxins that total 10,000 times the amount of pesticides sprayed on them (the primary concern with meat is improper handling leading to microorganisms polluting it, and improper cooking methods leading to char - i.e. you don’t want to burn it).

As far as we know all human societies in every age throughout history ate as much meat as they could get their hands on, and supplemented with plants only when necessary to avert calorie restriction, treat/prevent illness, and as a garnish, or side dish to their meat. The farther back we go the less palatable the plants were and they required even more processing to make them edible.

Agrarian societies were always, and still are, less healthy than their hunter gatherer counterparts.

Now, to be clear, I’m not arguing for a forever meat diet.

The Lion diet refers to eating just ruminant red meat garnished with salt and washed down with mineral rich water.

The way I see it, this is an elimination diet, of which there are many.

Some popular ones include AIP, Carnivore and Vegan.

AIP is the autoimmune paleo diet and advises removing grains, sugars, eggs, dairy, soy, and nightshade vegetables.

Carnivore allows all meat, fish, dairy and eggs.

Vegan allows only plant products.

The idea behind elimination diets, which were a mainstay of pre-modern medical systems, and still used heavily in functional and alternative medicine today, is that something you are eating is preventing your body from recovering from chronic illness, perhaps due to a “leaky gut”, i.e. your gut lining has become damaged and permeable by some toxic insult (like viral/vax entry into the bloodstream and subsequent transfection of key cells) to partially digested food particles which trigger immune reactions that can cross react with your own tissues or simply create inflammation that keeps you sick, and keeps the gut lining from healing.

Eliminate the foods and eliminate your symptoms, heal the gut, then reintroduce the foods one at a time, carefully watching for reactions.

It can get complicated because the reactions can take weeks to wear off, and days to recur upon reexposure. So the reintroduction phase is usually done by consuming the test food for 3 days then waiting another 4 days for a reaction.

Tracking gut permeability tests (lactulose-mannitol ratio, zonulin level, antibodies to zonulin, actin, and lipopolysaccharide) can help determine when to begin the reintroduction phase.

Given the inherent toxicity of plants, which has developed as an evolutionary defense mechanism against being eaten, and the relatively benign nature of animal meat the safest elimination diets either limit the most toxic plant foods, or eliminate plant foods altogether.

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In my case I know I have an autoimmune issue with mild psoriasis, which is likely related to leaky gut, I also have had chronic constipation, occasional reflux, occasional headaches, occasional stuffy nose, a tendency towards insomnia, and relatively rapid aging in the last few years with significant weight gain.

So my plan is to try to reverse all of these naturally and I’ll likely be checking micronutrient levels and genetics at some point to fine tune things using protocols developed by Chris Masterjohn.

Diet over the longer term will likely trend towards lower in carbs, higher in meat/seafood, dairy, and eggs, but this will depend on my carb tolerance in the future as evidenced by markers like body fat and fasting insulin levels. Will eat shortly after waking to help strengthen the circadian rhythm further.

Exercise will start with mobility drills, walks, sprints (because no other exercise naturally stimulates muscle gain and fat loss better - just look at an olympic sprinter - the message to your body is either: something’s about to kill us, or we’re about to starve and need to catch some food fast, so shape up ASAP and help me out here), body weight exercises, maybe kettlebell swings.

Skin and hair care will include traditional topical treatments like egg whites, egg yolks, tallow, and essential oils.

Sleep will be as much as needed and regular hours.

Light environment: aim to minimize blue light toxicity from sunlight filtered through window glass, and indoor bulbs by spending as much time outdoors as possible. Sun exposure in the mornings and around sunset especially with some midday sun.

Also need to work on emotional and spiritual growth and interpersonal relationships, but those are higher hanging fruit.

Anyway let me know if you’ve tried an elimination diet in the past and how it went for you.

https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-lion-diet-reset-for-jumpstarting

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