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Category: neuroscience – Page 970

A drug for treating prostate cancer has been linked with increased risk of dementia, study finds

You don’t improve the body by breaking its parts. In the case of prostate cancer this might be a fair trade-off, but unless you have a specific medical condition that is serious and life-threatening you should not be poisoning yourself with metabolism breaking chemicals. They will have negative impacts all over the body as a rule.

  • Prostate cancer patients who take a hormone-suppressing drug may be at an increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s, a study has found.
  • The study of more than 150,000 men found a link between the degenerative diseases and a treatment drug called androgen deprivation therapy.
  • Researchers cautioned doctors to further consider the risks of ADT before giving it to their patients to treat prostate cancer.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A study of more than 150,000 men with prostate cancer found that a certain hormone treatment is linked with increased risks of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

There’s a 20-percent higher chance of having dementia for older men who have taken the prostate cancer treatment, according to the research study from JAMA Network. That drug treatment, called androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), is used to suppress male hormones (like testosterone) that can help to spread prostate cancer in the body.

Effect of the Energy of Consciousness (The Trivedi Effect®) on Withania somnifera Root Extract Using Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha) root extract is very popular ancient herbal medicine. The objective of the study was to characterize and evaluate the impact of The Trivedi Effect® — Energy of Consciousness Healing Treatment (Biofield Energy Healing) on phytoconstituents present in the ashwagandha root extract using GC-MS and NMR. Ashwagandha root extract was divided into two parts. One part was denoted as the control, while the other part was defined as The Trivedi Effect® — Biofield Energy Treated sample, which received The Trivedi Effect® — Energy of Consciousness Healing Treatment remotely from eighteen renowned Biofield Energy Healers. The GC-MS data indicated that the peak height and peak area of The Trivedi Effect® treated sample were found to be altered compared with the control sample. The peak height of the phytoconstituents present in the treated ashwagandha sample was altered significantly in the range of −8.32% to 89.25% compared with the control sample. Similarly, the peak area of the treated sample was altered significantly in the range of — 4.28% to 216.30% compared with the control sample. Overall, the change in the peak area% of the treated sample was significantly altered in the range of −18.29% to 170.18% compared with the control sample. The GC-MS and NMR analysis results identified the presence of withanolides such as glyco-withanolides, alkaloids, and sugars in the root extract in both the sample. The peak area of 2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyridazine , methyl ethyl sulfoxide , 5,6-dihydro-2-methyl-4(H)pyran-3,4-dione , diethoxy-2-methyl-propane , 2,3,4,5-tetrahydroxy-tetrahydro-pyran , and 3,4-dimethyl-2(3H)-furanone were significantly increased by 170.18%, 58.21%, 7.74%, 139.50%, 23.16%, and 45.63%, respectively in the treated sample compared with the control sample. On the contrary, the peak area% of 2-hydroxy-γ-butyrolactone was decreased by — 14.96% in the treated ashwagandha compared with the control sample. From the results, it can be hypothesized that The Trivedi Effect® — Biofield Energy Treatment might have the impact on the intrinsic physicochemical properties of the phytoconstituents present in the ashwagandha root extract and responsible for the alteration in the relative peak height/area of treated sample compared with the control sample. As a result, the concentrations of the phytoconstituents assumed to be increased in treated sample compared with the control sample. This treated ashwagandha root extract would be helpful for designing better nutraceutical/pharmaceutical formulations which might be providing a better therapeutic response against autoimmune diseases, nervous and sexual disorders, infectious diseases, antiaging, diabetes, cancer, immunological disorders, stress, arthritis, etc.

Keywords:

Biofield Energy Healing Treatment, Biofield Energy Healers, Consciousness Energy Healers, The Trivedi Effect®, Withania somnifera, Withanolides, GC-MS, NMR.

DJ MacLennan on his Cryonics book “Frozen to Life”

To me cryonics just makes sense. It may not be pretty but, just like open heart surgery, it is one of those things that, without any guarantees, can possibly extend your life [very] substantially. Thus, especially given the alternative, I just can’t quite make sense of the slow rate of adoption evident not only in North America but also across the world. And so I am always happy to discover new books that lay out the scientific argument for cryonics while making it easily digestible and giving it a very personal, human perspective. Since the most recent book, I thoroughly enjoyed on this topic was Frozen to Life: A Personal Mortality Experiment I thought that D.J. MacLennan will make an excellent guest on my podcast. I was not wrong about that.

During our 1 hour conversation with D.j. MacLennan we cover a variety of interesting topics such as: why he decided to write Frozen to Life and who is it for; cryonics as a glass-state time travel; why he chose neuro- rather than full-body preservation; the costs and rate of adoption of cryonics; the culture, conservatism and geography of his home on the Isle of Skye; transhumanism and transcending limitations; the differences between Max More and James Hughes; his fear of death; the promise of chemical brain preservation; mindfulness and meditation; writing a transhumanist take on The Wizard of Oz and potentially on Grim’s Fairy Tales…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunes, make a direct donation or become a patron on Patreon.

T Cells Infiltrate the Aging Brain

As published in a recent study, researchers have discovered that neural stem cells are impeded by the invasion of T cells, immune cells that are not normally present in the neural stem cell niche.

The neural stem cell niches

Our brains contain neural stem cells (NSCs); like their name suggests, these cells are responsible for the formation of new neurons within the brain. This process, which continues throughout life, is known as neurogenesis. These stem cells live in particular niches, which contain a panoply of different cell types, including stem cells in different phases of development and multiple types of immune cells. However, the researchers discovered a startling fact: the brains of older mice contain many specific immune cells known as T cells, while the brains of younger mice contain very few – and, as the study explains, this is true for humans as well.

Ultra-small nanoprobes could be a leap forward in high-resolution human-machine interfaces

Machine enhanced humans — or cyborgs as they are known in science fiction — could be one step closer to becoming a reality, thanks to new research Lieber Group at Harvard University, as well as scientists from University of Surrey and Yonsei University.

Researchers have conquered the monumental task of manufacturing scalable nanoprobe arrays small enough to record the inner workings of human cardiac cells and primary neurons.

The ability to read electrical activities from cells is the foundation of many biomedical procedures, such as brain activity mapping and neural prosthetics. Developing new tools for intracellular electrophysiology (the electric current running within cells) that push the limits of what is physically possible (spatiotemporal resolution) while reducing invasiveness could provide a deeper understanding of electrogenic cells and their networks in tissues, as well as new directions for human-machine interfaces.

Buddhism And The Freedom of The Will

A South Indian philosopher sometimes called the “second Buddha,” Nagarjuna stands ambivalently at the beginnings of Mahayana philosophy. His arguments are subtle, sophisticated, and complex. Their interpretation is made more difficult because they are written as beautifully crafted quatrains whose density require extra concentration. As a transitional thinker, Nagarjuna is taken by some commentators (David Kalupahana and Jay Garfield) as continuing the Pali tradition and by others (Frederick Streng and T. Wood) as making a clean break with it. The latter school of interpretation reads Nagarjuna’s quatrains as thoroughly dialectical refutations of any positive thesis, even the minimalist claims of Pali realism. There is general consensus that the Yogacara school of Vasubandhu and Asanga reject Nagarjuna’s views, whatever they are, in favor of an objective idealism roughly similar to Hegel’s. Unfortunately, we do not have space to deal with Yogacara except only in an indirect way.

As we have seen, Pali Buddhists do not deny the appearance of an empirical self (jiva); rather, they deny that, corresponding to this appearance, there is anything enduring, separate, or independent. These may just be three different ways of saying the same thing, but since they represent three different types of Buddhist arguments, they merit separate presentations. First, there is no self that endures. What we see is constantly changing and there is nothing that stays the same. The traditional argument here proceeds by elimination: the physical bodies change; feelings, beliefs, desires, and intentions all change; consciousness is intermittent; and our self-conceptions change over time. None of the things we can point to as the self remains the same. Therefore the self does not endure. The argument is similar to the one given by Hume.

Second, the self is not separate from the causes and conditions that give rise to it. A standard metaphor for this comes from the Dhammapada, a Pali text from the 3rd century BCE. The appearance of a rainbow arises out of a certain combination of mist and light. Remove either one of these and the rainbow no longer exists. Similarly, the appearance of a self arises out of conditions: oxygen, food, parents, etc. Without them, there would be no self. This argument can be made on a general level, as just done, or on a particular level. You wouldn’t be the person you are if your family, friends, and acquaintances all weren’t the people they are, if you hadn’t had the experiences you’ve had, lived in the society you live in, etc. If we define the constellation of these conditions as one’s “world,” we can say that the self cannot be separated, either practically or logically, from the world in which it exists.

Cholesterol that is too low may boost risk for hemorrhagic stroke

Current guidelines recommend lowering cholesterol for heart disease risk reduction. New findings indicate that if cholesterol dips too low, it may boost the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, according to researchers.

Over a period of nine years, a Penn State-led study examined the relationship between —LDL, commonly known as “bad” —and hemorrhagic stroke. This type of stroke occurs when a blood vessel bursts in the brain.

The researchers found that participants with LDL cholesterol levels below 70 mg/dL had a higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke.

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