Category Archives: Human Longevity

Restrict the calories you consume if you wish to live longer  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

Whenever the issue of longevity with all your cognitive skills intact crops up, I cannot help but recall what then Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad had told a gathering of ASEAN leaders in Bangkok in November 2019. His political opinion and allegiances apart, the 5-time-PM's words are valued because though now 96 years old, he still exudes energy and good health.

First thing is dont overeat. Eat to live and do not live to eat. Thats it. Very simple. And when the food is nice, stop eating. That is what is my mothers advice to me.

"Its difficult, but you have to develop discipline. And then the next thing is to stay active means the whole system, Not just the muscles, but the brain as well. As you grow old, the brain begins to recede in power due to disuse. But if you use it to talk, debate, sing, quarrel etc, it will function well. If it does not, then repeat the actions.

"What you do again and again gets imprinted on the brain and it will remember. But if you go into inactivity on account of retirement, the brain and the body will lose its capacity, Dr Mahathir Mohamad told the audience.

Dr Mahathir graduated as a doctor in 1953 and served as a medical officer at the Alor Setar General Hospital.

Now BBC Future brings a report by Alex Riley that cites the importance of a lighter diet to ageing well. Its important to not just add years to human lifespan but vital as well to add health to those years (lets call it healthspan).

Focus on Healthspans and not Lifespans:Riley cites that in 2014, for instance, the United States Health Interview Survey reported that 16 per cent of people aged between 50 and 64 were impaired every day with chronic illness a betterment on a number that only 3 decades earlier stood at 23 per cent.

In other words, as well as benefiting from longer lifespans, we are also experiencing longer healthspans and the latter is proving to be even more malleable.

Riley paraphrases a speech by former US president John F Kennedy given at the first White House Conference on Ageing in 1961, life can indeed be added to years, rather than just years added to life.

How to enhance the length and quality of our lives?Researchers the world over say that the answer is a simple change in diet.They believe that the key to a better old age may be to reduce the amount of food on our plates.The BBC report calls this approach calorie restriction.

Cut back on fats and downsize the portion sizes permanentlyStudies carried out since 80+ years on animals involving a 30 per cent reduction in the amount of food consumed per day has been linked to longer, more active lives and its possible that humans have just as much to gain.

Restrict the diet in amount but not variety, as advised byAlvise Cornaro a 15th Century infirm aristocrat from a small village near Venice in Italy who claimed to have achieved perfect health up until his death in his 98th year. In 1591, his grandson published his posthumous three-volume tome entitled Discourses on the Sober Life that pusheddietary restriction into the mainstream, and redefining ageing itself, according to the BBC report.

A research video published by Salk Institute says: Eat less, live longer- If you want to reduce levels of inflammation throughout your body, delay the onset of age-related diseases and live longereat less food.

"Thats the conclusion of a new study by scientists from the US and China that provides the most detailed report to date of the cellular effects of a calorie-restricted diet in rats.

"While the benefits of caloric restriction have long been known, the new results show how this restriction can protect against ageing in cellular pathways, as detailed in Cell on February 27, 2020.

Incidentally, Salk Institute was founded by and is named after the great medical researcher Jonas Salk who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine in the 1950s andchose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution.

A scientific report, published in Neurosciencenews.com, says that calorie-restricted diets reduce inflammation, delay the onset of age-related diseases, and extend lifespan.

If you want to reduce levels of inflammation throughout your body, delay the onset of age-related diseases, and live longereat less food.

We already knew that calorie restriction increases life span, but now weve shown all the changes that occur at a single-cell level to cause that, says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a senior author of the new paper, professor in Salks Gene Expression Laboratory and holder of the Roger Guillemin Chair. This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat ageing in humans.

When to start calorie restriction?Ageing is the highest risk factor for many human diseases, including cancer, dementia, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Caloric restriction has been shown in animal models to be one of the most effective interventions against these age-related diseases. In the laboratory experiment, the animals diets were controlled from age 18 months through 27 months. In humans, this would be roughly equivalent to someone following a calorie-restricted diet from age 50 through 70.

So how many calories should we be eating?A report in Express.co.uk quotes NHS experts as saying: An ideal daily intake of calories varies depending on age, metabolism and levels of physical activity, among other things Generally, the recommended daily calorie intake is 2,000 calories a day for women and 2,500 for men The term calorie is commonly used as shorthand for kilocalories. You will find this written as kcal on food packets To lose weight in a healthy way, you need to use more energy than you consume by eating a healthy, balanced diet with fewer calories while increasing your physical activity.

Disclaimer: Tips and suggestions mentioned in the article are for general information purposes only and should not be construed as professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a professional healthcare provider if you have any specific questions about any medical matter.

Continued here:
How to live to be 100 years old? Eat less, stop while you can eat more, practice hunger from your 50s - Times Now

Nan Shepherd was 84 years old when The Living Mountain came out in 1977. Shed written the book, a meditation on her beloved Cairngorms in Scotland, in the 1940s during the Second World War. At that time, the prose of this book, a seminal work of nature writing, was thought to be ahead of its time and after getting one rejection, she put it away. Her fiction had already been published in the 1920s and 30s and after that she seemed to have disappeared from view, only to emerge three decades later.

The book had been published in a small print run by the Aberdeen University Press, an institution to which Shepherd had personal and professional ties (she had studied there and also later edited the universitys journal). It came out and was forgotten until resurrected by Robert Macfarlane, the acclaimed nature writer, some years ago. In his introduction to the book, Macfarlane talks about how the book changed him. He also reflects on how Shepherd, a woman, approaches a mountain so differently from her male peers. For a man, nature writer or not, tackling a mountain is all about summiting it, conquering the landscape. As a woman, Shepherd cares not for reaching the peak, but going through those magnificent hills.

Shepherd lived all her life in the same area around the Cairngorms. She explored the landscape with her passion for hill walking and wrote about the flora, the fauna and the environment in such pellucid, sensual prose that reading it is to experience ecstatic pleasure.

She covers it all in The Living Mountain the stone, the water, the plants, the trees, the clouds, the air even. She peers over the edge of a precipice to observe a small, reflecting pool of water. She falls asleep in the open and experiences nature from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She observes the busy life of ptarmigans and snow buntings and hares in this harsh terrain.

Even when lost in the depths of the beauty of these hills, she doesnt gloss over the treachery of a landscape that is not really conquerable. Deaths happen, of animals and humans. People go missing in sudden blizzards. Their losses are recounted, some of them people she has personally known. Theres heartache in these lines, mourning for lives that are often cut down before their prime.

In the distance, the war drums sound and even in this remote part of Scotland theres no escaping the drone of aircraft. But the mountains, older than human civilisation, and for whom time moves at a slower pace than us, stand stoic through it all. Theres an odd sort of comfort to be had in contemplating the mortality of the human race in the face of such longevity. Shepherd is able to conjure up such a well of emotions in the reader that by the time this small treasure of a book comes to an end youre grateful that she thought to take it out of the drawer where it languished for so many years and gave it another chance to see the light.

The author is a Bangalore-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great. Come, raid the bookshelves with us.

Read this article:
'My spirit soars where the air grows thin' - Deccan Herald

In the past 60 years, the life expectancy of the average newborn has increased by nearly 20 years from 52.5 to 72, as of 2018. Weve seen an incredible wave of technological innovation in this time: The introduction of the internet, medical breakthroughs and an enhanced understanding of public health initiatives have transformed the course of human life. And with new technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence now taking the stage, we know that even more radical transformation is coming. These disruptive technologies are paving the way for both longer and healthier lifespans.

To show you just how much healthcare has advanced thanks to these technologies, I want to highlight a case study of two unique companies, Insilico Medicine and Longenesis. Together, they show how the development of AI for medical care has grown in tandem with the advent of blockchain healthcare applications.

In 2014, longevity innovator Alex Zhavoronkov and their company, Insilico Medicine, reached out to me. The company was based on a simple but radical premise: using AI to accelerate drug discovery and development. At the time, the use of AI was still nascent, both in public awareness and its applications to medicine. But in the seven years since I invested in this company, it has used AI to transform research and development in the therapeutics sector completely. Its rapid discovery and development of new therapies result from the incredible amount of data they process searching for the next best cure. Rich in source and scope, this data comes from the genomic and proteomic sequences of actual healthcare patients. Through dozens of new drug candidates, they have shown tremendous potential in using AI for data-driven healthcare.

However, the groundbreaking progress made by Insilico was not without obstacles. Working with massive amounts of data presented unique challenges regarding centralization and security. Data in healthcare tends to be scattered and siloed. Each doctor, medical center and hospital maintains its silo and, due to privacy regulations, data is typically only shared when necessary for patient care. Having access to synthesized patient data was critical for Insilicos AI algorithms to be successful, and it just wasnt available.

In looking for solutions to the security and centralization concerns associated with this type of data, Alex and the team at Insilico Medicine soon discovered blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The immutability of entries on the blockchain and the ability to have multiple decentralized nodes contributing data to a shared ledger offered a solution to the complex problems associated with patient data. This technology was what they had been looking for, but they needed a partner to build it with them. Insilico formed a joint venture with leading European blockchain company Bitfury (now one of the largest emerging technology companies on the continent) and launched a new company named Longenesis. Longenesis aim was clear: to create a blockchain healthcare ecosystem that considered the sensitive requirements of health data and the application needs of biotech research.

Related: Concerns around data privacy are rising, and blockchain is the solution

Longenesis designed a blockchain-based environment for stakeholders across the healthcare/biotech industry, including patient organizations, biomedical research groups, and research partners and sponsors. The beauty of Longenesis solution is that there is always a record of consent. When patients agree to share their data for any purpose, there is immutable proof of their permission.

Its first product, Curator, is used by hospitals and other care organizations to safely and compliantly present the data available for researchers without compromising patient privacy. This function empowers researchers to review datasets without endangering the security of patient information. When a researcher or company is interested in using the data, Longenesis second product Engage provides it. Engage also allows hospitals and researchers to quickly onboard patients into new medical trials and research, recording ongoing patient consent. Regardless of whether AI is being used to analyze new data from a medical trial or old data from medical records, patients know about it and can decide to consent at their convenience. Longenesis has deployed this solution in state hospitals, government biobanks and more. Its work empowers AI companies such as Insilico Medicine to access vast amounts of data that can be used for artificial intelligence analysis, leading to even more treatment and drug discovery.

While Ive highlighted two companies here, there are thousands of outstanding startups, research institutions and physicians working tirelessly to improve the human lifespan. They could all benefit from blockchain-unlocked data and the analytical power of artificial intelligence.

The average hospital generates 760 terabytes of data annually, yet 80% of this valuable data is unstructured and unavailable to researchers. It needs to remain secure, and patients need to provide ongoing consent for its use. This disconnect is holding back progress across every aspect of medicine. The pairing of blockchain and AI can unlock this data for analysis, facilitate patient consent, track usage of clinical data and more.

Without blockchain, artificial intelligence lacks the ethically sourced and protected biomedical data it needs to find new solutions. Without artificial intelligence, the vast amounts of data protected by blockchain remain secure but unusable for research. Progress happens when these innovations work together, just as critical public health initiatives of past decades succeeded thanks to the advent of the World Wide Web. Then, our goal must be to bring these technologies more fully to market so longevity-focused care can be accessible to all.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Garri Zmudze is a managing partner at LongeVC, a Switzerland and Cyprus-based venture capital firm accelerating innovative startups in biotech and longevity. He is a seasoned business expert and angel investor with several successful exits across biotech and tech companies. He is a long-time supporter and investor in biotech companies, including Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity and Basepaws.

Authors note: Both entities, Insilico Medicine and Longenesis, are portfolio companies of our longevity-focused VC firm, LongeVC.

Read the original here:
The Next Generation Of Data-driven Healthcare Is Here - Todayuknews - Todayuknews

In the past 60 years, the life expectancy of the average newborn has increased by nearly 20 years from 52.5 to 72, as of 2018. Weve seen an incredible wave of technological innovation in this time: The introduction of the internet, medical breakthroughs and an enhanced understanding of public health initiatives have transformed the course of human life. And with new technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence now taking the stage, we know that even more radical transformation is coming. These disruptive technologies are paving the way for both longer and healthier lifespans.

To show you just how much healthcare has advanced thanks to these technologies, I want to highlight a case study of two unique companies, Insilico Medicine and Longenesis. Together, they show how the development of AI for medical care has grown in tandem with the advent of blockchain healthcare applications.

In 2014, longevity innovator Alex Zhavoronkov and their company, Insilico Medicine, reached out to me. The company was based on a simple but radical premise: using AI to accelerate drug discovery and development. At the time, the use of AI was still nascent, both in public awareness and its applications to medicine. But in the seven years since I invested in this company, it has used AI to transform research and development in the therapeutics sector completely. Its rapid discovery and development of new therapies result from the incredible amount of data they process searching for the next best cure. Rich in source and scope, this data comes from the genomic and proteomic sequences of actual healthcare patients. Through dozens of new drug candidates, they have shown tremendous potential in using AI for data-driven healthcare.

However, the groundbreaking progress made by Insilico was not without obstacles. Working with massive amounts of data presented unique challenges regarding centralization and security. Data in healthcare tends to be scattered and siloed. Each doctor, medical center and hospital maintains its silo and, due to privacy regulations, data is typically only shared when necessary for patient care. Having access to synthesized patient data was critical for Insilicos AI algorithms to be successful, and it just wasnt available.

In looking for solutions to the security and centralization concerns associated with this type of data, Alex and the team at Insilico Medicine soon discovered blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The immutability of entries on the blockchain and the ability to have multiple decentralized nodes contributing data to a shared ledger offered a solution to the complex problems associated with patient data. This technology was what they had been looking for, but they needed a partner to build it with them. Insilico formed a joint venture with leading European blockchain company Bitfury (now one of the largest emerging technology companies on the continent) and launched a new company named Longenesis. Longenesis aim was clear: to create a blockchain healthcare ecosystem that considered the sensitive requirements of health data and the application needs of biotech research.

Related: Concerns around data privacy are rising, and blockchain is the solution

Longenesis designed a blockchain-based environment for stakeholders across the healthcare/biotech industry, including patient organizations, biomedical research groups, and research partners and sponsors. The beauty of Longenesis solution is that there is always a record of consent. When patients agree to share their data for any purpose, there is immutable proof of their permission.

Its first product, Curator, is used by hospitals and other care organizations to safely and compliantly present the data available for researchers without compromising patient privacy. This function empowers researchers to review datasets without endangering the security of patient information. When a researcher or company is interested in using the data, Longenesis second product Engage provides it. Engage also allows hospitals and researchers to quickly onboard patients into new medical trials and research, recording ongoing patient consent. Regardless of whether AI is being used to analyze new data from a medical trial or old data from medical records, patients know about it and can decide to consent at their convenience. Longenesis has deployed this solution in state hospitals, government biobanks and more. Its work empowers AI companies such as Insilico Medicine to access vast amounts of data that can be used for artificial intelligence analysis, leading to even more treatment and drug discovery.

While Ive highlighted two companies here, there are thousands of outstanding startups, research institutions and physicians working tirelessly to improve the human lifespan. They could all benefit from blockchain-unlocked data and the analytical power of artificial intelligence.

The average hospital generates 760 terabytes of data annually, yet 80% of this valuable data is unstructured and unavailable to researchers. It needs to remain secure, and patients need to provide ongoing consent for its use. This disconnect is holding back progress across every aspect of medicine. The pairing of blockchain and AI can unlock this data for analysis, facilitate patient consent, track usage of clinical data and more.

Without blockchain, artificial intelligence lacks the ethically sourced and protected biomedical data it needs to find new solutions. Without artificial intelligence, the vast amounts of data protected by blockchain remain secure but unusable for research. Progress happens when these innovations work together, just as critical public health initiatives of past decades succeeded thanks to the advent of the World Wide Web. Then, our goal must be to bring these technologies more fully to market so longevity-focused care can be accessible to all.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Garri Zmudze is a managing partner at LongeVC, a Switzerland and Cyprus-based venture capital firm accelerating innovative startups in biotech and longevity. He is a seasoned business expert and angel investor with several successful exits across biotech and tech companies. He is a long-time supporter and investor in biotech companies, including Insilico Medicine, Deep Longevity and Basepaws.

Authors note: Both entities, Insilico Medicine and Longenesis, are portfolio companies of our longevity-focused VC firm, LongeVC.

Continued here:
The next generation of data-driven healthcare is here - Cointelegraph

When trying to ascertain the best types of food or diet to help improve your lifespan, reduce risk of serious diseases and improve brain health; turning to studies is often the best bet. Numerous studies have found one of the best snacks to help with the ageing process and could even boost your lifespan by 10 percent.

Berries are a nutritious, heart-healthy snack for everyone, according to dietitian Juliette Kellow and nutritionist Dr Sarah Brewer.

Theyre packed full of antioxidants and fibre, which contribute to cardiovascular improvements, they said.

Eating just three or more servings of berries a week could lower your risk of a heart attack by as much as 34 percent, they revealed.

READ MORE-Fatty liver disease: Symptoms of hardened liver

An 18-year study conducted by led by Dr Eric Rimm, associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, found that women who ate the most strawberries and blueberries were 34 percent less likely to have suffered a heart attack than women who ate the least of these fruits.

The answer to why berries are so healthy could lie in their antioxidants content called anthocyanins, which protect against the oxidative stress and inflammation that contribute to the development of heart disease.

Blueberries also contain specific flavonoid molecules which help fight DNA damage and slow age-related damage to brain cells.

Numerous studies have shown that blueberries slow age-related damage to brain cells and protect memory-associated brain regions from oxidant and inflammatory damage.

The result is improvements in overall cognitive function.

One study on fruit flies found those who regularly consumed blueberries lived 10 percent longer.

Equally it was found that berries not only boosted the fruit flies longevity but also improved their levels of activity.

These benefits arouse from both the increased tolerance of oxidant stress and from beneficial changes int eh way certain important genes are exposed.

Scientists from the Human Nutrition Research Center on Ageing found that strawberries helped improved mental capabilities.

The research trial involved 37 participants of both men and women between the ages of 60 to 75 and consumed two cups of freeze-dried strawberries a day or a placebo for a total of 90 days.

The results found those who consumed the strawberries showed improved cognitive skills.

The participants also had significantly better spatial navigation, a vital skill for identifying locations and not getting lost, one which is crucial that we maintain as we get older, and verbal recall, which is important for communication.

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How to live longer: Delicious snack to reduce heart attack risk and boost longevity by 10% - Express

Dr. Steven Gundry has written several best-selling books includingThe Plant Paradox, The Longevity Paradox, andThe Energy Paradox,to help anyone who thinks they are eating healthy but is still gaining weight, feeling low-energy, bloated, or suffering from myriad symptoms like leaky gut syndrome that, no matter how many salads and green smoothies they make, just don't go away.

Dr. Gundry will patiently yet persistently (and clearly) explain to anyone who will listen that he believes that not all plant-based foods arebeneficial for everyone, and if you have an autoimmune disease or an adverse reaction to foods, instead of turning your back on a plant-based approach, the better course is to steer clear of compounds such as lectins, which may be aggravating. His point: If you know which whole foods to eat and which to avoid, you can enjoy a plant-based diet and feel amazing. It's actuallythe key to longevity, weight loss, and consistent health.

To live longer, feel better, lose weight, andenjoy clear, glowing skin, and the energy and lithe movements of an athlete, all you have to do is eat more foods that agree with you and stay away with the ones that cause inflammation, says Dr. Gundry.Like everyone else you talk to these days, he is bullish on mushrooms, andnot a fan offoods that contain lectins, which is a full array of menu items, from pasta and grains to tomatoes, eggplant, and other nightshades, and legumes, which may be leaving you with what's known as leaky gut, but is essentially an allergic-style reaction to lectins, that once you solve, could allow you to add back some of these foods with little or no reaction, so you feel amazing.

Dr. Gundry has been plant-based forover 20 years and has power research to back up his claims and has conducted his own original researchinto lectins, leaky gut, and the stories of patients who lose weight and lower their markers for major diseases, while they live lectin-free.

In an exclusive interview, he talks toThe Beetabouthis"tough love" stance on: "Eat plants, but not all plants," which is clearly working for him and others who follow his strict anti-lectin approach. Here, he shares his views on what to eat for longevity and to live a long healthy life until the day you die.

Lucy Danziger: Not everyone can tolerate certain vegetables, like tomatoes. What's your advice for people who want to eat healthy and plant-based, but for whom not all foods agree with them?

Dr. Steven Gundry: Believe it or not, plants don't want us to eat them. They were not put on Earth for us to eat them, and they want to live. They want their seeds and babies to live. Their only defense system is compounds like lectins so they try to dissuade an animal or preditor that it's not a good thing to eat them.

We have a defense mechanism against these plant proteins,including acid in our stomach, our gut microbiome, but as I talk about, our gut microbiome has been decimated by antibiotics that are sprayed on all of our vegetables, and so we're pretty defenseless against these plant toxins.

If you have what's called "leaky gut," [which is defined as an unhealthy gut lining that develops cracks or holes, allowing partially digested food, toxins, and bugs to penetrate the tissues beneath it and cause inflammation], then you have to change your diet. The way to solve leaky gut is to eliminate what's aggravating you.

Once we heal that, the immune system can be retrained to forget that itgets bothered by these compounds. That being said, for 22years, I've asked patients to remove troublesome foods fromtheir diets foods that they thought were really good for them. When they remove these foods, we can show them that their leaky gutgoes away and their auto-immune disease gets resolved.

In Western society, we've set ourselves up to fail, to be sensitive to these plant toxins. For my patients with celiac disease, when we took other lectin-containing foods away from them, their celiac disease dissolves.

Lucy Danziger:So, that's fascinating. It's not just gluten! Do you think everyone should stay away from lectins or just those that have sensitivity?

Dr. Steven Gundry:I can tell you that all disease begins in the gut, a leaky gut. If you have any disease process, that includes diabetes, arthritis, mental health, depression, acne, anxiety, you nameit, we'll find that you have a leaky gut. if you remove these plant issues, then you'll repair yourself and everything will return to normal. I had a meeting at Harvard a few years ago, about the effects on lectins and brain function and memory loss. One of the professors challenged me and said, 'well I believe everything in moderation,' and I said, "That's great if you want a moderate amount of diabetes, a moderate amount of arthritis, or a moderate amount of artery disease, then I agree with you, but why would I want that?

Lucy Danziger:Most people are just waking upto the idea that food is medicine. Where do we start? Should we start by adding more plant-based foods or taking away animal products? What's your best advice for someone who wants to eat healthier to boost immunity?

Dr. Steven Gundry: Rule number one, which I write in all my books, is that what I tell you not to eat is more important than what I tell you to eat.

Jack Lalanne used to say, "If it tastes good, spit it out. " He was right. Another mistake we make, and this dates back to our great grandparents, is that when you eat whole foods eat them whole! Only then are they healthy. When you line up wheat and turn it into a "whole wheat" bread, it's no longer whole wheat. It's bread.

Our ancestors ate whole foods, if you're going to eat foods whole, then eat them whole.

The same is true of fruit:If you're going to eat a grapefruit whole, it's a lot better for you than a glass of grapefruit juice, which is a mainlining a glass of fructose.

We're beginning to learn a lot more than fructose, in whatever form. It used to be only available to us in season for fruit, which was usually late summer and early fall [when we are active with the harvest]. But now we have 365 of endless summer, which is also endless sugar, because of high-fructose corn syrup and we are not designed to handle that.

Lucy Danziger: We're constantly given opportunities to eat, but we're rarely given opportunities to burn off what we eat. Our bodies are made to move, not eat all day!

Dr. Steven Gundry:Agreed.

Lucy Danziger: Let's talk about mushrooms. I love mushrooms. What's your opinion on them?

Dr. Steven Gundry: Mushrooms are a great source of polysaccharides, which are long-chain sugars that our gut microbiome biome loves to eat.

Certain mushrooms have one of the most amazing brain-stimulating mitochondrion-boosting compounds. The more mushrooms you eat, the more nutrients you get. People who eat two cups of mushrooms per week (that's not even that much) have a 90 percent reduction in dementia, compared to those who don't eat two cups of mushrooms a week, according to a recent study. If we had a drug that promised you a 90 percent reduction in Alzheimer's, I can tell you everyone would pay for it. But if you could pick up mushrooms at the store for three bucks then why not?

Lucy Danziger: Tell me about sorghum. Why is this good to eat?

Dr. Steven Gundry: Sorghum produces a high-quality, high-protein grain. It's an ancient grain that uses the least amount of water to produce of any crop. In the US, we used it as cattle food.It's a cash crop. In the Middle East and Africa, it's their grain.

Sorghum is one of the ways we can have an impact on climate change and the amount of water we need to grow food. Let's use what we know about climate change and grow a grain that's good for us and saves the planet.

Lucy Danziger: How did you learn the connection between human health, the environment, and animals? Most doctors don't think that way or learn about nutritionin medical school.

Dr. Steven Gundry: As an undergrad at Yale, I had a special major in human pollution biology and I wrote a thesis about health. Then my life was changed over 20 years ago by a gentleman who had reversed massive artery disease and he told me what he eats and it was exactly what I wrote about in my thesis. So, I put myself on the diet I wrote about in my thesis, and then I put thousands of patients on this program. We're not supposed to have certain diseases, like heart disease. People who eat like us don't get these diseases.

Lucy Danziger: Aging and the way we age is really up to us. I believe that this kind of medicine and the way you practice is life-changing. But how do you tell patients who come to you and say, "help me now?" that they need to change their diet?

Dr. Steven Gundry:We can pretty much give anyone a crystal ball to look at what's going to happen. You can luckily control your faith, that's really exciting and drastic.

None of us want to get old because we see what happens when we get to that age. But, it's an opportunity to intervene and control what's going to be your fate. Ninety-two percent of the things that are going to happen to you are controlled by you, and 8 percent is determined by your genes.

We can overcome the way those genes get expressed. We know now that how we influence our microbiome and give it what the bacteria in our gut wants to eat, they want to have a home, and if you give the microbiome what they need, they will, in turn, take care of you, which is their home.

The really exciting thing in animal and human research is that thebacteria in our gut have the most effect on our lifespan than anything else. We should actually be eating for our microbiome rather than our tongue. That is temporary, and the gut has long-term ramifications.

Don't sit around and wait for your genes to create conditions that don't have to come at all.

Lucy Danziger: Do I need to take Vitamin D or can I get it from my food?

Dr. Steven Gundry: It's nearly impossible to get anadequate amount of vitamin D from food and from the sun. When I first meet my patients, most of them are deficient in vitamin D, despite living in Southern California. The higher your vitamin D level is, the longer you live, period.

There arestudies that show people with higher vitamin D levels, the safer they are from COVID. We rarely see vitamin D toxicity, It could exist but we don't see it. When we are confronted by a lethal virus, and we have a natural substance we can take, why wouldn't we?

Lucy Danziger:Any last piece of advice?

Dr. Steven Gundry:The more we can not eat, within reason, the better our health will be long-term. The amazing effects of intermittent fasting or time-restrictive eating are that it prevents diabetes, boosts your immune system, and protects you against certain diseases.

Originally posted here:
What To Eat To Heal Leaky Gut, From Dr Steven Gundry - The Beet

Malaria is a killer.

Caused by a tiny parasite, spread by infected mosquitoes, the disease afflicts hundreds of millions each year, killing hundreds of thousands cruelly, most are children under 5.

Despite making some progress in much of the developed world, the disease is eliminated, and bed nets have cut down on deaths in malarial regions vaccines and other treatments to prevent infections have yet to be successful on a broad scale.

To make matters worse, the parasite that causes malaria, P. falciparum, is notorious for becoming resistant to our drugs that fight it.

Malaria continues to be a major cause of illness and death in many regions of the world, especially in infants and young children; therefore, new tools are needed to prevent this deadly disease, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases(NIAID) director Anthony Fauci said.

Now, NIAID researchers have proven that one antibody an immune system weapon that sticks to bad guys can prevent malaria for up to nine months. How can they be sure?

They injected volunteers with malaria.

A global challenge: Purposefully exposing a volunteer to a virus, bacteria, parasite, fungus, or what have you, so that you cause disease, is known as a human challenge trial.

The risks of human challenge trials are obvious; if were purposely exposing people to a pathogen which may make them sick, theres a chance that, well, theyll get sick. Possibly very sick.

For that reason, researchers usually reserve human challenges for diseases we have good, proven treatments for.

Malaria is a killer, and vaccines to prevent it have not yet been successful on a broad scale.

First and foremost, you need to have a known, proven, and effective countermeasure, Ruth Faden, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins, previously told me.

You also need volunteers who are low-risk, and to be able to make them just sick enough to mimic a real-world infection.

So whats the advantage? Because you are guaranteeing infection, you dont have to recruit thousands of people and wait around for enough of them to get sick on their own to give you the data you need a process that can take months or years.

By challenging their volunteers with the malaria parasite, the researchers were able to tell quickly and definitively if their malaria antibody worked.

Trial by parasite: An antibody is a protein your immune system makes that sticks to specific targets, called antigens. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccines, that antigen is the spike protein.

For some diseases, you can skip the vaccine part and just jump straight to giving people a dose of the antibodies thats what the researchers did here. Research in Petri dishes and animals have already shown that certain antibodies could halt malaria in its tracks by glomming onto it before it infects cells. The question is, would that same thing happen in humans?

They began by extracting an antibody from the blood of a volunteer who had previously been given an experimental malaria vaccine. They beefed up that antibody to last longer in the body than normal, then manufactured a bunch of them using Chinese hamster ovary cells, Science reported. (Yes, for real.)

By infecting volunteers with the malaria parasite, the researchers could quickly and definitively tell if their malaria antibody worked.

To test it, the researchers performed a two-part trial. They enrolled 40 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 50 who had never been infected by malaria before.

In the first part of the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 21 of those subjects received the malaria antibody, either through IV infusion or an injection like a vaccine. They were then studied for six months to see how safe and tolerable the treatment is, and to take a look at antibody levels in their blood.

The second part of the trial is where our human challenge comes in. Nine people who received antibodies and six brave controls signed up to get bitten by mosquitoes with malaria.

The subjects were followed closely for three weeks. Five of the six people without antibodies became infected. (Dont worry, they were given meds and cleared the parasite).

None of the antibody group did.

The results suggest that a single infusion of a monoclonal antibody can protect people from malaria for at least 9 months, Fauci said. Additional research, however, is still needed.

Not a silver bullet: This is a great proof of concept, but its not yet ready as an intervention, W. Ripley Ballou, who helped develop a malaria vaccine, told Science.

Theres a few reasons for this. First, the study, while promising, was small. Its not enough to tell us precisely how effective this is.

Second, manufacturing the antibodies would likely be extremely expensive impractical in countries where malaria is an issue. (In a similar scenario, a monoclonal antibody made by AstraZeneca that could prevent COVID-19 for up to a year costs about $1,000 a dose, compared to about $20 for the vaccines.)

And, third, working in a laboratory in the United States is a far cry from working in the real world.

None of the subjects who received the antibodies were infected by the malaria parasites.

These results are very exciting and their longevity makes it very promising for something like a travellers vaccine, Joshua Blight, co-founder of the antigen-developing startup baseimmune, told me via email.

However in many cases studies can often fail to translate to the field where natural exposure occurs at a high rate, so well have to wait and see the field results. The coveted treatment for a region where a disease is endemic would ideally [be] something that protect[s] for life or many years, and is logistically viable, preferably no intravenous administration.

Its a sentiment acknowledged by the researchers themselves.

People said to me when I got this result, Have you broken out the champagne? study leader and immunologist Robert Seder told Science.

I said, No, I got a beer. Ill only break out the champagne when I have data from Africa.

Wed love to hear from you! If you have a comment about this article or if you have a tip for a future Freethink story, please email us at tips@freethink.com.

Continued here:
A malaria antibody prevented infections in purposefully-infected volunteers - Freethink

Our first thought: Yoga? Really? Who has time for that now?

At Kripalu, we live by the phrase, Its all yoga, meaning that you dont have to be on your mat to practice. Yoga can be going for a peaceful walk, or even nourishing your body with a healthy meal.

What is Ayurveda, and how can it help promote balance and health in times like these?

Ayurveda is directly translated as the science of life or the science of longevity. Ayu means life, veda means truth. It can also be defined as the truth of you. Developed around 5,000 years ago in India, Ayurveda teaches us that as a human, we are an interconnection of body, mind, senses, and soul. What affects one, impacts the other.

Ayurveda recognizes that each individual needs something different to achieve balance and health.

Its actually very practical. If youre new to Ayurveda, start with getting to bed early, eating foods that are in season and grown locally when possible, and finding some time for rest and fun. One aspect of Ayurveda is that every substance we consume food, social media, and so on is either nourishing or depleting. Think of everything as food: sleep is food for the body and mind, movies can be nourishing or disturbing, for example.

Basically, it means staying relaxed, taking breaks from the news, taking action where you can, eating supportive foods, and keeping good company. All of this can be nourishing.

With so much uncertainty, its hard to find the joy in life. Were just emotionally depleted.

I think we need to redefine what joy is. Can we find it in something as simple as going outside and noticing, Those are the most beautiful flowers Ive ever seen? Ayurveda teaches us that we can get quiet, and get under the noise anxiety, depression, fear and connect to the true, unchanging spirit we were born with. The aim of Ayurveda is to get to that place. It takes quiet and stillness to integrate body and mind and connect with our spirit. Its not sexy, but it works!

And if you have a friend or someone you can share these feelings with, talk about it. We need each other.

Were so polarized right now. How can we address this?

For many, the pandemic has caused an incredible amount of social isolation leading to loneliness, anxiety, and depression. Others have not stopped working and are exhausted. Folks have lost loved ones. Some have been thriving. Ayurveda teaches us that we are the microcosm of the macrocosm. What exists in the entire universe also exists within each person. It is like we have all gone through a similar macrocosmic experience and at the same time our own microcosmic experience.

At Kripalu, each yoga class, workshop, and program is rooted in the philosophy of compassionate inquiry, focused on offering kindness to ourselves and others which we need now more than ever.

We hear the term self-care a lot lately. What does that really mean?

To many of us, it feels like the world is on fire. Ayurveda provides a daily and seasonal toolbox of self-care practices, from tongue scraping to meditation, to sleep hygiene. What works for one person may not work for another. Look at what is available and experiment to see what is supportive to you. At the bare minimum, get to bed before 10 p.m., eat home-cooked food as much as possible, and move your body.

One of the most helpful things I did was frame a little handwritten note for my bedside table. It reads Thank you for this new day; I am grateful for the opportunity to begin again. In the middle of the pandemic, when it felt like one long Groundhog Day, this small thing turned out to be the best antidote to monotony, loneliness, and uncertainty.

But then its 2 p.m., when things get crazy and start to fall apart.

I would ask each reader to look at their day and find the time where they struggle the most. I find that it is the later afternoon where I get restless and agitated. Then look at what you do to alleviate that restlessness? Eat something? Drink? Check social media? Go for a walk? Meditate? I found guided meditation in the afternoons to be just the right medicine. We all struggle. Pause to acknowledge the struggle and then look for the best way to find ease, not just for that moment but for the long run.

With a new season arriving, how can we make a fresh start?

Yoga and Ayurveda teach us that a seasonal approach to life is really important. Your mind and body need different things in the summer versus the winter and so on. Thats why autumn is a great time to visit Kripalu. Besides the stunning fall foliage, we teach you how to transition between seasons and what your body needs to stay calm and nourished as we head into winter.

For example?

In the winter, nature gives us more nourishing foods. This includes wheat, meat, dairy, and root cellar vegetables. Wheat isnt bad or wrong in Ayurveda. It is heavy, sticky, and warming, the perfect antidote for cold, dry winter.

That includes holiday cookies and babka, yes?

Life is to be celebrated. Ayurveda is not about making anyone feel bad for eating gingerbread cookies or babka during the holidays!

Use the U-turn theory. Eat the babka and then make a U-turn. If you are still eating it in March, maybe youve waited too long. Winter is the time of year that is nourishing, in direct opposition to summer, which is depleting. In the summer, eating seasonal means eating lots of garden fruits and vegetables. In the winter, eating seasonal means eating nourishing foods. When you are done with the holidays, go back to eating seasonal soups, stews, and tea.

For information: Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, 57 Interlaken Road, Stockbridge; 866-200-5203; http://www.kripalu.org. In-person guests must show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test that produced negative results within 72 hours of arrival. Rates for onsite Retreat and Renewal experience start at $85/day plus accommodations; includes three meals, yoga classes and workshops, and full use of Kripalus grounds. Room rates from $110. Day pass: $125. Online programs, from $15 to $99; sliding scale tuition is available for online programs to promote accessibility for those facing financial or other hardships.

Diane Bair and Pamela Wright can be reached at bairwright@gmail.com

Read more:
Can ancient wisdom help us cope with COVID stress? - The Boston Globe

The study was based on 69,744 women and 1,429 men. Both groups completed survey measures to assess their level of optimism, as well as their overall health and health habits such as diet, smoking and alcohol use.

Women were followed for 10 years, while the men were followed for 30 years. When individuals were compared based on their initial levels of optimism, the researchers found that the most optimistic men and women demonstrated, on average, an 11 to 15 percent longer lifespan, and had 50-70 percent greater odds of reaching 85 years old compared to the least optimistic groups.

The results were maintained after accounting for age, demographic factors such as educational attainment, chronic diseases, depression and also health behaviours, such as alcohol use, exercise, diet and primary care visits.

"While research has identified many risk factors for diseases and premature death, we know relatively less about positive psychosocial factors that can promote healthy ageing," explained corresponding author Lewina Lee, PhD, clinical research psychologist at the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston and assistant professor of psychiatry at BUSM.

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Research may have uncovered the secret to reaching 100 - and it's not what you eat - Daily Express

Crews spent much of Wednesday morning cleaning up the remnants of Routt Countys old Human Services Building in downtown Steamboat Springs, making way for a new building that has become much more expensive to build than initially thought.

The estimated cost of Routt Countys new Health and Human Services Building has ballooned to more than $14 million, an increase of about 40% since December 2020 as the cost of steel and other materials has skyrocketed.

Since January, the raw price of steel has tripled, said Jim Kohler, vice president of Calcon Constructors, which has offices in Steamboat and Englewood and is doing preconstruction work on the project. Our whole structure is steel. All of our metal studs are steel. Steel is in everything.

Other costs have increased, as well. The cost of wood has come down recently but is still double the price it was in January. Kohler said fuel was $2.08 per gallon in November last year, where now it commonly flirts with $4 per gallon. Labor and the cost to ship materials are higher now, too, he said.

It is a hard one to swallow, but if you do the basic math, you get there pretty quick, Kohler said. We assume 50% of the project is labor and another 50% of it is materials. If you take that 50% of material and take a large chunk of it and double or triple its value it adds up quick.

Kohler said there is no indication steel prices are going to drop any time soon either, and delaying the project wouldnt end up with any significant savings and could result in an even higher final cost.

A groundbreaking ceremony for the project is scheduled for Oct. 13, and crews hope to pour the foundation and erect much of the steel structure this year. Then construction will pause until April or May when the snow is gone.

Starting work this fall and winter will require portions of the job site to be heated to ensure the concrete cures, but pushing foundation work to the spring likely would have led to heating the whole structure next winter as crews finished work.

It is a little bit of a trade off, but the consensus with our general contractor and our owners representative is the smart thing to do is get it started this winter, said Commissioner Tim Corrigan.

Nine months ago, the total project cost was estimated at about $9.8 million, with about $7.4 million or 75% of the total cost going toward actual construction and the rest paying for building design and engineering, the various permits required, fixtures and furnishings and money set aside as a contingency.

But those construction costs have increased by about $3.6 million since then, bringing the current estimate for the total project to $14.1 million. Construction alone will cost about $11 million now, which represents about 83% of the total cost.

There is a lot of steel in the building, Corrigan said. Its not just the steel I-beams, the steel trusses and the metal decking, but it affects everything from conduit, wire, pipe steel doors.

Corrigan said the cost of drywall and anything with a chemical in it, such as PVC piping or foam insulation, has also increased.

County Budget Director Dan Strnad said he thinks the county will be able to weather the cost spikes because of several revenue streams he is projecting to come in much higher this year than originally anticipated.

The county will collect about $2.3 million more in sales tax this year than originally anticipated, an increase of 33%. Building use taxes are bringing in about $1.2 million more than expected, a projected increase of more than 230%. Auto use taxes, paid when buying a car, have also increased by about 77% this year, adding nearly half a million dollars more to county coffers.

In all, Strnad projects the county will collect about $4.7 million more in 2021 than the budget anticipated, bringing total county revenue from $16.2 million to $20.9 million. Because of this, Corrigan said he was still confident the county would not use any of its $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding on this project.

(Strnad) has been able to identify other sources of funds so that we dont need to access those ARPA funds, Corrigan said.

It isnt entirely clear whether the building would even be an appropriate use for the funding anyway, Corrigan said, and using it on the building could further increase costs as there would be more federal regulations to adhere to.

Corrigan also said commissioners, from the start, had no interest in building a sub-par building, and the county is committed to designing a building that fit with the design and development standards of downtown Steamboat. The new building is being built at the corner of Sixth and Oak streets.

Still, more cost increases would likely result in some design choices meant to lower total cost.

Were going to build a building, especially in the location that were building, that would be something that the community could be proud of, Corrigan said. Could we have built that building for less money? The answer is yes. But we felt it was important to build a high-quality building that fits into the neighborhood and will serve the needs of the community for years to come.

To reach Dylan Anderson, call 970-871-4247 or email danderson@SteamboatPilot.com.

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Cost of new Health and Human Services building has ballooned to more than $14M - Steamboat Pilot & Today