This Saturday morning we return to the clueless writers at Examine.com and a summary of a meta-analysis of 27 randomized controlled trials, where some dimwits thought it would be a good idea to poison participants with pine bark extract and then look at markers of cardiometabolic health without a clue about the physiological and biochemical effects.
So, let’s see what they believed they found and what stupid conclusions they might have drawn.
Key study details
“Some of the 1,685 participants had a health condition (e.g., type 2 diabetes). The supplement dosages were 25 to 1,322 milligrams daily, and study durations ranged from 2 to 24 weeks. The forms of pine bark extract included Pinus massoniana bark extract, Enzogenol, Flavangenol, Oligopin, and Pyncogenol (the most commonly studied formulation).”
So, some evil bastards thought it would be a good idea to poison some people with toxic pine bark, who were already struggling with their health due to an excessive intake of carbohydrates and seed/vegetable oil, as in type 2 diabetes. What a bunch of complete idiots.
And 2 to 24 weeks. If you see changes within a few days or even a week or two, it’s not from the body healing and getting better, especially not if you have not provided it with better nutrition which is needed for healing and tissue repair to occur, and in this case to increase healing so it’s noticeable. Also, healing takes time. If you’ve been unwell for a long time and your health has been declining slowly for years, there will be tremendous amounts of damage, and your health or cardiometabolic markers will not suddenly improve in a few days or weeks. So, if you only introduced some compounds that are void of the nutrients needed for detoxification, healing, and tissue repair (as in protein, saturated fats, cholesterol, and some micronutrients,) it’s from acute poisoning and/or increased toxic load, overwhelming the detoxification system, reducing the healing and detoxification ability. This acute poisoning or increased toxic load that will hamper the healing process will reduce symptoms (which are the healing process) and also improve some markers, as these markers are elevated when healing and detoxification occurs. If the markers go down, healing and detoxification has also gone down. Very simple and basic physiology, and also plain common sense.
“Pine bark extract reduced the following:
- Blood pressure: diastolic (−2.62 mmHg) and systolic (−2.26 mmHg)
- Body weight (−1.37 kg/−3 lbs)
- Fasting blood glucose (−6.25 mg/dL)
- HbA1c (−0.32%)
- LDL cholesterol (−5.07 mg/dL)
Pine bark extract had no effect on BMI, HDL cholesterol, insulin, total cholesterol, triglycerides, waist-hip ratio, or waist circumference.”
A sudden reduction in blood pressure is not a good thing. It indicates that the body’s ability to detoxify and repair tissues has been compromised. If blood pressure is elevated, it’s because there is a lot of damage in the body and it’s trying its best to heal. Blood pressure is high because the body’s organs and tissues rely on proper blood flow to receive essential nutrients and oxygen, and to remove waste products through detoxification. In such a scenario, if you actually have begun to assist your body, blood pressure should slowly decrease over the span of several months to a few years if health is actually improving and you are finally healing — and not simply stuck in a healing loop where the toxic load is so high that the body can’t keep up with detoxification and healing (also known as chronic inflammation.)
A reduction in body weight from simply taking a toxic compound is alarming as it is can be from reduced appetite due to acute poisoning. Considering that 99% of all people’s diets are complete and utter crap, simply eating less is very bad, as it will accelerate the development of nutrient deficiencies — further inhibiting detoxification and healing.
And considering that BMI and waist circumference did not really go down, it might be from both a little fat loss that was hardly noticeable and from muscle loss, which is even worse. Or simply that a lot of cells were overwhelmed by the toxic load and could not store as much glucose (glycogen) and water as they could previously.
A reduction in fasted blood glucose is also very alarming as it either shows that the participants were consuming less food, lost muscle mass, and their bodies were conditioned to rely on a toxic carbohydrate/glucose metabolism, and thus their ability to manufacture their own glucose through gluconeogenesis was severely reduced in between meals. Or it was the toxic effect of pine bark on the liver and kidneys, reducing their ability to generate glucose in a fasted state. Either case, it’s very bad. This really shows the toxic poisonous effect of pine bark.
HbA1c should naturally go down a bit if you either consume less toxic carbohydrates or if your body suddenly can’t produce enough glucose on its own (as in liver and kidney damage,) as glycated hemoglobin or glycohemoglobin (HbA1c,) is a form of hemoglobin that has glucose attached to it. The amount of glucose that attaches to hemoglobin is directly proportional to the total amount of blood sugar/glucose in the system at the time, making HbA1c a useful measure of average blood glucose levels over a period of about two to three months.
A reduction in LDL cholesterol is extremely bad and 100% proof that pine bark is extremely toxic as it damages the liver and thus interferes with our body’s natural healing process. LDL is the carrier lipoprotein manufactured by the liver that transports cholesterol to damaged tissue so it can be repaired. If LDL is elevated, your body is desperately trying to heal. LDL will naturally go down again if you supply your body with enough essential nutrients while reducing the toxic load so it can finish healing the damaged tissues. Again, this will take many months or even many years. If LDL drops in a few days or weeks it’s due to impaired healing, and that is extremely bad as damage will accumulate at a much higher rate leading to really serious health problems such as cancer, stroke, heart attack, or organ failure.
So, to conclude, considering the short length of the studies and the fact that the participants only added pine bark extract to their daily routine and thus did not improve their diets by adding a lot of animal-based foods and they did not reduce their toxic load as in removing all plant-based and processed foods, all these markers clearly shows that their detoxification and healing processed were inhibited by the toxicity and damage of the pine bark extract.
Now let’s see what these imbeciles at Examine have to say.
Examine.com’s take
“Due to the low quality of evidence for most of the outcomes and the wide variation among studies (e.g., health status of the participants and type and dose of pine bark extract), the results should be viewed with caution.”
Sure, because you view these outcomes as “positive,” because you do not understand the biochemistry behind them. Thus you also failed to explain these outcomes and the changes in some of the cardiometabolic markers. Luckily, I did that work for you. And anyone who has looked into biology and biochemistry knows that plants are very chemically different to humans and not compatible with our biology or physiology. They can never be beneficial in any capacity, it’s not biochemically possible.
That is why the nonsense of antioxidants are still being touted among complete imbeciles. Antioxidants in plants are very chemically different to antioxidants in our bodies and cells. All living organisms produce their own antioxidants to protect us, but they are very different among the different classifications of organisms. Humans are classified under the kingdom Animalia, while plants are classified under the kingdom Plantae. Thus, while humans can manufacture their own antioxidants, especially when we run on our natural fat metabolism and are in ketosis, we can also get antioxidants from other animals by consuming their flesh, as they are biologically identical and compatible. However, plants are not, they belong to another class of organisms and their “antioxidants” are not compatible and will be highly toxic. Very simple and logical. It’s common sense.
In plants, antioxidants are simply defense chemicals made by the plants to protect them from anyone wanting to eat or hurt them, as well as from environmental hazards. That means that within the human body, they will be extremely toxic doing enormous damage to our tissues. And that is one of the reasons why pine bark extract is so toxic and damaging, as it contains a lot of phenols and flavonoids such as procyanidins, catechins, and phenolic acids. Only a complete retard would ever come up with the idea to process bark into a liquid and then dry it into a powder. It’s frikkin’ bark! It’s not meant to be consumed!
Again, humans are obligate hyper carnivores, and we should never consume anything that is growing out of the dirt. We should only consume animals and their produce.
If you need help with any kind of health problems or transitioning from your current way of eating to our natural species-appropriate, species-specific way of eating, I’m available for both coaching and consultation.
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