Category: General Interest

According to a systematic review published in Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, sage (Salvia officinalis), a common culinary herb used for centuries in traditional medicine, showed promising benefits for Alzheimer’s disease.

The review highlighted a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in which patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease who took 60 drops of sage extract daily for 4 months experienced significant improvements in cognitive function compared with those receiving a placebo.

Researchers reported benefits in memory, attention, learning ability, and overall cognitive performance. Importantly, the treatment was well tolerated, with no significant difference in adverse effects between the sage and placebo groups, making sage one of the most promising herbs investigated for Alzheimer’s disease at the time.

I saw an article on the health benefits of humming so asked an AI tool about the relative merits of humming and singing. This is the data returned.

Both humming and singing offer health benefits, particularly through vagus nerve stimulation and enhanced parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) activity, as measured by heart rate variability (HRV) markers like RMSSD and SDNN. These practices promote relaxation, stress reduction, and related physiological effects, though direct head-to-head comparisons are limited. Evidence comes from small-to-medium studies, systematic reviews, and physiological experiments, often involving yoga practices like Bhramari pranayama (humming bee breath).

Shared Mechanisms
– Vagus nerve stimulation: Vocalization (humming or singing) vibrates the larynx and vocal cords, where branches of the vagus nerve innervate. Prolonged exhalation and sound production activate parasympathetic pathways, increasing HRV and reducing sympathetic (fight-or-flight) dominance.
– Nitric oxide (NO) boost (more prominent in humming): Humming increases nasal NO production 15–20 times compared to quiet breathing, supporting vasodilation, antimicrobial effects, and cardiovascular health. Lower pitches (~130 Hz) appear optimal.
– Respiratory effects: Both involve controlled, often slow or extended exhalation, which amplifies respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and cardiorespiratory coupling near ~0.1 Hz resonance frequency.
– Broader benefits: Reduced stress/cortisol, improved mood, better sleep/attention, and potential immune/respiratory support. Group singing adds social/oxytocin benefits.

A 2024 systematic review/meta-analysis on phonation-based practices (including humming/chanting) found significant vagal tone improvements (RMSSD SMD ~0.92) and cortisol reductions.

Humming-Specific Evidence
Humming (e.g., Bhramari pranayama) is simple, accessible, and effective for acute calming:
– Produces very low stress index (even lower than sleep in one Holter monitor study), with higher SDNN/RMSSD.
– Increases parasympathetic activity, reduces blood pressure/heart rate, and improves pulmonary function, anxiety, tinnitus symptoms, and attention.
– A 2025 pilot showed humming breathing matches slow-paced breathing for HRV enhancement and relaxation.
– Regular HRV oscillations (0.05–0.1 Hz) but sometimes less overall RMSSD increase than structured singing.
– Easy entry point; no musical skill needed. Benefits seen in short sessions.

Singing-Specific Evidence
Structured or paced singing often shows stronger or complementary effects:
– In a key 2013 study, hymn/mantra singing significantly increased RMSSD (vagal marker) vs. baseline and humming; it also lowered LF/HF ratio in some analyses. Humming produced more regular (coherent) HR fluctuations but less overall HRV boost.
– Paced singing at ~0.1 Hz matches slow breathing for LF-HRV/RSA gains, with added positive affect.
– Group/choir singing synchronizes HRV across participants and boosts social/emotional benefits (e.g., endorphins, oxytocin).
– Broader effects on mood, respiratory efficiency, and conditions like Parkinson’s (via Polyvagal Theory lens).

One study noted vocalization (toning/singing) can increase heart rate/effort more than pure slow breathing, potentially masking some RMSSD gains during the activity itself, but post-activity neural benefits (e.g., alpha/theta EEG power) appear.

Relative Benefits Summary
– Humming excels in simplicity, nitric oxide production, acute stress reduction (potentially outperforming sleep in some metrics), and accessibility. It’s ideal for quick vagal resets or beginners.
– Singing (especially paced, structured, or group) may produce stronger overall HRV increases and additional psychological/social gains. It engages more motor/cognitive elements.
– They are complementary: Humming can serve as a warm-up or low-barrier entry; singing sustains resonance and adds enjoyment/motivation. Paced versions of either near cardiorespiratory resonance frequency (~6 breaths/min) optimize vagal effects.

Limitations: Many studies are small, short-term, or from yoga contexts (e.g., Bhramari). Few large RCTs directly compare the two long-term. Individual responses vary by pitch, duration, effort, and context (solo vs. group). Benefits are generally safe and low-risk for healthy people.

Practical takeaway: Try 3–5+ minutes of low-pitched humming daily for easy vagal tone gains, or incorporate singing (solo or choral) for broader effects. Combine with slow breathing for synergy. Consult a doctor for specific health conditions. More research is ongoing, but current data supports both as evidence-based, enjoyable tools for autonomic health.

A Japanese immunologist spent 20 years proving that the chemicals trees release into the air walk into your bloodstream, hunt down your stress hormones, and arm your immune system in ways no therapist or pharmaceutical has ever matched, and most of the data has been sitting in Japanese medical journals for two decades waiting to be translated.

His name is Qing Li.

He is a clinical professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and the president of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine. The Japanese government has been funding his research since 2004, and the body of work he has produced is the reason forest bathing is now an officially prescribed clinical therapy in Japan and Korea.

The story actually starts in 1982, when the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries coined the term shinrin-yoku to describe the practice of slow, mindful walking in a forest. They did it for a practical reason.

Japan was urbanizing fast, stress-related illness was climbing, and the country had thousands of square kilometers of forest sitting unused. The idea was to give people a reason to walk into the trees… They had no idea what was actually happening to the human body during those walks until Qing Li ran the first proper experiment in 2005.

He took twelve healthy adult men on a three-day, two-night trip to a forest park. They walked for a few hours each day. Nothing strenuous. No prescribed routes or breathing exercises. They simply walked slowly through the trees, breathing the air, looking at the forest.

Li drew blood and urine samples before the trip, on the second day, on the third day, on day seven after returning home, and again on day thirty.

The numbers that came back from the lab were not what anyone expected.

The activity of a specific type of immune cell called the natural killer cell, which is the cell your body uses to hunt down cancer cells and virus-infected cells before they can spread, had jumped by roughly 50 percent during the forest trip. The actual number of natural killer cells circulating in the bloodstream had increased significantly.

Three different anti-cancer proteins that those cells produce, called perforin, granzymes, and granulysin, had all risen sharply. And the effect did not disappear when the men went home. The immune boost was still measurable on day seven and was still partially present on day thirty.

Two hours a day in a forest had upgraded the immune system for a full month.

Li ran the same experiment with women a year later and found nearly identical results. Then he ran it with a control group who took a three-day trip through an urban area with the same amount of walking, the same hotel quality, and the same diet.

The urban group showed no measurable change in natural killer cell activity at all. The forest was doing the work, not the vacation.

The mechanism turned out to be a class of airborne molecules called phytoncides. Trees produce these compounds to defend themselves against insects, bacteria, and fungi. Pine, cedar, oak, and cypress trees release them in particularly large amounts, especially in warmer weather and after rainfall.

When you walk through a forest, you are inhaling those molecules into your lungs and absorbing them through your skin, and once inside your body they appear to directly stimulate the production and activity of the very immune cells Li was measuring in his lab.

Roughly 50 percent of the health benefit of a forest walk, according to Li’s data, comes from the chemistry of the air itself. The other half comes from what the forest is doing to your nervous system.

This is where it stops being only about the immune system and starts being about stress.

A separate Japanese research team measured cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, in 84 participants across 35 different forest sites. They drew samples before and after a 30-minute walk in each forest and compared them to control walks in matched urban environments. The cortisol levels of the people who walked in the forest were lower than the cortisol levels of the people who walked in the city by a significant margin. Their heart rates were lower. Their blood pressure was lower.

The activity of their parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part responsible for rest and recovery, had gone up. The activity of their sympathetic nervous system, which is the part that drives fight or flight, had gone down.

Then a researcher at the University of Michigan named MaryCarol Hunter ran the cleanest version of this experiment ever done. She recruited participants from a city and told them to take a nature pill three times a week for eight weeks.

They were free to choose the time, the place, and the duration of the nature experience, as long as it was outside, in daylight, and free of phones, conversations, and aerobic exercise. They sent her saliva samples before and after each session so she could measure cortisol changes accurately and rule out the normal daily drop in stress hormones that happens to everyone.

The result was that participants experienced a 21.3 percent drop in cortisol per hour spent in nature, with the biggest payoff happening between minutes 20 and 30 of the walk.

After that, the cortisol kept dropping, but more slowly. The threshold dose for measurable stress relief was just 20 minutes outside in something that looked and felt like nature.

What none of this means is that nature is a substitute for therapy or for medication when someone genuinely needs them. Therapy treats different things than a walk does, and Li himself has been careful in interviews to call forest bathing a complementary intervention rather than a replacement for clinical care.

But what the research has settled is that the human body has a physiological response to being among trees that operates on the same biological systems modern medicine is trying to reach with drugs and clinical protocols, and that response is fast, measurable, and free.

The strangest part of Li’s work is the implication he keeps repeating in interviews. The average person now spends more than 90 percent of their life indoors. Their cortisol stays elevated. Their natural killer cells stay sluggish.

Their parasympathetic nervous system rarely gets a chance to take over. The system that was tuned by millions of years of life under a canopy of trees is being asked to run permanently inside a box made of drywall and screens.

Your body has not forgotten what it is supposed to do in a forest. It is waiting for you to walk into one.

Tommy Wells posts:

Did you see the new 2026 Paper? About the survival benefit of colonoscopies? Nobody else did either. Because mainstream science likes to bury data that doesn’t fit their narrative. That’s how they herd the sheep in preferred directions.

So here’s what happened in the study. Here:
https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736/26/00508-8/abstract

About 13 years ago, researchers set up a large randomized controlled trial where they split participants into two groups:
* One group was invited to colonoscopy screening
* The other group was not.

Then they followed both groups for 13 years. Here are the numbers:
In the group invited to colonoscopy screening, about 15 people per 1,000 developed colorectal cancer. In the group that was not invited, about 18 people per 1,000 developed colorectal cancer.

A difference of roughly 3 cases per 1,000 people over more than a decade.
And what about survival differences?

Over the same 13-year follow-up, colorectal cancer deaths were low in both groups.

For those who had colonoscopies, about 4 to 5 people per 1,000 died from colorectal cancer. For those with no colonoscopy, about 5 to 6 people per 1,000 died.

So in regards to survivability it was not statistically significant. Which means colonoscopies do not save lives, despite what the experts have been telling us for decades. Which is why the elitists are so quiet.
Now as to their assertion that colonoscopies may have prevented a small number of cancers. Let’s look at their trickery.

In their minds, if they take out a polyp, that necessarily counts as a cancer prevented. Despite the fact that the vast majority of polyps are harmless and would have never turned into cancer. (see the paper below)

The reality is that the small, mushroom-type polyps, which typically occur in the left side of the colon (and are usually quite visible during scans) are overwhelmingly harmless. Almost all of them are benign and would never cause harm.

At the same time, the larger, flat-type polyps that occur on the right side or in the transverse section of the colon are much harder to see during a colonoscopy (and thus, easy to miss) and are also more dangerous. But even still, chances of metastasis are still very low, as stated by the paper below, which blows the lid off the whole colonoscopy scam:

The paper found that small polyps had a 0.4 percent chance of abnormal growth along with 0% rate of metastasis. Even larger polyps had a less than 1% chance of being malignant. Here’s how they put it:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20304097/

Conclusions:
“Small (6–9 mm) polyps rarely contained high-grade dysplasia (0.4%); none was malignant. The malignancy rate for large (1–2 cm) colorectal polyps was less than 1%. These findings indicate the potential for less aggressive management of lesions detected by CTC.”

~~~~~~~~~~

So basically any small or medium sized polyp poses virtually no risk.

But the point is, when their models and analysis of the 13-year study ASSUMES or infers that burning or digging out polyps prevents cancer it’s nothing but a deception based on their underlying flawed assumptions.

Something else important: Polyps are designed to keep heavy metals and other poisons sequestered. That’s their job. Like a warehouse. So as soon as a doctor shaves them off, suddenly their integrity is obliterated and all the contents go spewing out into the colon, into the gut lining, and into the blood stream.

I’m not saying that colonoscopies should never be done. But in my opinion, they should never be done in people who aren’t experiencing concerning digestive symptoms.