On Health

[Skybird]

On CHOLESTEROL:


A very interesting, fascinating explanation why the consummation of saturated fats lead to higher levels of LDL. It might be not so much a sign of a health issue, but a normal adaptation mechanism.

https://sciencenorway.no/cholesterol...ystery/1810159

The understanding of fats and cholesterol has seen a revolution in the last decade or even slightly longer. Food and pharma lobby bitterly fight and argue against it, but it is quite clear by now that the old belief that saturated fats are bad and unsaturated fats are better, can no longer be supported.

The Norwegian ecothrophologist authoring the article behind the link above, is just a very new look at it (and she has beside her witty brain also the good looks of herself to offer...). We also need to understand that cholesterol gets transported by LDL and HDL, from liver to organs, and back. Certain fats like coconut fat include very high levels of saturated fat acids, (90-96%), and correlate with rises in LDL. However, there are LDLs with small and with big particle sizes. The problem are the small ones, since these can penetrate into the walls of blood vessels, if these are already fractured or rough, for any reason. Then the small particles can start to clot and form atherosclerosis, possibly (it depends on so many other facotrs, on the ability to counter oxydation, the presence of other molecules and vitamines and nutrients and amino acids and so much more). The message here is that LDL is not just LDL. While coconut oil can correlate with a rise in LDL, it nevertheless has a health benefit, because it raises the LDL mostly by big particled LDL, while reducing small particled LDL, which is the dangerous one. So while you have a higher total LDL, you may nevertheless enjoy a lower level in small particled LDL, which in the end is a net gain in health effect.




After coconut oil got celebrated, since some years the food industry tries to defame it again, instead wants to sell their seed oils with claimed healthy unsaturated fats and their toxic levels of inflammatory Omega 6 (sunflower oil has a O6 : O3 ratio of 125:1 !!!) from their monumental monocultural farms that bring so much wanted profits (if not for the farmers, then at least for the food industry...). Don't believe everything they try to tell you to scare you and fearmonger you!

There are studies that the increased consummation of saturatedf fats can even extend the life of the elderly people and protect them to some degree against strokes and cardiovascular diseases (CVD).

What should be avoided, are trans fats, seed oils and Omega-6 oils, as well as any oil that is especially prone to fast oxidation (linseed oil!). Eat freshly shreddered linseeds and nuts completely instead of using just their oil. The O6 may still be in the comolkete seed/nut - but also plenty of antioxidants mother nature put into the nut and seed that keep O6 under control and in balance. In oils, you usually miss these antioxidants. Also, avoid refined oils, ald every oil sold in clear plastic bottle (light and UV means constant ongoing oxydation). Avoid oils that get won by using heat, and in plenty of light. Keep heat and oxydation out of the equation of creating oil, whereever possible.

[Skybird]

On OBESITY & DIABETES:


When I went to school, leaving school in the mid-80s, there were no fat kids. Today there are many fat kids, and some already have adult onset diabetes. Tendency growing. Fast.

The obesity wave started rolling in the 80s. That was when we slowly realised that still recommending refined white sugar maybe is not so good an idea. We started to avoid sugar, slowly, and started to turn to artificial high-chem sweeteners. And we started to become obese.

Sugar was not the only thing that changed. When I grew up, at home we had three meals a day, and rarely only was I allowed to snack inbetween. Sweets got strictly controlled by my Mom. I knew it to be like this with the parents of other kids as well. It was common, it was how parent used to run their "regime". Today, we snack all day long. Additionally to the main meals of the day. And obesity has turned into a pandemic overrolling the industrialised world. We have breakfast, on the way to work we have a bonbon maybe, in the office somebody switches on the caffee machine and guess what - somebody puts some cookies on the table. In the meeting we maybe have a piece of cake, the woke eco friends have a banana or apple instead, and then comes lunch. After that, this or that person may join colleagues in the cafeteria and have a coffee, probably with a cookie or a chocolte bar as dessert. Afternoon shift, more coffee maybe, ad an occasional toffee. And at home, what do we do? Having supper. And to the TV we go (many of us do not excercise, lets be honest), and what is a good film without some sweets or candies, popcorn or potatoe flips?

We eat all day long.

Our reaction to that obesity wave in many cases is a very infantile one: we start to babble about self-esteem and being proud of our (ugly fat) body, and we invest much time into convincing others of how great it feels to have this (ugly fat) body, and , in the end, convince mostly ourselves how well we feel in our (ugly fat) body, so that we must not lift our lower backs from he couch and start with getting something done about our beautifully ugly fat body. The health consequences of this ugly fatness we nevertheless will and must suffer in the future - but we ignore them as long as we do not feel the pain: non-alcoholic fatty liver, liver inflammation, liver hepathitis, diabetes-amputation-blindness-death, CVD, silent inflammations, auto-immune deseases.

How could it be that all this overwhelms Western societies, when we get so "well advised" by nutrition societies and state authorities to avoid sugar, to eat frequently and at rest, vegetable 5, 6 or 7 times a day, fruits 3, 4, 5 times a day, a balanced diet with "healthy plant oil" and no smoking and no alcohol? Its been recommended since 40 years. And thats the 40 years when the obesity wave arrived and started to flatten society and financially overwhelm health systems with ugly fat bodies.

Is the good advise by nutrition societies really that good an advise? Well, to put it this way: I avoid such nutrition societies and their advice like the most lethal of pleagues. I cannot even just laugh about them anynmore - I am furious about them. Due to their eating advice, but also for other reasons having to do with supplements and how they demonise them and mistake absolutely minimum doses as above-optimum and almost dangerous doses. It oversteps the thin red line to physical assault, like recommending to eat rat poison would.

What is wrong with having 5 portions of fruits per day and 5-7 portions of vegetable per day? Well. You eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat. And eat.

You eat all day long. You layaway yourself from fruit to vegetable, from vegetable to fruit (if you would do that). More realistically, you layaway yourself from snack to snack. Unhealthy snacks, filled with plenty of bad oils and fats, and sugar. You add limonades and corn syrup-enriched liquids.

And almost every time you put something into your mouth, your create an insuline spike.

Artificial sweeteners do not save you. They may not rise your blood glucose level, they may not add calories to your metabolism, but they nevertheless trigger an insuline production spike. Worse, this spike can be higher than that of a similiar amount of sugar! I did not know this until just days ago. I did not like learning this. I do not drink lemonades, but I thought I do a little good deed when not using sugar but sweetner in my coffee. Damn!

Insuline is a hormone whose purpose is to press fructose into the liver and into the fat cells. Whenever insuline gets produced, you build fat - in the liver with its limited storage capacity (reach that limit and the liver starts to form "symptoms"), and into the body's fat cells.

It is a myth that you become fat due to eating more calories than you "burn", it also is a myth that you can loose weight by exercising. There are even studies showing that it does not work this way.

The problem is - insuline. This is at the heart of the problem of obesity and diabetes. The more often you eat, the more insuline spikes you have over the day. The more often your fat depots get fed. The more your general insuline level must rise, due to rising insuline restistance: more and more insuline is needed to still get all that fructose pushed into your overloaded fat cells.

And here you have the reason why fat is not your enemy, but your friend, good fats that have no trans fats and that have small or minor levels of inflammatory Omega 6 in them: fat does not create insuline spikes. Not on a level worth to be mentioned at least. By eating fat, you offer your body the other fuel that it can burn: beside glucose, it can burn fat. The liver forms ketones from it. Ketones can feed your cells' energy cycles, especially your brain cells, and they can pass the blood brain barrier. Many cells in the brain and elsewhere even have the ability to take certain fats directly and build the ketones themselves, by passing the liver and not needing it, this for example is true with many brain cells.

"Food light" products, with reduced fat contents, work as good as sweeteners, therefore: not at all. Plus they are inferior in taste.

Proteins and carbohydrates trigger insuline spikes, fat does not. Now you know why many diets limit carbs ("low carb"). Full grain bread often has a higher glycaemic index than refined sugar! Not even connecting to the health issues that can be caused by wheat itself, it must be said that full grain diet probably is not a good idea at all, at least if you want to loose weight, or have a diabetes issue.

Another good method to reduce insuline production is - to not eat at all. Fasting. There is nothing wrong with it, its a natural state in our evolution. There are many ways how to do it, personally I have become a fan of intermittend fasting. I did it for 12 months three years ago, I lost 14 kilograms in six months, and kept that level easily for another 6 months. Alsmost 92 kg before, almost 76 kg after.

Nowadays, I have just two meals a day, a late breakfast and a later lunch with a warm meal. I only eat in the time window of 12am to 8pm, and every second or third or fourth day, depends on how I feel, I even skip the breakfast, and reduce the lunch to something with low calories not above around 600, its the only thing I care to make a reasonable calory estimation for - elsewise I think counting calories is total bollocks.

A recent blood test I needed to do in preparation for the anesthesia during a planned jaw surgery showed me unwelcomed high levels of blood glucose, low levels of HDL, and a slightly elevated level of GPT (which is an indicator for the liver health, often meaning there are inflammated cells in the liver). All this together with my weight development of the past months and last year indicated to me what I already suspected in decembre, due to my again reached weight of 92 kg back then: that I likely had a non-alcoholic fatty liver, and was and maybe still am in a state of so-called pre-diabetes.

Already in Decembre I had started with intermittend fasting again. I already was busy with studying vitamines and minerals due to corona and immune system and all that, as you have noticed , but since a few weeks, since that blood test, have dived into diet and low carb as well, combining low carb and intermittend fasting with elements of ketogen diet, especially I had - already before - replaced bad fats with good fats, and pushed fish and Omega-3 oil up on my charts. I try to teach my body to depend less on carbohydrates, and more on fats as a major fuel. And I am successful, I am at 81 kg (that is 11 kg in 3 months), still dropping constantly, it goes faster than three years ago when I fasted without low carb and keto.

If there is one message one should really understand about why we become obese despite doing as we are advised and using light food products and sweeteners, than it is this: obesity and diabetes are caused by dysbalances in the insuline metabolism. You do not become obese so much by what you eat, but when you eat. And "When" means: by eating too often and keeping your insuline level high all day long.

Antidot: Keeping insuline low, and avoid as many spikes as you can. Thats why fatty diet, low carb work, as does fasting. Combine the fatty diet (low insuline and switching to fat instead of glucose burning) with intermittend or full days fasting (reducing the number of opportunities over the day when insuline goes up) is your way to go.

The combining of intermittend fasting and elements of keto and low carb I experimented with and stumbled over all by myself, without having a full model of understanding, I imagined more or less a rough orientation (which turned out to have been right on target and being in congruency with theory I now read), but a few days ago I finally also found a very competent author and expert who finally also gave me the full deal on theory and explanation that my intellectual mindset also craves for. I want to recommend him to you if you feel interested in these topics for any reason. His name is Jason Fung, he is a Canadian nephrologist who got interested into these topics twenty years ago and today usually gets announced as one of the world's leading experts on treating obesity and diabetes. Form yourself an impression of him, I provide links at the bottom for starters. There are several books by him, I recommend his two bestsellers "The Obesity Code" and "The Diabetes Code".

Read 2 minutes, his best advise:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/my-single...eight-loss-tip

Get an impression on the man in person:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/how-to-maximize-fat-burning

^ The video, lasting 4 minutes., Four minutes that have it all in them.

I like the man. He is smart, I find him sympathetic, and after two books that I consummed in two rushed readings I say he obviously knows his stuff inside out. Here is a doctor whom I trust!

I will not avoid forever carbs, wheat, pasta. I baked my bread over 25 years myself, i would not have done that if I would not LOVE the taste and smell of fresh, good bread. I know a thing or two about how to do a real good pizza dough (like none I can get in any restaurant here in my hometown). I LOVE spaghetti with two or three different sauces I use to prepare for them. I love boiled potatoe with herring in dill cream, and ibnly butter and salt on the potatoes. But I will for exmaple avoid noodles, potatoes as part of a lunch that has other main inredinets: give me the fish, the meat, the fat, the vegetable, the sauce - but keep rice, noodles, potatoes.

But my short time goal is to drop below 80kg, my medium time goal is to get into the med-70 range, and my long time goal is to get near or right on the mark of 70. Thats why I currently eat more fat than before, but not as much as I would like to: the fat I eat is the fat my body must not burn from his fat deposits (take this as an indication that "eat fatty!" does not mean to blindly consume fat in absurd quantities). Thats why I avoid carbs currently. Thats why I drink no alcohol, no carb-including alcoho-free white beer, no pasta. Its not forever, but for some more months. Once I reached my target weight, I will eat carbs again, but at limited amounts and with time pauses between them, days. I will eat even more fat. I will allow myself an occasional Bailey's again. Life is too short to pass on all the good things always and forever.

Because last but not least: EATING SHOULD BE PLEASURABLE AND FUN AND SHOULD GIVE SATISFACTION IN TASTE AND SMELL!

This together with the massively improved nutrition status that i started to implement last year, results in many health benefits, loss of minor physical symptoms, and greater mental and emotional stability of mine. I feel so good like I have not since - well, since as long as I can remember. Very long time, I mean.

I had to change my doc, however, the old one was too unwilling to learn new, and strictly limited himself to what he learned at university long time ago, and what the DEG, the German Nutrition Society, says. The new one is not more educated, but a bit more open to listen to new stuff. Thats okay, I see doctors not as people making decisions in my place, but only as advisors. And I must not accept every advice if it does not make sense to me or cannot be reasonably explained.

Listen to your doctor - but never blindly trust one. They too are just humans, you know.

[Skybird]

Addendum: On SWEETENERS:


In the post before I mentioned that sweeteners were found to nevertheless trigger an insuline reaction although they may do not rise blood sugar/glucose.

Comparable claims I have red many times before, and it never made sense to me. It still does not, and thats why I researched it today after having red in a believable source recently that sweeteners can trigger an insuline spike up to 20% higher than normal sugar. I googled for it. Two hours long. And I did not find a convincing evidence for this claim. If there is evidence, then it still waits for me somewhere out there. Where is Mulder when you need him.

This is a confusing situation, and I think its worthy and necessary to shed some light on the situation of the debate. I do not like the picture I see.

What angers me is that when you look for biochemical arguments against sweeteners, you literally always sooner rather than later get confronted with criticism based on not chemical, physiological facts, but psychological and ecological arguments. They all get systematically mixed into just one argument, without any differentation: that sweetners are bad, should not be used, and implying that enjoying sweet taste is a sin in general, we better do not use neither sugar nor sweeteners. I am so sick and tired of this pleasure-hostile reeducation! While the changing of your diet changes your taste preferences a bit over time (due to TASTE, not due to feeling a duty of any kind), and consumming salt can reduce your craving for sweetness for sure on the brain-neurological level, and your appetite chnages as well (which is hormone-controlled and even can set up its own, hormone-dependent time tables: you feel an appetite because it is that time of the day and although you even are not hungry, because that hormone gets produced when the timer beeps), lets face it: a basic appetite for sweetness remains in many of us, always, if not in form of "sweetness intense", then at least as an additional ingredient helping to make something else you drink or eat more pleasurable a taste experience: coffee for example, tea. I love coffee - but never black, black it is an ineditable, bitter, suspicious brew to me, It makes me almost vomitting that bad it is, I add milk and some mild sweetnes to actually change it into somethign extremely! enjoyable. For the same reason, historically this is why Espresso traditionally gets served and enjoyed with lots and lots of sugar. The drink stems from the times when after WWII the factory workers in Italy had neither time nor money to waste precious money on expensive good coffee, they wanted a coffeine kick, and it had to be fast and affordable. The quality of the coffee used for cheap Espresso (a fast brew costing less time to prepare and to drink), was accordingly: it was a bitter, terrible brew, and it needed lots of sugar to turn into something eatable. Cheap coffee beans = bad coffee. Trivial!

Sweeteners are not all the same. Some get more metabolistically digested and chemically processed in your guts than others, thats why most of them differ in the dose at which they already produce diarrhea, the differences can be many factors. They also differ greatly in sweeteness intensity and own taste, some have very strict, strong own taste (Stevia) that even limit their usability, others are more neutral and less offensive in own taste, can even taste like sugar (I personally find the controversial Aspartam so convincing that I cannot reliably differentiate it from sugar, but I do almost never use it anyway).

Now, insuline. I have not found anything describing how sweeteners chemically or metabolistically trigger an insuline reaction while not causing a rise in blood sugar. Please note: some products that have sweetners in them, do cause insuline reactions, to varying degrees. You may even have a written warning on the bottle or box. Usually it is less intense than from sugars exclusively used. Since some sweetners are not completely free from calories, and/or get digested differently in the upper guts - and because additional agents are beign used that for themselves DO cause insuline spikes.

I think this is what the source of the quoted claim ("some sweetners can cause insuline spikes up to 20% higher than those from sugar") has allowed itself to get confused over: talking of sweetners as a pure agent while in fact referring to ready-to-eat products or liquids that include sweetners AND other agents.

Please note: mixtures of different sweeteners, mostly used in ready-to-eat products like lemonades for exmaple, can include different agents to add sweetness, and such an added agent for example can be fructose. In light lemondes, it can form up to 1% of the liquid's volume. That is something that definitely triggers an insuline reaction. Heck, its fructose, or corn syrups, so what else would you expect? But this does not mean that you get the same when adding for example Xylit - without any fructose. Xylit and Erythrit do not cause any raise in blood sugar, period. And hence I strongly assume they do not cause any insuline reaction at all. I found no evidence and no hint for that. If you know better, I would be thankful for letting me know, I really would like to know these things for certain.



Sometimes it is claimed that the brain realising the taste '"sweet", by this stimulus alone already creates insuline reaction. I cannot find anythign confirming this, however!? As long as this circumstance does not change, I rate this as unproven claim, and therefore: myth.


What is being done by routine by propagators of the anti-sweet-movement, to give the whole crowd a name to call them by, is this: they take psychological arguments on motivation and behaviour and imply these are like are hard-coded metabolistic reactions and processes on the bio-chemical level. But this is wrong - though a factor worth to be considered!

People can - and often do! - believe "Oh, this is a cola light, I saved calories, I have some calories free to eat somethign additional" and they throw in another chocolate bar, or they drink another bottle of it carelessly, ignoring or not knowing that it indeed includes not just a calory-neutral sweetner, but also 1% of fructose. And here you get an insuline reaction for sure - with a "light" product of which you wrongly assume it does not make you thick. It does, a tiny little bit per bottle. But that must not be the wrong of the pure sweetner itself...!

So the argument is that because people can be motivated to eat more because they drank a diet coke, products with artificial sweetners (without fructose or anything!) make people thick and fat and so should be avoided. Wouldn't it be better to educate people on the facts better and more honestly so to change their motivation this way? I personally take great anger from this deceptive and cheap argumentation. And until I do not get shown by evidence (!) that my reasoning is wrong on the chemical and metabolistical level, I insist on that taking sweetners is better than taking sugar as long as you take care not to throw in more other bad stoff due to using sweetners. So, I will continue to enjoy my coffee with a mild dose of sweetner in it (I do not want to have sweet coffee, but mild tasting coffee instead of bitter coffee, that ammount and not more sweetnes in it I want, same for condensed milk or cream), without feeling it as ecothrophologically sinful.

Another abstruse argument mistaken for chemical reality comes from the ecological direction. It is said that sweeteners are bad because they are indeed NEVER natural food, but always are chemically highly-processed agents from the lab. That is absolutely true, even for Stevia (and especially for that one), also for others that have a better reputation like many other sweetners, namely Xylit and Erythrit. They are food lab - like so much artificial stuff you can buy in the bio-market for vegans. Much of that is high tech food and anything but "natural". And often it is low in nutrients, causing deficits whichwho form patterns by which doctors can identify vegans and vegetarians, vegans and vegetarians, too different degrees, often (though not always) need to supplement nutrients like vitamines and minerals. There are many chemically highly processed food nobody cares to call out: plant oils, refined salt, margarine... And I say each of these is more dangerous than sweetners.

Also, an environmentalist argument in formed, due to the chemical processing of sweetners, quoting the energy needed to be invested, and chemical agents used in the process of chemically cracking up molecules, filtering and so forth. Well that is like with avocados. Avocados often get criticised for being transported over long distances, and they need plenty of water to be farmed. That are facts, yes. But these are facts for themselves the consumer should decide on by the standards by which his own personal word view ticks, they are no chemical, nutrition-relevant arguments. Avocados are not dangerous to your health just because they take long travels and need lots of water! They are VERY healthy for sure!

Here you again have the case that chemically hard-coded metabolistic arguments and non-related arguments get both mixed together and taken as one. Such intellectual sluggishness makes me wild! And often missionising drive and ideology is behind it - what makes me even wilder.

A word on Aspartam. It would be my preferred sweetner, because its sweetness is equal to that of sugar, you therefore can dose it like sugar, and I cannot differentiate the taste of it from the taste of sugar, no other sweetner to me tastes as natural and as much the same like sugar. However, I am only human, too, and I irrationally allowed to get scared by the argument that always is being used against it, although you only have an animal experiment with unclear results in its defence, and no human-researched hard evidence. A rat is a rat, and a man is a man, I reject to conclude from the the one on the other, it does not work, and I saw it not working in relation to according conclusions made in the reading on salt, fat, and acrylamide, too. A rat is no human. A chimp is no human. Chimps can digest cellulose, we cannot. As just one exmaple, the list of exmaple is open-ended.

"Aspartam causes cancer." Thats the one claim against Aspartam. More precise: it is claimed to cause cancer in rats, but it has not been really proven in those experiments. Said the American food authorities.

The other claim is indeed a chemical fact, and I learned about it already in physiology class at university. Aspartam includes phenylalanin, and there are people with so-called (German) phenylketonurie who are well advised to avoid phenylalanin, which has a very neurotoxical effect on them. The prevalence for this desease is 1 in 8000 (0.125%), and Aspartam-including products thus must have a warning on their packages that the product includes a phenylalanin source. For comparison, in Europe 0.3-8% of kids and 0.3-3% of adults are affected by any forms of food allergies. The Americans allowed Aspartam in the years from the early 80s to the early 90s for different food product groups, and since the mid-90s without any restrictions, and in the EU the product is allowed wihtout restrictions since 1990. The original patent has fallen, the most known marketing name is NutraSweet, but there are now many other companies offering it, too.

Personally, I am surprised by my own hesitation to use it more, I only use it on Belgian waffles a bit, since it can be dosed like ordinary powder sugar: one tea spoon of this and one tea spoon of that both taste the same and add the same quantity of sweetness. The rat claim is just a claim and never got proven and rats are not humans anyway, and the thing with phenylalanin is relevant for just every 8000th consumer. We have many diabetics that shoudl avoid sugar more or less. Does this make an argument to ban sugar from all and everything? People with peanut allergy - should peanuts be banned from the shelves? Other people having metabolic issues that prevents them from eating this and that - should these foods be banned in general?

Paracelsus said something like that the dose makes the poison, and there can even be individual doses for different people. Its like that with sugar and sweetners as well. People's organisms react differently to both, and can tolerate different doses of these. They all become toxic if you reach excessive doses. What a surprise!

In the late 80s/early 90s the Swedes panicked everybody by claimign that acrylamide causes cancer. What they did not say immediately is that they fed their poor rats - not humans! - with amounts of it that equalled up to several dozens and I think even a hundred times the animals' own body weight. Well, if I eat lets say 600 pounds of acrylamide, I assume I too would then prefer to lay still on the ground and being dead. - This is one of my most favourite examples of how absurd the nutrition debate is often led. In roughly the first decade of this century they tried to replicate the Swedish "findings", and so they amounted almost one thousand studies worldwide! And not one was able to replicate the Swedish findings: not one in almost one thousand! Even worse, more than half of these studies found all the same correlation: a correlation between acrylamid-avoiding eating behaviour, and prevalences to form various sorts of cancer. The more acrylamide-avoiding people were, the more often they got cancer! (This does not mean that acrylamide is an antidot to cancer, it most likely means that the lifestyle acrylamide-aware people are living by makes them prone to cancer: limiting food and nutrients for example) This study meanhwile has been withdrawn, is no longer being referred to, and the scandal is that it even was published in the first, this tells a lot about the lack of quality in the science magazine'S reviewing. Neverthless, until today we get warned to not fry our fries too hot and that we should reduce heat in deep fryers to 175° and you know what. Once the nonsens is out of the bottle, its hard to squeeze it back in. Personally, I do not care for acrylamide one bit. We are evolutionary adapted to it, because our ancestors roasted meat over open fire since - since how many thousands of years...?

I bring this example to illustrate from a different angle that not every claim against sweetners should be uncritically believed. Food sciences often base on only observation studies that do not allow causal linking, like correlations do not allow, too, and this is an inherent and unfortunately omni-present weakness of the whole academic branch of ecothrophology.

All I want to reach with stating this is: dont stop thinking yourself, be modest with whatever our eat, and practice healthy scepticism: do allow to get convinced, but do not allow to get convinced for free and without solid argument. Always scrutinze what is being claimed.



Edit:


P.S. The following is a release by the German "Süssstoff Verband e.V.", a lobby group for producers of sweeteners, so what they say better gets taken with some caution. Still - ah well, form your own opinion.

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://suessstoff-verband.info/suessstoff-wissen/haeufige-irrtuemer/suessstoffe-regen-den-appetit-an-und-lassen-den-insulinspiegel-steigen/

Recent studies on cell cultures and laboratory animals have shown that there is a stimulus from the taste receptors to certain hormone-producing cells in the digestive tract. Theoretically, these cells could promote insulin release. Numerous clinical studies with volunteers have shown, however, that this stimulus is so minimal that it ultimately has no effect on either blood sugar or insulin levels.

[Skybird]

Added content:

on Fats:

https://discover.grasslandbeef.com/b...an-trans-fats/

Why to be on your guard against Linolic Acid (LA) and Omega 6, and what oxidization and HDL and LDL have to do with it.

Avoid O6. Beef up your O3. Big particle LDL must not be much of a worry, but small mparticle LDL should, since it oxidizes easier. The first seemk to not help in forming atherosclerosis, the latter does. Additional information is needed to assess your cholesterol status, just the total HDL and LDL levels tell you almost nothing.

[Skybird]

On FASTING and INTERMITTEND FASTING


I have seen many of his shorter interviews, podcasts and lectures, but I found this to be the most suitable as an introduction to both the idea of fasting, and the man (to get an impression og him). I know it is a bit longer, one hour or so, but if yo are into these thigns or wondered about it before and did not dare or whatever, this might be what was needed to convince you.


I do much of that myself, and sinc elogner time now. It works. Its easy. You get used to it. Combine fastign with a carbohydrate reduced diet, replace your unhealthy with good eating fats, slash out refined sugar and do not snack between meals. Keep insuline spikes rare in numbers and low in amplitude. Then you are on a good way to improving your health.

[Skybird]

"When you're a kid, you think adults have their shlt together, when you're an adult, you realize no one has their shlt together...." - Dr. Fung on the qualification of doctors who went through just the drilling program of ordinary medical studies at university.


Another brilliant presentation by Dr. Fung. I can only wonder on how many thousands of people'S lives he has had a positive, healing, life-saving influence on by not just sitting in his office and talking to those who find their way to him, but being so engaged in spreading the message as actively as he can. He has the empiry behind him, and his explanatiosn just make bloody strwight, consistent sense. Theory meets empiry, and they get happily married and have many kids.

The industry must hate this man. There is no money in what he recommends.

Fasting as a therapeutic option

Originally Posted by video description

Dr. Jason Fung, MD, is a nephrologist and expert in the use of intermittent fasting and low-carbohydrate diets for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes. In this presentation, delivered on Aug. 2, 2018, at the 2018 CrossFit Health Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, Fung shares his first-hand experiences with “The Mess” and discusses how he shifted his research and medical practices as a result of those experiences.

Fung’s objectives for his presentation include: 1. Understanding why long-term weight loss is so difficult. 2. Introducing the concept of therapeutic fasting. 3. Understanding some myths and misunderstandings associated with the fasting process. He recalls treating obese and diabetic patients with traditional methods, which included what he characterizes as poor dietary recommendations and a slurry of drugs. He explains, “It became obvious that I’m just sort of holding their hand until they get their heart attack, until they get dialysis, until they go blind, until we chop their feet off.” “It’s really sad to realize that the profession that you’ve chosen is not really helping people,” he says. This realization compelled him to diagnose the problems associated with traditional care and seek alternative treatment methods for his patients.

Fung historicizes what he calls “the modern eating pattern,” which emerged in 1977 in the U.S. with the development of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. He notes the 1977 guidelines led to the consumption of more grains and sugars, which in turn led to people “eating often, eating late, and eating all the time.” Incidences of obesity and Type 2 diabetes reached epidemic levels, and the most common treatments long have been drug interventions. Unfortunately, the prevailing non-pharmaceutical prescription — to eat less and move more — has a 99.9% failure rate.

Fung observes that popular wisdom tells us to blame the patient and assume he or she did not adhere to the prescription. He claims a basic understanding of metabolism suggests otherwise, however. Fung explains why a significant reduction in caloric intake leads to a decrease in basal metabolism. This biological inevitability is ignored by the proponents of the “calories in, calories out” fallacy, he observes. He also explains why intermittent fasting is an effective alternative to traditional treatments for obesity and diabetes. The modern eating pattern keeps our insulin levels high all the time as we eat over long durations, and when insulin remains high all the time, Fung explains, our bodies store food energy as fat, and we remain hungry. Intermittent fasting, on the other hand, allows insulin levels to drop, which puts us in burning mode rather than storing mode. Fung claims his recommendations are so effective that patients no longer need to say, “Oh wow, I have to go see my doctor to see what pill I need,” or, “I need to go see my doctor to see if he needs to stick a stent in me.” Instead, Fung explains, “We’re giving you the power to take back your own health, because you’re not gonna get it from anywhere else.”

[Skybird]

On IMMUNITY:



I currently have the book in reading again (after a longer interruption), necessarily in English, still no German translation. Good one.

[Skybird]

More on SWEETENERS:

https://translate.google.com/transla...fwechselrisiko

I came across this text from the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, summarising some studies that I have not further explored, but some of the mentioned details, namely the relevance of the guts for indirectly helping to trigger an insuline resistence, had some alarm lights flashing up on my desk. Plus the relevance of certain sweeteners reducing the diversity of the microbiome in the guts. But especially the possibility of insuline resistence being helped to get boosted by sweeteners, what somewhat counters the reason why you would consume them in the first, has me in an raised state of attention-paying, where before I was always relatively relaxed. I expressed in the first post on sweeteners that I am relaxed about that "alarmism" and could not imagine how it should be true. Maybe I must change my view on that topic very substantially. Which would be bad news, of course.

I really would like to see research results on to what degree the insuline production caused by refined sugar equals, is higher or is lower than that caused by various kinds of sweeteners. Dr. Fung mentioned that some seem to trigger higher insuline reaction than white sugar, but did not further elaborate that at the text position where he wrote it in a book.

Dr. med. Kristina Rother criticizes the fact that for a long time the discussion about the safety of a sweetener was largely based on cancer risk and teratogenicity. The sweetener expert, who comes from Germany, is doing research at the renowned US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington and now sees the problem of sweeteners elsewhere: "We also have to talk about metabolic safety." In her opinion, there is clear evidence that that artificial sweeteners can promote insulin resistance. In fact, overweight subjects showed signs of insulin resistance after being given a drink containing sucralose, as measured in the oral glucose tolerance test ( 5th). This was confirmed again in a recently published randomized control study in healthy people of normal weight ( 6 ). Dr. med. Stefan Kabisch, doctor and researcher at the German Institute for Nutritional Research in Potsdam, is skeptical: “The new study is certainly an important aspect, but not yet proof.” For Rother, however, the matter is clear: “The connection between sucralose and insulin resistance is practically proven. ”She is of the opinion that this also applies to other sweeteners such as saccharin and acesulfame-K.

Edit: P.S.

Found something. And I do not like what I read.

https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/9/2530

In the conclusions they describe in how far their study is different from earlier such studies which came to opposing results. This study here was done with obese black Americans, while before most such studies were done with non-obese Caucasians. Both race and obesity status are relevant differences in the body's metabolism and physiology, not drmatic, but such differences are real (for exmaple there is medications that help white people, but would almost kill an African, Africans need for the same purpose a different drug, that has nothing to do with "latent racism", but just is reality). Still, something tells me that there nevertheless is something very relevant in this study that points beyond just obese black Americans.


Why is it that the good tasting things so often are unhealthy, and the healthy things so often are less tasty? Its mean. The devil must have made things so.

[Skybird]

Myth Busting: Does Fasting burn Muscle?

This is a very popular myth, even my old doctor (changed him earlier this year) told me that bollocks, amongst some other nonsense.

Take note of the links in the text that lead you to some dedicated studies on the matter.

And no, fasting DOES NOT burn muscle or weaken you. Quite the opposite. Maybe you do not turn into a muscular Schwarzenegger, but you become more energetic, enduring, physically lasting.

https://www.dietdoctor.com/does-fasting-burn-muscle

Beginners who find it hard to keep it, can ease it a bit by allowing a fatty coffee (but not as fatty as a bullet proof coffee) once per day, say 1-2 table spoons of cream 30+%. If that is what maintains your compliance, its worth the price ( I could not drink black, bitter coffee, not for my life). No sugar and no sweeteners, however, both trigger the insuline. Coffee and fat does not. Take salt, lots of water, consider supplementing vitamines and minerals, if you are concerned by that. It should not play a role if you fast only 2-3 days and maybe not even as often as I do (3-4 days in a row, then 4-5 eating days, plus daily intermittend fasting 17/7).

The food industry does not want you to fast. They cannot sell food to a person that does not eat. Instead they tell you you shoudl eat "frequently", and often, spreading over the whole day, or you should eat their wonderful "light" products, or special food designed to help you loosing weight. You could as well believe in the stork bringing the babies! I read nonsense like having 5 or better 6, no: even up to 9 small meals with vegetable and (fructose enriched) fruits, the magazines and daily press are full of this drivel - that borders physical assault, and recommending dangerous health hazards as a healthy cure! And from insuline spike to insuline spike your journey goes that way...

[Skybird]

On SOY:


https://translate.google.com/transla...soja-ungesund/

This nicely sums up why I have come to avoid soy (since years already) although I liked Tofu roasted in the pan after being marinaded for some hours in soy sauce, roasted sesam oil and sherry. I also avoid meat "surrogates" made of soy. Only soy sauce is something i cannot do without in my kitchen, ketjap manis is somehting i cannot do without and cannot replace. But then, it is heavily fermented soy beans, so that is a bit of a difference than natural soy beans (same for Natto (grim taste and consistence, I happily skip it) and other Japanese fermented soy foods, fermentation really changes things, same for fermented milk products). We Westerners live under this impression that Japanese eat Tofu all day long, but they don'T, I knew Japanese people, and they had it rarely and said it is not common to eat often - and if so, then only in context of certain meals helping with Tofu's "fallout".

I also remind of that originally soy beans were not farmed for human consumption but as animal fodder. (Comparable to canola/rap originally getting produced to win lamp oil and ingredients for soap prduction exclusively, usiong it to feed humans came later, it was originally not farmed in huge quantities for human consumption).

Eat meat of god fat quality. Omega 6 and transfats are to be avoided. The concerns about saturated fats are no longer supportable, forget it, like we learned to forget about food cholesterol raising blood cholesterol - it doesn't. The surrogates made of soy imo never came even close to the taste and consistency of meat, not to mention that their nutrient mix is completely different. We should stop to talk of "meat surrogates", so far there are none, that simple the truth is. Like there is no surrogate for cow milk (I do not mean to say you should drink plenty of cow milk, you probably shouldn'T, but in cheese and curd and cream, milk gets processed, if it should taste well, you cannot avoid milk for this). Cereal-water mixes are no milk, do not taste like milk, and if you want to cook with them or put them in your coffee you immediately realise they also do not behave like milk. Try to cook a pudding with them, but don'T be too disappointed with the result!
All this babbling about "alternatives" in the end is just lame excuses for promoting a certain ideology and worldview.

Always watch out for, ask for, check for the quality and type of included fats and oils. I find that when I do that, 9 out of 10 "alternative" food surrogates immediately land in the waste bin. Spend more, east less, eat quality, gain health. To me that rates as just industrially processed food, often with included health hazard.

[Catfish]

^ all quite interesting.

Vitamin D update though - have been taking very high doses of Vitamin D, around 10,000/week for more than a year. Talking to several doctors (one of the MHH Hannover) they advised to immedately reduce the quantity now. Vitamin D is not harmless in a way that you can take as much as you want – it is not only about Calcium levels.

It is better to get the blood levels, stage up the D-level until the fat reservoirs are filled up with Vit. D again, and then stop.
Also better to take Vitamin D in the winter, since UV radiation during summer boosts the Vit. D level and can lead (together with pills) to an overdosage with resulting kidney insufficiency, and even failure.

Vitamin D is "good for you", but do not use too high doses over time, it can indeed lead to kidney failure and the need for regular dialysis.

[Skybird]

Catfish, traditional doctors raised by the classic, industry-influenced paradigm at university all warn of how dangerous supplements are in general. The food and pharmaceutical industry pay over 95% of all medical studies underttaken! There lobbyists are in politics, media and educaiton, and they influence massively the training curriculae at unversities. That is as classical a conflict of interests as "classical" can mean.

I said a lot about Vit-D in the past 12 months, and all what I said I quote from academic, medical, practioner sources, nothing of it has grown on my own intellectual property. In the Wuhan virus thread I mentioned it repeatedly as well. I have three thick books just on vitamine D on my shelves now, two of them by the Einstein of Vitamine D research, Michael Hollick, he is the driving force behind it since 50 years.

Thate doctors who warned you, most likely told you BS, due to his own limited understanding of it (nutrition and prevention play almost no role in studying medicine at university). Especialyl in germany,l the generla atottude ion nutrient supplementation is extrneely phobic, and oriented towards mininmalist doses that do not even cover the minimum biological needs. Endless German concerns, concerns, and more concerns. If you really want to blow up in anger, just read the garbage released be the DGE(German Food Association), it really gets me fuming nowadays. Dubious, obscure, suspicious, I would even call it almost criminal, but its Am erican counterpart is not any better, what they still publish on "healthy"fats and limiting salt and grains and cereals, kills people by the many thousands every year via karciovascular deseased, hypertension, strokes, obesity, and diabetes. THEY MAKE PEOPLE ILL.

At 10.000 iE of Vit-D daily, and assuming you are blessed with non-ill organs, you must not fear problems. There are still the old myths floating around sometimes, namely the risk of hypercalcemia, and yes, Vitamine D can effect other variables as well in the metabolism, in the blood fats, the glucose metabolism. Heck, what else to expect, it is a bloody steroid-hormone, it is of omnipotent relevance! I have written so often now on why taking higher doses and why these still are safe to take, that I do not repeat it all another time here once again. I have linked to videos by Dr. Serheult (last tiem he was asked he said he takes 5 or 6 thousand units although living in some sunshine place: he had low calcidiol levels nevertehless, he said) and I think I listed some others in the Wuhan thread. I gave a head-up on this book (in German): https://www.amazon.de/Vitamin-Heilkr...s&sr=1-3-spell. The authors are not just any unknowns from outer space, they are luminaries in their branches. Hollick was the Big Bang of Vitamine D research in modern time.Severla of the key discoveries sinc the 780s, have been booked by him and his team.


I just say this (again): the body is prepared by nature to handle 20.000 IE per day. taking more is safe, but most likely useless (costs more money for nothing). A growing risk is not to be expected below up to 40.000 IE per day over any months, or as one-time-doses of 100-150 thousand IE in one day (fully reversible symptoms in case of the latter). Vitamine D must be combined with Magnesium, the storage form of it that you swallow in a pill or produce via the sun can metabolically not be used, must be activated before that, and for that Magnesium is a must. Vitamine K2 helps additionally, but is, at these doses, not really essential. Its maximum dose beyond which K2 turns poisonous is still not knowm, but the ylooked very high already, and did not yet find the limit, so you risk nothing there except a few pennies. It helps to keepo the Calcium mint he biones, and get Calcium in the blood transported into the bones (and teeth). But it is not the only but essential actor for this.

And I also say this: if you want to be safe, then do not speculate, but measure. A Vitamine-D test can be asked for easily, can even be ordered for use at home, at the doc it costs around 25-30 Euros. My dentist offers it as well, that relevant he considers good Calcidiol levels! Wer wissen will, muß messen. . Many Vitamine-D doctors say they want Calcidiol levels of at least 40-60 ngr/ml, and your daily dose to reach that depends on your ammount of body fattness, and metabolic rate. I have taken since long time 10,000-15,000 IE per day, on average 12500 over the past 6 months or so, and this March, as I reported in the Wuhan thread I think, I had a robust Calcidiol level of 73 ng/ml, which is a bombastically good value: it is above the mere academically wanted minimums of 40-60, and still significantly below threat levels that according to some sources are starting to become a valid concern from 100 on, others say 120 or even 150.

If your doctor tells you taking 10.000 IE per day is a rik for you but he does not give you a valid diagnosis for any health conditions of yours that organically put you at risk, then do like I did early this year: say him farewell and find yourselfelf a new doctor. Dogmatical defenders of outdated paradigms and business lobbies designed to protect the profit interests of industry, are not a benefit for your health. Doctors are only humans, you know. They can err, and they can not know something. Absolutely possible.

Avoid Calcidiol levels of 30 or deeper at all cost. They should be seen as very serious health risks.

I aimed at 70-80, and with 73 I landed right on the mark: 12500 IE per day, metabolically usable Magnesium ca. 800 mg, Vit-K2 200 mcgr, I am male, age 54, 177cm, weight back then was 87 kg (slightly overweight at that time, now am at 76 and falling ), abdominal girth 104 cm (back then). This gives you an idea.

I do not worry about calcidiol levels up to 80-90, at worse I produce expensive urine. The body by nature is made to handle 20.000 IE per day, this is established knoweldge and verified in practice, and this is what correpspnds with the Calcidiol levels in primtive tribes beign exposed to high-UV light all day long while walkign around almost naked. I probably reduce to 10000 any time soon, due to my no longer existent fat reserves.

Never forget one thing: if you are healthy, the industry cannot make economic profit from you. And vitamines and minerals cannot be patented, cannot be used to make fortunes with. They want to sell expensive drugs with long lists of health risks and side effects. At your expense.

Dont worry, dont be so easily intimidated. Use your reason, get some education on the matter, and then add 1 and 1 together.

Nutrition, food, nutrients, supplementation is a wide field. University and medical paradigms do not even get close to adequatly reflect their relevance. Prevention and healing and maintaining health is not high on the agenda, the big money lies in endlessly treating symptoms only - while leaving the causes untouched. That maintains the customer base.



Check your Calcidiol level once a year. Thats how I do it now. He who wants to know, must measure.

[Skybird]

Heck, I just realised you did not write "10000 units per day", but "10000 units PER WEEK".



What the hell are you even worrying about...??? 1500 IE per day - That is nothing!

P.S. Fauci, when asked said he takes 5000 per day. The German DGE, idiots that they are, still stick to 800 per day (I thoguht they had raised it to 2000 meanwhile...) : and since your dose, catfish, is twice as much than that, your doctor believes in the official recommendationsand takes them as ultimate truth because they are precious always trustworthy official recommendations and so must be right. And so he hits your alarm button.

Do not believe him. (I say this assuming there are no inherent health conditinsn or deseases in your system that indeed could recommend limiting several nutrients. cancer patients for exmapelk wpould nto nwant to take all nutrient that strengthen cell health, since they woudl also strenghten cancers vcells when taking them).

Get up and have a Calcidiol test in your blood serum. If you have less than 60 ng/ml, raise your daily dose.


Vitmaine D doe snot directla affect the kidney, only indirectly via the calcium in a hypercalcem ia. So, if you think you are sufferinbg from Vitamine D intoxication , then you would need to have extrenely, very extremely high elvels, anmd then it wpould affect your calcium metabolsim becasue then the Vitmaine D would extract much more calciuum form the food you digest. So an altenative is - and I have that form adoctor, not just my imagination - check not or not only you Calcidiol level, but your calcium level as well. Its cheap. If you calcium is fine, then there is no chance that Vitamine D affects your kidneys negatively (kidney stones, kidney inflammation).



Down the street where i live there is a man who won the lottery last summer. I heard he takes Vitamine D. Other people get kidney problems, and also took Vitamine D. - So...?

The health system is not about healt, but making money. Healthy people are a n annoyance for that task.

[Skybird]

Catfish,

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30294301/

Note that they say quite the same like I do. They assume, as I did, a vitamine D toxicity (VDT) from levels of 150 ngr/ml of Calcidiol in serum upwards, that is far, far above what I recommend as safe.

I bet money on that with 10,000 IE in seven days you are a lightyear away form such levels. You cannot reach that levels this way. Not even with my daily dose, I take your weekly dose in one day! Its just not possible if your organs work normally and you are not ill.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition...he-bottom-line

The whole text is kind of vague in describing what levels the studies they refer to have been run with. Still, I tend to not disagree with them that much. They are just not precise enough, imo.

Although a vitamin D level of 30 ngr/ml (75 nmol/l) is typically considered adequate, the Vitamin D Council recommends maintaining levels of 40–80 ng/ml (100–200 nmol/l) and states that anything over 100 ng/ml (250 nmol/l) may be harmful.

40-80, there you have it again, I said 60-80, and probably even safe until 100-150.

Levels below 30 ngr/ml are dangerously low. Below 20 you are in need of immediate health measures to get your calcidiol up. In case of a Covid 19 infeciton, your risks would be multiplied by many factors below 30 ngr/ml. So why just jangign aroudn at minimums? Have some reserves, build some more. Why wanting just 40 if you can have 80?

I do not deny that it becomes toxic from some level on, and I rated it to be the case from exceeding daily doses of 40,000 IE (they say even 50,000 IE) over severla months, or a single once-in-a-lifetime dose of over 100-150 thousand. However, there are therapeutical protocols in clinical context using up to 500 thousand IE, and more! Everything becomes toxic if you take too much, think of Paracelsus. Even O2. Even H2O. The question is where to set these treshhold levels. Conventional medical paradigms set it way too low - as with practially every micronutrient. All vitamines and minerals and trace elements they mention - they always, always always seem to systrmatcally underdose them by factors, apparently in a bid to keep you from taking them at all, and if you do, then at least in non-therapeuticla doses so low that they will not help you from benefitting them. Many studies on Omega 3 recently were done, and were it was hailed some years ago, since some years they all suddenly mysteriously claim: it doe snot work, save your money, Omega 3 does niothiugn for you. It is mysteriously only as long as you do not look up the studies. I did with some of these. The doses by which Omega 3 from low levels was papmperd upwards, were hilariously lowl while confoudnign variable like mutliple times as high O,mega 6 slevekls were left uncontrolled, unaltered. If you have lets say 20 tinmes miore Omega 6 than Omega 3, and then add 5% of Omega 3 consumption to your diat and leave the Omega 6 were they are - then you MUST find that it makes no difference and that Om,ega 3 "doie snot anything for you". Its wanted methodolocial bull to keep peopopel from caring for this issue,. They should buy precious healthy plant oils from corn, soy, and sunflower instead! Their Omega-6 levels will kill you over the years, slowly, but until then you serve as a productive financial source of money income for the industry running those monumental monocultures... Doesnt this add a valuable meaning to your life?

They spread fear by exaggerating the risks. Do not fall for that !

Be sick, pay much money for meds, and be a financially fertile and economically valuable patient. That is what the real name of the game is. Healthy you are of no economical use for the industry.

Edit:
There are quite some books helping you to get cured form your belief your doctor i8s infallible. This is one I happen to know. The author - is a doctor himself. He is not right with everything - hear hear! - but with most what he writes there. His comments on fibres however I would take with a grain of salt. I see fibres as disputed battleground, the debate is still open.



https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Docto.../dp/162860378X

[Skybird]

On Cholesterol and Carbohydrate Reduction:




https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://kochketo.de/cholesterin-und-keto/

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://foodpunk.de/alles-ueber-cholesterin/

Things are a bit different than just "high cholesterol cloggs your arteries". From some age on, higher cholesterol levels are even associated with smaller risks for death, whereas low levels that were considered "healthy " until some years ago seem to increase the risk for certain types of cancer and heart attacks.

If you want to check with your doctor, do not be satisfied with just learning total cholesterol levels, but ask for a specialised analysis of how your LDL is composed: how much small density LDL (sdLDL) and oxidated LDL (oxLDL) do you have (you want them to be low), and how is your HDL level (you want it to be rather high)? Big larticle LDL is not so much a cocnern, and that is what usually gets raised by cionsuming keto fatty diats and MCTs. sdLDL and oxLDL are the more relevant data.


Worth to remember: if you fast, or eat keto style and thus more healthy fats/oils, your LDL MUST rise, and it is wanted, because all the fat and lipids and keton bodies must get transported from the liver to the parts of the body where they are needed. Thats what the LDL does, whereas HDL works the other way around, collecting unused components and transporting them back to the liver for recycling. Think of it like christmas time. People raise the amounts of parcels due to the gifts and presents they sent, and so the mail and logistics services are more present with their vans on the street, they even do additonal shifts: you see more vans on the streets. Its just logical.