Researchers say they have observed a male Sumatran orangutan treating an open facial wound with sap and chewed leaves from a plant known to have anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties.
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“Thirteen minutes after Rakus had started feeding on the liana, he began chewing the leaves without swallowing them and using his fingers to apply the plant juice from his mouth directly on to his facial wound,” the researchers write.
Not only did Rakus repeat the actions, but shortly afterwards he smeared the entire wound with the chewed leaves until it was fully covered. Five days later the facial wound was closed, while within a few weeks it had healed, leaving only a small scar.
The team say the plant used by Rakus is known to contain substances with antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, antioxidant, pain-killing and anticarcinogenic properties, among other attributes, while this and related liana species are used in traditional medicine “to treat various diseases, such as dysentery, diabetes and malaria”.
Scientists concluded that Rakus knew the process would heal him because orangutans rarely eat poultice, because of the precise placement of the plant on the wound and the amount of time it took.
Orangutans in the area rarely eat this plant.
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Humans might even have discovered some remedies by watching animals, he says. “Probably our ancestors were looking at other animals and learning about medicines.”
Each of these stories claims this is a “first”, the first time we have borne witness to a wild animal intentionally healing itself with a plant. Yet, at the end of these articles it says, for example, “humans have discovered some remedies by watching animals.” Which is it? Are we just now noticing that animals use plants as medicine? Or have we been noticing it for ages?
Maybe we’re being a bit anthropocentric here. We really need to give credit where credit is due.
In a series of videos I did about a decade ago, I discussed this landmark research showing that a single high-fat meal could cripple artery function within hours of consumption, compared to no change in the low-fat meal. The high-fat meal that so crippled artery function included Sausage and Egg McMuffins from McDonalds. How do we know the sausage, egg, or cheese was to blame? What about the crappy carbs in the biscuits or something? Because the low-fat meal that didn’t impair artery function was a sugary mess of carby Frosted Flakes.
And just when your artery function finally starts to recover five or six hours later? Lunchtime! And, your arteries may get whacked with another load of meat, eggs, dairy, or oil. Why does it matter so much what happens after a meal within your body? Because most of us spend about 16 hours a day in that after-a-meal state, constantly hammering our arteries. No wonder cardiovascular disease is our #1 killer.
I didn’t know a high-fat meal could have a similar effect on the lungs:
And it doesn’t just inflame the arteries in our heart, but our lungs as well. “A high-fat challenge increases airway inflammation and impairs bronchodilator recovery in asthma.” Have asthmatics cough up sputum from their lungs four hours after the same kind of high-fat meal, and inflammatory cells shoot up in the high-fat meal group. In terms of lung function, give them two hits of their inhalers (containing a drug called albuterol or Ventolin) and their airways open up as they should—after the low-fat meal. But after the high-fat meal, the same inhaler doses don’t work as well, crapping out after a few hours because of all the extra inflammation in their lungs. What you eat can determine how well you breathe.
Okay, but that was asthmatics. But even in nonasthmatic subjects, you get that same spike in inflammatory cells in sputum coughed out of your lungs four hours after eating what was, in this case, a Jimmy Dean Meat Lovers Breakfast Bowl.
And … pizza:
And there aren’t only more inflammatory cells; there is a doubling of the amount of pro-inflammatory oxidized LDL cholesterol sucked up by the type of white blood cells that go on to form foam cells. Those are the cells that build up the inflamed pus in your artery wall that leads to heart attacks. And all this happens within just hours of eating pizza, in this case.
Here he’s referencing a pretty new study (the last one in the Resources list below), that sheds more light on the effect of endotoxins, which were thought to be integral in arterial inflammation. It may be the fat after all:
The fat in your blood goes up, and so do your endotoxin levels. Endotoxins are the components of bacterial cell walls, and foods like meat can be so contaminated with bacteria—alive and dead—that they accumulate endotoxins. And we’re talking about both red meat and white meat.
But, recent research (published in 2020) suggests the main culprit may not be endotoxins after all, but the fat itself. The saturated fat floating in your blood after an unhealthy meal may be inducing the inflammation more directly.
This study demonstrates that a single oral dose of saturated fat increases hepatic TG [triglyceride] accumulation, insulin resistance, GNG [gluconeogenesis], and ATP concentrations in the human liver. Ingestion of saturated fat also induces peripheral insulin resistance in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue.
One fatty meal. One. Note that the people who received the fat meal, which did not include any carbohydrate, experienced a rise in blood glucose and blood insulin. That’s because the liver started pumping out glucose (that it was making from gluconeogenesis, which uses bits of the body’s protein, which it steals from things like muscle).
This is a McDonald’s Sausage Biscuit with Egg. The meals supplied in the study were “designed to mimic the contents of various fast-food meals” such as this sandwich.
The study compared how 51 women performed on a test of their attention after they ate either a meal high in saturated fat or the same meal made with sunflower oil, which is high in unsaturated fat.
Their performance on the test was worse after eating the high-saturated-fat meal than after they ate the meal containing a healthier fat.
The loss of focus after a single meal was eye-opening for the researchers. … Most prior work looking at the causative effect of the diet has looked over a period of time.
“If the women had high levels of endotoxemia*, it also wiped out the between-meal differences. They were performing poorly no matter what type of fat they ate,” Madison said.
Possible mechanism:
Previous research has suggested that food high in saturated fat can drive up inflammation throughout the body, and possibly the brain. Fatty acids also can cross the blood-brain barrier.
One way dietary fat contributes to inflammation is by increasing absorption of endotoxins, to which we launch an inflammatory response. Endotoxins are bits of bacterial membrane that are absorbed along with the fat we eat, especially saturated fat to which endotoxins have an affinity. They’re thought to derive from bacteria (dead or alive) introduced to the intestines from food, primarily meat, eggs, dairy, or fermented food, all of which carry relatively higher levels of microorganisms. The bacteria that colonize our colon are too far along the digestive tract for absorption to take place in any significant quantity.
It was a good study: double-blind, randomized crossover trial of 51 women. It concluded:
These results suggest that higher LBP, sCD14, and LBP:sCD14 [these are endotoxemia markers] and saturated-fat intake individually and jointly influence attention. Endotoxemia may override the relative cognitive benefit of healthier oil choices.
Both meals were high in fat and both contained animal food (eggs, turkey sausage) which provide the bacterial bits for endotoxemia. Remove the animal food and reduce the fat and you might have seen even better results.
“Because both meals were high-fat and potentially problematic, the high-saturated-fat meal’s cognitive effect could be even greater if it were compared to a lower-fat meal,” [lead author Madison] said.
Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), A Man Without a Country (His final work, published in 2005.)
I created this chart over a decade ago. I sourced the values from NutritionData (which is no more). While it may not be helpful if you’re looking for exact amounts, it’s a good approximation when comparing one food against another.
Here’s some data I gathered to generate this chart. It includes the omega-6/omega3 ratios (N6/N3 Ratio).
He pulled out some good studies here. Essentially, exercise increases appetite. We counter the calories used up by taking in more calories. Interestingly, even the THOUGHT of exercising can do this.
Most overweight individuals evidently tend to choose exercise as their first approach to weight loss. When unrealistic hopes clash with reality, the disappointment may lead to an abandonment of weight-loss efforts altogether as an exercise in futility (no pun intended). Our false expectations may also give us license to overeat. Our pie-in-the-sky notions about the power of exercise may just be used to justify an extra slice of pie right here on earth. Some researchers warn that labeling menus with calorie equivalents of exercise could be counterproductive, backfiring if people rationalize their indulgences after a workout. This concern has actually been put to the test.
Exercise psychologists took a group of men and women, put them on stationary bikes, and had them cycle until they burned either 50 calories or more than 250 calories. Unbeknownst to them, the researchers manipulated the machines to give false readouts, such that in actuality both groups burned the same number of calories. They just thought they burned more or less. Then, they were offered a meal 10 minutes later, ostensibly to measure the “effects of exercise on taste perception,” but the real purpose was to covertly measure how much people ate. Those who falsely believed they had burned off more calories did seem to demonstrate a greater “license to eat,” ending up eating significantly more calories (mostly in the form of chocolate chip cookies).
After a workout, people may be tempted to treat themselves for their sweaty sacrifice. To prevent this knee-jerk reaction from undermining our efforts, we should strive to make exercise less of a chore. In a paper entitled “Is it fun or exercise? The framing of physical activity biases subsequent snacking,” a study is described in which individuals were randomized to the same amount of physical activity, but just described differently. Half were told they were going on a “scenic walk,” and the other half were told they were going on an “exercise walk.” Afterwards, researchers covertly measured how much dessert everyone took at a subsequent meal. Those in the movement-as-exercise group reportedly served themselves about 35 percent more chocolate pudding than the movement-as-fun group. This is all the more reason to choose activities that are enjoyable, such as walking with friends, while listening to music, or watching a video on the treadmill. Reframing exercise as play rather than work may not only make for a more sustainable regimen, but may make us less likely to consciously or unconsciously feel the need to later reward ourselves at the buffet line.
Even just thinking about exercise may compel people to eat more food. Those randomized to simply read about physical activity went on to serve themselves nearly 60 percent more M&Ms than those in the control group, adding up to hundreds of extra calories. The researchers concluded: “simply imagining exercising leads participants to serve themselves more food.”
Expending energy through exercise may not just psychologically predispose us to eat more, but may physiologically make us hungrier. We evolved in the context of scarcity; so, our body places great value on rapidly replenishing lost fat stores. This helps explain why the average weight loss with exercise training is only 30 percent of that predicted based on the number of extra calories burned. Calories in versus calories out can be complicated by the fact that changes on one side of the equation can affect the other side. In other words, we can work up an appetite.
Carefully controlled studies show that caloric intake tends to rise over time to match any increase in caloric expenditure, making significant weight loss through exercise alone remarkably difficult. This doesn’t happen over a day or two. After a workout, there may not be an immediate increase in hunger, but averaged over the week or weeks, our appetite does tend to increase to balance out most of the extra calories we’ve been burning. This calorie compensation isn’t perfect, though. So, we can end up with a net loss in body fat, particularly at higher exercise levels. So the secret to weight loss through exercise may be sheer volume––at least 300 minutes a week to achieve appreciable fat loss.
This regulation of our appetite through activity works in both directions. Just as there exists a higher level of exercise where we can start to outpace our appetite and lose weight, there’s a lower level of exercise where our body loses the ability to sufficiently downgrade our appetite, and we gain weight. This sedentary zone where our appetite becomes uncoupled from our activity level appears to start at around 7,100 steps a day.
Let’s say you start out as a really active person, chowing down on nearly 2,900 calories a day, and, for whatever reason, have to cut back on exercise. You’d think you’d gain a lot of weight, but you’re surprised that you don’t. Basically, no increased odds of gaining significant body fat. What happened? With your drop in exercise came an inadvertent drop in appetite. But there’s a limit to how far your appetite can drop. Once you cross that threshold, once you dip below logging at least 7,100 steps or so a day on your pedometer, your appetite doesn’t slow much further to match, and the pounds can start to pile on. Your body tries to keep your weight steady by adjusting your appetite, but we just weren’t designed to handle such extreme low levels of movement that sadly characterizes most of the U.S. population.
I transcribed some parts of this interview that just blew me away.
Beginning around 19:25 Bush says that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, was originally designed as an antibiotic, not a weed killer. It was not originally patented as a weed killer, it was repatented later.
So, glyphosate is an antibiotic. It works by blocking the shikamate pathway in bacteria that, if functioning, produces folates and some amino acids. Without those, bacteria die. Plants also use this pathway and are also damaged by glyphosate’s action. Humans don’t. However, we get our essential amino acids from eating plants, or animals that ate those plants. That doesn’t mean that humans aren’t injured by glyphosate, as you’ll see in the last paragraph.
In this next part, he describes why he thinks glyphosate was not put on the market when it was discovered in 1958:
23:44 “One of the reasons I think that glyphosate was not put on the market in 1958 when it was discovered is because the Japanese inventor of that chemical recognized that that was a water-soluble toxin. You do not want to introduce a water-soluble toxin into the environment because you can never get it back. Where if you have a fat-soluble toxin it’ll actually be sequestered by mycelium in the soil, if it gets into a human or another mammal, it’ll be sequestered by fat cells so it never hits the brain, it’ll be protective. A water-soluble toxin on the other hand can’t be subtracted out of the ecosystem because everything on planet Earth including your human body is water.”
Glyphosate is now everywhere – in the air we breathe, the rain, the water we drink and put on crops. And we’re spreading 4 and a half billion pounds of this antibiotic around the world every year!
24:45 “The current statistics is that less than 1/10 of 1% of the Roundup used on the planet actually hits a weed. The other 99.99% gets into the soil and into the water system and washes off. And so we are now seeing the runoff from these farms, and in the water table itself. So we have fossil aquifers in the United States here that run from Canada all the way down to historically Mexico that is now dried up. We’ve turned over a thousand square miles of Texas into desert over the last 20 years from sucking water out of the ground. That fossil aquifer is now contaminated with Roundup that’s filtered down into this ancient freshwater source for us.”
25:29 “Then in the same moment you’ve got the Mississippi River which collects over 80% of all the Roundup in the country. And then it’s evaporating the whole time so it’s going into the air that you breathe and then it goes into the clouds and then it rains down on us. Recent studies in the air and rainfall in the southern United States is showing 75% of rain, 75% of air contaminated with Roundup. So before you even take a bite of food, you’re being hit with an antibiotic when you breathe, you’re getting hit with an antibiotic when you experience rainfall. And so you may be growing organic crops but they’re getting rained on. And so we have now locked this water-soluble toxin into our environment.”
In this next part he describes a side effect of glyphosate on the human body. This, to me, was shocking.
33:25 “The side effects of glyphosate that are outside of the shikamate pathway is direct injury to the protein structure that holds your gut lining together. This would be bad news if that was it. But it turns out that every macro membrane in your body – the blood vessels that fuel your entire body with oxygen nutrients are held together with the same tight junctions, the blood-brain barrier that protects your peripheral nervous system in your brain, same tight junctions, the kidney tubules that are held together to detox your body, same tight junctions. So what’s happened as we’ve introduced a chemical that’s directly toxic to this velcro-like protein is we turn into leaky sieves on the front-end – gut leak and nasal sinus leak and so every time we breathe, every time we eat, we’re starting to leak. Our immune system gets overwhelmed and then the blood vessels that are supposed to deliver either an immune response from peripheral or get nutrients to some distant space is also leaking and so we’re getting permeability of the blood vessels. Then you get to the blood-brain barrier this is supposed to be the Holy of Holies a peripheral nerve or the brain is supposed to be protected against everything in your blood because even glucose which is the main fuel for your brain should not get into the brain in an unregulated fashion. It will damage the nerves. And so Holy of Holies of the central and peripheral nervous system is being destroyed. And so if that’s true, if glyphosate was really damaging that, then we should see a massive explosion in neurologic injury to children and adults starting in about 1996. And that’s exactly when we see this steep increase happening in autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, neurodegenerative conditions like MS, autoimmune diseases, and all the rest.”
So, glyphosate destroys the integrity of our linings … the gut lining, nasal lining, kidney tubules, blood vessels, blood-brain barrier. Tissues and organs become leaky which turns on the immune system and leaves us in a chronic state of inflammation. No wonder Monsanto just sold itself to Bayer.
There is so much more in this interview. I’m going to read up about Dr. Bush. Here’s his website: https://zachbushmd.com/
Fanatic Cook 