[Jeff Gerber]

I absolutely love your approach at home. Growing food, preparing it and truly understanding it.

The type of food you’re talking about is either not found at all or found at the far ends of the grocery store. Although can be found more frequently if you have a habit of regular visits to the local farmer’s market. Sadly, some people’s education of food is that food comes from a drive thru.

There is something very magical about planting a seed. I have a copy of Luther Burbank’s book “His Methods and Discoveries and their Practical Application”. Allow me to quote Mr. Burbank from the beginning of volume 7:

“Perhaps you are inclined to demur, and say that your feat of flower growing is no miracle at all because you had nothing to do with the matter. The growing of the plant with its ultimate production of the flower, you will perhaps allege, was all together the work of nature; a work in which you had no share.

Not so; for had not you supplied the cupful of water, nature would have been as powerless to transform the seed into flower as you would be to transform the water into a flower without the aid of Nature.

Your feat of jugglery, like that of any other conjurer, required appropriate paraphernalia and the aid of an accomplice.

You chose as paraphernalia a tiny seed and a cup of water; and for an accomplice you chose Nature herself.

You invoked the aid of natural laws, just as every other conjurer must do; and the results you achieved were surely more wonderful, more mysterious, more inexplicable than the results of any other trick that human ingenuity could devise.

In effect, you held a cup of water before your audience, waved your hand over it with magic incantations, and transformed the water into an exquisitely petalled and perfumed blossom.”

[IMA-HelenT]

Oh that’s just beautiful @jrgerber -thank you so much for sharing.

[Jeff Gerber]

I am very much a fan of Luther Burbank. He was a true American Hero, and, in his time, he was a household name like Edison and Ford (his close friends). If he were alive today, he would be leading us in getting back to growing food at home.

Copilot: You’re thinking of the Plant Patent Act of 1930. Although it was passed a few years after Luther Burbank’s death in 1926, it was directly inspired by his pioneering work in plant breeding. The law allowed inventors to patent new and distinct varieties of asexually reproduced plants (excluding tuber-propagated ones like potatoes), giving legal recognition and protection to horticultural innovation.

Thomas Edison, a close friend of Burbank, testified before Congress in support of the bill. He famously said the law “will, I feel sure, give us many Burbanks,” emphasizing how it would encourage creativity and experimentation in plant science.

Burbank himself had developed over 800 plant varieties, including the Russet Burbank potato, Shasta daisy, and plumcot. Though he didn’t live to see the law enacted, he was posthumously granted several plant patents under it.

This is American ingenuity at its finest and no doubt why Burbank, Ford, and Edison were close friends. These American inventors wanted the best for America. Burbank even helped the world by his innovation with the potato. The Irish Potato Famine was due to a blight and the Burbank Russet Potato (now we simply say Russet) had a resistance to the blight.

That hope that folks would continue to improve upon our food sources (things you can do at home if you have some basic knowledge of plants, this isn’t just for scientists, anyone can do it) was further bolstered in 1970.

Copilot:

🌱 That would be the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970 (PVPA) — a major expansion of intellectual property rights for plant breeders.

While the Plant Patent Act of 1930 only covered asexually reproduced plants (like those propagated by cuttings or grafting), the PVPA extended protection to sexually reproduced and tuber-propagated plants, such as grains, vegetables, and potatoes.

Here’s what the PVPA introduced:

• 🧬 Protection for seed-grown varieties: Breeders could now secure rights over plants reproduced by seed, provided they were new, distinct, uniform, and stable.
• 📜 Certificates instead of patents: The law granted Plant Variety Protection Certificates, offering up to 25 years of exclusive control.
• 🚜 Farmer & research exemptions: Farmers could save seed for replanting on their own land, and researchers could use protected varieties for breeding new ones.
• 🌍 International alignment: The PVPA helped the U.S. comply with global treaties like UPOV (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants).

This act was pivotal in encouraging innovation in agriculture, especially in crops like wheat, soybeans, and corn. It also laid the groundwork for later developments in biotech and utility patents.

[IMA-HelenT]

Tomorrow’s Webinar Details:

Are wearables the future of health—or a digital Trojan horse… or both?

This week, host Dr. Ryan Cole will be joined by Dr. Paul Marik, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, and Dr. Mollie James for an important discussion covering both the promises and perils of wearable health tech. Wednesday, July 16 at 7pm ET.

You can join live on X.

[Jeff Gerber]

As far as wearable health metrics go, I agree with RFK Jr. on Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM). These have been historically difficult to get a prescription for, and yet they can benefit anyone. How?

Dr. Peter Attia talks about CGMs and the Hawthorne Effect.

What Is the Hawthorne Effect?

The Hawthorne effect is a psychological phenomenon where individuals modify their behavior simply because they know they’re being observed. It originated from studies in the 1920s at the Hawthorne Works factory, where researchers found that workers improved productivity when they felt watched — regardless of the actual changes made to their environment.

In terms of CGMs, people not only learn what foods spike their blood sugar (spiking is bad and leads to elevated HBA1C, metabolic disease, etc.) but they are apt to modify their behavior of what they eat. This is a good thing for everyone.

It wasn’t until just last year that the FDA started approving CGMs for OTC purchase. This is a step in the right direction. However, the cost to entry is still exorbitantly high.

Dr. David Perlmutter, author of “Grain Brain” and “Drop Acid” serves on the medical advisory board for Levels Health. Level’s makes an app that builds on top of, or fills in the deficit for, the typical CGM app.

I use both a CGM and the Levels app. Though this is still prohibitively expensive for most people and I would bet the average person does not know how they would benefit.

This is definitely an interesting topic to explore.

[Jeff Gerber]

People had a lot of concern for RF (radio frequency) or EMF (electromagnetic fields).

This was my field of study in college.

I can help by explaining how it works, so people can decide what to think about the topic and what to think about a given device in a ballpark way of understanding.

EMF consists of two main parts, the power output (Watts) and the frequency. There are other considerations, but these are the main two. Both affect the body.

Our body has to be thought of in terms of what it’s made of. 50-60% of the body is water. So, this is a big part of the equation. Another part is elements like iron in our blood.

The obvious issue is anything with high power output. That is a concern. Don’t go climbing a TV transmission tower or cell tower, right? Those are high power output frequencies.

But what about the frequency? Is a low frequency such as 60Hz (think about living under a powerline) a problem and how does this compare to a high frequency such as satellite communications say in the 40GHz range?

When it comes to water, I’ll give an example. To communicate with a submarine, you use a frequency of 76Hz. Why? Because higher frequencies become attenuated by the water; the water absorbs the energy of the higher frequencies. So, to the body, made of 50-60% water, it is absorbing the energy of higher frequencies. The higher the frequency, the more water will absorb it. This is why satellite TV can be affected by weather and clouds (which are made of water).

Does this mean that a submarine or powerline frequency (aka ELF – extremely low frequency) is safe to the human body? It is with respect to water. The iron in your blood (and in cows) has been inconclusively studied with respect to ELF EMF from powerlines and leukemia (https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_b/B129/index.html).

To put it more succinctly, the higher the power output and the higher the frequency, the worse the EMF is to the human body.

There is yet another factor beyond those two, and that is waveform. If you have a device that is analog and unmodulated, it is putting out a sine wave. That is a single frequency. If a device is digital and it puts out a square wave, it is actually putting out an array of sine waves (look up Fourier transformation). So, it’s possible to have a device that reports it emits a low frequency but is in fact emitting that frequency plus increasingly higher and smaller power output of frequencies. It can be deceptive based on what I wrote above and is harder to answer the impact without analyzing with a spread spectrum analyzer.

Bottom line, higher output and/or higher frequency = worse for you.

pubs.nmsu.edu

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[Jeff Gerber]

Here’s a study that states 60Hz is capable of helping with bone growth:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3780531/

“Both extremely low frequency fields, including 50/60 cycle exposures, and microwave EMF range exposures act via activation of VGCCs. So do static electric fields, static magnetic fields and nanosecond pulses.”

“In summary, the non-thermal actions of EMFs composed of low-energy photons have been a great puzzle, because such photons are insufficiently energetic to directly influence the chemistry of cells. The current review provides support for a pathway of the biological action of ultralow frequency and microwave EMFs, nanosecond pulses and static electrical or magnetic fields: EMF activation of VGCCs leads to rapid elevation of intracellular Ca2+, nitric oxide and in some cases at least, peroxynitrite. Potentially therapeutic effects may be mediated through the Ca2+/nitric oxide/cGMP/protein kinase G pathway. Pathophysiological effects may be mediated through the Ca2+/nitric oxide/peroxynitrite pathway. Other Ca2+-mediated effects may have roles as well, as suggested by Xu et al. [26].”

In understanding what I wrote above about high frequencies (such as microwaves) you can understand why they chose for bone growth stimulators to use ultralow frequencies… avoiding the damaging effects of higher frequencies, even though the high frequencies also stimulate bone growth.

But the interesting takeaway here is that even low frequencies affect the body in some way, and most likely too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage-gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects - PMC

The direct targets of extremely low and microwave frequency range electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in producing non-thermal effects have not been clearly established. However, studies in the literature, reviewed here, provide substantial support for ...

[IMA-HelenT]

Confused by all the wearable options? Get, Senior Fellow, Dr. Kristina Carman’s free guide to the best wearables and biohacking tools, with insights into all their pros and cons. https://imahealth.org/tools-and-guides/wearables-biohacking-tools-your-quick-reference-guide/