Health Heathen

The presence of a healthy population of earthworms in a garden’s soil works very effectively to protect plant leaves from being eaten by slugs, new research from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna has found.

Even though the earthworms don’t have direct contact with the slugs or the plant growth above, they seem to very effectively protect the plants via increased nitrogen content in the plants, as a result of the earthworms being present. The researchers also found that with increased plant diversity the amount of damage that the slugs did to individual plants was greatly lessened.
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Grapes work to reduce the heart failure that is often associated with chronic high blood pressure via an increased activation of several genes that are responsible for antioxidant defense in heart tissue, new research has found.

It has been known for some time that grapes are a significant natural source of antioxidants and polyphenols, which are theorized to be the compounds behind many of the beneficial health effects that are observed when grapes are added to a diet.

And now, the new research, done at the University of Michigan Health System, has “uncovered a novel way that grapes exert beneficial effects in the heart: influencing gene activities and metabolic pathways that improve the levels of glutathione, the most abundant cellular antioxidant in the heart.”
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Previous research has found that the addition of berries to a diet offers some protection against excess inflammation in humans, and improves cognitive function/behavior in stressed lab rats, but the exact mechanisms behind these effects have remained somewhat unclear, until now. New research from Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and University of Maryland Baltimore County has found that berries greatly improve the ability of the brain to clear away toxic accumulation.

The research was done by feeding some laboratory rats a berry diet for a period of 2 months and monitoring their brains after exposing some of the them to irradiation. “All of the rats were fed berries 2 months prior to radiation and then divided into two groups- one was evaluated after 36 hours of radiation and the other after 30 days.

“After 30 days on the same berry diet, the rats experienced significant protection against radiation compared to control,” stated researcher Shibu Poulose, PhD. “We saw significant benefits to diets with both of the berries, and speculate it is due to the phytonutrients present.”
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Even very occasional divergences from the typical diet of an animal can have profound effects on gene expression in the animal, according to new research from the University of Massachusetts.

As an example, if someone’s diet consisted primarily of foods such as fatty cold-water fish, roots, greens, berries, etc, simply by occasionally including small amounts of westernized sugary foods, or breads, in their diet, significant changes in gene expression can occur. Making the individual’s genome, as it’s actually expressed, markedly different from an individual without those foods in their diet.

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Clean water is one of the most basic living requirements for humans on the planet Earth. But for people in many parts of the world it can be a difficult thing to obtain. This article will go over some of the basic do-it-yourself methods to filter, purify, and disinfect, potentially dangerous water, and also to desalinate saltwater if saltwater is all that’s available.

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Earthworms Very Effectively Protect Garden Plants From Invasive Slugs, Research Finds

Grapes Work To Reduce Heart Failure Via An Increased Activation Of Antioxidant Producing Genes

Berries Help To Clear Toxic Accumulations From The Brain And Improve Cognitive Function, Research Finds

Even Very Small Changes In Diet Have A Large Effect On Gene Expression, Research Finds

Drinking Water, DIY Water Disinfection, Filtration, Desalinization, Collection, SODIS, etc