Saturday, March 18, 2023

The surprising benefits of sleep masks

By using a sleep mask at night, your memory and alertness may improve

Study participants were better able to recall events and experiences, and had improved reaction times, when they wore a sleep mask at night

Wearing a sleep mask enhanced participants’ ability to learn new information and form memories 

Use of sleep masks, as well as ear plugs, by ICU patients significantly improved subjective sleep quality

Exposure to light at night may increase your risk of cancer, obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes

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Friday, March 17, 2023

Exercise best medicine against depression !

An overview of 97 systematic reviews and meta-analyses found exercise is 1.5 times more effective for mental health than top medications or counseling, and benefits were seen in 12 weeks

The authors of the umbrella review call on mental health professionals and doctors to start prescribing exercise as a first line of treatment

Another systematic review, which analyzed the association between physical activity and the risk of depression, found there’s a dose-dependent response. Compared to those who did not exercise, people who got half the recommended volume of physical activity lowered their risk for depression by 18%. Those who got the recommended amount lowered their risk by 25%

Most health authorities recommend getting 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise each week

Previous research has also found that people who met or exceeded the weekly exercise recommendation lowered their risk of death. Men can lower their risk of cardiovascular disease death by as much as 34% and their all-cause mortality by up to 36%; women can lower their CVD death risk by as much as 44% and their all-cause mortality by as much as 55%

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How to spot a lying politician ?

If a person is lying, they’ll commit a deceptive behavior within 5 seconds of being questioned, and commit 2 or more deceptive behaviors before they’re done responding

Ignore a person’s truthful statements, which are often attempts at manipulation, and instead focus on their deceptions

Deceptive behaviors include failing to deny the accusation, failing to answer the question and using “convincing statements” rather than conveying information

Nonverbal cues that a person is lying include grooming gestures, hand-to-face motions, moving feet and clearing of the throat

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Thursday, March 16, 2023

Vaping deadlier than cigarettes

A 2023 study demonstrates that vaping triggers more DNA damage in the mouth than traditional cigarettes; those who used sweet, flavored pods had the highest DNA damage followed by those using fruit or mint flavors

Vaping affects multiple organ systems, including nearly immediate changes to endothelial cells, which is one of the first changes seen in developing heart disease. Other data show flavored pods may trigger changes in the brain, lungs, heart and colon

During the COVID-19 pandemic, young people who vaped had an increased risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and having symptoms of COVID-19. A 2022 study found those who vaped also had more severe complications, including death, than those who did not smoke or vape

Data also show that bystanders are affected by vape toxins, demonstrating an increase in bronchitis-type symptoms and shortness of breath; another study showed bystanders had similar levels of cotinine — a measure of the amount of nicotine the body absorbs — as people who are exposed to traditional secondhand cigarette smoke

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Making Lyme bugs deadlier

In her book, “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, ” Kris Newby reviews the circumstantial evidence suggesting the organism that causes Lyme disease may originally have been developed as a biological weapon

An estimated 476,000 Americans are diagnosed with and treated for Lyme disease each year, and prevalence is rising

Lyme disease is transmitted by ticks (and sometimes other biting insects) infected with the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi.
There are about two dozen species of B. burgdorferi with hundreds of strains worldwide, many of which are resistant to antibiotics

Ticks can also carry other pathogens, and coinfections are another reason why Lyme disease is so difficult to treat

A major challenge with Lyme disease is that its symptoms imitate so many other disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS), arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, bromyalgia and even Alzheimer's disease, making proper identification difficult and time consuming

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Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Farmed salmon, toxic junk food

Salmon farming is a disaster both for the environment and for human health, and tests show farmed salmon is about 5 times more toxic than any other food tested

In animal feeding studies, mice fed farmed salmon developed obesity and diabetes — effects researchers believe are related to toxic exposures

Besides pesticides and antibiotics used in fish farming, the most significant source of toxic exposure is the dry pellet feed, which contains dioxins, PCBs and other toxic pollutants


PCB concentrations in farmed salmon are, on average, eight times higher than in wild salmon

Farmed salmon also does not have the nutritional profile of wild salmon, containing more than 3.02 times more omega-6 fat than wild salmon, which further skews rather than corrects most people’s omega-3 to omega-6 ratio

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Infant vaccines lead to higher infant mortality

In 2011, Neil Miller, Ph.D., and Gary Goldman, Ph.D., published a paper in the journal Human & Experimental Toxicology showing infant mortality rates correlated with childhood vaccination rates, with high-uptake countries having higher child mortality

In January 2022, Goldman discussed the CDC’s suppression of undesirable vaccine data in an interview. In December that year, the Miller Lab at Brigham Young University in Utah, as part of the BYU Bioinformatics Capstone course, reanalyzed the Miller-Goldman paper in an effort to debunk it

In response to the critique, Miller and Goldman conducted their own reanalysis, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Cureus in early February 2023. The paper confirmed their 2011 conclusion that there’s a positive correlation between vaccine doses and infant mortality rates

Data from the first few months of the pandemic seem to confirm this link, as the death rate for American children under 18 dropped during lockdowns, from an average of 700 per week to fewer than 500 per week during the months of April and May in 2020

The decades-long work of Christine Stabell Benn, a clinical professor at University of Southern Denmark and her colleague Peter Aaby, a vaccine scientist, shows six of the 10 vaccines investigated increase infant mortality by rendering children more susceptible to other lethal diseases

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