#Dietary assessment

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Research Paper | Nutritional assessment status of adult patients with multiple sclerosis By IJBB Journal

Authors Leena Ahmad, Omar A. Alhaj, Nour A. Elsahoryi, Iman F. Mahmoud, Haitham Jahrami, Abdallah M. Younes, Maha M. Al Rasheed, and Nicola L. Bragazzi Journal Name International Journal of Biomolecules and Biomedicine | IJBB Publisher Name International Network For Natural Sciences | INNSpub Abstract No previous research has assessed the nongenetic factors, especially the nutrition status…

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Comprehensive Nursing Care for Patients with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

Certainly, when providing care for a patient with congestive heart failure (CHF), it’s important for nurses to be attentive to the patient’s mental status in addition to their physical condition. Here are some key aspects to consider: Anxiety and Stress: CHF can be a chronic and debilitating condition, often causing anxiety and stress in patients. Nurses should be prepared to provide emotional…

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"Islam was the second religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. S. D. Goitein, perhaps the twentieth century's leading historian of Jewish life in the Arab world, concludes: "when the known facts are weighed, I believe it correct to say that as a whole the position of the non-Muslims [Christians and Jews under medieval Islamic rule] was far better than that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe."

Goitein's assessment is valid, but it tells us much more about the Jews' condition under Christians than about their treatment by Muslims. For while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity. At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.

Like Christianity's, Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-a-vis Judaism.

When Islam was born in the seventh century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as called in Judaism and later in Islam.

During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goitein noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of Justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasized, from Israel."

The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran, the Muslim bible, and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the book of Moses was revealed....This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure on the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).

Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substitute Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrut: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols." The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.

Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jews' founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.

Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luther...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.

The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.

One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the Book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis).

Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superceding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism or Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians as rendering absurd the prophet's claim that he was superseding Jesus."

Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah Laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.

For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was even more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goitein concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."

As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the New Testament, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. these writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to the Jews.

In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to a Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah....Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).

Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed them" (4:160).

Third, Muhammad charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's) coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.

Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they." (9:30).

These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.

One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully.j That was for their disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day. *

(* In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing our prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and on this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this.")

Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had - and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam, just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.

Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.

As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of MUslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.

No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of dhimmis (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.

The two guiding principles of Islam's treatment of Jews and Christians are that Islam dominates and is not dominated, and that Jews and Christians are to be subservient and degraded. Nonmonotheists were usually given the choice of conversion to Islam or death.

The Muslim legal code that prescribed the treatment of Jews and Christians, or dhimmis as they are both referred to in Islam, was the Pact of Umar, attributed to Muhammad's second successor, but assumed to date from about 720. Its key characteristic was the requirement that dhimmis always acknowledge their subservient position to Muslims. Jews and Christians had to pledge, for example, "We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it." The subservience that dhimmis were required to show publicly to Muslims is analogous to the behavior once expected of Blacks in the Jim Crow American South: "We shall show respect...and we shall rise from our seats when they [Muslims] wish to sit." They also had to pledge "not to mount saddles," since riding a horse, or, according to some Muslims, any animal, was considered incompatible with the low status of a dhimmi. The dhimmis also had to vow "We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead."

Anti-dhimmi legislation did not end with the Pact of Umar. In the Koran, Muhammad had urged Muslims, "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture...and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (9:29). Accordingly, Muslim officials often insisted that when paying tribute, dhimmis must be "brought low," that is, humiliated.

An early Muslim regulation precisely prescribed how to humiliate Jews and Christians when they pay tribute: "The dhimmi, Christian or Jew, goes on a fixed day in person to the emir, appointed to receive the poll tax, who occupies a high throne-like seat. The dhimmi stands before him, offering the poll tax on his open palm. The emir takes it so that his hand is on top and the dhimmi's underneath. Then the emir gives him a blow on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir, drives him roughly away The same procedure is followed with the second, third, and the following taxpayers. The public is admitted to enjoy this show." The public was not merely "admitted" to this humiliating spectacle, but as Baron observes, "Public participation was, indeed, essential for the purpose of demonstrating, according to the Shafi'ite school, the political superiority of Islam."

In the course of time Muslim rulers developed additional ways to humiliate dhimmis. Baron describes one of them: "Equally vexatious was the tax receipt, which in accordance with an old Babylonian custom, was sometimes stamped upon the neck of the 'unbelieving' taxpayer. This ancient mark of slavery...expressly prohibited in the Talmud under the sanction of the slave's forcible emancipation, occasionally reappeared here as a degrading stamp of 'infidelity.'"

These humiliating and painful procedures had a terrible effect on the Jews: "An Arab poet rightly spoke of entering the door with bent heads 'as if we were Jews.'"

Another law designed to humiliate dhimmis required them to wear different clothing. The purposes of this law were to enable Muslims to recognize Jews and Christians at all times, and to make them appear foolish. In 807, the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, legislated that Jews must wear a yellow belt and a tall conical cap. This Muslim decree provided the model for the yellow badge associated with the degradation of Jews in Christian Europe and most recently imposed by the Nazis.

A Jew living in Baghdad in the days of Al-Muqtadir (1075-96) described additional measures passed by the vizier, Abu Shuja, to humiliate Jews: "each Jew had to have a stamp of lead...hang from his neck, on which the word dhimmi was inscribed. On women he likewise imposed two distinguishing marks: the shoes worn by each woman had to be one red and one black. She also had to carry on her neck or attached to her shoe a small brass bell...And the Gentiles used to ridicule Jews, the mob and children often assaulting Jews in all the streets of Baghdad.

During the same century in Egypt, the Fatimid Caliph Hakim ordered Christians to wear a cross with arms two feet long, while Jews were ordered to wear around their necks balls weighing five pounds, to commemorate the calf's head that their ancestors had once worshiped.

These clothing regulations were not only enforced in the Middle Ages. Until their departure from Yemen in 1948, all Jews, men and women alike, were compelled to dress like beggars.

 In fact, Yemen offers us a unique opportunity to understand Muslim attitudes toward the Jews. For it was the one Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority (Jews) that was never ruled by a European power. It was therefore able to treat its Jews in the "purest" Muslim manner, uninfluenced by non-Muslim domination.

In 1679, Jews in most of Yemen were expelled from their cities and villages. When allowed to come back a year later, they were not allowed to return to their homes, but were forced to settle in Jewish settlements outside of the cities. During their expulsion the synagogue of San'a, the capital, was converted into a mosque, which still exists under the name Masjid al-Jala (the Mosque of the Expulsion).

Among the many indignities to which the Jews of Yemen were constantly subjected was the throwing of stones at them by Muslim children, a practice that was religiously sanctioned. When Turkish officials (the Turks occupied Yemen in 1872) asked an assembly of Muslim leaders to see that this practice be stopped, an elderly Muslim scholar responded that throwing rocks at Jews was an Ada, an old religious custom, and thus it was unlawful to forbid it.

The greatest recurrent suffering that Yemenite Jews experienced was th e forced conversion to Islam of Jewish children whose fathers had died. This was practiced until the Jews fled Yemen in 1948, and was also based upon Islamic doctrine. Muhammad was believed to have said, "Everyone is born in a state of natural religion [Islam]. It is only his parents who make a Jew or Christian out of him." Accordingly, a person should grow up in the "natural religion" of Islam.

When a Jewish father died, there was often a "race" between Jewish communal leaders who sought to place the man's children with Jewish parents and the Muslim authorities who wanted to convert the children to Islam and place them in Muslim homes (in the Yemenite Islamic culture it would appear that the surviving mother was regarded as irrelevant). The Jews often lost. Goitein reports that "many families arrived in Israel with one or more of their children lost to them, and I have heard of some widows who have been bereaved in this way of all their offspring."

Yet as persecuted as the Yemenite Jews were, they were also denied the right to leave the country.

By the nineteenth century, the Jews' situation under Islam went from degradation to being recurrent victims of violence - as these examples from Jewish life in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine illustrate.

Egypt

In his authoritative book, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyyptisns, Edward Lane wrote that, at the time of his study (1833-35), the Jews were living "under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish Empire." He added, however, that the Jews "are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general." Lane explained: "Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering idsrespectful words against the Kuran (sic] or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

That this was the Jewish situation in Egypt, "a less oppressive government" than elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world, tells us a great deal about Muslim antisemitism in the nineteenth century - prior to the Zionist movement.

Syria

In 1840, some French Catholics introduced the blood libel into the Arab world. After a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished, Ratti-Mention, the local French consul, told police authorities that the Jews probably had murdered him to procure his blood for a religious ritual. Several Damascus Jews were then arrested, and under torture, oneo f them "confessed" that leaders of the Jewish community had planned the monk's murder. Many other Jews were then arrested, and under torture more such confessions were obtained. French officials pressured Syria'sruler, Muhammad Ali, to try the arrested men, and it was only after an international protest organized by Jewish communities throughout the world that the Jews who survived their tortures were released.

The blood libel immediately became popular among Muslims, who attacked Jews as drinkers of Muslim blood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1853, Damascus again, in 1848 and 1890, Cairo in 1844 and 1901-2, and Alexandria in 1870 and 1881.

The blood libel played a decisive role in unsettling the lives of nineteenth-century Syrian Jews, and since then it has been repeatedly utilized in Arab anti-Jewish writings.

Palestine

Jews have lived continuously as a community in Palestine since approximately 1200 BCE. The only independent states ever to exist in Palestine have been Jewish. After the destruction of the second Jewish state in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews always maintained a presence in Palestine, awaiting the reestablishment of the Jewish state. But these Jews often had to live under degrading conditions.

In nineteenth-century Palestine, which was under Ottoman Muslim rule, Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.

In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism; therefore, synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. In addition, despite the widespread poverty among Palestinian Jews, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes (in actuality, a form of extortion). For example, Jews paid one hundred pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and fifty pounds a year to the Ta'amra Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay ten pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh to to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.

These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had a rather intimidating effect on the Jews. The British consul James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book Stirring Times how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."

Muslim antisemitism continued to be brutally expressed through the twentieth century. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist, who grew up in North Africa, cites a few examples:

"In Morocco in 1907, a huge massacre of Jews took place in Casablanca, along with the usual embellishments - rape, women carried away into the mountains, hundreds of homes and shops burned, etc....In 1912 a big massacre in Fez...In Algeria in 1934, massacre in Constantine, twenty-four people killed, dozens and dozens of others seriously wounded....In Aden in 1946...over one hundred people dead and seventy-six wounded, and two-thirds of the stores sacked and burned....In June, 1941, in Iraq, six hundred people killed, one thousand seriously wounded, looting, rapes, arson, one thousand houses destroyed, six hundred stores looted....[In Libya]: November 4th and 5th, 1945, massacre in Tripoli; November 6th and 7th in Zanzour, Zaouia, Foussaber, Ziltain, etc: girls and women raped in front of their families, the stomachs of pregnant women slashed open, the infants ripped out of them, children smashed with crowbars....All this can be found in the newspapers of the time, including the local Arab papers."

Memmi summarizes the Jewish status under Islam in the twentieth century: "Roughly speaking and in the best of cases, the Jew is protected like a dog which is part of man's property, but if he raises his head or acts like a man, then he must be beaten so that he will always remember his status."

It is the Jews' refusal to accept an unequal, inferior status that lies at the heart of the Arab-Muslim hatred for Israel. (It is this, not the Palestinian refugee issue, that has been the basis of Muslim antisemitism. Without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, as Memmi notes [on page 35 of his book Jews and Arabs]: "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about thirty miles within one vast Arab nation.") As Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel, put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam...as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again 'Islam dominates and is not dominated."

This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine, the mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron).

An ardent supporter of Hitler, the mufti spent much of the war in Nazi Germany; on November 2, 1943, at a time when the Nazis were murdering thousands of Jews daily, the mufti declared in a speech: "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...[makes them] in capable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."

Though many Arab nations formally declared war against Germany in 1945, when German defeat was imminent, in order to be eligible for entry into the United Nations, extensive Arab sympathy with the Nazis continued even after Germany's surrender. The Egyptians and Syrians long welcomed Nazis to their countries, offering them the opportunity to further implement the "Final Solution," by assisting in their efforts to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish community living there.

Among many Arabs the Holocaust has come to be regarded with nostalgia. On August 17, 1956, the French newspaper Le Mongde quoted the government-controlled Damascus daily Al-Manar as observing, "One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honored place in the Arab world....[Journalists} are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler, they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies. Long live the Hitler [i.e., Nasser] of the Arab world."

On June 9, 1960, after Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had supervised the murder of six million Jews, the Beirut daily Al-Anwar carried a cartoon depicting Eichmann speaking with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Said Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty because you killed six million Jews." Responded Eichmann: "There are many who say I deserve the death penalty because I didn't manage to kill the rest."

On April 24, 1961, the Jordanian English-language daily Jerusalem Times published an "Open Letter to Eichmann," which concluded, "But be brave, Eichmann, find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood." At the UN sponsored "Conference Against Racism" in September 2001, an Arab pamphlet displayed at the Durban Exhibition Center featured a picture of Adolf Hitler with the caption, "If I had won the war there would be no...Palestinian blood lost."

Arab Jew-hatred also has brought about the resurrection of the blood libel. In 1962, the Egyptian Ministry of Education reissued Talmudic Sacrifices by Habib Faris, a book originally published in Cairo in 1890. The editor notes in his introduction that the book constitutes "an explicit documentation of indictment, based upon clear-cut evidence that the Jewish people permitted the shedding of blood as a religious duty enjoined in the Talmud."

On April 24, 1970, Fatah radio, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, broadcast, "Reports from the captured homeland tell that the Zionist enemy has begun to kidnap small children from the streets. Afterwards the occupying forces take the blood of the children and throw away their empty bodies. The inhabitants of Gaza have seen this with their own eyes."

Even more disturbing, the blood libel accusations have been made by the most prominent figures within the Arab world. In November 1973, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that it was necessary to understand the Jewish religious obligation to obtain non-Jewish blood in order to comprehend the crimes of Zionism. A decade later, in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission Conference on religious tolerance, Marouf al-Dawalibi, told the commission, "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." In The Matzah of Zion, a book that has remained in print since its publication in 1983, Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian Defense Minister since 1972, wrote, "The Jew can kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread." A 2000 article about Tlas's book in Al-Ahram, Egypt's largest, and government-controlled, newspaper, reported, "The Bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared without being found, torn to pieces, without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." As one American journalist commented: "If this is 'the most reasonable explanation," can you imagine an unreasonable one?" The Al-Ahram article went on to report that an Egyptian movie company is planning to shoot a multimillion dollar film version of The Matzah of Zion, which will retell, as truth, the story of the Damascus blood libel.

And still the blood libel goes on. A 2001 cartoon in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour depicts an Israeli soldier presenting his mother with a Mother's Day gift of a bottle containing the blood of a Palestinian child. At about the same time (November 2001), Abu Dhabi Television depicted a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon preparing to drink a cup of blood taken from a Palestinian. A March 10, 2002, article in Saudi Arabia's Al-Riyadh, the government-controlled newspaper, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University, creates a new twist to this ancient libel, claiming that Jews use blood for Purim pastry and not just for Passover matzo: "Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend."

Arab Muslims have also reached back to classical themes of Islamic antisemitism to attack the Jews and Israel. Many Arab speakers and publications echo Muhammad's charge in the Koran (5:82) that the Jews are the greatest enemies of humankind. For example, an Egyptian textbook, published in 1966 for use in teachers' seminars, taught that Jews (not only Israelis) are the "monsters of mankind [and] a nation of beasts."

Perhaps the favorite antisemitic publication in the Arab world for over fifty years has been The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. In an interview with the editor of the Indian magazine Blitz, on October 4, 1958, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt praised the Protocols: "I wonder if you have read a book called 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' It is very important that you should read it. I will give you an English copy. It proves clearly, to quote from the Protocols, that 'three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continents and they elect their successors from their entourage."

The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave copies of the Protocols to the guests of his regime. When he presented the Protocols, along with an anthology of antisemitic writings, to French journalists who accompanied French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert on his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 1974, "Saudi officials noted that these were the king's favorite books."

Article 32 of the 1988 Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant claims that the Zionist "scheme" foe takeover of the Arab world "has been laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there." Hamas literature repeatedly accuses Jews of controlling the world's wealth and its most important media, and using them to promote Jewish and Zionist interests, even of having established the League of Nations in the 1920s "in order to rule the world."

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (and therefore supposedly less extreme than Hamas), regularly contains references to the Protocols. Thus, even during the height of the Oslo peace process the paper published the following: "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud, and the Protocols...This conflict resembles the conflict between men and Satan." At about the same time in Egypt, Al-Ahram, the country's largest newspaper, reported, "A compilation of the investigative' work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world states that Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara)." As the journalist Andrew Sullivan comments, "It is worth noting that every word Al Ahram prints is vetted and approved by the Egyptian government, a regime to which the United States - i.e., you and I - contributed $2 billion a year."

It is perhaps no surprise that, as of 2002, over sixty editions of the Protocols are being sold throughout the Arab world, and this libelous "warrant for genocide" is probably more widely distributed today than at any other time in its history. In 2002, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that a major Egyptian television station was about  to launch a forty-one-episode TV series based on the Protocols (complete with Jewish villains dressed in black hats, side curls, and beards) to run before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic world today has combined antisemitic motifs from Nazism and medieval Christendom, as well as from its own tradition. This potent combination has made the Arabs the major source of antisemitic publications in the world today. And as in other forms of antisemitism, in the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the evil in the Jews is ascribed not to race or blood, but to their spiritual character and religion." Thus, when Pakistani Islamic terrorists kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002, they forced Pearl to say, "I am a Jew," (and videotaped him doing so) before slitting his throat.

Only through an understanding of the deep theological roots of Muslim antisemitism and an awareness of its continuous history can present-day Muslim hatred of Israel be understood. Only then does one recognize how false are the claims of Israel's enemies that prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony and that neither Islam nor Muslims have ever harbored Jew-hatred. The creation of the Jewish state in no way created Muslim Jew-hatred; it merely intensified it and gave it a new focus.

So long as the Jews acknowledged their inferior status among Muslims, they were humiliated but allowed to exist. But once the Jews decided to reject their inferior status, to become sovereign after centuries of servitude, and worst of all, to now govern some Muslims in a land where the Jews had so long been governed, their existence was no longer tolerable. Hence the passionate Arab Muslim hatred of Israel and Zionism, a hatred that entirely transcends political antagonisms. Hence the widespread Muslim call not merely for a military defeat of Israel, but for its annihilation.

As so often in Jewish history, it is the Jewish nation's existence that arouses hatred and needs to be ended. Despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), for most Muslims the source of their hatred remains the Jewish sate's existence, not its policies, nor even its borders.

The Muslim and Arab claim that the issue is anti-Zionism rather than antisemitism really means that so long as the Jews adhere to their dhimmi status in Arab Muslim nations, their existence as individuals is acceptable. But for a Jew to aspire to equality among Muslims, for a Jew to aspire to a status higher than "humiliation and wretchedness," is to aspire too high."

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, chapter nine

[covid-safer-hotties]

Reference saved in our archive

Take-out is covid prophylaxis.

Abstract Background: Following COVID-19, dietary habits have been altered frequently along with other societal lifestyle modifications. However, changes in the dietary habits of maintenance hemodialysis patients (MHPs) before and during COVID-19 have not been investigated.

Methods: A total of 132 MHPs were assessed for changes in their dietary habits before and during the pandemic and their association with COVID-19 prevention. Logistic regression models were used to calculate the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the risk of COVID-19. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed.

Results: Approximately 27% (36 of 132) of the MHPs modified their dietary habits. Following COVID-19, the frequency of eating out decreased, and that of eating in increased significantly for dinner. However, there was no change in dietary habits for breakfast and lunch. Multivariate analysis revealed an inverse correlation between the number of eating takeout and COVID-19; that is, more eating of takeout was associated with a lower risk of contracting COVID-19.

Conclusions: Comparing before and after the pandemic, there was a shift from eating out to eating in for dinner. However, the frequency of eating takeout played a role in preventing COVID-19, suggesting that the person preparing the meal may be a more important factor than where the meal is eaten when the main route of infection is household transmission.

[sarahowritesostucky]

📖"The Carter Academy for Omega Excellence" Pt 7

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes

Tags: age gap, boarding school au, a/b/o, dub-con/non-con, spanking, feminization, dumbification, sexism, misogyny, prostate milking, discipline, D/s elements, hurt/comfort, mentions of past self-harm, predatory behavior, teacher/student, bathroom use control, humiliation, omarashi

Summary: Bucky Barnes is young, confused, and conflicted - a real "rebel without a cause" type. His parents ship him off to Steve's reform school to help him get straightened out into a "proper young omega."

Wait! I haven't read an earlier part of this fic! Story Masterlist

Part 7 - The Liberal Assault on Traditional Values

After the bathroom, Bucky feels … loose. Kinda like how you feel right after getting one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-your-muscles, deep-tissue massages. It’s positively dreamy.

Steve drops him back off at French with Sharon, and Bucky sits at his desk and doesn’t hear a word the teacher says for a little while, because he feels nice and fuzzy and weak. He’s back with it once class is over, and is grateful to find that not only did Sharon take notes on the rest of the class for him, but that she also plans to act like the whole bathroom incident didn’t even happen. 

They go to lunch in the dining hall, and Bucky remembers his excitement over how the food at this place is going to be one of the main highlights. There’s so much to choose from, multiple buffets, and it all looks delicious. Sharon grabs a tray for him, because the rules are that Bucky has to go around with her and ask for what he wants as she fills up his plate. It’s a dumb rule but not worth fighting over, so he complies. There’s a boy over by the dessert bar who looks like he might be around Bucky’s age. He appears to be pleading his case for a piece of chocolate cake.

“Please, Nat? I’ll do an extra thirty minutes on my parkour tomorrow!”

The redheaded handler who’s with him looks amused. “It’s not about calories, Parker. You can’t have sugar like that. You’ll be bouncing off the walls all night—and not in a parkour way.��� She guides the boy over to a soft serve machine that’s mounted into the wall. “Frozen yogurt,” she proclaims. “No sugar added.”

“Blegh.”

Bucky smirks and sets his sights on the chocolate cake for himself, later. As far as he knows, no dietary restrictions have yet been set for him. This theory is confirmed when Sharon doesn’t say no to anything he asks for. She doesn’t even hesitate to comply when he asks to have double portions of the less healthy items, so Bucky decides not to get huffy at her over how silly it is that he can’t fill up his own plate.

Besides, he’s just relieved that Sharon doesn’t make him kneel on a cushion on the floor like some other students are doing. 

They sit down at one of the dining tables and Bucky asks if the kids who are kneeling and being hand fed by their Handlers are being punished. Sharon looks at him funny for the question, like she thinks he’s really ignorant and feels bad for him. “It’s a protocol,” she says, then proceeds to explain the difference between “punishments” and “protocols.”

The former are always deterrents and are meant to be unpleasant. The latter are daily or weekly routines done for reinforcement and wellbeing, and are tailored specifically to each individual student’s needs. Sharon points out that there can sometimes be a degree of intersection between the two (as in the case of spanking), but that protocols typically involve things like sleeping restraints, or hand feeding, or leashing. “It depends on how you’ve been assessed,” she tells him. “What your Handler decides your needs are. Some boys eat at the table and never get leashed, some get hand fed and maintenance spanked. It just depends on the student.”

Bucky flushes at the mental image of Sharon “maintenance spanking” him on the daily. Yikes. He forces himself to casually eat a few potato chips off his plate so that he doesn’t come across as too anxious when he next asks, “Um, so … have you assessed me yet?”

Sharon smiles sweetly at him and sips her drink through its straw. “Oh, I’m working on it,” she says, somehow managing to make it feel like a threat even through her cheerful tone. She tells Bucky to finish his food, as lunch is almost over and they’ve still got his afternoon classes to get to. Bucky hurriedly complies, hopeful that there’ll still be enough time to go back and snag that piece of chocolate cake for dessert. 

Well, the bomb had to drop somewhere. 

Turns out, that first half of the school day had lulled Bucky into a false sense of security, exceeding his expectations and leading him to think that he’d be receiving a totally normal education at this backwards institution. But no such luck. 

Reality comes crashing in after lunch, when Bucky’s made to sit through the introduction of material that he refuses to believe could be accurate. “Who produces this garbage?” he mutters, flipping to the front cover of his biology textbook and searching out the copyright page.

Scholastic Publishers The Complete Human Body: a comprehensive framework of human biological systems  Copyright © 2024 Oxford College Publishers

Well. That actually seems pretty legit. He twists his lips unhappily and closes the book. In the tutor’s seat beside his desk, Sharon taps her hand against the desktop to get his attention. All she has to do is give him a look, and he knows she’s telling him to pay attention to the teacher. 

Up at the front of the classroom, Professor Cho has been giving a lecture on brain anatomy.

“The limbic system is where we see the biggest differences in the omega brain,” she says, clicking her little remote to bring up the next slide. It shows a cross section of a human brain with labels and highlighted regions. “It’s located here, to either side of the thalamus and just beneath the medial temporal lobe.” She uses her laser pointer to highlight said parts of the projection. “Now, the main functions of this system are emotion, behavior, olfactory, and long term memory. Omega brains are both structurally and functionally unique. We see the biggest structural differences in the nucleus accumbens, the amygdala, and the septal nuclei. Let’s take them one by one and explore what the differences are and how that affects us.”

She says “us,” but Bucky is pretty sure she isn't omega. Why would an uber-traditional school like this one hire an omega professor, after all? Bucky listens with pursed lips as Cho proceeds to talk about the different structures.

“Now, the piriform cortex in omegas is the one part of the limbic system that’s actually very similar in structure to that in the alpha brain.” She indicates a spot on the diagram with her laser pointer. “Right here. This is where we process olfactory information, including pheromones. You see how much bigger it is compared to the beta brain? You’ll always see this increase in size—that’s why we can scent more intensely than betas do.”

Sharon taps the desk again and looks pointedly at Bucky’s notebook, telling him to get to work on taking notes. Bucky huffs but he does listen, picking up his pen and scribbling down a few notes about the piriform cortex and scenting.

“In terms of omega brains specifically though, we do see massive structural and functional differences when it comes to the pleasure and reward centers and emotional regulation.” She points to another part of the diagram. “Here. This is the septal nuclei, and this,” she points again, “is the nucleus accumbens. They both deal with one’s pleasure and reward feedback loops. The accumbens especially is enlarged in omegas, and that is where sexual arousal is processed.”

A few students snicker at the mention of sex, and Cho smiles good naturedly while she waits them out. “Yes, yes, let’s all try to be mature about this, okay? Moving on. You can see the size difference, yeah? In omega brains these structures are nearly double to the size of what they are in the alpha or beta brain. That is what leads to the hypersexuality we see in omegas, and the heightened level of pleasure response to certain stimuli that wouldn’t really affect betas or alphas. This is multi-faceted, by the way: it’s not merely sexual pleasure that’s intensified. We also see the marked increase in pleasure-reward pathways with regards to things like scruffing, Holding, biting, and other possessive Alpha behaviors. These structures are the reason why omegas respond so strongly to dominance and aggression behaviors.” She looks at them all and says, “So the next time you get that gooey, goosebumpy feeling from the pressure of a collar, or from your Handler making you kneel, you know you have your nucleus accumbens to thank.”

Bucky scowls, resentful as fuck of his nucleus accumbens. One sharp look from Sharon has him writing down the information, though. 

Nucleus Accumbens: horny central, cause of simping for alphas.

Sharon narrows her eyes when she sees what he’s written, but Bucky just ignores her and focuses on Cho at the front of the room.

“It’s not just the bigger size of these structures that affect omegas, it’s also the differences in activity levels. And we know this because we’re able to observe this through neuroimaging studies. Does anyone want to take a guess at what types of neuroimaging are most useful for this kind of brain mapping?” She waits, and when nobody raises their hand, she calls on the kid whom Bucky had seen begging for cake in the cafeteria. “Peter? You ought to know this.”

Bucky looks over to where “Peter” is sitting with his red-headed Handler. The boy groans a little at being put on the spot, but eventually he guesses, “I dunno, like a CATscan or something?”

Cho smiles. “Good guess, that is one type. But the most common methods we use are MRI scans and EEGs.” She clicks to the next slide, which shows animated pictures of multiple brains, each illuminated in various colors that flare and flicker to show the brain activity.  “So this is an alpha brain’s amygdala, and this is an omega brain. Unlike the different sizes of the accumbens, the amygdalas are structurally identical. But the omega amygdala is much less active. The warmer the color, the more activity is indicated.” She points to the alpha brain. “All this dark blue? That means that it’s only moderately active—not too much emotion. But over here on the corresponding structure in the omega brain, what do we see?” She points to where the same part of the omega brain is lit up red. “Much more intense activity. So what does this tell us?”

She waits, and after a moment another student raises their hand. “That omegas are more emotional?”

Cho nods. “Exactly! Brain mapping studies have long indicated the increased emotions of omegas, but what’s important to note is that it’s not just that one factor that results in a high level of observable emotionality. We also have to consider this other little area over here.” she points to another spot on the diagram. “The anterior cingulate cortex is what regulates emotional control, and this is where the most pronounced difference is. Not only is this structure physically smaller in the omega brain, but it’s also much more inactive. This is why omegas struggle with independent emotional regulation and focus. Now this is fascinating: If you look here at these three comparison scans, the one on the left is an unmated omega at rest. You see the dark blue, indicating minimal emotional control? Now look at the next one over: that’s the cortex of an omega who’s been newly bonded!”

Bucky squints at the powerpoint, able to clearly see the lighter color blue in the area.

“Now it’s still extremely poor compared to alpha or beta brains, but you can see how the bond has mildly improved the activity levels.” Cho beams at them. “This is because of the influx of the alpha’s bonding pheromones. That’s the connection and settling that omegas feel upon bonding.” She says it all cheerfully, as if this a good thing, and Bucky sits back grumpily in his chair. Cho continues, “This last brain on the right shows the most activity of all, however. Anybody want to guess why?”

A few students raise their hands. One guesses that it’s not an omega brain at all, but Cho assures them it is. “This is the burst in activity levels seen just after an alpha has Voiced,” she says. “They had omegas wear headphones in the MRI machine, and hearing the Voiced intonation of an alpha caused many observable brain changes. All to the positive.” She continues prattling on about all the ways in which interactions with alphas have been shown to increase positive and decrease negative brain activity , annoying Bucky with every single fact she throws out. “Next class we’ll talk more about pheromonal feedback loops and the structures of the prefrontal cortex, so for homework I want you to read all of chapter two in your textbooks.” 

When class is over, Bucky slaps his pen down onto his notebook, and on the short walk to his next classroom, Sharon asks him what’s wrong. Bucky avoids looking at her. “That’s all bullshit,” he says. “Just putting a spin on things to make it look like we’re dumb.”

Sharon ‘tsks’. “I don’t recall Professor Cho saying anything about intelligence in that lecture.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” Bucky grumps. “That’ll be next.”

“Hey kid, I don’t know what to tell ya. The science doesn’t lie.”

“Junk science,” Bucky grunts, though he honestly isn’t so sure about that. Dr. Cho’s slideshow had cited sources from places like Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. Bucky’s pretty sure those are major medical institutions and publications …

“Don’t be grumpy,” Sharon says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Maybe you’ll like psychology class more.”

Bucky does not like psychology class more. 

Professor Banner spends a whole thirty minutes lecturing them on the roles of neurotransmitters in omegas versus alphas and betas before Bucky finally gets frustrated enough to call out, “How come they don’t mention any of this crap in regular school? Huh?”

Banner looks over at Bucky, surprised, and Sharon shoots him a warning look from where she’s sitting across the room. Unlike in Cho’s class, where all the desks face the front of the classroom and the Handlers stay by each student’s side, in Banner’s class they’re all sitting around in small clusters at communal tables and the Handlers sit in chairs along the far wall. Bucky’s cluster has the chocolate cake kid, Peter, in it, along with two other boys. In the chair directly across from Bucky’s, Peter is staring at him with wide eyes. Bucky clenches his jaw and looks back down at the worksheets they’re supposed to be filling in as Banner lectures.  

“Well …” Banner says, parsing his words. “It depends what school you went to before this. You’re American, right?”

“Duh,” Bucky mutters. Across the room, Sharon narrows her eyes at him.

Banner just chuckles. “Yeah, well. A lot of folks in academia don’t like to emphasize anything that goes against the popular narrative, I suppose. But this is all extensively documented.” 

Bucky scowls. “It’s not a narrative. It’s just the real world.”

Banner blinks mildly at him. “Uh huh.” He turns back around to continue the lesson. “So, moving onto the role that endorphins play. I believe you all discussed regulatory centers in the brain in bio today?” A few students murmur in agreement, and Banner nods. “Okay, good. So we know that the parts of the brain that house your pleasure pathways and emotionality are located in the limbic system, and that’s where everything gets processed, but what makes the process happen, what makes it work?”

Bucky stares mutinously at his paper and mutters, “Apparently there’s not much going on up there,” he mumbles sarcastically. “Our ‘amygdala’ is ‘hypoactive’.”

If Banner hears him, he ignores him. “Think of it this way,” he says. “The structures in the limbic system are the factories, yeah? But they need workers inside and machinery to make anything happen. What is the factory worker, in this case?” He calls on Peter when the boy raises his hand. 

“Um, is it endorphins?”

Banner claps his hands, pleased. “Yes! But even broader than that, it’s your neurochemicals and the receptors for those chemicals. Endorphins are just one type of neurotransmitter that the brain releases. And you’re right, that’s what makes these processing centers in your brain work the way they do. The main ones we’re going to be going over today are omgestrin, oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. Only omegas produce omgestrin—it’s totally unique to you guys. That’s known as one of the “love hormones,” and omegas produce the most of it when they’re in heat, newly bonded, or when they have a new baby. Omegas naturally produce higher levels of all of the other three neurochemicals too, but: their bodies aren’t as good at regulating it. It has to do with the amount of receptors available in the brain—don’t worry, we haven’t gone over that yet. But in a general sense, you guys have more neurotransmitters floating around, but less active receptor sites. So your body struggles to be able to use the neurotransmitters effectively. Does that make sense?” A few students mumble in agreement, and Banner nods. “So does anybody know how we turn the receptor sites on? How is good regulation achieved?”

“I’ll take a whack at it,” Bucky drawls, not raising his hand. “Alphas?”

Banner nods and shoots him an approving grin. He doesn’t seem to notice Bucky’s sarcasm. “Yes! Exactly. Now simple proximity is probably the biggest and most important factor. We know that omegas who spend large amounts of time in close proximity to alphas fare much better than those who don’t. Usually this means an alpha in the household, but there can be other situations that provide enough contact. Perhaps a friend or a neighbor or a teacher. Someone or several people in the community.”

Bucky doodles nervously on the edge of his worksheet, not looking up. “So then ... what happens if you don’t have an alpha in the house?”

“Good question! Now this is something psychologists have studied extensively. We see a lot more depression in omegas who forego A-o contact, along with higher rates of emotional and behavioral disorders. Suicidality rises by almost ten percent when no alpha is present in the household, and an omega is much more likely to engage in impulsive and high risk behaviors.”

Bucky’s eyes track to the question on his worksheet that asks about the effects of lack of A-o contact. Sighing, he reluctantly writes down Banner’s answer. “Stupid,” he mutters, but it’s said so quietly that nobody hears it except for the boys in his group. Peter shoots him a curious look from across the table, and Bucky flushes and looks away.

“Of course, there are a whole host of proven behaviors that alphas and omegas can engage in that essentially ‘turn on’ the neurotransmitter receptors in your brains. It’s that ‘rush’ of good feelings that you get when an alpha Voices, for example.” Banner looks around the room. “What are some other examples you can think of? I’ll give you a hint: they don’t all require an alpha to be effective.”

This is another question on the worksheet, so Bucky poises his pencil and waits for the other students to call out their ideas. He’s not willingly participating in this misogynistic lesson, he refuses to. One by one, the other kids call out their ideas:

Holds? Scruffs? Scenting? Kneeling? Being hand fed? Spanking?

God, this is so cringe. Bucky pinches the bridge of his nose and writes down a few of the answers that Banner nods along to.

“Remember, they don’t all require an alpha. Nesting is a good example of one that you can do on your own,” he says. “Though of course it always helps to have Alpha-scented materials available to use. Proximity to one’s own offspring is another, especially if the child in question is under the age of two.”

“Can’t we just cut to the chase?” Bucky interrupts. 

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, this is all just leading up to the part where you tell us that we can’t exist in the big bad world without an Alpha, right?”

Banner, surprisingly, doesn’t get mad (even though Bucky can see Sharon glaring at him from the other side of the classroom). “Exist? No, no I wouldn’t say that. You don’t need an alpha to exist. But to thrive? Yes, I would say so. Optimal mental health almost always requires interaction with an alpha.” Banner walks up to the room’s whiteboard and uncaps a marker. He begins writing on the board. Let’s discuss what can happen when one is absent that contact, okay? We already mentioned depression.” He writes “depression” down in big, looping letters. “And impulsivity, and high risk behaviors. Anybody want to take a gander about some of the most common high risk behaviors?”

“Sleeping around?” somebody says.

Banner makes a ‘meh’ face. “Well … yes, in the sense that arbitrary promiscuity is unhealthy. But not sexual activity altogether.” He writes down “promiscuity.” “Omegas have high sex drives, so it’s actually important for there to be outlets for that, but it should be with people you’re close to, not strangers or acquaintances.”

Bucky looks down. He’s never slept with anybody but acquaintances. Around the room, the students call out other problematic behaviors, and Banner writes down on the board, “alcohol and drug use,” self-harm,” and “criminality.”

“Good, good. Those are all good examples. And we see these behaviors in omegas who are, for example, raised in very rural communities where there might not be any alphas at all. It’s complex, but all you need to remember is that, in general, if there’s no A-o contact, then the risks for depression, addiction, suicidality, and criminality are all significantly raised.” 

That’s another question on the worksheet, so Bucky begrudgingly fills it out. He can’t help but make comparisons to his own life, of course. He’s never spent any significant amount of time around any alpha, and he does engage in more than one of these so-called “high risk behaviors.” But he’s not depressed, and he’s certainly not suicidal. Jeez. 

“So basically, the two big categories are one: being in physical proximity to alphas; and two: engaging submissive-dominant behaviors. Who here has a daily protocol?”

Almost everybody raises their hands, and Bucky glances over to Sharon. She shakes her head minutely, and Bucky’s shoulders untense. Banner calls on Peter, who’s got his hand raised. “I’ve got spanking protocol,” the boy volunteers.

Bucky’s eyes shoot up. “Daily?” he hisses, slightly horrified. 

Peter just smiles and nods. Banner calls on another student, who volunteers that they have assigned “lap time” with their Handler. Bucky doesn’t even know what that means. “Yeah,” Banner is saying. “So, what’s happening on a neurochemical level when you’re engaging in these activities with your Handlers, is that your body’s sending signals to more efficiently direct your happy hormones. More receptor sites become available, and that’s when you feel the effects—that rush of pleasurable sensation.”

Bucky answers another question on the worksheet, jotting down a few of the daily protocols that the other kids mentioned. He really hopes that he won’t get assigned the more humiliating protocols, like nudity or spanking. Yikes. 

“Now,” Banner says, erasing the board and starting over by drawing long lines to make a table. “Let's chart out all the protocol activities and work through which of the four pleasure receptors is involved in each.”

Banner’s class stretches on for what feels like forever, and Bucky is relieved when the bell rings and they’re dismissed. On the way out the door, Peter walks alongside him and holds out his hand. “Hey. I’m Peter.” 

Bucky shakes his hand. “Hey. Bucky.”

“You’re from the US too?” Peter asks.

“Brooklyn,” Bucky confirms, and watches Peter’s face light up like a Christmas tree. 

“Really?! I’m from Queens!” 

Bucky grunts. 

“Do you have gender studies next?” Peter asks eagerly. 

“I dunno.”

“He does,” Sharon supplies from behind. She’s walking alongside Peter’s Handler and the two of them are chatting back there while they walk along the hall. 

“Awesome!” Peter nods. “Miss Foster is my favorite teacher. She’s really nice and down to earth, you know? You’ll like her.”

“Doubt it,” Bucky mumbles, but he says it so quietly that Peter doesn’t hear, just keeps talking about how they get to sit in beanbag chairs for this class rather than at tables or desks. Bucky doesn’t say a word, just lets Peter prattle on, while privately wondering why the heck the boy seems so happy to be here.

They arrive at the next classroom, and inside there are indeed a bunch of beanbag chairs arranged in a circle. Bucky chooses one and isn’t too surprised when Peter plops down in the next one over. “Miss Jane” turns out to be a pretty omega woman, which surprises Bucky a lot. She’s wearing a collar, which means that she’s mated, and Bucky curls his lip in disdain. He wonders how self-hating an omega would have to be to want to teach at a place like this. 

Jane greets them all and introduces herself. “Welcome to gender studies,” she tells them, taking up one of the beanbag chairs for herself and tucking her legs under her. “I see a few new faces, so let me explain what this class is all about.” She gestures to herself and around to everyone in the circle. “We’re all omega, and in this class we study and explore the nature of that designation, what it means, and how we can all live our best, happiest and healthiest lives.”

Bucky’s eyes slip shut and he groans inside his head. It’s like they’re doing this on purpose, he thinks, slowly ramping up the rhetoric and reinforcing the previous teacher’s points. 

“This isn’t quite like your other classes,” Jane is saying. “For one thing, these chairs.” She wiggles in her own and smiles. “They mimic the atmosphere of a nest, so they should be much more comfortable for us than the usual desks. This is a place where we talk a lot more openly, omega-to-omega, and we have all sorts of discussions. It's much more loosey-goosey in structure, a place of free expression. Okay?”

(Bitterly, Bucky thinks that she probably wouldn’t like what he has to express.)

“Today I thought we could talk about gender roles and expectations, and how we all might feel that society is pressuring us to act one way versus another,” Jane says. 

“What?” Bucky says. “You mean like how we’re expected to stay home, pregnant and barefoot and catering to our Alpha’s whims?”

Jane smirks at him. “Actually quite the opposite. I’m talking about modern society, progressive values that dictate that we should all live and function independently, that we shouldn’t express our feelings or our needs. The modern feminist perspective is that there’s no difference between the sexes and that we should live exactly as alphas do, because that’s the right way to act. The valued way.”

Bucky frowns at her. “That’s a good thing though.”

She tilts her head. “Is it?”

Before he can answer, another student from across the beanbag circle speaks up. “I don’t think it’s always good,” he says. Bucky glares at the kid and Jane asks him, “Why not?”

The other boy shrugs and tucks his knees in. “I dunno. Just … it’s stressful, you know? I feel like we’re supposed to not say anything about how we're feeling, like it’ll be bothering people if you say you need help, or if you admit that you’re feeling sad or seem too needy or something.”

Jane nods along approvingly. “Yes. Well that’s the thing: modern feminism tells us that a good omega is just like an alpha, and that a good omega doesn’t need extra support. So we internalize that and feel guilt and shame when we do have these needs. We’re too embarrassed to speak up and feel like we should just keep it to ourselves and not say anything. But that’s not healthy, and it’s not fair to us. Modern western culture completely devalues the natural omega by insisting we’re the same as everybody else. What’s so wrong with being different?”

“That’s not true,” Bucky argues. “Feminism is good. It’s trying to make a fair world for us!”

Jane raises an eyebrow. “When did ‘fair’ become ‘identical’? When did ‘equal’ become ‘the same’? In today’s world we’re constantly sent messages to be self-reliant, to not be a burden: ‘Don’t mention it if you’re close to heat, just take suppressants. Don’t admit you need body contact, just stay in your space and don’t bother anybody.’ We have all these natural interests, abilities, and inclinations, but society tells us to pursue alphas’ interests and inclinations, to be just like they are because those are the valued traits. Don’t you think that’s the most sexist thing of all? To completely dismiss our natures as something undesirable?”

Bucky frowns and looks down at his lap. “I dunno,” he grumbles. He’s never thought of it that way. He doesn’t like the spin Jane’s trying to put on it though, as though omegas can’t or shouldn’t pursue independence. 

Jane goes back to addressing the whole class. “Just look at the ways that modern feminism has denied omegas’ nature and actually hurt us: We’re told we should want to suppress these traits, that we should ignore our urge to have children and a family, that we should avoid leaning on an alpha for support or comfort. The sexual revolution insisted that we could and should have casual sex with anyone, robbing us of the proven benefits we get from bonded sex and long term partners. It’s drastically increased the risks we face for abandonment upon pregnancy, because alphas are now given the message that they don’t need to commit and they don’t need to protect or nurture us. Both sides wind up lonely and deprived, and we’re told we should be saying thank you for it.” Jane looks around sadly at them all. “And what we’re seeing consistently now is tons of omegas in their thirties and forties—alone, mateless, childless, depressed—with houseplants and cats and regrets that’ve come too late.” She shrugs. “I would posit that true omega feminism would promote acceptance of our natures, rather than pretending they don’t exist. We need to think about what our culture can do to start valuing omegas how they are, not how they ‘should be’.”

Around the beanbag circle, a lot of the students are nodding along, looking relieved as if Jane has just put to words the way that they’ve all felt for a long time. Bucky isn’t nodding, but he is frowning down at his own lap, ruminating on it …

“Is there anybody who’s had an experience where they felt like they weren’t allowed or weren’t ‘supposed to’ act a certain way, and had to hold something that they really felt or thought in so they wouldn’t be judged?”

Several kids raise their hands, and they all volunteer times where they’ve felt pressured to not be their true selves. Bucky’s dismayed to realize that he can relate to many of the stories. He’s just never considered it before. He pulls his knees up to his chest and burrows further into the beanbag chair, chewing his lip and listening to things that he doesn’t want to believe might be true.

“So what?” he eventually says. “We’re all just supposed to stay home and make babies and never do anything?”

Jane shoots him an exasperated look. “Do you know the rate of antidepressant use in omegas in the US?”

“No.”

“It’s seventy nine percent. In the general population it’s thirteen.”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “Oh. … I didn’t know that. That sounds high.”

She nods sadly. “It is. But back in the fifties and sixties, the rate was nearly identical to theat of the general population’s. It only skyrocketed after the sexual revolution and second wave feminism. You think that’s just a coincidence?”

Bucky shrugs mulishly. “I dunno. It could be. Correlation isn’t causation.”

Jane nods. “Yes, but we also know that in bonded omegas who have children and work in traditional jobs, antidepressant use is still over sixty percent. In bonded omegas who fulfill caregiver roles? It drops to eight percent.”

Bucky avoids her stare, uncomfortable with being confronted with all these facts. “Whatever,” he mutters. “We should still have the choice to do whatever we wanna do.”

“Well of course,” she says. “We’re not saying those paths shouldn’t be allowed, but society has decided to demean and diminish the most common and beneficial life choices for omegas. It’s made us feel like what we naturally want to do isn’t good enough, isn’t worth anything. And that’s what’s not fair. We should be allowed to take pride in our designation, not be constantly told to ignore it and repress it.” 

Bucky shrugs, unhappy to concede the point. “Sure, I guess,” he mutters. 

Jane seems to sense that he isn’t interested in talking anymore, because she directs the conversation back to the class as a whole and moves on from there, leaving Bucky to sulk in his beanbag.

This story is an ongoing commission for an amazing supporter who wishes to remain anonymous. If you have a story that you'd like to see custom written, send me a message on Tumblr or reach out on my Kofi.

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[macgyvermedical]

RN Scope of Practice

I recently learned something that was pretty interesting about the RN scope of practice.

In hospital settings, we tend to think of registered nurses as carrying out the orders of physicians and advanced practice providers. In a hospital just about everything needs an order, including things that in nursing school we were always told were under our scope of practice-like ambulating the patient, dietary plans, positioning, wound care, etc...

So I was wondering- what can a registered nurse do without an order? Do we have our own scope of practice if we were to, say, freelance?

It turns out, yes- I can only speak for the state of Ohio, but outside a facility that requires an order, an RN can actually do a lot in the way of independent practice. The reason everything requires an order in a hospital setting is facility policy, not law.

Here is what the Ohio Revised Code says the RN Scope of Practice is:

"Identifying patterns of human responses to actual or potential health problems amenable to a nursing regimen

Executing a nursing regimen through the selection, performance, management, and evaluation of nursing actions

Assessing health status for the purpose of providing nursing care

Providing health counseling and health teaching

Administering medications, treatments, and executing regimens authorized by an individual who is authorized to practice in this state and is acting within the course of the individual’s professional practice

Teaching, administering, supervising, delegating, and evaluating nursing practice."

"RNs have independent licensed authority to engage in all aspects of practice specified in Section 4723.01(B), ORC, except that, when providing nursing care pursuant to Section 4723.01(B)(5), ORC, the RN must have an order from an individual who is authorized to practice in this state and is acting within the course of the individual's professional practice for administration of medication or treatments or for the regimen that is to be executed."

Basically, if you read down that list, the only thing that actually requires an order is #5. But other than that, RNs are allowed to independently practice without medical direction, as long as we are doing something that is within our scope.

What does that mean? Well, if you look at number 1, we can identify patients who can use nursing care. If you look at number 2, we can independently select, use, and evaluate the effectiveness of nursing interventions such as positioning, diet, oral hydration, non-pharmacological pain, anxiety, and nausea control, run codes if we have ACLS, etc... If you look at number 3, we can do pretty much any physical assessment. If you look at number 4, we can provide health coaching and teach health education to the public. And if you look at number 6, we can teach nursing students, delegate to those lower on the nursing hierarchy, and study nursing practice academically.

So what does that look like? Well, an RN can independently select a patient who could benefit from nursing care, assess that patient, advise nursing interventions that may help them, perform those interventions or delegate them to an LPN, STNA, or CHW, evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions, provide health education to that patient, and pass along that knowledge to a next generation of nurses, STNAs, and CHWs.

So I just want you to know, RNs, future RNs, and writers that write RNs, an RN is an independent license. You do not need a medical provider to practice nursing, only to do things that fall under a medical scope of practice.

[mcatmemoranda]

I have a pt who has alpha thalassemia minor in her medical problem list. She had asked for blood tests because she felt anemic. Her Hgb/hct are normal. Iron panel showed low iron saturation and elevated UIBC.

Unsaturated iron binding capacity (UIBC) is a blood test that measures the amount of iron that can still bind to transferrin in the blood. It's part of a panel of tests that evaluate iron levels. 

What's it used for?

UIBC is used to assess iron deficiency or overload. 

It's often ordered along with a serum iron test and a total iron-binding capacity (TIBC) test. 

UIBC can help diagnose conditions like anemia, hemochromatosis, and iron toxicity. 

What do UIBC results mean? 

Elevated UIBC: May indicate iron deficiency or malabsorption.

Decreased UIBC: May indicate iron overload, hemochromatosis, or other conditions.

When might a UIBC test be ordered?

If a complete blood count (CBC) shows low hemoglobin and hematocrit 

If there are signs of anemia, like chronic fatigue, dizziness, or weakness 

If there are signs of iron overload, like joint pain, weight loss, or low sex drive 

If there's a family history of hemochromatosis 

Basically, she has weird hemoglobin so she can't use iron properly. I don't think I need to actually do anything unless she becomes anemic. I just referred her to heme/onc.

Looking on UpToDate, basically alpha thalassemia minor would now be called non-transfusion dependent. Beta thalassemia is transfusion dependent. They need blood transfusions. This is what UTD says about thalassemia management:

Anemia – The main treatments for anemia are transfusions and luspatercept (algorithm 1). Transfusions reduce symptoms and morbidities of anemia and ineffective erythropoiesis. Ineffective erythropoiesis can impair growth and development and cause skeletal abnormalities, splenomegaly, and iron overload. (See 'Management of anemia' above.)

•Transfusion-dependent – For individuals with TDT (previously called thalassemia major phenotype), we suggest chronic transfusion (Grade 2C). (See "Diagnosis of thalassemia (adults and children)", section on 'Overview of subtypes and disease severity' and 'Regular transfusions' above.)

We generally suggest a pretransfusion hemoglobin of 9.5 to 10.5 g/dL rather than a higher or lower nadir (Grade 2C). Clinical experience and observational studies demonstrate this hemoglobin nadir is associated with greater survival, provided iron stores are controlled, and reduced extramedullary hematopoiesis. Different hemoglobin nadirs may be appropriate in individuals with certain comorbidities or without clinically significant ineffective erythropoiesis. (See 'Decision to initiate regular transfusions' above and 'Typical chronic transfusion regimen' above.)

Luspatercept can reduce transfusion requirements in some adults with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia (TDT). Some individuals may choose to take luspatercept, and others may continue with regular transfusions while awaiting more information on long-term outcomes. (See 'Luspatercept for transfusion-dependent thalassemia' above.)

•Non-transfusion-dependent – For non-transfusion-dependent thalassemia (NTDT, previously called thalassemia intermedia phenotype), management is individualized. Most patients need only periodic transfusions for symptomatic relief or during periods of stress (rapid growth, infection-associated bone marrow suppression, surgery, pregnancy). Some patients may become require regular transfusions (see 'Decision to initiate regular transfusions' above). The role of erythropoiesis-modifying agents is unknown.

•Thalassemia minor – Chronic transfusions are not required when anemia is very mild or absent.

•Alpha thalassemia major – Management is discussed separately. (See "Alpha thalassemia major: Prenatal and postnatal management".)

For individuals with hemolytic anemia, we also suggest folic acid (Grade 2C). Folic acid may reasonably be omitted if especially burdensome and folate levels are adequate. (See 'Dietary restrictions and supplements' above and "Clinical manifestations and diagnosis of vitamin B12 and folate deficiency", section on 'Diagnostic evaluation'.)

●Excess iron stores – Patients receiving transfusions require regular assessment and treatment of excess iron stores. (See 'Assessment of iron stores and initiation of chelation therapy' above and "Iron chelation: Choice of agent, dosing, and adverse effects".)

●Splenectomy – Splenectomy is an option for severe anemia, hypersplenism, or other splenic complications; but we avoid splenectomy when possible. The benefit may be transient, and risks (life-threatening infection; thromboembolism, especially in patients receiving luspatercept) are increased. When pursued, splenectomy is generally deferred until ≥4 years. Pre-splenectomy vaccines and infection and thromboembolism are required. (See 'Role of splenectomy' above.)

●Transplantation – Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is potentially curative and may be appropriate for severe TDT (algorithm 1). The decision to pursue transplantation is complex and should be made in consultation with a thalassemia specialist and experienced high-volume transplant center. (See 'Decision to pursue allogeneic HSCT' above.)

●Monitoring – Individuals with TDT are typically seen by a specialist at least two to four times yearly for monitoring and management of iron stores and other disease manifestations (table 3). (See 'Monitoring and management of disease complications' above.)

●Curative and investigational therapies – Several curative therapies (allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, gene therapy) and medical therapies are under investigation, and two gene based therapies have been approved for TDT but not for alpha thalassemia.

•Considerations including when to offer curative therapies, how to choose among the different options, and how to optimize health and iron status prior to these therapies, are discussed separately. (See "Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and other curative therapies for transfusion-dependent thalassemia".)

•Investigational medical therapies are discussed above. (See 'Investigational approaches' above.)

●Reproductive counseling – Genetic testing and reproductive counseling is routine for all individuals with thalassemia. (See 'Reproductive testing and genetic counseling' above and "Hemoglobinopathy: Screening and counseling in the reproductive setting and fetal diagnosis".)

●Prognosis – Survival continues to improve into the fourth, fifth, and sixth decades of life. Cardiovascular complications are the major cause of death in TDT. (See 'Prognosis' above.)

[crosstheveil]

Health: Misconceptions with Anemia and "Iron Deficiency"

Iron Absorption & Utilization

Simply taking iron supplements often doesn't cure anemia.

Proper absorption and utilization of iron involve many processes.

1/3 of the population has trouble absorbing and utilizing iron; it's considered the most common nutritional disorder in the world.

Anemia is usually about iron dysregulation, not deficiency.

Iron supplements or injections tend to circulate excessively, potentially causing toxicity.

Iron overload strains the iron recycling system and the liver.

Liver plays a key role in regulating iron uptake.

Iron doesn't regulate itself; it's copper-dependent.

Copper is essential for ceruloplasmin, a protein that mobilizes iron from tissues into the blood. Without copper, iron accumulates in tissue leading to inflammation and tissue damage which can develop into others issues like heart or liver disease and diabetes with increased risk of infection and cancer.

Retinol (Vitamin A) enhances iron absorption and influences genes regulating iron metabolism.

Iron Testing

CBC can detect anemia but it can't necessarily tell you the cause.

Serum ferritin doesn't give a true measure of iron stores.

Approximately 70% of iron is found in hemoglobin, around 20-25% is stored as ferritin and hemosiderin in tissues, about 5% is in myoglobin and enzymes, and roughly 0.1% as serum iron.

For accurate assessment, consider all containers of iron including hemoglobin, serum iron, and ferritin, as well as non-iron markers such as zinc, copper, and vitamins A & D.

The only direct way to measure iron stores is to keep removing blood until anemia sets in, then account for the iron deficit and dietary iron consumed during this time.

Sources (meat, liver, and seafood)

Copper: liver, nuts, molasses, oats, bee pollen, shellfish, pumpkin seeds, dark chocolate, acerola cherry powder, shilajit.

Retinol (Vitamin A): liver, other organ meats, egg yolk, seafood, fish liver oils, dairy products.

Other Insights

Phytates in plants can hinder non-heme iron absorption but vitamin C helps to counteract these inhibitory effects.

Over-supplementing with zinc can cause copper deficiency since copper and zinc need to be in balance.

There are many causes of anemia beyond "iron deficiency", such as vitamin B12 deficiency.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1934 to George Whipple, George Minot, and William Murphy for their discoveries related to liver therapy in cases of anemia.

Other studies have supported incorporating beef liver (which contains copper, iron, zinc, vitamin A and D) into the diet.

The key is to have food that isn't concentrated on a certain vitamin or mineral but provides a mixture of what we need in a way that our body can properly absorb without inhibiting effects.

Men are naturally higher in iron than women and women are naturally higher in copper than men (estrogen levels contribute to the production of copper).

Female menstruation is why iron deficiency anemia is more common among women.

Signs of anemia include fatigue, pale complexion, blurred vision, dizziness, irregular heartbeat, cold hands and feet, scanty menstruation, numbness, insomnia, poor memory, dry skin, brittle nails, vertical ridges on nails, muscle twitches, shortness of breath, chest pain, headache, swollen or sore tongue, unusual cravings, restless legs.

[fitscientist]

Understanding FDA Guidance on Protein Claims: Demystifying "Excellent Source" and "Good Source"

Welcome to fitscientist! I'm a food scientist irl and I see a lot of misconceptions about packaging claims out there - I'm trying to be more active on my tumblr (instead of just reblogging/queuing pretty pictures - which obviously I will continue to do!!) and I'd like to share my expertise with you all so we're all more knowledgeable about food labeling, packaging, and more - especially as we are all on our fitness journies together :) The more you know!

Today, let's dive into the fascinating world of FDA guidance for protein claims. Yeah yeah, we all know protein is good for you, but when you look at a food label, do you really know what you're getting?

We often come across terms like "excellent source of protein" and "good source of protein" on food labels, but what do these claims really mean? Let's break it down:

1. Excellent Source of Protein: - According to the FDA, a food product can be labeled as an "excellent source of protein" if it provides 20% or more of the Daily Value (DV) for protein per serving. This means that consuming a serving of such a product can significantly contribute to meeting your protein needs for the day.

2. Good Source of Protein: - A food product can be labeled as a "good source of protein" if it provides 10-19% of the DV for protein per serving. While not as high as an excellent source, choosing foods labeled as good sources of protein can still contribute to your daily protein requirements.

It's important to note that these claims are based on the protein content per serving of the food product. Different products may have varying serving sizes, so it's crucial to check the serving size stated on the nutrition facts panel to accurately gauge the protein content you'll be consuming.

3. Daily Value (DV): - The DV is a standard reference set by the FDA, representing the recommended daily intake of a nutrient, including protein, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. For protein, the DV is set at 50 grams per day, which can vary depending on individual needs.

4. Consider Your Individual Needs: - It's important to remember that individual protein needs may differ based on factors like age, sex, activity level, and overall health. While these claims can help guide your choices, it's essential to assess your personal protein requirements in consultation with a healthcare professional or registered dietitian.

5. Protein Quality Matters: - While the FDA guidance focuses on the quantity of protein, it's equally important to consider the quality of the protein you consume. Complete proteins are those that contain all essential amino acids required for muscle repair and growth. Look for sources like lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, and plant-based complete proteins like quinoa and soy.

Remember, protein is a vital macronutrient necessary for several bodily functions, including muscle repair, satiety, and hormone regulation. By understanding the FDA's guidance, you can make informed choices to meet your daily protein needs. Remember to check the serving size and consider incorporating a variety of protein-rich foods into your diet for optimal health benefits. Stay nourished! <3

Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog post is for educational purposes only and should not replace professional medical advice nor guidance for front-of-pack labeling claims. Please consult with a healthcare professional or registered dietitian for personalized dietary recommendations, and consult with a regulatory professional for guidance on product content or other claims for your own products.

[gingersnapwolves]

'tis the season for family bullshit

I swear to God, my family has ruined my ability to assess what is and is not normal. I have no idea whether or not my frustration is warranted so I'm going to turn to you, my lovely tumblr friends, to help me the fuck out.

For a little light reading, there's Last year's Thanksgiving debacle, plus epilogue, but all you really need to know is that there's a LONG historical precedent of my family ignoring the dietary needs of my wife and my sister and last year there was drama about it

I started this year off on the right foot by saying fuck the holiday itself, we are going to my MIL's. She had back surgery two months ago and although she's up and around, she's not up to cooking a Thanksgiving dinner so my wife and I are going over to cook for her. I told my family I'd be free Friday to make plans with them and they were welcome to come up to my place, which was met with some hemming and hawing and no real plans being made.

Relevant: recently, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and although it's mild so far it is definitely noticeable

This is the email I just sent my father, brother, and SIL:

"Hi there, when I talked to mom yesterday, several times she talked about coming up to visit and reminding me that Dad couldn't drive after dark. I explained that there weren't any plans of that variety but sort of took that as maybe she had a subconscious desire to come up here? So I mentioned that I had offered to have everyone come up the day after Thanksgiving, in which case driving after dark wouldn't be an issue since presumably [brother] or [SIL] could drive. But I also told her that we hadn't made any firm plans and I didn't know what we were doing on that day yet. We are certainly happy to have you guys come up here if that's what you would like to do. I don't know if Mom actually wants to come up or if she was just confused about plans in general."

My brother's response: "Rex [the insane dog from this post] and Comet [the new dog they got a few months ago despite already having one poorly behaved dog] have daycare that day, so we could come up, but some subset of us would need to leave no later than 4pm to get Comet (pickup by 5pm). It would probably work best if I just brought mom and dad and the kids up and [SIL] stayed here.

Or, you could come down, since the dogs will be in daycare, it wouldn't be a problem to bring Yanli [our dog, who is generally well behaved but does not like their dog]. You would just have to leave before we got back with them, around 5:15 [because as per previous post, I refuse to go near their insane dog]."

To which SIL added: "Would you have [aunt] and all the kids too? I'm fine with hosting if we need lots of room to kick kids to other areas of the house:-) If you want to host, we can do that too. As [me] said, we haven't made any solid plans."

For one thing, I don't know why my aunt is involved and the reference to 'all the kids' makes me think my cousin is visiting and ... nobody bothered to tell me? Which, sure, fine. I really just want to reply with "look, if you don't want to come up here, just tell me that" but I genuinely don't know if that's warranted. They never actually invite me, they just assume I'm going to show up, so maybe they don't know how invitations work. I literally can't parse whether their response is rude or if I'm just reading too much into it. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this response and I'm afraid to reply to it and make things worse and I just ((((((OTL

[myability]

Say Goodbye to Hypertension: Effective Physiotherapy Strategies

Hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure, is a widespread health condition that increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, and kidney problems. While medications are a cornerstone of hypertension management, incorporating physiotherapy into your routine can play a transformative role in improving cardiovascular health, lowering blood pressure, and enhancing overall well-being.

Physiotherapy offers a holistic approach by addressing key lifestyle factors such as physical inactivity, stress, and poor posture, which contribute to hypertension. Here's how physiotherapist in east delhi can help you manage and control high blood pressure effectively.

1. The Role of Exercise in Lowering Blood Pressure

One of the most significant ways physiotherapy addresses hypertension is through personalized exercise programs. Regular physical activity has been proven to reduce blood pressure by improving cardiovascular fitness and reducing arterial stiffness.

Physiotherapists design safe and effective exercise routines tailored to an individual’s health status, age, and fitness level. Common recommendations include:

Aerobic exercises: Activities like walking, cycling, or swimming improve heart health and lower blood pressure over time.

Strength training: Moderate weightlifting helps improve overall muscle strength and enhances blood circulation.

Stretching and flexibility exercises: These aid in improving range of motion and reducing muscular tension, contributing to stress relief.

Regular exercise not only lowers blood pressure but also helps in weight management, another critical factor in hypertension control.

2. Stress Management Techniques

Stress is a significant contributor to hypertension, as it triggers the release of hormones that temporarily spike blood pressure. Physiotherapists incorporate relaxation techniques and breathing exercises to help patients manage stress effectively.

Diaphragmatic breathing: Deep, controlled breathing lowers stress levels and promotes relaxation.

Progressive muscle relaxation: This technique reduces physical and emotional tension by systematically relaxing different muscle groups.

Mindfulness-based exercises: These focus on mental relaxation, helping individuals handle stress triggers calmly.

By learning to manage stress, patients can prevent the prolonged episodes of high blood pressure caused by emotional strain.

3. Posture Correction and Ergonomics

Poor posture can increase pressure on the circulatory system, contributing to hypertension over time. Physiotherapists assess posture and recommend corrections to reduce unnecessary strain on the heart and blood vessels.

Ergonomic advice for workspace setups helps reduce physical stress during prolonged sitting.

Exercises to improve spinal alignment and strengthen the core muscles are often included in physiotherapy plans.

4. Lifestyle Modifications and Education

Physiotherapists also play a crucial role in educating patients about lifestyle changes that can help manage hypertension. Key areas of focus include:

Encouraging regular physical activity.

Advising on healthy dietary habits, such as reducing salt intake.

Recommending relaxation techniques to manage stress effectively.

5. Monitoring and Progress Tracking

Physiotherapy involves regular monitoring of a patient’s progress. Blood pressure readings are tracked, and exercise plans are adjusted as necessary. This personalized approach ensures that the interventions remain safe and effective for the individual.

Conclusion

Physiotherapy is a highly effective, non-invasive way to manage hypertension by addressing its root causes and risk factors. Through personalized exercise routines, stress management techniques, and education, physiotherapy empowers individuals to take control of their health.

If you’re living with hypertension, consult a physiotherapist like myablilty chiropractor in delhi to develop a comprehensive, tailored program to complement your medical treatment. With the right guidance and consistent effort, you can lower your blood pressure and improve your quality of life naturally.

[anaswaraseo]

Clinical Nutrition & Dietetics: Science for Better Health

Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics is a specialized field that uses nutrition to manage and prevent disease, improve health outcomes, and promote overall well-being. Here’s a deep dive into the essential aspects of this field:

What is Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics?

Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics involves assessing, diagnosing, and treating nutrition-related health issues. Dietitians and clinical nutritionists work closely with patients to develop dietary plans tailored to their medical conditions, lifestyle, and specific health goals.

Key Areas of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics

Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT): MNT is the cornerstone of clinical dietetics, involving specialized dietary interventions based on scientific evidence. It’s used to treat chronic illnesses like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and kidney disease.

Nutritional Assessment: This includes evaluating a patient’s diet, medical history, physical health, and lab results to create personalized nutrition plans. Tools include BMI, body composition analysis, dietary history, and blood tests to assess nutrient levels.

Therapeutic Diets: Dietitians often develop therapeutic diets to manage health conditions, which can include:

Low-sodium diets for hypertension and heart health.

Low-glycemic diets for managing diabetes.

High-protein diets for malnutrition and muscle recovery.

Renal Diets for kidney disease patients to reduce the intake of specific nutrients.

Pediatric and Geriatric Nutrition: Clinical dietitians specialize in creating age-appropriate nutritional plans for children and elderly patients, addressing issues like growth, development, bone health, and cognitive function.

Mental Health and Nutrition: Dietitians are increasingly focusing on the connection between nutrition and mental health, as certain nutrients (e.g., omega-3s, and B vitamins) can impact mood and cognitive function.

Emerging Areas in Clinical Nutrition

Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals: Functional foods (like probiotics) and nutraceuticals (such as dietary supplements) are increasingly used in clinical nutrition to support specific health outcomes, such as immune function or gut health.

Personalized Nutrition and Genomics: Nutrigenomics studies how genes influence individual responses to nutrients, leading to personalized nutrition plans based on a patient’s genetic makeup. This method works especially well for treating chronic illnesses.

Integrative and Holistic Nutrition: Integrative nutrition considers lifestyle factors, stress, and mental health along with diet, promoting a more holistic approach to patient care.

Plant-Based Diets: The use of plant-based diets in clinical settings is becoming popular for their benefits in reducing inflammation, improving heart health, and supporting weight management.

Role of Clinical Dietitians in Healthcare Settings

Hospitals: Clinical dietitians are essential in hospitals, where they design dietary plans for patients recovering from surgeries, dealing with chronic illnesses, or undergoing treatment that affects their nutritional status.

Outpatient Clinics: Many dietitians work in clinics, providing ongoing support for patients with chronic conditions like diabetes or high cholesterol.

Rehabilitation Centers: Nutritionists here help patients with recovery, focusing on high-calorie or high-protein diets to promote healing.

Skills for Clinical Dietitians

Analytical Skills: Strong understanding of biochemistry and physiology to interpret lab data and develop dietary plans. Counseling and Communication: The ability to communicate effectively with patients to promote adherence to dietary plans.

Evidence-Based Practice: Staying updated with the latest research to provide science-backed advice. Career Opportunities

Clinical dietitian: employed by long-term care homes, clinics, or hospitals.

Nutrition Researcher: Contributing to research on disease prevention and dietary interventions.

Consultant Dietitian: Providing freelance or consultancy services for healthcare facilities, wellness centers, or private clients.

Corporate Wellness Programs: Supporting employees’ health and well-being through nutritional guidance in corporate settings.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics is a transformative field that bridges the gap between nutrition science and patient care, offering personalized approaches to health and wellness. By understanding the intricate relationship between diet, disease, and overall health, clinical dietitians play a crucial role in improving health outcomes and enhancing quality of life. As new research and innovations in nutrition continue to emerge, this field remains essential in advancing preventive care, supporting disease management, and promoting holistic well-being.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Psychology can help with certain Long Covid symptoms, but Long Covid is not a psychological condition.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and a program of physical and mental rehabilitation probably improve symptoms of long COVID, but the effects are modest, finds a review of the latest evidence published in The BMJ.

Intermittent aerobic exercise also probably improves physical function compared with continuous aerobic exercise. But the researchers found no compelling evidence to support the effectiveness of other interventions, including certain drugs, dietary supplements, inspiratory muscle training, transcranial direct current stimulation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or mobile education apps.

Although most patients recover from COVID-19, up to 15% (an estimated 65 million people globally) might experience long term health effects, including fatigue, muscle pain (myalgia), and impaired cognitive function.

Health care providers are increasingly seeing patients with long COVID, and in the absence of trustworthy and up-to-date summaries of the evidence, patients may receive unproven, costly, and ineffective or harmful treatments.

To address this, researchers trawled databases for trials randomizing adults with long COVID to drug or non-drug interventions, placebo or sham, or usual care.

They found 24 relevant trials involving 3,695 patients investigating drugs, physical activity or rehabilitation, behavioral interventions, dietary interventions, medical devices and technologies, and combinations of physical exercise and mental health rehabilitation.

The trials were of varying quality, but the researchers were able to assess their risk of bias and the certainty of evidence using established tools.

Evidence of moderate certainty suggests that compared with usual care, an online program of CBT probably reduces fatigue and improves concentration, and an online, supervised combined physical and mental health rehabilitation program probably increases the proportion of patients that experience meaningful improvement or recovery, reduces symptoms of depression and improves quality of life.

Moderate certainty evidence also suggests that intermittent aerobic exercise 3-5 times a week for 4-6 weeks probably improves physical function compared with continuous aerobic exercise.

However, no compelling evidence was found to support the effectiveness of other interventions, including the antidepressant vortioxetine, the antibody leronlimab, a combination of probiotics and prebiotics, the antioxidant coenzyme Q10, brain retraining, transcranial direct current stimulation, inspiratory muscle training, hyperbaric oxygen, and a mobile education app on long COVID.

Despite their rigorous search of the literature, the authors acknowledge that it is possible they missed eligible trials. Furthermore, most of the evidence supporting other interventions was low to very low certainty, and new trials may affect results.

However, this was a rigorous review, designed with input from people with lived and living experience of long COVID, and with a focus on outcomes that are important to patients.

As such, the researchers conclude, "Our findings suggest that offering patients with long COVID a program of CBT or a program of physical and mental rehabilitation will probably improve symptoms."

These results will be updated as new evidence becomes available, they add.

More information: Interventions for the management of long covid (post-covid condition): living systematic review, The BMJ (2024). DOI: 10.1136/bmj-2024-081318

Study link: www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-081318