New "magic pill" under development to extend life !!

Read all about it.
(link)
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-zombie-cells-buildup-body-role.html

But why wait for science to figure out how nature works?
(link)
fast your way to autophagy

Autophagy is a "body intelligence" process. Science doesn't understand how this works yet, only that it does. How is it intelligent? It's a normal autonomic function that goes after pathogenic tissues, along with stored fats for energy. Extended autophagy (we get a little of it when we sleep) is induced with calorie restriction. This is why the majority of people come out of a "regenerative" water only fast looking 10 years younger and feeling better than they have in ages. And "therapeutic" water fasting, which should only be undertaken under expert supervision in an established fasting clinic like True North Health Center in Santa Rosa California, is more effective for healing the majority of "lifestyle" diseases than any other modality.
(link)
https://www.healthpromoting.com/

The energy for functioning and continuation of human life can only come from the three "macronutrients", carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. If carbohydrates are available (glycogen stored in muscles and liver) the body will use those first. If carb stores become depleted the body shifts to burning fat stores (spread throughout the body). If fat stores become depleted the body shifts to burning proteins for energy.

There is a time limit to "rapid and continuous" autophagy (water fasting) based on levels of stored fat that can be used for energy. After fat stores are depleted the body shifts from "fasting" (burning fat for energy) to "starvation", and begins consuming least critical proteins. We know "least critical" proteins are consumed because autopsies of starvation victims have shown the critical organs to have been "spared". (This is why concentration camp victims can recover completely.) The energy in starvation comes mostly from muscle tissue proteins converted to energy.

Expert supervision of therapeutic water fasting is necessary to ensure the fast is terminated well before the shift to proteins as fuel, but long enough to achieve maximum benefit. Each patient must be assessed individually before the fast and every day throughout the fast. Co-factors are assessed, such as age and types and degrees of ongoing disease processes.

True North Health Center has an unblemished record for safety after supervising many thousands of fasts over decades. Compare that to any hospital:
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medical errors third leading cause of death

An interesting thought experiment: what if there were as many fasting clinics as there are hospitals, and fasting was widely recognized as the safe and effective treatment that it is? Hospitals could well lose about 2/3's of their business over time, destroying the business model of the overall healthcare industry in the process. Buuut...water fasting isn't really all that profitable compared to what we have now, the most expensive and least effective health care system (on a developed world basis).

You don't need to wait for science to catch up by developing a pill ! (It ain't ever going to be as effective anyway). Intermittent fasting does not require supervision (in most cases) once you learn the options and how to proceed, and autophagy is increased to some significant degree whichever method you choose. There are (probably) hundreds of websites explaining intermittent fasting, this one is pretty comprehensive:
(link)
Intermittent Fasting 101 — The Ultimate Beginner's Guide

Thoughts of My Father on His Passing

William Evans King, born September 22, 1928 in Muskogee Oklahoma, which had become the 46th State just 21 years prior to his birth. He grew up in the small town of Checotah Oklahoma, a few miles down the road from Muskogee. Before statehood Checotah was on the border of the Creek Nation and Cherokee Nation, so Dad’s blended Cherokee - European heritage was not unusual. (click the pics for larger)

I feel lucky he was my father, he was one of the kindest and gentle men I have known. As I matured I appreciated more and more that he was one of the great blessings in my life.

I became a bit of a rebel in my teens. He didn’t like it, but he never stopped loving me, and when I was ready to grow up a little bit he picked up right where we had left off. At one point he even took some responsibility for my waywardness, saying, “you know, your mother and I made just about every mistake in the book with you kids”. I don’t know how true that is, but I sure felt loved when he said it. And I remember it now as an example of his humility and generosity of spirit.

Dad was good at leading with vulnerability and "owning his stuff".

He was my first “health educator”. He read Adelle Davis, and every morning served Diana and me a healthy breakfast before sending us off to school. I didn’t always follow his “prescriptions”, but came back around when it was time for me to take better care of my health. He was quiet and steady, he taught us through his example.

He and my mother divorced in 1971 when I was 20 and Diana was 18. He met his future wife Carol January 10 1976, and then they married exactly 5 years later January 10 1981. He told Carol, "this will help me to remember our anniversary", and I'll bet he never forgot it. I've heard more than once Carol say how impressed she was by his honesty on their first date.

Sometime later, after he and Carol had been married quite awhile, he turned to me at one point and said with great earnestness, “Dave, the most important thing in marriage is compatibility. If you don’t have that it’s going to be difficult”. He didn’t teach with words too often so that has always stuck with me even though I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant at that point. I suppose he had learned it the hard way as most of us do.

When he passed yesterday June 13, 2020, Carol was by his side. He had been quite still for two days with his eyes closed. He opened his eyes and looked out the window, then he turned to Carol and looked at her. Then he closed his eyes and was gone.

I’ve never seen a better relationship than theirs. On more than one occasion he would put his hand on her shoulder, or his arm around her waist and say “Dave, I love this woman”. It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen. Carol and Dad never stopped enjoying each other’s company, and they always took good care of each other.

Diana, Dad, and Carol

Carol has a daughter Misha, and Misha has two children Shelly and Paul Joe. They are all exceptional human beings, and Dad loved them very much. His family with Carol was one of the great joys of his life.

This is the last photograph I took of my beautiful Father at 91 years of age when I was with them over the New Years holiday about 6 months ago. Farewell sweet man, My Beloved Father.

When the Ripe Fruit Falls

When the ripe fruit falls

its sweetness distills and trickles away into the veins of the earth.

When fulfilled people die

the essential oil of their experience enters

the veins of living space, and adds a glisten

to the atom, to the body of immortal chaos.

For space is alive

and it stirs like a swan

whose feathers glisten

silky with oil of distilled experience.

DH Lawrence

Dad's final resting place

How do I get enough NUTRITION on a vegan diet?

Here is the simple truth about protein. As long as you consume enough calories in a diet of varied whole plant foods you are getting more than enough protein.

When you burn more calories (an athlete for example) your need to consume more food (to replace calories burned) will result in greater hunger. If you are eating correctly simply eating until completely satisfied is all you need to do. The correct of additional protein (and all the other nutrients) will "automagically" (nature is a miracle) be included in those calories.

A vastly bigger problem for vegans than getting enough protein is getting enough CALORIES. Most new vegans have little appreciation of the fact their calorie consumption drops dramatically when switching to a "good" vegan diet. (Bad vegan diets are just another junk food diet.) They get thinner and thinner and think "I look good" and along in there somewhere health problems begin to show up. Why is that?

They are not getting enough calories. They tend to go to the "default blames" which are in order of popularity: protein, omega 3 fats, vitamin b12.

But the problem with caloric deficiency is you're not getting enough of all the nutrients necessary for robust health. All the vitamins and minerals, and yes, protein. And not enough fat and carbohydrates too.

Why aren't these new vegans eating enough food? It's because we don't live in nature any more, and post-industrial foods deliver highly concentrated calories. This is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic, out instincts tell us to "fill our stomach" (our instincts "live" in nature), but doing so on post-industrial food creates obesity. So people who manage to stay at health body weight have trained themselves to eat less by not filling the stomach.

A person on a good vegan diet who does not fill the stomach will not get enough calories, which by default also means not enough vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, and carbs. But they are just eating the quantity of food they have always eaten.

The solution? Eat more food than you are used to eating, stretch the stomach a little at the beginning.

Nature is a miracle, when we eat enough of the foods we are primarily adapted to we automatically get the correct amount of all nutrients. This is the disease reversal formula.

What is malnutrition? Too little, but also too much nutrition. How do we know we have the correct amount of nutrition in our diet, not too much and not too little? Eat the foods we are adapted to until we are satisfied, in sufficient variety to get the variety of nutrients we need. It takes a while for the body to recalibrate. When you hit your stride with a SOS free whole food plant based diet you will feel great, have stopped thinking and worrying you have "enough" nutrition of any type, enjoy your food without worrying about gaining or losing too much weight.

Over time you gravitate toward being lean with a high strength to weight ratio without even thinking about it. This is optimal health, the disease reversal diet. If you also exercise your strength to weight ratio will increase, a good thing, and you will automatically consume more calories to make up for calories burned.

SOS free whole food plant based diet is freedom from worry about health, weight, nutrition, it just works.

There is a problem however hiding in the bushes for most vegans, even among healthier vegans. It is empty calories, which come from vegetable oils. The recipe for health is sufficient calories from "nutrient dense" foods. We don't want to get fat, so when we add the most calorically dense substance (veg oils) to our diet we are not getting enough nutrition, across the spectrum. Think about it...there are no refined vegetable oils in nature. There is also no refined sugar or flour. Whole grain flours are not empty calories, but they are not nutrient dense either, so they should be eaten in minimal qualities. Whole grains however are fine. As are root vegetables.

But again, you do not have to begin to obsess on getting the most nutrient dense foods, all you have to do is cut out the vegetable oils, or at least cut down to nearly zero. Most vegans have cut out the refined sugars, and cut down on pastas and breads sufficiently. But the refined oil message is not getting through. Empty calories displace good calories (nutrient dense calories). And fractionated (refined) nutrients in supplements do not replace whole food nutrition. 

This is a subtle but important problem because micronutrient deficiency comes on gradually. Long term vegans who develop symptoms of various sorts may be suffering because of what  might be called the "displaced nutrition syndrome" caused by vegetable oil consumption, and it goes undiagnosed for the most part, because the "oil is not a health food" message has not reached critical mass. Many doctors, naturopaths, nutritionists as yet do not understand the displaced nutrition syndrome, or that veg oils consumption is the primary cause of it.

Remind me again...where do vegans get their protein?

Dr Neal Barnard answers that critically important question in 3 minutes and 33 seconds:

A simple theory - why the incidence of auto immune diseases is increasing rapidly

So, as we know, autoimmune conditions are where the body attacks itself, it's own tissues are destroyed by the immune system. Medical science has been completely baffeled by this for years.

However. I think it's very likely as veganism continues increasing in popularity the real reason will become more culturally acceptable and begin to surface.

So what is it then, the real reason? It's actually very simple, and logical.

The immune system is attacking it's own tissues right? Did you know eating animal products causes immune system responses to rise? Apparently there are factors in animal products the immune system recognizes as "toxic", and activates to neutralize.

Our own cells are animal cells. How does the immune system know the difference? Answer, it doesn't, and when we eat animal products the immune system attacks them, but also our own cells.

And it's not that the body can't tolerate any animal product consumption at all. The problem is a dramatic increase in animal product consumption as a modern cultural phenomena. The body is a detox machine, it is designed to handle all kinds of undesired substances that come in. But it can be overwhelmed, and that is the basic cause of chronic conditions...toxins are coming in faster than the body can expel them.

This is a modern disease. We now have the industrial capacity to ramp up production of many foods that are instinctually appealing for various reasons...they may be calorie rich, foods that are harder to come by in "wild" pre-industrial conditions. We are not to blame for wanting these substances, our instincts are telling us to eat as much of them as possible.

But they are killing us.

I found an interesting web page endorsing the point of view that excessive animal product consumption is the cause of autoimmune conditions:

https://www.arespectfullife.com/2018/04/22/molecular-mimicry-how-eating-animal-based-products-causes-autoimmune-disease/

There is no Immune "System", pt 2

I've heard a few people who read my original blog post about this idea have said it's "crazy".

The original post (with credit to Doug Graham):
https://davewavehealthway.blogspot.com/2020/01/there-is-no-such-thing-as-immune-system.html

I can certainly understand why people will think that, but they may not be getting the point. No immune system does not mean there is no immune function, because there definitely is immune function...we can't last long without it. The point is there is no separate and distinct anatomical immune "system" in the way all the other anatomical "systems" are seen and identified. The respiratory system, yep it's the lungs primarily. The nervous system, yep the vast network of nerves and brain. The digestive system, the mouth, stomach and colon. And so on.

There is no separate immune "system" because pretty much any function of the body one can think of contributes to "immune function" in some way. The only immune system is the whole body. So, no separate "system". "System", as in the separate anatomical sense, is a misnomer in this case. My guess is it was a name given before it was well understood, and the name stuck. The proper name, if there is ever going to be one, IMHO would be "immune function".

And immune function would be very similar to the concept of "biologic age" (as opposed to chronologic age). There would be countless ways to estimate biological age. We see 60 year olds that look like 80 year olds, and 80 year olds that look like 60, so that simple measure is a reasonable start. And there are  more precise measures, length of telomeres for example.

There are some common sense ways to stay younger for longer: don't become an acute alcoholic that smokes like a chimney. Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. Get adequate sleep, reduce stress where possible, and remain physically active.

Once length of telomeres were identified as a correlate to biologic age science has begun slicing and dicing potential measures for biologic health in a zillion ways as they approach better understandings of biologic mechanisms (which are exceedingly complex).

But you don't have to wait, it could take decades of research. Even then, the idea we will be able to take a drug that will confer improved biologic age?

What is a drug anyway? It's a laboratory substance so concentrated it can fit into to a pill...with side effects.

Why do all drugs have side effects? Because we did not evolve over millions of years into the super strong species we are by taking drugs.

Why do some drugs "intoxicate", and make us feel better in the short term? Because they are (in) "toxic", ie some level of poison that induces an "altered state".

Are altered states good for us? Maybe, depending on which altered state we're talking about. Sleep is an altered state, but it de-intoxicates us. Meditation is an altered state, but it also "de-intoxicates" us.

The body is a highly complex "de-intoxication machine", a universe onto itself. De-intoxication is what it does 24/7/365. It is our "immune system", always vectoring toward health, in a process that continues until we take our last breath.

The "big secret" to good health? Don't fight immune function, support it in every way you already know how to do, and keep learning how to do it better.

So then...what is the real cause of diabetes?

This is a very informative interview, and well worth watching start to finish, but I'm starting it at the particular point where this question is addressed within a few minutes (the Cliff Notes version). You may be surprised at the answer.

The vid starts automagically at 25:45, watch to 30:22, not quite 5 minutes.

Interesting research on covid-19

Vascular health is very much an integral part of immune function. Do a search on "corona virus endothelial damage blood vessels"
https://www.google.com/search?q=corona+virus+endothelium+damage+clood+vessels&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS849US849&oq=corona+virus+endothelium+damage+clood+vessels&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.28595j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Lot of hits, here's an example:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/blood-vessel-attack-could-trigger-coronavirus-fatal-second-phase 

This is interesting because damage to the endothelial lining of blood arteries, vessels, and capillaries is the cause of cardio vascular disease.  What causes the damage? Smoking does it. But an even more aggressive agent is higher levels of fat in the diet, causing blood lipid levels to rise. Caldwell Esselstyn, the Cleveland Clinic surgeon who wrote the book Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, discovered this relationship. Increased fat in diet is the direct cause of fat in the blood is the direct cause of endothelial damage. But reduce fat in the diet to 10% of calories and it stops occurring immediately. Even better the plaques that formed as a result of chronic endothelial damage begin to melt away.

Not to mention insulin sensitivity shoots way up very quickly also (to levels of normal functioning).

These are two of the key reasons the 80/10/10 diet is the disease reversal diet. There are others, notably that animal product consumption is implicated nine ways to Sunday in cancer proliferation.

So what is the 80/10/10 diet? There are variations, but they all get 80% of calories from carbs (healthy whole food carbs of course), 10% from fat, and 10% from protein.

It may be worth remembering...all plants are carbs. Calling junk food "carbs" is a bastardization of the word. So let's just call junk food junk food, OK?

Meanwhile, back at the (cattle) ranch, it takes years of chronic damage, meal after meal after meal, for endothelial damage to build to the point of critical stage heart disease. But make no mistake, the high fat standard american diet (SAD) is the cause. There is very little question about this at this point, but the information is being suppressed for various reasons (mostly having to do with protecting revenues of several highly profitable industries).

As you probably know the Cleveland Clinic is thought to be the lead cardio hospital in the country. Esselstyn had an illustrious decades long career there, but when he published his research he was ostracized and became a semi pariah among his colleagues.

Meanwhile if individual docs at the clinic had a heart attack they would come to "Essy" on the QT to reverse their own heart disease. They also began sending loved ones.

But Essy came within a hairs breadth of being fired. He is a gold medal Olympian, a stellar student, a physician of many decades and many accolades, president of this and that, and the all around consummate professional. The clinic really couldn't fire him, it would have brought even more attention to his research, which lets be honest, should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine....a rapid, efficient, complete and final reversal of the leading killer? All by something as simple and inexpensive (free, basically) as adopting a low fat vegan diet?

Hey Nobel Committee, maybe it's not too late, he's only 87 years old...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldwell_Esselstyn  

Meanwhile Essy's colleagues were watching his study group (all of whom they had sent home to die) rebound miraculously from this "incurable" disease. Most of these former patients are still around, still healthy and active in their 70s and 80s. Those who went back to the old ways? No longer with us.

So what's this got to do with Corona Virus deaths?  I seriously doubt there will be studies, much less published data (we aren't allowed to talk about the serious health implications of a high fat diet), so I will propose that pre-existing damage in vascular endothelium is a strong co-morbidity factor relative to covid-19 susceptibility. I got there by using a little deductive reasoning of the same sort that has led many experts to propose those with the strongest immune function are the most resistant to developing symptoms even when exposed to the virus.

Think you don't have arterial plaque? Are you an American?

Vascular health is very much an integral part of immune function, but I doubt we'll see docs talking about that any time soon either.