Posts

How Does Oligosaccharide Fiber (FOS) Work?

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So I was going through some older studies I had saved, and this one caught my attention. I don't remember seeing it at all, but it illustrates beautifully how deceptive things can be. What is it about? Essentially, it is a study of how adding fiber (fructo-oligosaccharide, FOS) to the diet favorably affects metabolism. Perfect. Opinions on fiber vary widely. My view is that fiber in the large intestine triggers signaling similar to overeating. The presence of undigested food in the large intestine signals that we have eaten more food than would have been necessary, and so the intestinal bacteria feed on it as well. What comes out of this is quite a lottery, because each of us has a different composition of bacteria in our gut, so we don't know what those bacteria will actually produce. If things turn out well, the bacteria produce acetate (and other short-chain fatty acids, SCFAs), and this signals to the body that there is indeed enough fuel, and the body adjusts accordingly. ...

Can Mobile Phone and Computer Displays Cause Obesity?

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Why are there so many light sensors in adipose tissue? Until today, I have always considered the influence of light only in terms of its direct effect on the functioning of enzymes in mitochondria . It is time to change that.  A strange question occurred to me, the one you see in the headline. Could modern LED displays on computers and mobile phones, with their limited emission spectrum, be causing not only the epidemic of myopia , but also metabolic problems and obesity? So I started investigating.  First, I asked artificial intelligence whether it happened to know anything about it:  AI quote  “Yes — OPN5 (opsin 5, neuropsin) has a demonstrable connection to the regulation of metabolism and thermogenesis, but so far mainly from experiments in mice. And interestingly, the connection with the thyroid gland was not directly confirmed in the key study.  What is known so far  OPN5 is a light-sensitive receptor. In the brain, specifically in the preoptic area o...

Is the Increase in Refractive Errors in Children Caused by Modern Light Sources?

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The headline always has to be a little provocative, but it is possible that this is indeed the case. Quite recently, I pointed out the historical work of Dr. Bates , who considered the main cause of vision problems to be excessive tension in opposing eye muscles, which shape the eyeball, affect the axial length of the eye, and thus focus or defocus the image on the retina. This strain is caused by stress in the brain.  If the brain cannot recognize what it is looking at, this causes stress and increases the tension in the muscles around the eye, including the tension in those muscles that are supposed to remain relaxed. How does modern science view refractive errors? It seems that studies are already emerging that consider feedback systems, in which the eye is exposed to various influences and therefore has to constantly "fine-tune" itself. They call them the GO signal and the STOP signal. The GO signal lengthens the eyeball, while the STOP signal stops this lengthening. Noth...

Strange Anomalies in the Curves of Death Statistics in Europe

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Something strange happened this summer...  During the pandemic, I looked at the death statistics published on the EuroMOMO portal. Occasionally even now. I remember them and take a look. I am usually interested in whether those strange humps from the COVID era are still there and whether the epidemic is already over or is still ongoing. You may object that the epidemic ended a long time ago. Well, I think it is not that simple. You only need to take a quick look at the graphs.  Where is the epidemic? Do you really see it there? I don't, at least not much—or it hasn't ended. There is a certain wave there, but it seems that epidemics recur almost every year, practically up to the present day. But they were there before that as well; it is just no longer visible because the older data is not there. Isn't that strange? After all, we are told that the effective mRNA vaccine dealt with the epidemic, as all the mouthpieces controlled by the World Health Organization (WHO) say. But...

Monitor the Rate of Processes—Fast Does Not Mean Safe!

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Today it will be more of a summary, a more general reflection. In one of my recent posts, I commented on a study that quite clearly showed that if we remove the regulatory processes limiting the rate of fat burning, then the rate of burning is suppressed only after mitochondrial damage, loss of cardiolipin, loss of the necessary phospholipids , simply through oxidative stress . It is not a good idea to switch off regulatory mechanisms and think that things will be better without regulation—they will not. If researchers try to switch mice or rats to a high-fat diet, they almost always damage their mitochondria. We now know that they will probably deprive them of sufficient cardiolipin, a phospholipid necessary for the proper functioning of the enzymes that produce cellular energy in the form of ATP molecules. We also know that this can be prevented by a different composition of fats, for example if the diet contains fish oil , or if it contains MCT oils, or if it contains vinegar/aceta...

Could a Deficiency of LA in Cardiolipin Be Caused by an Excess of LA?

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Could an excess of the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid in the diet and in adipose tissue create the paradoxical situation in which linoleic acid (LA) is lacking in the phospholipids needed to form mitochondrial cardiolipin? That would mean reduced mitochondrial function and increased oxidative stress, which we observe in animal models fed very high-fat diets. We have already encountered a similar situation with omega-3 fats. Take a look. The percentage of omega-3 phospholipids in cell membranes initially increases sharply but then declines as the consumption of more plant-derived omega-3 and omega-6 fats increases. This phenomenon is explained by changes in the activity of the enzymes that elongate and desaturate plant fats into the long-chain fatty acids EPA and DHA, which are found primarily in fish oil. The same enzymes also elongate and desaturate linoleic acid (LA) into arachidonic acid (ARA), whose concentration is maintained relatively stable. Thus, a higher intake of LA mean...