Some Talk on Vision Supplements │ Research Finds That Chemotherapy Kills Alarmingly High Percentage of Patients in Just One Month

My younger brother arrived home last evening right around 9:00 p.m. from wherever he had been drinking. That's usually the cutoff where I am concerned ─ I deem it too likely that he'll be intolerably inebriated if he's any later.

And since I am the only one of us who can operate our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box, he is left with the T.V. programming offered through the basic cable package that we subscribe to.

Also, I don't always feel like sitting up into the midnight hour.

However, last evening I gave him the benefit of some doubt; and instead of turning off the T.V. and coming upstairs to where I keep my computer in the small room next to my bedroom, I decided to remain downstairs and use the Android TV Box to tune in episodes of two or three of the T.V. series we follow.

First, though, I had the news channel on T.V. ─ the only Canadian news channel that we can receive through that basic cable package. My brother ─ after some initial chatter about a news item he had overheard ─ was involved in preparing himself some supper in the kitchen.

At one point he even took a phone call.

And meantime, I am sitting idle in the living room with the news channel, not wanting to start into an episode of one of the many T.V. series we follow together.

It was not until just after 9:30 p.m. that it dawned upon me that I was putting myself out for no reason. My brother was still mucking around in the kitchen, and I had yet to watch one of our shows.

It was exactly as if my brother had not yet arrived home ─ why in blazes was I sitting up and wasting my time when I could still get myself to bed quite early?

I can fix up a quick supper for myself in about five minutes ─ this wait was intolerable.

So I left the living room and came upstairs.

Soon after, I heard my brother utter his usual directive intended to have me begin operating our Android TV Box, "Put it on something interesting!"

He had not yet discovered that I was not there in the living room awaiting his convenience to finally join me to watch some of our shows.

Too bad ─ I was not going back downstairs. He was going to have to live the rest of the evening with his choice to just 'dick around' wasting time ─ I do not serve his whims.

I was into bed before 10:00 p.m., although I now do not recall just when. Sleep, though, was difficult ─ I felt too overheated in my bed.

My wife had worked the long day at her friend's Thai restaurant, so there is never any knowing just when she will be home.

At some point I did zone out for a spell of time, and it was around 11:00 p.m. when I checked the time. I was a little anxious to get at today's content assignment for the post I am finishing at one of my six hosted websites, but my brother would still be up.

I had another lapse of awareness and found the time to be nearly 12:40 a.m. ─ my brother would have long since gone to his bedroom.

And so it was.

Soon, I was at work on that website content assignment. As yet, my wife had not shown up.

When I was approximately half done my work, I took a revitalization break. My youngest stepson who had been up earlier had gone to bed. 

It was just a few minutes after 3:00 a.m.

I got myself set up to perform a plank in my bedroom, wondering on what the odds were that my wife would suddenly arrive home during the three minutes the plank was to be performed?

I was well into it when I could hear some noises outside; and then with just two minutes of the plank done, I could hear my wife unlocking the front door.

Why come home now?

Thankfully, she was hungry. Instead of coming directly upstairs and interrupting me, she set about fixing herself a bedtime snack.

And so I performed a plank of three minutes and 15 seconds. I felt that I could quite easily have extended it another 15 seconds.

Ultimately she did go to bed, and stressed in a request to me that I ensure she did not get up any later than 10:10 a.m. ─ she did not want to show up late for work (she has an 11:00 a.m. start).

When I at last was able to go to bed shortly after 5:00 a.m., I was taken aback upon opening the bedroom door to find that my wife ─ who earlier confessed to having been drinking ─ had herself so entombed with the bedding that it was as if she was in a sleeping bag.

I had to resort to a heavy blanket that is kept here in this room, and use that to cover myself in bed.

Sleep was good, if fitful. I checked the time a couple of times. And when I decided to get up for the morning, I thought that it was approaching 8:00 a.m. However, it was actually an hour later than that.

The day was clear and sunny from the start.

I never had to waken my wife, she got herself up. And when at last she had freshened up and come downstairs, all dressed to go, she looked somewhat punished for her bad choices of the night past.

It would be a long, hot day for her in the kitchen at her friend's Thai restaurant.

I watched some T.V. (via our Android TV Box) with my brother until near the end of the noon-hour, at which time he sought his bedroom to rest up before heading away for the afternoon to get back into his drinking somewhere.

I had some exercising scheduled for the backyard toolshed, so when he was shut up in his bedroom, and readied to go outside and get at it.

First, though, I weighed myself dressed exactly as I would be while exercising: I was around 188 pounds.

I did well out there ─ very well. It was 1:14 p.m. when I set about starting those exercises with full range pull-ups.

I have a total that I consider to be an absolute minimum that I need to achieve, but I usually try to at least best that total by one repetition.

Well, I exceeded that minimum by five repetitions.

I then gambled that my brother would be in his bedroom for awhile yet, and I commenced just over a half hour of sunning while facing into that glowing orb, all the while slouched low into a deckchair or lawn-chair, and attired only in a pair of gym-style shorts.

I was securely back into the house and into my usual clothes before my brother had yet emerged from his room. In fact, I was even eating my first meal of the day ─ not too much, but a high-protein feed.

After my brother had gone, it was time to get back outside and sun my back for a half hour ─ I stood barefooted in my shorts with my back to the Sun, and with that chair before me to lean on for occasional support.

And now here I am at 4:25 p.m.

oooooooooooooo

I am an old age pensioner (I am 69 years old), so I do not have a lot of 'free' cash when it comes to keeping myself in stock with the nutritional supplements I deem to be the most desirable or essential.

My eyes are very poor. In fact, in 1997, I was told during an overall physical that my right eye's vision was then so poor that I was legally blind.

I haven't had my eyes checked since then ─ but my vision has deteriorated even more, of course.

Anyway, because of the state of my eyes, this article quite interested me:

NorthStarNutritionals.com

Lutein, zeaxanthin, and meso-zeaxanthin can reverse vision loss │ Could this nutrient trio restore 95% of your lost vision?

I was curious about the Medscape.com article that was referenced. And I did locate it ─ 'Eye Health' Supplements: Do the Benefits Justify the Cost? But only visitors registered at that website can access the article.

Nevertheless, I found it in full at (of all places!) this Spanish blog:

• metgedelravalelx.blogspot.com

However, I have no idea what the first article's authour is talking about when he mentions "the next report in the link" after telling of the Medscape article.

Let me here declare that I am not self-diagnosing that I have macular degeneration ─ I would be crushed if I actually did!

Nevertheless, I know that the three supplements the first article mentioned are likely excellent for vision health.

I located a short article about the Dr. Harry Marsland that the article talked of. He was the man who managed to save the vision in one of his eyes using a product called MacuShield ─ the article I found was published back on December 11, 2009:

• DailyMail.co.uk: The marigold miracle that saved my sight 

But why did the article also say that MacuShield "is NOWHERE to be found ANYWHERE in the Americas"? See my Amazon search at the top of this post!

Nevertheless, it certainly is not inexpensive ─ the article was correct about that.

So just what is in MacuShield? Well, provided the link remains valid, you can see the ingredients list here.

Basically, each capsule contains 10 milligrams each of meso-zeaxanthin and lutein, and one milligram of zeaxanthin.

Well, I did another Amazon search at the bottom of this post using the term "meso-zeaxanthin" ─ there are lots of products that contain the very same three ingredients as MacuShield, but which also have some other beneficial extras.

And they don't seem to cost any more than does MacuShield.

They're too expensive for me, though ─ practically a buck a capsule!

Interestingly, my wee bit of research while blogging about this has found that meso-zeaxanthin may not be as...I want to say 'crucial'...as lutein and zeaxanthin, but you can wrestle with this for yourself. See here, here, and here.

Thus, just because one supplement may list only a milligram per capsule for meso-zeaxanthin, and another supplement lists two, it's actually the lutein and zeaxanthin dosages that we probably want to see escalating.

And so in that vein, for example, Amazon U.S. has a product with 20 milligrams of lutein and 10 of zeaxamthin that's called Total Eye Complex which 'only' costs about $20 for 120 capsules.

If the product is reliable ─ and I know nothing about it, so I am not saying that it is or is not a sound product ─ then it would be a far better deal than many of those others that cost practically a dollar a capsule. 

Just do your own research! 

I have one other article that I want to direct people to ─ it doesn't involve vision preservation. Rather, it presents an extremely stark argument against ever undergoing chemotherapy to treat cancer. 

I bet no cancer specialist is ever going to let you know anything about this! Check out the headline:

DrMicozzi.com

The doctor-recommended treatment killing half of cancer patients within 30 days

So...undergo a cancer treatment that will kill one out of two patients in a mere month, as opposed to living with a cancer that will kill you in a few or more months' time....

And there are also all of those hideous chemotherapy side-effects to go along with the treatments!

But the people invested in the Cancer Industry gotta make a living, don't they? 

So ─ on with it! 

There was, however, this one little confusing sentence in the article:

It turns out, 8.4 percent of lung cancer patients and 2.4 percent of breast cancer patients died within just one month of getting chemotherapy.

Those percentages are nowhere near 50%, so I'm perplexed where that statement is supposed to fit into the overall theme of the article.

Gosh, I still have to make a small post at my private blog, so I am going to have to beg off right here ─ my evening is already well underway.

 

Why to Avoid a Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) Test │ Gradually Failing Sense of Smell May Be a Harbinger of One's Premature Death

I have to admit that I was quite pleased to be able to get to bed early last evening ─ I don't think that it was much after 9:40 p.m.

My younger brother had not yet arrived home from wherever it was that he was doing his drinking, and I had no interest in being up when he did show up.

The three previous evenings, he somehow managed to present a reasonable state of consciousness all evening after he was home, so I was unable to betake myself to bed. Instead, I sat up into the midnight hour operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to bring us the episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow.

He doesn't understand how to operate the Android TV Box, so when he is watching T.V. on his own, he must settle for the limited fare offered through the basic cable package that we subscribe to.

Anyway, I eventually got to sleep last evening, but not for too long. Around 11:30 p.m. I found myself awake enough to consider getting up in order to start work on today's content assignment at the post I have in progress at one of my six hosted websites.

But what were the odds that my brother had gone to bed? Not good at all.

I quietly opened my bedroom door and saw that the T.V. was indeed on downstairs ─ I was thwarted.

I returned to bed and may actually have lapsed back into a short bout of sleep, for in no time it was about an hour later.

Upon checking, this time I found my brother had shut himself up into his bedroom. Only my youngest stepson was probably still resisting bed downstairs.

And so I was quickly enough here to my computer in the small room immediately next to my bedroom, and busy with the website post content assignment.

Maybe 20 minutes later at most, I heard my wife coming through the front door. She and her youngest had some chatter, and then he took off with her car to probably buy some trash at a fast food outlet.

When she came upstairs, she uttered some surprise at finding me still up ─ she must have thought that I had yet to go to bed. However, I didn't make her wise.

She hadn't been home since the latter morning when she left for work at her friend's Thai restaurant on Tuesday, incidentally.

While she was shut up in the bathroom, readying herself for bed, her youngest son returned. And anon, she went to bed. She left the bedroom door ajar, probably expecting that I would soon be coming to bed, too.

Unfortunately, I had much work yet ahead of me, and it was not to be until after 4:00 a.m. that I was at last able to return to bed and seek more sleep.

I had taken a break around midway through my work, and while my youngest stepson was annoyingly having a shower here upstairs in the bathroom. I went downstairs and performed a three-minute and 15-second plank, and then capped that off with 51 flat-footed partial squats.

This serves to revitalize me for some while, for I don't drink coffee at that hour ─ I should be in bed sleeping, not wired with caffeine.

My wife stirred when I carefully got into bed; but she must have done so in her sleep, for soon enough she was very gently snoring.

I cannot recall ever before hearing her breathing with that effect in her sleep, and it filled me with such endearment for her that it was almost painful to experience. The oxytocin must have been flooding throughout me ─ I seldom have occasion to bask in that sensation, for there is no intimacy in my marriage nor my life anymore.

I was to sleep more; and around 8:30 a.m. decided to get up and get an early start on this blog post ─ right now, it is 9:22 a.m.

My brother was not yet up when I quietly emerged from my bedroom. He didn't have his shower and then emerge from his own bedroom until after 9:00 a.m.

My wife is still in bed, and likely will not rise until around 10:00 a.m. in order to begin readying for her 11:00 a.m. start at her friend's Thai restaurant ─ she has a bit of a drive to get there. By 10:00 a.m. I will have joined my brother in order to put the Android TV Box to use until into the noon hour at which time he generally returns to bed to rest up before taking off for the afternoon to eventually get back into his drinking.

It is an overcast morning, as it was yesterday. But also like yesterday, the afternoon is supposed to see clearing and considerable sunshine.

Yesterday I was unable to do any sunning because I had become involved in the creation of a very long blog post in my private blog, but that will not get in my way today.

oooooooooooooo

I have enough evidence at 69 years of age that I likely have an ailing prostate gland, but I have never had myself checked out medically.

I have read so many articles in recent years that roundly caution against invasive tests such as those which attend the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test ─ let alone prostate cancer treatments ─ that I honestly believe that I would prefer death over the lifelong consequences and side-effects that commonly attend these tests and treatments.

Here is yet another of those cautionary articles men ought to read before willingly undergoing these procedures:

DrMicozzi.com

Urgent alert for men: Routine prostate screening may increase risk of death

If you were not compelled enough to refer to the article, perhaps this snippet will spark sufficient interest ─ Dr. Marc S. Micozzi referred to a recent published piece of research involving several nations and 700,000 men who had gotten PSA tests, along with the recommended further procedures if the PSA tests indicated any problems.

According to the research findings, at best one man out of 1,000 might be saved from a life-taking prostate cancer.

However, of those same 1,000 men who got the PSA test and then any follow-up procedure as may have been medically recommended due to the test results:

• 1 man will require hospitalization due to sepsis (a potentially fatal blood infection) as a result of prostate biopsy or surgery in the genito-urinary area.
• 3 men will suffer such extreme urinary continence, they’ll have to wear absorbent pads (i.e. “adult diapers”).
• 25 men will experience erectile dysfunction (ED), leading to more dangerous—and useless—treatments.

Wouldn't you agree that those side-effect hazards outweigh any possible benefit of the PSA test and the recommended follow-up procedures when the usually wrong (75% of the time) PSA test threw up an alert?

I am 69 years old, but I would rather choose death than spend the remainder of my clearly limited physical life wearing an adult diaper.

Remember, refusing the surgery and its risks is by no means a death sentence. That's what "watchful waiting" is all about!

However, we all have to each decide what truly matters and make those decisions, don't we? I certainly would not put too much credence into the opinion of a surgeon who makes a living from performing prostate surgeries. Ultimately, he has definitely not gone into the prostate surgical field so that he can try to talk men out of such surgeries.

One other health-related topic I want to bring some attention to relates to yet further research into why a diminishing sense of smell can indicate the imminence of cognitive decline and even death.

I've never been one who has had a particularly keen sense of smell. For example, even back when I was a young man, if someone queried aloud, "Do you smell something burning?"

Well, I was usually not the person anyone should be asking that question. The same went for other faint odours someone might have felt he or she was detecting. If the odour was not pronounced, then I likely was not going to be any sort of useful source of confirmation.

Oddly, a fart has never been much of a problem for me to detect!

This association with a reduced sense of smell and the approach of failing cognition and perhaps even death has been known for some years ─ the idea is not at all new.

But some recent research has found much more reason to have the fading sense of smell as a symptom of something much more dire.

These articles tell of the research:

JacksDailyDose.com

CREEPY! This “Sniff Test” Could PREDICT Your Death!

GentSide.co.uk

Sense Of Smell Could Be An Indicator Of "Premature Death"

Guardian.ng

Why losing ability to smell lemons, onions could herald early death

ScienceMediaCentre.org

expert reaction to sense of smell and death

Fortunately, I don't feel that my ability to detect the odour of lemons or onions has diminished one whit over the years.

oooooooooooooo

I am going to bring this post to a close ─ my afternoon is already extinguished and my evening upon me.

My wife did rise in time enough this morning to ready herself and leave for her drive to work. And I watched T.V. with my younger brother via our Android TV Box from 10:00 a.m. deep into the latter half of the noon-hour.

When he sought his bed rest, I had some exercise with my 43½-pound dumbbell, and then fixed up my first meal of the day. I had essentially finished eating when my brother was back out of his bedroom and prepared to ready himself to leave for the afternoon.

As too often happens, my meal bogged me down, and I had to seek a nap. I wanted to get some Sun thereafter, but it was already 3:27 p.m. by the time I was slouched low in a deckchair or lawn-chair out in the backyard while facing directly into the Sun and wearing just cutoffs.

I put in just over 40 minutes.

With that done, I resumed work on this blog post. I should not, however, have allowed myself to be sidetracked by making a lengthy response to an E-mail I had received.

I want to have a bath before my brother returns home for an evening of T.V. (should he do so early).

I will finish this post with a few further photos that my wife took in early June of last year when she flew to Italy to visit a sister of hers who has made that country her home.

The photos' metadata indicates that these photos were taken on June 6, 2018 ─ that is possible. However, the digital camera's date setting had not been adjusted for the trip, so even if the date is correct, the times of day would all be amiss.

I lead off with a selfie of my wife:

 

One of Those Token Posts

I have no time to create a significant post here today. 

The reason for this is because I had spent a few hours creating a very lengthy post in my private blog, and doing so consumed my afternoon. It even cost me some backyard sunning this afternoon.

That post in my private blog is mostly comprised of the reproduction of an old 40-year-old journal entry of mine that I had typed out on two full pages on this day back on May 29, 1979.

That entry covered the period since my previous journal entry of May 14, 1979.

As I said, the blog is private, but anyone can request access to it.

Forty years ago I was 29 years old and living in Surrey. But I shall say nothing further ─ the blog is private for a reason, obviously.   

All else I will mention in this post is tuning in a movie at 10:00 a.m. this morning for my younger brother and I to watch. It ran long ─ over 2½ hours: American Honey.

Although interesting enough ─ for central character Starr is quite appealing and fetching as portrayed by actress Sasha Lane ─ my brother announced at its conclusion that it had been a huge waste of his time. 

I somewhat agree. However, it was very well acted ─ at times, the acting was so natural that it seemed like a documentary about a group of very young, itinerant, magazine salespeople, and not a movie at all.

But it finished in most unsatisfying fashion. I wanted to see Starr make a better choice with her life, but the movie ended with her changing nothing about her status.

And at the very least, I wanted to see the Jake character get his total comeuppance ─ the guy needed to be put in prison. But nothing of the sort happened to the prick.

Anyway, I hope to be able to make a better post tomorrow.

Research Establishes How Elderberries Are Able to Treat Flu Infections │ Biophotons and "Cellular Communication"

The previous two evenings have found my younger brother more or less able to sustain consciousness throughout those evenings after he was home from wherever he had been drinking.

As a result, I ended up operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box into the midnight hour, since I am the only one of us who understands its operation.

We use the device to find episodes of the hundred or more T.V. shows that we follow.

On both occasions, I drank two cans of the strong (8% alcohol) beer that I keep in stock.

What was unfortunate about both of those evenings was that my wife had come home after my brother and I were watching our shows, but I was unable to have the discussion of our financial plight with her that I have been wanting to have.

This discussion is wholly private ─ my brother cannot know aught of any of its intended details. So with him present, my hands were tied.

However, since I also had to operate the Android TV Box, I was doubly tied up. And it was not as if I could simply pause the play of one of the episodes my brother and I were watching in order for me to avoid missing out on the episode.

The Android TV Box does allow for pausing; however, that would of course just alert my brother to the important discussion he is not to be privy to in any degree.

It was all distinctly chafing.

She has had to work at her friend's Thai restaurant both yesterday and today with 11:00 a.m. starts, so once she is gone late into the morning, there are no further opportunities to speak with her.

My brother does not normally go anywhere until the early afternoon, but he did go out this morning at 10:00 a.m. to take his van somewhere to have some work done on it.

Notwithstanding this opportunity, I did not wish to suddenly dump financial woes upon my wife just ahead of her leaving for the day to drive to work, and so I held my tongue.

The odds are against my brother retaining consciousness this evening ─ three consecutive such evenings are most unlikely. If he does flake out, I won't be sitting up after he passes out. I wash my hands of him once he surrenders to his drunken oblivion.

Thus, whichever way the evening plays out, I will not be having any discussions with my wife. If I retire due to my brother's drunken unconsciousness, she will not be home before I go to bed.

A fallout of the previous two late evenings has been that I have been unable to get up during the night to work on the next day's content assignment at the post I am constructing at one of my six hosted websites.

Due to this, I have had to tackle the assignments after rising in the morning. This worked out well enough this morning, since my brother went off at 10:00 a.m. to have the work done on his van.

However, normally at 10:00 a.m. on weekdays, I join him where he has been watching T.V. in the living room and ─ after assuming operation of our Android TV Box ─ I spare him having to settle for the banal fare that is available through the basic cable package that we subscribe to. 

Due to having to undertake that role yesterday, I was unable to finish the day's content assignment until the afternoon. I also sunned that afternoon for well over an hour...and then succumbed to prolonged turpitude that effectively exhausted what remained of my afternoon.

What all of that meant was that I was unable to make my usual daily post in this blog.

My brother and I did watch an entertaining musical documentary yesterday that I had summoned up at 10:00 a.m. ─ I located it through the YouTube 'app' that is downloaded into our Android TV Box.

The 1984 documentary, however, can be found online elsewhere ─ one current source is the Web Archive.org: Rock and Roll: The Early Days. 

As said, my day fell apart into the latter afternoon yesterday, so today is proceeding far better. For one thing, I don't have the demands upon my time that I did in the afternoon yesterday. Or at least, even though today became markedly sunny by midday, I am not possessed of the same compunction to get out and do any sunning.

One reason for that is because I would like to try and get out this afternoon to do some local grocery shopping ─ I had failed to do so two days ago after I had blogged of hoping to manage to get out to discharge that errand.

It is 3:45 p.m. as I type these words. My brother had sought some bed rest awhile after he had gotten back with his van, and I soon sought my own bed. Despite seeming to have slept unusually well overnight, I had difficulty getting myself to put a halt to this wonderful nap.

When I did rise, it seemed that my brother had already left again for the afternoon. But then I realized that he was outside in the backyard doing yard work.

I find that this tends to put him into an ill disposition. I had fixed myself a cup of instant coffee to help reinvigorate me; so when I had nearly finished it and then heard my brother coming into the house with his chores apparently done, I betook myself back into my bedroom and had some exercising with my 43½ dumbbell.

Meantime, he evidently sought some further bed rest.

I was seated here at my computer having my day's first meal when he produced himself once more ─ and in a decent mood ─ and announced that he was going to head off for the afternoon. It wasn't too much after 3:30 p.m. when he left.

A change of topic now.

Back in February, I contracted what I believe was the flu ─ either that, or it was an exceptionally strong cold.

Soon after I was pretty much over the worst, my left ear plugged up. I didn't fret much about it for the first several weeks, but I began getting too annoyed to bear with it any longer because it had gotten to the point where my hearing was badly impaired.

The hearing was a reduced as if I had an earplug deeply inserted into the ear.

I found myself having to cup my bad ear in order to hear conversations on T.V., and even then it was troublesome. Obviously when someone said anything to me, I was at a loss sometimes to understand what had been said, but reluctant to own up to it.

I did research on how to try and unplug a blocked ear, and tried methods presented in some YouTube videos.

One procedure was to hold the nose and try to blow air out of it ─ but not too hard, for doing this does exert considerable pressure to the eardrum.

I tried this method quite a lot. And then one video featuring a young woman cautioned not to do it more than a few times at any one occasion ─ as I recall, maybe only two or three times.

She stressed that by constantly forcing the air through the Eustachian tube can actually 'blow out' or rupture the eardrum.

I now wonder if I might have done that ─ I don't think that there is always notable pain associated with the event. It can happen and the victim be quite unaware. Things like 'cotton swabs' (as in Q-tips) are renowned for doing this to eardrums. As Wikipedia says in that article, "The use of cotton swabs in the ear canal is one of the most common causes of perforated eardrum, a condition which sometimes requires surgery to correct."

Ultimately what I felt that I had to do to unblock the ear was to get the ingredients to concoct my own nasya oil, for I didn't feel myself able to afford actual nasya oil.

It probably fulfilled the intended purpose; and I still use the oil practically on a daily basis because it keeps the mucous in my nasal passageways soft ─ for years I have been prey to extreme drying of that material.

My left ear still does plug up when I have been lying down, but it readily enough unplugs once I am back erect. 

One procedure that I find is worse than useless to me is to apply a droplet or two of nasya oil or even an essential oil like tea tree oil into the ear canal ─ the damned oil just clogs up my ear, and the sensation lasts for many hours.

But I got into this flu topic because I wanted to link to an article on elderberries ─ the article was reporting on some recent research that found elderberry consumption can block the flu virus from doing what the nasty germ is so effective at doing:

JacksDailyDose.com

Have The Flu? This Simple Berry STOPS It in Its Tracks

I never realized that the berries could just be eaten as if they were any other kind of berry ─ I have never seen any for sale in any market I have ever been shopping in.

However, maybe they can't! Here are two further articles about that research concerning the berries' effectiveness against the flu virus ─ note that the first article does indicate that the fresh berries can be toxic when consumed in any quantity:

FoxNews.com

Can elderberries help fight flu symptoms? New study explains how 'ancient remedy' allegedly works

ScienceDaily.com

Elderberry compounds could help minimize flu symptoms, study suggests

You can check out the results of an Amazon search I did at the bottom of this post using the term "elderberry." Heck, if I had the property, I wouldn't mind getting some live plants and growing my own berries!

I have one further article that I want to direct attention to ─ it has nothing to do with elderberries nor the flu.

Have you ever heard of biophotons? The following fairly short article almost seems to be entering into the field of the supernatural:

LifeSpa.com

Distance Does Not Disconnect Us: Understanding Consciousness

Whenever I read material such as the above, I find myself almost fascinated...temporarily. Soon enough, I seem to forget all about it once my very limited reality manifests itself once more (and in very short order).

I am going to close today's post with a few photos that my wife took in early June 2018 when she had travelled to Italy to visit a sister of hers who basically lives there.

Although the photos' metadata indicates that these photos were taken on June 6, 2018, the camera's date setting had not been adjusted or updated for that trip.

I think that the photos were taken during an outing on my wife's first full day in Italy, so everything she saw was new and exciting.

 

💀💀💀 Dissolution

It has been a gorgeously sunny day, and I took advantage in the backyard, of course.

However, then I went most astray.

In fact, it is now 7:29 p.m., and I have absolutely no time nor incentive to do more with this post  

Dangerous Aflibercept Now Approved for Diabetic Retinopathy │ Reflecting upon What Might Have Been During My First Trip to Thailand in 2003

After publishing yesterday's blog post early in the evening, I tuned in an MMA bout that was well in excess of three hours duration, all the while wondering if my younger brother was going to arrive home with his girlfriend Bev as he had done the three previous Saturday evenings.

Normally, his practice on late Saturdays had been to spend the night at her home; if he showed up otherwise, it was because the two of them got too drunk to get along.

Well, I sat through every preliminary match, and then just as the main card bout was about to start, I espied him about to arrive home ─ it was approximately 10:00 p.m.

Momentarily I remained where I was, thinking that if Bev was with him, then we could watch a movie.

And then it occurred to me that I was likely setting myself up for considerable discomfort if she was not with him ─ I would likely be stuck with an odious drunk unable to retain enough consciousness to watch more than a few minutes of anything at all before he passed out.

So hastily I turned off the T9 Android 8.1 TV Box that I had been using to find and then watch the MMA match on T.V., and I also turned off the T.V.

I then hied myself upstairs ─ if Bev did happen to be with him at that late hour, then I could always come back downstairs and join them. However, if I only heard him sighing theatrically and muttering (usually obscenities) to himself, then I was going to call it an evening and go to bed.

I had hidden myself in my darkened bedroom to listen. But I was also waiting for my infernal youngest stepson to vacate the bathroom ─ my two stepsons have a diabolical knack for ensconcing themselves in the bathroom just as my brother is arriving home. It is as if they deliberately want to prevent me from using it before I am able to get myself to bed.

As it happened, I could only hear my brother ─ nothing of Bev. And then he came upstairs to his bedroom to change into his leisure wear ─ he muttered something as he approached his bedroom door and then went into the room.

Fortunately he took his time while in his bedroom. My youngest stepson finally emerged from the bathroom and scampered downstairs ─ he'd had a shower; and I was free to make that final micturition of the evening and get to bed.

Perhaps it was around 10:15 p.m. at latest.

When eventually sleep possessed me, I slept reasonably well in that I was never curious enough about the time until after 3:00 a.m.

Although I felt very sleepy, I rose to use the bathroom and get more water to drink; and then I came back to bed, thinking that I oughtn't to have too much trouble getting asleep again.

I was wrong. I began reflecting that I still had the day's content assignment to fulfill on the post I am developing at one of my six hosted websites, and it is rare that I can manage that job in as little as three hours.

In other words, if I did not get up and get at it, then I would be involved with it deep into the morning. I prefer getting the task over with as early in my day as I can.

So at approximately 3:20 a.m., I rose and came here to my computer that I keep in a small room next to my bedroom.

As it was to happen, I did not finish and get back to bed until shortly after 7:00 a.m. And I had taken a break midway through my work to partially revive myself by performing a three-minute plank and then 51 partial flat-footed squats.

The entire time I was up, I fretted about and regretted over my life and marriage and the enormous debt that my wife has been foolishly allowed by me to plunge us into; and I worked with the oppressive weight of feeling utterly forsaken by an uncaring God.

Only my return to bed and the gift of sleep got me rid of that despairing mindset.

After a fair initial block of sleep, I enjoyed a few briefer bouts of slumber; and then I accepted that I was futilely wasting my time by remaining abed any longer. By then 10:00 a.m. was not far off.

When I had returned to bed earlier, a strikingly clear blue sky portended that a sunny day might be ahead. That still seems to be the case as I type these words at 11:06 a.m.

My brother has just returned to his bedroom to rest up ─ he will be heading off for the afternoon soon after he gets up again. I am going to take the opportunity now to have some exercise with my 43½-pound dumbbell.

oooooooooooooo

I've had quite the break, actually.

At 11:59 a.m. I began a little over 40 minutes of sunning outside, seated low in a deckchair or lawn-chair, facing into the Sun, and garbed only in cutoffs.

We've got a lot of high, light cloud around, but it's still penty warm out there!

When I returned into the house to begin fixing up my day's first meal, my brother came downstairs. He wondered on the weather; and then after some discussion and a little experimentation (he went out onto the backyard sundeck to assess), he decided to change into shorts before heading away for the afternoon.

My eldest stepson showed up right after I had eaten, so with him home I felt secure about going back outside and lying upon an old bedsheet on the backyard lawn to expose my back to the Sun for just over half an hour. This time I wore a pair of gym-style shorts.

That session began at 2:03 p.m.

With that done, the meal and sunning depleted me, so I had to lie upon my bed with a makeshift blindfold ─ possibly I napped a little.

And here I am at 3:52 p.m.

I want to bring up the topic of vision, for my eyes are quite poor. My right one is by far the worst because it bore the brunt of a fireworks accident I experienced one October back in the year 1960 or so. 

At least my eyes were damaged through an accident ─ as far as I know, I don't have macular degeneration or something like that, nor am I suffering consequences of eye-related damage due to something like diabetes. 

Of course, I might be wrong ─ since I am 69 years old, it is indeed possible that I have developed an eye disease of some kind. I just don't care enough about myself and my life to go and get myself checked out. After all, why should I? What the hell do I have to live for?

If something is seriously wrong with my eyes, then it's just another nail in that ol ' coffin as I head towards that early and final roundup. 

But lots of people do care passionately about their lives and their eyes; and as a result, they will undergo optical surgeries I cannot imagine submitting myself to voluntarily.

And that leads me to this recent article I read:

HSIonline.com

New diabetic retinopathy drug is a horror show │ Big Pharma’s new eye jab will NEVER measure up to these 2 vision saviors

Why in blazes would anyone take surgery or treatments like this as their first step, rather than give some "vision support" products a try?

Keep in mind ─ physicians who perform these procedures do not make a living off recommending or prescribing nutritional supplements, so they are never going to suggest giving any a good try. 

Only the surgery or wicked medications like aflibercept are going to be pushed. 

I have no recommendations on any vision support products, but I did an Amazon search at the bottom of this post using the term "zeaxanthin," and there do appear to be quite a few that contain it.

If cost isn't too much of a bother for you, another avenue is to zero in on a few of these products and examine their ingredients labels. Then seek individual high potency supplements that at least match or even exceed the key components that the vision formulas contain. 

For instance, if a vision support formula contains zeaxanthin and lutein at specific milligram levels ─ say 10 and two respectively; then get those two supplements by themselves in an equal or heavier dose than the vision support formula offers. 

The formula might also contain a bilberry extract ─ Mirloselect® is apparently a "standardized" brand name that has currency worldwide with researchers. "Standardized" just means that the product contains a guaranteed specific amount whose chemistry is consistent from batch to batch.

So look into getting some quality bilberry extract to at least match what's in those vision support formulas ─ likewise for saffron extract and / or whatever other extras might be in reputable formulas.

Yes, you have to do a little research; but you will find that the ingredients listed on those vision support labels are usually quite limited ─ you are not going to be confronted with some bewilderingly long list. 

So why buy a formula with specific doses of a few ingredients if you can afford to get those four or six or whatever ingredients separately and maybe even in greater strength?   

After all, you won't be administering to yourself astronomic multiples of each ingredient. Rather, you only want to ensure that you are at least matching what's in the formulas, and bettering them by reasonable margins whenever you can.

That's what I would do if I wasn't on my limited pension ─ I can't afford to do this, nor to buy ready-made vision support formulas.

I am going to bring this post to a close because I would like to try and get out to do some local grocery shopping before my brother shows up for the evening.

However, I want to post four photos sent to me this morning via E-mail at 2:42 a.m. by a Thai woman very dear to me.

Tukta helped me so very much when I made my first trip to Thailand in January 2003 ─ the trip in which I also met the woman who is today my wife.

But Tukta was herself newly married at that time to a Dutchman, and awaiting a visa to go and join her husband in the Netherlands.

Alas, he was apparently of very meagre means ─ his government deemed him unable to support a wife. And so a visa for her to come and live in the Netherlands was refused. 

The Dutch government must have felt that she was just desperate to get to the West, and could not possibly love her husband; nor did they intend to allow her into the country and then have to subsidize her potentially for life because her husband was himself not very self-sufficient. 

And so she never went. I suppose by now the marriage must have been annulled ─ I have never pried about that.

But had she not been newly married when I made that first trip to her country, it is very possible that she and I would have become involved.

I now believe that she would have been the better choice for a wife than the wastrel I now find myself burdened with.

I have never seen Tukta since that 2003 trip. I returned to Thailand in 2004 to become engaged to the woman who is now my wife; and then I got married in 2005. But my wife did not live anywhere near Tukta, so I was not to see Tukta on those two later trips.

Tukta had only been in the area (the Isaan region) on that first trip of mine where my wife had lived because it was thereabouts that Tukta and another woman had come and gotten newly married. Tukta lived nearer to Bangkok. I suspect that Tukta and the other lady had gotten involved with the men they married through the personals website that was being partially operated by a woman who had been my wife's sister-in-law ─ she had been married to my wife's only living brother.

That website shut down years ago, but back then it was called SiamLady.com. I had actually come across that website before ever going to Thailand, and only later learned that the woman who was to become my wife actually had her own profile on it ─ the sister-in-law had cajoled her into it.   

But she never got any 'bites' and figured that it was a lost cause. Nor could I recall having seen her profile at the website.

I would very much like to see Tukta again before I die, but that is unlikely.

Anyway, here she is ─ she must have been using her computer's webcam, and experimenting with some special effects:

I especially like the photo where she is wearing glasses.