Steady Daily Routines Linked To Better Health, Regardless Of Poor Sleep

 It would be easy to assume that chronic insomnia throws an older adult’s entire schedule off course: irregular meals, erratic bedtimes, a life that falls apart because sleep already has. New research complicates that picture entirely. Adults with insomnia kept just as steady a daily routine as good sleepers did. What was consistently linked to pain, body mass index, and depressive symptoms across both groups was the regularity of a person’s daily schedule.

A team of researchers from the University of Missouri, Washington State University, Trinity College, the University of Macau, and the University of Pittsburgh set out to examine how consistent daily schedules relate to physical and mental health in older adults. Their findings, published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, suggest the timing of daily life may be another important piece of older adults’ health, even when insomnia is present.

Researchers call this consistency behavioral-social rhythms: the regularity of daily activities that act like internal clock cues, known scientifically as zeitgebers, helping the body’s circadian system stay in sync with the 24-hour day

https://studyfinds.com/steady-daily-routine-better-health/ 

Stopping the War Against Sleep - by A Midwestern Doctor

 

Since few recognize the critical value of sleep, a safe cure was buried, the pills that replaced it make sleep worse, and Congress is on the precipice of locking in dark mornings nationwide.

Story at a Glance:

•Proper sleep is one of the most important things for our health, and when it is disrupted, many severe issues consistently emerge (e.g., heart attacks, psychiatric illnesses, car accidents, fatigue, diabetes, cognitive impairment, or dementia).

•Due to the importance of sleep and healthy sleep cycles not being understood, many counterproductive policies exist (e.g., sleep is essential for learning, yet educational programs like medical training sleep-deprive students, and schools wake adolescents up too early).

•One of these, daylight saving time, has been particularly problematic, so decades of attempts have been made to fix it. A law is currently advancing through Congress to do so, but it is mislabeled and will actually make things much worse—unless the public is awakened to what is actually in the bill.

•A similar issue exists with sleeping pills, which are labeled to “fix sleep” but in reality function as sleep-blocking sedatives that create a host of issues, making them among the most dangerous drugs on the market. Many people hence do not know that in 1964, a sleeping medication hit the market that was remarkably effective for a variety of conditions (including insomnia) and hence, unlike sleeping pills, profoundly improved the health of its recipients.

•Because it threatened so many different drug markets, once it reached America in 1990, the FDA, in collusion with the media, launched a ten-year takedown of it, which in many regards was almost identical to what they did to ivermectin. It was successful, and very few people are even aware that this drug exists or that many of the sleeping disorders we face are easily treatable.

•In this article, we will review the data that illustrates the harms of poor sleep, the common causes of poor sleep, and the most effective treatments we have found for sleeping disorders that are still available to the public.....

https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/stopping-the-war-against-sleep?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=748806&post_id=210498876&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=y7h5a&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email 

....•You need to have your bedroom be a place that is psychologically associated with sleeping (this can include physical intimacy). Sleep hygienists generally advise minimizing the number of non-sleep-related things in your bedroom (e.g., a TV or desktop computer) and avoiding intellectual activity or social media in your bedroom.

•You need to have a set time to wake up and sleep each day. The body adapts to a rhythm, and if you keep changing that time, the body has much greater difficulty falling asleep.
Note: many people find cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to be extremely helpful for insomnia and there is now significant evidence to support it being a first line therapy.

The Unintended Consequences of the Digital Revolution Await Us – Paul Craig Roberts

 “Wikipedia was recognized early on as an important propaganda organ.” Jews use it to demonize Israel’s critics, and Sanger reports “what we know as fact, based on all sorts of evidence, is that the CIA has already edited Wikipedia.”  “Wikipedia is already compromised. That’s clear,” Sanger admitted. He went on to say the ideological bias embedded in Wikipedia is now being amplified because large language models increasingly rely on its content as a reference source when answering factual queries.

Full text:

https://paulcraigroberts.org/the-unintended-consequences-of-the-digital-revolution-await-us/ 

What Caused the Post-WW2 Decline of Urban America? Part 2 – Dropping the Hammer, by Steve Penfield - The Unz Review

 

The Shelley’s home in St. Louis was ground zero for the 1948 ruling that struck down neighborhood Freedom of Association. That year, a weaponized Supreme Court invented a “right” of forced entry that a more sober and diverse Supreme Court had unanimously rejected in 1926. Urban chaos exploded when the Court got it wrong.

As detailed in Part 1, dozens of major U.S. cities experienced a cooling of growth in the 1930s and then suffered huge losses after WW2, reversing over a century of previous expansion and prosperity. Two big factors in that decline were the unprecedented federal assaults on the historical work/save/invest ethic via nationalizing home mortgages (instant bank credit) in the 1930s and the 1935 nationalization of unions triggering the downfall of urban manufacturing that froze millions of middle-class jobs.

A third and more devastating federal action was inventing the “right” of forced entry by blacks (or anyone else) into previously peaceful English, German, Irish, Polish, Italian and other diverse ethnic communities. This final act of reckless social engineering permanently chased away millions of established urban residents and replaced them with a new class of predominantly poor, rural, uneducated people who often had little or no experience with the rigors of owning and maintaining property.

The federal imposition that chased people out of stable urban communities was the Supreme Court’s 1948 Shelley vs. Kraemer decision that abolished Freedom of Association in American neighborhoods. This radical decision reversed the 1926 Corrigan vs. Buckley ruling that had unanimously protected those community rights in a very similar case. Unfortunately, both rulings have been largely forgotten in today’s climate of extreme aversion to anything branded “racism.” That reflexive avoidance has left enormous gaps in the public record.

War Fever Comes Home, Race Militants Target American Neighborhoods

In the post-war glow of moral supremacy (having spent most of the 1930s to 1945 denouncing “Nazis” and “fascists” while increasingly embracing Nation Socialism at home) stone-throwing Pharisees and other political extremists needed new demons to slay. With Germany and Japan now obliterated and the Soviet Union officially declared the new source of global terror, the next targets were variably “communism” or white Christian “racism,” depending on the situation. And the grandstanding displays of social piety were again stacking up.

With any mention of Communism or Socialism, I feel obliged to note that America was moving in a collectivist direction since Herbert Hoover’s panic after the stock market correction in 1929 (when almost no one owned stocks). When FDR took office in 1933, he immediately reneged on campaign promises to make the government smaller and went hog wild to initiate or extend federal control over agriculture (AAA), banking (gold seizure, FDIC), broadcasting (FCC), college, energy, housing, retirement, unions and wage controls—none of which were legally authorized in the Constitution.

After World War 2, America could have returned some of those “emergency” powers back to states and individuals. But Truman and Eisenhower decided to plow ahead with more central planning, particularly in areas of racial revenge. The 1948 Shelley decision to strike down freewill in local community housing arrangements fit well into this trend.....

https://www.unz.com/article/what-caused-the-post-ww2-decline-of-urban-america-part-2-dropping-the-hammer/ 

....Conclusion

Following our hollow “victory” of World War 2, dozens of major U.S. cities that had previously enjoyed peace and prosperity for generations suddenly stopped growing and soon declined. Many of them like Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Newark, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C. entered death spirals in the 1950s that drove millions of residents away, never to return.

Reckless federal interference in the housing market since the early 1930s gradually killed the longstanding Western ethic of working, saving and investing for a home; easy credit soon moved in for anyone with a pulse and a penchant to Buy Now, Pay Later. Additional interference of nationalizing unions in 1935 immediately led to a spike in labor unrest and lawless behavior that eventually choked America’s manufacturing base. Then the vengeful 1948 Shelley decision revoked neighborhood Freedom of Association, opening the floodgates to anyone coveting a lifestyle they did nothing to build. All three radical impositions were unprecedented in U.S. history at the time. Viewed as a whole, these measures were all designed for catering to predatory fiat bankers, corporate cartels, union militants and other powerful interests, while simultaneously pandering to mob voting passions. The ensuing chaos was no accident.

Despite tens of trillions spent on federal welfare programs since the 1960s, largely targeted on the urban poor, most cities never regained anything like their former glory of the circa 1800 to 1950 era. And the sprawling suburban flight from urban decay wasted tens of trillions more.

Along with the failed intrusion into college and exploding healthcare costs immediately following World War 2 (explored in a previous essay last year), the housing, labor and racial interferences of the 1930s and 40s created a New America that would have been unrecognizable to anyone living here from the 1600s to the 1920s. Once again, the illusion of post-WW2 allied “success” fades into a political charade that should be questioned by everyone.

Email: spenfieldNY@gmail.com

Vanishing Veggies - The World's Vegetables Are Vanishing, And It's Quietly Wrecking Our Diets

 Before agriculture became industrialized, there was a much greater diversity of plants being grown for food.

For instance, there are more than 4,000 different varieties of potatoes, but in the United States, only about five to eight varieties are widely used.

From artificial selection, to monocultures for mass production, to genetic modification, the industrialization of agriculture – and the supply chains that distribute these products – has whittled away the variety of vegetables that wind up on our tables.

A review by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 24 percent of the wild relatives of vegetables assessed at the species level are at risk of extinction.

And as we lose the genetic diversity of vegetables, we also lose their nutrients and the ability to adapt our crops to changing climate conditions.

"A few species, such as lettuce, onions, and tomatoes, have become global crops and are part of diets worldwide," van Zonneveld and team write.

"Many others, such as spider plant, slippery cabbage, and bitter gourd, which are typically denser in micronutrients and better adapted to challenging and resource-limited environmental conditions, are available only regionally, and very often neglected in large-scale food policies and strategies."

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-worlds-vegetables-are-vanishing-and-its-quietly-wrecking-our-diets

"Currently, only a few local varieties are conserved in gene banks, with many gaps in collections, constraining breeding and the development of improved varieties for larger-scale production," van Zonneveld and team note.

Slippery cabbage is one of the most popular dark-green leafy vegetables in the Pacific, where the researchers say it has potential to greatly improve women's and children's nutrition especially.

Bitter gourd is another climate-resilient vegetable popular in Asia and the Caribbean that has many wild relatives, which the researchers think could improve crops in these tropical regions.

And then, there's the well-known pumpkin, which can tolerate drought and heat, while producing fruits rich in beta-carotene. Despite its commercial importance, the researchers say "its genetic resources remain underutilized and poorly conserved".

The researchers think these four vegetables could be great starting points for diversifying food crops regionally, but there's plenty of others.

We just need to start growing and eating them, before they disappear.

Related: Scientists Found a Remarkable Way to Help Kids Like Vegetables

"The ongoing biodiversity loss for these and the other 1,480-plus vegetable species occurs at a time when global food systems urgently need diversification," the team concludes.

"Alignment under a global initiative would ensure that local and regional efforts translate into improvements in diets at both the local and global levels."

Closer to home, we can add more diversity to our diets in a few ways.

If you're a keen gardener, look for 'landrace' and 'heirloom' varieties of vegetables to grow in your garden.

Collecting seeds from your own vegetables to grow again next year is another great way to keep that biodiversity rolling – you might even end up with your own unique varieties.

Shopping for groceries at farmers' markets and independent grocers is also a great way to find a wider range of vegetables (and fruits) to add to your diet.

Who knows, you might even find a new favorite.

Moving the Girls Out - by Vox Day - Sigma Game

 It’s always easy to tell when an organization finally gets serious about something, because the first thing they do is eject the women in charge:

https://sigmagame.substack.com/p/moving-the-girls-out?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2265630&post_id=210381490&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=y7h5a&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email 

....This is interesting to me because it indicates that more than a year after the little drone-and-pony show at the White House, the US military has finally grasped the reality that 5GW > 3GW and that no amount of posturing can substitute for the combination of drones and the ability to manufacture large numbers of them.

The US military was so far behind the state of the military art that it still thought of Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems as being the perfect sort of makework job to park a diversity executive. But now that Iran has demonstrated that an effective drone force can negate the combined power of the USAF and the USN, everyone understands that this might be one of the most important responsibilities in the Navy.

I doubt it will make much difference, to be honest, because having a more decisive male decision-maker in the position isn’t much of a substitute for an effective mass-productive industrial sector. But the replacement of Ms Gassler is an indication that someone in authority now understands the strategic importance of robotic and autonomous systems.

The Value (to me) of Church History - by bionic mosquito

 https://achristianhall.substack.com/p/the-value-to-me-of-church-history?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2189155&post_id=210141642&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=y7h5a&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email 

Yet, the Church is still here.

And I take this as an encouragement.

(By “Church,” I hope you know that I mean what is described as the Invisible Church.)

It means that the Church survives corrupt leaders; it means that the Church survives difficult times, harsh punishments, unjust laws – even when the Church turns on itself; it means that Christ always wins, even through the worst trials and tribulations.

This is the lens through which I read Church history; this is one of the values for me in studying Church history. We suffer through corrupt leaders and difficult times (inside and outside of the Church), harsh punishments, and unjust laws.

Yet, as we have seen throughout 2,000 years of Church history, these have never eliminated the Church – more accurately, God has never abandoned His Church.

Some look at this history and wonder: what kinds of so-called “Christians” were these? I look at the history and am in increasing wonder as to the awesome power and love of the God that we worship! He has preserved His Church for me, and He has preserved me to the point of finding it.