DAVE ASPREY: Let's talk about hormones. And there's two big groups of hormones that I think most people know about. One is testosterone. The other is the estrogens.
Well, let's hit testosterone first. When I was 26, I had lower testosterone levels than my mother. And this is by lab testing.
That's not a good thing. And this happens when you're obese. Because even if you're just carrying that extra 20 pounds, your body will use the fat cells to convert testosterone into estrogen.
And this is why, for most of my life, but not now, I was really self-conscious about my man boobs. And they would just get all perky when I was a little bit puffy, because my testosterone was very quickly turning into estrogen. So what do you do about things like that? Should you be on hormone therapy as you age?
The evidence is in. And all the anti-aging doctors I've worked with, the functional medicine people, they know very well. But they're facing this wall of misinformation, mostly from the '70s and early '80s, about, testosterone will give you cancer, estrogen will give you cancer.
Well, the testosterone problems that we had were bodybuilders using synthetic forms of testosterone. What anti-aging doctors use and what I use is a bioidentical form of testosterone. And people go to their regular doctor, and they'll get a test, and they'll say, oh, your levels are within normal ranges for your age.
Did you ever see the movie Grumpy Old Men? Well, that is testosterone deficiency. You do not want the average hormone levels of a 60-year-old if you're 60. You want the average hormone levels of a 30-year-old if you're 60, and you want to live a long time. So what you do is, you supplement with testosterone.
Now, you could say, well, that was advice for men. No, it's advice for men and women. Because guess what happens when women have enough testosterone. It's way less than for men. No, they don't get a deep voice and a goatee. What they get is a zest for life. They start liking sex more than they did before. But they show up at work and they like it. They show up for their families better. Their brains are on. And they usually lose a little bit of fat and they have muscle tone. But you cannot get bulky on testosterone as a woman, if you're taking bioidentical normal doses. The bodybuilder look takes a lot more testosterone than that. So you don't need to be afraid of that whatsoever.
But what you will find is that you love your life and you feel more like yourself. And it's not about the bedroom, but it helps there too. And for men, it's an equivalent thing. It turns your brain on. It makes you just want to go out there and do things. And it's a really important anti-aging technology. And I consider it cruel when a doctor looks at a 60-year-old with levels of testosterone that are low and says, oh, you're fine. No, you're not fine. You're starting to decline. Guess what having adequate testosterone in men and women does. It can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease.
And let's cut over to estrogen. We've all heard, oh, estrogen replacement causes cancer, so let's quit doing it. Guess what estrogen they used for those studies. They used an artificial form of estrogen that is not the same as what humans make that was collected from horse urine from pregnant mares. That's actually how they did this. They had little horses walking around with little cups underneath them. And they collected that, purified it, and sold it to you. And it didn't do what bioidentical hormones do, because you can't patent bioidentical hormones, since they're already in your body.
What that means is that, when you work with a functional medicine doctor, and they measure your levels of estrogen, and you use topical estrogen replacement-- this is a cream you put in various parts on the body, or injections, or pellets-- there's different ways to get it-- your risk of all sorts of diseases go down. And if you're dealing with pre and perimenopause, it can really change the quality of your life in a very, very meaningful way. So, we are walking around with people suffering, tired, emotional ups and downs, all sorts of problems because we're afraid that a bioidentical compound your body makes will have the same effect as something a horse did 25 years ago.
And this is why anti-aging doctors and functional medicine doctors are the ones that I choose to see when I'm dealing with aging. And when I break my arm, I go to the hospital. Of course, I don't break my arm. I have high bone density, 'cause I manage that.
- Hormone therapy and supplementation have often been associated with cancer and unwanted side effects.
- However, this connection is fueled by misinformation and faulty sources of testosterone and estrogen outside the human body.
- When taken correctly, bioidentical hormone supplements can dial back the aging process and spark a zest for life while decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease in both men and women.
- Hack Your Flow: Understanding Flow Cycles, with Steven Kotler ... ›
- Testosterone Therapy Studies Discover Mixed Results, As Usage ... ›
Humanity knows surprisingly little about the ocean depths. An often-repeated bit of evidence for this is the fact that humanity has done a better job mapping the surface of Mars than the bottom of the sea. The creatures we find lurking in the watery abyss often surprise even the most dedicated researchers with their unique features and bizarre behavior.
A recent expedition off the coast of Java discovered a new isopod species remarkable for its size and resemblance to Darth Vader.
The ocean depths are home to many creatures that some consider to be unnatural.
Bathynomus raksasa specimen (left) next to a closely related supergiant isopod, B. giganteus (right)
Sidabalok CM, Wong HP-S, Ng PKL (ZooKeys 2020)
According to LiveScience, the Bathynomus genus is sometimes referred to as "Darth Vader of the Seas" because the crustaceans are shaped like the character's menacing helmet. Deemed Bathynomus raksasa ("raksasa" meaning "giant" in Indonesian), this cockroach-like creature can grow to over 30 cm (12 inches). It is one of several known species of giant ocean-going isopod. Like the other members of its order, it has compound eyes, seven body segments, two pairs of antennae, and four sets of jaws.
The incredible size of this species is likely a result of deep-sea gigantism. This is the tendency for creatures that inhabit deeper parts of the ocean to be much larger than closely related species that live in shallower waters. B. raksasa appears to make its home between 950 and 1,260 meters (3,117 and 4,134 ft) below sea level.
Perhaps fittingly for a creature so creepy looking, that is the lower sections of what is commonly called The Twilight Zone, named for the lack of light available at such depths.
It isn't the only giant isopod, far from it. Other species of ocean-going isopod can get up to 50 cm long (20 inches) and also look like they came out of a nightmare. These are the unusual ones, though. Most of the time, isopods stay at much more reasonable sizes.
The discovery of this new species was published in ZooKeys. The remainder of the specimens from the trip are still being analyzed. The full report will be published shortly.
What benefit does this find have for science? And is it as evil as it looks?
The discovery of a new species is always a cause for celebration in zoology. That this is the discovery of an animal that inhabits the deeps of the sea, one of the least explored areas humans can get to, is the icing on the cake.
Helen Wong of the National University of Singapore, who co-authored the species' description, explained the importance of the discovery:
"The identification of this new species is an indication of just how little we know about the oceans. There is certainly more for us to explore in terms of biodiversity in the deep sea of our region."
The animal's visual similarity to Darth Vader is a result of its compound eyes and the curious shape of its head. However, given the location of its discovery, the bottom of the remote seas, it may be associated with all manner of horrifically evil Elder Things and Great Old Ones.
On May 12, 2021, the Republican governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, announced five US$1 million lottery prizes for those who are vaccinated. Meanwhile, in West Virginia, younger citizens are being enticed to get the shot with $100 savings bonds, and a state university in North Carolina is offering students who get vaccinated a chance to win the cost of housing. Many companies are paying vaccinated employees more money through bonuses or extra paid time off.
The push to get as many people vaccinated as possible is laudable and may well work. But leading behavioral scientists are worried that paying people to vaccinate could backfire if it makes people more skeptical of the shots. And ethicists have argued that it would be wrong, citing concerns over fairness and equity.
As a behavioral scientist and ethicist, I draw on an extensive body of research to help answer these questions. It suggests that incentives might work to save lives and, if properly structured, need not trample individual rights or be a huge expense for the government.
In the United States, incentives and disincentives are already used in health care. The U.S. system of privatized health insurance exposes patients to substantial deductibles and copays, not only to cover costs but to cut down on what could be deemed as wasteful health care – the thinking being that putting a cost to an emergency room visit, for example, might deter those who aren't really in need of that level of care.
In practice, this means patients are encouraged to decline both emergency and more routine care, since both are exposed to costs.
Paying for health behaviors
In the case of COVID-19, the vaccines are already free to consumers, which has undoubtedly encouraged people to be immunized. Studies have shown that reducing out-of-pocket costs can improve adherence to life-sustaining drugs, whether to prevent heart attacks or to manage diabetes.
A payment to take a drug goes one step further than simply reducing costs. And if properly designed, such incentives can change health behaviors.
Payments and cash prizes have been shown effective in encouraging blood donations, adherence to blood thinner drugs, blood glucose monitoring, physical activity and smoking cessation.
And for vaccination in particular, payments have been successful for human papillomavirus (HPV) in England; hepatitis B in the United States and the United Kingdom; and tetanus toxoid in Nigeria. The effects can be substantial: For example, for one group in the HPV study, the vaccination rate more than doubled with an incentive.
For COVID-19, there are no field studies to date, but several survey experiments, including one my group conducted with 1,000 Americans, find that incentives are likely to work. In our case, the incentive of a tax break was enough to encourage those hesitant about vaccinations to say they would take the shot.
Coercion concerns
Even if incentives will save lives by increasing vaccinations, there are still other ethical considerations. A key concern is protecting the autonomous choices of people to decide what they put into their own bodies. This may be especially important for the COVID-19 vaccines, which – although authorized as likely safe and effective – are not yet fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
But already people are often paid to participate in clinical trials for drugs that have not yet been approved by the FDA. Ethicists have worried that such payments may be “coercive" if the money is so attractive as to override a person's free choices or make them worse off overall.
One can quibble about whether the term “coercion" applies to offers of payment. But even if offers were coercive, payments may still be reasonable to save lives in a pandemic if they succeed in greater levels of immunization.
During the smallpox epidemic nearly 100 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the power of states to mandate vaccines. Compared with mandating vaccination, the incentives to encourage vaccines seem innocuous.
Exploitation and paternalism
Yet some still worry. Bioethicists Emily Largent and Franklin Miller wrote in a recent paper that a payment might “unfairly" exploit “those U.S. residents who have lost jobs … or slipped into poverty during the pandemic," which could leave them feeling as if they have “no choice but to be vaccinated for cash." Others have noted that vaccine hesitancy is higher in nonwhite communities, where incomes tend to be lower, as is trust in the medical establishment.
Ethicists and policymakers should indeed focus on the poorest members of our community and seek to minimize racial disparities in both health outcomes and wealth. But there is no evidence that offering money is actually detrimental to such populations. Receiving money is a good thing. To suggest that we have to protect adults by denying them offers of money may come across as paternalism.
Some ethicists also argue that the money is better spent elsewhere to increase participation. States could spend the money making sure vaccines are convenient to everyone, for example, by bringing them to community events and churches. Money could also support various efforts to fight misinformation and communicate the importance of getting the shot.
The cost of incentives
Financial incentives could be expensive as a policy solution. As in Ohio, lottery drawings are one way to cap the overall cost of incentives while giving millions of people an additional reason to get their shot.
The tax code could also allow for a no-cost incentive for vaccination. Tax deductions and credits are often designed to encourage behaviors, such as savings or home ownership. Some states now have big budget surpluses and are considering tax relief measures. If a state announced now that such payments would be conditional on being vaccinated, then each person declining the shot would save the government money.
Ultimately, a well-designed vaccination incentive can help save lives and need not keep the ethicists up at night.
Christopher Robertson, Professor of Law, Boston University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
