#the worst thing is probably the mining of minerals aspect

[mytholegy]

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[anarchist-soupkitchen]

ooop its a really long essay

A brief list of why the Tories is pretty rubbish

 Before we start, I have a few things to say. As this is intended for UK audiences it might be a little difficult for people outside of the UK to understand the wording of certain topics, I will include somethings that need more explanation up here but if I do not include it here, please feel free to ask down in the comments.

Tory: someone who is a part of the conservative right

Anglicanism: the English church’s version of Christianity

This essay is a PERSUASIVE ESSAY this means its BIASED I hope you could tell from the title. This essay is from the view of someone who is white I am not trying to speak over people of colour on issue like race and I encourage you to look at non-white creators within the UK to get views on this matter.

I am pretty armature when it comes to my writing so do not expect something ground-breaking. And with that out of the way, let us begin.

1.       The tory party we know today was founded in 1834, you would think that would be plenty of time for its members to grow and shape the party into the best organization it can be. But with the tory party still stuck on the same ideas that Anglicanism is the only true religion, and that queer people should not have rights you would think that the party is straight out of the early 20th century, or still stuck on the same ideas the party was founded upon. It does not matter what side you are on and how your choice to view the tory party, people can agree on the prominent figures inside the tory party from old to recent. An example of a prominent tory of old was Winston Churchill a well know racist who also, coincidentally got us through WW2 when he was appointed by Chamberlin. He fostered such views that white people should govern over the “primitive” black and indigenous people of Africa and that Indian people “bred like rabbits”. To anyone who knows their UK history, 1983 was a very eventually year for politics and the UK as a whole. You now have to wear seatbelts in the front seats of cars, the dismembered victims of serial killer Dennis Nielsen are found in his London flat, unemployment was on a record heigh since the 1930’s and a general election found that Margaret Thacher was to be the next prime minister after a landslide win in the polls. Over the course of her 11-year reign of terror she periodised free-market capitalism and privatised public sectors including transport, railways and mines. Then because she did not like the Scottish government, she through a hissy fit and closed all mines in Scotland. Just like that she fucked up the economy, where in the big mining areas of the past are still experiencing the aftershocks today. I remember my granny telling me how she made up food packages for the miners around town and how it was so devastating to the town’s economy. Everyone was unemployed and starving, even my grandad. These examples really show that the Tories will support people who are the worst in British society if they have the parties’ interests at heart. You would think the tory party cannot get any worse but with modern polices such as pledging to get 50,000 nurses for the NHS while only giving them a 1% pay rise, which is only £7.78 for a low band nurse, by 2023. Or being “tough on crime” even though 96.4 crime were recorded by every 1000 people in 2019. You can see how tough they are about carrying out their polices. Let me tell you my favourite of the lot, Boris Johnston, our current PM, wants to limit immigration by 100,000 people. They want to only let in “the brightest and the best,” what a load of shite. Our immigrants are the backbone of our society doing everything people like the Tories would not even dream of doing. Imagen seeing Boris working in a McDonalds or in your local call centre. That fucker probably has not worked a day in his life. According to the migration observatory, migrants make up 50% of the low pay workforce. Either way you look at it, its abysmal. The government should do more for these people that letting them rot in a McDonalds or in a low paying job. If you have taken time to be a model citizen, train and get your qualifications, possibly learn a new langue to mover over to a shitty wet rock I do not see any problem with the government providing necessities to get you started in your new life. We have got the money.

2.       Can I ask you, what side do you think Boris Johnson is on? I will let you think for a moment. The Working class makes up more than half of our population according to the BBC’s class calculator. They say that a government is reflective of the people’s views and I think that is bullshit. Out of the working-class eligible to vote, who do vote, only three in ten vote conservatives. Do you want to know why people in the working class do not vote tory? Because under tory leadership since 2010, 6000,000 more children and their families were forced into poverty. The need for foodbanks skyrocketed 12.3% in the last five years and that is no even accounting for the pandemic. It is clear by now; I have given you enough time to think. “we know whose side Boris Johnson is on- the billionaires, the bankers and the big business.”- labour shadow chancellor, John McDonell. We know the conservatives are very busy committing acts of voter suppression and giving money to their friends instead of caring about you. They are buzzy introducing laws that make it mandatory to have voter ID in order to vote. If you do not make it free people will stop coming. The electoral commissions think 3.5 million voters just will not come back. this is all a part of, “takle[ing] every aspect of electoral fraud”- tory manifesto. It is well known that many rich people have been investing in the party for quite a while. Here is just a few: Anthony Bamford head of machinery in JCB, he gave £12.1 million since 2005. Charles Cayzer owns a shipping tycoon, he gave £480,00. Did you also know, Boris is known to be very generous when it comes to giving back. You’ve probably herd in the news about the conservatives handing out £3mil in contracts to tory owned covid PPE companies over the course of the pandemic. Some of that went to a MP, Nadim Zahawi who is a shareholder in SThree. SThree was given £1mil in contracts over the course of the pandemic. With all the evidence I have given above you’d think the government its rolling in it, I suspect they are but I doesn’t look like it from the outside. They have cut funding to courses drastically, as well as benefit schemes. Like cutting access for eighteen- to twenty-year-olds to the housing benefits. Yet with all the money they been cutting away from services and councils who desperately need it they still have enough money to cough up a commission for a royal yacht named after the duke of Edinburgh, costing over £200 million. Seems sweet does it, name a yacht after the ghoul of Edinburgh, right? You probably know the just of it now, your wrong. Not only is the yacht being paid for by taxpayers, but they are also naming it in honour after a racist. Or how the BBC would phrase his words as “memorable one-liners”. Here is a selection I find quite fitting: “The Philippines must be half empty if you’re all here running the NHS”- while meeting with a Filipino nurse. “If you stay here much longer, you’ll be all slitty-eyed”- he said to a group of British students while on a royal visit to China. My favourite must be “It looks like it was put in by an Indian.”- referring to and old-fashioned fuse box in Edinburgh. He is supposed to be the duke of the bloody place! I really like how one article what I read put it “[Prince Philip] screams out loud what other racists like him have learned how to conceal and camouflage in what they think and project as civilised demeanour.”- Hamid Dabashi.

3.       What I find absolutely astounding, is the Tories inability to show compassion to the people who have nothing. If you did not know the vagrancy act among other things crimeless the homeless and rough sleepers, which is by far a very bad mixture with the recent homelessness statistics, homelessness has risen 28% since labour was last in office and if the Tories continue down the path they are now, it is only going to keep rising. What you would find is most shocking is that there’s solutions for the homeless crisis right in front of us, what the Tories must to not be able to see. Layla Moran of the liberal democrats thinks they “must take a more compassionate and holistic approach, starting by scrapping the vagrancy act”. I think that would be a step forward and away from the old ways of prosecuting people for not being as fortunate as the rest of us, but there is something even more simple than that. Repossessing the 200,000 buildings that have been vacant in the UK for more than six months. Not only would that put a sizeable dent in the houses we need, but it also saves space. The UK is small collection of islands and I do not think the Tories can see that. We do not have the land available to just start building everywhere while leaving all those homes empty and unfilled. Its not a way to solve the housing crisis and its certainly not a way to save the money we supposedly need. Even the homes the Tories are building are left dormant because they are too expensive for the area, they are located in. With the way things are going the Tories will have to build more houses than they ever built before, because by 2041 homelessness is expected to doble. That is 400,000 more households if things do not change -a study by heriot-wat university. The evidence suggests that whatever the Tories are doing to end homelessness it is not working. Everything is not as bleak as I just told you though, the conservative has ended homelessness before. In the hight of the pandemic the conservatives got 90% of all rough sleepers off the streets and put them in hotels or hostels. This helped people apply for benefits, find jobs and get some more permanent assistance. People was helped during the pandemic, but when the funding ran out last July, homeless and the rough sleepers in the hotels and hostels where back out in the streets again. Alone and forgotten by the government that promised to end the very crisis they are apart of years ago. Theis shows that the Tories have the money to help the unfortune but they would rather sit on their arses chatting about what colour they should paint the walls of their house. More recently the Torie introduced a law what will fine people for sleeping in doorways. It really shows what the Tories care about, getting linings for their pockets. The Tories have the money to stop homelessness and when it was a danger to them, they stopped the issue what has been so recuing in our politics for decades. They helped the people who so desperately needed it only to chuck them back into the cold when covid-19 was no longer a danger to them.

4.       The conservatives fail to keep minorities safe in the society that they created. It is not surprise that the Tories are the most incompetent as ever. A study by BBC radio 5 found that hate crimes have doubled since 2013. An optimist would assume that is great, that there must mean that people have been reporting it more, right? Partly so. Although we have seen a rise in reports of hate crimes, the rate of prosecution has dropped down from 20% to just 8%. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, in a survey of faith-based organizations; the home office found that seven in ten of the employees surveyed has never reported a hate crime to the police where one happened. For a country where we are supposed to be the most tolerable it is no surprise that a big portion of the hate crimes committed are ones where the religion the victim followed played a big part. Our population, like many others, is influenced by our politicians. After Boris described Muslim women in burkas as “letterboxes” in an interview; citizen UK found that there where a surge in hate crime directed to Muslim women where the word “letterbox” was used. Again, continuing with the theme of hate crime against religions, Muslims made up half of the statistics in 2018 – 2019. The biggest spike we have seen in the last few years has been to Jewish people, where hate crimes against them have more since doubled. It is not a surprise since people seem to relate being a ‘good’ Jew to being a Zionist. Other minorities like trans youth under sixteen in England and whales now must go through everything that goes with puberty on top of not wanting to have the body you cuntly have all because TERF’s and conservatives do not think puberty blockers should be available to them.  At this point I genuinely think they want trans kids dead, how could you not see that the benefits of puberty blockers far out way the potential consequences. If puberty blockers really where the target they would have taken them of the shelfs completely, but they did not do that did they? They just restricted the rights of an already marginalised group more. Its not just trans kids but the fight for a third gender to finally get recognised is still waging on despite it being a battle since 2018. The government petition has been signed 136,000 times demanding non-binary finally be recognised as a valid gender in the eyes of the law. I hope I can get recognised as well as everyone else. It may not seem a big deal to some of you reading this but it is to thousands. Especially the people who want to go on hormones and medically transition. Because right now I and many other people are restricted and not allowed to get that service. If you are in the UK and you are of age, I urge you to signs the government petition. In other news the conservatives are just now getting to outlawing conversion therapy three years after they announced they would do so. It just shows how the party is not on target. On the topic of not on target let us talk about the increasing number of racial minorities becoming homeless because of lack of funding to their communities. Since the conservatives got into power in the 2010 racial minorities now make up 40% of all homeless despite being only 15% of the current population. It really shows how much they care about anyone who is not white. Yet people like my gran will continue to say they are doing enough for these underfunded communities.

the tory party really has nothing going for them, they are certainly not for the working class, they cannot solve homelessness and they do not give two fucks about minorities. To think anyone would vote form them is just amazing. Its fucking stupid to believe that they are anything but a bunch of rich shites dawdling around and thinking up ways to get more money into their pockets. To end this really all over the place essay, if you vote tory you are a massive twat.

Sources in comments:

[drlaurynlax]

7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine

Functional medicine focuses on getting to the root cause of your problem instead of just treating the symptom.

We are living in one of the worst chronic disease epidemics of all time with 1 in 2 Americans living with a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) caused by preventable lifestyle factors, like nutrition and sleep, and a projected 100,000 doctor shortage by 2030 (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017). 

The solution? If you’re looking to insurance, you may be waiting awhile, at least if you want an option other than the current model, like Functional Medicine or a holistic doctor.

Practitioners who take  an “unconventional approach” to medicine by addressing the roots of disease, as opposed to managing symptoms like the norm.

Sound Familiar?

If you’ve ever been to the doctor, you’ve probably experienced the healthcare rabbit hole. 

1st Step: Feel sick.

2nd: Step Call the doctor to make an appointment.

3rd Step: Wait 1-4 weeks to get seen. 

4th Step: Go to see the doctor. Wait in the waiting room. Chat briefly.

5th Step: Walk out with a prescription or go down a rabbit hole to see another specialist or schedule another appointment.

We ALL know that rabbit hole: 

The Rabbit Hole of Healthcare

In the traditional healthcare system, it takes an average of121 minutes each time a person seeks medical care just to get seen. The total includes 37 minutes of travel time, as well as 87 minutes at the doctor’s office or clinic—most of that spent waiting in the waiting room. (Ray et al, 2015)  

In fact, the average person only spends 15 minutes of “talk time” with the doctor in a visit (Tai-Seale et al, 2007). 

Couple this with the projection tha,t by 2030, America will have a 100,000 doctor shortage (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017)—unable to meet the “demands” of the, now, 1 in 2 Americans who has a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) and, Houston…we have a problem!

I’ve been there, got the t-shirt. 

The Scene: Healthcare & Current Insurance Inefficiencies 

I had waited 3-months for the appointment with a local doctor in town. 

Nothing unusual—as the “average” wait time to see a doctor nowadays—especially a specialist—is an average of 24-52 days (Merritt Hawkins, 2017). And, not for anything crazy—just an annual “Well Woman” check up. 

So there I was in a conventional outpatient clinic, after 3-months of waiting to see the doctor, and here’s what went down under my conventional health insurance…

What Traditional Health Insurance DOES Cover

1. OVERBOOKED APPOINTMENTS:

Traffic was shut down to one lane on I-35 in Austin and I was running right on time to the appointment (not early). I called the office on my way to inform them of the situation, to which they said to still come in.I managed to park in the lot right at 8:35 a.m. and race upstairs for my 8:30 a.m. appointment.

Once checking in with the staff, she told me she’d have to call back to the doctor’s staff (which they had already done) to verify I could get “in.” 10-minutes later, confirmation was given—I could go back to the waiting room.

2. DISORGANIZATION:

However, before being released to the waiting room, ANOTHER hurdle…

Front Desk: “Oh wait a second..you can’t see the doctor, you have an HMO plan,” the front desk girl said.

Me: “My doctor faxed it over 3-months ago when I made the appointment.”

Front Desk: “You will need to fax it again if you want to keep the appointment,” the girl said.

(I quickly texted my doctor—one of my colleagues and now friends—and the situation was resolved).

3. A SYMPTOM-BASED APPROACH:

As I sat in the waiting room, I was asked to complete a one-page form.The only thing the form asked me about was…my symptoms, my brief health history (surgeries, family diseases), if I smoke or drank, and the date of my last period. 

That’s it.

No exploration around my current diet, sleep habits, what work I had already done around my gut health, my health goals, my physical activity patterns, food intolerances and beyond.

4. CHRONIC DISEASE SYMPTOMS:

Initially, it only took about 15-minutes once I was in the waiting room to go back to the clinic room. The nurse was very nice and did her routine thing: blood pressure, weight check, heart rate and body temperature. She also asked me the SAME questions on my health form. She was shocked to hear how I had NO diseases whatsoever. My ONLY complaint was chronic constipation. (Apparently she was used to hearing ALOT more). 

5. LONG 2-HOUR WAITS:

After our check in, the nurse left me be…for 2 hours.

At one point in my waiting, she actually asked if she could “pull me” out of my room for “about 10 minutes” to go back to the waiting room in order to see another patient.

So I went back to the waiting room where I waited another 45-minutes…

6. NO APPOINTMENTS: 

I had booked a 10:30 am appointment with a client of mine—allotting for my 8:30 a.m. doctor visit that morning, thinking I’d have plenty of time in between. 10:20 a.m. rolled around and I was STILL in the waiting room. To say the least, I did not get seen, and the nurse told me she’d call back that evening to reschedule…which did not happen.

The Solution?: People Want to Take Their Health Into Their Own Hands

Many people are looking to take their health into their own hands—with at least 80% of all people seeking out advice on search engines like Google alone (Pew Research Center, 2013). 

Others are looking for OTHER options (like holistic doctors, health coaches and functional medicine providers). 

According to a report from the National Institute for Health in 2015 alone, researchers found that about 1 in 3 Americans were utilizing some sort of alternative or holistic care out of mainstream medicine (Stussman et al, 2015). 

Fast forward to today, and there is no doubt that those numbers are consistent—if not more—with the job outlook for all allied healthcare providers expected to go up by 2026 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (including occupational therapy, physical therapy, personal fitness training, health coaching, life coaching, acupuncture, chiropractic care and naturopathic or functional medicine). 

However, this doesn’t mean these alternative providers are always covered by health insurance. 

A common question we as functional medicine practitioners are asked is:

Patient: “Do you take insurance?”

Functional Medicine Provider: To which we most often reply, “No.”

Although many holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners CAN submit superbills, and SOME CAN reimburse partially for visits or lab testing, generally most holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners are cash pay.

Why?!

Let me give you 7 reasons.

7 Reasons Why Insurance Doesn’t Cover Holistic Doctors & Functional Medicine

1. Insurance is NOT Patient-Centered.

Functional Medicine is patient-centered. Instead of focusing on numbers-centered or about getting more people in the door, wee typically take time to review your chart well before your appointment.

2. Insurance is NOT Big on Taking Time with Patients.

Functional Medicine takes time. We don’t rush to get you through our churn mill. Typically, you will spend 1-2 hours for your first appointment so your practitioner can truly get to know your story. The doctor will assess your health struggles and your goals.

3. Insurance is NOT Focused on the Whole Body.

Functional Medicine is a “Whole Body Medicine,” taking into consideration all aspects of your health and life. Those that contribute to how you feel and the presentation of disease. It’s different from an endocrinologist who just looks at your hormones and thyroid, an ENT doc who just looks at your ears, nose and throat, or a psychologist who just focuses on your mental health. Functional Medicine acknowledges a respect and awareness of how ALL body systems impact one another, including:

Gut Health

Brain Function

Hormone Health

Detoxification Pathways

Mindset/Mentality

Cardiovascular Health

Immunity

Thyroid & Metabolic Health

Mineral & Vitamin Status

  4. Insurance Does NOT Address the Roots of Disease.

Functional Medicine does. Instead of looking to suppress or manage symptoms from the top down, we take a “bottom up” approach. We find and address the triggers and root causes of any disease or symptoms a patient is experiencing. These include bacterial overgrowth and SIBO (connected with skin conditions, chronic headaches, metabolic dysfunction, and GI disturbances), or cortisol imbalances (connected with insomnia, anxiety, blood sugar imbalances, and GI disturbances). 

5. Insurance is NOT Focused on Prevention.

Functional Medicine focused on preventing disease, or further decline of health from happening by using laboratory reference ranges (blood work, urine, stool analysis, etc.) that reflect the progression of disease (in order to help reverse it early). We also integrate lifestyle medicine FIRST to support our clients health as a whole. Through a holistic care plan that includes nutrition, supplement, lifestyle healing and stress busting strategies, and physical activity.

6. Insurance Views Functional Medicine as “Quack” Medicine.

Contrary to popular belief, Functional Medicine isn’t about “woo woo” or “voo doo.”  Functional Medicine acknowledges the latest in research to influence and support care. In fact, Functional Medicine is simply an approach to medicine. Healthcare says, “Hey guys, let’s address lifestyle factors FIRST and consider all aspects of health—not symptoms—before turning to medicines or negating other factors of our patients’ modern day lifestyles.”

Functional medicine acknowledges science, reason and research for modes of healing and treatment protocols. If anything, is a compliment to the ever-evolving research in traditional medicine.

For example, with the past 3 years of research on the gut microbiome alone (more than 8,000 studies in PubMed), we know that our gut health definitely influences other aspects of our health, including our mood and anxiety levels (Clapp et al, 2017), our metabolism (Boulange et al, 2016) and brain health (Li et al, 2017). In practice, Functional Medicine is more readily able to address gut healing for all types of conditions and diseases.

Another example: when TIME Magazine leaked the “big news” that the sugar industry paid off the FDA to hide evidence that sugar—not saturated fat—was the driver of all disease, Functional Medicine practitioners could further educate their patients as to why butter, bacon and egg yolks are NOT bad. Mainstream medicine on the other hand? Still preaching that saturated fat and high cholesterol are the number one drivers of heart disease. Nevertheless, insurance companies DON’T always look for the research on their own.

7. Insurance is Stuck in the Good Ol’ Days.

If you’ve ever simply tried to call or fax something to your insurance provider, you know the never-ending hold times. In addition, inefficiencies of modern day health care (seemingly stuck in 1961). Whereas, functional medicine is now integrating more and more tele-health, “biohacking” (alternative therapies and healing supports, like infrared saunas, hot-cold therapy, coffee enemas and herbal supplements), and high-tech EMR’s (medical record systems), Insurance still has you on a “brief hold”and is comfortable doing things they’ve always done. 

Bio:

Dr. Lauryn Lax is a Doctor of Occupational Therapy, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Functional Medicine Practitioner, author and speaker, with over 20 years of clinical and personal experience specializing in gut health, intuitive eating, disordered eating, anxiety, hormone balance and women’s health. She’s based in Austin, Texas, and operates a virtual Nutrition & Functional Medicine practice, Thrive Wellness & Recovery, LLC, working with clients and patients around the world. In addition, Dr. Lauryn is a published journalist and speaker. Her works have been featured in Oxygen Magazine, Women’s Health, Paleo Magazine, Breaking Muscle, CrossFit Inc, USA Today, ABC and CBS News.  Ultimately, she loves nothing more than helping others “quiet the noise” in the health food and fitness world.

  The post 7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine appeared first on Meet Dr. Lauryn.

Source/Repost=> https://drlauryn.com/wellness-knowledge/insurance-wont-pay-functional-medicine/ ** Dr. Lauryn Lax __Nutrition. Therapy. Functional Medicine ** https://drlauryn.com/

[gethealthy18-blog]

294: Using Targeted Nutrition to Alleviate Hormone Related Issues With Dr. Chris Masterjohn

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/294-using-targeted-nutrition-to-alleviate-hormone-related-issues-with-dr-chris-masterjohn/

294: Using Targeted Nutrition to Alleviate Hormone Related Issues With Dr. Chris Masterjohn

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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This podcast is brought to you by the Kion Clean Energy Bar. We all know that finding healthy snacks for you and your kids is no simple task. Most snacks, even the so-called “healthy” ones, are high in sugar, have poor nutrient quality, and will leave you and you feeling tired or hungrier than you were before. That’s why my friends at Kion created the Kion Clean Energy Bar, a delicious, all-natural, snack that will satisfy your appetite and give you stable, long-lasting energy. My kids loves these and I love that Kion bars are made from all real-food ingredients like coconut, almonds, and chia. They have zero refined sugar. They have a lot of healthy fats and clean protein to fuel the body and brain. They are naturally gluten, dairy, and soy-free. They contain electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals. And even though they are chocolate, they won’t melt in the heat or freeze in the cold. And they have a delicious chocolatey flavor and crunchy texture that you and your kids are gonna love. You can get 15% off of the Kion Clean Energy Bar by going to getkion.com/wellnessmama and using code MAMA15 at checkout.

Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and this episode is a much requested round two with Dr. Chris Masterjohn. Like our first episode, we go deep on various aspects of nutrition and Chris is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to most of these topics. He earned a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut and served as Assistant Professor of Health and Nutrition Sciences at Brooklyn College. He has a really amazing guide called “The Ultimate Cheatsheet” which helps you decode your own body’s nutritional needs as well as a really informative website and podcast I highly recommend both and I know that you are going to love this episode as much as I did. Chris, welcome back. Thanks for joining us again.

Chris: Thanks for having me, Katie. It’s good to be here.

Katie: Well, your first interview was so helpful. We went deep on a lot of nutritional topics, and I’ve heard from a lot of the audience how some of your tips on like pantothenic acid helping skin has been really amazing for them. And I knew I had to have you back to go deeper on different nutrients and to learn more.

And, on this episode, I’d really love to talk a little bit more women-specific because I think women potentially deal with a bunch of symptoms that men may not face because of all the hormone changes that we go through, whether it be monthly, whether it be during pregnancy. We just have a lot more going on. I think than guys do, and I know if you look at the chart, like, you guys have hormone fluctuations, but women is almost like a roller coaster every month just because we have all these hormones coming into play.

So I’d actually love to start with just, like, an overview of things that you’ve found that seem to be nutrient deficiencies related to those hormone changes each month that come with the monthly period, with ovulation. What are some things we need to know and be aware of when it comes to that?

Chris: Yeah. So my interest in this first peaked when I was talking to a consulting client of mine who was having real, bad problems with headaches. And she hadn’t identified any triggers, and so we talked about food triggers as nothing. And she didn’t offer the fact that it correlated with her menstrual cycle maybe because she didn’t think it would make any sense until I asked. And then she was like, “Yeah. They always occur on day 13. That’s when they’re the worst.” And then a couple of days before I have my period, they often occur, and they’re not quite as bad.”

And so I looked at the chart and, you know, sure enough, that corresponds to the big estrogen peak around ovulation and then the smaller estrogen peak that happens to also be balanced with more progesterone in the days leading up to menstruation. And so, you know, at the time, I was researching histamine a lot, and so the first thing I think is, “Well, let me see what estrogen does to diamine oxidase activity.” Diamine oxidase or DAO is an enzyme that you need a number of nutrients for, including B6 and copper especially, and vitamin C.

So diamine oxidase is one of the main ways that you clear histamine. And so, sure enough, estrogen massively down-regulates diamine oxidase activity. And so, I suggested to my client she should try supplementing with diamine oxidase proactively around those times of her menstrual cycle, and it works. So, you know, that was the first place that got me interested in this. But, you know, once you look into this a little bit more deeply, I think we can paint a little bit of a broader picture and one that applies to several different contexts. So one area that’s been of quite a bit of interest, I think, for years at this point has been the fact that, for reasons that no one has really identified that well, high dose vitamin B6 supplementation has been at least promising, if not often effective, in treating morning sickness associated with pregnancy.

And so it seems like the morning sickness of pregnancy must be tied in some way to something that has to do with B6. So one hypothesis that came out a couple of years ago that I think is a very compelling argument is that estrogen increases hydrogen sulfide production, and hydrogen sulfide can generate sulfite, which is toxic, and which happens to be something that’s added to a lot of medications, cosmetics, and processed foods as a preservative that a lot of people don’t tell. You know, some people, like certain wines give them really bad headaches, and it’s because of the sulfites in the wine.

Well, when you’re pregnant, you’re making sulfite. And you’re not making sulfite to make sulfite. You’re making hydrogen sulfide gas, which, although like we would typically associate it with the smell of rotten eggs at high doses, has been discovered in recent years to be a very important signaling molecule that is, among other things, a vasodilator. So hydrogen sulfide gas falls into a very small category of things that can dilate blood vessels, along with nitric oxide, which has been known about for a much longer period of time.

And hydrogen sulfide is particularly important in delivering blood to the placenta when you’re pregnant. And it also has other activities related to pregnancy. For example, it suppresses preterm labor. And it’s necessary to keep hydrogen sulfide levels higher than they would be when you’re not pregnant or for probably anytime if you’re a man, in order to prevent you from going into labor early, but also just to keep the blood flow, the placenta going to nourish the growing baby.

And now it so happens that a small portion of hydrogen sulfide is going to be turned into sulfite, which is a toxic compound. And sulfite, we all generate sulfite in the course of normal metabolism from any of the sources of sulfur in our diet, especially the sulfur-containing amino acids that are in the protein we eat. And in order to neutralize that sulfite, we use a mineral, molybdenum, to convert the sulfite, which is toxic, to sulfate. Sulfate is both not toxic and is also highly useful. We use it for detoxification. We use it for regulating hormones. We use it to synthesize structural things that are protective against cardiovascular disease, highly protective against arthritis in our joints, and so on.

So, you basically have this balance between sulfite, which is toxic, and sulfate, which is extremely necessary and useful. And the more sulfite you generate, the more you need to convert it to sulfate. Even if you don’t need extra sulfate, you still need to get rid of sulfite because it’s toxic, and you do that with molybdenum. So that would imply that during pregnancy, because of increased hydrogen sulfide, you are going to generate more sulfite. Your molybdenum needs will increase to make sulfate.

Now, what happens to molybdenum intakes during pregnancy? Well, by far and away, the best source of molybdenum is beans. And in pregnancy, a lot of women develop aversions to beans and other molybdenum-rich foods just because they’re more difficult to tolerate digestively and, you know, maybe as well as taste aversions and things like that. So in someone who’s pregnant, molybdenum intakes tend to go down just because they’re less tolerant of molybdenum-rich foods. And then, at the same time, molybdenum needs to go up because of the increased sulfite generation. Now, why would that relate to vitamin B6? Well, it turns out that sulfite binds to B6 and essentially destroys it, basically eliminates it from the body.

So sulfite can induce a B6 deficiency, and high doses of B6 can be used to clear away sulfite that you were not able to convert into the non-toxic sulfate using molybdenum. So, basically, this hypothesis is that molybdenum needs would go up. But since most pregnant women aren’t meeting those needs for molybdenum, high doses of B6 can act as a…I want to say Band-Aid solution, but it’s not really Band-Aid because it’s not like you’re just managing the symptoms. You are clearing away the sulfite, but sort of like…you can’t… So, like, the doses of B6 used in morning sickness would be like 100 milligrams a day, completely impossible to get from food, so I don’t even want to call it a backup mechanism. Like, molybdenum at nutritional doses would be really, really useful here and would be most related to the root cause.

High doses of B6 are very natural, very safe, and effective, but they’re one step removed away from the root cause. It’s like because you didn’t have the molybdenum, you’re more reliant on the B6. And who knows exactly what that’s doing? You know, maybe the sulfite, because it’s giving you a B6 deficiency, that itself is taking away from important things that B6 would do to prevent morning sickness, or it might just be that the extra B6 is mopping up the sulfite, and the sulfite is what’s causing morning sickness.

Now, sulfite does a bunch of toxic things, but one of the things that it does is it can cause mast cells to release histamine. And histamine in the gut can give you all kinds of gut-related issues like diarrhea, for example, make you feel nauseated, you know, things that could be possibly related to morning sickness, especially if because of B6 deficiency. And actually, I think sulfite also inhibits diamine oxidase, and diamine oxidase requires B6 that’s needed to clear histamine from foods.

She might, on top of everything, become more intolerant to histamine, certain foods maybe. So who knows what the mechanisms are, but the sort of like takeaway point is that because sulfite is going up, your needs for molybdenum are going up. And if you don’t have enough molybdenum, your needs for B6 are going to go up, but they’re not going to go up within the nutritional range. They’re going to go up like ridiculously high. So, you know, maybe on a ridiculously high B6 intake from natural foods, you could hit 10 milligrams of B6, but you might need 100 milligrams to mop up all that sulfite. So it’s not insane amounts, but it’s way out of what you could get from natural foods.

And now, looking at that, I’m like, “Well, what about outside of pregnancy? You know, what’s regulating this? Is it estrogen?” And, yes, it’s estrogen that’s regulating sulfite. I don’t know what the effect of progesterone is, so I had trouble finding direct research on it. But it can’t be the case that progesterone is effective at countering the effect of estrogen because progesterone rises in pregnancy alongside estrogen, and none of this would be an issue in pregnancy if progesterone was really protective.

The other thing is if you look at, like, Plan B has some side effects that are very similar to the morning sickness of pregnancy, and Plan B doesn’t have any estrogen. It’s an emergency post-sex contraceptive that only has a synthetic form of progesterone in it. So I don’t know what progesterone does to this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if progesterone was actually acting in concert with estrogen here and maybe augmenting its effects just because this seems to be like a highly pregnancy-related thing. But in any case, you can tie this to the estrogen peaks in the menstrual cycle, especially…

You know, the big peak is around ovulation. The more moderate peak is in the days leading up to menstruation. And then you can also tie it to other supplemental estrogens. So most birth control patch or pill has estrogen in it, and then, you know, hormone replacement therapy that women would typically go on after menopause has estrogen in it. And so, any of these sources of estrogen are going to affect diamine oxidase and possibly make you histamine intolerant, and they’re also going to increase sulfite production, increase your needs for molybdenum, and possibly increase your needs for B6.

I think those are the things that are most related to headaches, nausea, you know, any other form of digestive complaints, feeling queasy or just like general GI distress, and any kind of allergy-like symptoms, so itching, hives, etc. And, you know, we could branch off from there in numerous directions, but I think that’s the sort of most interesting thing I’ve been synthesizing lately related to this stuff.

Katie: That’s so fascinating. And it seems like a vicious cycle. Once you’re in that, it will be difficult to pull out of it without, like you said, supplementation. So if I’m understanding correctly, would this be maybe something if people have symptoms more so around ovulation when that estrogen spike is, or they’re taking an estrogen-based birth control, this would be something they could look at and try?

Chris: Yeah. In fact, I’d go a little bit further than that. So another thing that has been known for decades to happen when women are on birth control is that the amino acid, tryptophan, which is used to make serotonin, and is used to make melatonin, and is also used to make niacin, which is vitamin B3, estrogen increases the production of niacin, vitamin B3, from tryptophan. And in so doing, there’s a neurotoxic compound that kind of spills out of the pathway called kynurenine. And there are studies…this has been known for a long time and yet no one knows it because what happened was they tested different doses of B6 to see what could normalize tryptophan metabolism.

And I would imagine this to be beneficial for insomnia and headaches in particular. Anyway, so what they did was they tested a couple of low doses, up to 2 milligrams, and they tested 20 milligrams. And they found that 20 milligrams of B6 completely made tryptophan metabolism totally normal, but all of the doses that they considered reasonable to get from food didn’t. And so, they basically dismissed their own finding, about 20 milligrams, and said like…because there’s this bias in mainstream nutrition where they don’t want everyone running around taking supplements.

So they looked at that, and they said like, “That effect can’t be, like, a real effect.” Like, B6 obviously isn’t doing something here because 20 milligrams is a ridiculous dose, and we’re not going to tell people to take 20 milligrams, even though it’s well under what the Institute of Medicine has set as the dose that would have no safety concerns, which is 100 milligrams. So the reality is that the data have said, for decades, that 20 milligrams of B6 normalizes the negative effects of birth control on tryptophan metabolism, and there are no reviews that say that.

I have to go back and look at the original papers because all the reviews from people that I would expect about this…sorry, not expect, that I would respect and that would be considered prestigious, they just cite these people citing their own data saying that B6 didn’t fully normalize tryptophan metabolism. And you have to go back to the paper and see that 20 milligrams does. So I would go more than that to say that anyone who’s on supplemental estrogen should, by default, take 20 milligrams of B6 and tweak from there, but I would do it as a precautionary measure.

Katie: Wow, that’s amazing. And the safety data, just to reiterate what you said, is up to 100 milligrams that can be safely taken based on what they’ve demonstrated? Is that also during pregnancy?

Chris: Yeah. There’s no alteration to the safe limit in pregnancy for B6 or for molybdenum, which is the other nutrient we were talking about before. And, you know, there are people anecdotally who believe that they’ve developed problems from taking high doses of B6 that are in that range, but there’s no published data of case reports showing that. And the published data of case reports shows that B6 can have neurotoxic effects at very high doses. All of those studies have used pyridoxine, and I actually think pyridoxal 5-phosphate is the ideal for P5P.

All of those studies also showed that the consequences went away as soon as you removed the supplement. And the minimum dose of B6 in any of those studies was 500 milligrams a day. Nothing below that has been shown to have negative effects. So when the Institute of Medicine set the tolerable upper intake level or TUIL, which is…you know, a lot of people are familiar with the RDA.

The TUIL, the upper intake level, is always set alongside the RDA, And the definition is basically, this is the dose that we would expect to have no risk of adverse effects in the general population. And that doesn’t rule out that someone might have a hypersensitivity disorder or something like that. But, you know, if you take 100 people and you put them all on 100 milligrams of B6, you would expect approximately zero people to develop any problems from that.

You know, what they did with that was they took the lowest observed adverse effect at 500 milligrams, and they applied a safety factor of five-fold to that. So they said, “We don’t have any evidence of this occurring at less than 500 milligrams, so we’ll take 500 milligrams as the dangerous dose and say that, you know, even if there’s 1,000 things that we don’t know, 100 milligrams should be like the mega safe dose.” And then 20 milligrams has been shown to normalize tryptophan metabolism, which is five times under that. So it’s 25 times under what we have case reports showing problems of.

And so, you know, there’s, like, dramatic windows of safety applied to get down to 20 milligrams. You know, and it’s not well-studied, like, maybe the ideal dose that you need is 10 milligrams. I don’t know. But there’s some studies suggesting that 5 to 10 milligrams are not enough to normalize markers of B6 status in pregnant women, which suggests, to me, that the ideal dose for, like, minimizing risk of B6 deficiency symptoms during pregnancy and during any conditions of supplemental estrogen is probably at least 10 milligrams. And, you know, 20 has been shown to be effective in studies, so I’m happy with that, and I’m content that it’s not a safety risk.

Katie: When especially that’s a water-soluble vitamin. So, like you said, as soon as you stop taking it, your body should be okay, even if you had a high dose.

Chris: Yeah, I mean…so I actually think that’s a myth that has been propagated very widely and doesn’t have that much basis that the solubility of a nutrient is related to its toxicity profile. So, like vitamin E, although it might have some negative effects at high doses by interfering with the function of other fat-soluble vitamins, it doesn’t actually have a toxicity syndrome at all, and vitamin B6, which is water-soluble, does. So even though…I mean, like yes, what the case reports showed is that it’s reversible. I have no idea if that relates to its water solubility or not.

So, like niacin has a serious toxicity profile at very high doses, totally water-soluble, you know. So, like niacin and B6, both have toxicity profiles at very high doses. Thiamine, which is water-soluble doesn’t. Riboflavin, which is considered a water-soluble vitamin, but it’s actually, like, 50% fat-soluble. It’s just, like, halfway in between water and fat solubility on a chemical solubility level, and at hundreds of times the normal intake has produced no safety concerns whatsoever.

So I actually think that the solubility really is, like, largely unrelated to the safety of nutrient. But, yeah, it appears to be completely reversible on the basis that the case reports showing, like, tingling in the hands and feet on it that when you remove it, it goes away.

Katie: That’s a really interesting point and good to know because that’s definitely something I have heard quite a bit, is that if it’s water-soluble, it’s fine, and you have to be really careful with fat-soluble vitamins. Since there’s an estrogen component here, is it also logical to suggest that maybe people with, for instance, PCOS or other things that lead to estrogen dominance or have an estrogen dominant component could benefit from experimenting with this as well?

Chris: Yes, I think so. And actually, I think there’s quite a lot of unanswered questions here. So, for example, in males, testosterone also increases hydrogen sulfide production in certain cells. And so it’s, like, what does the increased androgens do in PCOS to this? I have no idea, you know. I’m highly confident in what estrogen is doing here. I’m rather confused about what testosterone is doing. And, I really have no idea what progesterone is doing.

So I’m highly confident that anything where you’re approaching estrogen levels seen at the peaks during the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, birth control, and hormone replacement therapy are highly relevant. I think PCOS has a complex hormonal profile that I don’t really understand exactly how it would relate to this. But I would definitely consider it because, if you think about the recommendations that I would make to compensate for this, basically molybdenum, you know, the average dose that you would try to get by default every day is like 45 micrograms.

The safe upper intake level is 2,000 micrograms or 2 milligrams. And the safety profile from that, I couldn’t find any reliable human data suggesting problems with excess molybdenum, so they actually took fertility problems in female rats at the body weight-adjusted equivalent of 50 milligrams a day and applied this extraordinarily huge safety factor to wind down to 2 milligrams a day as the safe upper limit for humans.

So, you know, to go from a normal…like, imagine a pregnant woman is reducing her molybdenum intake just sort of by, you know, food aversions, and maybe getting down to 30 micrograms a day. There’s a lot of room to go up between 30 and 2,000 micrograms. And so I’m guessing that, you know, 300 to 500 micrograms would be more than enough and way within the upper limit for molybdenum.

And like I said before, 20 milligrams of B6 should be more than enough. In most cases, you could go up to 100 and still way within the upper limit. And I would say that, you know, anything that seems sex hormone-related could plausibly relate to these things. My confidence being really high if estrogen being high is the main thing, and then the more complexities you add to that of hormonal imbalance, I’m less and less sure exactly what it means.

But if the symptoms of headaches, of insomnia, of queasiness or nausea, of GI distress, or of anything that seems related to allergies like hives, and itching, and redness, any of that cluster of symptoms that go along with definitely high estrogen and maybe other abnormalities in hormone metabolism, I would say, would be something where trying this completely safe thing of adding some extra 300 to 500 micrograms of molybdenum and 20 milligrams of B6 to, like, try and see if it works.

Katie: That makes perfect sense. To circle back on histamine for a minute, this is something I’m hearing a lot more about from the audience increasingly, so I’m wondering if it’s something that’s on the rise. Is this something that is universally worth trying for anyone suffering from histamine issues, and are there other things that come into play as well when we’re just talking about histamine?

Chris: Yeah, okay. So I think that there are some complexities when you get to histamine. And, it depends where it’s coming from, and it depends whether, for example, it’s a food-based thing or it’s more than that. So let’s, like, sort of start with the gut and work our way inside. So, in the gut, there’s histamine that you encounter in your food, and you can also have gut bacteria producing histamine. And if the gut bacteria are producing it, I don’t know exactly what to do about that. But, you know, shifting the microbiome with prebiotics and probiotics would be the thing that really fits the bill.

But anyway, let’s just assume the histamine is coming in from your food because there’s plenty of histamine in foods. And if the histamine is coming in your food, then nausea and diarrhea are probably the big things you would expect at the gut level, but then histamine can get inside your blood. And when it’s systemic, then that’s where you can start to get more allergy-like symptoms like hives, itching, or redness, flushing. That’s also when you could get changes in blood pressure.

By default, histamine lowers blood pressure, but sometimes you get an adrenaline response to that that causes secondary increase in blood pressure above normal. So any changes in blood pressure could be plausibly related. And then histamine can increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier generally and let stuff in, including itself. And if histamine gets into the brain, histamine in the brain usually, by default, is produced inside the brain in a highly regulated fashion to regulate your wakefulness and alertness.

And this is why if you take Benadryl, for example, you get sleepy, and it might knock you out because it’s antagonizing the histamine in your brain. On the flip side of that though, too much histamine in the brain could cause insomnia, or cause generalized anxiety, or could cause panic attacks. So, you know, trace it from the gut through the brain, and you’re getting nausea, diarrhea, then you get inside, hives, itching, redness flushing, then blood pressure changes, and you get into the brain, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks.

So, any of those things, the first line of defense is the production of diamine oxidase in the gut. So you can think of histamine as having two main defenses. Diamine oxidase is the extracellular defense. Methylation is the intracellular defense. When you’re eating food, that’s outside your cells, and it’s going through your gut, which is actually literally everything from your mouth to your anus is outside your body because we’re all sort of, like, a cylindrical tube, where the inside surfaces, mouth, the anus, that’s outside the body. The skin is the outside surface outside the body, and things get absorbed to get inside the body.

So, in the gut, you’re outside the body, you’re outside your cells. You’re producing massive amounts of diamine oxidase or DAO for the purpose of completely neutralizing all the histamine in your food. And the diamine oxidase could be missing from the gut due to nutrient deficiencies, or due to intestinal damage. Nutrient deficiencies, the ones that are most relevant are B6 and copper. There’s some possible…and actually manganese is also important there, possible roles for vitamin C and possible role for riboflavin, although that hasn’t been shown with the human enzyme.

Now, on top of that, you could just have intestinal damage that’s damaging the cells that produce diamine oxidase. That kind of unravels a whole another area that I’m not really an expert in. My expertise is really in the micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals. For example, if you have an autoimmune condition like celiac disease that’s destroying the intestinal cells, or you have some pathogen in there that’s, you know, your immune system is trying to defeat the infection and is causing damage to your intestinal cells, possibilities like that are reasons for having low diamine oxidase activity.

And then, of course, I don’t really know anything about how to modify this, but you could also have gut bacteria that are producing histamine as well. Then when you get inside…and actually this isn’t just inside. So, inside your body, or even in the gut, you can have increased mast cell burden. Mast cells are those cells that produce histamine. And now we’re getting into the area where we’re not talking about the histamine in foods, we’re talking about the histamine that you produce yourself. And so the normal way that you would think about this, like, the kind of conventional thing that would happen is in an allergy.

And in a traditional conventional allergy, you have your immune system reacting to some allergen, produces IgE antibodies that then activate a cascade of things that leads ultimately to the release of histamine by mast cells. You can also have things that cause mast cells to release histamine that you’re not allergic to, and that’s what sulfite does that we were talking about before. So sulfite will just act on the mast cell to make it release histamine, but it’s not an allergy because there was no antibody made by your immune system.

It looks like an allergy because you get itching, hives, you know, redness, any of the traditional allergic symptoms that are caused by histamine, and it kind of walks and talks like an allergy because you might get it in response to certain specific foods if those are foods that have histamine in them or have sulfites in them that cause histamine release or whatever, but it’s not an allergy because, in the case of sulfite or dietary histamine, there’s no antibody-mediated response. So it looks, talks, walks, smells like an allergy, but it’s not.

And in the mast cell, there’s two categories of things that we should care about. One is antioxidants because oxidative stress increases histamine release from mast cells, and the other is methylation. And those two things are both, like, big cans of worms that we could each spend an hour talking about just on its own. But to briefly summarize, antioxidants, I think, a lot of people think about is like, “Oh, those are the things that are in berries, and fruits, and vegetables, and stuff like that,” which I think is a misleadingly simplistic way to think about it. Your antioxidant defense is very much based on minerals and protein-related things that you make yourself. And I don’t mean you make the minerals. I mean, you eat the minerals and you make enzymes that require the minerals.

So very briefly, protein, zinc, copper, selenium, iron, and manganese, vitamin E, and vitamin C, and all those colorful things in fruits and vegetables that people call antioxidants, those things together are the things we care about in terms of antioxidant defense. And then, on the second category, methylation, that’s where we get into B12, folate, and choline as the top nutrients, and then we can peel layers away to get at many minerals and B vitamins working underneath those as the main support.

You know, so that is, I think, a pretty broad view of histamine generally and all the potential things that you could work on related to it. And then you want to ask questions like, where is histamine coming from? Because it might be primarily hormonal, like we were talking about before, or you might have, you know, a rare condition like mast cell activation disorder, mast cell activation syndrome, which might require finding a very good specialist to start digging away at.

Katie: That was an amazing overview. Thank you for that. I think you’re right. There’s so much at play there, but I think so much of what you just said is probably going to be really helpful to a lot of people. And, for my own curiosity, I wonder if there’s a difference or any other considerations for women who tend to have their symptoms right around their periods or not at ovulation when estrogen strikes, but they have things like migraines, or PMS, or other symptoms right about when their period begins? Are there other nutrients that come into play in that scenario?

Chris: Yeah. So, first of all, I look specifically at this once to look at water retention. And, in general, I think that the other symptoms of PMS kind of go hand in hand here, but I didn’t look at them as much as I was looking at water retention. And I was actually surprised to find that the key difference between women who have PMS symptoms, including water retention, which I was more focused on, and those who don’t is that they actually have higher progesterone levels in the days leading up to menstruation. So the progesterone should be like an ovulation-related sort of, like, post-ovulation spike during the breakdown of everything produced during ovulation, but it should be cleared effectively by the time you get into menstruation.

And the women who have PMS-related symptoms, especially where I was looking at in water retention, they basically produce the same levels of all the hormones, but the primary difference is the clearance rate of progesterone is a lot lower. And my suspicion is the water retention issue is driven by the fact that one of the ways that you can get rid of excess progesterone, it’s… Actually, this isn’t really a way of getting rid…it shouldn’t be a way of getting rid of progesterone. But progesterone, if it’s elevated and not cleared through the normal ways, can spill over into aldosterone production, which can cause retention of sodium and loss of potassium, and with retention of sodium comes retention of water.

I don’t know if that would cause some of the other symptoms, although I could imagine it would because if you retain water, you’re going to get swelling everywhere. And if your blood volume is increasing, and you’re getting generalized swelling in extracellular space, you’re going to put pressure in a lot of places that wouldn’t otherwise have pressure. And, in your head, I think that would cause a headache. I’m not saying that’s the only thing, but it just might be a contributor there.

And so, specifically, in the case of water retention, salt is controversial. So there are some cases that I think are the exception to the rule where sometimes you can reduce water retention by increasing salt, but that’s not normally the case. And I think for most women in that case, probably reducing salt and increasing potassium is going to be the thing that’s best going to help the water retention. In terms of both, and I don’t know the mechanisms here, but in terms of both the water attention and the other symptoms of PMS, magnesium and B6 have been the top things that have been helpful.

I think the doses… I’m blanking here. I don’t have 100% confidence on this, but I believe that the papers I was looking at, the doses are around, like, 40 milligrams of B6. I would use P5P for the form of B6, and somewhere around 200 or 300 milligrams of magnesium, so higher doses of B6 and people are usually using lower doses of magnesium that a lot of people are using. But both of those seem to have some positive benefits in a number of human trials.

And then for PMS symptoms, the data is less good for manganese, but low manganese levels correlate with PMS symptoms. And it’s possible that manganese supplementation would help, but no one has clearly shown that. But notably, manganese along with B6 are co-factors for diamine oxidase, so it could all come back to histamine metabolism in some way in terms of some of those symptoms. But I don’t think histamine would be related to the water retention, but headaches and mood disturbances, maybe.

Katie: That’s really interesting. And I’m definitely gonna plug your book, “Testing Your Nutritional Status,” because I think that’s a great place for people to delve in and try to figure out what they specifically need to take.

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Katie: But I am curious, when it comes to women and hormone fluctuations, either during pregnancy or just during normal monthly cycles. Are there nutrients in general in any amounts, that you would say, on average most or all women should be taking or it’s safe to take than not take?

Chris: Can you go over the context again? You were talking about pregnancy, or you were talking about through the menstrual cycle.

Katie: I would say they need to be separate answers. During pregnancy, are there things that women need to be especially cognizant of and then also hormones?

Chris: Yeah. So, pregnancy, the nutritional recommendations are generally made around birth defects. And I think those are… I mean, I would reinforce those. So, like, the typical pregnant woman is going to get put on prenatals to have extra folic acid in them, for example. I would say you want to make sure you’re getting full…I would prefer using methyl folate as a supplement. But I think making sure you’re getting the RDA for folate through that is really important. I mean, that’s mainly used to prevent neural tube defects, which are mainly spina bifida, and then another rare one that is just fatal.

It’s, quantitatively, like, the likelihood of that happening is very small, but the consequences are so devastating that, you know, it’s just worth it to reinforce those recommendations. One nutrient that I haven’t talked about yet, but it applies across the board to all estrogen-related things here. And actually, this is a good bifurcation between pregnancy and other estrogen conditions. So, estrogen increases copper absorption from the gut, and the placenta during pregnancy causes all that extra copper to go to the baby.

So I don’t think that you need extra copper during pregnancy because you hyper absorb copper and you hyper transport it to the fetus. But estrogen outside of pregnancy causes you to hyper absorb copper just as much, and you don’t have a placenta. So, there’s nowhere to put it. It just accumulates. Now, in most cases, probably what happens is the woman’s liver just makes more proteins that bind copper such as ceruloplasmin to protect the copper from causing problems. But if the woman does not make enough ceruloplasmin and other copper-binding proteins, the free copper can cause a lot of problems. It can cause serious problems in the eyes. It can accumulate in the brain and contribute to neurodegenerative diseases later in life.

It can generally cause oxidative stress. So, what I would suggest is, normally, I would say the upper limit for what you really want to steer clear of copper is, like, 10 milligrams. I would cut that down to 5 milligrams for anyone who is on supplemental estrogen. You know, during the estrogen peaks in the menstrual cycle, if the menstrual cycle is normal, I’m not too worried about it because it just goes up for a couple of days, comes down, goes up for another couple days, comes down. It’s not a major…you’re gonna hyper absorb copper during that time, but, you know, more days than not, you just have normal estrogen levels for a woman and so it all kind of evens out.

But when you’re on birth control, or when you’re on hormone replacement therapy, those are essentially the only other conditions where you’d have chronic exposure to estrogen like you would in pregnancy. So, you’re going to hyper absorb copper and not have any place to put it. So I think it’s best to cut the upper limit for copper in half, down to 5 milligrams, and then just more generally not go out of your way to increase the 5 milligrams. So, I’m not too worried about foods. Copper-rich foods include liver, mushrooms, seaweed, shellfish.

You know, those other foods have things that balance copper and protect copper from causing problems like zinc, for example. So I’m not saying, you know, micromanage your fruits and don’t hit 5 milligrams. But I’m saying like, you know, if you’re taking supplements, don’t use supplements to go above 5 milligrams total intake. And, you know, don’t go out of your way to try to hit 5 milligrams or higher with your foods.

But for pregnancy, I would say, you know, the copper is just sort of, like, you want to get your minimum requirement for copper, and you don’t have to alter it because you are going to absorb it better, and you are going to do something with that copper. So another concern with pregnancy is vitamin A. And I don’t think the evidence is strong on this, but there is some very limited evidence that I think is very shaky that vitamin A intakes over 10,000 IU during the first eight weeks of pregnancy could cause birth defects.

And I want to reiterate here, like, triple reiterate here, the data is not good, the data is not good, the data is not good. However, most women have no need to go over 10,000 IU of vitamin A. I mean, yes, if you have signs of vitamin A deficiency because you’re poorly absorbing it, or there’s some other thing that is causing your needs to go up, and you’re monitoring blood levels, and you’re working with someone who’s sort of managing your nutrition with you, fine.

But if you’re planning on getting pregnant, and you don’t have any symptoms of vitamin A deficiency, and you don’t have any reason to think you have higher than normal needs of vitamin A, then, even though the data is not good, the data is not good, the data is not good, it’s prudent to not supplement with vitamin A to bring your intakes of retinol, which is the animal form of vitamin A that we’re most concerned with here, to not bring those over 10,000 IU per day.

After eight weeks, it doesn’t matter. So I think that’s one concern that women will encounter, and that’s basically, like, if they hear it. They might hear it put another way by someone who’s looked at the data less, like, “Vitamin A is toxic to your baby. Don’t take vitamin A when you’re pregnant.” So what I just said I think is the way to say that that actually sticks to the kernel of truth that’s there. And then, like we said before, managing morning sickness and just being proactive with, I would say, maybe like 100 to 300 micrograms of molybdenum on a proactive basis and 10 to 20 milligrams of B6 on a proactive basis as P5P.

And then, you know, I mean, for women who are philosophically natural-minded and don’t want to take extra supplements, I would say, like, you know, try to hit your targets for those foods. But honestly, like, telling a woman to eat a lot of beans when she’s pregnant might not go over very well. So taking 100 to 300 micrograms of molybdenum, taking 10 to 20 milligrams of P5P form of B6, and then… Well, one thing I didn’t mention before is that, folate, all the emphasis is on folate, but choline is very important to methylation, helps conserve folate.

And although we don’t have data in pregnant human women, we have data from rats suggesting that, if we were to extrapolate to humans, suggesting that if a woman got three times the basal requirement for choline during pregnancy, and during nursing, and then supported the growing child with three times the minimum recommendations for the first four years of life, that that could have extremely profound benefits to the brain, especially as an increase in audio spatial memory dealing with, you know, sounds and visual perception of space, preventing interference memory, which is the kind of memory loss where you forget where you parked your car when you go to the grocery store because you parked at that grocery store, you know, 350 times before, and you’re mixing all the 350 memories of where you parked your car.

And then, also, in these rats, it basically fully protects them from age-related senility at the end of life. So we’re talking about choline during pregnancy, nursing, and first four years of the child’s life, conferring brain benefits at, you know, 70, 80, 90 years old. So, I think, I actually have a good thing to link in the show notes would be my choline database. You can also Google “Masterjohn choline database,” and you can go see my recommendations there of how to get choline from foods. And if you could make a mix of choline and betaine that gets up around 1,200 or 1,300 milligrams a day from those foods, then I think that would be great to do. And you can make up the balance of supplements. I have specific recommendations for how to get choline supplements on there as well.

And I would summarize those by saying phosphatidylcholine is the best form of choline to take, and it’s the form that’s predominant in food. And you just have to be careful that, usually, when you take a supplement, the dose of phosphatidylcholine and not the dose of choline is mentioned on there. So you have to multiply it by…excuse me, you have to divide the dose on the bottle by eight to know the amount of choline you’re getting. And then trimethylglycine or TMG, you could just sort of like take that alongside the phosphatidylcholine half and half to get that.

And then the last thing I would mention is biotin. So about one-third of women spontaneously become biotin deficient during pregnancy, and biotin deficiency can cause a lot of skin problems and mood problems. So depression is a major risk of biotin deficiency as is dermatitis, which can affect a number of areas around the face and also the perineum, which is between the vagina and the anus. Particularly dermatitis in that area, like, being in the perineum would be kind of a red flag for biotin deficiency.

But also the fact that just with good markers, we know that a third of women just become biotin deficient when they’re pregnant because of their pregnancy, and it goes away after pregnancy. But, you know, how many women develop skin problems and depression during or after pregnancy? So, there, getting a few eggs a day would be your best bet. And honestly, if you try to meet the choline requirements I was just talking about, you will, by accident, meet the biotin requirements. But it’s also perfectly safe to put, you know, as much as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 milligrams of biotin in your food, which is actually way higher than what you would need.

What you’re getting for food if you shoot for, like, four egg yolks a day is going to be more on the order of 30, 40, 50 micrograms, and a microgram is a thousandth of a milligram, you know. Basically, with a supplement, if you add like 1 milligram of biotin in there, you’re getting completely safe amount of biotin that is definitely in excess of what you need. That’s my general view of pregnancy.

Katie: That was super helpful. And the last one I’ll ask you about today, but I think I’m just gonna have to keep asking you back is vitamin D because I know I’ve seen studies on vitamin D deficiency, and like low birth weights, or premature labor, and there seem to be some really big implications, but also it is one that can store in the body for at least from what I’ve read. So I know it’s one that you want to test and you want to know what your levels are. Do you have any data that you’ve seen or guidelines you would give about what target vitamin D level to aim for and what form is best to get that from?

Chris: Yeah. So, you know, vitamin D is interesting because there has been so much enthusiasm and research on vitamin D promoting high levels of it that we kind of have this…you know, which was genuinely merited by the fact that there has been and still is widespread inadequate vitamin D levels. Like, there was a study in the UK a couple of decades ago that showed that in a third trimester of pregnancy, women in the UK, on average, would have their vitamin D levels dropped to zero.

That’s, like, you know, ridiculously in need of a Vitamin D, right? And yet, we have, like, this bifurcation between kind of the general population where they probably need more vitamin D, and then we have health-conscious populations where everyone’s supplementing. And the funny thing that…you know, the majority of those people are probably getting too much, even though they, you know, certainly are people with very high needs that are minorities but are important to include here.

And so, yeah, it’s fat-soluble. But, you know, more importantly, it does have a toxicity profile, and it does increase the risk of soft tissue calcification. And I also think we always have a danger when people are told to avoid vitamin A and to take vitamin D. The risk of soft tissue calcification is going to increase because vitamin A protects against soft tissue calcification caused by too much vitamin D. So, I think, on a background for vitamin D supplementation, you don’t want to get into the hype around paranoia about vitamin A because that in and of itself is going to make vitamin D less safe.

But in pregnancy, the vitamin D needs are very similar to a non-pregnant woman for the first two trimesters. And then, in the third trimester, the fetal skeleton starts to get mineralized. And when that happens, there’s, like, a massive mobilization of calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D all going towards the mineralization, the fetal skeleton. And that’s when you see 25(OH)D levels, which is the marker that we use for vitamin D nutritional status drop in women’s blood.

Now, vitamin D is also complicated by the fact that the levels of the markers change during pregnancy. And so, it’s actually, like, it makes things difficult because the way that they change are not… It’s well-characterized what happens, but it’s not well-characterized what it means in terms of how to re-interpret the markers to know whether women need more or less. And, as a result, I think that the reason that makes things difficult is that we have this voluminous data on, you know, thousands of studies of tens or really hundreds of thousands of people on how to interpret those markers, and they just don’t apply to pregnant women.

So what happens in pregnancy is that 25(OH)D, which is the traditional marker that is mostly used to assess vitamin D status, goes down, calcium levels go down, and parathyroid hormone levels go down. Parathyroid hormone or PTH is generally a marker of…like, the higher it is, the more you need vitamin D and calcium. And meanwhile, calcitriol, which is the active hormonal form of vitamin D goes up. And I think these are probably adaptations to supply calcium to the fetus while simultaneously minimizing the risk of bone loss to the mother because PTH, which rises when you have deficient calcium and vitamin D, helps mobilize calcium to get into your blood by taking it out of your bones.

So, basically, what pregnancy is doing… And calcitriol, the active hormonal form of vitamin D, it does take calcium out of your bones, but it also increases absorption of calcium from your food. So, basically, PTH and calcitriol are two different ways that you can mobilize more calcium into the blood, which, in the case of pregnancy, you’re trying to get it to go to the fetus. And what pregnancy is doing is, and I don’t know what mediates this, estrogen, progesterone or, you know, chorionic and…I don’t know what it is. Something in pregnancy is shifting the balance to a calcitriol dominant state to take more calcium out of your food and less calcium out of your bones. That way, overall, you get net more calcium moving to the fetus, but to the degree you’re not taxing the mother’s bones.

You can support that system by supplying more vitamin D to the mother, and that’s going to funnel in to bring 25(OH)D levels back up, which we measure as the main marker of nutritional status. It’s also the precursor to calcitriol, so it’s going to spill into calcitriol production. The more calcitriol you get and the less PTH you get, the more you’re going to protect the mother’s skeleton, while also simultaneously maximally extracting calcium from food to shift towards the fetus. At the same time, you can support that by getting more calcium in the diet.

We talked about this last time. I think the calcium requirements, the official calcium requirements are not changed during pregnancy if I remember that right, but, I think they clearly are, physiologically. And more to the point, I think a lot of women who are, you know, maybe altering what they eat because of pregnancy and their food aversions and so on, and then, on top of that, women in our audiences who are health conscious are often…especially like in the Paleo world, this is also true in the vegan world. A lot of people are worried about calcium supplements.

And I would say that in pregnancy, especially in the third trimester, to support mineralization of the fetal skeleton with minimal risk to the woman’s bones, you at least want to hit the RDA for calcium, and I would say go a little bit above it. So consistently hitting like 1,200 or 1,300 milligrams of calcium I think would be the ideal thing, alongside taking whatever vitamin D will keep your 25(OH)D levels up into the normal range, which, you know, to me, you’re looking at 30 to 40 nanograms per milliliter, in my opinion. And then, you know, it’s perfectly safe to take an extra 1,000 or 2,000 IU of vitamin D if you’re not measuring your blood level, but it’d be ideal to measure your blood levels.

Katie: Amazing. That is so practical and helpful. And, once again, our time has completely flown by, and you’re just gonna have to come back at some point.

Chris: I would be happy to.

Katie: Thank you so much for the time today. I know how busy you are. And I’m so grateful for you coming back again to share even more, and I look forward to more episodes in the future.

Chris: Awesome. Can’t wait.

Katie: And thanks to all of you for joining us and listening today, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama Podcast.” If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/targeted-nutrition/

[houseofvans]

ART SCHOOL | MICHAEL C. HSIUNG (LOS ANGELES) | VANS US OPEN OF SURFING 2017

Last, but certainly not least, we’re stoked to announce Michael C. Hsiung as our fifth and final muralist at this year’s 2017 Vans US Open of Surfing! You may know Michael for his intricate line work and bearded characters, but Michael is not just one thing. In fact, he’s the House of Vans Art Editor— creating magic on this blog every day. We’re so excited to turn the tables and interview Michael for a change to find out how he first got interested in art, and what project he’s most proud of. Keep your eyes peeled as he transfers his art onto the biggest canvas of his career at the Vans US Open of Surfing!

Photographs courtesy of the artist

Introduce yourself My name is Michael C. Hsiung. I’m an artist/drawer who was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, where exposure to skateboarding, heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons fueled my imagination. Fun fact: My middle name represented by the letter “C” is actually my Chinese given name that refers to “the Unicorn,” from Chinese mythology! How perfect is that hah.

What’s your medium of choice? My favorite medium of choice has to be pens like Microns because first and foremost I was a doodler, and there’s something about having my hands and elbows press down on the paper that gives me comfort.

Have you ever created anything in a space as large as the skate bowl at Vans Us Open of Surfing? I’ve never have painted anything as large as what I’ll be painting in the skate bowl at the Vans US Open of Surfing. I’m excited, nervous, and just ready to get at it. I’m also super stoked that Vans gave me an opportunity to paint this year alongside so many talented folks like Lauren Asta, Jack Graydon, Andrew Pommier and Teddy Kelly!

How did you first get interested in art? Are you self taught or art schooled? I was drawing and coloring with my talented older sister, Pearl, for as long as I can remember. Drawing was our activity as kids –from drawing our own food to play with to drawing illustrations for our own newspapers!  

While my sister went to art school, I really just thought my drawing talents were more of a hobby.  I never really thought it was something for me to pursue.  It wasn’t till after I graduated college and moved back to LA that I actually started revisiting drawing.  I got lots of positive feedback from friends and folks, so I just kept it going and here I am.  It’s basically been on-the-job training for me the last 8 years or so?

What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever created? One of my favorite things I’ve ever created was for Blunt Umbrellas in New Zealand.  We had worked together with an agency to create three unique and detailed illustrations for their artist umbrella and ad designs!  It was just so fun to make something and then have my name attached to it.  We released all my designs on to limited umbrellas, and I still get lots of cool emails or comments about them, which is so cool. We even won a Gold (New Zealand’s Best Graphic Designs) and Silver (Spike Asia) for the designs!  

What was the first piece of artwork you ever sold? I think the first piece of artwork I sold was a drawing at the first show I ever was in at a space in Echo Park called Echo Curio.  Two talented guys I worked with at a museum opened the space and invited me to participate.  Pretty sure the drawing had something to do with mermen, a favorite subject matter of mine. Gosh I think that was in 2006.

Many of your pieces feature a mustached, bearded man. Who is he and what does he represent? As long as I can remember (I have old drawings as a kid), I’ve always kind of drawn mustaches on people for some reason.  Probably some weird early obsession, but it was something that just sort of happened with characters.  I guess sometimes I thought their faces were too plain or needed more character, so I’d add these features which allowed me more room for detail, pattern and etc. Sometimes they represent old San Fernando valley hippies (I grew up around Topanga) and sometimes they’re just hermity looking people.  Sometimes it is to add a bit more dimension or personality, but occasionally I’ll draw a goatee or something hahah.

Would you say your personality reflects your work? I think whether or not it is on purpose, my personality is reflected in my works.  Usually folks will say that my sense of humor peeks through, and I like to think that I’m a fairly lighthearted person in that aspect. I like to laugh, and I like to make folks smile and laugh through my art.

What project are you most proud of? The project I’m most proud of is the recent work that was selected for Metro LA’s Through the Eyes of Artists poster series 2017!  My illustration and digital collage for the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook was chosen and will be on placards for select Metro buses and trains in LA!  It is my proudest project so far because it’s for Los Angeles and for the public transportation system, two things I support!

What’s the most used tool/item in your studio? Books.  By far my favorite tool and item because I can find inspiration in the old books I’ve got on costuming, scrimshaw, mythology or etc.  I love old illustrations and flipping through books and reading them - I always find an interesting tidbits or stories that can turn into a drawing or I can sort of re-tell in my own weird way.

What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of being the Art Editor for the House of Vans Blog? I think the most challenging and rewarding part of being the Art Editor for the House of Vans Blog is keeping up and staying on top of all the talented artists! It happens to also be the most rewarding part too.  Through the blog, I’ve got to interview so many amazing folks and support the work of artists who I’ve always been a fan of–being able to get their story and art out there is something I’m very stoked on.   

Top 3 songs to listen to while creating: 1. Children of the Grave | Black Sabbath 2. Rainbow in the Dark |  DIO 3. And Classical music from public radio! I KNOW total opposite! ha

What is the last exhibit/show you saw? The last show I saw was the Twenty One group show at Subliminal Projects in LA, celebrating 21 years of Shepherd Fairey’s gallery and studio.  I was lucky to be a participant, and it was filled with so many artists that I personally look up too and respect.  Their next show will be Todd Francis’ Worst of the Worst, the Anti-Hero retrospective August 5th will be killer!

How are you “Not Just One Thing?” First and foremost, while I might be an artist, I’m also an amateur cook / baker, avid reader, art writer, and now I’m a mineral pusher with my wife, Rachel Pitler.  We’ve just recently opened our online mineral / crystal shop called Crystal Habitats which I help to manage and run, while she curates and features stones!

Follow Michael C. Hsiung Website |  www.michaelchsiung.com Instagram | @michaelchsiung Tumblr: @michaelchsiung-blog Twitter: @MichaelCHsiung

[obinfx-blog]

Total Information Awareness? How effective was it?

What is the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program?

TIA may be the closest thing to a true "Big Brother" program that has ever been seriously contemplated in the United States.  It is based on a vision of pulling together as much information as possible about as many people as possible into an "ultra-large-scale" database, making that information available to government officials, and sorting through it to try to identify terrorists.  Since the amount of public and private information on our lives is growing by leaps and bounds every week, a government project that seeks to put all that information together is a radical and frightening thing.

Who runs the program?

TIA is run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a branch of the Department of Defense that works on military research.  It is headed by John Poindexter, the former Reagan-era National Security Adviser known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, who famously said that it was his duty to withhold information from Congress.

Is this program unique?

No.  There is another effort underway that could bring about a similar result:  an airline profiling system called CAPS II.  CAPS II would collect massive amounts of information about the tens of millions of American who fly each year and use that information to create profiles. Its use in the airline context gives it a lot more surface appeal, and it has been presented in a far less threatening manner, but it is based on the same faulty premise that terrorism can be prevented by collecting hoards of information about everyone and then subjecting them to a virtual dragnet.  

How much information would be available to the program?

Virtual dragnet programs like TIA and CAPS II are based on the premise that the best way to protect America against terrorism is to for the government to collect as much information as it can about everyone - and these days, that is a LOT of information. They could incorporate not only government records of all kinds but individuals' medical and financial records, political beliefs, travel history, prescriptions, buying habits, communications (phone calls, e-mails, and Web surfing), school records, personal and family associations, and so on.  

In the last decade we have witnessed an enormous explosion in the amount of tracking and information of individuals in the United States, due mainly to two factors:

Technology. The explosion of computers, cameras, location-sensors, wireless communication, biometrics, and other technologies is making it a lot easier to track, store, and analyze information about individuals' activities.                                          

The commercialization of data.  Corporations in recent years have discovered that detailed information about consumers is extremely valuable, and are in the process of figuring out how to squeeze every available penny out of this revenue source.  That is why consumers are increasingly being asked for their information everywhere they turn, from product registration forms to loyalty programs to sweepstakes entry forms.  As a result, private sector incentives are now aligned with the interests of those in government who wish to track everyone's behavior.  The government has not been shy about buying that data, and it is envisioned as a primary source for the TIA database.  

The information that is generated and retained about our activities is becoming so rich that if all that information about us was put together, it would almost be like having a video camera following us around.  Programs like TIA would make such "data surveillance" a reality.  

What is wrong with the TIA Program?

There are five major problems with the concept behind programs like "Total Information Awareness" and CAPS II:

It would kill privacy in America.  Under this program, every aspect of our lives would be cataloged and made available to government officials.  Americans have the right to expect that their lives will not become an open book when they have not done, and are not even suspected of doing, anything wrong.                                          

It harbors tremendous potential for abuse. The motto of the TIA program is that ""knowledge is power,"" and in fact, the keepers of the TIA database would gain a tremendous amount of power over American citizens.  Inevitably, some of them will abuse that power.  An example of the kind of abuses that can happen was chronicled in a July 2001 investigation by the Detroit Free Press (and December 2001 follow-up): the newspaper found that police officers with access to a database for Michigan law enforcement had used it to help their friends or themselves stalk women, threaten motorists, track estranged spouses - even to intimidate political opponents.  Experience has shown that when large numbers of Americans challenge the government's policy (for example in Vietnam), some parts of the government react by conducting surveillance and using it against critics.  The unavoidable truth is that a super-database like TIA will lead to super-abuses.                                            

It is based on virtual dragnets instead of individualized suspicion. TIA would represent a radical departure from the centuries-old Anglo-American tradition that the police conduct surveillance only where there is evidence of involvement in wrongdoing.  It would seek to protect us by monitoring everyone for signs of wrongdoing - by instituting a giant dragnet capable of sifting through the personal lives of Americans.   It would ruin the very American values that our government is supposed to be protecting.                                          

It would not be effective. The program is based on highly speculative assumptions about how databases can be tapped to stop terrorism, and there are good reasons to suspect that it would not work at all (see below).                                          

It fails basic balancing tests.  The benefits of this program in stopping terrorism are highly speculative, but the damage that it would do to American freedom is certain.

Why would TIA be ineffective?

There is no question that if government agents track the lives and activities of everyone, they will probably experience some marginal improvement in their ability to stop terrorism - through even a perfect totalitarian society could not stop every attack (the Nazis were unable to stop attacks by the Resistance in France and other occupied nations during World War II, for example).  And there is no question that many other, more direct steps that the U.S. is taking will significantly improve our security.  The real question is how much additional safety would a TIA program bring us over and above all the other steps we're taking (tightened borders, improved overseas intelligence, increased airport security, etc).

There is a good reason to think the answer is: not much at all.  Some versions of TIA described by Defense officials are based on the dubious premise that "terrorist patterns" can be ferreted out from the enormous mass of American lives using techniques known as "data mining" that try to identify hidden patterns in large masses of data.  What attracts proponents of this scheme is that data mining has proven very successful in some commercial contexts, such as the discovery of suspicious spending patterns that indicate credit card fraud.  The problem is that in order to be effective, data miners need an enormous amount of sample data to work from.  Credit card companies experience a vast amount of fraud, which allows them to go back and find patterns of behavior that are associated with it.  But as horrific as the 9/11 attacks were, there have been very few overall incidents of terrorism within the United States in the recent past, so it is difficult to understand how these programs will be able to identify true patterns of suspicious behavior, and easy to imagine how they will simply end up reflecting the beliefs and prejudices of their programmers about what that behavior looks like (and there's no need to sift through data about millions of citizens to do that).  

The debate appears to be underway within government over the utility of data mining to fight terrorism.  Publicly, TIA officials have recently said that they never intended to carry out such data mining.  Even their more modest descriptions of what TIA would do, however, are of questionable effectiveness and would devastate privacy. (See the May 2003 ACLU report on the questions TIA must answer for Congress: Total Information Compliance.)

In fact, a program like TIA could actually reduce our security by draining resources from more effective measures like an improved collection of on-the-ground foreign intelligence.  

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, numerous intelligence experts declared that the government's problem was a failure to sift targeted intelligence information from the masses of useless data.  The TIA solution to that problem would be to exponentially increase the amount of junk data that the government collects.  You don't find a needle in a haystack by bringing in more hay.

If TIA is implemented, it will probably fail at preventing the next terrorist attack.  But once created, that kind of failure is unlikely to lead to the program being shut down.  Instead, it will probably just spur the government into an ever-more furious effort to collect ever-greater amounts of personal information on ever-more people in a vain effort to make the concept work.  We would then have the worst of both worlds: poor security and a super-charged surveillance tool that would destroy Americans' privacy and threaten our freedom.  

Now tell what you think would make this program more effective?

[masterofmagics]

Remy Reviews: Pierce Brown - Red

This review contains spoilers, obviously.

I picked up this book at my local bookstore because I pick up every book that I feel the slightest bit of promise from, since I have no self control. I tore through it in not more than 3 days during a few car rides on vacation.

It opens fairly stereotypically for its genre (dystopian YA). The protagonist is an outstanding Helium-3 miner in a miners’ colony on the planet Mars. I will not start on the implication that a gas like He-3 can be mined with big drills - this is not Remy’s chemistry nitpicking post.

The protagonist, Darrow, is content in his life, until his wife (NB: people in the mining colony don’t usually live to 40, and it’s customary to marry as teenagers) is hanged for singing a rebellious song. He decides to bury her, also a crime punishable by death, and gets hanged.

Lo and behold, he is saved by the resistance! Some backstory here; the solar system is ruled by a single government that enforces a rigorous caste system, that’s color coded for your convenience. Golds are the ruling class, Reds do manual labour (Darrow is a Red), Coppers are administrators, Pinks are… in the pleasure business. The Reds in the mines are told they are harvesting He-3 to make the planet Mars livable, but really it’s been colonised for ages and they’re kind of just slaves.

The resistance, calling themselves the ‘Sons of Ares’ (this is the first of many classical mythological motifs) wants to send Darrow as an infiltrator to the Golds Super Special School for Skilled Kids. One of them would probably have made a better alliteration. The problem is that due to centuries upon centuries (the Golds are said to have taken over roughly 700 years ago) of genetic manipulation, he is physically not on the same level. A Purple (artists, but also genetic meddlers) takes care of that issue, and he gets sent to the school.

The school is not high school drama and jocks or nerds, and I’m almost sad it wasn’t, because it’d almost be less trope abiding than the reality. Instead, The Institute, as it’s called (X-Men readers raise your hands), is more like Capture the Flag meets Hunger Games meets Hogwarts meets Camp Half-Blood. The students are sorted into twelve houses corresponding to the Roman Olympian deities (although instead of Neptune, the writer decided to use Pluto- sadly, this is also not Remy’s mythology nitpicking hour) that are then dumped into an arena of sorts inside their house’s castle. Their flag has the power to enslave members of other houses. They’re not technically supposed to murder each other, but everyone kind of forgot about it after the Game Makers - sorry, the Supervisors didn’t really punish it at all.

I’m not going too deep into the rest, because I’d just be retelling the story, but of course Darrow gains sympathy for the Goldens, and of course he gets a new love interest, it’s all very predictable.

The book, speaking in terms of style, is well-written. Brown has a good style and knows how to write compelling characters.

And here’s also where I have to get on my soapbox and grandstand about a pet peeve of mine: stupid capitalisation. Capitalising a word in the middle does not make it a cool word. I could care less about duroSteel (is that Star Wars I detect?) or nanoBlades. In fact, I find it kind of annoying to read. Please do not do this, because obviously my opinion is the most important of all.

Also, my translated copy had spelling and punctuation errors that simply should not have been in a final edition. Not the writer’s fault, but really, kinda sloppy.

Now where was I.

The writing itself, in the technical aspects, leaves very little to remark about it. However, as some astute readers might have noticed, I find it very trope adherent. I could accurately predict some of the twists (betrayal! secret twins! this guy dies (but not really)!), and there were a certain few sloppy Chekovs in the story.

The story setting is very typically dystopian, too. Powerful ruling class? Check. Rigorous caste system? You bet. Censorship, suppression of dissent, and cool technology? You guessed it.

One of its other cardinal sins is the apparent forgetfulness of the writer. His urge to push a lot of interesting things (because for all I like to harp on the tropeyness of the Hunger Gamesian parts, I loved it) into the book leads to other parts being pushed away. During the Institute’s war game, Darrow’s backstory is reduced to a cheap cause of character conflict in an already complicated character.

Now to clarify, I don’t think complicated characters are bad. And the character itself forgetting about his origins is compelling character development. But, the reader can never forget about the origin of the character. If you push too much to the point where the characters in the middle of the book and the characters in the prologue and epilogue might as well have been different people, you’re going too far.

And yes, I think the origin becomes a very cheap conflict in the middle. Why? It never puts him before any real choices. The writer never really explores his guilt for going to someone else after his wife was killed by the same ruling class he’s now mixing with. It feels like an afterthought the reader is occasionally reminded of.

It’s like Brown couldn’t decide between writing Brave New World or The Hunger Games and just threw them both in. In my opinion, both parts are cheapened because of it.

Despite this, I actually greatly enjoyed the book. As I mentioned, despite his flaws, Brown writes compelling characters, and I couldn’t wait to find out what happens to them.

Although the one I missed the most in the second part was Matteo, Darrow’s young Pink teacher in Golden etiquette, dancing and sweet homosexual lovemaking.

Okay, I made up that last one. But it would have been nice.

Final judgement: 3.5/5. Flawed, but enjoyable, and definitely not the worst you can find in Dystopian YA at the moment.

[cryptobrief]

Lately, longtime Bitcoin Core contributor Luke Dashjr has been gauging support for a potential lowering of Bitcoin’s block weight limit (the effective block size limit these days) on social media. In Dashjr’s view, the block weight limit is currently too high, as evidenced by the amount of time it takes to complete the initial block download aspect of full node synchronization (for example).

Is it time for #Bitcoin to do a *temporary* block size/weight limit DECREASE yet?

— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) December 19, 2018

At the Unconfiscable Conference in Las Vegas over the weekend, the Why Bitcoin Not Blockchain? panel was asked by an audience member for their thoughts on Dashjr’s statements regarding the block weight limit. The panel consisted of Mempool Partners founder Johnny Dilley, Programming Blockchain instructor Jimmy Song, and BHB Network founder Giacomo Zucco, with Bitcoin analyst Tone Vays as moderator.

Luke is Technically Correct

In their responses to the question from the audience, the general consensus of the panelists was that Dashjr’s logic is correct.

“Luke is almost always technically correct, but in a way that’s almost always prone to piss everyone else off,” said Dilley, who added that he’s friends with Dashjr.

Dilley went on to praise Dashjr’s understanding of the centralization pressures that face Bitcoin, pointing out that he ran one of the first bitcoin mining pools to ever exist. As supporting evidence for the argument that the block weight limit should be lowered, Dilley also mentioned that Moore’s Law essentially ended eight years ago.

While not outright claiming support for Dashjr’s views (at least not in a non-sarcastic manner), Zucco provided some points to back up Dashjr’s argument too:

“One thing that I think people do not appreciate in Luke’s argument is that Bitcoin should be able to run in a worst case scenario, and since now we are witnessing the best case scenario (the world is not going into a war which is partitioning the internet, we are not forced to use Tor for everything, miners can use beautiful things like FIBRE and Stratum without running on Tor, we don’t have to hide our full node) . . . We should prepare for the worst case condition.”

Zucco added that the issue of people not running their own full nodes is related to the larger phenomenon of most people opting for cloud services connected to their smartphones over storing their own data on their own hardware.

But It’s Not Worth the Hassle

Although the panel agreed that Dashjr’s logic is technically correct, they also agreed that attempting to implement this change may not be worth the hassle.

“We are facing a perpetually worse scaling problem every single day, but we’re already in a place where [lowering the block weight limit] is a difficult conversation to have because of the kind of aggression that was brought about and brought on by the businesses that seek to have their businesses subsidized by the protocol,” said Dilley. “So, to the extent that I personally would not like to see that debate ever happen ever again I don’t think those conversations are that useful.”

Here, Dilley is referring to the businesses that lobbied for a variety of contentious hard-forking increases to Bitcoin’s block size limit over the years, culminating in the failure of the hard fork portion of the SegWit2x plan, which was based on the New York Agreement. Some members of the Bitcoin community viewed this as an attempted corporate takeover of the Bitcoin network.

“If you follow his reasoning, there’s really no flaw there; he’s very logically sound about this stuff,” admitted Song. “That said, there are compromises. This is what makes Bitcoin beautiful. You need consensus to do this stuff, and we don’t have that.”

At the end of this part of the panel discussion, Vays added that Dashjr would probably never launch his own altcoin due to the lack of support for a lowering of the block weight limit on the Bitcoin network, which appeared to be a shot at Bitcoin Cash supporters. Bitcoin Cash was launched back in August 2017 as a reaction to a lack of consensus for a hard-forking increase to Bitcoin’s block size limit.

[clarencebfaber]

7 Reasons Why Insurance Wont Pay for Functional Medicine

Functional medicine focuses on getting to the root cause of your problem instead of just treating the symptom.

We are living in one of the worst chronic disease epidemics of all time with 1 in 2 Americans living with a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) caused by preventable lifestyle factors, like nutrition and sleep, and a projected 100,000 doctor shortage by 2030 (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017). 

The solution? If you’re looking to insurance, you may be waiting awhile, at least if you want an option other than the current model, like Functional Medicine or a holistic doctor.

Practitioners who take  an “unconventional approach” to medicine by addressing the roots of disease, as opposed to managing symptoms like the norm.

Sound Familiar?

If you’ve ever been to the doctor, you’ve probably experienced the healthcare rabbit hole. 

1st Step: Feel sick.

2nd: Step Call the doctor to make an appointment.

3rd Step: Wait 1-4 weeks to get seen. 

4th Step: Go to see the doctor. Wait in the waiting room. Chat briefly.

5th Step: Walk out with a prescription or go down a rabbit hole to see another specialist or schedule another appointment.

We ALL know that rabbit hole: 

The Rabbit Hole of Healthcare

In the traditional healthcare system, it takes an average of121 minutes each time a person seeks medical care just to get seen. The total includes 37 minutes of travel time, as well as 87 minutes at the doctor’s office or clinic—most of that spent waiting in the waiting room. (Ray et al, 2015)  

In fact, the average person only spends 15 minutes of “talk time” with the doctor in a visit (Tai-Seale et al, 2007). 

Couple this with the projection tha,t by 2030, America will have a 100,000 doctor shortage (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017)—unable to meet the “demands” of the, now, 1 in 2 Americans who has a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) and, Houston…we have a problem!

I’ve been there, got the t-shirt. 

The Scene: Healthcare & Current Insurance Inefficiencies 

I had waited 3-months for the appointment with a local doctor in town. 

Nothing unusual—as the “average” wait time to see a doctor nowadays—especially a specialist—is an average of 24-52 days (Merritt Hawkins, 2017). And, not for anything crazy—just an annual “Well Woman” check up. 

So there I was in a conventional outpatient clinic, after 3-months of waiting to see the doctor, and here’s what went down under my conventional health insurance…

What Traditional Health Insurance DOES Cover

1. OVERBOOKED APPOINTMENTS:

Traffic was shut down to one lane on I-35 in Austin and I was running right on time to the appointment (not early). I called the office on my way to inform them of the situation, to which they said to still come in.I managed to park in the lot right at 8:35 a.m. and race upstairs for my 8:30 a.m. appointment.

Once checking in with the staff, she told me she’d have to call back to the doctor’s staff (which they had already done) to verify I could get “in.” 10-minutes later, confirmation was given—I could go back to the waiting room.

2. DISORGANIZATION:

However, before being released to the waiting room, ANOTHER hurdle…

Front Desk: “Oh wait a second..you can’t see the doctor, you have an HMO plan,” the front desk girl said.

Me: “My doctor faxed it over 3-months ago when I made the appointment.”

Front Desk: “You will need to fax it again if you want to keep the appointment,” the girl said.

(I quickly texted my doctor—one of my colleagues and now friends—and the situation was resolved).

3. A SYMPTOM-BASED APPROACH:

As I sat in the waiting room, I was asked to complete a one-page form.The only thing the form asked me about was…my symptoms, my brief health history (surgeries, family diseases), if I smoke or drank, and the date of my last period. 

That’s it.

No exploration around my current diet, sleep habits, what work I had already done around my gut health, my health goals, my physical activity patterns, food intolerances and beyond.

4. CHRONIC DISEASE SYMPTOMS:

Initially, it only took about 15-minutes once I was in the waiting room to go back to the clinic room. The nurse was very nice and did her routine thing: blood pressure, weight check, heart rate and body temperature. She also asked me the SAME questions on my health form. She was shocked to hear how I had NO diseases whatsoever. My ONLY complaint was chronic constipation. (Apparently she was used to hearing ALOT more). 

5. LONG 2-HOUR WAITS:

After our check in, the nurse left me be…for 2 hours.

At one point in my waiting, she actually asked if she could “pull me” out of my room for “about 10 minutes” to go back to the waiting room in order to see another patient.

So I went back to the waiting room where I waited another 45-minutes…

6. NO APPOINTMENTS: 

I had booked a 10:30 am appointment with a client of mine—allotting for my 8:30 a.m. doctor visit that morning, thinking I’d have plenty of time in between. 10:20 a.m. rolled around and I was STILL in the waiting room. To say the least, I did not get seen, and the nurse told me she’d call back that evening to reschedule…which did not happen.

The Solution?: People Want to Take Their Health Into Their Own Hands

Many people are looking to take their health into their own hands—with at least 80% of all people seeking out advice on search engines like Google alone (Pew Research Center, 2013). 

Others are looking for OTHER options (like holistic doctors, health coaches and functional medicine providers). 

According to a report from the National Institute for Health in 2015 alone, researchers found that about 1 in 3 Americans were utilizing some sort of alternative or holistic care out of mainstream medicine (Stussman et al, 2015). 

Fast forward to today, and there is no doubt that those numbers are consistent—if not more—with the job outlook for all allied healthcare providers expected to go up by 2026 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (including occupational therapy, physical therapy, personal fitness training, health coaching, life coaching, acupuncture, chiropractic care and naturopathic or functional medicine). 

However, this doesn’t mean these alternative providers are always covered by health insurance. 

A common question we as functional medicine practitioners are asked is:

Patient: “Do you take insurance?”

Functional Medicine Provider: To which we most often reply, “No.”

Although many holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners CAN submit superbills, and SOME CAN reimburse partially for visits or lab testing, generally most holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners are cash pay.

Why?!

Let me give you 7 reasons.

7 Reasons Why Insurance Doesn’t Cover Holistic Doctors & Functional Medicine

1. Insurance is NOT Patient-Centered.

Functional Medicine is patient-centered. Instead of focusing on numbers-centered or about getting more people in the door, wee typically take time to review your chart well before your appointment.

2. Insurance is NOT Big on Taking Time with Patients.

Functional Medicine takes time. We don’t rush to get you through our churn mill. Typically, you will spend 1-2 hours for your first appointment so your practitioner can truly get to know your story. The doctor will assess your health struggles and your goals.

3. Insurance is NOT Focused on the Whole Body.

Functional Medicine is a “Whole Body Medicine,” taking into consideration all aspects of your health and life. Those that contribute to how you feel and the presentation of disease. It’s different from an endocrinologist who just looks at your hormones and thyroid, an ENT doc who just looks at your ears, nose and throat, or a psychologist who just focuses on your mental health. Functional Medicine acknowledges a respect and awareness of how ALL body systems impact one another, including:

Gut Health

Brain Function

Hormone Health

Detoxification Pathways

Mindset/Mentality

Cardiovascular Health

Immunity

Thyroid & Metabolic Health

Mineral & Vitamin Status

 4. Insurance Does NOT Address the Roots of Disease.

Functional Medicine does. Instead of looking to suppress or manage symptoms from the top down, we take a “bottom up” approach. We find and address the triggers and root causes of any disease or symptoms a patient is experiencing. These include bacterial overgrowth and SIBO (connected with skin conditions, chronic headaches, metabolic dysfunction, and GI disturbances), or cortisol imbalances (connected with insomnia, anxiety, blood sugar imbalances, and GI disturbances). 

5. Insurance is NOT Focused on Prevention.

Functional Medicine focused on preventing disease, or further decline of health from happening by using laboratory reference ranges (blood work, urine, stool analysis, etc.) that reflect the progression of disease (in order to help reverse it early). We also integrate lifestyle medicine FIRST to support our clients health as a whole. Through a holistic care plan that includes nutrition, supplement, lifestyle healing and stress busting strategies, and physical activity.

6. Insurance Views Functional Medicine as “Quack” Medicine.

Contrary to popular belief, Functional Medicine isn’t about “woo woo” or “voo doo.”  Functional Medicine acknowledges the latest in research to influence and support care. In fact, Functional Medicine is simply an approach to medicine. Healthcare says, “Hey guys, let’s address lifestyle factors FIRST and consider all aspects of health—not symptoms—before turning to medicines or negating other factors of our patients’ modern day lifestyles.”

Functional medicine acknowledges science, reason and research for modes of healing and treatment protocols. If anything, is a compliment to the ever-evolving research in traditional medicine.

For example, with the past 3 years of research on the gut microbiome alone (more than 8,000 studies in PubMed), we know that our gut health definitely influences other aspects of our health, including our mood and anxiety levels (Clapp et al, 2017), our metabolism (Boulange et al, 2016) and brain health (Li et al, 2017). In practice, Functional Medicine is more readily able to address gut healing for all types of conditions and diseases.

Another example: when TIME Magazine leaked the “big news” that the sugar industry paid off the FDA to hide evidence that sugar—not saturated fat—was the driver of all disease, Functional Medicine practitioners could further educate their patients as to why butter, bacon and egg yolks are NOT bad. Mainstream medicine on the other hand? Still preaching that saturated fat and high cholesterol are the number one drivers of heart disease. Nevertheless, insurance companies DON’T always look for the research on their own.

7. Insurance is Stuck in the Good Ol’ Days.

If you’ve ever simply tried to call or fax something to your insurance provider, you know the never-ending hold times. In addition, inefficiencies of modern day health care (seemingly stuck in 1961). Whereas, functional medicine is now integrating more and more tele-health, “biohacking” (alternative therapies and healing supports, like infrared saunas, hot-cold therapy, coffee enemas and herbal supplements), and high-tech EMR’s (medical record systems), Insurance still has you on a “brief hold”and is comfortable doing things they’ve always done. 

Bio:

Dr. Lauryn Lax is a Doctor of Occupational Therapy, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Functional Medicine Practitioner, author and speaker, with over 20 years of clinical and personal experience specializing in gut health, intuitive eating, disordered eating, anxiety, hormone balance and women’s health. She’s based in Austin, Texas, and operates a virtual Nutrition & Functional Medicine practice, Thrive Wellness & Recovery, LLC, working with clients and patients around the world. In addition, Dr. Lauryn is a published journalist and speaker. Her works have been featured in Oxygen Magazine, Women’s Health, Paleo Magazine, Breaking Muscle, CrossFit Inc, USA Today, ABC and CBS News.  Ultimately, she loves nothing more than helping others “quiet the noise” in the health food and fitness world.

 The post 7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine appeared first on Meet Dr. Lauryn.

Source/Repost=> https://drlauryn.com/wellness-knowledge/insurance-wont-pay-functional-medicine/ ** Dr. Lauryn Lax __Nutrition. Therapy. Functional Medicine ** https://drlauryn.com/

7 Reasons Why Insurance Wont Pay for Functional Medicine via https://drlaurynlax.weebly.com/

[brian-cdates]

7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine

Functional medicine focuses on getting to the root cause of your problem instead of just treating the symptom.

We are living in one of the worst chronic disease epidemics of all time with 1 in 2 Americans living with a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) caused by preventable lifestyle factors, like nutrition and sleep, and a projected 100,000 doctor shortage by 2030 (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017). 

The solution? If you’re looking to insurance, you may be waiting awhile, at least if you want an option other than the current model, like Functional Medicine or a holistic doctor.

Practitioners who take  an “unconventional approach” to medicine by addressing the roots of disease, as opposed to managing symptoms like the norm.

Sound Familiar?

If you’ve ever been to the doctor, you’ve probably experienced the healthcare rabbit hole. 

1st Step: Feel sick.

2nd: Step Call the doctor to make an appointment.

3rd Step: Wait 1-4 weeks to get seen. 

4th Step: Go to see the doctor. Wait in the waiting room. Chat briefly.

5th Step: Walk out with a prescription or go down a rabbit hole to see another specialist or schedule another appointment.

We ALL know that rabbit hole: 

The Rabbit Hole of Healthcare

In the traditional healthcare system, it takes an average of121 minutes each time a person seeks medical care just to get seen. The total includes 37 minutes of travel time, as well as 87 minutes at the doctor’s office or clinic—most of that spent waiting in the waiting room. (Ray et al, 2015)  

In fact, the average person only spends 15 minutes of “talk time” with the doctor in a visit (Tai-Seale et al, 2007). 

Couple this with the projection tha,t by 2030, America will have a 100,000 doctor shortage (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017)—unable to meet the “demands” of the, now, 1 in 2 Americans who has a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) and, Houston…we have a problem!

I’ve been there, got the t-shirt. 

The Scene: Healthcare & Current Insurance Inefficiencies 

I had waited 3-months for the appointment with a local doctor in town. 

Nothing unusual—as the “average” wait time to see a doctor nowadays—especially a specialist—is an average of 24-52 days (Merritt Hawkins, 2017). And, not for anything crazy—just an annual “Well Woman” check up. 

So there I was in a conventional outpatient clinic, after 3-months of waiting to see the doctor, and here’s what went down under my conventional health insurance…

What Traditional Health Insurance DOES Cover

1. OVERBOOKED APPOINTMENTS:

Traffic was shut down to one lane on I-35 in Austin and I was running right on time to the appointment (not early). I called the office on my way to inform them of the situation, to which they said to still come in.I managed to park in the lot right at 8:35 a.m. and race upstairs for my 8:30 a.m. appointment.

Once checking in with the staff, she told me she’d have to call back to the doctor’s staff (which they had already done) to verify I could get “in.” 10-minutes later, confirmation was given—I could go back to the waiting room.

2. DISORGANIZATION:

However, before being released to the waiting room, ANOTHER hurdle…

Front Desk: “Oh wait a second..you can’t see the doctor, you have an HMO plan,” the front desk girl said.

Me: “My doctor faxed it over 3-months ago when I made the appointment.”

Front Desk: “You will need to fax it again if you want to keep the appointment,” the girl said.

(I quickly texted my doctor—one of my colleagues and now friends—and the situation was resolved).

3. A SYMPTOM-BASED APPROACH:

As I sat in the waiting room, I was asked to complete a one-page form.The only thing the form asked me about was…my symptoms, my brief health history (surgeries, family diseases), if I smoke or drank, and the date of my last period. 

That’s it.

No exploration around my current diet, sleep habits, what work I had already done around my gut health, my health goals, my physical activity patterns, food intolerances and beyond.

4. CHRONIC DISEASE SYMPTOMS:

Initially, it only took about 15-minutes once I was in the waiting room to go back to the clinic room. The nurse was very nice and did her routine thing: blood pressure, weight check, heart rate and body temperature. She also asked me the SAME questions on my health form. She was shocked to hear how I had NO diseases whatsoever. My ONLY complaint was chronic constipation. (Apparently she was used to hearing ALOT more). 

5. LONG 2-HOUR WAITS:

After our check in, the nurse left me be…for 2 hours.

At one point in my waiting, she actually asked if she could “pull me” out of my room for “about 10 minutes” to go back to the waiting room in order to see another patient.

So I went back to the waiting room where I waited another 45-minutes…

6. NO APPOINTMENTS: 

I had booked a 10:30 am appointment with a client of mine—allotting for my 8:30 a.m. doctor visit that morning, thinking I’d have plenty of time in between. 10:20 a.m. rolled around and I was STILL in the waiting room. To say the least, I did not get seen, and the nurse told me she’d call back that evening to reschedule…which did not happen.

The Solution?: People Want to Take Their Health Into Their Own Hands

Many people are looking to take their health into their own hands—with at least 80% of all people seeking out advice on search engines like Google alone (Pew Research Center, 2013). 

Others are looking for OTHER options (like holistic doctors, health coaches and functional medicine providers). 

According to a report from the National Institute for Health in 2015 alone, researchers found that about 1 in 3 Americans were utilizing some sort of alternative or holistic care out of mainstream medicine (Stussman et al, 2015). 

Fast forward to today, and there is no doubt that those numbers are consistent—if not more—with the job outlook for all allied healthcare providers expected to go up by 2026 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (including occupational therapy, physical therapy, personal fitness training, health coaching, life coaching, acupuncture, chiropractic care and naturopathic or functional medicine). 

However, this doesn’t mean these alternative providers are always covered by health insurance. 

A common question we as functional medicine practitioners are asked is:

Patient: “Do you take insurance?”

Functional Medicine Provider: To which we most often reply, “No.”

Although many holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners CAN submit superbills, and SOME CAN reimburse partially for visits or lab testing, generally most holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners are cash pay.

Why?!

Let me give you 7 reasons.

7 Reasons Why Insurance Doesn’t Cover Holistic Doctors & Functional Medicine

1. Insurance is NOT Patient-Centered.

Functional Medicine is patient-centered. Instead of focusing on numbers-centered or about getting more people in the door, wee typically take time to review your chart well before your appointment.

2. Insurance is NOT Big on Taking Time with Patients.

Functional Medicine takes time. We don’t rush to get you through our churn mill. Typically, you will spend 1-2 hours for your first appointment so your practitioner can truly get to know your story. The doctor will assess your health struggles and your goals.

3. Insurance is NOT Focused on the Whole Body.

Functional Medicine is a “Whole Body Medicine,” taking into consideration all aspects of your health and life. Those that contribute to how you feel and the presentation of disease. It’s different from an endocrinologist who just looks at your hormones and thyroid, an ENT doc who just looks at your ears, nose and throat, or a psychologist who just focuses on your mental health. Functional Medicine acknowledges a respect and awareness of how ALL body systems impact one another, including:

Gut Health

Brain Function

Hormone Health

Detoxification Pathways

Mindset/Mentality

Cardiovascular Health

Immunity

Thyroid & Metabolic Health

Mineral & Vitamin Status

  4. Insurance Does NOT Address the Roots of Disease.

Functional Medicine does. Instead of looking to suppress or manage symptoms from the top down, we take a “bottom up” approach. We find and address the triggers and root causes of any disease or symptoms a patient is experiencing. These include bacterial overgrowth and SIBO (connected with skin conditions, chronic headaches, metabolic dysfunction, and GI disturbances), or cortisol imbalances (connected with insomnia, anxiety, blood sugar imbalances, and GI disturbances). 

5. Insurance is NOT Focused on Prevention.

Functional Medicine focused on preventing disease, or further decline of health from happening by using laboratory reference ranges (blood work, urine, stool analysis, etc.) that reflect the progression of disease (in order to help reverse it early). We also integrate lifestyle medicine FIRST to support our clients health as a whole. Through a holistic care plan that includes nutrition, supplement, lifestyle healing and stress busting strategies, and physical activity.

6. Insurance Views Functional Medicine as “Quack” Medicine.

Contrary to popular belief, Functional Medicine isn’t about “woo woo” or “voo doo.”  Functional Medicine acknowledges the latest in research to influence and support care. In fact, Functional Medicine is simply an approach to medicine. Healthcare says, “Hey guys, let’s address lifestyle factors FIRST and consider all aspects of health—not symptoms—before turning to medicines or negating other factors of our patients’ modern day lifestyles.”

Functional medicine acknowledges science, reason and research for modes of healing and treatment protocols. If anything, is a compliment to the ever-evolving research in traditional medicine.

For example, with the past 3 years of research on the gut microbiome alone (more than 8,000 studies in PubMed), we know that our gut health definitely influences other aspects of our health, including our mood and anxiety levels (Clapp et al, 2017), our metabolism (Boulange et al, 2016) and brain health (Li et al, 2017). In practice, Functional Medicine is more readily able to address gut healing for all types of conditions and diseases.

Another example: when TIME Magazine leaked the “big news” that the sugar industry paid off the FDA to hide evidence that sugar—not saturated fat—was the driver of all disease, Functional Medicine practitioners could further educate their patients as to why butter, bacon and egg yolks are NOT bad. Mainstream medicine on the other hand? Still preaching that saturated fat and high cholesterol are the number one drivers of heart disease. Nevertheless, insurance companies DON’T always look for the research on their own.

7. Insurance is Stuck in the Good Ol’ Days.

If you’ve ever simply tried to call or fax something to your insurance provider, you know the never-ending hold times. In addition, inefficiencies of modern day health care (seemingly stuck in 1961). Whereas, functional medicine is now integrating more and more tele-health, “biohacking” (alternative therapies and healing supports, like infrared saunas, hot-cold therapy, coffee enemas and herbal supplements), and high-tech EMR’s (medical record systems), Insurance still has you on a “brief hold”and is comfortable doing things they’ve always done. 

Bio:

Dr. Lauryn Lax is a Doctor of Occupational Therapy, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Functional Medicine Practitioner, author and speaker, with over 20 years of clinical and personal experience specializing in gut health, intuitive eating, disordered eating, anxiety, hormone balance and women’s health. She’s based in Austin, Texas, and operates a virtual Nutrition & Functional Medicine practice, Thrive Wellness & Recovery, LLC, working with clients and patients around the world. In addition, Dr. Lauryn is a published journalist and speaker. Her works have been featured in Oxygen Magazine, Women’s Health, Paleo Magazine, Breaking Muscle, CrossFit Inc, USA Today, ABC and CBS News.  Ultimately, she loves nothing more than helping others “quiet the noise” in the health food and fitness world.

The post 7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine appeared first on Meet Dr. Lauryn.

Source/Repost=> https://drlauryn.com/wellness-knowledge/insurance-wont-pay-functional-medicine/ ** Dr. Lauryn Lax __Nutrition. Therapy. Functional Medicine ** https://drlauryn.com/ 7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine via http://drlaurynlax.tumblr.com/

[elizabethbgrimes]

7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine

Functional medicine focuses on getting to the root cause of your problem instead of just treating the symptom.

We are living in one of the worst chronic disease epidemics of all time with 1 in 2 Americans living with a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) caused by preventable lifestyle factors, like nutrition and sleep, and a projected 100,000 doctor shortage by 2030 (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017). 

The solution? If you’re looking to insurance, you may be waiting awhile, at least if you want an option other than the current model, like Functional Medicine or a holistic doctor.

Practitioners who take  an “unconventional approach” to medicine by addressing the roots of disease, as opposed to managing symptoms like the norm.

Sound Familiar?

If you’ve ever been to the doctor, you’ve probably experienced the healthcare rabbit hole. 

1st Step: Feel sick.

2nd: Step Call the doctor to make an appointment.

3rd Step: Wait 1-4 weeks to get seen. 

4th Step: Go to see the doctor. Wait in the waiting room. Chat briefly.

5th Step: Walk out with a prescription or go down a rabbit hole to see another specialist or schedule another appointment.

We ALL know that rabbit hole: 

The Rabbit Hole of Healthcare

In the traditional healthcare system, it takes an average of121 minutes each time a person seeks medical care just to get seen. The total includes 37 minutes of travel time, as well as 87 minutes at the doctor’s office or clinic—most of that spent waiting in the waiting room. (Ray et al, 2015)  

In fact, the average person only spends 15 minutes of “talk time” with the doctor in a visit (Tai-Seale et al, 2007). 

Couple this with the projection tha,t by 2030, America will have a 100,000 doctor shortage (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2017)—unable to meet the “demands” of the, now, 1 in 2 Americans who has a chronic disease (CDC, 2017) and, Houston…we have a problem!

I’ve been there, got the t-shirt. 

The Scene: Healthcare & Current Insurance Inefficiencies 

I had waited 3-months for the appointment with a local doctor in town. 

Nothing unusual—as the “average” wait time to see a doctor nowadays—especially a specialist—is an average of 24-52 days (Merritt Hawkins, 2017). And, not for anything crazy—just an annual “Well Woman” check up. 

So there I was in a conventional outpatient clinic, after 3-months of waiting to see the doctor, and here’s what went down under my conventional health insurance…

What Traditional Health Insurance DOES Cover

1. OVERBOOKED APPOINTMENTS:

Traffic was shut down to one lane on I-35 in Austin and I was running right on time to the appointment (not early). I called the office on my way to inform them of the situation, to which they said to still come in.I managed to park in the lot right at 8:35 a.m. and race upstairs for my 8:30 a.m. appointment.

Once checking in with the staff, she told me she’d have to call back to the doctor’s staff (which they had already done) to verify I could get “in.” 10-minutes later, confirmation was given—I could go back to the waiting room.

2. DISORGANIZATION:

However, before being released to the waiting room, ANOTHER hurdle…

Front Desk: “Oh wait a second..you can’t see the doctor, you have an HMO plan,” the front desk girl said.

Me: “My doctor faxed it over 3-months ago when I made the appointment.”

Front Desk: “You will need to fax it again if you want to keep the appointment,” the girl said.

(I quickly texted my doctor—one of my colleagues and now friends—and the situation was resolved).

3. A SYMPTOM-BASED APPROACH:

As I sat in the waiting room, I was asked to complete a one-page form.The only thing the form asked me about was…my symptoms, my brief health history (surgeries, family diseases), if I smoke or drank, and the date of my last period. 

That’s it.

No exploration around my current diet, sleep habits, what work I had already done around my gut health, my health goals, my physical activity patterns, food intolerances and beyond.

4. CHRONIC DISEASE SYMPTOMS:

Initially, it only took about 15-minutes once I was in the waiting room to go back to the clinic room. The nurse was very nice and did her routine thing: blood pressure, weight check, heart rate and body temperature. She also asked me the SAME questions on my health form. She was shocked to hear how I had NO diseases whatsoever. My ONLY complaint was chronic constipation. (Apparently she was used to hearing ALOT more). 

5. LONG 2-HOUR WAITS:

After our check in, the nurse left me be…for 2 hours.

At one point in my waiting, she actually asked if she could “pull me” out of my room for “about 10 minutes” to go back to the waiting room in order to see another patient.

So I went back to the waiting room where I waited another 45-minutes…

6. NO APPOINTMENTS: 

I had booked a 10:30 am appointment with a client of mine—allotting for my 8:30 a.m. doctor visit that morning, thinking I’d have plenty of time in between. 10:20 a.m. rolled around and I was STILL in the waiting room. To say the least, I did not get seen, and the nurse told me she’d call back that evening to reschedule…which did not happen.

The Solution?: People Want to Take Their Health Into Their Own Hands

Many people are looking to take their health into their own hands—with at least 80% of all people seeking out advice on search engines like Google alone (Pew Research Center, 2013). 

Others are looking for OTHER options (like holistic doctors, health coaches and functional medicine providers). 

According to a report from the National Institute for Health in 2015 alone, researchers found that about 1 in 3 Americans were utilizing some sort of alternative or holistic care out of mainstream medicine (Stussman et al, 2015). 

Fast forward to today, and there is no doubt that those numbers are consistent—if not more—with the job outlook for all allied healthcare providers expected to go up by 2026 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (including occupational therapy, physical therapy, personal fitness training, health coaching, life coaching, acupuncture, chiropractic care and naturopathic or functional medicine). 

However, this doesn’t mean these alternative providers are always covered by health insurance. 

A common question we as functional medicine practitioners are asked is:

Patient: “Do you take insurance?”

Functional Medicine Provider: To which we most often reply, “No.”

Although many holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners CAN submit superbills, and SOME CAN reimburse partially for visits or lab testing, generally most holistic doctors and functional medicine practitioners are cash pay.

Why?!

Let me give you 7 reasons.

7 Reasons Why Insurance Doesn’t Cover Holistic Doctors & Functional Medicine

1. Insurance is NOT Patient-Centered.

Functional Medicine is patient-centered. Instead of focusing on numbers-centered or about getting more people in the door, wee typically take time to review your chart well before your appointment.

2. Insurance is NOT Big on Taking Time with Patients.

Functional Medicine takes time. We don’t rush to get you through our churn mill. Typically, you will spend 1-2 hours for your first appointment so your practitioner can truly get to know your story. The doctor will assess your health struggles and your goals.

3. Insurance is NOT Focused on the Whole Body.

Functional Medicine is a “Whole Body Medicine,” taking into consideration all aspects of your health and life. Those that contribute to how you feel and the presentation of disease. It’s different from an endocrinologist who just looks at your hormones and thyroid, an ENT doc who just looks at your ears, nose and throat, or a psychologist who just focuses on your mental health. Functional Medicine acknowledges a respect and awareness of how ALL body systems impact one another, including:

Gut Health

Brain Function

Hormone Health

Detoxification Pathways

Mindset/Mentality

Cardiovascular Health

Immunity

Thyroid & Metabolic Health

Mineral & Vitamin Status

 4. Insurance Does NOT Address the Roots of Disease.

Functional Medicine does. Instead of looking to suppress or manage symptoms from the top down, we take a “bottom up” approach. We find and address the triggers and root causes of any disease or symptoms a patient is experiencing. These include bacterial overgrowth and SIBO (connected with skin conditions, chronic headaches, metabolic dysfunction, and GI disturbances), or cortisol imbalances (connected with insomnia, anxiety, blood sugar imbalances, and GI disturbances). 

5. Insurance is NOT Focused on Prevention.

Functional Medicine focused on preventing disease, or further decline of health from happening by using laboratory reference ranges (blood work, urine, stool analysis, etc.) that reflect the progression of disease (in order to help reverse it early). We also integrate lifestyle medicine FIRST to support our clients health as a whole. Through a holistic care plan that includes nutrition, supplement, lifestyle healing and stress busting strategies, and physical activity.

6. Insurance Views Functional Medicine as “Quack” Medicine.

Contrary to popular belief, Functional Medicine isn’t about “woo woo” or “voo doo.”  Functional Medicine acknowledges the latest in research to influence and support care. In fact, Functional Medicine is simply an approach to medicine. Healthcare says, “Hey guys, let’s address lifestyle factors FIRST and consider all aspects of health—not symptoms—before turning to medicines or negating other factors of our patients’ modern day lifestyles.”

Functional medicine acknowledges science, reason and research for modes of healing and treatment protocols. If anything, is a compliment to the ever-evolving research in traditional medicine.

For example, with the past 3 years of research on the gut microbiome alone (more than 8,000 studies in PubMed), we know that our gut health definitely influences other aspects of our health, including our mood and anxiety levels (Clapp et al, 2017), our metabolism (Boulange et al, 2016) and brain health (Li et al, 2017). In practice, Functional Medicine is more readily able to address gut healing for all types of conditions and diseases.

Another example: when TIME Magazine leaked the “big news” that the sugar industry paid off the FDA to hide evidence that sugar—not saturated fat—was the driver of all disease, Functional Medicine practitioners could further educate their patients as to why butter, bacon and egg yolks are NOT bad. Mainstream medicine on the other hand? Still preaching that saturated fat and high cholesterol are the number one drivers of heart disease. Nevertheless, insurance companies DON’T always look for the research on their own.

7. Insurance is Stuck in the Good Ol’ Days.

If you’ve ever simply tried to call or fax something to your insurance provider, you know the never-ending hold times. In addition, inefficiencies of modern day health care (seemingly stuck in 1961). Whereas, functional medicine is now integrating more and more tele-health, “biohacking” (alternative therapies and healing supports, like infrared saunas, hot-cold therapy, coffee enemas and herbal supplements), and high-tech EMR’s (medical record systems), Insurance still has you on a “brief hold”and is comfortable doing things they’ve always done. 

Bio:

Dr. Lauryn Lax is a Doctor of Occupational Therapy, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Functional Medicine Practitioner, author and speaker, with over 20 years of clinical and personal experience specializing in gut health, intuitive eating, disordered eating, anxiety, hormone balance and women’s health. She’s based in Austin, Texas, and operates a virtual Nutrition & Functional Medicine practice, Thrive Wellness & Recovery, LLC, working with clients and patients around the world. In addition, Dr. Lauryn is a published journalist and speaker. Her works have been featured in Oxygen Magazine, Women’s Health, Paleo Magazine, Breaking Muscle, CrossFit Inc, USA Today, ABC and CBS News.  Ultimately, she loves nothing more than helping others “quiet the noise” in the health food and fitness world.

 The post 7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine appeared first on Meet Dr. Lauryn.

Source/Repost=> https://drlauryn.com/wellness-knowledge/insurance-wont-pay-functional-medicine/ ** Dr. Lauryn Lax __Nutrition. Therapy. Functional Medicine ** https://drlauryn.com/ 7 Reasons Why Insurance Won’t Pay for Functional Medicine via https://drlaurynlax.blogspot.com/

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Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Segwit2x is right now not being adapted around the bitcoin network because the development team has stopped working on it because of a lack of general consensus around the network. Some miners were actually waiting for the new fork to happen because it would give them a chance to dole out yet another significant fork and get airdropped forked tokens.

But, most miners withdrew their support to the Segwit2x update and subsequently the update has been put off until further notice. Some miners are however, resorting to going with the fork on their own but they are probably going to leave it be. There is also the case of another fork called Bitcoin Gold that is already being realized and aims to shift away from the influence of big miners with complex hardware.

Bitcoin Gold price

Now why is a new update needed for the bitcoin network? It is already the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and carries command, respect and universal acceptance. So, what is it regarding the bitcoin network that needs updating and how is it implemented.

First thing you need to do is what is a hard fork and why is it done?

The answer is that the bitcoin’s system is notoriously slow for transactions. Average transaction times took thirty minutes and even after September 1’s upgrade and resulting Bitcoin Cash, they have still been slow and the fee is increasing with miners prioritizing high fees.

So, a plan was laid out by a bitcoin advocacy group to implement much needed changes on the bitcoin blockchain by gradually updating the underlying protocol which technically creates a fork in itself but these changes are necessary for the future of the coin as a major alternative cryptocurrency.

The plan was to first implement BIP 91, an upgrade to the bitcoin network and it was widely accepted as a necessary measure for the currency’s future. Based on consensus, the update was successfully done and it was all part of the first Segwit upgrade. But, the Bitcoin Cash instead of changing the protocol like BIP 91, instead increased the block size to 8 MB instead and thus the first hard fork of the bitcoin was realized.

The new currency was called Bitcoin Cash and it had the same transactional history as bitcoin but the future was different and it was now up to the market to accept it. But, Bitcoin Cash wasn’t readily accepted by the crypto community even though it basically meant free coins for everyone who owned bitcoin before September 1.

Major coin exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex didn’t even allow their uses to access their bitcoin forks for a long time and still many don’t trade in cash at the moment despite it getting a healthy bump every now and then. Now there was the possibility of two forks being separated from the bitcoin network and they included Bitcoin Gold and Segwit2x fork.

Now forks are usually bad for a cryptocurrency’s future but in some cases they are needed as the segwit and the SegWit2x upgrade were forks themselves. Satoshi Nakamoto left this ability to update the system as we know it or probably even as a far sighted approach to allow bitcoin to fork and ease the load on the main bitcoin network that gets crowded and crowded every day and also as a means to start a new bitcoin currency without actually starting a new cryptocurrency. I know this is all confusing but that’s actually an easy way to understand it.

So counting on the semi-success of Bitcoin Cash, we were expecting more of these forks and thus airdropped tokens resulting from these forks. Both the Segwit2x fork and Bitcoin Gold were forks that deviated from the original bitcoin protocol but their purpose was different.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork who mining protocol was changed and in such a way that mining cartels and other powerful groups won’t be able to dominate on the mining platform no matter how big their mining setup is. It is designed to give power back to the people by allowing everybody to mine for the new coins and everybody gets a fair share of the new blocks.

Now this may seem like a good prospect but we know that rationing coins is not going to be the solution to the problem as it is unnatural. Bitcoin was never intended to act as a rationing platform. It was decided to reward people who contributed more to the security of the system and miners do add more security to the decentralization efforts and more security.

If all people start getting the same number of bitcoin regardless of their hardware setup than part of the worth of that bitcoin’s fork will be lost due to the effects of the free market economics. That is what Bitcoin Gold is claiming to do and it is my opinion that it may not end well for it.

Regarding Segwit2x I have to say that it is not likely to be revived in the recent future as a different update with a different name will come along and the fork will the be based on that. It is a good thing perhaps that the Segwit2x is unlikely to be adopted. It is because it has some serious misgivings on its part and people didn’t just buy it because of them.

SegWit2x

This stubbornness and slow update of bitcoin is actually an asset in itself. It is the reason why it is so stable and never fails your transaction even if it slows it a lot. There was a worst case scenario if the segwit2x was adopted and it failed causing irreparable damage to the bitcoin ecosystem and costing the trust of the investors, miners and general users. It would have even damaged the credibility of the Bitcoin forks as well so nobody was in the favor of a major upgrade that was volatile.

Bitcoin definitely needs a new update but it is not going to be Segwit2x and resultantly, there is going to be no fork named Segwit2x. Incase you are waiting for these airdropped forks, you need to take certain steps. In anticipation of this fork, take a major portion of your bitcoin earnings and save it on a private wallet instead of an online exchange because in that case it will be up to the exchange to give you your coin and they can take forever to do so just like Coinbase did with Bitcoin Cash.

They waited very long to release the new fork to the users. So, if you are looking forward to the next bitcoin fork, no matter what its name is gonna be, download a private wallet and transfer your non-trading bitcoins to this address.

So, while it is raining forked tokens here, lets take a look at how the future of bitcoin is going to be. Since it is the most popular and value cryptocurrency in the world, it is certain that people will be interested in getting more airdropped tokens so that they have free money basically but there is also a purpose of increased liquidity and slowing down of pressure on bitcoin to perform if its hard forks continue to do well enough.

But, too many forks would ofcourse be detrimental to the entire system not to mention extremely confusing for the newbies as I have heard things like isn’t bitcoin cash bitcoin in the form of cash? These names are extremely confusing including that of Bitcoin Gold. I mean why Gold and why would anybody name their fork after the upgrade they didn’t do; Segwit2x.

So, these are certain aspects of the bitcoin forks that the crypto community needs to be mindful about. While it is absolutely part and parcel of an open source cryptocurrency that the threat of forks is there, it is not without benefits for the long-term. So, one bitcoin fork i.e Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is likely to be added to the ever-growing list. It is probably going to be the last fork of bitcoin for this year but I can’t predict how many hard forks we will have of bitcoin in the next year alone! The very unique nature of bitcoin invites forks.

Ethereum has like a thousand tokens launched on it and even got a hard fork of Ethereum Classic itself. Nobody is interested in doing a fork of Ethereum right now. Ripple is well, Ripple and Litecoin and Dash are already soft forks of bitcoin. So, Bitcoin’s hard forks can survive all this because all of these coins are directly related to the development of bitcoin itself.

http://ift.tt/2B9QIsT

[teiraymondmccoy78]

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Segwit2x is right now not being adapted around the bitcoin network because the development team has stopped working on it because of a lack of general consensus around the network. Some miners were actually waiting for the new fork to happen because it would give them a chance to dole out yet another significant fork and get airdropped forked tokens.

But, most miners withdrew their support to the Segwit2x update and subsequently the update has been put off until further notice. Some miners are however, resorting to going with the fork on their own but they are probably going to leave it be. There is also the case of another fork called Bitcoin Gold that is already being realized and aims to shift away from the influence of big miners with complex hardware.

Bitcoin Gold price

Now why is a new update needed for the bitcoin network? It is already the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and carries command, respect and universal acceptance. So, what is it regarding the bitcoin network that needs updating and how is it implemented.

First thing you need to do is what is a hard fork and why is it done?

The answer is that the bitcoin’s system is notoriously slow for transactions. Average transaction times took thirty minutes and even after September 1’s upgrade and resulting Bitcoin Cash, they have still been slow and the fee is increasing with miners prioritizing high fees.

So, a plan was laid out by a bitcoin advocacy group to implement much needed changes on the bitcoin blockchain by gradually updating the underlying protocol which technically creates a fork in itself but these changes are necessary for the future of the coin as a major alternative cryptocurrency.

The plan was to first implement BIP 91, an upgrade to the bitcoin network and it was widely accepted as a necessary measure for the currency’s future. Based on consensus, the update was successfully done and it was all part of the first Segwit upgrade. But, the Bitcoin Cash instead of changing the protocol like BIP 91, instead increased the block size to 8 MB instead and thus the first hard fork of the bitcoin was realized.

The new currency was called Bitcoin Cash and it had the same transactional history as bitcoin but the future was different and it was now up to the market to accept it. But, Bitcoin Cash wasn’t readily accepted by the crypto community even though it basically meant free coins for everyone who owned bitcoin before September 1.

Major coin exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex didn’t even allow their uses to access their bitcoin forks for a long time and still many don’t trade in cash at the moment despite it getting a healthy bump every now and then. Now there was the possibility of two forks being separated from the bitcoin network and they included Bitcoin Gold and Segwit2x fork.

Now forks are usually bad for a cryptocurrency’s future but in some cases they are needed as the segwit and the SegWit2x upgrade were forks themselves. Satoshi Nakamoto left this ability to update the system as we know it or probably even as a far sighted approach to allow bitcoin to fork and ease the load on the main bitcoin network that gets crowded and crowded every day and also as a means to start a new bitcoin currency without actually starting a new cryptocurrency. I know this is all confusing but that’s actually an easy way to understand it.

So counting on the semi-success of Bitcoin Cash, we were expecting more of these forks and thus airdropped tokens resulting from these forks. Both the Segwit2x fork and Bitcoin Gold were forks that deviated from the original bitcoin protocol but their purpose was different.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork who mining protocol was changed and in such a way that mining cartels and other powerful groups won’t be able to dominate on the mining platform no matter how big their mining setup is. It is designed to give power back to the people by allowing everybody to mine for the new coins and everybody gets a fair share of the new blocks.

Now this may seem like a good prospect but we know that rationing coins is not going to be the solution to the problem as it is unnatural. Bitcoin was never intended to act as a rationing platform. It was decided to reward people who contributed more to the security of the system and miners do add more security to the decentralization efforts and more security.

If all people start getting the same number of bitcoin regardless of their hardware setup than part of the worth of that bitcoin’s fork will be lost due to the effects of the free market economics. That is what Bitcoin Gold is claiming to do and it is my opinion that it may not end well for it.

Regarding Segwit2x I have to say that it is not likely to be revived in the recent future as a different update with a different name will come along and the fork will the be based on that. It is a good thing perhaps that the Segwit2x is unlikely to be adopted. It is because it has some serious misgivings on its part and people didn’t just buy it because of them.

SegWit2x

This stubbornness and slow update of bitcoin is actually an asset in itself. It is the reason why it is so stable and never fails your transaction even if it slows it a lot. There was a worst case scenario if the segwit2x was adopted and it failed causing irreparable damage to the bitcoin ecosystem and costing the trust of the investors, miners and general users. It would have even damaged the credibility of the Bitcoin forks as well so nobody was in the favor of a major upgrade that was volatile.

Bitcoin definitely needs a new update but it is not going to be Segwit2x and resultantly, there is going to be no fork named Segwit2x. Incase you are waiting for these airdropped forks, you need to take certain steps. In anticipation of this fork, take a major portion of your bitcoin earnings and save it on a private wallet instead of an online exchange because in that case it will be up to the exchange to give you your coin and they can take forever to do so just like Coinbase did with Bitcoin Cash.

They waited very long to release the new fork to the users. So, if you are looking forward to the next bitcoin fork, no matter what its name is gonna be, download a private wallet and transfer your non-trading bitcoins to this address.

So, while it is raining forked tokens here, lets take a look at how the future of bitcoin is going to be. Since it is the most popular and value cryptocurrency in the world, it is certain that people will be interested in getting more airdropped tokens so that they have free money basically but there is also a purpose of increased liquidity and slowing down of pressure on bitcoin to perform if its hard forks continue to do well enough.

But, too many forks would ofcourse be detrimental to the entire system not to mention extremely confusing for the newbies as I have heard things like isn’t bitcoin cash bitcoin in the form of cash? These names are extremely confusing including that of Bitcoin Gold. I mean why Gold and why would anybody name their fork after the upgrade they didn’t do; Segwit2x.

So, these are certain aspects of the bitcoin forks that the crypto community needs to be mindful about. While it is absolutely part and parcel of an open source cryptocurrency that the threat of forks is there, it is not without benefits for the long-term. So, one bitcoin fork i.e Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is likely to be added to the ever-growing list. It is probably going to be the last fork of bitcoin for this year but I can’t predict how many hard forks we will have of bitcoin in the next year alone! The very unique nature of bitcoin invites forks.

Ethereum has like a thousand tokens launched on it and even got a hard fork of Ethereum Classic itself. Nobody is interested in doing a fork of Ethereum right now. Ripple is well, Ripple and Litecoin and Dash are already soft forks of bitcoin. So, Bitcoin’s hard forks can survive all this because all of these coins are directly related to the development of bitcoin itself.

http://ift.tt/2B9QIsT

[adrianjenkins952wblr]

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Segwit2x is right now not being adapted around the bitcoin network because the development team has stopped working on it because of a lack of general consensus around the network. Some miners were actually waiting for the new fork to happen because it would give them a chance to dole out yet another significant fork and get airdropped forked tokens.

But, most miners withdrew their support to the Segwit2x update and subsequently the update has been put off until further notice. Some miners are however, resorting to going with the fork on their own but they are probably going to leave it be. There is also the case of another fork called Bitcoin Gold that is already being realized and aims to shift away from the influence of big miners with complex hardware.

Bitcoin Gold price

Now why is a new update needed for the bitcoin network? It is already the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and carries command, respect and universal acceptance. So, what is it regarding the bitcoin network that needs updating and how is it implemented.

First thing you need to do is what is a hard fork and why is it done?

The answer is that the bitcoin’s system is notoriously slow for transactions. Average transaction times took thirty minutes and even after September 1’s upgrade and resulting Bitcoin Cash, they have still been slow and the fee is increasing with miners prioritizing high fees.

So, a plan was laid out by a bitcoin advocacy group to implement much needed changes on the bitcoin blockchain by gradually updating the underlying protocol which technically creates a fork in itself but these changes are necessary for the future of the coin as a major alternative cryptocurrency.

The plan was to first implement BIP 91, an upgrade to the bitcoin network and it was widely accepted as a necessary measure for the currency’s future. Based on consensus, the update was successfully done and it was all part of the first Segwit upgrade. But, the Bitcoin Cash instead of changing the protocol like BIP 91, instead increased the block size to 8 MB instead and thus the first hard fork of the bitcoin was realized.

The new currency was called Bitcoin Cash and it had the same transactional history as bitcoin but the future was different and it was now up to the market to accept it. But, Bitcoin Cash wasn’t readily accepted by the crypto community even though it basically meant free coins for everyone who owned bitcoin before September 1.

Major coin exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex didn’t even allow their uses to access their bitcoin forks for a long time and still many don’t trade in cash at the moment despite it getting a healthy bump every now and then. Now there was the possibility of two forks being separated from the bitcoin network and they included Bitcoin Gold and Segwit2x fork.

Now forks are usually bad for a cryptocurrency’s future but in some cases they are needed as the segwit and the SegWit2x upgrade were forks themselves. Satoshi Nakamoto left this ability to update the system as we know it or probably even as a far sighted approach to allow bitcoin to fork and ease the load on the main bitcoin network that gets crowded and crowded every day and also as a means to start a new bitcoin currency without actually starting a new cryptocurrency. I know this is all confusing but that’s actually an easy way to understand it.

So counting on the semi-success of Bitcoin Cash, we were expecting more of these forks and thus airdropped tokens resulting from these forks. Both the Segwit2x fork and Bitcoin Gold were forks that deviated from the original bitcoin protocol but their purpose was different.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork who mining protocol was changed and in such a way that mining cartels and other powerful groups won’t be able to dominate on the mining platform no matter how big their mining setup is. It is designed to give power back to the people by allowing everybody to mine for the new coins and everybody gets a fair share of the new blocks.

Now this may seem like a good prospect but we know that rationing coins is not going to be the solution to the problem as it is unnatural. Bitcoin was never intended to act as a rationing platform. It was decided to reward people who contributed more to the security of the system and miners do add more security to the decentralization efforts and more security.

If all people start getting the same number of bitcoin regardless of their hardware setup than part of the worth of that bitcoin’s fork will be lost due to the effects of the free market economics. That is what Bitcoin Gold is claiming to do and it is my opinion that it may not end well for it.

Regarding Segwit2x I have to say that it is not likely to be revived in the recent future as a different update with a different name will come along and the fork will the be based on that. It is a good thing perhaps that the Segwit2x is unlikely to be adopted. It is because it has some serious misgivings on its part and people didn’t just buy it because of them.

SegWit2x

This stubbornness and slow update of bitcoin is actually an asset in itself. It is the reason why it is so stable and never fails your transaction even if it slows it a lot. There was a worst case scenario if the segwit2x was adopted and it failed causing irreparable damage to the bitcoin ecosystem and costing the trust of the investors, miners and general users. It would have even damaged the credibility of the Bitcoin forks as well so nobody was in the favor of a major upgrade that was volatile.

Bitcoin definitely needs a new update but it is not going to be Segwit2x and resultantly, there is going to be no fork named Segwit2x. Incase you are waiting for these airdropped forks, you need to take certain steps. In anticipation of this fork, take a major portion of your bitcoin earnings and save it on a private wallet instead of an online exchange because in that case it will be up to the exchange to give you your coin and they can take forever to do so just like Coinbase did with Bitcoin Cash.

They waited very long to release the new fork to the users. So, if you are looking forward to the next bitcoin fork, no matter what its name is gonna be, download a private wallet and transfer your non-trading bitcoins to this address.

So, while it is raining forked tokens here, lets take a look at how the future of bitcoin is going to be. Since it is the most popular and value cryptocurrency in the world, it is certain that people will be interested in getting more airdropped tokens so that they have free money basically but there is also a purpose of increased liquidity and slowing down of pressure on bitcoin to perform if its hard forks continue to do well enough.

But, too many forks would ofcourse be detrimental to the entire system not to mention extremely confusing for the newbies as I have heard things like isn’t bitcoin cash bitcoin in the form of cash? These names are extremely confusing including that of Bitcoin Gold. I mean why Gold and why would anybody name their fork after the upgrade they didn’t do; Segwit2x.

So, these are certain aspects of the bitcoin forks that the crypto community needs to be mindful about. While it is absolutely part and parcel of an open source cryptocurrency that the threat of forks is there, it is not without benefits for the long-term. So, one bitcoin fork i.e Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is likely to be added to the ever-growing list. It is probably going to be the last fork of bitcoin for this year but I can’t predict how many hard forks we will have of bitcoin in the next year alone! The very unique nature of bitcoin invites forks.

Ethereum has like a thousand tokens launched on it and even got a hard fork of Ethereum Classic itself. Nobody is interested in doing a fork of Ethereum right now. Ripple is well, Ripple and Litecoin and Dash are already soft forks of bitcoin. So, Bitcoin’s hard forks can survive all this because all of these coins are directly related to the development of bitcoin itself.

http://ift.tt/2B9QIsT

[courtneyvbrooks87]

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Segwit2x is right now not being adapted around the bitcoin network because the development team has stopped working on it because of a lack of general consensus around the network. Some miners were actually waiting for the new fork to happen because it would give them a chance to dole out yet another significant fork and get airdropped forked tokens.

But, most miners withdrew their support to the Segwit2x update and subsequently the update has been put off until further notice. Some miners are however, resorting to going with the fork on their own but they are probably going to leave it be. There is also the case of another fork called Bitcoin Gold that is already being realized and aims to shift away from the influence of big miners with complex hardware.

Bitcoin Gold price

Now why is a new update needed for the bitcoin network? It is already the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and carries command, respect and universal acceptance. So, what is it regarding the bitcoin network that needs updating and how is it implemented.

First thing you need to do is what is a hard fork and why is it done?

The answer is that the bitcoin’s system is notoriously slow for transactions. Average transaction times took thirty minutes and even after September 1’s upgrade and resulting Bitcoin Cash, they have still been slow and the fee is increasing with miners prioritizing high fees.

So, a plan was laid out by a bitcoin advocacy group to implement much needed changes on the bitcoin blockchain by gradually updating the underlying protocol which technically creates a fork in itself but these changes are necessary for the future of the coin as a major alternative cryptocurrency.

The plan was to first implement BIP 91, an upgrade to the bitcoin network and it was widely accepted as a necessary measure for the currency’s future. Based on consensus, the update was successfully done and it was all part of the first Segwit upgrade. But, the Bitcoin Cash instead of changing the protocol like BIP 91, instead increased the block size to 8 MB instead and thus the first hard fork of the bitcoin was realized.

The new currency was called Bitcoin Cash and it had the same transactional history as bitcoin but the future was different and it was now up to the market to accept it. But, Bitcoin Cash wasn’t readily accepted by the crypto community even though it basically meant free coins for everyone who owned bitcoin before September 1.

Major coin exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex didn’t even allow their uses to access their bitcoin forks for a long time and still many don’t trade in cash at the moment despite it getting a healthy bump every now and then. Now there was the possibility of two forks being separated from the bitcoin network and they included Bitcoin Gold and Segwit2x fork.

Now forks are usually bad for a cryptocurrency’s future but in some cases they are needed as the segwit and the SegWit2x upgrade were forks themselves. Satoshi Nakamoto left this ability to update the system as we know it or probably even as a far sighted approach to allow bitcoin to fork and ease the load on the main bitcoin network that gets crowded and crowded every day and also as a means to start a new bitcoin currency without actually starting a new cryptocurrency. I know this is all confusing but that’s actually an easy way to understand it.

So counting on the semi-success of Bitcoin Cash, we were expecting more of these forks and thus airdropped tokens resulting from these forks. Both the Segwit2x fork and Bitcoin Gold were forks that deviated from the original bitcoin protocol but their purpose was different.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork who mining protocol was changed and in such a way that mining cartels and other powerful groups won’t be able to dominate on the mining platform no matter how big their mining setup is. It is designed to give power back to the people by allowing everybody to mine for the new coins and everybody gets a fair share of the new blocks.

Now this may seem like a good prospect but we know that rationing coins is not going to be the solution to the problem as it is unnatural. Bitcoin was never intended to act as a rationing platform. It was decided to reward people who contributed more to the security of the system and miners do add more security to the decentralization efforts and more security.

If all people start getting the same number of bitcoin regardless of their hardware setup than part of the worth of that bitcoin’s fork will be lost due to the effects of the free market economics. That is what Bitcoin Gold is claiming to do and it is my opinion that it may not end well for it.

Regarding Segwit2x I have to say that it is not likely to be revived in the recent future as a different update with a different name will come along and the fork will the be based on that. It is a good thing perhaps that the Segwit2x is unlikely to be adopted. It is because it has some serious misgivings on its part and people didn’t just buy it because of them.

SegWit2x

This stubbornness and slow update of bitcoin is actually an asset in itself. It is the reason why it is so stable and never fails your transaction even if it slows it a lot. There was a worst case scenario if the segwit2x was adopted and it failed causing irreparable damage to the bitcoin ecosystem and costing the trust of the investors, miners and general users. It would have even damaged the credibility of the Bitcoin forks as well so nobody was in the favor of a major upgrade that was volatile.

Bitcoin definitely needs a new update but it is not going to be Segwit2x and resultantly, there is going to be no fork named Segwit2x. Incase you are waiting for these airdropped forks, you need to take certain steps. In anticipation of this fork, take a major portion of your bitcoin earnings and save it on a private wallet instead of an online exchange because in that case it will be up to the exchange to give you your coin and they can take forever to do so just like Coinbase did with Bitcoin Cash.

They waited very long to release the new fork to the users. So, if you are looking forward to the next bitcoin fork, no matter what its name is gonna be, download a private wallet and transfer your non-trading bitcoins to this address.

So, while it is raining forked tokens here, lets take a look at how the future of bitcoin is going to be. Since it is the most popular and value cryptocurrency in the world, it is certain that people will be interested in getting more airdropped tokens so that they have free money basically but there is also a purpose of increased liquidity and slowing down of pressure on bitcoin to perform if its hard forks continue to do well enough.

But, too many forks would ofcourse be detrimental to the entire system not to mention extremely confusing for the newbies as I have heard things like isn’t bitcoin cash bitcoin in the form of cash? These names are extremely confusing including that of Bitcoin Gold. I mean why Gold and why would anybody name their fork after the upgrade they didn’t do; Segwit2x.

So, these are certain aspects of the bitcoin forks that the crypto community needs to be mindful about. While it is absolutely part and parcel of an open source cryptocurrency that the threat of forks is there, it is not without benefits for the long-term. So, one bitcoin fork i.e Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is likely to be added to the ever-growing list. It is probably going to be the last fork of bitcoin for this year but I can’t predict how many hard forks we will have of bitcoin in the next year alone! The very unique nature of bitcoin invites forks.

Ethereum has like a thousand tokens launched on it and even got a hard fork of Ethereum Classic itself. Nobody is interested in doing a fork of Ethereum right now. Ripple is well, Ripple and Litecoin and Dash are already soft forks of bitcoin. So, Bitcoin’s hard forks can survive all this because all of these coins are directly related to the development of bitcoin itself.

http://ift.tt/2B9QIsT

[bobbynolanios88]

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Everything You Need to Know about SegWit2x and impact it could have on Bitcoin

Segwit2x is right now not being adapted around the bitcoin network because the development team has stopped working on it because of a lack of general consensus around the network. Some miners were actually waiting for the new fork to happen because it would give them a chance to dole out yet another significant fork and get airdropped forked tokens.

But, most miners withdrew their support to the Segwit2x update and subsequently the update has been put off until further notice. Some miners are however, resorting to going with the fork on their own but they are probably going to leave it be. There is also the case of another fork called Bitcoin Gold that is already being realized and aims to shift away from the influence of big miners with complex hardware.

Bitcoin Gold price

Now why is a new update needed for the bitcoin network? It is already the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world and carries command, respect and universal acceptance. So, what is it regarding the bitcoin network that needs updating and how is it implemented.

First thing you need to do is what is a hard fork and why is it done?

The answer is that the bitcoin’s system is notoriously slow for transactions. Average transaction times took thirty minutes and even after September 1’s upgrade and resulting Bitcoin Cash, they have still been slow and the fee is increasing with miners prioritizing high fees.

So, a plan was laid out by a bitcoin advocacy group to implement much needed changes on the bitcoin blockchain by gradually updating the underlying protocol which technically creates a fork in itself but these changes are necessary for the future of the coin as a major alternative cryptocurrency.

The plan was to first implement BIP 91, an upgrade to the bitcoin network and it was widely accepted as a necessary measure for the currency’s future. Based on consensus, the update was successfully done and it was all part of the first Segwit upgrade. But, the Bitcoin Cash instead of changing the protocol like BIP 91, instead increased the block size to 8 MB instead and thus the first hard fork of the bitcoin was realized.

The new currency was called Bitcoin Cash and it had the same transactional history as bitcoin but the future was different and it was now up to the market to accept it. But, Bitcoin Cash wasn’t readily accepted by the crypto community even though it basically meant free coins for everyone who owned bitcoin before September 1.

Major coin exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex didn’t even allow their uses to access their bitcoin forks for a long time and still many don’t trade in cash at the moment despite it getting a healthy bump every now and then. Now there was the possibility of two forks being separated from the bitcoin network and they included Bitcoin Gold and Segwit2x fork.

Now forks are usually bad for a cryptocurrency’s future but in some cases they are needed as the segwit and the SegWit2x upgrade were forks themselves. Satoshi Nakamoto left this ability to update the system as we know it or probably even as a far sighted approach to allow bitcoin to fork and ease the load on the main bitcoin network that gets crowded and crowded every day and also as a means to start a new bitcoin currency without actually starting a new cryptocurrency. I know this is all confusing but that’s actually an easy way to understand it.

So counting on the semi-success of Bitcoin Cash, we were expecting more of these forks and thus airdropped tokens resulting from these forks. Both the Segwit2x fork and Bitcoin Gold were forks that deviated from the original bitcoin protocol but their purpose was different.

Bitcoin Gold is a fork who mining protocol was changed and in such a way that mining cartels and other powerful groups won’t be able to dominate on the mining platform no matter how big their mining setup is. It is designed to give power back to the people by allowing everybody to mine for the new coins and everybody gets a fair share of the new blocks.

Now this may seem like a good prospect but we know that rationing coins is not going to be the solution to the problem as it is unnatural. Bitcoin was never intended to act as a rationing platform. It was decided to reward people who contributed more to the security of the system and miners do add more security to the decentralization efforts and more security.

If all people start getting the same number of bitcoin regardless of their hardware setup than part of the worth of that bitcoin’s fork will be lost due to the effects of the free market economics. That is what Bitcoin Gold is claiming to do and it is my opinion that it may not end well for it.

Regarding Segwit2x I have to say that it is not likely to be revived in the recent future as a different update with a different name will come along and the fork will the be based on that. It is a good thing perhaps that the Segwit2x is unlikely to be adopted. It is because it has some serious misgivings on its part and people didn’t just buy it because of them.

SegWit2x

This stubbornness and slow update of bitcoin is actually an asset in itself. It is the reason why it is so stable and never fails your transaction even if it slows it a lot. There was a worst case scenario if the segwit2x was adopted and it failed causing irreparable damage to the bitcoin ecosystem and costing the trust of the investors, miners and general users. It would have even damaged the credibility of the Bitcoin forks as well so nobody was in the favor of a major upgrade that was volatile.

Bitcoin definitely needs a new update but it is not going to be Segwit2x and resultantly, there is going to be no fork named Segwit2x. Incase you are waiting for these airdropped forks, you need to take certain steps. In anticipation of this fork, take a major portion of your bitcoin earnings and save it on a private wallet instead of an online exchange because in that case it will be up to the exchange to give you your coin and they can take forever to do so just like Coinbase did with Bitcoin Cash.

They waited very long to release the new fork to the users. So, if you are looking forward to the next bitcoin fork, no matter what its name is gonna be, download a private wallet and transfer your non-trading bitcoins to this address.

So, while it is raining forked tokens here, lets take a look at how the future of bitcoin is going to be. Since it is the most popular and value cryptocurrency in the world, it is certain that people will be interested in getting more airdropped tokens so that they have free money basically but there is also a purpose of increased liquidity and slowing down of pressure on bitcoin to perform if its hard forks continue to do well enough.

But, too many forks would ofcourse be detrimental to the entire system not to mention extremely confusing for the newbies as I have heard things like isn’t bitcoin cash bitcoin in the form of cash? These names are extremely confusing including that of Bitcoin Gold. I mean why Gold and why would anybody name their fork after the upgrade they didn’t do; Segwit2x.

So, these are certain aspects of the bitcoin forks that the crypto community needs to be mindful about. While it is absolutely part and parcel of an open source cryptocurrency that the threat of forks is there, it is not without benefits for the long-term. So, one bitcoin fork i.e Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is likely to be added to the ever-growing list. It is probably going to be the last fork of bitcoin for this year but I can’t predict how many hard forks we will have of bitcoin in the next year alone! The very unique nature of bitcoin invites forks.

Ethereum has like a thousand tokens launched on it and even got a hard fork of Ethereum Classic itself. Nobody is interested in doing a fork of Ethereum right now. Ripple is well, Ripple and Litecoin and Dash are already soft forks of bitcoin. So, Bitcoin’s hard forks can survive all this because all of these coins are directly related to the development of bitcoin itself.

http://ift.tt/2B9QIsT