Should you avoid bitter foods?

Bitter herbs, spices and foods offer valuable benefits and can go a long way toward improving your overall health by improving digestion, gastrointestinal health and absorption of nutrients

Historically, bitter herbs have been primarily used as cleansing agents, vitality builders and digestive support

Many bitters have been shown to have antifungal, antiseptic, antiprotozoal and even antitumor activity 

Much in the same way bitter compounds help protect the plant from harmful influences, they can be helpful in your body by inhibiting microbe growth, oxidation and inflammation

Commercially available bitter tinctures include Swedish Bitters and Underberg. Another easy way of getting more bitters into your diet is simply to add more bitter greens to your salads, and eating your salad first
 

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Weightlifting reduces heart attacks & strokes

Not excessive strength training is foundational for optimal health, especially as you get older. It’s not just about keeping your musculature strong; resistance training also benefits your heart, metabolism, cognition and mental health

Recent research shows less than an hour of strength training per week can reduce your risk for heart attack and stroke anywhere from 40% to 70%

These cardiovascular benefits were independent of aerobic exercises such as walking and running; strength training alone will lower your risk of heart attack and stroke, even if you don’t meet the recommended guidelines for aerobic activity 

Less than one hour of resistance training per week also lowers your risk of metabolic syndrome by 29% and high cholesterol by 32%, independently of aerobic exercise

Strength training also benefits your brain. In fact, there’s a strong link between muscle strength — especially leg strength — and cognitive health
 

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Selling depression to the world

After the SSRIs were developed, their manufacturers realized the population needed to be convinced they were suffering from depression so as many people as possible would buy their drugs

The tricks the drug industry used to perform this were remarkable and have many parallels to how the predatory pharmaceutical industry pushes many other drugs on us 

While a minority of patients (about a third) benefit from antidepressant therapy, the majority do not (termed “treatment resistant depression”), but unfortunately, until recently there have been minimal options available for these patients

Much of this results from depression being viewed as a single illness, rather than a myriad of conditions with somewhat overlapping symptoms which each need to be treated differently (rather than simply all being given the same drug)

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Preventing Urinary Tract Infections

An animal study from Baylor College of Medicine demonstrated how supplementation with the natural sugar D-mannose may improve cellular function in the urinary tract of older adults and lower the rate of urinary tract infections (UTIs)

Researchers compared the cellular function of naturally aging mouse bladder cells against younger animals and found increased cellular senescence, oxidative stress and increased susceptibility to recurring UTIs, with an increased inefficiency in combating stress

The prevalence of UTIs is rising, having grown by 60.4% from 1990 to 2019. Up to 60% of all women have at least one UTI during their lifetime according to some experts. The annual cost of treatment in the Medicare population for those with a UTI was approximately $12,000 per person in 2019 

In 2018, 79.8% of sampled pork, chicken and turkey in Flagstaff, Arizona, was contaminated with E. coli; blood and urine samples from a nearby medical center revealed 72.4% of those with a UTI had E. coli of the same strain, known as ST131

You can take precautions at home to prevent and start early treatment. Women can take several specific hygienic steps that may help prevent the development of a UTI; you may consider using D-mannose, the active component in cranberries — proanthocyanidins (PAC) — and a saturated solution of potassium iodide (SSKI) as early treatment

More tips to prevent UTI

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The benefits of cherries

Sweet cherries are a great source of potassium, which is important for maintaining normal blood pressure, and contain a number of potent anticancer agents

Tart cherries have been shown to improve athletic performance, endurance and recovery, reducing post-exercise pain and inflammation. Tart cherries also help relieve and prevent arthritis and gout

If you live in a sub-tropical area, growing acerola cherry trees in your backyard can provide you with this potent super food for several months of the year. Relying on commercially-available cherries will limit them to just a few weeks a year

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Eating carrots

Carrots are a popular snack food in the U.S. as they are easy, sweet and go well with a number of different dipping sauces, such as humus

While baby carrots are nutrient-dense, they also are bathed in chlorine before sale, increasing the risk of exposure to disinfection byproducts, some of the most dangerous chemicals to your health

Cooking and cutting whole unprocessed carrots may release more beneficial and powerful antioxidants in the vegetable

 

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Chemical Bayer strikes again, with a Trojan horse !

Bayer’s modified soil microbes could trigger a genetically engineered doomsday for agriculture

If you don’t like the toxic pollution from industrial agriculture’s synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides, Bayer and its partner Ginkgo Bioworks have a solution 

They say they’re going to swap out some of the old fossil-fuel-based agrochemicals for genetically engineered microbes

The uncontrolled spread of genetically engineered microbes could contaminate soil on such a vast scale that it could be the end of farming!

 

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