Donald Trump and Huckleberry Finn

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/10/donald-trump-huckleberry-finn-chuck-chalberg.html

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vigano-blames-homosexual-clergy-for-sex-abuse-and-corruption-in-the-ch

Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss and Fasting for Spiritual Awareness

Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss

Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss
A form of calorie restriction, intermittent fasting may help you lose those extra pounds.

By Jennifer Marano, D.C.

For many people, following a whole-food, plant-based diet is the key to maintaining optimum weight and health. However, for some of us, strictly adhering to a health-promoting diet as well as engaging in a regular exercise program is not enough to keep us where we want to be weight-wise. We just like eating too much; or perhaps we have extremely efficient digestive systems; or our internal calorie counters are a bit off. Whatever the reason, I and many others tend to maintain a body weight 5 to 10 pounds heavier than what would make us look and feel our best. I have been trying various tricks for years—decades, really—to get rid of those final pounds, and I think I have finally found the answer: intermittent fasting.

I have been involved with fasting for over 30 years as co-founder of TrueNorth Health, a fasting and health center in Northern California, and I am very familiar with the tremendous benefits of fasting for maintaining or restoring optimum health. But we have never recommended fasting as a solution for weight loss. It may jump-start a weight-loss program by resetting our appetite so that we enjoy health-promoting food; but maintaining optimum weight is done by consuming a proper diet every day, not by prolonged fasting followed by a return to bad dietary habits.

But what is a “proper diet”? Is it the same for everyone? Over the past few years I have read a lot about the value of intermittent fasting, both for weight control and general health, and what struck me from the beginning is that the daily eating habits we follow in the developed world—three meals a day supplemented by coffee breaks, mid-afternoon pick-me-ups, and evening nibbles—is a very recent development in human history. For most of the world this abundance of food has not been available until very recently; and in undeveloped areas it is still not the norm. But just mention that you are skipping a meal here and there, and you are met with looks of horror and comments about how unhealthy that is.

But is it unhealthy? What happens when we don’t eat for a period of time? We know that when we eat more than we need to maintain our function, the excess is stored as fat. This is one of the adaptations we possess to keep us going during times of scarcity. When food isn’t available we burn our stored fat to keep us going until we can locate more food. We need certain enzymes to help us store fat and other enzymes to help us mobilize our fat stores. But if we are eating all day long there is never a time when we need to burn fat. It takes 8 to 12 hours to digest and assimilate the food from a meal, so most people in the developed world really never have to mobilize fat. And if the body doesn’t need to do something, it tends to not maintain the equipment (think enzymes) necessary to do that task. You know what happens to your muscles if you don’t exercise. And you know what you have to do to get back into shape. The ability to burn fat waxes or wanes in response to use, just as your muscles respond to use after exercise. You can develop the enzyme systems that allow you to switch easily from burning glucose to burning fat, but it takes some time. And while you are developing them you feel hungry; sometimes very hungry. And it is uncomfortable. Even after you develop these systems you still feel hungry (although it isn’t quite as uncomfortable). But it’s okay—feeling hungry is okay.

What is Intermittent Fasting?
So what is intermittent fasting (IF)? How does it apply to humans? Why do it? What can it do for you? And how do you do it?

IF is a form of calorie restriction, which has been studied for a long time, mostly in animals like rats and mice. It was observed that animals fed a restricted diet lived a lot longer than animals allowed unlimited food. There are people who are practicing calorie restriction with the hope that they will greatly extend their lives. But it is a very uncomfortable way to live, and these people can become very gaunt and weak. Not very many are successful at maintaining this lifestyle. The difference between IF and calorie restriction is the “intermittent” part. Yes, calories are restricted, but only some of the time. And recent animal studies have shown that the benefits are actually greater for the intermittent fasters than for those on a calorie-restricted diet; they both live just as long, but the intermittent fasters don’t lose muscle mass or become stunted. And that makes all the difference when it comes to applying the idea of IF to human health and weight control.

Before getting into the various types of IF, I would like to say a little about the physiological changes that occur with IF and how they impact health. One change is that the level of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) goes down. High levels of IGF-1 in adults are associated with accelerated aging and development of cancer, so lowering this factor may be one explanation for the life-extension effects seen in animal studies. In addition, genes whose function is to repair are turned on by fasting. An organism needs to be in top shape during times of scarcity in order to successfully find food, so the stress of the fast causes this activation, much as the stress of drought or insect pests causes plants to produce more antioxidants. And a third effect is increased insulin sensitivity. Insulin resistance is associated with type 2 diabetes, and high levels of circulating insulin lead to excessive fat storage. Keep these physiological changes in mind as we discuss the various forms of IF; it will increase your understanding of why IF works for weight loss and also why it can be a healthy lifestyle choice, even after you have reached your ideal weight.

The Alternate Day Fasting Plan
One popular form of IF is “alternate day fasting” (ADF, or ADMF for “alternate day modified feeding”). The modified feeding title refers to a system developed by researcher Dr. Krista Varady of the University of Illinois at Chicago. In her system the fasting days actually involve eating a small meal (500 calories for women and 600 calories for men), while feeding days allow unrestricted eating. Dr. Varady found that, contrary to expectations, her subjects did not go crazy on feeding days. They tended to eat about 110% of what they would eat on a normal day before beginning ADMF. This makes ADMF a very effective weight loss program, but it has its difficulties, particularly socially. Friends and family have a hard time keeping track of when you are feeding and when you are fasting. But it is a good choice for people who have a large amount of weight to loose.

The 5:2 Plan
A more easily followed, yet still very effective version of IF is the “5:2 plan,” which was popularized by Dr. Michael Mosley with his Horizon TV program on BBC and in his excellent book, The Fast Diet. On this plan you choose two fast days a week (perhaps Monday and Thursday) when you will eat 500 to 600 calories. The other five days you eat whatever you want, but preferably a health-promoting diet. This plan has been studied extensively. In one study by Dr. Michelle Harvie in Manchester, England, three groups of women were compared for three months. Group 1 was asked to eat 1,500 calories a day on a Mediterranean diet. Group 2 followed a 5:2 plan, eating 650 calories of low-carbohydrate food on the two fast days. Group 3 was asked to avoid carbs two days a week, but was not given any specific calorie target. At the end of three months the 1,500-calorie group lost an average of 5.28 pounds, and the 5:2 groups lost an average of 8.8 pounds!

The Restricted Eating Window Plan
A third version of IF, perhaps the easiest to follow, is the “restricted eating window plan.” This method was based on a mouse study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where two groups of mice were each fed an unhealthy, high-fat diet. Each group received the same amount of food, but one group had constant access to the food, while the other group had to do all their eating in an eight-hour period each day and fast for the remaining 16 hours. After 100 days the “unlimited” group had high cholesterol, high blood glucose, and liver damage, while the “fasting” group put on 28% less weight and suffered less liver damage. The fasting group also had lower levels of inflammation, which we are learning is a very important factor in heart disease, cancer, stroke and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Intermittent fasting can be a powerful weight-loss tool with a bonus of improving your overall health. You can design your own program depending on your goals: ADMF if you have a lot of weight to lose, 5:2 as you get closer to your goal, and you can try a 6:1 plan when you get to your optimum weight so you can continue to reap the physiological benefits of IF. Or restrict your eating window to six or eight hours. If you get a bit off track you can throw in a 500- to 600-calorie day here and there. This approach is endlessly flexible—you just have to figure out what works best for you! And just remember: it’s okay to feel hungry.

Jennifer Marano, D.C., is a graduate of Western States Chiropractic College and along with her husband Dr. Alan Goldhamer is the co-founder of the TrueNorth Health Center in Santa Rosa, California.

https://www.drfuhrman.com/library/eat-to-live-blog/144/fasting-rejuvenates-the-immune-system

Fasting rejuvenates the immune system

Fasting under medical supervision can have amazing healing results. The concept of therapeutic fasting is not new; the early great philosophers, thinkers, and healers used fasting for health. Hippocrates, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Galen all praised the benefits of fasting. Paracelsus, one of the three fathers of Western medicine, is quoted as saying, "Fasting is the greatest remedy--the physician within."

Unfortunately, as time went on fasting as a modality to heal became obsolete as pill popping became the modality of treatment. However, a small number of medical professionals kept up with its use and today we are learning of its vast benefits and in particular, how it works on a cellular level. Fasting works because the body has the capacity to heal itself and when the process of digestion stops, healing is accelerated. Eating a Nutritarian diet allows the body to heal at a faster pace. I have been using fasting as a healing strategy throughout my career as a physician for patients who need to quicken the healing process.

Fasting promotes accelerated healing and a valuable treatment for a variety of medical conditions.

In my 1995 book, Fasting and Eating For Health, I described my observations of health improvements due to fasting. In fact, my colleagues and I published a series of case reports that showed remission of autoimmune diseases following supervised fasting. ¹  Reviews of studies on fasting supported those findings, concluding that fasting (followed by a vegetarian or vegan diet) produces improvements in symptoms for patients with autoimmune diseases.^2,3

Although fasting is a powerful healing modality that has been used for many years, only recent research studies are uncovering specifically how fasting works on a cellular level. These new studies are generating more interest in fasting. To understand how fasting works, you first need to know that our bodies stores sugar in the form of glycogen and when we stop eating, the stored glycogen is used by the body. Fasting, after glycogen stores are depleted, (which occurs during the first 24-48 hours of a fast), sets off complex biochemical pathways in the body that aim to conserve energy while adequately fueling vital organs. These complex biochemical pathways have tremendous healing benefits.

New research reveals cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy may have immune building benefit from fasting

 A recent study⁴ suggests that fasting promotes the regenerative capacity of the immune system that could benefit cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy,  as well as healthy individuals.. Previous research suggested that fasting could protect mice against toxicity from chemotherapy (without compromising the effectiveness of the chemotherapy).^5,6 Also, in a series of 10 case reports of patients who had voluntarily fasted alongside some of their chemotherapy treatments, all of the patients experienced fewer and less severe side effects during fasting cycles compared to non-fasting cycles of chemotherapy.^7,8

In an extensive series of experiments, a group of scientists found that fasting decreased DNA damage and cell death in white blood cells and bone marrow cells, and reduced chemotherapy-induced mortality in mice. Most importantly, after 4-5 cycles of fasting accompanying chemotherapy, the white blood cell count of the fasting group returned to normal, but the control group remained diminished by the chemotherapy.

The scientists also looked at fasting without chemotherapy, and found similar results: a six-fold increase in newly generated hematopoietic stem cells. Hematopoietic stem cells are those stem cells that are produced in the bone marrow and which give rise to all the other blood cells, including white blood cells that modulate immune function.  Fasting was able to provoke regeneration of the immune cells in healthy mice, and also changed the hematopoietic stem cell profile of aging mice to that of younger mice. The scientists were surprised at these dramatic results, which suggested that fasting signals the immune system to get rid of old of damaged cells and rebuild itself with new cells.^4,9 

IGF-1 and Fasting: Another fascinating finding

The scientists found that reduced IGF-1 signaling was a key player in the regeneration of immune cells that occurred in response to fasting. Lower levels of IGF-1 are associated with reduced risk of cancer and slower aging.  Mice that were given extra IGF-1 during the fasts did not have the same increase in hematopoietic stem cells.

Would this work in humans too?

Within the same publication, the scientists have begun to answer this question.  A clinical trial assigned patients undergoing chemotherapy to either 24 or 72 hour fasts prior to each chemotherapy cycle. Preliminary results were similar to what was seen in mice; the 72 hour fasting group saw an improvement in immune cell count and a shift toward the ‘younger’ cellular profile.

This promising and exciting research suggests that occasional fasting could have profound immune-boosting benefits for healthy individuals and those undergoing chemotherapy. By simulating an energy shortage with a few days of fasting, we can jumpstart the immune system’s natural self-renewing capacity, exchanging old immune cells for new ones.

What this could mean for cancer patients

The toxicity and side effects associated with chemotherapy are a major limitation for treatment of cancer.  An important research goal is to identify an adjunct treatment that could ameliorate those side effects without compromising the effectiveness of the chemotherapy. Research suggests that fasting could achieve these goals and even make chemotherapy more effective.  In other words, fasting is thought to protect normal cells while making cancerous cells vulnerable.

Depriving normal, healthy cells of energy-yielding nutrients signals them to set aside growth and go into a mode of energy conservation, protection, maintenance, and repair. It increases the capacity of these cells for stress resistance. In vitro, this resistance to stress helps to prevent oxidative DNA damage from chemotherapy drugs.

Since cancerous cells have mutations that hyper activate growth pathways, causing uncontrolled proliferation, they are unable to go into the protective stress-resistance mode like healthy cells.^5,10This is called “differential stress resistance.”  Fasting appears to induce stress resistance in normal cells but vulnerability in cancerous cells. Like the results regarding immune function, a reduction in IGF-1 levels due to fasting contributes to this differential stress resistance.^6,10

After the early series of 10 case reports noted a low rate of side effects in patients that had fasted prior to chemotherapy,⁷ additional studies in human patients were undertaken. The studies were small, but the results are positive. In one study, patients who fasted for 48 or 72 hours showed reduced chemotherapy-related side effects (including fatigue and nausea) and DNA damage in white blood cells compared to those who completed a shorter fast of 24 hours.¹¹

 A randomized controlled trial in women with breast cancer also showed evidence of attenuated DNA damage due to chemotherapy in the fasting group compared to the non-fasting group over the course of multiple chemotherapy cycles.¹²

 Future studies are needed to determine whether fasting strengthens patients’ response to chemotherapy, and also to determine the optimal fasting length for reducing side effects.  Potentially this research could lead to a widespread use of fasting as an adjunct treatment alongside chemotherapy.

Fasting and Eating for Health

My book, Fasting and Eating for Health, is still a must read for the health enthusiast, though 20 years ago we did not know about fasting’s potential to help rejuvenate the immune system and sensitize cancerous cells through a combination of reduced IGF-1, stem cell rejuvenation and stress resistance.

Horrors at an abortion clinic went ignored--Dr. Kermit Gosnell

Horrors at an abortion clinic went ignored: This column contains material that is difficult to read. Dr. Kermit Gosnell's former Philadelphia facility, the Women's Medical Society, was the scene...

Horrors at an abortion clinic went ignored

Dr. Kermit Gosnell's former Philadelphia facility, the Women's Medical Society, was the scene of untold horrors for many years, involving hundreds of babies being killed after being aborted alive.

This column contains material that is difficult to read.  But for a long time it was difficult even to find material to read about the story, as major media outlets tried mightily to ignore the story of America's most prolific killer.

That may change now that "Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer" has been released in more than 600 movie theatres.  It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

Let me explain, with apologies for the details.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell owned and operated the Women's Medical Society clinic in Philadelphia.  Well known for providing grisly lateterm abortions, the Gosnell clinic was actually raided in 2010 by the police on suspicion of illegal use of prescription drugs.  They found an unsanitary, blood-stained, cat-infested "house of horrors" in which women were found suffering various degrees of malpractice by unlicensed and unqualified personnel.  Fetal remains from late-term abortions were found in jars, in milk bags, in cat-food containers.  The severed feet of dozens of fetal corpses were preserved.

In 2011, Gosnell was charged with eight counts of murder in addition to hundreds of violations of Pennsylvania's abortion laws.  The murder charges related to an adult woman, Karnamaya Mongar, who died following an abortion procedure, and seven newborns killed by having their spinal cords severed with scissors after being born alive during attempted abortions.  In the May 2013 trial, prosecutors focused on fewer charges to obtain the necessary convictions to send Gosnell away for life.  He was convicted of murder (first degree) for three of the infants, and manslaughter for Mongar.  Gosnell is in prison for life, having waived his right to appeal in order to avoid the death penalty.

But what was introduced at trial was only the bloody tip of a massive iceberg of killing.  An unlicensed physician at the clinic, Steven Massof, 49, pleaded guilty to two counts of third-degree murder, murder conspiracy and other charges before Gosnell's trial.  He testified to a grand jury that he snipped the spines of more than 100 babies after seeing them breathe, move or show other signs of life.

"Severing the spinal cords of moving, breathing babies outside their mothers' wombs was, according to Massof, 'standard procedure'," reported the grand jury.

"Partial-birth" abortion is infanticide by another name.  "After-birth" abortion is infanticide, homicide, murder, pure and simple.  And it took place on a massive scale at the Gosnell clinic.

How then did America's most prolific serial killer get away with it for so long?  Therein lies a tale about regulators, the medical profession, police and journalists.

Gosnell had been sued dozens of times over more than three decades.  Detailed complaints on several occasions had been made to state regulators.  His clinic was found in violation by the state department of health as early as 1989.  But despite mountains of evidence that would have shut down an orthopedic practice overnight, Gosnell was allowed to operate, with abortion politics providing cover.  It went right to the top, with the grand jury finding Gov.  Tom Ridge's office responsible for regulators looking the other way, or not bothering to look at all.  That Gosnell preyed upon the poor made it easier for his victims to be ignored.

The police and prosecutors seemed deliberately lethargic, if not negligent, in following up deaths of women at the clinic, at least one of which resulted in a civil settlement.  It was, after all, a Drug Enforcement Agency investigation that finally brought Gosnell down for illegal prescriptions.  Had it not been for the DEA, Philadelphia police may have waited for the Internal Revenue Service to do its work for them.

Then came the trial.  By all accounts it should have been a notorious story locally, if not nationally.  But the major news media gave it a pass.  Only after a shaming campaign on social media built pressure on the major networks and newspapers did the Gosnell story get some of the coverage it deserved.

Abortion politics had corrupted the news media.  While a graphic sign outside an abortion clinic merits a disapproving story — to say nothing of violence at abortion clinics — the dismemberment of hundreds of babies born alive was treated as a non-story, unhelpful to the abortion cause.

And while Hollywood is eager to make movies about serial killers, the producers of the Gosnell film could not get the film financed.  It got made only after a crowdfunding campaign raised the necessary US$2.1 million, normally chump change in the movie business.

The Gosnell story is difficult to tell.  But that was not the reason that so many tried not to tell it.  Will its cinematic telling now also be ignored?

 

Kavanaugh/Ford credibility-READ THIS ARTICLE

If you are going to read one article on the Kavanaugh/Ford credibility read this one

Steve Jalsevac

Fox's Chris Wallace proclaiming that Ford's testimony was "extremely credible", based on just her performance during the hearings. Fox News video frame capture

October 1, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) –Breitbart's John Nolte smashes any thought that Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against Judge Kavanaugh was credible - regardless of what Fox News and other media commentators proclaimed:

By any standard of truth, fairness, classical liberalism, evidence, and facts, Dr. Ford is not only not credible, she is nothing close to credible.

Let me count the ways…

She has aligned herself with the far-left.
She straight-up lied about being afraid to fly.
She said she wanted anonymity but continually reached out to the far-left Washington Post.
Her polygraph is a farce.
Her story has been carefully weaved into a Kafka-esque nightmare no man (even with detailed calendars) can ever escape from.
Every single one of her witnesses refutes her story — has no memory of the gathering in question or says it doesn’t happen, and this includes a lifelong friend.
Her team was so desperate to have The Woman Who Wants Anonymity to testify publicly, they turned down the opportunity to have her questioned in private at her home in California — and then lied about it.
Ford’s therapist’s notes from 2012 also refute here tale, even as the media and Democrats try to gaslight us into believing the opposite. Ford originally claimed four boys tried to rape her when she was in her late teens in the mid-eighties. Now she says it was one rapist and one bystander when she was 15 in the early eighties.
Ford refused to give her therapist’s notes to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In the statement she wrote out in her farce of a polygraph test, Ford crossed out “early 80’s” so it would only read “80’s.”

And the points made go on and on ...

Read the rest of it here. Very compelling.

Nolte ends the article with 

A man’s life and career and name and reputation are on the line, his accusers actions and accusations are, by any standard, equal parts deceptive, dishonest, and implausible… And there was Fox News spreading the fake news that 2 + 2 = 5.