The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be unending and is creating challenges all over the world. Confirmed cases in Hong Kong are comparatively low, but the four waves are caused by imported carriers from abroad. Thus, the government claims that its efforts have been effective in coping with this disease. However, the public observes other dimensions of this claim. The discussion in this paper argues that policy loopholes, violation of normal practices and government estrangement from the community all damage anti-pandemic outcomes. The root cause of this failure comes from distrust in the government. Such a fiction of power brings negative reactions. On the one hand, the community suffers from tight disease-control measures which are disproportionate to the infection risk, and people are fighting not only the coronavirus but also poor leadership, policy loopholes and hidden agenda in social control. On the other hand, people are already self-motivated and self-disciplined enough, with the aid of mutual support, to adopt basic preventive methods, such as masking and personal hygiene, showing a robust civil society and social mobilisation.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a burdensome condition that has been made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic and that can lead to suicide, especially among childhood trauma victims, rape victims, military service members, and law enforcement. PTSD is thought to be an evolutionary mechanism that functions to promote survival by heightening the stress response in an anticipatory fashion, allowing the organism to react quickly to recurring stressors or threats, even when stressors or threats are not present in the immediate environment. Frequent and sudden activation of the stress response can be uncomfortable and deleterious to health. The mammalian dive response (MDR) is another evolutionary adaptation that functions to promote survival by conserving oxygen when submerged underwater, and like the stress response, it disrupts the homeostatic environment. However, the physiological reactions induced by the MDR include slowing of the heart rate, conservation of oxygen, and conservation of energy, while the fight or flight response has opposite physiological effects. I hypothesize that frequent activation of the MDR and its parasympathetic components might inhibit brain regions involved with stress, and condition neural circuitry to anticipate aquatic submersion stimuli, thereby reversing the sympathetic mechanisms involved in the fight or flight response and PTSD.
WHAT IS CANCER?Cancer is not a single condition, but a set of many diseases that share common characteristics.Cancer is primarily a disorder caused by DNA mutations and epigenetic changes that make an abnormal cell multiply uncontrollably with the potential to invade other parts of the body, rather than the natural immune system response, which leads to cell death.[1], [2] The cancer researchers Douglas Hannahan and Robert Weinberg believe that cancer at a molecular level could be described in 10 basic steps.The first six were established in 2000 [3] another 4 in 2011 [4], which are two enabling hallmarks and two emerging characteristics.They proposed that the properties of a cancer cell are:
At birth, babies begin a developmental journey that transforms them from immobile infants to bipedal toddlers typically within 12 to 18 months.][3][4] In the first 3 months, you'll see them move, struggle, turn their heads, and even attempt to lift their heads.From 3 to 9 months, you'll see them prop themselves up on their elbows, roll, and move to a crawling position.Between 9 and 15 months, they will independently sit, stand, 'cruise' while holding onto objects, take their first steps, and walk.][3] These movements will happen completely naturally, without assistance, if the baby is allowed to develop normally.From birth, babies experiment with how to move and use their bodies.This is how they learn-by trying, testing, and sometimes failing, then trying again.They don't need to be taught how to move, turn over, crawl, or walk.In a natural environment-one free from modern technological devices and toys-typically-developing infants figure out how to do that all on their own.Infants are neurologically primed to develop movement patterns like sitting, crawling, and walking as the result of a complex neurosensorimotor process that evolution has honed over millennia. 4Babies don't need technological intervention to succeed in this process, and as much as parents and others want to "help," babies do not need caretaker assistance in their motor development.In fact, as you will see, such assistance could even interfere with the healthy progression of this development.The question is, what can we, as caretakers, do to best support rather than inhibit infants on this significant developmental journey?How can we create an ideal environment in which they can reach, move, and grow during the first 18 months of their lives?That is the question that Building Your Baby From the Ground Up seeks to answer for parents, caregivers, and clinicians around the world. A Minimalistic Evolutionary Model of Baby-Led DevelopmentWhen infants spend time on their backs and on their stomachs, they benefit from the opportunity to move naturally-and that alone propels them to eventually crawl, sit, and walk.It is in this
The Ancestral Health (or Paleo) movement is a collection of people who apply an evolutionary perspective to improve their health through lifestyle changes (e.g., diet, physical actively, sleep). In 2013, a survey of this population revealed that its participants did not align with media stereotypes; in contrast, survey participants were predominantly white, female, and middle aged. Since diet and health trends change over time, the goal of this survey study was to collect data on the members of the movement and compare the survey responses from five years earlier. In addition, we surveyed people who have left the movement to determine why they left and if they follow a particular diet now. Broadly, we hypothesized that participant demographics would remain the same while lifestyle characteristics (i.e., how they participate in the movement) would change. The survey was distributed online through various platforms (social media, blog posts, and mailing lists). A total of 1506 (54% female) participants completed the survey and a majority (75%) were still a member of the movement. Overall, numerous participant responses differed from the 2013 survey (18 questions; p<0.05 for all). One of the main changes between survey years was a general aging of the participants as demonstrated by an increase in participant age, income, and education level. This suggests that the movement is not capturing new and/or younger individuals. Further, the main reason participants left the paleo movement was a change to a new specific diet (16%; two most reported diets: low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diet), although 39% of participants who left do not currently follow any particular diet. We conclude by hypothesizing reasons for the changes and potential implications for the future of the movement.
representations derived from learning experiences, and thus the pruning process is key to developing smarter neurons and therefore smarter brains. Thus, by increasing the number of dendritic spines at the starting point, this allows for the pruning process to make much more intelligent brains that represent the world at much greater levels of abstraction than is possible in any other animal (Garlick, 2010).
The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) has updated their recommendations for salt intake in January 2017 [1]. According to this press release they consider 1.5g of Sodium (equivalent to 3.5g of salt) as adequate. This is in line with recommendations from other world-wide respected Organizations like the American Heart Association, the Institute of Medicine or the World Health Organization [2–4]. Since only 0.3% of the global population consume such low amounts of salt per day, these guidelines should promote dramatic changes of the worldwide consumer’s behavior [5]. Nevertheless these Organizations consider a reduction in sodium intake as an effective health action to reduce blood pressure and improve cardiovascular (CV) health [2–4]. Since higher sodium intake is strongly associated with higher blood pressure, which itself is a leading risk factor for heart disease and stroke, it is believed to be somehow causal for the leading causes of death. Although clinical trials have undermined the association of reduced blood pressure with reduced sodium intake, the latest Cochrane review, including a total of 185 randomized controlled trials, estimates the impact of salt restriction on blood pressure with less then 1 % as relatively small (the reduction in SBP/DBP in people with normotension was about 1/0 mmHg, and in people with hypertension about 5.5/2.9 mmHg) [6]. Furthermore, to my knowledge, no large randomized trial was intended to investigate favorable effects on CV risk due to salt restriction. Data of epidemiological studies are inconsistent with many showing an increased risk among those consuming less than 3g of sodium per day [7–9]. According to O’Donnell et al., published in 2011, there exists a J-shaped association between estimated sodium excretion of 28,880 patients and CV-events with an increased risk of all CV-events associated with a sodium excretion of greater than 7g (17,5g Salt) per day and less than 3g (7,5g Salt) per day [9]. Since Evolution brought us from a salty marine environment in which sodium chloride is by far the dominant mineral (90%) to where we live now, sodium is an essential nutrient and has some vital functions in every organism [10]. According to any medical textbook, we find chronic hyponatremia to be associated with symptoms like headaches, nausea, poor balance, confusion, seizures, and finally coma [11]. In 1986 it was shown, that pregnant women change their sense of taste in favor of more salty solutions [12]. So it is not surprising that studies found salt restriction in animals and humans to be causal for retardation of fetal growth, leading to low birth weight and the underdevelopment of cardiovascular organs [13]. Hyunwoo et al. examined the relation between salt restriction and insulin resistance, and found a positive association in at least 9 out of 25 studies, with very heterogeneous designs, indicating potential effects of low sodium diets on insulin resistance [14]. Published 1993, Overlack et al. could show an alarming heart rate rising effect of salt restriction [15]. On the other hand it was shown that a sodium loading approach, with 2g of salt, four times a day in a group of 21 patients with primary hypertension, leads to a 8% lowered glycemic response in the oral glucose tolerance test [16]. Furthermore, a second analysis of existing data of two randomized controlled salt trials reveals a significant fall of serum uric acid in the moderate and high intervention group in hypertensive and non-hypertensive subjects [17]. So what are the proposed mechanisms to explain those findings? Since Brunner et al. had published the strong association between sodium excretion and plasma renin and aldosterone excretion in 1972, these findings were replicated over and over again and summarized in the 2017 Cochrane Review on effects of low sodium diets versus high sodium diets [6,18]. The paper showed a significant increase in plasma renin, aldosterone, adrenaline and 1 Lemke: Modern Recommendations of Salt Restriction Published by Journal of Evolution and Health, 2018 noradrenaline which are the main hemodynamic, hormonal responses to sodium shortage. These salt-retaining systems maintain the fragile equilibrium of electrolytes in a salt depleted environment – but at what cost? Chronic elevated aldosterone is well known for its association with numerous symptoms like hypokalemia, osteoporosis, poorly controlled hypertension, sleep apnea and fibrosis of the heart or kidney that can lead to failure of these organs [19–21]. Moreover, the Cochrane paper [6] listed a 2.5% increase in cholesterol, and a 7% increase in triglycerides, two well known risk factors for any CV event. On the other hand, favorable effects such as the release of natriuretic peptides, a natural aldosterone inhibitor, could be seen in response to a diet rich in salt [22]. These peptides partly control the immune response in an anti-inflammatory and modulatory manner [23]. To shed more light into the controversial findings weather salt reduction results in an elevated or lowered risk for CV events, O'Donnell et al. conducted an investigation within the PURE study in 2014 [7]. With 101,945 fasting morning urine samples from five continents, it was the largest international study to examine the association between sodium intake and health. The estimated associations are based on more than 3000 outcome events, high rates of followup and incorporation of a very well validated sodium estimation approach [24]. Their results confirmed J-shaped association published in 2011 with a lower risk of death and CV events correlated with an estimated sodium intake between 3g per day and 6 g per day (7,5g – 15g of salt!). Furthermore, in 2016 a pooled analysis of 133,118 individuals (63,559 with hypertension and 69,559 without hypertension), from 49 countries out of four large prospective studies undermined these results and found similar associations of urinary sodium excretion with cardiovascular events [25]. In addition there was no association of high sodium intake with an increased risk of CV events or death in the normotensive population, suggesting that salt restriction recommendations should only be aimed at the population with hypertension. In my personal opinion and summing this up, it appears that the latest history of nutrition guidelines is repeating itself. Similar to the ban of cholesterol and saturated fats, worldwide salt reducing recommendations are based on preliminary observational data with missing trails testing the hypothesis that reducing sodium intake could lower CV risk. Taking the existing evidence into account it is probably harmful to recommend a sodium reduction below 3g per day. An evolutionary approach would consider the fact that a “hunger” for salt evolved in animals as well as in humans, as studied in isolated indigenous people, for good reasons, since vertebrates were faced with salt scarcity living outside of the oceans. A guideline that turns on our ancient emergency hormonal responses seems to be counterproductive. What’s more important is to reduce the excessive intake of processed foods and emphasize the importance of real food with a favorable sodium to potassium ratio. A liberal salted meal of vegetables and meat must be labeled as nothing but healthy!
Two alternate hypotheses about human adaptation to nutritional ketosis are contrasted by the supposition of the first that ketosis is foremost an adaptation to cope with periods of starvation, and therefore would be stressful if prolonged, whereas the second considers long-term ketosis natural and safe due to presumed adaptation to extended periods of negligible carbohydrate availability. If there were concrete evidence of a traditional population whose members were usually in ketosis, this would support the second hypothesis by providing a precedent. American Arctic populations traditionally followed a diet that might be expected to be ketogenic due to low levels of carbohydrate intake. Therefore, historical reports finding a lack of ketosis have been surprising. Moreover, some evidence suggests that these populations have a genetic mutation preventing significant ketogenesis. Because an adaptation that can reduce ketogenesis occurred specifically in an environment known to be perpetually low in carbohydrates and which would therefore otherwise result in chronic ketosis, some writers have proposed that this proves chronic ketosis is sufficiently detrimental to health that evolution selects against ketogenesis (Ballantyne 2017, Masterjohn 2017, Chuter 2019). However, the evidence on which this argument rests has important limitations that impact the conclusions. In this brief review, I describe these limitations and conclude that there is insufficient evidence to rule out chronic ketosis in Arctic populations, and provide alternative explanations for the findings consistent with the second hypothesis.
