The Gary Null Show - 02.22.22

Depression linked to reduced arginine levels

University of Eastern Finland, February 20, 2022

People suffering from major depressive disorder, MDD, have reduced arginine levels, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows. Arginine is an amino acid which the body uses to produce, e.g., nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, in turn, is a nervous system and immune defence mediator, and it also plays a role in vascular regulation. The global arginine bioavailability ratio, GABR, is an indicator of the body’s arginine levels, and the ratio has previously been used to measure the body’s capacity to produce nitric oxide. Reduced arginine bioavailability is also known to be an independent risk factor of cardiovascular diseases.

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Vitamin D supplementation associated with improvement in mood, desire in women

Medical University of Silesia (Poland), February 19 2022 

A study reported in Endokrynologia Polska resulted in improvement in female sexual desire, orgasm and satisfaction, as well as mood, after supplementation with vitamin D. Based on researchers Robert Krysiak and colleagues’ previous finding of an association between deficient vitamin D levels and abnormal female sexual function, a trial that examined the effects of six months of oral vitamin D supplementation was conducted among 47 women with deficient or insufficient plasma vitamin D levels. Women with vitamin D deficiency, defined as plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels that were lower than 2 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL), were given 4,000 international units (IU) vitamin D per day, and participants with insufficient levels of 20-30 ng/mL were given 2,000 IU daily or no vitamin D. Questionnaires that evaluated female sexual function and depressive symptoms were completed before and after the treatment period. Supplementation with vitamin D was associated with improved sexual desire in both deficient and insufficient women. Among participants with vitamin D deficiency, vitamin D improved total sexual function scores and scores for sexual satisfaction and orgasm, while decreasing total depression scores.

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Midwifery linked to better birth outcomes in state-by-state report cards

Oregon State University, February 22, 2022 

Midwife-friendly laws and regulations tend to coincide with lower rates of premature births, cesarean deliveries and newborn deaths, according to a new U.S.-wide “report card” that ranks all 50 states on the quality of their maternity care. The first-of-its-kind study found a strong connection between the role of midwives in the health care system – what the researchers call “midwifery integration” – and birth outcomes. States with high midwifery integration, like Washington and Oregon, generally had better results, while states with the least integration, primarily in the Midwest and South, tended to do worse. The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE. About 10 percent of U.S. births involve midwives, far behind other industrialized countries, where midwives participate in half or more of all deliveries. Each state has its own laws and regulations on midwives’ credentialing, their ability to provide services at a client’s home or at birth centers, their authority to prescribe medication and the degree to which they are reimbursed by Medicaid.

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Microbiome changes could underlie nicotinamide riboside’s ability to protect against weight gain

Medical College of Wisconsin, February 21 2022.

The January/February 2022 issue of the journal mSystems reported how the vitamin B3 derivative nicotinamide riboside (NR) impacts the gut microbiome and protects against weight gain. NR is a precursor of NAD+, a coenzyme found in all cells that aids in the production of energy. “Gut bacteria produce vitamin B3 in the colon and are capable of salvaging and metabolizing vitamin B3 and its derivatives,” wrote Valery V. Lozada-Fernández of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and colleagues. “However, it is unknown how dietary supplementation of NR alters the microbiome and if those alterations contribute to deflection of weight gain.” Mice were given diets that were high in fat with or without the addition of NR. NR supplementation resulted in less body mass gain, lower fasting glucose levels and differences in gut microbes, including a greater number of bacteria that produce butyrate.

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How sound waves could help regrow bones

RMIT University (Netherlands), February 22,2022

Researchers have used sound waves to turn stem cells into bone cells, in a tissue engineering advance that could one day help patients regrow bone lost to cancer or degenerative disease. The innovative stem cell treatment from researchers at RMIT University offers a smart way forward for overcoming some of the field’s biggest challenges, through the precision power of high-frequency soundwaves. Tissue engineering is an emerging field that aims to rebuild bone and muscle by harnessing the human body’s natural ability to heal itself. Additionally, the few clinical trials attempting to regrow bone have largely used stem cells extracted from a patient’s bone marrow—a highly painful procedure. In a new study published in the journal Small, the RMIT research team showed stem cells treated with high-frequency sound waves turned into bone cells quickly and efficiently.

(Videos)

1. Justin Trudeau’s China dictatorship gaffe (1:30) (start at :25)
2. Edward Dowd Clip (5:50)
3. Banishment From The Financial System The War On Dissent (11:51)
4. “OH MY GOD! Six Fatal Mistakes in Two Weeks”Jordan Peterson
5. Communism Has Arrived   6. Jonathan Haidt & Yuval Noah Harari: Adapting to Change in an Accelerating World (15:00 to 30:00)

 

(OTHER NEWS)

Wokeism Is a Cruel and Dangerous Cult

Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and—if need be—of those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda.

Victor Davis Hanson (Stanford University)

Wokeism has been described by its critics as the omnipresent use of race—and to a lesser extent, gender—to replace meritocracy and thus ensure equality of result. What follows from implementing that ideology are reparatory actions to reward those of the present by atoning for the injustices done to others in the past. Some see it as an update of 1960s cultural Marxism fads. Others scoff that it is just a return to 1980s-style political correctness. Still more see it as the logical successor to 1990s-type race, class, and gender obsessions—albeit with a shriller and more dangerous Jacobin, Soviet, and Maoist twist. Wokeism’s hysteria also invites comparisons to the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. But few have described wokeism as the cruel creed that it is. Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and—if need be—those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda. It is nihilist and destroys everything it touches. It tears apart foes and friends alike, whether by fueling media-driven hatred of Donald Trump or faux-deification of the disaster that is now Joe Biden. Woke’s Victims Defunding law enforcement and defaming police resulted in record numbers of murders in 12 U.S. cities. A wave of violent crime is even hitting America’s suburbs. Without much fear of arrest, indictment, conviction, and incarceration, emboldened violent career criminals for the past year have robbed, assaulted, and killed the innocent with impunity. The victims at the bus stop, the subway, or in the furniture store do not seem to warrant media or progressive attention, much less sympathy. They are the ignored—the unnamed, and the forgotten collateral damage from the grand experiment of redefining crime as a social construct. The guilty are the elite academics, activists, and billionaires like George Soros who are untouched by what they birthed. We have all seen videos of the vast expanse of flotsam and jetsam strewn by train thieves along the Union Pacific tracks in Los Angeles. Yet the Wild West mess is still more than just the concrete manifestations of Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón’s unhinged efforts to excuse criminals from legal consequences. The packages thrown along the ground by thugs and gangsters represent, among other things, lost COVID-19 test results of the ill. Presumably, they unknowingly are waiting still by the window for the delivery of results that never arrive. The package in the dirt was, perhaps, a key tractor part eagerly awaited, in vain, by the broke farmer in the Central Valley. The mess included the life-saving medicines shipped to the sick that disappeared. And our elected leaders did what in response? Governor Gavin Newsom apologized for using the insensitive word “gangs” to describe those who plunder, loot, and trash railcars. Always In Search of Targets It is a cruel thing to indoctrinate children with the lie that they are innately guilty of oppression due to their skin color. One accurate definition of racism is collective ill-treatment of an individual due to his innate appearance—on the pretext that such bias is deserved, given the target is deemed mentally, spiritually, or morally inferior because of said traits. But that, in a nutshell, is the essence of critical race theory: the destruction of all human traits and unique characteristics, as demonized individuals are reduced to stereotyped, faceless members of a collective. The Forgotten Broken Eggs of the Woke Omelet Equity in our Orwellian world is not equality, but payback. Again, it is the idea of making the current generation pay for the supposed sins of the long dead of centuries past. Aside from the destruction of merit by the substitution of racial criteria, millions from a discarded generation will have doors slammed on their careers—simply because of the color of their skin. And they will never forget that. The woke do not even make the effort to admit that class matters as much as, or more than, race. By doing so, they doom millions of poor white and Asian students, who managed in poverty to achieve excellent grades and test scores, from being admitted to top-tier schools. Their actual achievement, despite their absence of wealthy, college-educated, or well-connected parents, means little. Once a morally bankrupt society—for naïve, utopian, or ignoble reasons—begins to calibrate graduation ceremonies, dorm space, roommate selection, achievement, and grading standards based on race, then it not only will lose its standard of living, but it will deserve to. And it may have a future date with the violence of Rwanda, Iraq, or the Balkans. Power, Not “Equity,” Is the Creed In sum, wokeness is not about kindness, equality, fairness, or morality. It is the power agenda of the elite of all races. For differing reasons, they rig the game in their own interests, without a care about who suffers. Rich white people assume that they possess the money, the influence, the networking skills, and the connections to navigate around the very exclusionary rules they make for others. For them, there are seldom costs. But they win apparent psychological gain at feeling spiritually superior while driving a Range Rover. They get high on the sense of power they wield to engineer the lives of millions deemed less important than they. And to the degree they feel guilty about their own monopoly of wealth and leisure, such transient superficial remorse is alleviated by abstract caring for the “other.” If they can ensure that 50 percent of TV commercials highlight African Americans, then they worry little about the nation’s existential crisis of 800 blacks murdered in Chicago last year. And no such television execs have a clue—or likely a concern—about how to stop it. The woke take out a medieval contract that all their material indulgences can be balanced by virtue-signaling caring for the less fortunate—although always at someone else’s expense. Woke = Wealthy Careerists And for the millions of the affluent, elite nonwhite? The resurgence of racial obsessions conveniently destroys the old idea of class, even though now it is the far more precise calibration of inequality. For all the woke talk about “constructs” of gender, race is somehow alone exempted and declared innate, definable, and immutable. One’s appearance becomes the permanent victimized refuge—even of NBA multibillionaires and billionaire rappers alike. A Ward Churchill or Elizabeth Warren can desperately seek to leverage a career in becoming Native American, apparently as if they were almost trapped in their own white bodies. Yet they can still not manage to construct such assumed identities in the manner of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. If race is now the sole immutable barometer of who is a victim, who a victimizer, then LeBron James, Jay-Z, Kayne West, Chris Rock, Michelle Obama, and Oprah Winfrey are always to be among the eternally oppressed. The enormous influence, power, status, and wealth they wield never negates their victimhood, despite a nation three generations into affirmative action. In the immoral calculus of woke, the poor white or Southeast Asian offspring of poorly paid high-school dropouts constitute “the privileged.” And a multimillionaire racist like the TV anchorwoman Joy Reid claims to be the perpetual victim, not the inner-city African American retiree who in 2021 has lost local police protection. No wonder the woke elite and the affluent leftists fixate on race, given they are now the ruling class. Otherwise, their own privilege would be the obvious target of the once-beloved “Revolution.” So, they fear that by their own prior left-wing standards, they too could end up on the wrong side of their moral Maginot Line. Wokeism’s obsessions with ferreting out “white privilege” are a way for rich people to head off (so to speak) the fate of Marie Antoinette. Totalitarian Wokeism A final note. We know wokeism is both contrary to human nature and antithetical to democracy and constitutional government. Without public support, it has instead embraced an entire array of cruel, Soviet, and Maoist means to achieve its own self-interested ends. Woke talk about “racists” eerily emulates Soviet boilerplate about “counterrevolutionaries.” Today’s wokeist spouts things that could come right out of the mouth of the novelist Boris Pasternak’s character Army Commissar Strelnikov, or Mao’s Little Red Book concerning “suppression of counterrevolutionaries.” No wonder the woke, so-called “humanists” are the first to resort to Trotskyization and iconoclasm. They are masters of censoring, blacklisting, scapegoating, deplatforming, ritual humiliation, doxxing, cancel-culture, ostracism, and disbarring. Wokeism’s logic is the eternal one of the bully Jacobin with his guillotine lists of the revolutionary unpure, the 19th-century lynch mob storming the frontier jail, the Red Guards hounding the counterrevolutionary, and the forced mental hospitalizations of the Soviet Union. But above all, wokeism is a cruel cult—created by and for the careerist benefit of the privileged.