I believe in science — that the scientific method produces provable truths. I don’t believe in religion. Religion is based on unprovable faith. Therefore, it may be true or may not be, so one doesn’t know.
All this puts me in the minority.
Author: Henry Barnard
I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.
Cutting Carbs, Cutting Protein
When I started this, I was 10 lbs. from my ideal weight at 140, having lost 40 lbs. over 3 years with 20:4 intermittent fasting. Now I’m only 3 lbs. away. A 2-day per week Keto approach broke through that plateau at 150 — and at the time it was starting to climb. When I get to 140, I may cut back to only having 1 Keto day per week — that should be able to keep my weight vert steady.
Mind you, I don’t really think the Keto diet per se is a very healthy one with all that fat and such low fiber, and it doesn’t come close to the nutrition one gets from a GBOMBS diet (that’s very obvious when you compare the two in cronometer — a typical Keto day to a typical GBOMBS day), but I do appreciate what it can do with such a low level of carbohydrates relative to ketosis.
Similarly, I’ve been thinking one might get a benefit from drastically reducing protein if one is about to do a longer fast for the sake of autophagy. Similar logic. I’m very interested in all the health benefits for someone my age of autophagy, particularly potentially with fighting cancer. I’ve been planning to do a 5-day mimicking fast starting as per the guidelines in Longo’s book The Longevity Diet — for the sake of autophagy. The 2 days before that begins, I will be cutting protein down to an absolute minimum.
Bear Market
The bear market that started with the dot.com crash in 2000 lasted through 2002 — 3 years. If this bear market plays out the same, the light at the end of the tunnel won’t appear until mid-2025. So don’t expect any quick turnaround here. This is going to be grim. 2002 in particular was very difficult — the market went down relentlessly the entire year, month after month.
Fasting and Cancer
Looks pretty clear that a 3-day water fast does a lot in terms of fighting cancer. Cancer cells grow using glucose, not ketones, but if you are fasting, there is no added glucose for cancer cells to use. Also, the lack of additional protein undermines tumor growth.
A long water fast stimulates autophagy, which may mean the actual destruction of cancer cells.
A long water fast also simulates the immune system, which may be a key player in fighting off cancer. There have been many authorities assert that long fasts are beneficial for those doing chemo, largely because of this effect of restoring the immune system, which otherwise gets whacked on chemo.
The Keto diet with low carbohydrates and moderate protein might be the best choice for a cancer patient. Again, low carbohydrates minimizes the amount of glucose available. so cancer cells “starve”.
There’s quite a bit of evidence that mushrooms have the effect of minimizing blood vessel growth. This can help with cancerous tumors as these tumors need blood vessels in order to continue growing.
Bread Frustration
Have you ever noticed in grocery store-bought bread that no matter what type of bread you are buying — “oat bread” or “rye bread” or whatever — the first and therefore most prominent ingredient is wheat, not oat or rye or whatever? This is my first pet peeve with commercial breads. They are all wheat bread, including the ones masquerading as something else. I would like to buy an oat bread made exclusively from oats with no wheat at all. It doesn’t exist.
Pet peeve number two is that all the breads now have sugar, that is, added sugar, usually from cane sugar, which I suppose is the cheapest, and therefore the one they all choose. Why must bread have ANY sugar, added or otherwise? I don’t want sugar added to my bread. I don’t want that additional insulin spike from added sugar — the insulin spike from the carbohydrates in the grains is severe enough. I want a bread with no sugar. It doesn’t exist.
Which brings me to the only alternative available to one who wants an oat bread with no sugar. Make it oneself.
And that thought has my more creative juices flowing. What would be the ingredients in an ideal bread that I might devise myself, given that all the options are open-ended? While I don’t want any sugar in MY bread, I do think the taste would be improved with some healthy fats, so I would combine the main ingredient — oats — with almond or walnut flour, and I would add sprouted seeds for their healthy fats as well as flaxseed powder for its omega 3 fat. I think the seeds would make the bread chewier, which is a plus. A touch of cinnamon would round out the taste. And the bread would include nutritional yeast, of course, and some apple cider vinegar.
Finger on the Button
Remember before Trump was elected that the anti-Trump people put out the scare meme, Just think Trump having his finger on the nuclear button? But then when he was elected, he steered very clear of war, despite building up the military.
Now we have Biden actually playing nuclear chicken with the Russians by using Ukraine as the tool.
We were much safer with Trump, in my opinion.
Just Criminal!
I was walking the other day and picked up an empty plastic soda bottle someone had tossed negligently on the ground. I habitually look at the ingredient list of every food and so looked at the amount of sugar in this 12 oz. bottle. 73 grams — criminal! Just criminal!
Where is our government to prevent this kind of thing? Nowhere, that’s where — despite the epidemic of diabetes.
Autophagy
The consensus among scientists seems to be that you have to go from 48 to 72 hours fasting to induce serious autophagy, and from there it just escalates the longer you go.
But here’s the issue. They know that eating protein is counterproductive for autophagy, which is logical since cell regeneration requires ammo acids, so if you provide ammo acids in your food, then the body doesn’t have to scalp for them in senescent cells.
But then one should consider the opposite. What if one severely restricts the grams of protein one eats in one’s diet? Would that severe restriction induce the start of serious autophagy sooner than the 48 hours commonly believed to be the earliest threshold?
I’ve read that the body needs approximately 300 grams of protein for its daily recycling of cells throughout the body. Assuming that one eats 100 grams of protein in one’s diet, that would mean that the body takes 200 grams from it ammo acid pool — makes up the difference that way.
But what if one restricts the daily protein from food to only 15 grams — 85 grams less that what one usually eats? Would that restriction induce a faster autophagy, as now the body needs to find 285 grams, not just 200 grams, within itself for the daily recycling? Would not the additional 85 grams required induce sooner autophagy? Seems logical.
And what if one were to continue to restrict to only 15 grams of protein in subsequent days. Would that continued severe restriction escalate the autophagy faster?
These all seem to be logical assumptions, but I’m not sure anyone has explored any of these ideas on humans in actual experiments to prove these possibilities with autophagy one way or the other.
“Evil Empire”
“Evil Empire”
Reagan called the Soviet Union the “evil empire”. But if you look at the international relations of the United States in the last 70 years, the litany of terrible outcomes and consequences is almost breathtaking — Vietnam, El Salvador, regime change in Iran, second Iraq war, Afghanistan. I’m sure this short list is missing other significant fiascos. So the bottom line might indeed be that today’s “evil empire” is not them but us — we are the evil empire!
At the very least, I think it is time that the United States government seriously reevaluate its goals relative to international affairs, and make the key objectives not exploiting weaknesses of other countries for some illusory gains for the US, but instead rectifying potential areas of conflict between nations so that peace and prosperity world-wide are assured.
Instead of jockeying for some questionable advantages, a more high-minded diplomacy on the part…
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Two Deadly Punches
There are two deadly punches in boxing. One has to do with the way the head of the boxer who is punched is moving. In boxing, there is constant movement by both fighters, back and forth, left and right, up and down. The movement is a big aspect of defense in boxing. The head of the boxer is therefore almost never stationary.
This deadly punch happens when the head of the boxer is actually moving in the direction the punch is coming from. The more extreme the movement of the head toward the punch, the more devastating the outcome because the movement of the head toward the punch magnifies the force of the punch. This type of scenario can be so devastating that you just see the boxer collapse instantly on impact, wilting straight down to the mat and knocked out — perhaps permanently.
The other deadly punch isn’t a punch at all, but the result of a knockout. If a boxer is hit with a knockout punch and falls directly backward, chances are he will land flat on his back, but when he is falling the head tends to lag the body so that the chin may be almost touching the top of the torso as he falls backward. So when the boxer’s back hits the mat, the head has a violent whiplash motion backward, and the back of the head can hit the mat with tremendous force because of the whiplash. There have been many fatalities in boxing from this precise scenario, and aficionados of the sport, cognizant of this, fear for the worse whenever they see this type of knockout.
Henry's Views 