D3 or crosswords?

A post about dementia and vitamin D3 – with thanks to Psychology Today for the picture.

On 1 March 2023 the Alzheimer’s Association published a peer-reviewed scientific paper centred on the relationship between vitamin D supplementation and dementia. To read it (which I recommend) simply click the link here or above.

In summary, a massive 12,388 individuals were involved over ten years in the Canadian study. The findings revealed that Vitamin D exposure was associated with 40% lower dementia incidence versus no exposure, meaning that those that received D3 supplements were significantly better protected from dementia than those that did not. Results were enhanced for males, and also those who entered the study dementia-free.

Many earlier studies have focused on the health benefits of vitamin D, in particular D3 (do read my previous post here). Vitamin D is naturally generated in the body through skin exposure to sunlight, and appears to be of significance for day-to-day health. Humans would historically have gained sufficient natural exposure in our more primitive lifestyle, but migration to Europe and the north where daylight is restricted during winter has resulted in a deficiency.

According to the Alzheimer’s Society, currently there are 900,000 people in the UK living with dementia. With an ageing population, the incidence is set to become a massive challenge to society, not least in the provision of safe later-life care.

Rather than relying on crosswords, perhaps now is the time to make your investment in a vitamin D3 supplement? It appears to have no down-side or side effects – see here and here. Vitamin D3 supplementation may actually be the answer to the question of how to ensure a longer, healthier and more productive life?

I should add that I have no financial interests in vitamin supplements of any kind. Advertisements appearing below this post are placed randomly by the platform, not the writer. They are neither endorsed nor monetarised.

Argentine tango under the microscope

A post dealing with the microbiology of Argentine tango (but do read on if you like trees).

My post ‘Learning something from trees‘ appears to have interested my dowsing colleagues that explore and exercise their personal energy; but surprisingly also, my friends who dance tango.

For those few that are not yet familiar with Argentine tango as danced in Buenos Aires (in contrast the the European pastiche), let me start by sharing a few truths.

More than the deadliest virus, once infected with Argentine tango, colonisation is rapid. Your social media fills with classes, events, milongas – your vocabulary embraces ochos, sacadas, boleos, colgadas – your wardrobe becomes populated by tango clothes and shoes – and frequently, non-dancing friends fall by the wayside as you become more and more fixated on your new obsession. Symptoms involve a craving that transcends normal preoccupation. It can be a lifelong dependence for which there is no known remedy.

The reason for such obsession is not what you might have thought. Alright, there may be romance – the late night milonga (the social event devoted to tango), gorgeous Golden Age tango music, a beautiful partner in your arms. Yet it is that which happens quite spontaneously within the tango embrace that really triggers this compulsive behaviour. ‘The magic’ emanates from the embrace in which you or your partner need be neither young nor beautiful. It all turns on energy, and how we deploy it in movement.

In dance, electrical events known as ‘action potentials‘ (rapid sequences of voltage differential across a membrane) cause neurons to release the pleasure inducing neurotransmitters of dopamine (movement), serotonin, norepinephrine (brain), and various endorphins (inhibitory neurotransmitters). What is it in dance that triggers that process? And what evolutionary advantages justify the release of such a pleasure hit?

With age, practice, experience and skill, tangueros appear to develop an electrical charge. Atoms and their pairs of electrons line up to create an energy field that is manifest within the embrace, sometimes subtle and occasionally dynamic. Studies show that, irrespective of steps (for Argentine tango is systematically unstructured) or experience, dancers’ breathing and heart rates synchronise.

Sharing of energy through symbiotic synchronicity seems essential for both trees and humans, perhaps because of a long-lost shared heritage where 50% of our DNA is in common with trees. But more staggeringly, our genes and DNA structure more closely associate us with the mycelium that envelops their roots and occupies our gut.

Might it be our shared match with mushrooms that causes us to dance?

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Learning something from trees

A post about humans, trees, anthropomorphism, mycorrhizal mycelium and quorum sensing.

As a young Prince, King Charles III famously hugged a tree. It is not recorded what was said by either Prince or tree, or whether his act was met with arboreal approval or dismissal. However, according to his aides, he continues the practice publicly every time he plants a commemorative sapling.

We now know that trees enjoy two-way communication (if not with Kings) certainly with the symbiotic mycorrhizal mycelium (fungus threads) that envelop and enrich their roots. Here they exchange water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals, with each other and with the tree’s progeny. Additionally, chemical messages pass via the fungus to communicate information of threats or abundance, suggesting that the process is heuristically reactive rather than mechanical.

Within the human body, indigenous bacteria (of which we have trillions outnumbering human cells 10-1) do very similar things. Cell to cell communication is facilitated by both prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cell and multi-cell organisms), the former clubbing together using quorum-sensing circuits to enable them simultaneously to secrete signaling chemical molecules that communicate precise information – just as do murmurations of birds in the air, warrior ants on the march or bioluminescent plankton in the sea.

Go to any football, rugby or tennis match and you will see the same phenomenon acted out by a human audience, resulting in synchronized signals that convey pleasure or dismay. If at that very moment you were to take a microscope to the human body you would see why – the same bacterial microorganisms are busy synthesising autoinducing proteins that communicate their collective feelings and intention.

All I can say is that tonight when I took dousing rods to my eighty year old thirty three leafed Aspidistra, there was an immediate energetic resonance between the two. I did not enquire further of the plant, but I do recall, according to Feng Shui experts, that placing an Aspidistra in the main entryway of one’s home can collect an abundance of positive energy.

Maybe, rather than seeking to anthropomorphise trees by talking to them, or worse by felling them in their prime for profit, we should observe and revere them for the energy that they clearly share both with us and the world on which we depend?

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Migration, asylum, designated places and extradition

A post intended to throw a little light on a misunderstood (or disunderstood) topic.

Let’s get straight to the point. The laws relating to regulation of entry to and forced departure from the UK have been an historical mess, and the fix is neither clear nor simple.

As a reaction to the horrors of World War 2, key nations met to sign the Refugee Convention of 1951 that bestowed on foreign migrants a shower of human rights. Questions remain – is the convention an essential anchor to fundamental human rights – or merely a brake on progress for change given the current migration landscape? Should the convention rights be unchangeable, or may they be qualified given criminal exploitation?

In medieval England, nationality was quite a straight forward topic: you were either a subject who owed allegiance to the monarch; or an alien. Empire and colonies complicated the issue slightly, but nevertheless our laws managed to accommodate our citizens of the dominion.

In 1687 England faced its first modern migration challenge when 50,000 Hugenots, French protestants fleeing Catholic oppression, began to arrive on English shores. Eighteen years later in 1705 we saw the first ‘Alien Act‘ aimed at the Scots after their ‘Act of Security‘ sought to oust the jurisdiction of the British Parliament on the succession of the monarch; and nearly a century later followed the Aliens Act 1793 aimed at regulating those fleeing the French guillotine in Paris.

In 1848 the Irish potato famine produced the first mass migration, London, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow alone sharing about 300,000 immigrants; and 1881 saw a huge migration of Jewish settlers, resulting in the Aliens Act 1905. This piece of legislation proved a turning point for Britain, being the first Act of Parliament that sought actively to control migration.

Progressing to modern times of the last century, two world wars brought about a significant global movement in populations, estimated in the millions, hence the introduction of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914 which for the first time codified common law and statute.

World war one led in 1920 to the appointment of the ‘League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’, the office that oversaw the 1933 Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees. It was this organisation that was to morph into the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, later the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 

And then we reach the moment of the Refugee Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 which the UK signed in 1954. This convention produced a pivotal change in thinking, removing a case-by-case resolution of migration, to replace it with the global rights system which persists and binds the UK today.

Three years earlier the British Nationality Act 1948 had set about defining ‘nationality’ through citizenship. Twenty three years after that the Immigration Act 1971 was passed to control immigration and provide for deportation; closely followed by the British Nationality Act 1981 dealing again with the right of abode in the UK. Both remain in force.

The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 sought to improve arrangements for removal from the jurisdiction, notification of suspicious marriages and provision of passenger information for those arriving in the UK. Within three years the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 made provision for the deprivation of British nationality and introduced the ‘life in the United Kingdom test’ and reintroduced the ‘Oath of Allegiance’. The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (modified in 2014 and in 2016) went on to deal further with appeals, deportation on the basis of national security, employment of immigrants and financial support afforded to them. A year later saw the UK Borders Act 2007 enacted to introduce biometric registration and deal further with deportation, and in 2009 the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act sought to deal further with border functions, immigration and citizenship. Meanwhile the Extradition Act 2003 brought in a much needed framework to expedite removal of criminals.

Now we have the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 which seeks to further regulate asylum applications, accelerating appeals, addressing modern slavery and providing removal of migrants to a safe country. It is supported by Exclusion (Article 1F) and Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention which advises on circumstances in which an individual may be excluded from the convention.

Even in this selective outline, you will appreciate the mess, especially were you to follow up all of my embedded links placed in the blog post.

In reality, the UK borders, migration and asylum policy has been made on the hoof, reacting to the latest perceived problem rather than fashioned to balance community interests and individual rights.

As a simple commentator, I wonder why nobody has taken on the task of a root-and-branch legal revision in simple terms: setting out the indispensable human rights against community interests to provide a definitive pathways to navigate between them? Perhaps a twenty first century starting point would be to enable applications for asylum to be made digitally, safely and securely from outside the jurisdiction rather than a designated place within it?

Immigration lawyers may have some answers. But I suspect your guesses may be better?

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