As the U.S. Government inches closer to its maximum borrowing limit, here’s a primer on what the debt ceiling is and what happens when it’s breached pushing the U.S. Government into technical default.
As the U.S. Government inches closer to its maximum borrowing limit, here’s a primer on what the debt ceiling is and what happens when it’s breached: https://t.co/EFtEFSiVjn pic.twitter.com/7CUctvhEmY
— J.P. Morgan (@jpmorgan) May 3, 2023
Democrats spend money when they don’t raise taxes; and, Republicans cut taxes when they don’t decrease spending. Tax and spending reforms are needed desperately.
“The government has basically three gigantic programs and it’s the US military, Social Security, and Medicare,” Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) said. As Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once wrote, the US government is “best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army,” and increasing interest payments.
If the government wants to get serious about its fiscal spending and reducing the national debt, all government spending would have to be reduced by 27% to get budgets balanced in the next decade — and, if tax increases, defense spending, Social Security, and Medicare are all off the table, 78% of federal spending would have to be cut, according to CRFB.
The federal deficit vs. Debt — they’re two separate concepts.
The combination of spending increases, tax cutsc, and increasing interest expenses on the debt inflates deficits. While the rise in spending tends to be bi-partisan, tax cuts tend to be enacted by Republicans.
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You can come up with a million reasons for not being physically active.
Roughly 3.2 million people die each year because of physical inactivity, according to WebMD. Regular exercise — aerobics, resistance, stretching and balance — especially among older adults, is critical to good health.
Healthspan is more important than lifespan. On average, people live up to 20% of our lives unhealthy. ~ Institute for Public Health
But it’s important to know that stillness or lack of exercise is bad for your longevity and healthspan. “Healthspan” can be defined as the period of one’s life that one is healthy, according to the Institute for Public Health. However, being “healthy” means being free from serious disease. A disease is considered to be serious if it is a leading cause of death.
Caring about extending the well period of one’s life should be intuitive – if one is past their healthspan, it means they are chronically sick, often with a degenerating condition. Therefore, most people would agree that staying within their healthspan is desirable.
To extend a person’s healthspan, first healthcare professionals must be able to measure it. Once they can measure it, then they can improve it.
Unlike the average lifespan, which is now 79.3 years in the US, healthcare professionals don’t have a statistic to mark the end of the average healthspan. To address this, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed an indicator, HALE – healthy life expectancy.
To improve healthspan, treatments are required, but treatments don’t necessarily mean drugs. First, there are many commonalities around lifestyle that could delay the onset of most, if not all, of the serious diseases. It might seem like common sense, but maintaining a healthy plant-based diet with regular exercise and without smoking and drinking alcohol and nurturing strong social relationships are the surest ways to promote one’s healthspan and limit the onset of most diseases.
Food, Exercise and Social Connections as Medicine to improve Healthspan.
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Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, “Oracle of Omaha, has a set of rules, principles and philosophies when it comes to making a decision, investing, managing the business and also building success in life. And his success principles can be summarized with the top 10 rules below.
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller.
The final rule for success by Warren Buffett has a lot to do with your personality and beliefs. Being a philanthropist, Buffett believes in helping society and giving back to the world. This could be the reason why he has been so successful. He is always looking to help and to give, rather than to take. When you operate in a giving and grateful mindset, you will put your customers first, and this is what makes a business enterprise thrive
Source: https://www.thewisdompost.com/billionaires/warren-buffett/warren-buffetts-top-10-rules-success/1575
Building Wealth, along with good health and emotional well-being, can be viewed as an important component for a happy life.
However, it is important to remember that wealth cannot by itself buy or guarantee happiness or love, but it can help us get peace of mind. It can offer us the freedom to do what we enjoy (which can lead to happiness), and let us take care of our physical, emotional and mental well-being.
Wealth means having enough personal capital to achieve financial freedom, to do what you want, when you want.
Here are three keys to successfully building wealth:
It’s been the patient, disciplined and focused on the long term investors that has had the best success building wealth over the long term
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Oprah Winfrey is known as one of the most successful individuals globally and her estimated net worth is almost $3 billion! To her degree of success and power, it took a lot of perseverance and wisdom.
Here are the ten rules of success according to Oprah Winfrey.
Source: https://moneyinc.com/10-rules-success-according-oprah-winfrey/
Consuming dark chocolate and/or cacao has several benefits to brain function, including reducing stress levels and inflammation, and improving mood, memory and immunity, according to two studies. The natural stuff in dark chocolate and cacao is chock-full of ingredients called flavanols, antioxidant compounds found in cocoa beans.
Researchers at Loma Linda University Adventist Health Sciences Center in Southern California studied how consumption of dark chocolate with a high concentration of cacao — at least 80 percent — has positive health benefits and effects.
Tests revealed that dark chocolate or cacao can stimulate the body to produce nitric oxide. Nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels to allow an increased flow of blood and oxygen to the heart, brain, and other organs of the body.
In the past, research has shown that cacao is a major source of flavonoids. Because they are extremely potent antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents, flavonoids benefit brain and cardiovascular health, the researchers said.
“For years, we have looked at the influence of dark chocolate on neurological functions from the standpoint of sugar content — the more sugar, the happier we are,” Dr. Lee S. Berk, associate dean of research affairs at Loma Linda and principal investigator on both studies, said in a press release. “This is the first time that we have looked at the impact of large amounts of cacao in doses as small as a regular-sized chocolate bar in humans over short or long periods of time, and are encouraged by the findings.”
Tests have found that the equivalent of four cups of flavanol-rich cocoa dramatically increased blood flow to the arms and fingers of people after only four days. Such an increase can help people fighting diseases ranging from high blood pressure, hardening of arteries, and stroke to diabetes, vascular dementia, and preeclampsia, a serious condition that affects pregnant women.
RT.@DrKristieLeong: A study finds cacao flavonoids increase the expression of proteins that support the health of brain cells. https://t.co/j39QbwSWXt #chocolate #health #brainhealth https://t.co/gFyib8Pjzs
— Kristen Jakobitz (@KristenJakobitz) May 6, 2022
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In Boston labs, experiments have shown that aging is a reversible process, capable of being driven “forwards and backwards at will,” said anti-aging expert David Sinclair, a professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research.
“Our bodies hold a backup copy of our youth that can be triggered to regenerate”, said Sinclair, the senior author of a new paper showcasing the work of his lab and international scientists.
The combined experiments, published in the journal Cell, challenge the scientific belief aging is the result of genetic mutations that undermine our DNA, creating a junkyard of damaged cellular tissue that can lead to deterioration, disease and death.
“It’s not junk, it’s not damage that causes us to get old,” said Sinclair. “We believe it’s a loss of information — a loss in the cell’s ability to read its original DNA so it forgets how to function — in much the same way an old computer may develop corrupted software. I call it the information theory of aging.”
Epigenetic changes control aging
While DNA can be viewed as the body’s hardware, the epigenome is the software, writes CNN Health. Epigenes are proteins and chemicals that sit like freckles on each gene, waiting to tell the gene “what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
The epigenome literally turns genes on and off. That process can be triggered by pollution, environmental toxins and human behaviors such as smoking, eating an inflammatory diet or suffering a chronic lack of sleep. And just like a computer, the cellular process becomes corrupted as more DNA is broken or damaged, Fr. Sinclair said.
“The cell panics, and proteins that normally would control the genes get distracted by having to go and repair the DNA,” he explained. “Then they don’t all find their way back to where they started, so over time it’s like a Ping-Pong match, where the balls end up all over the floor.”
In other words, the cellular pieces lose their way home, much like a person with Alzheimer’s.
“The astonishing finding is that there’s a backup copy of the software in the body that you can reset,” Sinclair said. “We’re showing why that software gets corrupted and how we can reboot the system by tapping into a reset switch that restores the cell’s ability to read the genome correctly again, as if it was young.”
It doesn’t matter if the body is 50 or 75, healthy or wracked with disease, Sinclair said. Once that process has been triggered, “the body will then remember how to regenerate and will be young again, even if you’re already old and have an illness. Now, what that software is, we don’t know yet. At this point, we just know that we can flip the switch.”
To prove the theory and with the help of other scientists, Sinclair and his Harvard team have been able to age tissues in the brain, eyes, muscle, skin and kidneys of mice.
To do this, Sinclair’s team developed ICE, short for inducible changes to the epigenome. Instead of altering the coding sections of the mice’s DNA that can trigger mutations, ICE alters the way DNA is folded. The temporary, fast-healing cuts made by ICE mimic the daily damage from chemicals, sunlight and the like that contribute to aging.
In his lab, Sinclair said his team has reset the cells in mice multiple times, showing that aging can be reversed more than once, and he is currently testing the genetic reset in primates. But decades could pass before any anti-aging clinical trials in humans begin, get analyzed and, if safe and successful, scaled to the mass needed for federal approval.
Here’s how to eat to live longer, new study says
But just as damaging factors can disrupt the epigenome, healthy behaviors can repair it, Sinclair said.
“We know this is probably true because people who have lived a healthy lifestyle have less biological age than those who have done the opposite,” he said.
His top tips? Focus on plants for food, eat less often, get sufficient sleep, lose your breath for 10 minutes three times a week by exercising to maintain your muscle mass, don’t sweat the small stuff and have a good social group.
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“Nothing beats the true healing power of food and food is the best medicine for chronic disease. It works faster and better, and is cheaper than medication. And all the side effects are good ones.” ~ Dr. Mark Hyman
Many Americans have long been told that consuming dietary fat makes them fat, contributes to heart disease, and generally erodes their health. Now a growing body of research debunks long held beliefs about dietary fat, revealing the immense health and weight-loss benefits of a high-fat diet rich in eggs, nuts, oils, avocados, and other delicious superfoods, explains Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D., author of “Eat Fat, Get Thin” and director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, and founder and director of The Ultra-Wellness Center.
We now know that refined sugars and ultra process carbs, not fat, are the true causes and villains of obesity and heart disease. Overconsumption of refined sugars and processes carbohydrates causes a spike in the body’s production of the hormone insulin, which increases the storage of fat, especially dangerous visceral fat, explains Dr. Hyman. Instead, consuming healthy fats and plant based food, which are packed with powerful antioxidants and photochemicals is what your body and mind need.
Fat is one of the body’s most basic building blocks. The average person is made up of between 15 and 30 percent fat!
Essentially, dietary fat does not cause a spike in insulin. Unlike eating refined sugars and processed carbs, eating fat makes your body burn fat, rather than store fat. Fats like butter and coconut oil boost your body’s metabolism, suppress hunger, lower triglycerides, reduce fat storage, and even improve athletic performance.
By increasing dietary fat into your diet, and eliminating sugar and process carbs, studies demonstrate that you can lose more weight, improve your metabolic health, and begin to feel and look better.
“Dr. Mark Hyman has helped thousands of people lose weight and lead happier, more energetic lives,” writes Toby Cosgrove, CEO of Cleveland Clinic. “His powerful insights on the dynamics of dietary fat will change the way you think about everyday eating, and show you how easy it is to enjoy a healthier, more satisfying diet.”
In short, the right fats can improve your mood, skin, hair and nails, while protecting you against Type 2 diabetes, dementia, cancer and much more, according to Dr. Hyman. Among his favorite sources of fat include:
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Dark chocolate (or cacao) is the number one longevity food on earth.
According to researchers, “The raw cacao bean is one of nature’s most fantastic superfoods due to its mineral content and wide array of unique properties.” And according to Dr. Li, dark chocolate or cacao is one of the best foods for improving the stem cell response inside your body.
Dark chocolate, containing 70 to 80 percent cacao or higher or its more processed cousin cocoa, is rich in polyphenols, antioxidants that help protect from disease-causing free radicals. Cacao is also rich in magnesium, which helps our minds and bodies to relax.
Dr. Li specifically mentions drink two cups of dark, hot chocolate as the best way to get your daily dose of cacao, which can actually double the number of stem cells flowing in your bloodstream at any given time.
Dark chocolate containing 70 to 80 percent cacao or higher is packed with nutrients that can strengthen your body’s defense systems and positively affect your overall health.
Dark Chocolate is Heart Healthy
You may have heard this benefit before—and it continues to ring true through vast research today. Epidemiologists have long-established a connection between consuming foods with flavanols—a potent antioxidant found in dark chocolate—and a lower incidence of death from cardiovascular disease.
With the help of over 750 million stem cells, your body regenerates itself each and every day. Dark chocolate can mobilize your stem cells to carry out their job to the fullest. At the University of California, San Francisco, researchers found that participants who received a chocolate drink made with cocoa twice a day for thirty days had twice as many stem cells in their circulation as their control group.
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