There are many organs (the skin, liver, bowels, etc.) to consider when we are desirous of cleansing the body for a goal of optimal health. Thanks to new technology, though, we can now see exactly how the brainwashesitself – not in the metaphoric sense, but how the glial cells, which power cerebrospinal fluid, help wash out guck from the brain.
How the Brain Washes Itself
Fortunately, the kind of toxic goop that the liver or intestines take on doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier and interfere with the fatty mass between our ears. This is how the brain protects itself from pathogens like viruses and microbes. In order to protect itself, yet still flush out toxins, the brain makes a fluid called cerebrospinal fluid that scientists once had a hunch helped keep the body and brain healthy, but weren’t exactly sure how.
Using a two-photon microscope, scientists were recently able to see exactly how the brain washes itself even with the blood-brain barrier in place. Special cells, called glial cells form the glymphatic system. These cells power the cerebrospinal fluid. They do so by forming little feet which wrap around vessels and veins to carry blood – almost like a pipe in regular ‘this old house’ plumbing. The pipe the glial cells form have tiny pores within it that suck nutrient-rich cerebrospinal fluid from the vessels into a channel that is full of nerve cells, and pores located elsewhere along the channel pump out the waste-filled fluid. The brain cells are therefore fed with nutrients and cleaned of toxins at the same time.
In many separate studies conducted on cerebrospinal fluid, it has been hypothesized that its statis (in activity or sluggish flow) can cause all sorts of disease. There are many factors which determine the flow of this important brain fluid, including the overall cardiovascular health, respiratory health and vasomotor health of an individual, and healthful nutrients are as important to the glial cells and lymphatic flow as anything.
Where there is dis-harmony in the body, the cerebrospinal fluids may not be able to flow appropriately, and this in turn can lead to poor cellular metabolism – even of brain cells and important neurons which must communicate with one another to keep our hormones in balance, our nervous systems functioning properly, and allow us to make intelligent decisions in our every day activities. It is for this reason that many postures in yoga aim to move cerebrospinal fluid up and down the spine so that it can reach the brain stem.
Simple Ways to Help the Brain Clean Itself
Other therapies which help the brain clean itself by utilizing good cerebrospinal flow include cranial manipulation, cranial sacral therapy, massage therapy including promotion of lymph flow, and breathwork. Nutrition and overall detoxification of the body can also ensure that the other organs of elimination are not overloaded so that once the glial cells ‘dump’ waste into the blood, these toxins can be removed from the body appropriately.
Proper nutrition, cleansing techniques and good cerebrospinal flow are imperative to removing amyloid plaques that may be the basis of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia like Parkinson’s Disease or Lou Gerhig’s Disease. In younger stages of the body, we can utilize these therapies as a means to keep the brain and spinal fluid healthy so that our mind’s can function at peak levels.
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Christina Sarich is passionate about natural health and wellness, and as well as running her own Yoga blog, she contributes to timetocleanse.com, a popular cleansing and clean living website.
Selected quotes from WSJ Op-Ed today by distinguished Princeton physicist Dr. William Happer: Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature. WSJ.COM 5/8/13: Of all of the world’s chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That’s simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity... Crop yields in recent dry years were less affected by drought than crops of the dust-bowl droughts of the 1930s, when there was less carbon dioxide. Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it’s a wonder that humanitarians aren’t clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, some are denouncing it.
We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth’s atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.
Pollinators participate in the sexual-reproduction of plants. When you eat an almond, beet, w[youtubeatermelon or sip on coffee, you’re partaking of an ancient relationship between pollinators and flowers. But since the 1990s, worldwide bee health has been in decline and most evidence points to toxic pesticides created by Shell and Bayer and the loss of genetic biodiversity due to the proliferation of GMO monocrops created in laboratories by biotech companies like Monsanto.
But never worry, those real life pollinators—the birds and the bees, as they say—may soon be irrelevant to the food needs of civilization. Harvard roboticists are developing a solution to the crisis: swarms of tiny robot bees made of titanium and plastic that can pollinate those vast dystopian fields of GMO cash crops.
The Harvard Microrobotics Lab has been working on its Micro Air Vehicles Project since early 2009. Borrowing from the biomechanics and social organization of bees, the team of researchers is undergoing the creation of tiny winged robots to fly from flower to flower, immune to the toxins dripping from petals, to spread pollen. They even believe that they will soon be able to program the robobees to live in an artificial hive, coordinate algorithms and communicate amongst themselves about methods of pollination and location of particular crops.
Of course, published reports from the lab also describe potential military uses—surveillance and mapping—but the dime-sized cyber-bees have yet to be outfitted with neurotoxin tipped stingers.
(Video courtesy – YOUREPORTER.IT)
A strong tornado hit the Italian region of Emilia Romagna on Friday at around 1400 GMT according to Italian media, injuring 11 people and damaging several houses. Numerous fields were damaged by the strong storms and the harvest could be ruined.
RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
Killer robots that can attack targets without any human input “should not have the power of life and death over human beings,” a new draft U.N. report says.
The report for the U.N. Human Rights Commission posted online this week deals with legal and philosophical issues involved in giving robots lethal powers over humans, echoing countless science-fiction novels and films. The debate dates to author Isaac Asimov’s first rule for robots in the 1942 story “Runaround:” ”A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
Report author Christof Heyns, a South African professor of human rights law, calls for a worldwide moratorium on the “testing, production, assembly, transfer, acquisition, deployment and use” of killer robots until an international conference can develop rules for their use.
His findings are due to be debated at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on May 29.
According to the report, the United States, Britain, Israel, South Korea and Japan have developed various types of fully or semi-autonomous weapons.
In the report, Heyns focuses on a new generation of weapons that choose their targets and execute them. He calls them “lethal autonomous robotics,” or LARs for short, and says: “Decisions over life and death in armed conflict may require compassion and intuition. Humans — while they are fallible — at least might possess these qualities, whereas robots definitely do not.”
by Christina Sarich
By Russ McSpadden
PN 