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.
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”
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…
View original post 420 more words
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.
You get afraid when you realize the leadership in Washington today are a bunch of dolts who make decisions based mostly on wanting to win a popularity contest rather than rational decisions based on the best possible outcome.
We are facing imminent food shortages, the erosion of our currency, an economic collapse, and horrible decisions in foreign policy that have driven our two most consistent adversaries — Russia and China — into a mutually beneficial alliance hostile toward the US.
Hard times are coming to this country…hard times, and much of it is our own doing.
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 of the US would be, for instance, to seek ways to peacefully unravel the conflict between North Korea and South Korea so that that potentially explosive issue just melts away. Ditto the issue of China and Taiwan. Not gain specious advantage from these situations but actually solve them so they go away.
Wouldn’t it be a huge sea change if US foreign policy were to pursue goals that were on the side of the angels rather than policies that, in the last 70 years, have led inevitably to the death of millions, devastation of whole nations, and terrible unintended consequences — the heritage of our evil empire.
So this brings us to the present moment and the Ukrainian situation, which isn’t fundamentally about Ukraine at all, but instead the uneasy relationship between an expanding NATO and a Russia with security concerns, having been invaded by Europe twice in history.
A high-minded diplomacy on the part of the US would have the US seek to bring these two parties together to work out an agreement that would leave both feeling secure and respected, so that the world could breathe easier and enjoy peace and prosperity.
But what has the US done instead? It has elected to exploit the Ukrainian situation in a proxy war to debilitate its supposed enemy Russia. The end result is not hard to see. Ukraine will be decimated, many there will die, and the relationship between NATO and Russia will deteriorate, perhaps to the breaking point, with the specter of nuclear war rising up once again.
All of this because the cognoscenti in the US see Russia as the enemy, even though, around the world, there are actually very few points of direct contention between the United States and Russia — the Arctic region being the conspicuous exception. That this is so is probably a consequence of geography, as the two countries are, after all, on opposite sides of the globe. And there are many similarities between the two countries — both are threatened by Muslim extremists, both are principally Christian, both are ostensibly democratic, with elections, both are capitalist.
Yet we are led to believe by our leaders in the US that Russia is the enemy. Why? And what will be the net result, but another decimated country called Ukraine, decimated as much by the narrow-minded and short-sighted diplomacy of the United States as by Russia.
Add yet another country to the list of countries victimized by the current evil empire, the United States.
I don’t think the Keto diet is healthy. It doesn’t provide enough fiber for healthy gut bacteria. It doesn’t provide a wealth of vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients that you get from eating lots of complex-carb vegetables and fruits. Also, people who practice it make light of the hazards associated with saturated fat and heart disease, which I consider a serious issue. Having said all that, I do think there can be a subtle role for using Keto in order to extend the ketosis one experiences with intermittent fasting.
Let me explain. I do a 19:5 regimen with intermittent fasting. To my mind, this means that ketosis starts to build around the 12th hour from my last meal. So, with 19:5, I should be getting an escalating ketosis that lasts about 7 hours — from the 12th to the 19th hour of my fasting period.
Question is, is there a viable way to maximize ketosis past the next meal for another 19 hours? This is where Keto may come in handy. If at the next meal, one eats an extremely low — as in insignificant — amount of carbohydrates, but an excessive amount of fat, then the body doesn’t spike insulin, and is left with only fat as an energy source.
Doing this strategy — an extremely high-fat but extremely low-carb OMAD meal — it is very possible to radically reduce your calorie count for that day, as all that fat induces satiety on far fewer calories than what you eat normally. This means that over the following 19-hour fasting period, burning body fat will happen much sooner (perhaps starting at the 6th hour instead of the 12th) because the body will burn through the fewer-than-normal calories from the food sooner, and so instead of 7 hours of ketosis, I might be experiencing up to 13 hours of escalating ketosis in this subsequent fasting period — a win win.
So I think a judicious and selective use of Keto with intermittent fasting could have significant benefits relative to burning body fat, even though I think Keto as your basic diet is unhealthy, even dangerous.
Finland and Sweden want to join NATO. But is that a good choice for their citizens, their populations? Under the current agreement with Russia, both countries enjoy a nuclear umbrella — in the event of nuclear war, their populations will not be decimated by nuclear bombs and/or the subsequent radiation.
But in joining NATO, that nuclear umbrella goes away. So does joining NATO make the people of Finland and Sweden safer? Unaligned, the two countries are under no threat of being attacked by Russia, but in joining NATO, both countries are now part of the nuclear confrontation between US/NATO versus Russia, and so, as a consequence, both countries would face annihilation in the event of nuclear war.
It would seem that joining NATO has very little gain for either country and potentially everything to lose. Under such circumstances, one has to wonder about the rationality of their political leadership in making such a questionable decision to join NATO. It does not appear to be a very rational choice.
The US/NATO vendetta against Russia using Ukraine as the pawn will lead to the destruction of Ukraine. It also brings in the nuclear specter. And by the way, the sanctions mean starvation around the world. The Russia-haters in the US and NATO don’t care.
I want to do one 48-hour fast per month to get the benefit of increased autophagy, but I’ve had difficulty doing this. I stay busy with exercise (swimming) the full day that I can’t eat anything, but end up caving and eating just a few hours before going to bed, which would otherwise mean success if I didn’t cave. So I almost get there. Frustrating.
I got this idea from listening to a Youtuber about how to extend a fast a little longer. The idea was to use very high-fat and low-carb foods that won’t spike one’s insulin levels, so they won’t bring down the active ketosis. So I thought I might try this the next time I reach that impasse at a few hours from bedtime.
I’ve chosen two foods to eat: pecans (20 half shells) and one whole avocado. I put these two foods into cronometer, and they do provide an enormous amount of fact and very little carbohydrates. The issue is whether that much fat will satisfy my food craving and get me to bedtime without an insulin spike. We’ll see how this goes.
Henry's Views 