Emil Nolde The Sea, c. 1950*
LAST NIGHT OF THE LEONIDS
No moon. The pines like black wind
brushed the tips of stars.
Horses stood in their corral,
carved as if outside of time.
You said, “They are sleeping.”
But suddenly one horse,
the tallest, ran toward us
full gallop, a rift in the dark.
The other horses never stirred.
They slept, eternal statues. Only he
sensed us and needed to see —
shot through darkness like a marble flame.
We almost
stopped breathing, struck
with pure rhythm,
muscle and mind —
that shining horse starting up —
then standing still,
the frost of stars
braiding his tall outline —
And we too stood
still, face to face,
in the shivering starlight.
~ Oriana
EMILY DICKINSON’S LATER YEARS
~ In the fall of 1861, Dickinson experienced a difficult period she later referred to as "The Terror." It has never been fully explained, but may have involved disappointment at the lack of romantic reciprocation from the never-identified Master, the perceived emotional withdrawal by her sister-in-law Susan who was having her first child, or some other factor. It is possible she began to feel abandoned and alone but turned her distress into a kind of defiance and source of strength.
Dickinson expressed her resilience in an 1862 poem, "The zeroes taught us phosphorus." Phosphorus matches had become popular since their introduction in the 1820s, and for her, they apparently epitomized the ability of fire to blaze suddenly even in cold conditions; by implication, coldness can suddenly turn to vitality and creativity. It certainly was a period in which her own creativity, and ambition as well, was sparked. This was also at least in part due to her correspondence with the literary critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who sent her supportive letters that she later said had saved her life during this difficult time.
By 1866, however, her writing diminished, and she became even more withdrawn, rarely leaving the house. On those occasions, she wore light-colored clothing and became known in the neighborhood as The Woman in White. On the rare occasions when visitors would appear, she would not see them in person, but rather would talk from behind a closed door. What little social life she had was conducted primarily through letters and small gifts. The one notable exception was her relationship with Otis Phillips Lord, a judge with whom she shared literary thoughts, and whose interest may have become more romantic a few years later after his wife passed away.
DICKINSON AND DARWIN
In these years, Dickinson’s view of religion and mankind’s place in the universe continued to evolve as well. Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 led to widespread debate challenging the Calvinist notion that the world was based on immutable facts, among which was that mankind was exceptional, created by a miracle, and thus quite apart from the rest of nature.
Darwin pictured a very different kind of world, which was constantly, though slowly, changing, with continents rising and mountains appearing across geological time, and with a similar fluid process leading to the evolving of species. Dickinson, like Darwin, was also influenced by the death of loved ones, and also seeing the seeming brutality of nature in the lives of small creatures in their gardens and woods. These experiences made it easier to understand human beings as not being exceptional in their creation, but rather part of the natural world. Dickinson mentioned Darwin several times in her letters and had become more comfortable with the notion that the world was not immutably fixed but in a state of fluidity.
In 1874 Dickinson’s father died of a stroke while on a trip to Boston. The funeral took place in the entrance hall of their home, but she did not attend, instead listening from behind her upstairs bedroom door. The following year a stroke left her mother partially paralyzed and affected her memory. Dickinson’s writing declined to about 35 poems a year as she dealt with loss and her caretaking responsibilities. The year 1882 was notable for both the death of her mother, and also a family complication, her brother Austin had begun a rather public affair with the wife of an astronomy professor at Amherst. This led to some degree, withdrawal from his closeness with the rest of the family. The following year Dickinson’s nephew, Austin’s son Gilbert, with whom she was particularly attached, died, followed over the next decade by her friends Samuel Bowles, Charles Wadsworth, and Otis Phillips Lord. Isolated and seeing almost no one, her health deteriorated. By late 1885, she was frail and mostly stayed in bed; she passed away, from what at the time was thought to be Bright’s disease (chronic nephritis) in May 1886.
Later, her sister Lavinia found her papers, including correspondence and some 1800 poems. Lavinia honored Emily’s wish to burn her letters but had been left with no clear instructions about the poetry. Lavinia wanted to see them published, and turned them over, perhaps unwisely, to both Austin’s wife Susan as well as his lover Mabel Loomis Todd. A small volume, heavily edited by Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, appeared in 1890, followed by other small collections, but the inevitable squabble between the two women and then their children delayed the publication of the complete works for several decades.
Even in the early years the quality and freshness of the poems was recognized by luminaries such as William Dean Howells. Growing critical recognition, and then the later notoriety of having competing volumes issued by the daughters of Susan and Mabel continued to spark public interest. Many more editions appeared in the early 20th century, but it was not until the 1950s that the first complete and scholarly collections became available.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
There has been no shortage of retrospective analyses of Dickinson’s mental health. In 2000, psychiatrist John McDermott, in an assessment of her letters, suggested that at age 24 she had an episode that met formal criteria for a panic attack, and the beginning of agoraphobia. In a later study, he argued that during the first half of her most productive years, 1858-1865, the number of poems she wrote was much greater in the spring and summer compared to fall and winter, implying that she may have been affected by seasonal influences on her mood. This process was interrupted by the emotional upset we described earlier, which she termed The Terror. As we described, the end of The Terror marked the beginning of an even more productive four years, which he noted might be consistent with hypomania, raising the possibility that she may also have suffered from bipolar II disorder (meaning the "up" episodes never reach full-blown mania).
Certainly, Dickinson left much evidence of being very sensitive to the seasons, as well as numerous occasions in which she likened the winter months to death. One issue militating against the interpretation that the years 1862-1865 represented a period of hypomania is the very long duration; in data developed more recently than the McDermott 2001 study, about three-quarters of episodes in bipolar II disorder were reported to be for less than four weeks. There are, of course, alternative interpretations to her remarkable increase in productivity after The Terror. One could be that she now had the support of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who she later credited with saving her life. Another could be that her new productivity was a response to having been so focused on death; indeed, she likened her new work to being like the boy who sings as he passes a graveyard. Viewed in this way, her output in those years might reflect the maturing and blossoming of a creative response to a period of depression.
Two decades later, when she was 53, Dickinson’s physician believed that she suffered from nervous prostration. At the time this was considered a form of neurasthenia manifested as fatigue, anxiety, and depressed mood. Aside from this, we know little of how her condition was viewed at the time. We do know that her life was marked by a number of deaths of persons to whom she was close, beginning with her cousin when she was 14, and that her response was so great that the family felt the need to send her away to live with relatives in Boston. Both her letters and poetry dwell on thoughts of loss, of which she experienced many.
In more recent years. it has been recognized that about 10-20 percent of bereaved persons develop what was first called complicated grief and is now formalized as prolonged grief disorder. Persons with this condition continue to grieve more than a year after the event, and manifest many of the symptoms of depression, though with some subtle differences; their self-derogatory thoughts, for instance, do not reflect an overall sense of worthlessness, but rather are oriented to belief in their having failed the loved one, and thoughts of death center on the lost loved one and the notion of joining them.
The question of whether this might fit Emily Dickinson, or whether this is an over-medicalization of a reaction to a universal human experience, is a specific case of a broader issue being debated for society at large. What we can say is that she was very sensitive to the loss of important figures, either through death or perceived withdrawal of affection. We can speculate whether this inhibited her work or whether instead she was able to transform these thoughts creatively into elegant lyric poetry. Like other figures in this blog, such as Herman Melville and Charles Darwin, the life of the writer has been as rich a source of fascination and supposition as the writings themselves.
Dickinson 1890 cover, first edition of Poems
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychiatry-history/202207/emily-dickinson-the-later-years
Mary:
There is such temptation to 'explain' Emily Dickinson, not only because she was retiring, even asocial, and kept the world at a distance in a remarkable and unusual way, talking to people from behind a closed door, listening to her father's funeral from her closed upstairs room, but mainly, I think, because she was so singularly original in her art. There is no one quite like her.
I think it's quite a stretch to diagnose her as bipolar...her behavior was not outrageous or flamboyant, and one doesn't need the push of hypomania to be productive. From her poetry we know she had an exquisite sensitivity to both ideas and experience, that she felt things intensely. Distancing can be a way to tone down the intensity of experience to a more comfortable level. We know she was ambivalent about being “seen,” but she did share her work with a few members of her "select society." She knew her work was not the usual, and might not be welcomed or understood. She also knew its worth, careful to keep it as she did, sewing fair copies into 'fascicles,' left in a locked chest.
Oriana:
My take on Emily is that she was a "highly sensitive person" -- I use the term as defined by Elaine Aron. Overstimulation is particulary unbearable to such individuals. It's downright painful. Emily's room was her refuge from sensory overload.
Perhaps even more important, I agree that she valued her work. And that work demanded solitude, something that had to be guarded against the constant intrusions of making and receiving frequent visits expected of women in her social sphere, as well as all the trivial occupations expected of "gentle women."
"The Homestead" -- the house where Emily and Lavinia lived *
SOVIET PROPAGANDA’S BIGGEST LIES
~ The Soviet government always claimed that people’s living conditions in the Western countries were worse than in the Soviet Union. As they say, the bigger the lie the more they’ll believe in it…until you see the evidence to the contrary.
In 1939, Finland successfully fought off the Soviet Union in the Winter War. Finland had gained independence in 1917 and built a social democracy, geared towards the needs of its people.
The few Soviet people who visited Finland in 1980s thought they landed on another planet. And then they had to return to the USSR and listen to fairy tales about the “socialist paradise.”
A children’s movie “Mikko from Tampere Asks for Advice” was a joint Soviet-Finnish production that came out in 1986.
On the surface, it was stock propaganda patronizing the “little nation.” Finnish boy Mikko wants to meet a famous Soviet cat tamer, Kuklachev so he could teach him how to take care of his cat.
The film director went for realism and shot many scenes in Finland, inadvertently allowing millions of Soviet children (including this author) to have a glimpse of their peers' lives behind the Iron Curtain.
Mikke’s dad works as a driver. The driver’s family is supposed to share a communal apartment with ten families, yet they live in their own private house, which is not a one-room-plus-kitchen country cottage with an outhouse toilet either. There are at least three rooms in the house! There is a living room with wonderful, bright furniture. The concept of living room was novel to Soviet people so many of them were wondering where are the beds.
The driver’s family house also had a dining room with a large cool table and beautiful bright chairs for all the family members. Dining room was also a novel concept to most of the Soviet viewers: they cooked and ate in the kitchen. And lo and behold, there is the second floor with a nice, painted staircase!
Soviet children expected to see an attic with a tiny room upstairs. Mikko had his own comfortable room, and what was really hard to swallow — his own bathroom!
Viewers weren't looking at Mikko dad’s minivan. All eyes were on the surrounding houses. They looked beautiful and neat, no Soviet flaky wall paint that was always explained by “we have a cold climate.”
Mikko plays in the children's band. The children have all the musical instruments that they needed. Mikko’s dad bought him a guitar and wasn’t humiliated with sorrowful stories about the Soviet state and Comrade Gorbachev personally taking care of the children of the world, so there’s nothing left for him.
Soviet children immediately paid attention to how Finnish children were dressed: jeans, fashionable pants, bright and colorful print t-shirts. No scary school uniform made of ugly synthetic-wool fabric. Bright clothes, bicycles, their own rooms, interesting hobbies - all these things Finnish children had without having to listen to stories about the leading role of the Communist Party and the "international duty" in Afghanistan. In other words, they had a great life without 24/7 propaganda.
Finnish women had their own cars, and families had more than one car in the household.
Meanwhile, a Soviet citizen arrives in Finland. There was no vacancy at the hotel, so he began to ingratiate himself to the hotel owner (a representative of the authorities, to the Soviet citizen) to get a room. When it didn't work out, he showed some magic tricks”.
Five years later the Soviet Union had run out of magic tricks and ended its short but eventful existence. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Mikko in his family's living room.
*
~ Georgians, like Armenians, survived historically because they are textual peoples – that is to say, they are people who own texts, they have writings. Nations that depend on territory, or gold mines or whatever it is – they can disappear. Nations created by an enterprising, talented general – they can disappear. Textual nations persist. The more textual, the more they persist. ~ Edward Luttwak
*
COULD RUSSIA LOSE ITS GRIP ON SIBERIA?
~ What the Buryats are inflicting on Ukraine, while fighting as part of the Russian army – the cruelty and greed of the Russian colonialists – they themselves experienced four hundred years ago. What do we know about the nation in Siberia?
A glimmer of hope for Buryatia’s ability to decide its own destiny came after the October Revolution in 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today’s involvement of Buryats in the war in Ukraine on the side of the aggressor could serve not only as a pillar of shame but also as another opportunity for the nation’s self-determination, as Buryats are slowly becoming united by an anti-war movement. The seeds of Buryatia’s independence are now slowly sprouting, mainly abroad, including in Lithuania.
The Buryats are one of the most numerous nations living in Siberia. Almost half a million Buryats live in Russia, with an additional 150,000 living abroad for work or political reasons. Based on open-source data, more than 10 military units, including six brigades, with tens of thousands of troops from all over Russia, are deployed in the Republic of Buryatia and Ulan-Ude, its capital.
The 5th Buryat Tank Brigade is included in a list of more than ten other units of the Russian Armed Forces whose members may be implicated in war crimes in Ukraine’s Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin.
Bloody history
The 17th-century annexation of Buryatia to Russia was not peaceful. Back in 2013, historian Vladimir Khamutaev was forced to emigrate from Russia after writing a book, The Annexation of Buryatia to Russia. History, Law, Politics. In it, he presented a history of colonization that is at odds with the official Russian version, from the first military forays of the Tsar’s Ataman and Cossacks into Buryat lands in 1618–1627 to the major Russian-Buryat battles of 1629–1767.
“Bringing the Buryats ‘under the hand of the White Tsar’ was accompanied by unprecedented atrocities. The local governors, intoxicated with their power in a land far from the state center, mocked the people in every possible way. [...] Uluses were burned, women and children were taken into slavery, property was looted,” writes E. Zalkind in the book The Indestructible Friendship of the Buryat-Mongolian and Russian Peoples.
In the early 20th century, Russia set about dismantling Buryats’ tribal self-government and intensifying the Russification of the local population. However, the seizure of ancestral lands under the guise of new land management led to the first spontaneous and later organized Buryat resistance.
In April 1903, Russian War Minister Aleksey Kuropatkin said that “for the slightest manifestation of freedoms, disobedience to the authorities, and for any demands whatsoever, the Buryats will be wiped off the face of the earth”.
Anti-war movement
In the 18th century, the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov promised that Russia’s power would grow with Siberia. However, in 2022, Buryatia could divide Russia, according to the Finnish-Buryat politician Dorjo Dugarov.
“If the Buryat people revolt, Russia will come to an end because Buryatia is almost in the middle, dividing Russia in two. If only the Buryats would unite!” Dugarov says.
In his words, all of Buryatia’s resources go to Moscow: “It’s unfair to keep all Siberian peoples in poverty – either ensure equality or put us into separate apartments.”
Coffins from Ukraine are often going to Buryatia, not Moscow. Meanwhile, in Ulan-Ude, modest blue and yellow stickers with calls for peace are being pasted on lampposts, and posters with Russia’s war symbols are being defaced. On social media, the Free Buryatia Foundation is also calling on Buryats, Karelians, Tatars, and other people to end the war in Ukraine and start the denazification of Russia itself.
Ojumi Bashynova, currently living in Vilnius, is originally from Buryatia. According to her, she has been ashamed of her origins for most of her life. However, she is now proud of the emerging Buryat anti-war movement.
“Of course, everything is coming from abroad. I look at all those familiar faces – they think like me. I contacted those people immediately and they asked me to record a video message,” Bashynova says. “In it, I started talking about racism and the denazification of Russia itself. And now, this whole movement has turned towards the denazification of Russia.”
After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Bashynova, her husband, and their three children left Russia to settle in Lithuania. She thinks that it was the right decision.
“I didn’t think there would be an even bigger disaster. [...] Those who didn’t leave then probably regret it now,” Bashynova says.
Before moving to Lithuania, she wrote about the Gulag. She says her articles were politicized, it became risky to publish them. In Lithuania, she continued her work, searching for information about Lithuanians deported to Irkutsk and Buryatia during the Soviet times.
“There were not many Lithuanians who returned alive, but they were all very grateful to the Buryats. Lithuanians were deported there to die, and the Buryats supported them, fed them, taught them how to live in the harsh climate,” Sotkina says.
She has no doubt that if the Ukrainians, who are already being deported from the Russian-controlled territories, were moved to Buryatia, the local people would help them too.
War and poverty
According to Dugarov, it is “a bit easier for the Buryats to shoot at someone with a European look”.
“They are currently fighting for the so-called Russian world. But their logic is that they [Ukrainians] are not ours, they are white. This is not racism. It’s just that in Russia, there has always been a feeling of dislike for Ukrainians […] – it has been perpetuated for decades. Moreover, the Buryats themselves do not like Russians, and for them, a Russian or a Ukrainian is roughly the same,” he said.
Most Buryats know someone who is now fighting in the war in Ukraine. According to Bashynova, her cousin’s future son-in-law went to war, and she is now following the Ukrainian Telegram channel “Look for your own”.
Sotkina also says a husband of her classmate from Ulan-Ude is fighting in Ukraine: “They have a mortgage. Of course, they are in slavery. [Buryats] are fighting out of poverty.”
According to the Lithuanian anthropologist Jonutytė, Buryats do indeed go to war because of socio-economic reasons.
“It is one of the few options for a better life. According to statistics, the standard of living in Buryatia is very low,” the anthropologist says. In 2021, Buryatia was ranked 78 out of 85 Russia's regions in terms of affluence.
Moreover, Buryats, like the inhabitants of other Russian peripheries, have to constantly prove their loyalty to Moscow: “The Buryats grew up in such an environment. They are under pressure from the social hierarchy in Russia itself.”
Fate of the Buryat language
According to official data, just over 200,000 people spoke Buryat in Russia in 2010. Dugarov says that the local language is preserved in the family only if it is spoken in principle. A few years ago, Buryat was removed from the primary school curriculum. It is not required for university admissions, nor is it used in the public sector.
“Young people don’t speak, write, or read in Buryat. There is little Buryat on TV and radio, […] and everything is being done to break up Buryat into dialects and make it disappear because there will be no single Buryat language,” Dugarov says.
According to Jonutytė, the preservation of the Buryat language was complicated by the urbanization of the region.
“Ulan-Ude has always been a Russian colonial city. When urbanization and the policy of accustoming Buryats to a sedentary life was being implemented during the Soviet era, they were put in a linguistic environment that was not favorable to them – they could not even use Buryat in public,” she says.
“In the villages, Buryat is still very much alive. Unfortunately, recent trends are not positive. The sharp decline in Buryat language proficiency could be traced back to our own times and linked to post-Soviet Russian policies,” she adds.
According to Bashynova, not only the Buryat language but also the culture of the region is not being nurtured because people are encouraged to learn about “the great Russian culture”.
Short-lived democracy
The memory of Buryatia’s statehood lives on in many families.
“I know that there was the Buryatia-Mongolia Republic, and our grandfather was the social security minister there,” Sotkina says.
Dugarov also recalls his nation’s history: “I come from a part of Buryatia that declared full independence at the beginning of the 20th century, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, after the October Revolution and the civil war, and existed as an independent state almost until 1921. And when the Bolsheviks came, the Buryats fought a guerrilla war until 1927.”
According to him, Buryats still remember the democracy that flourished in the independent country.
“We had our own king, parliament, and government. My great-grandfather was a justice minister and one of the main authors of the Constitution. It was quite a democratic state – a bicameral parliament, equal rights for both sexes. So we have a tradition of statehood,” he says.
Dugarov had been a member of the Buryat Democratic Movement and the Erche youth social movement since the early 2000s. In 2014, he openly opposed the deployment of Buryat troops to Ukraine and was soon forced to leave Russia. There was a very strong dissident movement in Buryatia during the Soviet era.
“Our rightful king, Bedjard Dandaron, was also a Buddhist philosopher. He was imprisoned in Soviet camps but survived and became a scholar, an orientalist. He had many Lithuanian followers from the 1950s and 1960s. When I came to Lithuania, I was welcomed by the descendants of Dandaron’s students, mainly professors from Vilnius University,” Dugarov recalls.
According to him, the ideology of pan-mongolianism is also popular in Buryatia: “This is the idea of the cultural, economic and political unity of all the Mongolian-speaking peoples of the world – the Buryats, the Kalmyks, and the Mongols. It was born on the territory of Buryatia.”
However, neither then nor now is there any talk of creating a unified Mongolian state: “Half a millennium has passed since the Buryats were separated from Mongolia. We have taken a different path.”
In the words of Jonutytė, there are some Buryats who want Buryatia to be fully independent or even to join Mongolia, but they make up a very small percentage.
“Many Buryats, including some Buryat activists, believe that Buryatia should remain part of Russia in the future, but they want a completely different Russia,” the anthropologist says.
But Dugarov is convinced that most Buryats secretly dream about independence: “We Buryats should live in our own country. That’s what 99 percent of people think. It’s deep down in all of us. It is only imaginary fears that cause problems, since Russia has shown that it is not so strong militarily.” ~
https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1728921/buryatia-is-similar-to-lithuania-can-russia-s-grip-on-siberia-slip?fbclid=IwAR31h5dfe3fEOul0crqAIo5bMu_Z7u7C1451VgiNjv7veGAuRG8GIRyZoY4
Misha Firer on the use of Buryats
~ In the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities are trying not to use too many ethnic Russians as cannon fodder fearing public backlash against Putin’s Napoleon plans.
As a solution, Buryats, Kalmiks, Tuvi, Chechens, Ingushi and young men of other ethnic minorities of the Russian Federation are drafted and sent into meat grinders.
Treated as third-class citizens, Buryats, a Mongolian people who live near Lake Baikal in Siberia, are thrown into frontlines during the most ferocious battles, and they die in such quantities that there are murmurs that genocide is being committed against them as they number only about half a million people.
A school in Ulan Ude, capital of Buryatia reported that children complain of the foul smell of rotting meat: the school gym was being used as a conveyor belt to display dead Buryat soldiers that arrived every day before the burial.
According to Telegram channel Russian Bordsch, KIAs of buryats are greater than of any other ethnicity by a factor of ten. A Buryat has a ten times bigger chance to die or get wounded in Ukraine than an ethnic Russian.
The governor of Buryatia, Alexei Tsidenov is a Putin’s appointee. He’s half Russian, half Buryat, hails from Zabaikal Krai and doesn’t speak Buryat language. His constituents do not consider him one of their own.
Obeying Kremlin’s diktat, Tsidenov dispatches Buryats to the war front on another continent 5,300 kilometres away, or about same distance as to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the tropics.
Historically, the region has been heavily militarized, with many army bases. For the local men, this is often the only decent career option as Buryatia is one of the poorest region in the Russian Federation (81st out of 85 regions in Quality of Life according to Rosstat).
Buryat soldiers in Ukraine have been an embarrassment to the Kremlin. It is often Biryats who steal toilets, washing machines, and women’s underwear.
By many accounts of Ukrainians, they are also most sadistic soldiers in the Russian Army committing atrocities on unprecedented scale against civilians including rapes and torture in Bucha.
In Kherson and Novaya Kahovka, Buryats and Chechens have divvied up captured territories into spheres of influence like mafias in New York, and locals often can hear Kalashnikov automatic shots fired between the two ethnic groups.
Kadirovtsi (private militia of Chechen warlord Kadyrov) took control over Mariyupol after less valuable Buryats were transported away to the meat grinder on Donbas front.
According to the many accounts, Chechen fighters view themselves as “a superior race” to “Russian slaves.” They hate central authority in Moscow and Russians, but don’t rebel only because their region receive enormous tributes from Moscow annually.
It should be noted here that conquest of the Buryat lands by Muscovy began in the 17th century, in which they exterminated more Buryats than there are alive today — hundreds of thousands — went on for more than a century, from 1620 to 1728.
Peter the Great gave Cossacks free reign to do what it takes to subdue Buryats and install imperial power in the region, and even the emperor, who publicly executed people with an ax and at one time hung Streltsy uprising rebels on a monastery wall, was appalled at the scope of pillaging the Cossacks unleashed on Buryats whom they viewed as subhuman.
After annexation of Buryat lands, Baikal region was shaken by riots and uprisings, the guerrilla war continued, and thousands more Buryats died.
After the February revolution, the state of Buryat-Mongolia was created, but after the October Revolution, Bolsheviks merciless suppressed all the attempts to gain independence by Buryatia.
In the 1930s, numerous prisons and labor camps appeared in Buryatia, where most dangerous convicts were kept. When they were released, they settled nearby.
After World War II, the capital of Buryatia, Ulan-Ude, became a transshipment center where routes from Kolyma and Magadan converged. In 1953, the city was under the rule of bandits for several months.
Under Vladimir Putin, Russification of Buryatia has begun. Buryat language was suppressed and school education system pressured them into identifying themselves firstly as Rossiyane (citizens of Russia), and secondly as an a Buryat people.
There was a scandal that went viral when a Buryat teenage girl complained to the police that her parents talk to her in Buryat, while she’s a Rossiyanka, a Russian speaker and has nothing to do with Buryat ethnicity.
A Buryat woman that I dated briefly in Moscow wouldn’t confess to her roots, and when I pressed on, said, blushing, “Oh my parents are Buryats, but I’m a Rossiyanka (Russian)!”
In general, I believe it is understandable why today's Buryats behave like that in Ukraine after being treated so cruelly by Moscovy in its many forms for centuries. ~ Quora
Oriana:
Obviously, in Putin’s army, a soldier’s life is cheap — especially if that soldier is not an ethnic Russian, but belongs to one of the Turkic or Mongolian minorities.
There is supposed to be a Russian saying, “Beat your own so that strangers are afraid.” But in this case, it’s hard to say to say that Putin is brutalizing “his own.” Rather, he sees them as “other” — Asian and inferior. Their lives don’t count. Why should ethnic Russians be thrown into the Ukrainian meat-grinder as long as there are enough young Buryats.
Not that Slavic lives have value either — Ukrainians are Slavic and Christian, but that doesn’t prevent the mass slaughter of civilians.
And here perhaps we find an essential difference between the West and countries like Russia — the value of human life. When we look at dictators in general, human life is of little or no value.
By the way, Yul Brynner had Buryat ancestors. 
*
WHY DOES RUSSIA DENY ITS CASUALTIES? (Misha Firer)
~ General Igor Konashenkov, chief spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defence lies on behalf of President Vladimir Putin churning out bullshit in his daily briefings of the special military operation with a straight face in the best traditions of president’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and spokesperson of Ministry of Foreign Affair Maria Zakharova.
Nationalists…armed gangs run amok…marauders, robbers…banderovtsi…Ukrainian Nazis…Kievan Nationalist Regime…militants…
This is not the full list of nicknames for the Ukrainian Army that defends their land against the Russian aggression Konashenkov has come up with.
On February 24, General Konashenkov reported: “Ukrainian Army soldiers en masse leave their positions, abandon their weapons, and surrender without a fight.”
However, starting from March, Ministry of Defence stopped dividing Ukrainian military into good and bad guys, and pronounced that Russian Army is fighting against militants, mercenaries, and Nazis. In MinDef lingo, which you read on Quora:
Nationalist/militant/Nazi is a Ukrainian who refuses to surrender to the Russian Army.
On March 30th, Konashenkov reported that “two battalions of Nazis are being formed…in a synagogue that Kyiv is using for their nationalist purposes.”
Jewish president, Jewish prime minister and Jewish minister of defense in Kyiv ordering to form Nazi battalions in a synagogue?
No contradiction here because minister of foreign affairs Sergey Lavrov whose daughter is married to an Israeli citizen and whose three grandchildren are citizens of Israel explained, “Adolph Hitler had Jewish blood.”
Ridiculous? I’m half Jewish and I’ve been called Nazi and Führer on Quora almost from day one by Putin’s bots. Russia is run by gopniks, low class crooks so don’t expect any common sense from them.
Konashenkov uses other newspeak terms: occupation is “taking under control,” instead of shelling civilians in the city - “blocking the city,” and streets battles are “purges.”
Not at any time did Konashenkov talk about retreat of Russian forces. Their departure from Kyiv and Chernihiv, he called “planned regrouping of troops.”
This presented a problem as the same settlements that changed hands and then got recaptured were announced as captured as if for the first time.
For example, Konashenkov briefed on March 2nd that Kremennaya in Luhansk People Republic was taken under the Russian control.
And then on March 7th, he announced again that “Kremennaya was just taken under the Russian control.”
March 31st, “Russian troops moved five kilometers and took under control Kremennaya.”
April 1st, “Russian Army blocked settlement Kremennaya.”
April 17th, “Russian Army destroyed forty groupings with Ukrainian military hardware and troops in Kremennaya.”
April 21st, “troops of the Russian armed forces and of the Luhansk Armed Forces took Kremennaya under full control.””
In the morning briefing of February 28 Konashenkov reported, “314 tanks, 57 Muti-rocket launchers, 121 artillery guns, 274 armored carrier vehicles of the nationalists have been destroyed.”
In the evening of the same day the figures changed — but the wrong way around. “311 tanks, 51 multi-rocket launchers, 147 artillery guns [increase of 36 within a few hours], 263 armored carrier vehicles were destroyed by Russian Army.”
On April, 16 Konashenkov claimed that from the beginning of the special military operation, 987 artillery pieces of the Ukrainian Army have been destroyed. Next day, additional 111 artillery guns were destroyed. On the evening of the same day, Konashenkov added 106 more artillery guns to the tally of 1098.
Next days, four batteries of artillery guns were blown up that added up to 1,004. That’s 94 fewer than the previous day.
On March 6th, Konashenkov claimed that “almost the entire combat ready Air Force of the Kievan regime was destroyed.”
Four days later, he corrected “90% of the air forces bases and fighter jets were put out of order.”
On March 24th, “70% of the military hardware of the Ukrainian Army were destroyed.”
On March 25th, he reported, “Almost the entire Ukrainian Air Force has been destroyed.”
By June 4th, according to the daily briefing Russian Army have destroyed more military airplanes than Ukraine has had in its entire history. According to Konashenkov 187 military planes were destroyed while Ukrainian Army had only 138.
At the same time, Russian Army lost only one military plane, a fighter jet, and it was in the first day due to a technical malfunction. The pilot ejected and returned to his military base safely.
Konashenkov claimed that 75 Bayraktar were destroyed plus a hangar that housed multiple units, while at that time Ukraine had only 62 Bayraktars.
How’s that possible? Russian soldiers take wrecks of a Bayraktar to various positions and photograph them to get paid a hefty bonus.
Kills of nationalists have been growing by leaps and bounds. If initially, Konashenkov reported 100 Ukrainian KIAs per day, by April the numbers grew up to 500. In the first 100 days of special military operation, according to Konashenkov’s briefings, Russian Army killed 40,596 Ukrainian soldiers and officers.
This should add up to roughly 160,000 WIAs, or about 80% of the Ukrainian Army.
At the same time, Russian Army sustained no casualties. They suddenly stopped dying after reporting 1,351 KIAs on March 25th.
Konashenkov didn’t say anything about the sunk cruiser Moskva or counter-offensive in Kherson Oblast, neither about losing more than 70 units of military hardware at the river crossing in Donbas. Bucha? Nada.
For his special talents, Putin promoted Konashenkov to the General Lieutenant rank, although he’s spent his entire carrier in the press service.
And finally an icing on the cake: General Konashenkov studied at Zhitomir Military Institute in Ukraine. ~ (Quora)
CNBC, MARCH 2023
NATO estimates that up to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, injured, captured or gone missing during the first month of the Kremlin’s war, an alliance official confirmed to NBC News.
Of those, between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian troops have died, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Oriana:
Now that it’s July, some estimate the number of Russians killed to be 30,000 or more. And let’s not forget the injured, captured, or missing — one way or another, not available for combat.
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When a unit has 30% of losses it is combat ineffective so 30% or 70% is not as important as whether that unit is ineffective. ~ David Peters
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Alex Nagi:
After all this never-ending nightmare is over, there will be tons and tons of academic research studying Russian propaganda, how despite the obvious ridiculousness to anyone with a semblance of critical thought it was extremely effective inside the country.
Bruno Cardeal:
But then, hundreds of thousands of families know their relatives didn’t return from barbarian invasion/genocide of Ukraine and they also don’t do anything… not even for their relatives who died... Their silence is their acceptance of what is going on… and they will suffer the consequences,
Philippe S:
They probably don’t even know yet. They most probably get told that their relatives are on duty and cannot be contacted for now. This will go on as long as they can use that line to prevent inquiries from the families of the dead soldiers.
Pru J Boynar:
Watch “The Kremlin's Secret War: Russia's Ghost Army in Ukraine" Vice News, on YouTube. It's heartbreaking to see how the families of the fallen and injured are treated. One mother who kept asking questions about how her son died was asked what her problem was as she had had the money to spend on alcohol.
Dorothy Peck:
Volodymyr Zolkin posted an interview on Flash with a captured Russian soldier who called his mother. The mother said that she was glad to know he was alive as he’d been listed as MIA. Instead of asking if he’d been injured or if he was being well treated, she asked who she needed to contact to make sure his payments continued to arrive. The poor lad looked increasingly frustrated that his mother’s only concern was regarding the money, not him.
Jerzy Pawlak:
But this weeks top entry in the “pure nonsense comedy about Ukrainian war” contest goes to Yevgieniy Valicki, Russian-nominated mayor of the occupied Melitpol. Reporting an Ukrainian missile attack he reportedly said that “Ukrainians tried to attack a residential area of Melitopol, however their American-made missile malfunctioned, strayed off target and accidentally destroyed a Russian ammo depot close to the airport”.
David Stewart:
I am 76 years old and during my entire life I have learned that no matter what the Russians say, be it the Soviet Union, the Russian Republic or whatever name we use to refer to the Putin regime, the one incontestable fact is the Russian government lies when the truth might do them more good. In psychology we refer to this as compensation for a massive inferiority complex or better yet, disorder. We had our own cross to bear, called Trump, a pathological liar. Well Putin has morphed into a short bald-headed Trump.
Simon Davies:
Misha, in ‘cloud cuckoo land’, how do you maintain your sanity? It’s surreal enough reading about it, let alone living in it.
Oriana:
“Nazi battalions being formed in a Kiyv synagogue” takes the cake.
Mary:
The absurdist clown circus that goes on with all the Russian Propaganda, including that crazy statement about a Jewish Nazi plot from a synagogue creates a sense of the surreal, a kind of astonishment at the sheer obtuseness of such nonsense. Yet it is apparently accepted indiscriminately in Russia. It seems very much like Trump's inability to stop lying, even when, as noted, they lie when the truth would serve them better. This noxious cloud cover does nothing to conceal the true horrors of Putin's war. This is a nightmare circus staged by evil clowns whose ringmaster intends no less than genocide.
Oriana:
Right on. Russia does seem a "cloud cuckoo land," and all of it would be just funny if not for the horrific fact that Russia is waging a very destructive war against its "brotherly" neighbor (also officially a "fake country"). "We are only taking back what used to be ours," is Putin's official line. Worse, he'd like to "take back" countries like Lithuania and Estonia, and half of Poland, including Warsaw. That's why Putin must be stopped: he won't stop on his own.
Russia is indeed quite a puzzle — a country that has the potential of being one of the leading countries in the world, economically, scientifically, culturally, you name it — at the same time, a country that has never in its history experienced democracy and is drenched in corruption to a degree that is hard to believe in the West.
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A BRIEF COMIC RELIEF 
“Don’t drink and drive a train.”
This is in Russia; my source is Quora
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Lenin tenderly holding a cat is somewhat like St. Francis. (1922)
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“That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.“ - John Fowles
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ICELAND: WHERE TWO TECTONIC PLATES MEET
~ On a recent sunny afternoon in Iceland, a group of scientists filed off a bus and took in a view of geological grandeur that, nearly everywhere else on Earth, would require a deep-diving submersible. They were standing in Thingvellir, a sweeping valley surrounded by majestic cliffs; the valley is one tiny portion of a long seam between tectonic plates that runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean.
In Iceland, this seam, called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, takes a brief jog over land before disappearing again beneath the sea. The ridge is essentially a volcanic seam many thousands of miles long, where magma is belched from deep inside the Earth, creating new crust and pushing tectonic plates apart. It moves at a rate of about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) per year.
"You stand there, and you can imagine you're on the floor of the ocean," said Ken Verosub, a distinguished professor of geology at the University of California, Davis. He and other scientists were attending a geology conference; a field trip brought them to the only dry site that marks the meeting place of the North American plate and the Eurasian plate.
Out of the ocean
Essentially everywhere else on Earth, the volcanic seams that birth new crust and shove continents apart lie at the bottom of the sea; they are called mid-ocean ridges.
The crack that divides East from West. On one side is the North American Plate, on the other is the Eurasian Plate.
"In Iceland it's sitting right at the surface," said Michael Rampino, a geologist at New York University who also attended. At Thingvellir, "you can put one foot on the North American plate and one foot on the Eurasian plate," he said.
Iceland itself is a side effect of aggressive volcanic activity along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; it was birthed over millennia as lava burbled up and rose higher and higher on either side of the seafloor fissure. "So it's one huge volcano with a crack going down the middle of it," Rampino told OurAmazingPlanet.
"New lava comes up in the middle, and pushes the older lava to either side," Verosub told OurAmazingPlanet. "As you get farther from the rift zone, the lava flows get older and older on both sides.”
When scientists figured this out, it provided evidence in support of the idea of plate tectonics — which painted a picture of a dynamic, changing planet — when the game-changing theory was still in its infancy in the 1960s.
Hidden volcanoes
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge cuts south from the Arctic Ocean, across Iceland, and down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the best studied of the mid-ocean ridges that score the Earth's surface in a pattern that is often said to resemble the seams on a baseball.
The other major leg of this seam runs through the Pacific Ocean, hugging its eastern shores. In 1977, it was along a smaller offshoot of this mid-ocean ridge that scientists discovered hydrothermal vents — seafloor chimneys where the volcanic activity that fuels the slow-motion drift of continents also fuels oases of life.
Scientists have discovered an ever-expanding list of species that survive on the chemicals that spew forth from these seafloor chimneys, from eyeless shrimp to vast colonies of tube worms the size of a small car.
In Iceland, the volcanic activity of its mid-ocean ridge offers myriad benefits for humans, providing the island with geothermal energy and some legendary sight-seeing — but it also poses hazards.
Rampino pointed to the 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which halted air traffic for days. "That was a very small eruption," he said, yet it plunged international travel into chaos.
Rampino, Verosub and other scientists were gathered in Iceland in part to address how to better prepare for such events, or the much larger eruptions that could rattle Iceland.
"The goal is to better understand these eruptions, and to be able to predict or respond very fast to the volcanic effects on the atmosphere," Rampino said. "We don't want to be surprised.”
https://www.livescience.com/31566-iceland-tectonic-plates-meet.html
Below, a diver touching North America and Europe at the same time. This location between the continents is in Iceland's Thingvellir Lake. The Silfra fissure is the only spot in the world where you can swim between two continental plates. 
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HUMANS MADE A RADIO-WAVE BARRIER IN SPACE
Forget the Kármán line [where Earth’s atmosphere ends and outer space begins]—there’s a human-made space barrier to wonder about, first observed by NASA in 2017. The mysterious zone of anthropogenic space weather is caused by specific kinds of radio waves that we’ve been blasting into the atmosphere for decades, but experts say the expanding band actually helps protect humankind from dangerous space radiation.
ScienceAlert reports that NASA first observed this belt in 2012. The agency sends probes to explore different parts of our solar system, including the Van Allen Belts: a huge, torus-shaped area of radiation that surrounds Earth. The donut shape follows the equator, leaving the North and South Poles free.
The Van Allen Belts are related to and affected by the magnetosphere induced by the nonstop bombardment of the sun’s radiation. They affect benign-seeming magnetic effects like the Northern Lights, as well as more destructive ones like magnetic storms.
People planning spaceflight through areas affected by the Van Allen Belts, for example, must develop radiation shielding to protect crew as well as equipment—and most spacecraft launch from as near to the equator as possible, right in the Van Allen zone.
So, what’s our new protective barrier? The same probes that launched in 2012 to help us understand the Belts better in the first place detected this phenomenon, and in 2017, the probes gave us the first evidence of the radio-wave barrier emanating from Earth. ScienceAlert explains:
“A certain type of transmission, called very low frequency (VLF) radio communications, have become far more common now than in the 60s, and the team at NASA confirmed that they can influence how and where certain particles in space move about.”
Why is this? Well, the very low frequency (VLF) waves are exactly right to cancel out and repel the radiative advances of the Van Allen Belts as a matter of total coincidence. In fact, NASA initially considered this a true coincidence, saying that a radio wave area happened to match exactly with the edge of the Van Allen Belts. But in 2017, the agency published findings revealing that one has caused the other after all.
Typically, services like the military have dibs on very low frequencies. These were the first frequencies to be discovered and used for broadcasting, but successive discoveries pushed private and recreational users further up the spectrum. At the very lowest point is the simplest broadcast, things like Morse code, where only binary values need to be received. After that, VLF used by military equipment, for example, occupies a chunk of wavelengths.
From there, AM is still pretty low, and FM is farther up. Some “regular” bandwidths of civilian-type radio are off limits because they’re used for more traditional radio communications by people like pilots and ship captains for different purposes. Any physical communication like this must be negotiated—remember the government has objected to some 5G ideas because of the conflict with GPS satellite signals.
Isn’t it interesting that VLF blankets the Earth without interfering with literally any other radio signal, for example, or the many other kinds of waves that flow around us all the time, but makes it into space far enough to push away harmful radiation?
This means that, for example, space programs could develop VLF technology to punch holes for spacecraft to travel through. As always, truth is stranger than fiction. ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/whoops-humans-made-a-space-barrier-around-earth?utm_source=pocket-newtab
COMIC RELIEF
I once met a woman who had a very cute little girl in a stroller. I complimented the woman on such a pretty child and asked for her name.
Mother: “Her name is See-ann.”
Me: “What an interesting name. How do you spell that?”
Mother: replied, “ S E A N”
Me: “Isn’t that Sean?”
Mother: “AUUUUGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!! Why do people keep saying that!? So many ignorant people in this world!!!!!!”
And she storms off in a huff.
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ELVIS (THE MOVIE): “MORE ISN’T NEARLY ENOUGH”
~ If you were a late Boomer hitting adolescence at the dawn of the 1970s, Elvis probably didn’t mean squat to you. Some good end-career songs on the radio – “Suspicious Minds,” “Burning Love” – were outweighed by the spectacle of Vegas bloat slowly darkening the sun. When he died August 16, 1977 – the day before my 20th birthday – my friends and I thought of him as a relic, a rhinestoned curio. Yes, he had invented something: Rock ‘n’ roll, a music that had left him far behind in the two decades since his first records. How are you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve heard Steely Dan and The Clash? And, anyway, had Elvis invented rock, or had it just come up through him? How much of what he wrought was conscious? He seemed an earlier era’s natural wonder, like Marilyn, ready-made to be reproduced on Warhol silkscreens and commemorative plates.
It took some doing to cure me of this idiocy. Reading “Elvis: Presliad,” the climactic essay in Greil Marcus’ 1975 book “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” did it. So did Peter Guralnick’s entry on Presley in “The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll,” opening as it does with a William Carlos Williams line – “the pure products of America go crazy” – that seems applicable to half the figures in this country’s 250-year cultural history, from John Brown to Britney Spears. The devastating final lines of Lester Bangs’ Village Voice obituary (worth reading in its entirety) still ring in my ears:
I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.
But of course it was the music that finally ushered me into the big tent with Col. Tom Parker’s boy – specifically, the music made before Parker found Elvis and slowly drained his vitality. The 22 cuts recorded at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records in Memphis from 1953 to 1955 are the sound of something breaking joyously free in the American soul, something kept down in the dark, repressed, for decades, centuries even, and finally somehow soaring with a lightness and authority that can make you weep with happiness right now, 70 years later. Famously, Elvis was clowning around in the studio when he started singing “That’s All Right” – an Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup song that he loved but knew a White boy could never record. The mics were off, everyone was taking a break, and the kid starts wailing the lyrics, just lets it rip, and Scotty Moore chimes in with his electric guitar and Bill Black gooses it forward with a slap bass line, and then Sam sticks his head out of the control room and asks What in heck are you boys doing? Shrugs from the three musicians. “Well, go back, find a place to start, and do it again.” And he hits record. And history begins.
It’s in the Sun singles that you hear a promise no one had dared speak stated loudly and unequivocally: That America’s great sin might be healed, that racial harmony, a true and honest intermingling of Black and White, could be envisioned and encapsulated in the confines of a two-minute pop song. That Heaven exists, that the pain might be assuaged, the crime somehow undone. A White fantasy, to be sure, but what Elvis and Scotty and Bill created at Sun – including “That’s All Right,” “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” “Baby, Let’s Play House,” and the haunting, haunted “Mystery Train,” a song that feels carved from the rock on which this country stands yet moves like mist on a river at dawn – offered a possibility that has yet to be realized, may never be realized, but still shimmers right there out of reach in the best of our art.
And the sex. Elvis was pure vulgar hip-thrusting sex in a White monoculture absolutely unprepared for it.
This, at least, is what Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” gets right. The sex and the beautiful, unselfconscious vulgarity with which Presley offered up “let’s fuck” on the half-shell of popular culture. By far the best scenes of this singularly hyperactive, heavy-breathing Mixmaster of a film are the ones set in 1956, as Elvis detonates in widening televised explosions, from “Stage Show” to the “The Milton Berle Show” to “The Steve Allen Show,” the hormones of America’s teenage girls and the heads of their parents erupting helplessly along with him. Col. Parker, played by an unrecognizable Tom Hanks (more about him later), looks at the well-behaved young women – young White women – writhing in ecstasy at Presley’s first live performance and understands the revolution is at hand: “They were having … feelings … they weren’t supposed to be enjoying.”
That scene is over the top but not by much. Luhrmann embraces the vulgarity and turns it into visual style for a solid two hours and forty minutes, which is the strength of “Elvis” and its fatal flaw. Presley was a lot smarter than many people took him for, especially when it came to his music and where it came from, but his genius, at least at the beginning, lay in his unselfconsciousness. That’s the sound ringing through the Sun singles: A man unleashing his truest self without artifice or forethought. Baz Luhrmann, by contrast, may be the most self-conscious filmmaker on the planet. He loves the shock of Presley’s arrival but he loves the schlock of it more, not because it’s honestly expressed but because it’s kitschy and fun and ironic. Not for nothing is our guide through this hall of mirrors the wizened ex-carny barker who sold Elvis to America and the world while squeezing him dry.
Austin Butler plays Elvis, and he is surprisingly excellent – I say surprisingly only because the actor seems to have come out of nowhere (he was one of the Manson gang in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”) and because he has a slightly generic prettiness that in another role might get him overlooked. He doesn’t have Presley’s bruised bedroom eyes – who does, besides Lisa Marie Presley and Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough? – but he has the lips and the gentleness and the restless-leg syndrome that travels up his body until it becomes full-on speaking-in-tongues possession.
You know who’s also fairly fantastic in “Elvis”? Tom Hanks. The part of Col. Tom Parker covers both bases: A real-life character who was a scoundrel, a fraud, and a leech. Swaddled under ten metric tons of latex chin wattle, a pointy fake nose sniffing the air for money, and speaking in a cracked Dutch-boy accent, Hanks’ Parker is a marvelous invention, a congenially malevolent man, and for once you forget you’re watching Tom Hanks.
The movie leans hard on Elvis’ Black influences – there are appearances by Big Boy Crudup (Gary Clark. Jr), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh), a guitar-slinging Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola) – and neglects the country and White gospel musicians who filled up the other half of Presley’s inner hall of fame. “Elvis” wants to tell the story of how a White boy liberated his countrymen by introducing them to the Black culture they had suppressed, but in so doing the movie falls into the same old trap of minimizing those Black artists as enablers for a Great White Hope. Even Elvis knew the reality was more complicated and cruel, and he spoke to it throughout his career.
Any of the scenes involving musical performance are extraordinary, including the ones that zoom ecstatically over the top. But as the movie careens into its third hour, you may start to realize the one thing that “Elvis” lacks is a point. Luhrmann uses split screens the way some people play darts: He throws multiple images at the wall and hopes the juxtapositions will mean something. The movie is pure sensation, and maybe that’s what Luhrmann thinks Elvis was about: the sensation of him, the simple fact that he was. But Elvis
Presley does have meaning within the context of America, its history,
its glories, and its sins, and these are things that deserve to be
explicated and dealt with. That may start with simply listening to “That’s All Right” and letting your spirits soar alongside the singer’s. But it certainly doesn’t end there. ~
https://tyburrswatchlist.substack.com/p/all-shook-up
Not all critics are enthralled:
~ Like most biopics, the appeal of Elvis rests on two factors: how compellingly the main actor can impersonate the subject of the film in terms of the way the current culture prefers to see them, and how dramatically but conventionally the complicated — often wild and disturbing — life story can be turned into a straightforward narrative that hammers home an idea — too frequently simplistic and moralizing — of who the star actually was.
In Luhrmann’s version, Elvis is a slightly profane angel of exquisite natural talent who’s a kind of musical Chosen One channeling the glorious traditions of black music. These are represented by the hotly sexual dancing in the juke joint where the boy Elvis first spies on Arthur Crudup Jr singing “That’s All Right, Mama,” and the black church that’s apparently across the street, rocking with exuberant gospel singing, where Elvis is ecstatically “saved” by the music. Of Elvis’s equal dedication to white “hillbilly music” as well as other burgeoning strands of American song, the film makes no mention.
The demon to Elvis’s angel is Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, as a grotesque old carny with a manner so creepy and predatory, he’s like the monster in a silent-era horror film. Hanks is fitted out with a fat suit and a pendulous fake nose and a ludicrous accent that identifies him as ostentatiously, evilly foreign, the very opposite of what the actual Colonel Tom Parker — Holland-born Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk — actually achieved in living in the United States illegally and passing for decades as a native-born American and a Southerner.
It would’ve been so much more interesting to have had Hanks play the role straight, perhaps slightly padded and no more, talking in an ordinary voice, subverting his own increasingly smarmy hero-of-the-heartland star persona to play “the Colonel.” How much more convincing he’d have been, laughing that patented, self-deprecating Hanks laugh, calling himself “the Snowman” as the Colonel did, charming people by acknowledging his flimflamming deal-making abilities in the service of his only client, Elvis. And, when necessary, pulling out all the sentimental stops to keep Elvis under his thumb with purple Luhrmann dialogue like this: “We are the same, you and I. Two odd, lonely children, reaching for eternity.” And then suddenly revealing the cold-eyed shark underneath the Colonel’s conman smiles, with threatened lawsuits demanding millions Elvis couldn’t pay. Hanks would’ve been perfect for it. But that wouldn’t have been a Baz Luhrmann character.
Anyway, the Colonel latches onto Elvis Presley as potentially “the greatest carnival show of all time,” and from that point on, the same showdown is staged repeatedly in different locations and registers. Elvis tries to be true to his God-given talent and himself, to be “the real Elvis Presley,” and Colonel Tom Parker keeps entrapping him in increasingly oppressive, artificial, demeaning commercial performances that satisfy racists and censors and squares, and keep the money rolling in.
Once this melodramatic battle of light vs. darkness is established, no scenario is too absurd for Luhrmann to restage it again. Elvis is shown to be so musically brilliant, he keeps finding ways to work around Parker’s relentless, tawdry commercial drive, such as when he demonstrates the “bigger sound” he’s devised to salvage his initial Las Vegas gig. We see Elvis arranging on the spot a complex arrangement of one of his hugely orchestrated anthem-like Vegas-era songs. It’s one of those scenes you’ve seen many times before, in which the musical genius improvises to the brass section, “Now you go wah-wah-wah,” and to the percussion people, “Now you go dappity dappity dap,” and so on, till the whole marvelous arrangement comes together in five minutes as if by magic.
Thus Elvis preserves his authentic genius even as he adopts the sequined jumpsuits and gets “caught in a trap” set by the Colonel. “We’re caught in a trap, I can’t walk out” is the opening line of one of Elvis’s late, great hits, “Suspicious Minds,” so it plays over and over in the most literal-minded way in the third act of the film devoted to Elvis’s Vegas years, when Parker signed deals that kept the increasingly desperate, drug-addicted, and justifiably paranoid singer stuck in the International Hotel where he both lived and performed.
Well-known central events and aspects of Elvis’s life are eradicated or glossed over if they don’t reinforce the melodramatic opposition of the central characters. Parker was well aware that Elvis’s molten sexuality was driving his popularity, and had no intention of switching it off, just channeling it in different ways. But in the film, he’s forever trying to force Elvis into a sexless, sanitized straitjacket of some kind. The long, ludicrous sequence in which Parker oversees a gigantic television production of an Elvis Christmas special, only to have Elvis order the cameras turned around at the last second, away from the elaborate happy-holidays set full of actors costumed as elves, toward him singing an intense solo of “If I Can Dream” in honor of the just-assassinated RFK, will haunt me for months. How stupid does Luhrmann think audiences are? Who could believe such an absurdity was possible in the world of ultra-expensive and labor-and-equipment-intensive television production?
As far as the embarrassing tendency of the film to make Elvis some kind of liberal-dream friend of the black community — yikes. It’s so clearly an attempt to address Elvis’s controversial standing as the hugely successful singer who most profited from making early black rhythm and blues/rock-and-roll music acceptable to white audiences, by making him “sympathetic.” The friend of BB King! The frequenter of black clubs on Beale Street! The man who shies away from his “King of Rock and Roll” label and says Fats Waller really deserved it! Just look how upset Elvis is when MLK dies!
This kind of special pleading is just silly. Elvis is the singer who got marketed most successfully as someone who could “safely” transmit black music to white audiences in an insanely racist culture. At that time, it was going to be somebody, or many somebodies. But Luhrmann’s tendency is to largely ignore the systemic racism, which Elvis benefited from, however reluctantly, in order to celebrate Elvis as the personal-friend-to-the-black-performer. Scenes in Beale Street clubs feature Elvis admiring entertainers like Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) while she’s singing her landmark version of “Hound Dog.” But nothing in the film points out how little she made from the song — though it was her biggest hit, Thornton claimed it earned her only five hundred dollars — compared to the untold millions Elvis must have made from what became his longest-running number-one smash. ~
https://jacobin.com/2022/06/elvis-presley-baz-luhrmann-clean-biopic-racism-film-review
Oriana:
Yes, the director is perhaps trying too hard to show Elvis as friends with black musicians. Still, there is no need for a critic to be sneering about it. This was a painfully racist era, especially in the South, and yet there is no question that Presley did manage to bring black influences into his music and make them acceptable to white audience.
To me the most touching part of the movie was the first third or so — the poverty of Elvis’s childhood, his sweetness toward his mother, his genuine obsession with music foreshadowing his future genius, his sneaking into a black religious service and much else.
There is also humor here, chiefly in the contrast between the conventions of the times and Elvis’s getting young women “all shook up.” Colonel Parker doesn’t quite get it, and is hilariously clueless during the Elvis “Christmas Special,” nervously walking around in a ghastly Christmas sweater, muttering that now is the time for Elvis to sing “Here Comes Mr. Santa Claus.” Unlike some critics, I think Tom Hanks is brilliant in this movie. It’s he who states the theme of the singer’s early ascent: a lonely child reaching for eternity.
It's the younger Elvis I like better, the Elvis before Las Vegas and Colonel Parker.
Kerry:
I grew up on Elvis, as a 10 year old imitated his playing--- air guitar... pelvis gyrations...my Mom loved it....funny to her I am sure. As you may have noted on my FB page, did not like the film at all---but then the Director has never pleased me in any film. Also the intense flamboyance and glitter of the pelvis shots was BS---- he did but not all the time and to such an extent...I did not like the easy run thru his childhood --seemed superficial and on and on...basically for me no insight to the times, the Sun Studio, the social milieu... actor was fine, however.... My son liked the film but then he knew little of Elvis...
Oriana:
Quite agree about the superficial take on his difficult childhood. Being bullied in school was a part of it. He was taunted for singing "nigger songs." Boys would even try to cut his guitar strings. And I'd definitely like to see the Sun Records sessions — that was without the "pelvis" effect. Some beautiful slow songs during that period.
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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANCIENT AND MODERN STOICISM
~ As the author of a book on Stoicism, I am always asked, “What’s the difference between ancient Stoicism (with a capital ‘S’) and modern stoicism?” The difference matters because people ordinarily assimilate the two, and dismiss the first on account of the second.
At the heart of ancient Stoicism is the notion that human beings ought to act in accord with their nature, which means two things.
First, we are social animals designed to work together “like hands, feet, or eyelids.” “Human nature,” said the Stoic teacher Musonius (d. 95 CE), “is very much like that of bees. A bee is not able to live alone; it perishes when isolated. Indeed, it is intent on performing the common task of members of its species—to work and act together with other bees.”
When we behave with naked selfishness, we are no longer being human—and it is only by being human, that is, by cooperating for the greater good, that we can be happy and fulfilled.
Second, while ants and bees, and maybe even wolves, may be more social than human beings, we are by a country mile the most rational of all animals, so that reason might be said to be our distinctive or defining function. Just as leopards ought to excel at running if they are to count as good leopards, so human beings ought to excel at reasoning if they are to count as good human beings.
If we aim instead to excel at running or swimming or making money, we have not adequately understood what it means to be a human being. Thus, of one who boasted of his diving, Aristippus asked, “Are you not ashamed to be proud of that which a dolphin can do?”
As human beings, we ought at every moment to be rational and social. Unfortunately, we are all too readily waylaid by unwise attachments and the destructive emotions to which they give rise. These attachments dangle the promise of pleasure or happiness but really offer only slavery—whereas, if only we could see it, nothing leads to pleasure and happiness as surely as reason and self-control.
Today, most people’s conception of Stoicism is colored by modern stoicism, that is, the simple suppression or closeting of emotions. This misleading modern derivation originated in the sixteenth century and should not be confused with the much older philosophical movement. The Stoic is not without emotions, but, ideally, without painful or unhelpful emotions such as anger, envy, and greed.
To be without emotion, were that even possible, would be to be reduced to the inanimate state of a tree or a rock, whereas the Stoic seeks, on the contrary, to exist and excel as a human being. Thus, the Stoics invited positive and prosocial emotions such as compassion, friendship, and gratitude, which pour out of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Already in Book 1, Marcus praises his tutor Sextus of Chaeronea for being “free from passion and yet full of love.”
Today, those familiar with Stoicism often came to it in a crisis but soon discovered that it is about much more than firefighting or even longer-term resilience building.
While I was writing Stoic Stories, a buttoned-up surgeon put me on the spot by asking how stoicism, the modern disposition, differs from Stoicism, the ancient philosophical movement. I ventured in reply: “Modern stoicism is about maintaining a stiff upper lip, whereas ancient Stoicism is about seeking to maintain the ultimate perspective on everything, which then raises many interesting questions.”
Unlike many modern interventions, Stoicism is not merely about feeling better, but about being better—which is, all considered, the surest way of feeling better, and not just better but better than ever before.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/202207/what-s-the-difference-between-ancient-and-modern-stoicism
Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism
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WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE MANIC
~ In retrospect, I had experienced manic episodes before; I just didn’t know it at the time. I had been misdiagnosed and treated for depression and anxiety for almost 20 years and was taking medication that can spark manic episodes in those with bipolar disorder.
Mania is a state of elevated energy, mood, and behavior that most often occurs in individuals with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, or those who have taken certain medications or drugs.
Milder mania (hypomania) is typically associated with positive effects like greater feelings of optimism, increased productivity, and/or a boost of creativity. However, as a manic episode stretches from days to months, symptoms will typically increase in severity.
Along with increased irritability, impulsivity, and inability to sleep, individuals may experience psychosis, which can include delusions (false beliefs) and/or hallucinations (perceiving something that doesn't exist).
I didn't experience hallucinations, but I did experience some types of delusions commonly associated with mental disorders. I also kept notebooks during that time full of thoughts, ideas, and sketches that I’ve only recently begun to revisit.
Delusions of reference
Delusions of reference involve thinking that random events contain a special meaning only for you.
During my last and most severe manic episode, I felt surrounded by signs and patterns with deep personal significance. My phone was full of pictures that I took of television screens showing scenes of movies and television shows that resonated with me.
One series of pictures captures a scene from Man of Steel in which a young Clark Kent has to learn to filter out all of the extraneous sensory information coming in through his superhuman senses. The scene seemed curiously relevant given my own feelings of sensory enhancement.
Another series of pictures is of a show I didn't usually watch about how things are made. I stopped to watch the show, and it oddly included a segment on the making of trombones.
I had received a music scholarship to college playing the trombone and had recently been starting to play again. That had to mean something, right?
Delusions of grandeur
Delusions of grandeur involve believing you're publicly important, a prophet, messiah, or God. Such delusions can dovetail with hyper-religiosity, which I also experienced even though I’ve been an atheist for most of my adult life.
My delusions of grandeur and hyper-religiosity had me thinking I might be a prophet chosen by God or even more. I realized that voicing those thoughts might lead to involuntary commitment, so I resorted to writing them down.
What I wrote related to thoughts about how many years Jesus Christ had been on earth to learn what it was like to be human and how old I was at the time (late 40s):
What is it about 33? Why? Why can't you be a late bloomer? It's more complicated now.
While visiting my parents, I found a print of The Sacrament of the Last Supper by Salvador Dalí (1955) that I had bought on a field trip to the National Gallery of Art when I was a kid. I was fascinated by its symbolism and geometric elements.
Dali: The Last Supper, 1955
The 12 apostles within a dodecahedron, or 12-sided space, which is an ancient symbol for heaven. I even included a rhetorical note: "Hi Pythagoras!”
For a while, I resisted treatment. The energy, creativity, and euphoria were, quite literally, intoxicating. Ultimately it was my inability to sleep that led me to listen to the urging of my girlfriend and family and take the antipsychotic medication I was being told that I needed.
I was prescribed olanzapine (Zyprexa) and I responded to it quickly. It helped me to sleep, my grandiose plans and flights of fancy were tamped down, and my "super-senses" and hyper-religiosity subsided. I also gained 20 pounds in a month and had severe muscle soreness, which are major contributors to patient noncompliance.
But instead of abandoning medication, I tried different antipsychotics that produced fewer unwanted side effects. And research in this area continues to advance. In fact, a new therapeutic was approved last year that blunts the weight gain of olanzapine by combining it with a novel µ-opioid receptor antagonist.
I encourage anyone who sees themselves in what I and others have written about mania to listen and take the medication. ~
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/night-sweats-and-delusions-grandeur/202207/inside-my-manic-mind-delusions-and-hyper-religiosity
Byron was supposedly bipolar.
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If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world. ~ Christopher Hitchens
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Most theists agree with atheists that gods are man-made inventions. They just don't agree that their particular god is. ~ Brad Mitchell
Oriana:
To me this is a particularly compelling argument. Christians have no trouble denying the existence of Wotan, Zeus, Kali, and so forth — those gods and their supernatural feats were obviously made-up. But not Yahveh. Not the story of Jonah and the Whale, for instance, or the parting of the Red Sea.
As Joseph Campbell remarked, other people’s religions are mythologies — but not the mythology a particular theist was raised in. That’s the one true religion.
But I have noticed a parallel trend among the more educated who want to preserve religion. Their politically correct claim is that “all religions are true and all point toward the same god.” This sounds so “inclusive” and is definitely more enlightened than the Fundamentalist attitude. But beware, this too is a slippery slope, though not as obvious as calling all other religions mythologies — the deities and their miracles all fiction.
“Omnism is similar to syncretism. However, it can also be seen as a way to accept the existence of various religions without believing in all that they profess to teach. Many omnists say that all religions contain truths, but that no one religion offers all that is truth.” (Wiki)
Hinduism is actually tolerant of other religions as being simply a different path to the divine. What about the notorious hatred Hindu hatred of Islam? Or Islam’s blood-thirsty hatred of all other religions? Well, that’s reality rather than theory.
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IS FOOD LESS NUTRITIOUS NOW?
~ The nutritional values of some popular vegetables, from asparagus to spinach, have dropped significantly since 1950. A 2004 US study found important nutrients in some garden crops are up to 38% lower than there were at the middle of the 20th Century. On average, across the 43 vegetables analyzed, calcium content declined 16%, iron by 15% and phosphorus by 9%. The vitamins riboflavin and ascorbic acid both dropped significantly, while there were slight declines in protein levels. Similar decreases have been observed in the nutrients present in wheat. What's happening?
Prompted by food shortages after World War Two, scientists developed new high-yield varieties of crops and breeds of livestock, alongside synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, to boost food production. Coupled with improvements in irrigation and the advent of affordable tractors, crop productivity increased dramatically. The average global cereal yield rose 175% between 1961 and 2014, with wheat, for example, rising from an average yield of 1.1 tonnes per hectare to 3.4 tonnes per hectare in around the same timeframe.
While yields went up, nutrient levels in some crops declined, bringing intensive farming techniques under scrutiny. Could it be, as some have claimed, the result of the increased use of artificial pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals disrupting the fine balance of soil life, the health of crop plants, and therefore affecting the quality of the food we eat?
A 170-year study into wheat grown using different farming techniques in the UK suggests there is more going on.
"The Broadbalk experiment is one of the oldest continuous agronomic experiments in the world. Started in 1843, it has been comparing the effect of inorganic [artificial] fertilizers and organic manures on winter wheat. It has specifically examined the levels of iron and zinc in wheat grown under different farming methods," explains Steve McGrath, a professor in soil and plant science at Rothamsted Research in the UK.
"First, our findings show that it isn't a lack of micronutrients in the soil that is driving the lower nutrients in the crop. Those that are bioavailable, that is, in a form that the plant can absorb, don't change with intensive farming methods.”
So, if the soil is as good as it was, what else is going on? Have the plants themselves changed?
In the 1950s, an American scientist named Norman Borlaug working in Mexico created "semi-dwarf" varieties of disease resistant-wheat. By reducing the stalk height by 20%, the plants were far less likely to fall over – an issue known as "lodging" – which reduced their productivity and made diseases more likely to take hold, as well as making mechanical harvesting far less effective.
"An additional benefit of the discovery of those dwarfing genes was that rather than putting the energy into growing a longer stalk, the plant put it into the spike [the ear, where the wheat grains grow]," McGrath continues. "The smaller plant pumps carbohydrates into the grain instead, increasing the amount of grain per plant.”
It did this by favoring an enlarged wheat grain endosperm, which the seed uses to feed the growing plant embryo much like an egg yolk feeds a growing chick. This is packed with carbohydrate in the form of starch – the main component of flour.
Producing bigger and more plentiful grains was a welcome improvement at a time when populations in developing countries were rapidly expanding and famine was a threat. However, an unforeseen side effect was that while the wheat produced more grain per plant, nutrient levels did not increase in the same way.
"What we end up with is a scenario where, while the nutrients remain at the same level in a single wheat kernel, the starch is up two or three-fold. This means that once the wheat is processed into flour you get a dilution effect. The ratio of carbohydrates to nutrients is down," says McGrath.
And while carbohydrates are crucial for human health – they provide the energy that keeps us moving and functioning day to day – we also need our diet to provide protein, minerals and vitamins which are critical for growth and biochemical processes in the body. Selenium, for example, is needed in processes that make DNA, zinc helps the body's immune system to work properly, while magnesium maintains nerve, muscle and heart function, and helps bones remain strong.
While the Green Revolution helped to tackle world hunger, today we find ourselves with a global food system that in some cases has been designed to deliver calories and cosmetic perfection but not necessarily nutrition. This is contributing to a phenomenon called hidden hunger, where people feel sated but may not be healthy, as their food is calorie-rich but nutrient-poor. It might initially sound counter-intuitive but obese individuals may be nutrient-deficient.
While some scientists feel the fall in nutrient levels in our food over the decades is too small to be significant compared to the increase in food availability provided by improved yields, the health of our soils is still thought to have an important relationship to the nutritional quality of our food. A trial in the US has been examining vegetables grown under different farming techniques to better understand exactly what this link is.
"The vegetable systems trial started in 2016 and is a side-by-side comparison of crops grown in soils managed with intensive practices and regenerative organic tillage practices," says soil scientist Gladis Zinati of the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania.
The goal of the study, which is designed to run indefinitely, is to link farming practices and soil health to crop nutrient density (or the amount of nutrients a food contains relative to the amount of calories) and human health.
Zinati's research suggests that the more fungi and microbes that are active the soil, the better equipped it is to get nutrients into plants and our diet. In other words, soil teeming with fungi and bacteria is better able to break down nutrients into a form that can be more easily gobbled up by the crops.
The initial findings are due to be peer-reviewed with a view to publishing in the coming year.
Soil is made of four elements in varying proportions: minerals in the form of rock particles, organic matter (plant, fungal and animal materials including microbes and microscopic worms, either dead or alive), air and water. But the important thing is how these elements interact.
A teaspoon of soil contains more microbes than there are people on the planet – we're talking billions, and as many as 10,000 individual species. Intertwined with all that mind-boggling life is a network of fungal filaments called mycorrhiza, a symbiotic relationship with plants and microbes that act as extensions to their roots. There is a constant dance of nutrient pass-the-parcel from soil to plant, powered by complex biochemical pathways, fungal superhighways and exotically named root exudates, which is basically root snot that stimulates or represses a wide array of biological activity in the soil.
The influence of mycorrhizae is such that it has been commercially harnessed to improve crop productivity. GroundworkBioAg in Israel has produced a soil inoculant based on particularly vigorous strains of mycorrhizal fungi, sourced from the Israeli desert.
These specialized soil fungi effectively extend the plant root system with mycelium – a web of long microscopic filaments called hyphae. They work in a symbiotic relationship with the plant, releasing nutrients from deep in the soil, in a form that the plant can absorb.
When this commercially produced powder is used to coat roots or seeds, the resulting impact on crop yield has some farmers embracing these remarkable fungi over artificial agrochemicals.
US farmer Cory Atley farms 8,000 acres (32 sq km) of maize and soybeans in Ohio and has been trialling the use of the inoculants. As well as seeing a boost in crop growth through the release of nutrients from the soil, he has found he is spending less on chemical inputs.
"What we are really trying to focus on is soil health, so once you get your soil health aspect of it down, it will translate into plant health. We're still using synthetic fertilizer but we're using less and less, about 25% less. What we're trying to do is break apart more of what is already in our soil, instead of constantly adding more to the soil.”
It's not only highly adapted fungi that are improving food productivity and the movement of nutrients – plants that have evolved to survive harsh conditions are also proving useful.
In Kenya, livestock are a key part of the economy, contributing around 12% of the national GDP. In the smallholder mixed crop-livestock system, livestock play a significant role in food and nutritional security, income generation and as a source of manure for soil fertility in crop production.
Dairy farming is especially important in Kenya, and it is one of the leading dairy producers on the continent. However, poor quality feeds and seasonal scarcity limit productivity, with the average yield at about eight liters (1.8 gallons) per cow each day compared with 25-50 liters (5.5-11 gallons) per cow each day elsewhere in the world. Donald Njarui of the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (Kalro) has been researching ways to improve the situation, through the introduction of improved forages.
"Most smallholder dairy farmers in the country have just two to five cows," says Njarui. "So any increase in productivity can have a profound impact on their lives. Over 90% of smallholder dairy farmers rely on Napier grass, which is used in a 'cut-and-carry' feeding system, where the grass is harvested and delivered to the animals. However, Napier has become susceptible to pests and diseases, which reduce biomass yield significantly. There was a need to look for other viable and sustainable options that farmers can depend on for their dairy cattle.”
And that search started overseas. A type of grass called Brachiaria has been commercialized in South America, Australia and Asia where it has transformed the beef and dairy industry in those regions. Surprisingly, Brachiaria grass originates from Africa, but it has not been exploited there for livestock feed in the same way – until now.
The impact has been significant. Milk yields rose, the health of the cows improved, crude protein levels are up compared to Napier grass, says Njarui, and it is less fibrous and more digestible, meaning animals feeding on it produce less greenhouse gases. "Due to its massive root system, it also has the ability to sequester more carbon into the soil than local pastures.”
The super-grass's success is simple – it has adapted to drought and low fertility acidic soils by creating a large, extensive root system, so has the ability to draw more nutrients from deep in the soil.
Whether it is natural or human selection, farming techniques or the weather, the nutritional content of our food is influenced by many factors. Ensuring that we get the best version of the foods we grow requires an in-depth understanding of the network of nutrients that flows around us. Can we incentivize farmers to grow better quality food over higher yields?
What we would need is a food production system which monitors nutrition in food and makes it universally comparable, and a commercial model that values nutrition above everything else, concludes McGrath. How that could be achieved remains to be seen.
"Farmers need to be paid for effective nutrient yield, not just mass of produce. Right now, the model of being paid per ton of grain doesn't stack up from a human health perspective," says McGrath.
There are many moving parts in the links between nutrition and farming, and much that is not yet fully understood. Simply put, more research is needed, but with more than two billion people globally affected by micronutrient deficiencies, so much good could come from following the trail of nutrients. ~
https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/follow-the-food/why-modern-food-lost-its-nutrients/
Mary:
We are really just at the beginning of understanding the relationships between plants and fungi. The webs of mycelium communicate with tree root systems and facilitate passage of necessary chemical nutrients .. this stimulates and protects not only the growth, but the health of the trees. It seems here the fungus mycelium promotes not just the growth and health of food crops but their healthfulness, their nutritional bounty. And the properties of plants evolved to flourish under harsh and severe environments deserves more investigation...learning from them would be like learning the strategies of a master in how to make more from less, to not merely surivive, but thrive.
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THE BENEFITS OF EXERCISE IN A PILL?
~ Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, Stanford School of Medicine and collaborating institutions report today in the journal Nature that they have identified a molecule in the blood that is produced during exercise and can effectively reduce food intake and obesity in mice. The findings improve our understanding of the physiological processes that underlie the interplay between exercise and hunger.
"We wanted to understand how exercise works at the molecular level to be able to capture some of its benefits," said co-corresponding author Jonathan Long, MD, assistant professor of pathology at Stanford Medicine and an Institute Scholar of Stanford ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering & Medicine for Human Health). "For example, older or frail people who cannot exercise enough, may one day benefit from taking a medication that can help slow down osteoporosis, heart disease or other conditions.”
Xu, Long and their colleagues conducted comprehensive analyses of blood plasma compounds from mice following intense treadmill running. The most significantly induced molecule was a modified amino acid called Lac-Phe. It is synthesized from lactate (a byproduct of strenuous exercise that is responsible for the burning sensation in muscles) and phenylalanine (an amino acid that is one of the building blocks of proteins).
In mice with diet-induced obesity, a high dose of Lac-Phe suppressed food intake by about 50% compared to control mice over a period of 12 hours without affecting their movement or energy expenditure. When administered to the mice for 10 days, Lac-Phe reduced cumulative food intake and body weight (owing to loss of body fat) and improved glucose tolerance.
The researchers also identified an enzyme called CNDP2 that is involved in the production of Lac-Phe and showed that mice lacking this enzyme did not lose as much weight on an exercise regime as a control group on the same exercise plan.
Interestingly, the team also found robust elevations in plasma Lac-Phe levels following physical activity in racehorses and humans. Data from a human exercise cohort showed that sprint exercise induced the most dramatic increase in plasma Lac-Phe, followed by resistance training and then endurance training. "This suggests that Lac-Phe is an ancient and conserved system that regulates feeding and is associated with physical activity in many animal species," Long said.
"Our next steps include finding more details about how Lac-Phe mediates its effects in the body, including the brain," Xu said. "Our goal is to learn to modulate this exercise pathway for therapeutic interventions.” ~
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220615113237.htm
However, before we jump to conclusions, there is this study to consider:
~ Exercise is a common component of weight loss strategies, yet exercise programs are associated with surprisingly small changes in body weight. Effect size is typically less than 3% of body weight, even in studies lasting more than a year. This may be due in part to compensatory adaptations, in which calories expended during exercise are counteracted by decreases in other aspects of energy expenditure. Here, we examined the relationship between a rodent model of voluntary exercise – wheel running – and total daily energy expenditure. Use of a running wheel for 3 to 7 days increased daily energy expenditure, resulting in a caloric deficit of approximately 1 kcal/day; however, total daily energy expenditure remained stable after the first week of wheel access, despite further increases in wheel use.
We hypothesized that compensatory mechanisms accounted for the lack of increase in daily energy expenditure after the first week. Supporting this idea, we observed a decrease in off-wheel ambulation when mice were using the wheels, indicating behavioral compensation. Finally, we asked whether individual variation in wheel use within a group of mice would be associated with different levels of energy expenditure. Despite large variation in wheel running, we did not observe a significant relationship between the amount of daily wheel running and total daily energy expenditure or energy intake across mice. Together, our experiments support a model in which the transition from sedentary to light activity is associated with an increase in daily energy expenditure, but further increases in physical activity produce diminishingly small increments in daily energy expenditure. ~
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5296274/
Oriana:
How do you feel after a workout? Or after a lovely hike in the mountains? The average person feels tired and wants to rest.
Result: about the same daily calorie expenditure.
There might be something to the “exercise molecule.” But it will be a long time before we hear of it again — if ever. I continue to be astonished how often some discovery causes an initial sensation, and then -- we never hear of it again.
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BREAKFAST: THE MOST DANGEROUS MEAL OF THE DAY?
~ A diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes led clinical biochemist Professor Terence Kealey to write his book, Breakfast Is A Dangerous Meal. The overall message of the book is simple: everything you’ve been told about breakfast as ‘the most important meal of the day’ is wrong. Eating breakfast is bad for your health and skipping breakfast is far better for you.
In Breakfast Is A Dangerous Meal, Kealey sets out to prove that eating first thing greatly increases the number of calories a person consumes in a day, causes hunger pangs later in the day (which do not arise if the person skips breakfast) and can lead to the development of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.
When Professor Kealey was first told he had Type 2 diabetes, he was given the conventional advice – eat three meals a day and never skip breakfast. But after having a bowl of wholemeal porridge (no sugar) in the morning and studying the glucometer he had been given by his doctor, Kealey found that his blood sugar levels were going through the roof after eating breakfast, and then spiking frequently over the course of the day. This didn’t occur when he skipped breakfast.
In a study he cites by Professor Jens Christiansen from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, thirteen adults with Type 2 diabetes were asked to divide their time between eating three meals a day (with breakfast) and two meals a day (without breakfast). The patients consumed the same amount of calories, compensating on the two meal days by having a larger lunch and supper.
The experiment showed the patients’ blood glucose levels spiked dangerously when they broke their fast first thing and remained more volatile over the course of the day, but on the days when they ate just lunch and dinner (skipping breakfast in the process) the increase in blood sugar level was gentler and more gradual after the two meals. This is important, says Kealey, as spikes in blood glucose can double a person’s risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke.
WHY IS EATING IN THE MORNING WORSE THAN EATING LATER IN THE DAY?
‘Not all meal times are equal’ says Kealey. One big reason is our circadian rhythm, which determines the release of hormones that regulate our body. One of these hormones is cortisol – also known as the ‘alertness’ hormone – which is higher in the morning to help wake us up, falling by the evening to help us sleep. But as the body wakes up first thing it goes into ‘fight-or-flight’ mode, with cortisol also working to resist insulin and raise the levels of glucose in our blood (in case we need a sudden burst of energy to run away from a predator). ‘The morning is a time of natural insulin-resistance’ he writes, ‘eating then will help both provoke and aggravate the metabolic syndrome, which is the mass killer of our day.’
The glucose spike caused by eating breakfast does one of two things’ Kealey says, ‘firstly it is in itself dangerous. You can show very clearly that people who get glucose spikes increase their likelihood of having a heart attack or a stroke, which is hugely dangerous. But probably even worse, glucose spikes precipitate hunger. People who eat breakfast, and this is something that’s really been ignored, the scientists have done us a real disservice here, the myth is that by eating breakfast you eat less for the rest of the day. That is just untrue. People who eat breakfast end up eating many more calories. If you eat 250 calories at breakfast you won’t eat 250 less calories at lunch. Also, an astonishing number of people, by eating breakfast, find they feel hungry mid-morning and those hunger dips continue in the afternoon at around 3 or 4.30.’
Kealey says the main effects can be broken into three:
‘Eating breakfast is itself a source of glucose spikes, which are dangerous’
‘Eating breakfast increases your calorie load, which in a world of Type 2 diabetes and obesity is also dangerous.’
‘Eating breakfast stimulates you to feel more hungry than you otherwise would feel.’
‘Why is it for 150 years the medical profession has been quite united behind breakfast?’ says Kealey, ‘it’s done by weight of papers. It’s very easy to produce papers which show an association between good health and breakfast.’ But there’s a big difference, he points out, between association and causation. ‘People at the top of the socio-economic pile do as they’re told – if you tell people in this group to eat breakfast then that’s what they tend to do.’
But these people, says Kealey, also follow many other pieces of advice that contribute to good health, e.g eating a balanced diet and exercising. ‘At the bottom of the pile what happens is that people tend to lead more chaotic lives – they often don’t have a lot of money, they’re not in control. In the morning they tend not to eat breakfast’ he says. But that doesn’t mean the people from a lower socio-economic group are unhealthy because they’re skipping breakfast.
To illustrate this point, Kealey argues that teenagers who smoke are more likely to become pregnant, but you’d never say smoking causes pregnancy. ‘Cereal companies pay for hundreds of papers – and I do mean hundreds – showing that people who eat breakfast have a lower rate of heart disease, or a lower rate of strokes. Anything that looks like it could be related to breakfast, because it looks persuasive. And they always say “of course it is only an association, however.”’
None of this is completely dishonest, but it is ‘an artful association of data’ that distorts the argument in favor of not skipping breakfast.
Have people always eaten breakfast?
No. For thousands of years, Kealey points out, only laborers ate breakfast and the ‘sedentary workers’ (e.g the aristocracy) did not. ‘When the Tudor period came along’ says Kealey, ‘and we all started to adopt a work ethic, all members of society, even people at the top of the pile, started eating breakfast. You then had these extraordinarily perceptive Tudor doctors saying “look unless you’re a manual laborer you don’t need three meals a day, because you’ll get fat and that’s unhealthy” – I find that incredibly prescient because they were dead right.’
Breakfast Is A Dangerous Meal is aimed at two groups of people. The first is the people who don’t like eating breakfast but feel they should. ‘My daughter’s boyfriend positively dislikes breakfast’ Kealey says, ‘he was forced to eat it by his family growing up because that was seen as his biochemical duty – there are millions of young people like that whose bodies are being damaged by eating a meal that they just don’t want to eat. My book is primarily for those people – liberate yourself from this tyranny which is based on nonsense.’
The second category? Anyone over the age of 40. ‘If you’re under 40 and you’re very fit and slim, breakfast is probably not going to do you any harm, though it might lead in later life to metabolic syndrome’ he says, ‘over the age of 40, unless you are very slim and fit, you really shouldn’t be eating breakfast. If a person with a BMI of over 25 tells me they can’t give up breakfast, it’s a bit like saying “I can’t give up my cigarettes” – it’s something they just have to do.’
Kealey’s advice? Not a calorie before noon. ‘I’ve had so many people who have tried this and what they’ve found is that they’re no longer getting these desperate sugar rushes where they’re dashing to eat their muffin at 11 and their chocolate at 3 o’clock – they actually end up eating more healthily.’
The good news: if you’re fit, slim and young you can get away with eating breakfast, so long as it’s low on carbohydrates. If you don’t fall into that group you should avoid carbs altogether, particularly cereals – which Kealey describes unequivocally as ‘the food of the devil.’
‘I know that many breakfast cereals are wholemeal and therefore the idea is that these will be healthier for you than refined carbohydrates. But wholemeal will still get broken down to sugar.’
Kealey instead suggests a couple of boiled eggs followed by strawberries and cream. Why? ‘There’s no sugar in cream and there’s astonishingly little sugar in berries – they are surprisingly benign – and the eggs have protein which stimulates insulin release.’ If you’re still hungry after that then he recommends trying a Scandi breakfast option – a piece of cheese.
Cutting back should still help. ‘If the goal is “not a calorie before noon” then even someone who does not move to a completely calorie-free morning should nonetheless achieve a health bonus.’
‘Breakfast may sound trivial but it absolutely isn’t,’ he points out. ‘It’s a very important question: should you be eating two meals a day or three? When you put it into those terms you realize how crucial that question is. The answer is, of course, is that you should only be eating two.’
https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/health-fitness/breakfast-is-a-dangerous-meal-462112-462112
from another source: SKIPPING BREAKFAST IMPROVES AUTOPHAGY
The reported health benefits of skipping breakfast or extended fasts present a very convincing case. Reduced markers of inflammation, oxidative stress and blood pressure. Improved cardiovascular function, increased cell repair and higher growth hormone release.
By skipping breakfast, you can actually encourage your body to enter a safe ketogenic state, which can expedite the body's natural fat-burning mechanisms by causing your body to dip into fat stores for energy.
Intermittent fasting can actually make you sharper and healthier, according to many doctors and researchers. "Twelve hours or more of fasting switches the body over to ketosis, which is the process of burning fat instead of carbs for fuel," explains Zach Iris of the Gingerhill Farm and Retreat Center. "Fat is a far superior fuel source both for the brain and the body and has the added benefit of making you leaner. So, skipping breakfast can lead to a leaner, healthier, sharper and longer-living you.”
According to microbiologist Kiran Krishnan, skipping breakfast as part of intermittent fasting increases the mucus levels needed for the growth of good bacteria—and elimination of the bad. "Some of this bacteria only grows and thrives when you are fasting. It also drives up the production of the human growth hormone, which burns fat and improves muscle mass because it uses fat as fuel instead of sugar, and allows your body to rest from producing insulin."
Perhaps the most discussed and relevant health benefit of extending your overnight fast is in anti-aging.
Specifically, improving the natural process called autophagy, which is the ‘removal of cellular junk’ from your body, a form of detoxification.
An easy way to think about it is ‘house cleaning’ for the body. Autophagy clears out faulty parts, cancerous growths and metabolic dysfunctions, and aims to make our bodies more efficient. It is essential for healthy aging, and becomes more important as you grow older.
Besides exercise, extended fasts are one of the best ways to increase autophagy, as it gives your body time to clear out the debris.
https://blog.ultimateperformance.com/the-advantages-of-skipping-breakfast/
Oriana:
Skipping breakfast is a new thing to me. Instantly I need to confess that I don’t fast 100%, just eat a very skimpy breakfast compared to what I used to eat. Usually I drink black tea, eat a sliver of chocolate, sometimes a teaspoon of almond butter, a tiny bit of goat cheese.
Sometimes I even indulge in a slender mango spear (a good source of potassium and fiber).
But I've tried just black tea ("Not a single calorie before noon"), and yes, I can do it. The beautiful surprise: the discomfort is minor, if any. I never thought that fasting would be easy; imagine my astonishment when I felt just fine.
I’m not overweight. If I happened to be, I’d be more strict — only liquids (I prefer black tea, but black coffee is fine too) until noon or 1 pm. On paper it looks good: skipping breakfast means consuming about 400 calories less a day. Above all, giving the body a rest from eating means that energy can be used for regenerative process (think of the healing that takes place during a good night’s sleep).
One of the mysteries of our physiology is that our microbiome — the gut bacteria and whatever other microorganisms happen to inhabit the lower parts of our digestive system — the friendly bugs seem to determine how many calories we absorb, and what nutrients. A slender person has a different microbiome than an obese person. There is evidence that introducing a fat animal’s microbiome into a slender animal results in the slender animal’s becoming obese, without a change of diet.
At this point it’s well known that the only reliable method of expanding an animals’s life span is calorie restriction. There are two calorie restriction regimens used in laboratories: one is providing less calories every day, and another way is feeding the animal ad libitum (no restriction) every other day. Both methods achieve the same result: a significantly longer life.
The fascinating thing is that the animals fed every other day eat a lot on their eating day. Someone finally measured the calories, and discovered that, over their life span, animals fed every other day consumed 90% of the calories of the animals fed daily. Nor did they weigh less than controls. But they still lived significantly longer and showed a delayed onset of cancer. (In fact fasting has been suggested as a potential cancer treatment. Fasting is known to have a profound inflammatory effect.)
Mice fed every other day had lower insulin and better glucose tolerance. They also showed less inflammation.
Mary:
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SHORT-TERM FASTING AS ADJUVANT CANCER TREATMENT
~ Preclinical studies suggest that short-term fasting (STF) protects rodents from toxic effects of chemotherapy, while simultaneously enhances the efficacy of a variety of chemotherapeutic agents in numerous distinct malignancies, e.g. breast cancer, melanoma, neuroblastoma, pancreatic cancer, and colorectal cancer. In distinct strains of mice bearing xenograft malignancies, tumor growth clearly slows down in response to chemotherapy combined with a 24–60 h fast as compared to treatment with chemotherapy alone. STF simultaneously protects mice from chemotoxicity as well, because it reinforces stress resistance of healthy cells. The distinct response of healthy versus tumor cells to STF is called differential stress resistance (DSR). During nutrient deprivation, healthy cells re-invest energy in maintenance and repair that contribute to resistance to chemotherapy, while tumor cells are unable to slow down growth due to mutations in tumor suppressor genes and mitogenic pathways.
Moreover, low serum levels of glucose during STF impose extra stress on tumor cells, as their energy needs under these circumstances are primarily met by means of glycolysis. As a consequence of these differential responses of healthy versus cancer cells to STF, chemotherapy causes more DNA damage and apoptosis in tumor cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed when it is combined with STF. Thus, STF protects healthy cells against the toxic properties of chemotherapy and renders tumor cells more sensitive, a phenomenon called differential stress sensitization (DSS).
In contrast to most cancer therapies, STF has only mild side effects, such as headaches, dizziness, nausea, weakness and short-term weight loss in humans. Therefore, STF is a promising strategy to enhance the efficacy and tolerability of chemotherapy in cancer patients, especially as STF is an affordable and accessible approach and is potentially effective in a wide variety of tumors. However, patients with severe weight loss, sarcopenia, cachexia or malnutrition are probably not good candidates for a STF intervention. Recent guidelines recommend to increase protein and fat consumption in patients with cachexia. Thus, STF may be particularly useful for relatively fit patients treated with (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy. [i.e. the patients should not be already emaciated, as often happens in advanced cancer; that "concentration-camp look," as I call it, predicts imminent death.]
In healthy cells, nutrient deprivation shuts down pathways promoting growth to re-invest energy in maintenance and repair pathways. This results in increased cellular protection, contributing to enhanced resistance to distinct stressors including chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In contrast, tumor cells are unable to activate this protective response, due to: 1) uncontrolled activation of growth pathways and self-sufficiency in growth signals caused by oncogenic mutations or autocrine production of growth factors, and 2) loss of anti-proliferative signals due to mutations in tumor suppressor genes.
Thus, acquiring the ability to increase growth, tumor cells lose the ability to adapt to extreme environments, including nutrient deprivation. Additionally, the persistent increased growth rate of tumor cells requires abundant nutrients. Therefore, STF increases DSS of tumor cells to several chemotherapeutic agents, radiotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Although the exact mechanism of DSR and DSS by STF is unknown, several growth factors and nutrient sensing pathways have been proposed to be key regulators, of which insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is the most examined. Nutrient sensing pathways are activated or inhibited in response to a low amount of available nutrients and are highly conserved among distinct organisms to overcome periods of famine. During nutrient scarcity, these pathways guide cells to invest energy in repair and maintenance rather than reproduction and growth, presumably to enhance survival of periods of famine. Analogously, infection-induced anorexia is a common sign of sickness and may be an important strategy for host defense.
IGF-1 and insulin stimulate proliferation and growth and inhibit apoptosis in response to calorie and protein availability through signaling via the IGF-1 receptor (IGF-1R) and insulin receptor isoform A (IR-A), respectively. Serum IGF-1 levels decrease during STF because low insulin levels cause growth hormone (GH) resistance of the liver, which inhibits hepatic IGF-1 production.
Therefore, the IGF-1R pathway is a key mediator of cancer cell growth and cancer resistance to commonly used therapeutics. Thus, the reduction in circulating levels of IGF-1 and insulin during STF may contribute to the anticancer activity as well.
AUTOPHAGY
Autophagy
(Greek for “self-eating”) is a highly conserved catabolic process among
eukaryotes to survive periods of nutrient deprivation. This adaptive
response of the cell involves damaged protein and organelle degradation
to generate amino acids as an alternative energy source. Activation of AMPK and autophagy seems to play a major part in the protective effects of STF in healthy cells.
Glucose metabolism and the “Warburg effect”
During short-term fasting, healthy cells have the metabolic flexibility to cope with nutrient deprivation, since glucose can be replaced by ketone bodies and fatty acids as primary energy source.
In contrast, tumor cells depend on glucose to maintain the high rate of cellular proliferation. Akt stimulates the so called “Warburg effect”, characterized by an increased rate of glycolysis rather than oxidative phosphorylation even in the presence of oxygen. STF down-regulates anaerobic glycolysis while up-regulating oxidative phosphorylation in tumor cells, and this “anti-Warburg effect” results in oxidative stress and apoptosis.
Also, a counterintuitive increase in protein translation during STF increases unmet energy needs, leading to cell death. Moreover, the 20–40% reduction in circulating glucose during STF may be enough to kill anoxic tumor cells. Thus, a decrease in nutrient availability during STF makes cancer cells more vulnerable to any challenge, including chemotherapy. However, overconsumption after a STF period might accelerate tumor growth, due to high glucose conditions and increased glycolysis.
As serum glucose levels decrease during STF, fatty acids serve as the main energy source. Beta-oxidation of fatty acids produces ketone bodies, which can be used as an alternative/additional fuel. Ketone bodies can also activate pathways involved in protection against free radicals. Moreover, STF presumably activates DNA repair processes in healthy cells. For example, in mice fasted for 24 h before high dose infusion of etoposide, less DNA damage was seen in small intestinal stem cells 3 h after the infusion compared to mice who ate ad libitum. As 1.5 h post-treatment DNA damage was similar, DNA repair was likely more efficient in healthy cells due to STF.
In contrast, tumor cells exhibit increased free-radical production if chemotherapy is combined with STF in vitro. In breast cancer cells cultured in low glucose medium or serum of fasting mice, a 20-fold increase in DNA damage was seen in response to chemotherapy, as compared to cells cultured in regular medium or in serum of ad libitum fed mice.
Metabolic risk factors for cancer
Obesity is associated with an increased risk of developing several cancers, such as breast cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer and thyroid cancer, and IGF-1 levels are positively associated with the risk of developing breast and prostate cancer. Moreover, obesity and high levels of insulin and IGF-1, as well as having diabetes mellitus are associated with worse survival in cancer.
Obese subjects are often hyperglycemic and hyperinsulinemic, as a result of insulin resistance. Although circulating levels of total (free + bound) IGF-1 are normal or even low in obese subjects, levels of free (bioactive) IGF-1 are higher than in lean subjects Both insulin and free IGF-1 can bind the IGF-1R and IR-A and activate the Ras/MAPK and PI3K/AKT pathway, through which cell proliferation is stimulated and apoptosis is inhibited, respectively. Moreover, preclinically, obesity is associated with macrophage accumulation in adipose tissue resulting in an immune suppressive microenvironment. These metabolic mechanisms may explain the increased risk of cancer as well as the worse prognosis of several cancers in obese subjects.
CLINICAL STUDIES OF FASTING
Voluntary fasting has been performed for many centuries and purposes, such as religious, ethical and cosmetic. Hippocrates was probably one of the first advocates of fasting for medical purposes (he recommended fasting during sickness). Since then, several doctors advised their patients to listen to their ‘fasting instinct’ (the natural loss of appetite during disease). Scientific research on the biomedical effects of fasting was performed from the late nineteenth century on, when several non-obese humans fasted for 20–40 days.
The first clinical study of medical fasting for the treatment of obesity was performed in 1915. The authors reported that short periods of four to six days of fasting is a safe and effective method for reducing bodyweight in obese humans. Since that time several studies were performed in obese subjects, with the longest fasting period lasting 382 days (!)
Benefits of fasting are improved cardiovascular risk factors, such as a decrease in blood pressure, improvement of lipid profile and insulin sensitivity, and weight loss in obese and non-obese subjects. The weight loss during STF is approximately 0.9 kg per day and decreases during prolonged fasting to 0.3 kg per day by the third week. Various studies examined the potential of fasting in the treatment of mood disorders, rheumatic diseases, asthma, chronic pain syndromes, hypertension, and metabolic syndrome.
For example, a large cohort study of more than 2000 subjects with chronic illness and pain syndromes, who used a very low-calorie diet of 350 kcal per day for 7 days, showed an increase in quality of life without any serious side effect. In healthy subjects, STF by 3 cycles of a fasting mimicking diet (FMD) reduces common risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and aging, such as lowering blood pressure, body weight, glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol. Additionally, STF may improve clinical outcome in patients undergoing a partial liver resection and may prevent acute kidney injury after cardiac surgery.
STF may be an affordable and safe intervention — at least in patients without severe weight loss or malnutrition -- which potentially dampens the side effects of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and TKIs (tyrosine-kinase inhibitors), while reinforcing their efficacy. Furthermore, it is potentially effective in a wide variety of tumors.
Abundant and convincing preclinical evidence shows that short-term fasting can decrease toxicity and simultaneously increase efficacy of a wide variety of chemotherapeutic agents. Preclinical data suggesting that STF can enhance the effects of radiotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors are promising as well. In clinical studies, STF emerges as a promising strategy to enhance the efficacy and tolerability of chemotherapy. It appears safe as an adjunct to chemotherapy in humans, and it may reduce side effects and DNA damage in healthy cells in response to chemotherapy. However, more research is needed to firmly establish clinical efficacy and safety. ~
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6530042/
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ending on beauty:
~ Emily Dickison
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