April 2008 Archives
This is mental. What we except as the truth about healthy water consumption is actually kind of made up. Read below and decide for yourself.
Drinking a lot of water is supposed to be healthy, but there is apparently little scientific support for the belief. A review of clinical studies has found no evidence that drinking eight glasses of water a day, the usual recommendation, is beneficial to a healthy person.
Numerous claims have been made about water — that it prevents headaches, removes dangerous “poisons,” improves the function of various organs and is associated with reduced risk for various diseases. But none of these is supported by scientific evidence. The authors were not even able to find a study leading to the “eight glasses a day” rule,
whose origin remains unknown.
The researchers, in the June issue of The Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, say some studies have found evidence that drinking extra water helps the kidneys clear sodium, and long-term sodium retention might increase the risk of hypertension, but no clinical significance for the phenomenon has been established. Water also helps clear urea, but urea is not a toxin.
There is “intriguing” evidence that water might help decrease appetite and control weight gain, write the authors, who say this might be worth more research.
“Under normal circumstances,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a co-author and a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, “drinking extra water is unnecessary. I want to relieve people of the burden of schlepping water bottles around all day long.”
Source: NICHOLAS BAKALAR. New York Times.
Rise early, raise testosterone naturally.
Researchers from the University of California/San Diego School of Medicine found that early-morning light raised levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) by 70%. LH is involved in the production of testosterone, a hormone which can help men to build muscle, cut fat, and raise mood.
Testosterone is slowly depleted as we get older, some theories suggest that stabilizing it's levels can prolong life and reduce the signs of ageing.
Seen above is a diagram of Testosterone that clearly does not illustrate anything to do with what we're talking about.
Links to his past shows:
And here's more info on the Silence = Death slogan.
From the Encyclopedia of AIDS:
“The pink triangle was established as a pro-gay symbol by activists in the United States during the 1970s. Its precedent lay in World War II, when known homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps were forced to wear inverted pink triangle badges as identifiers, much in the same manner that Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David. Wearers of the pink triangle were considered at the bottom of the camp social system and subjected to particularly harsh maltreatment and degradation. Thus, the appropriation of the symbol of the pink triangle, usually turned upright rather than inverted, was a conscious attempt to transform a symbol of humiliation into one of solidarity and resistance. By the outset of the AIDS epidemic, it was well-entrenched as a symbol of gay pride and liberation.
In 1987, six gay activists in New York formed the Silence = Death Project and began plastering posters around the city featuring a pink triangle on a black background stating simply ‘SILENCE = DEATH.’ In its manifesto, the Silence = Death Project drew parallels between the Nazi period and the AIDS crisis, declaring that ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people, then and now, must be broken as a matter of our survival.’ The slogan thus protested both taboos around discussion of safer sex and the unwillingness of some to resist societal injustice and governmental indifference. The six men who created the project later joined the protest group ACT UP and offered the logo to the group, with which it remains closely identified.
Since its introduction, the ‘SILENCE = DEATH’ logo has appeared in a variety of manifestations, including in neon as part of an art display and on a widely worn button. It was also the forerunner of a range of parallel slogans such as ‘ACTION = LIFE’ and ‘IGNORANCE = FEAR’ and an entire genre of protest graphics, most notably including a bloodstained hand on a poster proclaiming that ‘the government has blood on its hands.’ Owing in part to its increasing identification with AIDS, the pink triangle was supplanted in the early 1990s by the rainbow as the dominant image of ‘gay pride.’ By force of analogy, however, the rainbow itself has, in some countries, become an image associated with AIDS.”
Figuratively and possibly literally.Artist Wayne Martin Belger has created a camera that contains blood that is HIV positive. The blood is used as a filter through which images of people diagnosed with HIV are photographed by Belger.$20 says he has at least one Danzig album in his collection.
A pretty potent and might I say high-risk effort by the photographer, and candid undertaking on the part of the subject.
Click here to read more and see images made using the camera.
(Via OMG via Greydon)
This just in, via Artforum.com:
(from Jon Knowles)
GREGOR SCHNEIDER SEEKS SOMEONE WILLING TO DIE FOR ARTNot awesome.
Never one to shy away from controversy, the artist Gregor Schneider has begun a search for someone willing to die as part of a performance. “I want to display a person dying naturally in the piece or somebody who has just died,” he told the Art Newspaper's Gareth Harris. “My aim is to show the beauty of death.” Schneider has noted his desire to stage the performance at the Haus Lange museum in Krefeld, Germany, also saying that if the museum refuses, he will stage the performance in a studio space in his hometown of Rheydt, also in Germany. The museum declined to comment.
(from Jon Knowles)
In a post a few months back we told you about how Allen Ginsberg came up with the name for our foundation. Well here he is again making things lovely by speaking through Beck about himself online. Amazing!
Do you love facts? Do your friends characterize you as a "numbers person"? Do you have three minutes of your life that you'll never get back that you'd like to spend learning about death? Who doesn't? The whole idea of never getting time back will be moot in the next 50 years anyways. So enjoy!
Pretty crazy news about vitamin supplements! Read on...
Vitamin supplements taken by millions of people do not increase life expectancy and may raise the risk of a premature death , according to a review of 67 studies with more than 230,000 subjects.
The review, by the Cochrane Collaboration which regularly pools data from trials to evaluate drugs and treatments, found supplements vitamin A, vitamin E and beta-carotene are detrimental to health. In 47 trials with 180,938 people and a low risk of bias, the "antioxidant supplements significantly increased mortality", the authors wrote. When the antioxidants were assessed separately and low risk of bias trials were included and selenium excluded, vitamin A was linked to a 16% increased risk of dying, beta-carotene to a 7% increased risk and vitamin E to a 4% increased risk.
Evidence for vitamin C and selenium was more equivocal, suggesting there was no benefit to taking these pills compared with a placebo.
"The bottom line is current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general healthy population or in patients with certain diseases," said Goran Bjelakovic, who performed the review at Copenhagen Universityhospital in Denmark. "There was no indication that vitamin C and selenium may have positive or negative effects. So regarding these we need more data from randomised trials."
All the supplements are categorised as antioxidants; research has suggested these chemicals underlie some of the beneficial effects of eating fruit and vegetables because they soak up harmful byproducts of metabolism which can damage cells and cause aging.
While the evidence of a beneficial effect of a diet rich in fruit and veg is solid, the Cochrane data suggest antioxidant supplements are either useless or detrimental.
Bjelakovic's team evaluated 67 randomised clinical trials with 232,550 subjects; 21 of the trials were on healthy subjects, while the rest tested patients with a range of diseases. The evidence suggests it would be safer to obtain the chemicals not as supplements but by eating plenty of fruit and vegetables.
At long last, the t-shirt you've been waiting for!
You can find it on CafePress for $26.99.
It's the first of many upcoming designs. And as you know, if it's good enough for the hippies, it's good enough for all of us.
Also on the t-shirt tip, we've begun working with artist Luke Painter on a design that is shaping up to be awesome! ETA is about 1 month.
Keep it live!
FDF 'til Infinity
And don't forget...
You can find it on CafePress for $26.99.
It's the first of many upcoming designs. And as you know, if it's good enough for the hippies, it's good enough for all of us.
Also on the t-shirt tip, we've begun working with artist Luke Painter on a design that is shaping up to be awesome! ETA is about 1 month.
Keep it live!
FDF 'til Infinity
And don't forget...
Continue reading Fuck Death Foundation T-Shirt Online Now!.
Women who eat diets similar to the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet--which is low in animal protein, moderate in low-fat dairy products and high in plant proteins, fruits and vegetables--appear to have a lower risk of coronary heart disease and stroke, according to a new report.
The DASH diet has been shown to reduce both systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure in individuals with high or normal blood pressure, according to background information in the article. The diet has also been shown to reduce low-density lipoprotein ("bad") cholesterol and is recommended in national dietary guidelines as an example of a healthy eating pattern.
Teresa T. Fung, Sc.D., of Simmons College, Boston, and colleagues studied 88,517 female nurses age 34 to 59 in the Nurses' Health Study who did not have cardiovascular disease or diabetes in 1980. Seven times from 1980 through 2004, the women reported the types of foods they ate regularly over the previous year. Researchers then calculated a DASH score for each woman based on eight food and nutrient components. Their scores increased when they ate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes and stayed close to the recommended amounts of low-fat dairy. Scores decreased with increased consumption of red and processed meats, sweetened beverages and sodium.
The DASH diet has been shown to reduce both systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure in individuals with high or normal blood pressure, according to background information in the article. The diet has also been shown to reduce low-density lipoprotein ("bad") cholesterol and is recommended in national dietary guidelines as an example of a healthy eating pattern.
Teresa T. Fung, Sc.D., of Simmons College, Boston, and colleagues studied 88,517 female nurses age 34 to 59 in the Nurses' Health Study who did not have cardiovascular disease or diabetes in 1980. Seven times from 1980 through 2004, the women reported the types of foods they ate regularly over the previous year. Researchers then calculated a DASH score for each woman based on eight food and nutrient components. Their scores increased when they ate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes and stayed close to the recommended amounts of low-fat dairy. Scores decreased with increased consumption of red and processed meats, sweetened beverages and sodium.
Garlic has long been touted as a health booster, but it’s never been clear why the herb might be good for you. Now new research is beginning to unlock the secrets of the odoriferous bulb.In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that eating garlic appears to boost our natural supply of hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is actually poisonous at high concentrations — it’s the same noxious byproduct of oil refining that smells like rotten eggs. But the body makes its own supply of the stuff, which acts as an antioxidant and transmits cellular signals that relax blood vessels and increase blood flow.
In the latest study, performed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, researchers extracted juice from supermarket garlic and added small amounts to human red blood cells. The cells immediately began emitting hydrogen sulfide, the scientists found.
The power to boost hydrogen sulfide production may help explain why a garlic-rich diet appears to protect against various cancers, including breast, prostate and colon cancer, say the study authors. Higher hydrogen sulfide might also protect the heart, according to other experts. Although garlic has not consistently been shown to lower cholesterol levels, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine earlier this year found that injecting hydrogen sulfide into mice almost completely prevented the damage to heart muscle caused by a heart attack.
David Shrigley is Amazing (notice the capitalization)! Like the cat above, his works are dark, twisty, chuckle finding, thought curdling, manifestations of "what's going on these days" and they make up for the usual tedium encountered in the realm of fine art.
Have you ever studied the brain scans of two old men? Well, if you did you may find that the healthier one is from the old man that exercises all the time.That brain will remember your name and your birthday, the other one will call you Jeffrey and ask you to get him some ice cream chicken wings around at the bank machine hall. Work out, it will do your brain good. This info is straight from Dr. Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois. Vitalotechnics ain't no liar.
The mayor of a village on the French Riviera whose cemetery has run out of space has issued a decree telling people not to die."It is forbidden for any person not in possession of a family vault to die on the village's territory," the order stated.
The mayor of Le Lavandou, 40km (25 miles) east of Toulon, said he took the decision because a court in Nice has blocked plans to build a new cemetery.
The local Green Party had complained that the site for the proposed cemetery broke a law on sea shore constructions.
The party has proposed the new cemetery be located in a rock quarry in a less populated area.
Mayor Gil Bernardi said he issued the death ban to highlight the lack of burial space in the village.
Continue reading French mayor bans death.
We've posted no image here because we believe you need to see these powerful images with their supporting texts. Sensitivity disclaimer: the images may be upsetting to some viewers.
View the project at the following links:
The house is off-limits to children, and adults are asked to sign a waiver when they enter. The main concern is the concrete floor, which rises and falls like the surface of a vast, bumpy chocolate chip cookie.But, for Arakawa, 71, an artist who designed the house with his wife, Madeline Gins, the floor is a delight, as well as a proving ground.
As he scampered across it with youthful enthusiasm on a Friday evening in March, he compared himself to the first man to walk on the moon. “If Neil Armstrong were here, he would say, ‘This is even better!’ ”
Then Ms. Gins, 66, began holding forth about the health benefits of the house, officially called Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa). Its architecture makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that, she said, will stimulate their immune systems.
“They ought to build hospitals like this,” she said.
A reporter, who thinks they should never, ever build hospitals like this, tried to go with the flow. Like the undulating floor, Arakawa and Gins, as they are known professionally, tend to throw people off balance.
In 45 years of working together as artists, poets and architects, they have developed an arcane philosophy of life and art, a theory they call reversible destiny. Essentially, they have made it their mission — in treatises, paintings, books and now built projects like this one — to outlaw aging and its consequences.
Continue reading A House Not for Mere Mortals.
The number one killer in North America can be hindered by watching blooper reels or whatever one might do to illicit their inner laugh response.
So why do stress reduction techniques -- laughter in particular-- reduce the risk of heart disease? To answer that, it helps to know how mental stress can potentially damage your heart.
"When you're under a lot of stress there are chemicals that are released that cause blood pressure and the heart rate to go up, cause platelets to clump together and all of those set up a series of reactions that could enhance the process of plaque formation and development," said Miller. "So people that appear to be under lots of stress all the time are at increased risk [for heart disease] even if they dont have a family history of heart disease or if they don't have diabetes."
Conversely, reducing stress, with laughter in particular, can have the opposite effect.
"We think laughter is an active process and may have a direct impact on improving the lining of the blood vessels," explained Miller. Reducing stress also benefits the heart by lowering the blood pressure, and heart rate.
"The ability to laugh may have important implications in societies such as the U.S. where heart disease remains the number one killer," Miller said. "We know that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat, will reduce the risk of heart disease. Perhaps regular, hearty laughter should be added to the list."
Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light.Known as a "nanoimpeller," the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.
UCLA researchers reported the synthesis and operation of nanoparticles containing nanoimpellers that can deliver anticancer drugs in the journal Small.
Nanomechanical systems designed to trap and release molecules from pores in response to a stimulus have been the subject of intensive investigation, in large part for their potential applications in precise drug delivery. Nanomaterials suitable for this type of operation must consist of both an appropriate container and a photo-activated moving component.
Continue reading Nanomachine Kills Cancer Cells.
