Category: General Interest

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The Longevity Fuel: The Secrets to Fasting Plus The Most Rejuvenating Foods and Supplements on Earth

Here are some snippets I noted from the various health professionals who spoke on just the first half of presentation number 9 from the Zonia series.

Physical Body
Slouching increases cortisol and lowers testosterone.

Chemistry
How we fuel our body.

Emotional Journey to Health
Most of us are not kind to ourselves. We need to change how we treat ourselves.

Social Journey to Health
Find your tribe.

Spiritual Journey
Discover your basic purpose to empower your life.

 

 

Four Prime Areas:
Air
Water
Food
Sunlight

Also mentioned:
Grounding
Infrared Saunas
Gratitude
Setting intentions for the day.

Test your biological age versus your physical age.

Improve daily, incrementally.

 

 

Medication allows a person to suppress the symptoms of your body warning you to change your diet and regime. Hence the medical profession is actually forwarding an early demise. Without the medication to prescribe the doctors would have to be encouraging us to fix the underlying causes of disease.

The one proven way to longevity:
Moderate caloric restriction in the context of micro nutrient excellence.

If your diet is low on nutrients you become a calorie consuming monster!

Over-reliance on animal sources of protein (keto, carnivore etc.) leads to earlier death.

Animal protein instantly converts to IGF1 (Insulin Growth Factor) which increases the ability of cells to replicate, including cancer.

Plant proteins are rarely complete so the body does not convert them to complete protein unless it needs to. Therefore plant sources of protein do not automatically increase IGF-1.

 

 

Fasting:
Resets Immune System
Turns on Stem Cells
Helps With Mitochondrial Biogenesis

Sleep
Get 7-8 hours a night

Exercise
Best for mitochondria is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)

Supplements
NAD, POQQ, D-Ribose, Acetyl L-Carnitine

Detoxification
Supplements, Infra-Red Sauna penetrate deeper to internal organs to release toxins.

 

 

More than 20 grams a day of saturated fat increases inflammation.

We should aim for 40 grams a day of fiber. Helps feed the mitochondria and increase the production of butyrate.

To keep you gut intact, manage your stress. Stress increases cortisol which triggers adrenaline which goes through the enteric nervous system and attacks the brain and gut, increases gut permeability.

Exercise increases blood flow to the gut and helps maintain health.

Managing your weight is a great longevity strategy.
Minimise your visceral fat (around the organs). Visceral fat is an inflammatory engine that throws off adipokines, inflammatory compounds which lead to the gut breaking down.

 

 

You should be able to eat your skincare. To make your skin look better – eat berries, avoid sugar and gluten.

 

 

High amounts of sugar and seed oils adversely affect your sexual health. Sugar causes inflammation which nicks your blood vessels. The body makes more cholesterol to reduce the inflammation. Cholesterol is a starting molecule of hormones, including testosterone. Increased cholesterol will cause the doctor to prescribe statins to lower cholesterol which in turn reduces the production of testosterone.

Continued sugar consumption continues the inflammation and blood vessel damage but the body no longer has enough cholesterol to fight it so you develop heart problems.

Seed oils are the bandit twin of sugar. Seed oils are not native to our consumption but the body does what it can with what it is given. Our cells have a phospholipid bilayer that is constructed from the fats we feed it, good or bad. If you give it good fats it’s like the third pig in the three little pigs story. it builds strong, fully functioning cells. Give it seed oils and the cells more resemble the house made of straw, far more susceptible to damage when challenged.

Over time seed oils lower your tolerance to the sun, you can’t spend as much time in it.

 

 

Study published in the British Medical Journal in late spring 2021. The only change they made was to increased amount of Omega-3 fatty acids and reduced Omega-6 fatty acids. Within three months the participants went from 16 headache days a month to 9.

 

 

Fasting enables the mitochondria to go into repair mode. This process is critical to maintain mitochondrial health.

 

 

Only 7-8% of Americans are metabolically health. We really need 4 hours between meals for optimum digestion. Many people experience a relief of symptoms when they do this.

Our bodies like variety. There are benefits to not eating the same thing every day or following the same eating pattern every day. Mixing things up can be therapeutic. For instance one regime is eating during an 8 hour window and fasting for 16 hours for 5 days then doing a 24 hour fast then a higher than normal protein intake for day 7.

It is important to maintain our electrolytes during fasting to minimise deficiency which leads to headaches for instance.

 

 

Mold, sick or cancer cells can less easily tolerate fasting than normal cells.

Three months of doing a 24 hour fast once a week will yield similar results to a three to five day water fast.

Re the Mediterranean diet, the Orthodox Greek diet is fasting for 200 days a year. So maybe it’s not as much about what they eat but when they do and don’t eat.

 

 

Adaptogens are the most valuable herb in any culture in recorded history as they help counter the effects of stress.

One of the biggest accelerators of aging is allostatic load, when the mind can no longer counter the effect of chronic stress. The brain responds by making more stress hormones, reducing the signals to make sex hormones, reducing below adequate the level of growth hormones, the body becomes more insulin resistant.

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Here’s Why Smart Parents Are Skipping College and Choosing This Instead

The Preparation

For the past few years, I’ve been on a journey that started with a single, terrifying question…

My son, Maxim, was 18. He’d just finished high school (home school), and he had no idea what to do next.

And frankly, neither did I.

The default path we’ve all been sold—go to college, get a degree, get a job—felt broken. It felt like a trap.

Rising costs, ideological indoctrination, and degrees that no longer guarantee competence or opportunity… it was clear that modern academia had failed.

And now, with the exponential rise of AI, going to college has become the single worst financial decision a young person could make today.

Think about it. By the time a freshman graduates in four years, AI will have completely disrupted the global workforce. They’ll be spit out into an even more AI-dominant world in 2029, saddled with $150,000 in debt, maybe more.

They’d be completely screwed.

So, what’s the alternative?

That’s the question that led my son and me, along with my mentor, the legendary Doug Casey, to create “The Preparation.”

It’s a 4-year process, a “right of passage,” that replaces classroom memorization with real-world experiences. It’s designed to build virtue, values, skills, connections, and confidence in a young man or woman to navigate an increasingly unstable and unclear future.

And as my friend Mike Dillard so eloquently put it, “It’s fucking brilliant.”

Instead of turning someone into a specialist with a singular career path, The Preparation is designed to turn them into a “generalist” with the knowledge, skills, real world experience and the contacts needed to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Over the past two years, Maxim has been pioneering this model. He’s…

•Gotten his EMT or Emergency Medical Technician license…

•Worked as an apprentice to an Uruguayan gaucho…

•Worked with a geophysics crew for a gold exploration company…

•Learned how to sail in the Falkland Islands…

•Started an agricultural drone business…

•He as even learned to fly a plane…

And that’s just scratching the surface.

He’s done all of this by the age of 20.

This process is providing him with a lifetime of real-world experiences, contacts, and opportunities that most adults will never see. And the best part? He’s getting paid along the way.

But don’t just take my word for it. The response from people I deeply respect has been overwhelming.

James Altucher, the bestselling author of “Choose Yourself,” called it “mandatory listening (and reading)” and said, “This is exactly what young people should do now instead of college.”

Tom Woods, the NY Times bestselling author, said, “When I read The Preparation, my jaw was on the floor. I thought: this is exactly what young men need today. It’s practical, brilliant, and long overdue.”

And Glenn Beck dedicated an entire episode of his podcast to it, titled “How to Make Men DANGEROUS Again.”

Ultimately, your child’s education isn’t about what they learn. AI can teach them anything they want to know.

It’s about who they become.

Will they become another beer-drinking frat-boy, saddled with debt and stepping into a world that doesn’t need them?

Or will they become a true renaissance man or woman, capable of adapting to a world that needs their adventurous, adaptable spirit, and real-world experience?

If you have a child or grandchild, or know any young person trying to find their way, here are three things you can do right now:

1. Buy a copy of “The Preparation” here on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLRKZCKL

2. Subscribe to Maxim’s email newsletter to follow his journey as he documents this process. https://www.maximsmith.com/

3. Watch the fantastic interview with Glenn Beck here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsHENFPGXF8

This is more than a book. It’s a new path forward.

I hope you’ll join us.

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Key Ocean Current Faltering, Raising Risk Of “Ice Age”-Like Cooling

Gulf Stream

And just like that we’re free from climate hysteria and worried about a new “ice age”…Funny how that works, isn’t it? 

A new study in Communications Earth & Environment warns that a key Atlantic current could near collapse within decades, potentially triggering an “ice age” scenario and major sea-level rise, according to the NY Post.

The research, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oceanology and UC San Diego, focuses on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the “conveyor belt of the ocean” that includes the Gulf Stream and helps keep Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. East Coast relatively mild.

The Post writes that the study argues that warming temperatures are melting the Greenland ice sheet, sending freshwater into the North Atlantic and slowing the AMOC. Researchers say they’ve detected a related “distinctive temperature fingerprint” several thousand feet below the surface.

“Here we identify a distinctive temperature fingerprint in the equatorial Atlantic that signals the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation change,” they wrote, adding that its “robust physical mechanism and reliable detection make [this fingerprint] a valuable metric for AMOC monitoring in a warming climate.”

Using the MITgcm climate model and ocean data back to 1960, the team concludes the AMOC has been weakening since the late 20th century and could collapse before 2100. If that happened, Europe could face drastic cooling — possibly nearly 60 degrees — and drier conditions. As Jonathan Bamber told the Daily Mail, “Winters would be more typical of Arctic Canada and precipitation would decrease, also.”

Reuters notes the AMOC last collapsed before the Ice Age ended roughly 12,000 years ago.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/key-ocean-current-faltering-raising-risk-ice-age-cooling

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Dark chocolate and berries can sharpen memory – if you eat them at the right time, study finds

Dark Chocolate

  • Flavanol-rich foods like dark chocolate and berries may enhance memory by aligning stress hormone activity with the brain’s optimal window for forming long-term memories, according to research from Japan’s Shibaura Institute of Technology.
  • Mice given flavanols one hour before learning tasks showed about a 30 percent improvement in recognizing new objects, linked to a surge of noradrenaline in the hippocampus and other alertness-related brain regions.
  • The mechanism involves the brain’s “alarm system,” the locus coeruleus, which releases noradrenaline to heighten attention and prioritize information for storage when activated by flavanols.
  • Researchers believe the effect comes from sensory signaling, not absorption, as the bitter taste of flavanols may trigger gut-to-brain nerve pathways that rapidly stimulate the brainstem and enhance memory processing.
  • While promising, the findings are preliminary—the doses were higher than typical human intake and the long-term safety and timing effects need confirmation in human studies before practical recommendations can be made.

https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/food-cooking/dark-chocolate-and-berries-can-sharpen-memory-if-you-eat-them-at-the-right-time-study-finds/

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Kevin Costner and Dances With Wolves

Kevin Costner

In 1988, Los Angeles. Kevin Costner walked into a studio conference room holding the script for Dances with Wolves and said, “This will cost twenty million dollars and I am directing it myself.” Executives stared at him like he had announced his own career funeral.
Costner had spent months hearing the same rejection. Too long. Too expensive. Too quiet. No one wanted a three hour Western told in Lakota with a first time director. Orion Pictures finally agreed, but only if he took three million dollars upfront and accepted personal financial risk. Costner signed without negotiating. His agent warned him that if the film collapsed, he would owe more than he earned in a decade.
Filming began in South Dakota in June 1989. A violent storm destroyed twenty miles of fencing and scattered the buffalo herd across the plains. Each animal cost fourteen hundred dollars per day. Costner climbed onto a horse at sunrise and spent hours with wranglers rounding them back into position. He returned to set covered in dust and told the crew, “We roll again. The story comes first.”
Production fell behind. Crew members quit. Investors threatened to pull financing. Cinematographer Dean Semler told Costner that waiting for perfect light would ruin the schedule. Costner looked at the ridge they needed and said, “Then the schedule breaks. Not the scene.”
The buffalo stampede became the breaking point. Remote cameras were buried in trenches so the herd could pass inches above them. Four cameras were crushed. The sequence cost two and a half million dollars. Costner refused to move back. He wanted to feel the ground shake because the audience needed to feel it too.
By the end of production, the film was twenty percent over budget and hanging on by a thread. In the final mix Costner watched every cut, every sound pass, every frame. At the first test screening in 1990, the audience stood in silence and then applauded for a full minute. The film earned more than four hundred twenty million dollars worldwide and won seven Academy Awards.
People said it was ego. Costner called it belief. “If you think something is worth doing,” he said, “you walk toward it until your legs give out.” That is why Dances with Wolves exists. He carried it when no one else would.
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Ancient fruit proven to protect your heart, fight cancer, and restore vitality

Pomegranate

  • Pomegranate is one of the most antioxidant-rich fruits on Earth, protecting your cells from oxidative stress — the same process that drives aging, inflammation, and chronic disease
  • The peel contains 12 times more antioxidants than the juice or seeds, supporting heart health, blood sugar balance, and immune defense while fighting harmful bacteria and inflammation
  • Compounds like punicalagins, ellagic acid, and urolithins work together to slow the growth of cancer cells, block tumor-feeding blood vessels, and balance hormones involved in breast and prostate cancers
  • Research shows pomegranate’s unique nutrients support your brain, skin, and metabolism, helping maintain memory, collagen production, and healthy circulation as you age
  • Using the whole fruit — seeds, juice, peel, and even seed oil — provides a safe, natural way to strengthen your body’s defenses, reduce inflammation, and promote longevity from the inside out

https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/food-cooking/ancient-fruit-proven-to-protect-your-heart-fight-cancer-and-restore-vitality/

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Fat Metabolism Holds the Key to Why We Need Sleep

  • Sleep is not just downtime but a built-in survival mechanism that protects your brain from toxic byproducts created when mitochondria leak electrons
  • New research shows that the more electrons your cells fail to use, the greater the buildup of reactive oxygen species, which directly triggers your need for sleep
  • Excessive fat burning under stress makes this problem worse by clogging energy pathways, depleting cofactors, and pushing your body into deep fatigue
  • Serotonin levels rise when fatty acids flood your system, creating another pathway that drives drowsiness and heavy sleep pressure
  • Supporting your mitochondria with healthy carbs, avoiding extreme cardio, and limiting harmful fats found in seed oils lowers electron leaks, reduces sleep demand, and helps you feel more energized

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/11/12/fat-metabolism-sleep.aspx

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Raking Leaves

Raking Leaves

Two kids knocked on my door and offered to rake my whole yard for $10. What I did next changed how they’ll see hard work forever.

I heard the doorbell on a Saturday afternoon. Two boys, maybe 11 or 12 years old, were on my porch holding rakes that looked too big for them.

The taller one nervously asked, “Excuse me, sir. Would you like us to rake your yard? We’ll do the whole thing for ten dollars.“

I looked at my lawn. It was covered in leaves. It was a big job, at least two or three hours of work.

“Ten dollars each?“ I asked.

They looked at each other. The shorter one shook his head. “No sir. Ten dollars total. We’ll split it.“

Five dollars each. For hours of hard work.

I could have said yes and gotten my yard raked for almost nothing. But the way they stood there—hopeful, polite, and ready to work—reminded me of myself at that age, just trying to get a chance.

“Alright,“ I said. “You’ve got a deal. Get started.“

For the next two and a half hours, I watched them. They worked hard and didn’t cut corners. They didn’t complain. They raked every part of the yard, bagged the leaves, and even swept my driveway without me asking.

When they finally knocked to say they were done, they were sweating, tired, and smiling.

I walked out with my wallet. “You boys did incredible work,“ I said, and I handed them four twenty-dollar bills ($80).
“Here’s your payment.“

The taller one’s eyes got wide. “Sir, we said ten—“

“I know what you said,“ I told him. “But I also know what hours of good work are worth. You earned every dollar of this.“

They stared at the money like they couldn’t believe it was real. Then the shorter one looked up at me and said quietly, “Thank you. Really. Thank you.“

As they walked away, I heard them talking excitedly about what they would buy. I realized something: We talk a lot about teaching kids the value of hard work, but we don’t always show them that hard work is actually valued.

Those boys didn’t ask for a handout. They offered to work. They showed up. They did a great job. I wanted them to walk away knowing that good work doesn’t go unnoticed.

If you work hard and do your best, even when no one is watching, good people will see it. And they will reward you for it.

That’s not just a lesson for kids. That’s a lesson for all of us.

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Crop rotation delivers higher yields, better nutrition, and increased farm revenues across six continents, study shows

An international study involving INRAE and coordinated by China Agriculture University has shown that the practice of crop rotation outperforms continuous monoculture in terms of yield, nutritional quality and farm revenues. The results, based on more than 3600 field observations from 738 experimental trials across six continents, have now been published in Nature Communications.

Although crop rotation is practiced widely in Europe, notably for the control of crop pests, diseases and invasive weeds, monocultures still dominate in Africa and Southern Asia. Elsewhere, continuous monocultures can still be popular, particularly soybean monocultures in regions such as South America where market demand for this agricultural staple is strong.

To support the transition of agricultural systems at a global scale, it is thus essential to quantify the costs, and benefits of crop rotations compared with monocultures, taking proper account of the particular characteristics of each of the world’s major agricultural regions. Despite the availability of much experimental data, no comprehensive synthetic and multi-criteria study of the impact of crop rotation has been conducted until now.

In this context, INRAE has been working as part of an international team, coordinated by China Agriculture University in Beijing, to collect and analyze a dataset of 3663 paired field trial observations drawn from 738 experiments between 1980 and 2024. Their goal was to quantify the impacts of crop rotation across three critical dimensions: yield performance (taking averages and variability into consideration), nutritional output (dietary energy, protein and micronutrients) and farm revenue.

Revenues rise by 20% with rotation

This multi-criterion meta-analysis has demonstrated that, looking at the entire rotational sequence and taking all crop combinations into account, the practice of rotational cropping increases total yields by 20% compared with that of continuous monoculture. The yield gain is a little greater when crop diversification includes legumes (such as peas, beans, clover, alfalfa) compared with a non-legume regime (+23% vs. +16%).

The results also point to less year-on-year yield variability in crop rotations compared with monocultures. Turning to nutritional value, the results show that the energy and protein content of the foods produced are 24% and 14% higher, respectively, for crop rotations. What is more, crop rotation increases micronutrient content such as iron (Fe), magnesium (Mg) and zinc (Zn) by 27%, 17% and 17% respectively. Last, the data show a rise, under controlled experimental conditions, of 20% in farm revenues for rotations compared with monocultures.

The study enables specific crops to be selected for rotation to suit the production contexts of the various major global agricultural regions. In Argentina and Brazil, soybean-maize rotation can increase calorie content by 118%, nutritional quality by 191% and revenue by 189% compared with continuous soybean monoculture. In Western and Southern Africa, these gains are respectively 94%, 91% and 89% for a sorghum-maize rotation compared with continuous maize monoculture.

These results underline the importance and benefits of crop rotation for the sustainability of agricultural systems. They also highlight the need to improve our understanding of existing barriers (farming practices, supply chain and market structure, etc.) to the adoption of the practice of crop rotation in some areas of the world.

More information: Shingirai Mudare et al, Crop rotations synergize yield, nutrition, and revenue: a meta-analysis, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-64567-9

Journal information: Nature Communications

Finish reading: https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/self-sufficiency/crop-rotation-delivers-higher-yields-better-nutrition-and-increased-farm-revenues-across-six-continents-study-shows/