First real-time communication between researchers and lucid dreamers

Motto:  'Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.' (Arthur C. Clarke)

Long time ago i used to write about lucid dreaming. When Stephen LaBerge started to study the phenomenon during the Eighties, many were just thinking that this is some kind of hoax, similar to the astral projection. 

But now, 40 years later, we have the technology to prove that this is real, and some researchers did that, according to the research notes published on 18.02.2021 (link here). 

What are we talking about? While some of us may be naturally gifted for lucid dreaming, others need to work for it, more or less. I found that 3-6 months of training, using a Dream Journal to write what you remember as soon as you wake up (first 60 seconds when you wake up or the memory is gone), and a Reality Check (ask yourself as often as you can during the time you are awake if you are dreaming, and after a while the habit will make it possible to ask if you a dreaming while you are dreaming, so you will realize that you are aware while dreaming). If you realize that you are in a dream, you are in a world you created, having godlike powers (yes, i sound a bit blasfemous, but it is true), and you can do anything you wish, i may correct myself, anything you intent to do, as intention is the force changing the dream, basically anything and everything. The ultimate virtual game. You can drive your favourite car, meet your favourite person to chat or walk or else, you can even have any superpower you like (teleport, freeze time, anything you wish for, but my favourite by far is flying). I could talk about flying and ramble on many pages, but the short version is this, once you realize you are not in the  real world, and you are not bound by the laws of physics, you can fly, like Superman. It is exhilarating and unbelievable transforming. If you were to learn lucid dreaming only for this experience, and it is totally worth it. You can use it for repetitive actions, to master skills faster (like doing 10-100 times same Kata from martial arts or getting better at guitar or violin. Time is relative while dreaming, so one year dream time can be one hour in real life. Just imagine, if you need 10.000 hours to play violin and you do all this hours in 7 nights, you can master violin in one week. Another way to use the lucid dream, as i discovered personally, i call it pogressive exposure to a phobia. You can conquer your phobia bit by bit, creating the trigger and being exposed to it bit by bit. I tried this with public speaking, adding more and more people to crowd listening to me until i was not afraid anymore. Oh, there is so much to talk about lucid dreaming. Once i start i find hard to stop myself talking about it forever. But, let's go back to our bussiness. 

The issues with the research where that the memories of a dream are most often distorted and partial. They devised a method to create a two-way dialogue with a person while lucid dreaming. This dialogue was quite complex, using math problems and yes/no answer. The lucid dreamers answered during the REM sleep - while dreaming, using eye movements and facial muscle signals. 

So, during this experiment they used a previously learned two-way communication method, during polysomnographically verified rapid eye movement sleep (translation in layman terms: while dreaming) using 36 individuals, each of them having different skills in lucid dreaming. During testing, while dreaming, they proved they can perform veridical perceptual analysis of novel information, maintain information in the working memory, computing simple answers and expressing volitional replies. Meaning they can learn about new things, remember them later, answering questions and telling what they want. To do this, they used distinctive eye movements and selective facial muscle contractions. They answered correctly on 29 occasions with 6 individuals tested, showing not only that lucid dreaming is possible, but also that we can peak behing the courtain and find what it is happening while dreaming. 

This is also proof that our awareness can go further than just when we are 'awake', and that we are aware of much more of the reality, even when we are sleeping. Impressive, but nothing new under the stars, as there are similar methods devised by the Indians (Yoga-Nidra) and South Americans shamans (lucid dreaming techniques), some of them being two thousand years older. 

Still, we can be only happy when the science is catching up with the old magic. 

See you soon,

George

Pathways to Immortality - Alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG)

 This one started as a dietary supplement used by bodibuilders, of course, as they are the ones opening the way to all the needs experimenting, with or without much care about consequences. AKG is a chemical that we already have in our body. In medicine, it was used for kidney patients receiving  hemodialysis  treatments  process  protein, for intestinal and stomach disorders, liver problems and even cataracts. A notable use for reccuring yeast infections. The sport suppliers are telling us that taking AKG supplements can bring our body to peak performance, ny using the extra ammonia to reduce the ammonia toxicity, in a similar way with the patients receiving hemodyalisis. Others mention that you can take alpha-ketoglutarate intravenously, as they take sometimes during heart surgery to prevent injuries and muscle breakdown. Heck, it is even used in the pig industry to grow healthier, heavier pigs, especially during early months. And it is not cheap, a 240 capsules box of 500mg Calcium AKG is like $85.

But then, i found a research made by Buck Institute for Research for Aging, and the results are fascinating. They got groups of 16-18 months old mice (55 year old equivalent for humans), and they give them AKG daily. A little side note, AKG is an intermediate in the Krebs cycle, changing dietary glucose into ATP (you know it as adenosine triphosphate, the one compound that gives energy to the cell). And, interesting enough, in a similar way with NAD+ (another heavily marketed longevity supplement), our AKG levels are decreasing as we age, so around age of 50-60 you may have 10 times less AKG then in your youth. Where we go, this is a quest as old as humanity itself. But enough talking, let's see the results. The mice fed with AKG as supplement scored 40%+ on frailty test, and female mice lived up to 20% more than the control mice. But there is more than that. Even if the lifespan increased with up to 13%, the healthspan increased with more than 40%, as it was noticed. This is every researcher nightmare, that you may increase the lifespan, but without counteracting the frailty that comes with age. So, this supplement brings hope, because even the mices that lived a normal life, had less health related problems than the test group. This was a result due to low levels achieved by systemic inflammatory cytokines, better gait and grip strenght was also notices, as they retained the muscle mass better while ageing (I can see why older bodibuilders jumped to their conclusion). Female mice got bigger improvements than male mice.

Another distinct advantage for AKG is that, unlike other proven remedies like metformin and rapamycin (which are known to increase longevity given some specific conditions), this one is naturally made in our body, so it is considered safe by FDA. I have heard even of some ongoing researches trying to test this supplement uses in Alzheimer's disease. AKG is heavily researched in Asia, mostly for agricultural and farming reasons.

Word of advice: Do not go right away to buy it and use it, at least not before asking your doctor. There are still many unknown factors to this equation. They did not study it enough in terms of interactions and side effects. Especially during pregnancy and lactation time. You do not want to repair a hand watch with a hammer, irrelevant of your skill.

Bibliography:

https://www.rxlist.com/alpha-ketoglutarate/supplements.htm

https://www.supplementplace.co.uk/calcium-akg/

https://www.buckinstitute.org/news/a-metabolite-produced-by-the-body-increases-lifespan-and-dramatically-compresses-late-life-morbidity-in-mice/

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2018/3408467/

https://www.oncotarget.com/article/17132/text/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4703346/

Alzheimer's disease and what we can do to delay it succesfully

 

On my last blog post I was talking about the tests needed to detect it early. Once we know that we are prone to some subtype of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), what can we do to succesfully delay it (or even keep it at bay, if we are really lucky, genetically and otherwise). 

There are five causes that are usually related to early cognitive decline for every one of us, and we can deal with them optimizing our mental health adequatelly:

• Insulin resistance
• Inflammation and infections
• toxins (can be biological, chemical or physical)
• hormonal balance, nutrients for the brain and trophic factor enhancing
• restoration and protection of synapses (even for lost of dysfunctional ones).

Diet: A Keto-diet can greatly improve in relation with inflammation. This is a good video explaining the dangers of this diet and the benefits of this kind of diet. 

Exercise: You will need to make an effort in here, with 5-6 times a week, aerobic and strenght, for 30-50 minutes.

Stress reduction: Meditation, yoga postures and pranayama exercices can greatly help with this issue.

Brain training: 30 minutes 3 times a week or 15 minutes for 6 times a week.

Supplements that help preventing or delaying AD:

-MCT oil 1-3 g daily

-Curcumin or turmeric 1 g twice daily

-Ashwaganda 500 mg twice per day

-Bacopa monieri 250-500 mg twice per day

-Gotu kola 500 mg 1-2 times per day

-There are other Ayurvedic remedies indicated for this, without enough research done at the moment: Rhodiola, Hericium, Shankhpushpi, Triphala, Guduchi, Guggul and few more.

-Magnesium threonate 2 g per day (in the evening, can have sedative effect, not before driving or using heavy machinery)

-Ubiquinol 100 mg

-PQQ 10-20 mg

-Resveratrol 100 mg

-Nicotinamide riboside 100mg

-Omega3: DHA 1 g, EPA 0.5-1 g

-Liposomal glutathione 250 mg 2 times per day

-Enough vitamin D and K (D level targer of 50-80)

-Probiotics and prebiotics (read here and here) 

-Mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols (vitamin E desired level 12-20)

-Detoxification protocols if heavy metals or biotoxins are present

-Specific antibiotic treatment if infection is present

-Discontinue or minimize medication interfering with cognitive function if possible. 

Note: All the supplements are preferable to be from natural sources (fruits, veggies, dairy etc) as they are better absorbed than the farmaceutical products. You may need at least 6 months of dedicated effort to undue what you probably done wrong for your entire life. You don't need to do or use all of them, but test and adopt the habits that help you the most and implement them in your daily routine. 

Live long and and prosper!

G.

 

Alzheimer's disease early detection - complete list of tests

I realised that all the tests where mentioned across few posts, sa maybe it will be easier if there is a list of them, with the normal values:

Genetics - ApoE -Ideally negative for ApoE4

Blood tests:

Inflammation AD (Alzheimer's disease)

-homocysteine - under 7

-vitamin B (B6 60-100, B12 500-1500, Folate 10-25)

-vitamin C 1.3-2.5

-vitamin D 50-80

-vitamin E 12-20

-Omega3:Omega 6 ratio 0.5-3.0

-A/G ratio (albumin/globulin) -more than 1.8/ albumin more than 4.5 

-fasting insulin - less than 4.5 (fasting glucose 70-90)

-A1c - less than 5.6

-BMI (body mass index) - 18-25

-LDL-p 700-1000

-cholesterol - more than 150

-HDL more than 50

-triglycerides - under 150

-glutathione 5-5.5

-RBC thiamine - 100-150

-Leaky gut, leaky blood-brain barrier, gluten sensitivity - negative

Trophic support AD

-vitamin D -50-80

-estradiol (E2) - 50-250

-progesterone -1-20

-pregnenolone -50-100

-cortison 10-18

-DHEA sulphate 350-430 women, 400-500 men

-testosterone 500-1000, free testosterone 6.5-15 free

-free T3 3.2-4.2, free T4 1.3-1.8, reverse T3 less than 20, TSH less than 2

Toxin related AD

-mercury less than 5, lead less than 2, arsenic less than 7, cadmium less than 2.5

-copper/zinc ratio 0.8-1.2

-C4a less than 2830, MSH 35-81

-RBC magnesium 5.2-6.5

-copper 90-110, zinc 90-110

-selenium 110-150

-potassium 4.5-5.5

-calcium 8.5-10.5

Microbiome - gut/oral/nasal - no pathogens

I hope this helps. You just read my previous posts to see if you are at risk and which way you need to improve. 

G.

The Libyan adventure - strange facts about Gaddafi

Motto: ''Those who do not learn their history, are doomed to repeat it. ''

 

 

As i was exchanging ideas with someone knowing quite a bit about life under the dictator Gaddafi, here are some facts that i found out about:

During Gaddafi regime:

1. Every citizen, according to the Green Book, should have a home that needs to be owned by him and not by others. 

2. Education and healthcare was free. 

3. Electricity was free.

4. Petrol was $ 0.14 per litre.

5. Libya was the home of the 8th wonder of the world - an irrigation project covering almost the whole country, which is now almost completely destroyed, as it was intensely targeted in the war. Somebody wanted Libyans to be hungry and without food. 

6. A mother will receive a $5000 equivalent allocated for her and the child. 

7. If you wanted to make a farm, you will receive house, land, livestock and seeds needed to start. 

8. During Gaddafi, the number of illiterate Libyans wend down from 75% to 13%. Education was very important. 

9. Libya has their own national bank, which provided loans to population atr zero interest rate (as they use to be one of the few countries with no external debt.) The highest level ever reached was 6.47% GDP in 2011. This is a very low level, even now, after a was raged free in the whole country. Fun fact, another country with no external debt was Romania, with zero external debt in 1978, and highest level ever - 75% GDP external debt in 2011. U.S. external debt in 2019 is 84% of GDP. 

10. He tried to make the United States of Africa before European Union project, with a single African currency backed by gold called gold dinar. This will probably give unprecedented freedom and power to whole Africa, and some believe this was the real reason of being ousted out of his throne. 

Also, he was a good friend of Nelson Mandela, and declared Osama bin Laded terorist and wanted man three years before 9/11, condemning what was later known as ISIS.

Sometimes life is indeed stranger than fiction. And i know, he was also doing a lot of questionable things as president, and i lived under a Comunist Party to know better when your freedom finish and where it starts. But, why did they destroy all the good work of the Libyan people?

 

Alzheimer, gluten sensitivity and autoantibodies

We already talked about the gut-brain connection and how this will influence cognition. Statistically speaking, even if only 6% of the people will develop coeliac disease (severe gluten intolerance in layman terms), many of us will damage somehow our gastrointestinal tract at some moment in our life (see this book and this book for more information). Gluten sensitivity can lead to leaky gut, which in turn can trigger chronic inflammation leading to Alzheimer's disease (AD). There is a standard blood test to determine your gluten sensitivity, called tissue transglutaminase antibodies assesment in the serum, and obviously needs to be negative. There is also Cyrex Array 3 testing, to determine antibodies and also we can measure sensitivity to rye, barley, sesame, oats or rice, for example, using Cyrex Array 4. The result must be negative for both tests also. And if we need to explore further more, to find any autoantibodies from the group attacking the brain proteins, then we will use Cyrex Array 5. This one will asses a host of autoantibodies, and also needs to be negative. 

Next on our list are the mitochondria damaging agents. The mitochondria is that part of the cell generating and supplying energy, and there are many chemicals that can damage our mitochondria, within short and long term exposure. Antibiotics, statins, griseofulvin, L-DOPA, alcohol, Tylenol, aspirin, ibuprofen, cocaine, methamphetamine, AZT, thre is a really long list here. Even the ApoE4 alele might be associated with the mitochondrial damage. 

Even worst, there is no definite test to evidentiate this. All we can do is to avoid the known mitochondria-damaging substances and chemicals. 

The Alzheimer's disease and the bloodstream-brain barrier

When the brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease was analysed, there was an entire list of disease-causing bacteria, viruses and fungi, and while they were not enough to indicate encefalitis or meningitis, the low levels of pathogens will slowly wear down your defences, making your brain to function suboptimally. It was not really like an all-out war, but more like a sabotage. These findings are both surprising and concerning, as previous it was hypothetised that Alzheimer's disease (AD) is not infectious. 

Oral bacteria have been found repeatedly in the brain of people suffering with AD , as some of their excretions (protein based) were found also. The culprits are Porphyromonas gingivalis. Fusobacterium nucleatun and Prevotella intermedia. Herpex simplex virus (HSV) can live for decades in the nerve cells from your face and lips (trigeminal ganglion cells), causing cold sores when you are stressed or sunburned, but they can also migrate through the same nerve into the brain, producing mild, chronic inflammation, associated with AD. 

Syphilis causing bacterium - Treponema pallidum, can live in the body for years, eventually infecting the brain and causing dementia. AD seems to activate a similar pathway, but instead of one single organism causing this, in the case of AD, the mild chronic inflammtion seems to be caused by many different microorganisms associated together. 

Another notable presence, The Lyme disease spirochete - Borrelia burgdorferi, has been found in the brain of AD patients. This one is carried by a deer tick in most of the cases, and you can get it when the tick bite you and inject you with its saliva. Sometimes you will get some additional friends of Borrelia, such as Ehrlichia (infecting white blood cells), Bartonella (infecting blood vessels) or Babesia (relative of malaria parasite, attacking red blood cells). A very dangerous coktail. Want more distressing news? There are also some fungi that can be found in the brain of the AD patients. There is no single organism to cause AD, but the main problem may be the response to so many different infectious agents. 

Normally the brain is well protected by the blood-brain barrier, with few rare cases when this barrier can break down, similar with the leaky gut issue. Sometimes is the nose ( a known problem of cocaine users), sometimes is the gut (via the vagus nerve) and in very rare cases through the eye. All the dementogens will use one of these routes (dementogen - causal factor of dementia, like in cancerigen - cancer). In AD, the abnormalities related to the blood-brain barrier tend to appear very early, and there are substantial claims related to the link between the nasal and sinusal acces to the brain and the AD type 3. 

The test to verify this issue it is called Cyrex Array 20, and the result must be, obviously, negative. 

Next post will be about gluten related sensitivities.

Have a wonderful day!

G.