Archive for October 30th, 2022
Useful food database
The Encyclopedia of Food and Nutrition Focused on Comparison has many useful lists, plus you can do your own searches. If you do your own searches, note that the checkbox for each option is on the LEFT of the item name. (The tendency is to read the item name and then check the box on the right — but that box is for the next item on that row.)
I was interested to see that hearts of palm are very high in potassium. Not so high as paprika, but then who is going to eat 100g (3.5 oz) of paprika?
Artificial sweeteners are touted as an alternative to sugar — but research casts doubt on their safety
Jason Vermes reports for CBC Radio:
he safety of artificial sweeteners has been debated for decades, but new research is renewing concerns about their potential health impacts.
Researchers behind a large-scale nutrition study out of France say they’ve found associations between consumption of artificial sweeteners, like aspartame and sucralose, and cardiovascular disease and cancer.
The NutriNet-Santé study, which included more than 100,000 participants, is among the largest of its kind, and the first to quantify the amount of sweeteners consumed, they say.
“It’s an important step — a new brick to the wall — regarding the weight of evidence that we would train together regarding artificial sweeteners and health,” said Mathilde Touvier, head of the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research and one of the study’s authors.
Non-nutritive sweeteners, as they’re known in nutritional science, are intensely sweet — some hundreds of times sweeter than sugar — and favoured by many for offering the taste of sugar without the calories. And as the long-term effects of too much sugar become better known, artificial sweeteners are also seen as an alternative.
While diet soda might be the most obvious source, artificial sweeteners are found in all kinds of common foods, including yogurts, baked goods and even ketchup.
Previous studies have found sugar substitutes can alter gut microbiomes and elevate blood sugar. Other studies have even suggested that they can lead to weight gain, though that has been disputed.
“There really is growing evidence to challenge the assumption that artificial sweeteners are metabolically inert substances. And I do think these findings should give us pause,” said Leslie Beck, a dietitian and health columnist, in an interview with The Dose’s Dr. Brian Goldman.
International health agencies examining sweeteners
The most recent NutriNet-Santé study on cardiovascular health was published last month in the British Medical Journal.
It sorted participants into three groups — lower, higher and non-consumers of artificial sweeteners. Those in the higher cohort . . .
Where Will This Political Violence Lead? Look to the 1850s.
In Politico Joshua Zeitz looks to US history and notes a recurring refrain of political violence from conservative minorities:
Early Friday morning, an intruder broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and bludgeoned her husband, Paul Pelosi, 82, on the head with a hammer.
Details are still scant, but early indications suggest that the suspect, David Depape, is an avid purveyor of anti-Semitic, QAnon and MAGA conspiracy theories. Before the attack, the assailant reportedly shouted, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?”
This is the United States of America in 2022. A country where political violence — including the threat of political violence — has become a feature, not a bug.
Armed men wearing tactical gear and face coverings outside ballot drop boxes in Arizona. Members of Congress threatening to bring guns onto the House floor — or actually trying to do it. Prominent Republican members of Congress, and their supporters on Fox News, stoking violence against their political opponents by accusing them of being pedophiles, terrorists and groomers — of conspiring with “globalists” (read: Jews) to “replace” white people with immigrants.
And of course, January 6, and subsequent efforts by Republicans and conservative media personalities to whitewash or even celebrate it.
Pundits like to take refuge in the saccharine refrain, “this is not who we are,” but historically, this is exactly who we are. Political violence is an endemic feature of American political history. It was foundational to the overthrow of Reconstruction in the 1870s and the maintenance of Jim Crow for decades after.
But today’s events bear uncanny resemblance to an earlier decade — the 1850s, when Southern Democrats, the conservatives of their day, unleashed a torrent of violence against their opponents. It was a decade when an angry and entrenched minority used force to thwart the will of a growing majority, often with the knowing support and even participation of prominent elected officials.
That’s the familiar part of the story. The less appreciated angle is how that growing majority eventually came to accept the proposition that force was a necessary part of politics.
The 1850s were a singularly violent era in American politics. Though politicians both North and South, Whig and Democrat, tried to contain sectional differences over slavery, Southern Democrats and their Northern sympathizers increasingly pushed the envelope, employing coercion and violence to protect and spread the institution of slavery.
It began with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which stripped accused runaways of their right to trial by jury and allowed individual cases to be bumped up from state courts to special federal courts. As an extra incentive to federal commissioners adjudicating such cases, it provided a $10 fee when a defendant was remanded to slavery but only $5 for a finding rendered against the slave owner. Most obnoxious to many Northerners, the law stipulated harsh fines and prison sentences for any citizen who refused to cooperate with or aid federal authorities in the capture of accused fugitives. Southern Democrats enforced the law with brute force, to the horror of Northerners, including many who did not identify as anti-slavery.
The next provocation was the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, which effectively abrogated the Missouri Compromise and opened the western territories to slavery. It wasn’t enough that Democrats rammed through legislation allowing the citizens of the Kansas and Nebraska territories to institutionalize slavery if they voted to do so in what had long been considered free territory. They then employed coercion and violence to rig the territorial elections that followed.
Though anti-slavery residents far outnumbered pro-slavery residents in Kansas, heavily armed “Border ruffians,” led by Missouri’s Democratic senator David Atchison, stormed the Kansas territory by force, stuffing ballot boxes, assaulting and even killing Free State settlers, in a naked attempt to tilt the scales in favor of slavery. “You know how to protect your own interests,” Atchison cried. “Your rifles will free you from such neighbors. … You will go there, if necessary, with the bayonet and with blood.” He promised, “If we win, we can carry slavery to the Pacific Ocean.”
The violence made it into Congress. When backlash against the Kansas Nebraska Act upended the political balance, driving anti-slavery Democrats and Whigs into the new, anti-slavery Republican party, pro-slavery Democrats responded with rage. In 1856, . . .
Release ‘Emotional Baggage’ and the Tension That Goes with It
Julianne Ishler has an interesting article in Healthline that begins:
You’ve probably heard the term “emotional baggage.”
It’s sometimes used to describe the phenomenon of carrying past trauma or so-called negative experiences through life, relationships, or a career.
You may see this reflected in someone’s posture, as if they’re carrying around an unbearable weight. It may even prevent them from moving forward in life.
Everyone carries unprocessed emotions from experiences to some degree. However, emotions that aren’t dealt with don’t just go away.
They can affect:
• the way you think about yourself
• how you react to stress
• your physical well-being
• your relationships with othersAfter all, emotional baggage gets its name from somewhere, right?
Let’s unpack the layers of how and where emotions get stuck, so you can release what’s weighing you down.
What does it mean to have ‘trapped’ emotions?
Perhaps you’ve heard of people crying during yoga, massage, or acupuncture treatment because of a tender spot that, when activated, appears to lead to an emotional release.
Though some may refer to trauma being “stored” or “trapped” in the body, that isn’t necessarily a scientific way to put it.
However, the symptoms of traumatic stress can manifest physically.
This may be because the brain associates this area with a particular memory — often on a subconscious level.
Activating certain areas of the body may trigger these memories, according to Mark Olson, PhD, LMT, the owner and director of the Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork.
“Emotions are constantly being generated — subconsciously or consciously — in response to the reactivation of memories or unsatisfied goals,” Olson says. “The touch to X area is simply a reliable stimulus to reconstruct the pattern associated with that traumatic event.”
Touch may bring up emotions or a memory may create sensations in a particular area of the body. While this is usually associated with a bodily location, Olson believes that everything is happening in the brain.
Alternatively, some believe that trauma and difficult emotions can, in fact, become literally stuck energy in the body, though this isn’t supported by scientific evidence.
According to Bradley Nelson, DC, trapped emotional vibrations cause surrounding tissues to vibrate at the same frequency, known as resonance.
In his book “The Emotion Code,” Nelson writes, “Each trapped emotion resides in a specific location in the body, vibrating at its own particular frequency.”
This may cause you to attract more of that emotion, he says, creating a build-up or blockage.
Still, Nelson’s stance remains theoretical until further research can be done.
How do emotions get trapped?
That said, research as early as 1992Trusted Source along with more current research supports the mind-body connection, or the belief that a person’s mental and emotional health impacts the state of their physical health.
A classic example of this is fear.
If you’re in a situation where you’re afraid, your body generates a physical response to this emotion by activating the fight-flight-freeze response.
According to Nelson, three things happen when an emotion is experienced.
- We develop an emotional vibration.
- We feel the emotion and any thoughts or physical sensations associated with it. This is where the mind and body’s interconnectedness comes into play.
- We move on from the emotion by processing it.
According to Olson and other researchTrusted Source, emotional processing occurs in the limbic structures of the brain.
We’re constantly taking in information, which generates pre-conscious autonomic nervous system responses. This sends a signal to the body activating the corresponding emotion.
In other words, your “feeling” comes from what your nervous system is telling you.
According to Nelson, when the second or third step mentioned above gets interrupted, the energy of the emotion becomes trapped in the body. As a result, you might experience muscle tension, pain, or other ailments. . .
Later in the article you will find this interesting graphic:
Later On 