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With all the talk of global warming, assuming that it is happening, there is no talk of global oxidation, which is undeniably happening. Aside from all the pollution, the antibiotic use (people and animals), the use of estrogenic substances, the "dead" and "dying" lakes, etc., this happens within peoples' bodies. One manifestation of it is "AIDS," which is not an immune deficiency syndrome (because the "HIV infected patients" sometimes are said to die of very particular and unusual infections, but are often healthy for many years and don't get sick more often than the "average, healthy" person during this time). Instead, most cases of "AIDS" appear to be characterized by a great deal of oxidative stress.
Oxidative conditions favor fungi, and the "opportunistic infections" said to kill "AIDS patients" are mostly fungal in nature. Many people not said to be "HIV infected" have problems with "yeast infections" - another manifestation of this. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies are more likely to occur under these condtions as well. If we look at nature, we see that things like berries use massive amounts of antioxdants to fend off fungi. Berries could also contain things like enzyme inhibitiors, the way legumes do, but berries want animals to eat them, to scatter the seeds around, and so the solution was to contain the antioxidants, which are not likely to cause healthy animals any problems. Today, because "Western" diets are mostly highly oxidative (due to consumption of refined and highly unsaturated oils in particular), |
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we are being told to eat antioxidant-rich diets. Of course, since there is no reason to consume these oils in the first place, this kind of advice is based upon assumptions about what most people are eating.
My older relatives talk about how fruits and vegetables don't have much taste these days, and I've noticed this especially in the case of apples, which often taste like water that has an off taste to me. Plants which are usually antioxidant-rich may contain much smaller amounts if they are grown under stressful conditions, and so this is another example of the global oxidation that we are witnessing these days (after World War II, it has become much more pronounced). While one can protect oneself to some degree by avoiding any major dietary source of unsaturated fat, it is unclear what this will mean to life on this planet. There are all kinds of "pathogenic" infections among marine life that has never been seen before, and not just mammals. Off the coast of New England such an "epidemic" afflicted lobsters (I think it was first observed last year), for example. The way it was described by one "expert" led me to call it "lobster AIDS" among a few people I discussed this with, and as I've said many times before, in science, you do the controlled experiments and see what happens. It would certainly be easy to do with lobsters. What would most likely be found is that the same "pathogens" are present among both groups of lobsters, but that only the one that is exposed to powerful stressors (such as the kind of pollutants off the shores of New England) become ill. It is much easier and cheaper to determine how dangerous "global oxidation" appears to be than to do so with "global warming." My fear is that the former is much more dangerous to life on the planet (except perhaps to the fungi and some bacteria, for example) than the latter. |
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A good report that shows how similar things like "heart disease" and the destruction of coral reefs are can be found at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060718220627.htm |
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Here is a passage from a good report about scientists who developed a better way to examine free radical damage:
QUOTE: "Oxygen is actually one of the more toxic molecules in the environment," Beckman said. "Breathing 100 percent pure oxygen will destroy your lungs in about three days because it increases the formation of superoxide."
Superoxide is efficiently removed by an enzyme, superoxide dismutase. Antioxidants in food, such as vitamin C and E, are also part of this process. And in healthy animals, including humans, this delicate balancing act can work well and cause few problems. But sometimes the process breaks down and excess levels of superoxide begin to accumulate and lead to a wide variety of degenerative diseases.
Prior to this, there was no direct and accurate way to measure superoxide or its origin from the two places that produce it, the cell's cytosol or mitochondria. Now there is.
With the new system developed at OSU, researchers can use a fluorescent microscope, a fairly standard laboratory tool, to actually see levels of superoxide and observe changes as experiments are performed with living cells.
"If we poison the mitochondria, using something like the pesticides that have been implicated in Parkinson's disease, we can actually see superoxide levels begin to rapidly rise," Beckman said. "You get a similar reaction if a growth factor is added that's implicated in the development of Lou Gehrig's Disease."
The data available from this new technology, Beckman said, are so profound that for some time many in the science community didn't believe it was possible.
"This will become a critical tool in learning how superoxide works in a cell," he said. "I've been studying this for more than 10 years and never thought we would have such a clear and accurate picture of what's going on inside a living cell."
In their research on ALS, for instance, OSU scientists have used the new system to actually see cells eating themselves alive and dying from excess superoxide production. A new compound is in phase one clinical trials that appears to inhibit this process and may ultimately provide a therapy for the disease.
Oxidative stress resulting from mitochondrial dysfunction has already been implicated in neurodegeneration, aging, diabetes and cancer, the researchers said in their report. The new findings could rapidly speed research in all of those fields, they said.
UNQUOTE.
Note how they talk about the antioxidant defenses sometimes "breaking down." This can occur if you eat a diet containing the wrong lipids, not just the kind of molecules, but also the way they have been "refined" and they way you cook the food.
Source for the quoted passage: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060926104526.htm |
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Here's another problem that may be worse than "Global Warming," assuming it is as bad as predicted: QUOTE: ...Large-scale livestock operations provide most of the meat and meat products consumed around the world--consumption that is growing at a record pace and is projected to double by 2050, said symposium organizer Harold A. Mooney, professor of biological sciences at Stanford. "We are seeing tremendous environmental problems with these operations, from land degradation and air and water pollution to loss of biodiversity," he said, noting that the developing world is especially vulnerable to the effects of these operations... UNQUOTE. |
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QUOTE: ...Scientists at the University of Michigan say pollution may be the cause of cardiovascular diseases that cannot be explained by high fat intake and smoking.
The lung association reports that 2.8 million people on Long Island - and 150 million people nationwide - breathe air with dangerously high levels of ozone.
Air quality data in the report came from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which monitors pollutants statewide. Monitoring devices on Long Island are located in Babylon and Riverhead. The report involves monitoring conducted between 2003 and 2005.
"All of New York City received Fs for particulate matter, and that should serve as a warning sign for us because last year we had a B for particle pollution," Seilback said, referring to Nassau and Suffolk counties. "We're getting worse because there are more diesel trucks on the road."
Thurston said that not all forms of ozone are bad. "There's the good ozone in the stratosphere that we need to filter out ultraviolet radiation. But we have man-made ozone in the troposphere, where we live. It can oxidize the lining of the lungs and eat away at the tissue. So think of that as you would rust. That's what oxidizing does. It causes things to rust..." UNQUOTE. |
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QUOTE: The deadly chytrid fungus is making devastating in-roads into Australia's vulnerable frog populations, with a Griffith University study revealing the disease-causing fungus is now established in frog populations throughout Eastern Australia... Kerry said that chytridiomycosis �?the disease caused by the fungus �?was likely absent from Queensland until 1978. It is now prevalent in moist, temperate areas around Australia, and around the world. Scientists theorize the rapid spread has been driven by international trade in amphibians as well as environmental factors. "Chytrid has spread so quickly that frogs often have no chance to evolve resistance to it," Kerry said. "It's highly infectious, so when it arrives in an area most frogs are likely to contract it. It attacks the keratin in the frogs' skin, and may also produce a toxin that poisons the frog. The disease can have an 80 per cent mortality rate, and is already believed to be responsible for 6-8 species extinctions in eastern Australia. "Overseas dozens of species have disappeared due to the disease..." UNQUOTE. SOURCE: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070503095949.htm NOTE: Fungi create oxidizing conditions, which then prompt bacteria to become "clingly," causing "disease." Also, fungi are usually not as sensitive to the damaging effects of oxidizing conditions as compared to other organisms. |
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A new report supports my notion:
QUOTE: ...Bottjer and many others have published studies suggesting that the end-Permian extinction 250 million years ago happened in essence because "the earth got sick."
The latest research from Bottjer's group suggests a similar slow dying during the extinction 200 million years ago at the boundary of the Triassic and Jurassic eras... UNQUOTE.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081007102904.htm |
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