On fasting

The human body was meant to run on fat. We have enough fat stored in our bodies to last us 40 to 70 days without any food at all. Even the leanest of us, carry an enormous amount of fuel in an fuel tank around our midsections. When fasting, this is the fat that used for energy. If toxins are stored in fat cells, and we were meant to be running on fat (as opposed to sugar) then our bodies are not only efficient fat-burning machines, they are efficient toxin-burning machines. This is why water fasting is the best detox. Better than juice fasting, better than most supplements. Water fasting burns fat faster and more efficiently and therefore is the one fast that burns off toxins the quickest.


Secondly, I am quite sure there are significant and unique hormonal adaptions that occur during fasting that promote longevity, detoxification, mental acuity, and a host of other benefits. It stands to reason that if our bodies were meant to run on fat.  If we evolved to top up and run down our fuel stores. That the process of running those fat stores down would provoke beneficial biosystemical responses. If we don't fast regularly, we don't get those beneficial responses and our systems are not operating anywhere near their potential.

Fast walking - the only way

(NaturalNews) Walk faster to stay one step ahead of Death, according to recent research published in the Christmas edition of BMJ. (During Christmas, this normally formal publication publishes more unconventional articles.) A team of scientists from various schools, hospitals and medical institutions located in Sydney, Australia collaborated to determine the maximum walking pace of the Grim Reaper and the speed necessary to outpace him.

Since the Grim Reaper himself was unavailable for participation in this study, the scientists measured the walking speed and mortality of 1,705 men over age 70 and used receiver operating characteristic curve analysis to estimate the preferred walking pace of the Grim Reaper. Results showed that men who walked faster were less likely to die. It was estimated that the Grim Reaper walks at a rate of approximately 1.8 miles per hour. None of the men who walked at a speed of 3 miles/hour or greater met with Death during the time frame of the study; therefore, the scientists concluded that a walking pace greater than 3 miles/hour is optimal for outrunning Death.

The researchers used data from the Concord Health and Aging in Men Project, which is a study consisting of men over the age of 70 in Sydney, Australia. The researchers used a stopwatch to determine the time it took each participant to walk approximately 20 feet, using the fastest speed of two trials and adjusting walking speed for height. The men were then followed up with by telephone at 4 months intervals and with visits to the clinic at 2 and 5 years after the trial was completed.

It was found that men who walked at speeds greater than 2 miles per hour were 1.23 times less likely to die, while all 22 of the participants who walked at a pace of 3 miles per hour were still alive at the 5-year follow-up. The researchers conclude that "faster speeds are protective against mortality because fast walkers can maintain a safe distance from the Grim Reaper."

Other scientific studies have also shown the correlation between walking speed and mortality. A 2011 study published in theJournal of the American Medical Associationexamined the relationship between gait speed and survival by pooling the analyses completed for 9 different studies around this topic. It was found that survival increased across the full range of gait speeds. A 2008 study published in theJournal of the American Geriatric Societyfound that a slower gait was associated with a significantly greater risk of mortality and incident disability. A 2005 study, also published in theJournal of the American Geriatric Society, showed that a gait speed of less than 1 meter/second can be used to identify high-risk individuals for health-related events.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/034476_walking_longevity_exercise.html#ixzz1hQt00jd8

Water fast complete! Here's what i learned...

• Overeating is a nearly universal habit. Who decided this "three meals a day" propaganda? I wasn't hungry at all! Not once. I see clearly how much of eating is habit and almost any other reason than hunger and nutrition. 
• I had full energy. Very surprising. I had to purposely slow myself down remembering this was a time for regeneration and rest.
• Amazing to have so much more time free from eating and food thoughts - like adding 30% to your day.
• Lost 8 kg. Wow. Since toxins are stored in fat that means millions of toxins shedded. My eyes totally clear (no darkness or puffiness) for the first time in??
• I was very zen 90% of the time. Any negative emotions I felt were the underlying ones that i know are there already and am working on. I was never nervous, grouchy, upset, moody etc., do to lack of food.
• Any food fantasies I had revolved around healthy fruits, veggies, smoothies, fresh juice etc. I dreamed sometimes of salmon and hamberger. 
• What I will retain from my experience: 
1. Eat less! Limit portions and frequency. Eat when you feel genuinely hungry. Not because you just got home from work and need comfort food. 
2. Stop thinking of food so much - waste fo time and energy. Neurotic.
• I highly recommend the experience! I will do one 36 hour fast a week and one 5 days fast ever quarter. Next long fast I will go for 7 or 10 days. 

Water fast holiday challenge

I'm saying NO to mass consumerism at its lowest common denominator this holiday season. I am taking the opposite tack. NO to overeating, No to over drinking, NO to over shopping, in fact no to ALL of the above.


I've been intrigued by water fasting and have prepared myself to do so this holiday season. My last meal will be Saturday night December 17 and I will continue on with only water for at least 5 days but possibly as many as 7. During this time, I will not be communicating here or anywhere else (no Facebook, cellphone, Skype etc., etc.) House visits welcome however. 


My reasons are numerous (general health, detoxification, breaking dopamine-generated addictive behavior, willpower exercise, deeper mediation, and spiritual). I will report back on my journey on Christmas.


Any questions about water fasting can be best answered here:


http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508

Quantum Consciousness

Excerpt from Conscious Medicine by Gill Edwards


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conscious-Medicine-Creating-Well-Being-Universe/dp/0749941987



"It's easy to forget that science simply offers a story about reality, rather than the object truth. Just as religion was once taken to be the whole truth, scientist and doctors have become the new priests of our age, whose opinions are often taken for factual and accurate, But our ever-changing science is just a story - and stories are not true or false...


The Cartesian-Newtonian world view is based upon materialism. This is, it sees the world as real and solid, and assumes that the physical world is all there is. In this clockwork universe, everything is made up of separate objects that can bump up against each other like billiard balls, but which have no real connection. What really matters in this world view is the solid stuff - the "matter" - and everything is explained at that level.


To the materialist, the body is a machine - and consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon, and after-effect. Mind somehow emerged from the primordial broth and random genetic mutations, presumably because it has some advantage in survival terms as animals slowly evolved from the plant kingdom...


Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the materialist assumes that the mind cannot effect matter, that consciousness cannot affect anything at a distance, and that mind and matter are fundamentally different 'stuff.' If you see through these blinkered eyes, then drugs and surgery do make sense as an approach to health care. If the body is sick, you correct it on the physical level, since the physical level is all there is. You ignore the mind because it is pretty much irrelevant to the physical body. 


Back in the 1920's, quantum physics began to reveal a very different world from that inhabited by the materialist: a world in which mystics, ghosts, telepathy and distant healing could coexist happily alongside computers, jet planes and MRI scans. In the bazaar world of quantum physics, we can move backwards and forwards in time, communication can occur instantaneously across vast distances between 'entangled' partials and light can be a wave or a particle, depending on who is observing it.


What is more, as physicists looked at tinier and tinier particles of what makes up our physical reality, they concluded that there simply isn't any solid stuff. There is only energy, or in quantum physics terms, 'waves of probability.' and what is it that decides which of the many probable realities comes into existence, so that it appears real and solid? Consciousness. The new physics tells us that consciousness determines whether the light behaves as a wave or as a particle, or whether this event or that event occurs. If we take that a step further, it is consciousness that decides whether the knee is painfully swollen or healthy, or whether this tumour is 'here or not here.'


The new physics tells us that energy-consciousness, rather than 'solid stuff,' is the basic building block of physical reality. In other words, this is a psycho-energetic universe. Far from being the misty irrelevancy that materialists would have us believe, consciousness is at the heart of the emerging new science. It is not a mere ghost in the machine, but the creative source of everything.


The well-known physicist David Bohm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm) offered a model of the universe that is starkly different from Newton's lonely clockwork universe. Bohm viewed the universe as an undivided wholeness, like a hologram that is forever flowing in motion - a remarkably similar vision to that of Hinduism, Buddhism or shamanism. In his view, everything in the universe was interconnected. He wrote about the 'implict order' - the unseen dimensions or reality - and how this unfolds into the physical universe."

Raving, brain waves and nonlocal communication

Let's assume the Grinberg-Zylberbaum experiment is valid (see Nonlocal communication post earlier). Namely, two brain waves can be "synced" together via meditation even when is separate locations and subject to new external stimuli. Have you ever wondered why the people who go to see certain types of music seem similarly "synced?"


Let's take the example of Dead Heads, as ardent fans of the late Jerry Garcia's band are called. The Dead comes to town and fans flock to the show. Just to get to the musical event you have to share an interest in this type of music. So the group is already extremely pre-filtered similarity vis-a-vis brain-music response. The Dead Heads still retain their unique individuality but the similarities are much broader - two Grateful Dead fans both love the dead, travelled to hear them play but each has their own favorate songs. But the similarities are striking. Just to be at this concert must say something about the degree that their brainwaves are synced. Then add in a live performance, mega sound, ecstatic dancing, mind-opening narcotics - and that should explain the communal feeling, the similar responses, even the similar self-expression via hair and clothing. Dead Heads are literally on the same wavelength.


I would take my hypothesis further. The degree of "synch" seems to entail much much more (lifestyle, occupation, income, family structure, etc..). Conclusion: if you're feeling alone, alienated, depressed the simplest way to feel connect is to go to a performance of the music that most interests you. There you're extremely likely to find a large pool of potential friends, lovers, colleagues and dance partners. Music really is the answer.

Animism: man's search for meaning

What is the meaning of life? Animism, generalised anthropomorphism and social intelligence (2002)

Bruce G Charlton MD

Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry
Department of Psychology
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 4HH
EnglandEditor-in-Chief, Medical Hypotheses

Tel: 0191 222 6247
Fax: 0191 222 5622
E-mail: bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk

Alienation is often regarded as being an intrinsic part of the human condition, and this sense of division is at the root of much religious and philosophical questioning and questing. People do not feel at home in the world. Life seems intrinsically meaningless. If the meaning of life is by fortune to be found, then it is something that people must discover by strenuous endeavour, an act of faith or sustained intellectual exploration.

However, although this analysis is commonplace, it seems unlikely that human beings should have evolved such that their existence felt meaningless. Why should natural selection generate creatures that inevitably experience a chronic state of alienation? Most mental states, such as the emotions of fear, anger and disgust, are potentially useful adaptations that usually benefit survival and reproductive success, at least under the kind of conditions under which humans evolved.

A possible explanation is that the meaninglessness of life is an accidental and harmful side effect of useful mental abilities; perhaps alienation is the price paid for consciousness? But I suggest that when humans originally evolved, they indeed felt 'at home in the world', and that feelings of division and alienation are by-products of cultural change.

The need to discover a meaning in life is not part of human biological destiny, it is an artefact due to biologically-recent economic factors.

Animism

The point at which the majority of humans ceased to feel a spontaneous sense of belonging in the world can be identified with some confidence. It was the cultural transition from hunting and gathering to an 'agricultural' mode of life. In other words it is usual for hunter-gatherers to feel that life has ‘meaning’ - but rare for everyone else.

The typical spirituality of hunter gatherers is usually termed ‘animism’. But animism is not a fixed and dogmatic creed in the way of 'book religions' such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Animism is more a spontaneous experience than a set of beliefs, theories and practices - characterised by general form rather than specific content.

In an animistic world all significant things are agents, animate and sentient. There are no objects - only subjects. A hunter gatherer experiences a world in which human-type relations do not stop at the species boundary, but extend out into the animals, plants and landscape. A man may shift form to become a bear, or a bear may become a man, or there may be a synthesis of the two. A particular tree may be conscious, have a personality and memories, and may require informal and formal acts of respect.

Such specific features of animism are secondary. The core feature of animism is one of humans dwelling-in and moving-through a world that is alive and aware, and potentially in communication with humans. For the animist their world is wholly 'peopled'. Nothing is indifferent to the human observer, and the observer is personally concerned by every entity. The animistic world is bound together on both sides by feelings - likes and dislikes, desires and fears. Each person is at the centre of a web of reciprocal emotions. Each person’s place in the world is defined by this mesh, nothing is isolated and independent, every thing is linked to other things by affective bonds.

A world composed of human-like natural entities is a world saturated with meaning - because every significant entity in the compass of experience has its own 'nature', intentions and feelings. The agencies of animism display human characteristics. Bird David describes how forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers characterise the forest as a parent: the spirits of the forest will give foods and gifts, and socialise with the tribe. Like a human parent, the forest may go to sleep and need awakening, or may become angry if treated without respect, and require propitiation. Other natural agencies are enemies who may be blamed for mishaps.

Adaptive anthropomorphism

Animistic beliefs are broadly adaptive under the conditions that prevail in hunter gatherer societies. Indeed, generalised anthropomorphism, or social intelligence applied to non-human affairs, can be an extremely effective way of dealing with the natural world. Knowledge of an animal’s nature enables its behaviour to be predicted with considerable precision in real world situations - and individual animals have their own dispositions which may be learned. Expert animal trainers (such as Vicki Hearne) confirm that even with the advantages of scientific biology, informed anthropomorphism usually offers the best system for understanding, predicting and manipulating animal behaviour - especially with large mammals.

Furthermore, anthropomorphic knowledge is vivid, sustains attention, and mobilises emotions. In an oral culture that depends absolutely on human memory, anthropomorphic knowledge is probably the best way of memorising important information. 'Personalised' knowledge is also highly suitable for encoding in stories and songs that form a reliably transmissible source of information.

Recollections of the animistic experience should be accessible by consideration of pre-literate childhood. The developmental history of each modern child 'recapitulates' the global history of the human species. Without technologies to measure time, or any physical records of previous events, the sum and meaning of human affairs is held in memory. The mind is the measure of all things. History and prediction attain actuality only in the here and now of the lived moment where past, present and future come together (‘Ceremonial time’). Experience is filtered and structured according to the associational modes of the human mind. Recollection can occur in many sequences and orderings, may jump between events, simultaneously consider disparate entities, shape selected elements into a story, and may include dreams or visions of the future. Just as time is experienced in a non-technological society, so the world is perceived.

For hunter gatherers, the observed divisions of space and time are potentially permeable - as permeable as the categories of the human mind. In such a culture, nothing in the world of experience is alien, nor are humans divided from anything perceived or imagined, precisely because all experience is human. The nature of the world is shaped and defined by the nature of the mind.

Social intelligence

The animistic world view is a consequence of the evolved nature of human intelligence. Human intelligence is substantially social intelligence, a set of psychological adaptations which evolved as an adaptation to the problems of social living. Humans see the world through social spectacles. Consequently, hunter gatherers (and children) spontaneously anthropomorphise the natural world.

Humans are social animals, and human minds (like those of their primate cousins) have been shaped by many millions of years of natural selection in a social context. Those individuals best able to survive, thrive and reproduce in competition with their own species were the ones that left behind most offspring.

Humans living in social groups were apparently so successful at solving the ‘external’ ecological problems of life (eg. problems of climate, food and water supplies, the threat of predators etc) that social problems became dominant. Having solved the ecological threats to survival, the most important factor influencing reproductive success became the ability to outperform other humans in terms of social aptitude. So, except in situations of physical emergency, social reality dominates ecological reality.

Demographic studies in hunter gatherer cultures (eg. among the Amazonian Indians or African Bushmen) have demonstrated that you are more likely to be killed by another person than to be killed by a predator species. As in many other social primates, alliances are a major form of power, and the best defence against a hostile foe is to form a gang. Boys and men are highly peer-oriented, especially observant of potential friends or enemies, and spontaneously form goal-orientated cooperative groups. Similarly, but for different reasons and with different mechanisms, women readily form reciprocal alliances with other women for child care, food gathering and preparation, mutual defence against predators while gathering, and so on.

Sexual selection is perhaps the most important and distinctive form of social intelligence. The need to attract and please a mate has been instrumental in shaping the most distinctively human aspects of 'creative intelligence'. It is probable that humour, eloquence, arts, sport, fashion, dance and many other rich 'cultural' forms are primarily ways of displaying creative intelligence. Since creative intelligence requires many highly developed traits, and brain development and function requires exact co-ordination of many thousands of genes, the possession of creative is a reliable guide to good genetic quality and a desirable mate. Socially-orientated creative intelligence has therefore been selected as one of the most powerful of sexually attractive traits.

Over thousands of generations, the most reproductively effective humans were the ones those that were best at dealing with other humans - the best at monitoring and manipulating complex social interactions, interpreting behaviours, inferring the dispositions, motivations and intentions of other people, and engaging in complex and creative mating behaviours. Natural selection favoured those humans with the highest ‘social intelligence’, and social intelligence became the main way of experiencing the world and dealing with complex problems.

Consequently, human experience is socially biased, and human reasoning is spontaneously anthropomorphic. ‘Animism’ is merely one aspect of the lived experience of generalised anthropomorphism.

The transition

For a hunter gatherer the natural world is the subject of a social relationship, it is not a separated and inert object available for manipulation. The natural world is composed of personalities that must be engaged-with, communicated-with, a set of inescapable relationships. Care is needed when dealing with entities that have their dispositions, intentions and memories, and who are more powerful than humans. Since humans exist only by the consent of these personal powers, there is a sense of 'balance' that needs constant attention and work to maintain, excessive demands or inappropriate behaviour might destroy the natural order.

All this is changed by the development of ‘agriculture’. (Following Brody, the term 'agriculture' should be taken as shorthand for all complex economic systems: which include complex sedentary ‘hunter gatherers’ such as the Pacific North West American Indians, systems of herding and pastoralism, classic agrarian peasant societies, and modern industrial-mercantile states.) Agriculture involves a profoundly different relationship between humans and the natural world. In agriculture the natural world is no longer a source of food, it is raw material for the production of food. Human survival depends absolutely and permanently on the mastering of nature by man. The natural environment must be transformed, forced into artificial patterns, and must be sustained in this state.

With the advent of agriculture, at least some significant part of the natural world becomes separated from the social world, an object instead of a subject. The food producing environment is no longer a parent, it does not share its abundance with the farmer - rather, the farmer toils to hold back the continual encroachments of the natural world, and forces it to yield sustenance by strength of limb and sweat of brow. The balance of nature is actively prevented from returning to equilibrium. Although animism continues to feature in people’s beliefs and practices (after all animism remains the spontaneous mode of thought among all people, in all societies), humans cease to anthropomorphise the whole significant world, with the consequence that the world is no longer experienced as a whole. Only certain bits of the significant world are regarded as sentient agencies. In particular the economy is necessarily objectified and manipulated, because human survival depends on it.

The seamless integration of significant experience as a network of social relationships is lost in the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Life becomes divided, and humans alienated. From this point, not everything means something.

The nature of the meaning of life

Every individual in every society starts life as a spontaneous animist inhabiting a meaningful world composed of sentient agencies. However, in ‘agricultural’ societies the child is socialised into an instrumental attitude towards those parts of the natural world upon which the economy depends. The child learns to treat as objects things which were previously treated as agents. Animism is regarded as merely a naïve or uneducated belief system.

On the whole, learned objectification clearly 'works', in the sense that societies which treat significant aspects of natural world as objects include all the most powerful societies, the ones that have the greatest productive capacities, and the greatest ability to understand and manipulate. This should not need emphasising.

Alienation is not an accident. Objectification is necessary for economic efficiency hence societal survival. The need to function in the economic realm means that this division - at least - is inculcated into each new generation. There are sanctions. If socialisation fails and the animistic attitude of generalised anthropomorphism is carried through into adult life, the probable outcome for that individual is economic ineffectiveness, consequently low status. But individual experience of the ‘meaning of life’ has - in effect - been sacrificed to group power.

When people do not feel at home in the world this is because their cultures have 'taught' them that significant aspects of the world are objects with which there can be no legitimate social or emotional relationship. And this implies that when people in modern culture seek 'the meaning of life' they are often deeply mistaken about what kind of a thing they seek.

Possibilities

Typically people expect the meaning of life to be conceptual knowledge, information about how things work and what they should do about this. For instance, people imagine that the meaning of life might be something like a modern religion, or a philosophical system. Perhaps they envisage a 'cosmology' giving an account of the history and purpose of the world, linked to a description of how humans generally, and themselves specifically, fit in.

In other words, traditional discourse on the meaning of life is about propositional knowledge - knowledge about organisation and purpose. Purpose is often particularly sought after. People tend to assume that each human life and the world are part of an unfolding story - a divine plan - leading towards some kind of goal. Life should consist of progress towards that goal. For such individuals, discovering the meaning of life would be about discovering some information, then planning and managing one’s life to live in accordance with this information.

Dogmatic religions provide various stories and goals. Yet religious belief and practice in agricultural societies embodies the same divisions and alienation as the rest of these cultures. Indeed, religions are ‘agricultural’ phenomena - religions are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Much the same applies to philosophy.

Purpose, progress, aims, goals and plans are alien to the animistic mind. In fact, the idea of ‘purpose’ in life is itself a primary source of alienation, since purpose involves abstracting an idealised narrative from the actuality of the world, and matching each individual’s own life against that narrative. The act of comparison creates the state of division.

Hunter gatherers have a very fluid and responsive way of living, appropriate to moving through a world of personalised powers. Bird David describes how gatherers on a foraging expedition will not be looking for specific things, nor will the route be pre-arranged in detail - they set off in a direction, gather what they see, go where the impulse strikes. Such a venture cannot 'fail', and gatherers are seldom disappointed whatever the outcome - every expedition will always come back with something useful. And to have found something confirms the essentially benign relationship with the natural world who nurtures and supports them.

Brody gives an account of Inuit hunting demonstrates how discussion proceeds in a fluid, unstructured way. The hunt is not so much planned as imagined, with some of its infinite possible alternatives. Any 'plans' that emerge are not regarded as binding; each direction taken, each action or movement towards the hunt affects whatever comes next. For animists, hunting is not so much a matter of outwitting and forcibly killing animals; but a receiving of animals that are ready to 'give' themselves. Animals will be obtained only if and when it is right to obtain them, they are a gift from a cosmic economy that should not be artificially forced for fear of distortion and damage to an essentially benign system.

In stark contrast, modern life is a strenuous journey through an indifferent environment which will only yield under duress. The natural world must be coerced and manipulated into producing, the produce must be hoarded and guarded. Consumption needs to be regulated by time and place. A modern economy entails strategy, deferred satisfactions, explicit purpose, fixed and mandatory plans.

Animistic thinking is restricted in scope since not only are plants, animals and places typically regarded as inanimate objects - but even the mass of human beings are seen in this instrumental fashion. Politics, war, economics and management (for instance) are predicated upon an objectification of humans. All this objectification must be learned, and is probably one fundamental reason for the incremental extension of the educational process in developed countries - continual economic growth depends upon ever increasing success in overwriting animism.

Yet, however childish and foolish animism seems to the mass of Westerners, animism is not wholly alien to the inhabitants of modern cultures. Because animism is the spontaneous picture, it is liable to recur at any moment. For instance, there may be a resurgence of animistic ideas in solitude and away from economic constraints, in the company of children, in heightened states of mind that may temporarily be induced by art or by intoxication... For such periods people cease to feel alienated or divided from the natural world and feel emotionally connected with everything else by relational webs of significance. They briefly experience 'the meaning of life'.

Implications

Humans are not ‘meant’ to feel alienated - but alienation is an outcome of deep, intractable economic and social changes. A modern spiritual quest for meaning should perhaps be concerned mainly with attaining those conditions which enable the re-emergence of our natural predisposition for animistic modes of thinking, and for learning the cues and constraints governing such experiences.

Fundamental human psychology has not changed: the world is still full of personalised powers. But the diversity of human experience means that individual animistic worlds will be significantly distinctive. For each person the necessary conditions for a resurgence of generalised anthropomorphism are likely to differ - depending upon individual experiences and aptitudes. Few people have the specific depth of experience of plants, animals or landscape to replicate hunter gatherer spirituality. The task is to discover the evolving set of similarly potent associations 'sacred' to each person's internal economy of memory and emotion.

Albeit in such a bracketed and segmented fashion, humans still may experience being at home in the world.

* * *

Notes and References

Social intelligence

The social nature of human intelligence is well described in the ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ volumes edited by Byrne and Whiten (1988) and Whiten and Byrne (1997). And Geoffrey Miller’s ‘Mating Mind’ takes things a step further. The neurological mechanism of social intelligence is elucidated (although not explicitly) by Damasio (1994).

I have tried to put some of this together in my book (2000), a relevant excerpt from which is summarised on the web article on ‘Evolution and the cognitive neuroscience of awareness, consciousness and language’.

Hunter gatherers

The crystallisation of this essay was initiated by Hugh Brody’s recent book - The other side of Eden (2001) on the distinctive ‘world view’ of hunter gatherers, especially the Inuit (Eskimos).

One key concept in this essay is the qualitative difference which divides ‘simple’ hunter gatherers from every other kind of economic organisation - including ‘complex’ hunting and gathering (eg. Pacific Northwest Native American Indians, and probably the Australian Aborgines) farming, herding, pastoralism, trading, industrial production etc. This qualitative difference (although hotly contested in some quarters) is confirmed by authors such as Gellner (1988), Barkow (1989, 1992) and Diamond (1992, 1997).

The difference between simple hunter gatherers and the others has been analysed by Woodburn (1982). Probably the most important factor relates to whether or not there is significant storage of food (or other vital resources). Societies without significant food storage and almost daily food collection, preparation and distribution are ‘immediate return’ economies - those which have storage are ‘delayed return. This essay uses the term ‘hunter gatherer’ as synonymous with immediate return economies - and excludes complex delayed return hunter gatherer societies.

The importance of this distinction is the assumption that humans passed through a long period of their evolutionary history as simple hunter gatherers - many tens of thousands of years (Barkow et al, 1992 passim). This assumption is not (currently) confirmed by direct archaeological evidence, but the convergent supportive evidence from other fields seems very powerful - at any rate, that is my assumption in this essay.

Happiness and the meaning of life

A distinction not made explicitly in the above essay was between ‘happiness’ in the sense of pleasurable or gratifying emotions, and the happiness deriving from experiencing life as meaningful and feeling ‘at home in the world’. There is a difference.

Most children feel at home in the world (alienation typically only arises around adolescence in Western societies) yet children may, of course, be extremely unhappy. In contrast, adults in modern industrial societies often experience pleasure, even though they may feel chronically estranged from the natural world. I have written elsewhere about the problem of unhappiness (1998, 2000), and argued that unhappiness is endemic partly due to the frequency of ‘psychiatric’ symptoms such as anxiety, fear, malaise, insomnia and so on. Such symptoms are - in principle, at least - amenable to alleviation using technological interventions such as pharmacological agents (drugs). But even if all these psychiatric symptoms were successfully treated, this may leave untouched the basic ‘existential’ problem of experiencing life as meaningless and the world as alien.

So, in a sense, the above essay is concerned with those people who are not suffering from any significant psychiatric symptoms, those people who are lucky enough to be happy, healthy and able to experience gratifying emotions - yet who still experience ‘life’ as meaningless.

The idea that people in simple hunter gatherer societies are ‘happier’ than either agricultural peasants or modern industrial-mercantile citizens was one I learned from Barkow (1989, 1992) - and it has been amply confirmed by all other informed references and reports on the topic that I have been able to find (Charlton, 2000). This greater ‘happiness’ of hunter gatherers is twofold. A greater frequency and/or intensity of gratifying emotions on the one hand, and the integrated sense of feeling at home in the world on the other. Feeling at home in the world, as discussed above, is not necessarily associated with more frequent or intense pleasurable emotional states - but is itself a profoundly gratifying state of mind.

Animism and generalised anthropomorphism

References to animistic modes of thinking are widely scattered throughout the hunter gatherer literature, some of which are listed below - Lee and Daly (1999) provide a recent overview. Brody is particularly strong on this topic (1988, 2001). I have also found the work of Bird-David (1990, 1992, 1999) highly stimulating, including her 1999 suggestion of a link between animism and evolved social intelligence.

Possibilities and implications

The contemporary implications of this essay can be read either positively or negatively. On the positive side, an understanding of how it is that humans (under some conditions) can indeed experience life as meaningful and feel at home in the world may be a source of hope, or even a focus for action. On the negative side, it seems that humans living in a delayed return economy (eg. everyone reading this essay), especially humans in which the economy is encroaching on more and more of life (ditto), will never feel that their life ‘as a whole’ is meaningful, and will experience significant periods of alienation.

Furthermore, the mental deformations required by economic efficiency, and induced by a prolonged and intrusive socialisation process, themselves represent a significant barrier to even temporary resurgences of spontaneous animism.

The prospect of a utopian society is as remote as ever, and existing societies seem intractably suboptimal in terms of the chances of individual fulfilment. Nonetheless, for some individuals, it may be that an understanding of the connection between the experience of spontaneous animism and the experience of feeling at home in the world may be valuable in their own lives.

Sprint Training

from charles poliquin's bog

http://www.charlespoliquin.com/Blog/tabid/130/EntryId/813/Tip-227-Perform-Sprints-Intervals-Instead-of-Aerobic-Exercise-for-Superior-Quick-Conditioning.aspx

Perform sprint intervals instead of aerobic exercise for a superior conditioning workout and get better results. Sprint intervals using various intensities and volumes have proven to be much more effective than aerobic training at inducing fat loss and muscle gain. Intervals also improve health markers such as insulin action and blood pressure. Intervals will train both the anaerobic and aerobic energy systems, while improving the body’s muscle buffering capacity and energy use, and  increasing antioxidant levels. Plus, they take less total time than aerobic-type training.

You can easily fit a fifteen-minute interval conditioning session in at the end of your lift, or better yet, perform it as a short second workout to maximize fat burning, insulin sensitivity, and protein synthesis (performing your sprint workout separately will ensure you don’t  hold back from fully exhausting your muscles during your strength workout for maximal tissue remodeling). Although all-out prints can be extremely  mentally and physically challenging, maximal intensity intervals are not the only option to get results. A new study in theJournal of Sports Science and Medicine compared the effect of a slightly higher volume of less intense intervals with a low-volume all-out interval program on work capacity, blood lactate recovery, maximal oxygen uptake, and power output to determine if less difficult anaerobic protocols can induce worthwhile results in a very short time.

The following two protocols were tested on the cycle ergometer: a sprint protocol (SIT) at an all-out intensity for 30 seconds with five intervals per session and four minutes rest in between; and a high-intensity protocol (HIT) at an intensity of 125 percent of maximal oxygen uptake for 30 seconds with ten intervals per session and two minutes rest between intervals.  The participants were physically active college men and they performed their sprint workout three times a week for four weeks.

Results showed that for recreational trainees both protocols are equally effective at inducing physiological improvements, improving aerobic and anaerobic energy use, support fat loss. For elite athletes who need to be fast and produce maximal power for a short period of time, all-out sprints are preferable because the SIT protocol group had significantly greater improvements in power output. 

Both groups had equal improvement in maximal oxygen uptake, muscle buffering capacity, and energy substrate use. They also both improved antioxidant biomarkers substantially, and had improved mitochondrial enzyme content, which is associated with increased rate of fat burning once glycogen is depleted. Greater fat burning and a boost in antioxidant levels are both benefits of interval training that aren’t available in aerobic training, making intense interval training highly preferred. Additionally, these protocols took about 25 minutes total to complete, shorter than would be required for an effective aerobic training session in a recreationally trained individual.

Equal positive physiological adaptations could be induced with shorter workouts if the protocol was modified—for example, shorter rest intervals would likely be just as effective, although, more challenging from a motivational standpoint. Take note that a previous study tested using a very short, very hard sprint interval program that included six 35-meter sprints at maximum effort with 10-seconds rest. Participants improved conditioning, while eliciting a significant anabolic response. In this study performed by competitive wrestlers, the four-week training period resulted in a major boost to total testosterone and to the testosterone to cortisol ratio at rest. 

Take away from this research an understanding that high-intensity intervals are ALWAYS superior to aerobic training—you’ll get the benefits of better conditioning plus burn fat, elicit an anabolic response, raise your antioxidant levels, and improve physiological health. Plus, you’ll save time that can be devoted to your strength training workout. And interval training is an ideal solution to lack of time during the holiday season.

The choice to perform all-out sprints over high-intensity intervals is individual and based on personal motivation and training style—do you prefer short and super hard, or a little longer and less difficult? Also, consider getting a training partner who is equally matched or a little faster and in slightly better shape—you can push each other, and having someone to train with will improve motivation on days when a mentally challenging workout seems too much. Remember, you will feel better afterwards and the benefits are enormous. 
Reference:

Bayati, M., Farzad, B., et al. A Practical Model of Low-Volume, High-Intensity Interval Training Induces Performance and Metabolic Adaptations that Resemble “All-Out” Sprint Interval Training. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine. 2011. 10, 571-576.

Farzad, B., Gharakhanlou, R., Agha-Alinejad, H., Curby, D., et al. Physiological and Performance Changes from the Addition of a Sprint Interval Program to Wrestling Training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. August 2011. Published Ahead of Print.
 

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Nonlocal communication

Excerpt from Synchrodensity by Deepak Chopra


"In the famous Grinberg-Zylberbaum experiment, published in 1987, scientists used a device known as an electroencephalograph to measure brain waves of two people meditating together. They found that some pairs of people they measured showed a strong correlation in their brain wave patterns, suggesting a close bond or mental relationship. These meditators could identify when they felt that they were in "direct communication with each other, and this was confirmed by the machines measuring their brain waves. These strongly bonded pairs were asked to meditate together, side by side, for twenty minutes. Then one of the meditators was taken to a different room that was closed and isolated. With each person in a separate room, the mediators were asked to try to establish direct communication with each other. The meditator who had been moved was then stimulated by bright lights flashing in the room, which caused little spikes in his brain waves called evoked potentials. Because the brain waves of both meditators were still being measured, the scientists were able to see that the mediator who was exposed to light did, indeed,, show the little spikes of evoked potentials. But the fascinating part of the experiment is that the meditator who was not exposed to the light also showed little spikes of brainwaves that corresponded to the evoked potentials of the light-exposed mediator. So these two people were connected at a deep level (via meditation), and that connection allowed for measurable physical reactions even in the person who was not exposed to the light stimulation. What happened to the other, automatically and instantly. 


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synchrodestiny-Harnessing-Infinite-Coincidence-Miracles/dp/1844132196

The Dopamine Trap (excerpt from The Pleasure Trap)

The Dopamine Trap


Pleasure-seeking enticements, such as rich foods, coffee, cola drinks, alcohol, and recreational drugs, are different faces of the same trap. By causing artificially intense releases of dopamine within the brain's pleasure centers, these substances create a deceptively intense, short-term feeling of well-being. But there is a price.


The motivational triad encourages the aggressive search for the next possible dopamine "hit." In our ancestral environment, that meant the tastiest whole natural foods or the finest mating partner. Along the way towards these goals, serotonin was there to give us hints and encouragement. It helped us to change direction when necessary.


But in the modern world, this natural integration between serotonin and dopamine, between the moods of happiness and pleasure, has been partially lost. Though still perfectly operative when allowed to function, this integration is compromised by the artificial choices of modern life. It is no longer necessary to exercise in order to obtain food and security, we can sit at our jobs, instead. It is no longer necessary to sleep after darkness; we can extend the day, instead. and in the morning, we may no longer need sleep to satiation, because we are needed back at our desks. So we function not rested, but stimulated by caffeine, instead.


By using alcohol, tobacco, coffee, cola drinks, drugs, chocolate and other rich foods as shortcuts to induce dopamine for brief moments of pleasure, we compromise our health and happiness, instead.


http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508

One week calorie restriction challenge completed

Was easy! Just as I suspected - dinner is more about a dopamine reward at the end of the day or for social reasons. During the entire week, I was never hungry at night - just missed the habit. I woke up every morning not feeling hungry either and had my usual amount of energy and good mood - maybe even more. I had just as much strength for workouts as well. Finally I was the same weight at the end as in the beginning - but thinner. The 19 hour fast daily (5 hour eating window only) must generate HGH so that you lose fat and gain muscle.


I am not saying i will never eat dinner again. However, I am now incorporating this bit of Intermittent Fasting into my routine. 


for more information see: 


http://www.fast-5.com/


http://www.amazon.com/CR-Way-Secrets-Restriction-Healthier/dp/0061370983


http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Douglas-J-Lisle/dp/1570671974/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322045900&sr=1-1

On Alcohol (part II)

Alcohol causes cancer, and here’s the evidence

http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2010/01/28/alcohol-and-cancer-the-evidence/

Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer

Many of us are aware of the short-term effects of drinking too much – feeling sick, a hangover, a spot of embarrassment, a vague but hard-to-pin-down sense of guilt – but the long-term effects often slip under the radar. These include a higher risk of many cancers, heart disease, stroke and more.

Cancer Research UK is supporting the new campaign so we wanted to use this blog post to discuss some of the science around alcohol and cancer.

So is alcohol really linked to cancer?

Yes. Surveys tell us that only about a third of people realise that alcohol can increase the risk of cancer but actually the evidence in this area has been very strong for a number of decades.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer produces reports that are widely seen as the gold standard for working out what causes cancer and what doesn’t. They first said that there is “sufficient evidence” that “alcoholic beverages are carcinogenic to humans” way back in 1988. Since then, many more studies have been published. There are too many to list completely here, but this is a good review for the scientifically minded among you. IARC, incidentally, confirmed their ruling in 2007, and again last year.

Which cancers are affected? And how many?

Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including cancers of the mouth, oesophagus (food pipe), pharynx (upper throat), larynx (voice box), breast, bowel and liver. There is also increasing evidence linking alcohol to pancreatic cancer.

Estimating the number of cancers that are linked to alcohol is always going to be a rough business. One analysis by IARC estimated that in Western European countries like the UK, around 5 per cent of cancers are linked to alcohol, which works out to around 15,000 cases a year. In the Oxford Textbook of Medicine, Professors Richard Doll and Richard Peto estimated that 6 per cent of cancer deaths in the UK are caused by alcohol, adding up to around 9,000 a year.

What level of drinking affects the risk of cancer?

There is a clear linear relationship between the amount of alcohol someone drinks, and their cancer risk. In other words, the more people drink, the higher their risk.

But cutting back drinking so you don’t feel drunk doesn’t mean you avoid risks to your health. Alcohol can increase the risk of cancer at levels too low to make an average person drunk. Studies have consistently shown that as little as three units a day – the amount in a pint of strong lager or a large glass of wine – can significantly increase the risk of mouth, oesophageal, laryngeal, breast and bowel cancers. At this level, the risks are fairly small but they get bigger the more you drink.

However, it seems that alcohol only increases the risk of liver or pancreatic cancers if people drink large amounts. This is because alcohol affects the risk of these cancers by causingcirrhosis or pancreatitis, conditions that are linked to heavy drinking.

Which is worse: binge drinking or spreading my drinking across the week?

We don’t actually know, and this is one of the big holes in the current evidence. Imagine someone who generally drinks nothing during the week but then knocks them back at weekends. So far, there’s not been enough research to tell if they have a higher or lower risk of cancer compared to someone who drinks the same total amount, but spread throughout the week.

There are hardly any published studies looking at the effects of different drinking patterns.One study suggested that weekend drinking had particularly strong effects on the risk of breast cancer, but it’s not conclusive in itself. As we said above, it’s the total amount that matters.

How high are the risks?

There’s a good meta-analysis (an overview of existing studies) that compares the effects of different levels of drinking on different cancer types. By collecting the results of previous studies, this analysis concluded, for example, that drinking 6 units a day (around 2 pints of strong lager):

• increases the risk of mouth cancer by 3 times (200 per cent)
• increases the risk of oesophageal cancer by 2 times (100 per cent)
• increases the risk of breast cancer by 55 per cent
• increases the risk of bowel cancer by 10-19 per cent

These figures are “relative risks”. They show how a person’s odds of developing cancer change as they drink, but they don’t tell you what those odds were in the first place. Those are called “absolute risks”.

For example, for a woman, the lifetime risk of breast cancer (the odds of developing the disease at some point in one’s life) is 11 per cent or 1 in 9. If that goes up by 55 per cent, the new absolute risk becomes 17 per cent or 1 in 6.

For a man, the lifetime risk of oesophageal cancer is 1.3 per cent or 1 in 75. If that doubles, the new absolute risk is 2.6 per cent or 1 in 38.

It is worth noting that breast and bowel cancer are far more common than mouth or oesophageal cancers so the absolute risk of developing these cancers is much higher. Even if that risk goes up by a relatively small amount, that translates to a large number of actual cases. For example, the Million Women Study concluded that if 1,000 UK women under the age of 75 drank an extra unit a day, they would develop 15 extra cancers, 11 of which would be breast cancer.

How do these studies actually work?

There are two main types. “Case-control studies” compare people with cancer to healthy people to see if differences in their drinking habits are linked to their disease. “Cohort studies” are generally stronger. They follow large groups of healthy people, collect detailed information about their lifestyle, medical history and more, and see what happens to their health over the course of years or even decades.

In both cases, it is important to collect information on other aspects of a person’s lifestyle that could also affect their risk of cancer. For example, if you were studying the link between alcohol and mouth cancer, it’s important to account for whether people smoked or not, since smoking is a major cause of mouth cancer and smoking and drinking often go hand-in-hand. Likewise, being overweight also causes cancer, and drinking alcohol can make people put on weight. These are called “confounding factors” and scientists use statistical methods to adjust for them. In this way, they can consider the effects of alcohol alone.

Typically, scientists measure alcohol consumption with questionnaires that ask people to report how much they drink. These questionnaires have an obvious drawback in that they rely on people being honest rather than playing down how much they drink – and indeed this is a criticism frequently levelled at studies of alcohol consumption.

But actually, it turns out that alcohol drinking is measured very well by questionnaires, at least for those used by the best and biggest studies.  For example, the Million Women Study validated their questionnaire by comparing it to a 7-day food diary where participants write down everything they eat/drink on a daily basis for a week. They found a good level of agreement between the two measures. The EPIC study validated its questionnaire against actual urine and blood samples and found that alcohol was actually one of the parts of people’s diets most accurately measured by the questionnaires.

How does alcohol actually cause cancer?

There are probably many answers to this question because alcohol does a lot of things in our bodies. First and foremost, your body converts alcohol into a toxic chemical called acetaldehyde – responsible for many of the symptoms of a hangover. But acetaldehyde can also damage DNA – it sticks bulky molecules onto the famous double-helix and prevents our cells from repairing this damage.

Genetic studies support this idea. Some people in East Asian countries, like China and Japan, have genetic faults that either make them better at converting alcohol to acetaldehyde, or worse at getting rid of acetaldehyde. Either way, they build up unusually high levels of this chemical when they drink. And when they drink, they have a higher-than-usual risk of cancer.

As well as producing acetaldehyde, alcohol can also boost levels of oestrogen in the body, which could explain the link with breast cancer. And it increases the odds of developing cirrhosis, which, in turn, causes liver cancer. Finally, it can also make it easier for the tissues of the mouth or throat to absorb other cancer-causing chemicals, such as those found in cigarette smoke.

Do all types of alcohol affect the risk of cancer? Even wine? What about red wine?

You’ll see from the section above that, as far as cancer goes, the harmful effects of alcohol are common to all drinks, rather than any specific type. All alcoholic drinks, for example, produce acetaldehyde in the body.

There are some disagreements. Take wine, for example. It is difficult to untangle the possibility that wine consumption could simply be linked to generally healthier lifestyles. Some studies have found that wine increases the risk of cancer to a lesser degree than beer or spirits, others have said that it has the same effect, and yet others have concluded that it’s particularly harmful when it comes to cancers of the mouth or throat.  For example, theMillion Women Study found that women who only drank wine have similarly higher risks of cancer than those who drank all types of alcohol.

Red wine contains a chemical called resveratrol, which has some anti-cancer effects in laboratory cells. Many studies are looking at resveratrol as a possible drug for treating or preventing cancer, but as we’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog, this is a far cry from saying that red wine could protect people from cancer. A purified form of a chemical is not the same as the food or drink that contains it, and work in laboratory cells doesn’t automatically translate to effects in living people.

Isn’t some alcohol good for you?

There is evidence that drinking small amounts of alcohol can reduce the risk of heart disease in certain age groups. However, heavy drinking increases the risk of heart disease. Interestingly, a recent review of the global effects of alcohol estimated that alcohol causes twice as many cases of heart disease as it prevents.

We have to weigh up the heart disease effect against the links between alcohol and cancer, high blood pressure, some types of stroke, cirrhosis, liver disease, pancreatic disease and more. One analysis of 34 studies found that people who drink less than a unit a day have around 17-18 per cent lower risks of “total mortality”, which means that at any given age, they are less likely to die of any cause. These benefits disappear at roughly the level of alcohol drinking that the Government guidelines are set at.

It’s also important to realise that the benefits of light-drinking only applies to older age groups. According to one study, if you look at overall mortality, there is no beneficial level of drinking for women under 55 or men under 35.

The balance between the risks of cancer, heart disease and other conditions is why we are not suggesting that anyone avoids alcohol altogether. Instead, Cancer Research UK’s advice is to limit one’s drinking to one small drink a day for women (which is about two units a day) and two small drinks a day for men (about three to four units a day).

However, the important point is that, as we said above, there is a linear relationship between the amount you drink and your risk of cancer. This means that whatever you drink already, cutting down by some amount will help to reduce your risk. And, of course, doing so is entirely down to individual choice.