The New Yorker has published a comprehensive article on the effects of high-impact sports, particularly football, on the human brain. Penned by Malcolm Gladwell.

Upon closer analysis of brain plaques, particularly a trauma-induced scarring called tau, researchers have found considerable damage in the samples viewed. Only a post-mortem autopsy and proper staining can reveal the damage so the sample size is very small but the evidence is overwhelming.

Here are some notable quotes:

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), which is a progressive neurological disorder found in people who have suffered some kind of brain trauma. C.T.E. has many of the same manifestations as Alzheimer’s: it begins with behavioral and personality changes, followed by disinhibition and irritability, before moving on to dementia.

…a man who had been a linebacker for sixteen years, you could see, without the aid of magnification, that there was trouble: there was a shiny tan layer of scar tissue, right on the surface of the frontal lobe, where the brain had repeatedly slammed into the skull. It was the kind of scar you’d get only if you used your head as a battering ram.

Gladwell ties in Michael Vick and the aggressive nature of dogfighting and football. It’s a strange comparison that in the end reveals much about the will and fight in the football players to go beyond their pain and sacrifice themselves for the good of the team, or in this case the dog being loyal to its owner.

…data suggest that, in an average football season, a lineman could get struck in the head a thousand times, which means that a ten-year N.F.L. veteran, when you bring in his college and high-school playing days, could well have been hit in the head eighteen thousand times: that’s thousands of jarring blows that shake the brain from front to back and side to side, stretching and weakening and tearing the connections among nerve cells, and making the brain increasingly vulnerable to long-term damage.

A professor at the University of Chicago called it a “boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport.” I can now agree with this statement wholeheartedly.

Sugar is fat. This simple relationship is revealed in this 9 part video series. You absolutely MUST watch this whole series. When sucrose and fructose enter the body the end result through various biochemical reactions actually creates new fat in the body. Featuring Dr. Robert H. Lustig, M.D. of UCSF Division of Endocrinology and Professor of Pediatrics – this lecture is not the over-simplified story of “increased calories from carbohydryates (sugar) of course makes us fat” but the actual hard science that has decoded the fructose mystery. Fructose in nature is embedded with super high levels of fiber. The industrial food companies have spent countless hours of research figuring out how to strip natural foods of this embedded relationship of sugar to fiber. Think of the sweetest food… yup -sugar cane. This plant is basically as fibrous as a stick! And don’t count on the FDA to help here – they are not getting anywhere near this. It’s up to you to educate yourself.

Dr. Lustig draws his conclusions that sugary drinks are the cause of the epidemic obesity levels in children in the US. Watch and be blown away. Fast forward part 6 if you are scientifically challenged.

Dr. Gracovetsky is the funniest research presenter I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. His work on connective tissue has made him a big part of the Fascia Congress. Here is a quick interview with him.

I’m sitting watching Fox news last night in LA and heard a startling blip that all alternative medicine does not work and that any results are from the placebo effect. Wow. 10 years and $2.5 billion dollars of research have proved once and for all that alternative medicine’s only benefit is if the subject believes themselves better. This is an insulting, dangerous and ridiculous conclusion.

They are looking at this effect all wrong. The placebo effect is a pejorative term for the Natural Healing Response. The human body is designed to default to health and maintaining homeostasis. It simultaneously strives for bipedal balance (and our upright posture is the reason our brains could evolve to such a large and complex volume – but this is another article) and ideal health.

The human body, including the brain, does not reduce itself to separate systems and programs like a computer must, but treats life and functions as more of a complex symphony. There is so much overlap in the brain, which keeps us functioning as efficiently as possible but most parts overlay many tasks. By the way, when you hear someone say, “We only use 10 percent of our brains” you can tell them that that’s nonsense and the other 90% of the brain is being used for proprioception, mechanoreception, nocioception, balance and movement. But I digress, the point I need to make is a monist one. Monism is the idea that the mind and body are one. This includes emotions, ideas of the soul or spirit, consciousness, etc. The human being is all one thing non-reduceable to parts, while the different perspectives and perceptions are just different vantage points experiencing reality. When we see a red blanket that red blanket is every color BUT red – the red is reflected away and our eyes receive this information and the brain creates the image of the red blanket. The world around us is not what we think it is. The opposing, western medicine perspective is attributed by the father of dualism himself – Rene Descartes, whom made the claim that the mind was immaterial while the body was not. I’ve heard a convincing argument that Descartes was a monist and only made this case to appease the church who permitted him to dissect bodies and conduct his research. I digress again.

The mind is not separate from the body – it is of and from the body. The left and right brain are creating the illusion of consciousness which allows us to navigate and survive in this world, any neuroscientist can attest to this. This effect is a sixth sense if you will. Japanese element theory certainly got this correct by adding consciousness to the other 5 elements of water, wood, metal, earth, and fire. What I’m driving at is the placebo effect is one direction of a causal relationship. A fake pill, injection, or sham treatment is substituted unbeknownst to the researcher and patient and a healing effect is observed in the subject. The nocebo effect is when a negative effect or illness can occur in a person when they are given a sugar pill or sham treatment or told they have a disease when they do not. Another important point is the psychosomatic relationship. Psychosomatic means the mind influences the body and again is used to degrade someone’s problem to being “only in their head.” Psychosomatic is a bullshit term – everything is psychosomatic because the mind and body are one thing!

What we need to understand is that ALL healing is from the body/mind itself. Drugs don’t heal. The body always does this healing work, with or without the help of any drug or alternative treatment. Of course drugs and treatments can stimulate this healing response when it’s not working or can’t work but never does it do the healing. This is why alternative medicine is so wonderful – it works with this natural healing response attempting to stimulate it. And most of the time the treatments are natural, non-toxic and safe. Mainstream western medicine’s “drugs” by definition are toxic substances, fully unnatural, and absolutely must have side effects as the term “drug” is a legal term. All drugs are toxic. But you know this because you watch TV and see the Pfizer commercials warning you of their drugs extensive side effects and then you flip through a magazine and see the extra two pages of add that follow any drug promotion listing how dangerous it is. This world has gone crazy and I hope this Fox news clip is the pinnacle of the stupidity of this world.

And I’m not sure what “alternative medicine” the news report was referring to as this can be quite and expansive field of treatments from acupuncture to massage. But this report does reek of the western allopathic application of medicine further pushing their way to monopolize all medicine. And this is the real sham.