Author: Laurence D. Chalem, Independent Researcher
Conflict of
Interest: Nothing to declare
Abstract: Exogenous, digestible carbohydrates—sugar (sucrose),
starch (amylose & amylopectin) and their constituents—have long been
considered addictive, obesogenic, diabetogenic and atherogenic. The mechanism leading to deranged
metabolism—perturbation of the insulin-glucose system—has been known for decades. Little, if any, research, however, has been
undertaken to understand why. This
article presents a hypothesis for further study.
Keywords: Adaptation, Addiction, Carbohydrates, Diabetes
Mellitus, Glycosis, Maladaptation, Obesity, Overweight, Sugar
Introduction
The two independent variables most commonly
associated with obesity, eating too much food and sloth, have recently been
dismissed.[1], [2], [3], [4]
Additional associations recently proffered
include: sleep debt, pollution, air conditioning, decreased smoking, medicine,
population age, ethnicity, older moms, ancestors’ environment, obesity linked
to fertility, unions of obese spouses, and others, including a fat-inducing
virus, increases in childhood depression, less consumption of dairy products
and hormones used in agriculture.[5]
Francois
Magendie
In 1816, Francois Magendie set out to
observe the effects of a restricted diet.
He was interested in what role nitrogen played in digestion. The answer he got, after ten years of
painstaking work was none at all. “As so
often in research,” Magendie wrote, “unexpected results had contradicted every
reasonable expectation.” But in the
pursuit of this knowledge, Magendie had stumbled upon a striking, if unpleasant
discovery: he had found that he was able to starve his experimental dogs to
death on diets that should, on the face of it, have given them all the energy
they needed for life.
By his own account, Magendie “placed a small
dog about three years old upon a diet exclusively of pure refined sugar with
distilled water for drink; he had both ad libitum.” By the third week the animal, already
weakened, lost its appetite, and developed small ulcers in the centre of each
cornea. The ulcers spread, and then the
corneas liquefied. Shortly afterwards,
the dog died.
Magendie tried other nutritious foods. “Everyone knows that dogs can live very well
on bread alone,” he asserted; but, when he put this to the test, he found that
“a dog does not live above fifty days.”
The most calorific foods in Magendie’s pantry—wheat gluten, starches,
sugar, olive oil—were not enough for life.
This was totally unexpected.
There was something missing—something available only as part of a varied
diet—but what?[6]
No Thrifty
Gene
Diabetes confers a significant reproductive
disadvantage; yet, populations that James Neel studied had diabetes in such
high frequencies that a genetic predisposition to develop diabetes seemed
plausible.[7]
The most significant problem for the
“thrifty gene” idea is that it predicts that modern hunter gatherers should get
fat in the periods between famines. Yet
data on the body mass index of hunter-gatherer and subsistence agriculturalists
clearly show that between famines they do not deposit large fat stores.
Neel wrote that modern, very-high levels of
obesity and diabetes among formerly native populations were a recent phenomenon
most likely caused by dietary changes.
Given that some populations, e.g., the Inuit, experienced a rise in
obesity and diabetes in conjunction with a reduction of the proportion of fat
and protein in their diets, Neel concluded that the dietary causes of obesity
and diabetes lay in carbohydrate consumption.[8]
Emotional
States as Addiction
Group identity established by emotional
mechanisms requires both a long-lasting negative component and a less stable
positive component, the basic elements of an addiction module.[9] Eating starch- and sugar-based snacks in a
social setting entails both positive and negative emotional states. Positive emotions would include those of
pleasure, joy, happiness and contentment.
The stable negative component may not be apparent until after this
initial acquisition, when feelings of guilt or unhappiness result from the
finding of fat accumulation. Negative
emotional states then might include anxiety, depression and anger.
Although not everyone that consumes sugar is
addicted, sugar is implicated in obesity,[10], [11] asthma,[12] and every one
of the abnormalities seen in coronary heart disease and in diabetes can be
produced by the inclusion of sugar in the diet.[13]
That low carbohydrate diets work best in the
treatment of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes,[14], [15], [16], [17], [18],
[19], [20], [21], [22] reducing pharmaceutical dependencies, and in weight
loss,[23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31] is the prima fascia
case that carbohydrates are the keystone of the obesity, overweight and related
CNCDs arch.
Obesity Today
2.7% of UK men and women were obese in
1972. Fewer than three decades later, in
1999, 22.6% of men and 25.8% of women were obese.[32] Two-thirds of UK citizens are now overweight
or obese.
70% of Americans are currently overweight or
obese. Animals inhabiting human
influenced environments haven’t fared much better.[33]
Figure
1. US Overweight & Obesity. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
2006.
Evidence accumulated since 1917 has
indicated that eat less, do more does not work;[34], [35] in fact, those that
implement the advice fail 98% of the time.[36]
Calorie restriction results in a disproportionate reduction in energy
expenditure and metabolic activity.[37], [38]
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are defined by two
criteria. First, they usually contain
only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, although a few carbohydrates contain
nitrogen or sulphur. Second, the ratio
of hydrogen to oxygen is close to 2:1, the same ratio as in water; the
generalized chemical formula is (CH2O)n.[39]
Carbohydrates are divided into four
groupings. Oligosaccharides and
polysaccharides, commonly referred to as complex carbohydrates, can further be
classified either as non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) or structural
carbohydrates. Amylose and
amylopectin—starch—are polysaccharide NSCs.
Cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin (wood), are structural
polysaccharides.[40], [41]
Polysaccharide NSCs—complex
carbohydrates—reduce to simple carbohydrates during human digestion. But humans can’t digest structural
polysaccharides; we don’t produce cellulase, the necessary enzyme for breaking
them down. Wood-rotting fungi and
bacteria have cellulose-degrading enzymes, but even termites, cockroaches and
cattle can live on cellulose only because their digestive tracts contain
microorganisms with the proper enzymes that then convert it to short-chain
fatty acids for energy.[42], [43]
Monosaccharides and disaccharides are
referred to as simple sugars, of which all are NSCs. Blood sugar is the monosaccharide glucose and
table sugar is the disaccharide sucrose, consisting of glucose and fructose.
Starch serves as a long-term storage
chemical for energy. Although sugars are
excellent for storing energy because they are not very reactive, cells cannot
store large amounts of sugars. Sugars
absorb and hold water, causing cells to swell; starch does not.[44]
Figure
2. US Dept. of Commerce reports and the
USDA: continuous yearly sweetener sales from 1822 to 2005. Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D. & Jeremy Landen,
2012.
Figure 2 presents added sweeteners such as
cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and maple syrup, but not naturally
occurring sugars in fruit and vegetables.
It’s a remarkably straight line, increasing steadily from 6.3 pounds per
person per year in 1822 to a maximum of 107.7 lb/person/year in 1999. In 1822, we ate the amount of added sugar in
one 12 ounce can of soda every five days; today, every seven hours.
Figure 3 presents the consumption of the
three macronutrients from 1971 to 2000.
Figure
3. Percent kilocalories from
macronutrient intake among men aged 20-74 years (NHANES).
Ancestor’s
Diet
The best benchmark to use is what we ate
before the agricultural revolution. But it is difficult to accurately determine
the nature of past hominid diets because survival of organic materials is very
rare. The morphological changes—based on
analogies with living primates—increasing gracilization of the mandible and
increasing brain size, have been interpreted as the move from plants to
higher-quality, more digestible, animal meat, although this explanation is
debated. Artefacts, such as stone tools
which are likely to be used for hunting, and animal bones with evidence of
human processing and butchering, do indicate that hunting did occur at many
times in the past; but, it is impossible to judge the frequency. Direct evidence from bone chemistry, such as the
measurement of the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, provide direct
evidence of past diet and indicates the importance of animal protein in
diets. There is a rapid increase in
population associated with domestication of plants, and in many cases a general
decline in health and stature and the appearance of new nutritional
disorders.[45]
Present-day hunter-gatherer societies, on
average, consume a diet of 65% animal food and 35% plant food.[46] Contrast that with the fact that 72% of the
total daily energy consumed by people in the United States is made up of dairy
products, cereals, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils, and alcohol, all
items that didn’t exist until about ten-thousand years ago.[47] According to Dr. Loren Cordain, the word for
the difference between what we evolved to eat and what we currently eat is
“discordance,” and is due to the fact that our cultural evolution has paced
faster than our biological evolution.
Our biology has not caught up with the nutritional, cultural, and
activity patterns of contemporary western populations, and thus, many of the
so-called diseases of civilization have emerged.[48]
Most of those diseases are related to the
glycemic load of our diets. Within the
past two decades, substantial information has accumulated showing that
long-term consumption of high glycemic load carbohydrates can adversely affect
metabolism and health. Specifically,
chronic hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia, induced by high glycemic load
carbohydrates may elicit a number of hormonal and physiological changes that
promote insulin resistance. Diseases of
insulin resistance include obesity, coronary heart disease, type two diabetes,
hypertension, acne, gout, some cancers, and many others. Diseases of insulin resistance are rare or
absent in hunter-gatherer and other less-westernized societies living and
eating in their traditional manner.[49]
Strategies
The sugar first formed as a result of
photosynthesis was discovered in the early 20th century to be glucose; part of
it was then converted into fructose.
Condensation converts both into sucrose, and it is as sucrose that
translocation takes place to the bulbs.[50]
Plant organs that provide resources to other
tissues in the same plant are termed sources, and those that receive the
resource are called sinks. Sucrose from
a source cell is loaded into the phloem for long-distance transport. Then, the sucrose is unloaded from the phloem
at a sink, such as a root, where it is used for storage, growth or
respiration. When plants are defoliated,
storage organs become sources and the growing shoots are sinks.[51]
Among many strategies, plants produce fruit
or nectar to entice animals to disperse their seeds or pollen. In seed dispersal known as endozoochory, an
animal eats the fruit and the seeds inside it; the seeds survive the digestive
process of the animal, and, later, are deposited when the animal
defecates. When an animal feeds on
nectar, however, plants deposit their pollen—mobile, single-use sperm
production and delivery devices—on them.
On its quest for more nectar, the animal moves pollen from male anthers
of one flower to female stigma of another.
Although sucrose is the main sugar found in
nectar, other carbohydrates, including arabinose, galactose, mannose,
gentiobiose, lactose, maltose, melibiose, trehelose, melezitose, raffinose, and
stachyose have been identified in nectars of some flowers.[52] The various types of nectars can be ordered
into three groups according to sugar content: sucrose prevalent, glucose and
fructose prevalent, and equal amounts of sucrose, glucose, and fructose.[53]
Some animals remove nectar without
contacting anthers or stigma. These
nectar robbers include a small number of species of ants, bees, birds, bats and
others. But, contrary to the pure
sucrose humans obtain from sugar cane, all twenty of the amino acids found in
protein have been identified in various nectars, with alanine, arginine,
serine, proline, glycine, isoleucine, threonine, and valine, most
prevalent.[54]
H. sapiens does not obtain sugar via
pollination or nectar robbery; but, through two operations separated in space
time. We methodically depredate
croplands then cultivate them back again.
There are other depredating species. The Asian giant hornet Vespa mandarinia is especially adapted to raid bee hives. A single giant hornet can kill tens of bees a
minute and only a few can decimate an entire bee colony of 30,000 in just a few
hours. The hornets depredate bees to
satiate the hunger of their demanding young.
Swarm-raiding army ants Eciton
burchelli devastate the arthropod fauna on the ground and low vegetation
over which they conduct their daily forays.[55]
Leafcutter ants consume far more vegetation
than any other group of animals of comparable taxonomic diversity. The amount of vegetation cut from tropical
forests by Atta alone has been calculated to lie between 12%-17% of leaf
production. Because of the catholicity
of the diets of the fungus that they eat, leafcutters have an extraordinary
diverse impact on agriculture; loss to human interests is estimated in the
billions of dollars.[56]
Members of the myrmicine tribe Attini share
with macrotermitine termites and certain wood-boring beetles the sophisticated
habit of culturing and eating fungi.[57]
But no other animal depredates-cultivates palatable, non-essential
food. Although it’s true that humans
manipulate the plants, the opposite is equally true. We increase their fecundity; they, in turn,
reduce our fitness.
“They” refer to a number of plants
containing accessible NSCs. Included is
sugar cane (Saccharum spp.) and corn
(Zea mays)—grasses—and beet sugar (Beta vulgaris), a tuber. Corn is an annual; that is, it germinates,
flowers and dies in one year or season.
So too are the grasses wheat (Triticum
spp.) and rice (Zizania spp. & Oryza spp.). Beet sugar is biennial, taking two years to
complete its lifecycle, and the sugar canes are all perennial, living for
years.
Unlike an angiosperm that uses sweetness to
entice an animal to pollinate it or disperse its seeds, sugar cane attracts
humans to raid its stem, for it is there that phloem contain significant,
translocating sucrose. H. sapiens has
diverged into consumers and producers, members of the latter doing much more
work than any bat, bee, butterfly, hummingbird or moth.
Think how much of these organisms we
depredate-cultivate each year.
Worldwide, Homo sapiens—referred
to by some as Homo ludens, yet by
others as H. stultus—produce
two-billion metric tons of sugar cane, a billion metric tons of corn and about
a half-billion metric tons of beet sugar to meet demand.[58]
Beet sugar and sugar cane have a high water
content, about 75% of the total weight of the plants. The sugar content of sugar cane ranges from
10%-15% of the total weight, while that of beet sugar is between 13%-18%. Assuming seven billion people worldwide,
that’s more than a quarter-pound of sugar produced per day per person, not
including the high fructose corn syrup which is now nearly equal to sugar consumption. Add in the billion metric tons of corn—a
large portion goes to produce ethanol—and a billion metric tons each of wheat
and rice, and we have well over a pound of edible, non-essential carbohydrate
production per person per day. Although
rice and wheat provide some protein—the mysterious, life-sustaining component
of food that Magendie the dog killer would eventually find—the protein and fat
content of sugar is zero.
Some that try to eat just a little sugar are
surprised and discouraged when they crave more.
It’s no coincidence that sugar is sweet; sweetness is a powerful
bribe. Once ensnared in the taste,
humans demand more, driving further cultivation and depredation. We wind up favoring the plant’s interests at
the expense of our own because we have uncoupled food intake from functional
needs. Animals that must flap their
wings fifty times a second in order to feed have a hard time staying fat and do
not develop diabetes, at least as we know it.[59]
Still, why can some people eat all the NSCs
they want and remain fit? Richard Lenski
provides a prescient template.
Richard E.
Lenski
Michigan State University biologist Richard
Lenski, his colleagues and students started off with a single bacteria of E. coli; after it divided a few times
into identical clones, he started twelve colonies, each in its own flask. Each day he and his colleagues provided the
bacteria with a little glucose, which the bacteria ate by the afternoon. The next morning, the scientists took a small
sample from each flask and put it in a new one with fresh glucose. They did this for more than twenty years and
it’s still running today.[60]
Lenski expected that the bacteria would
experience natural selection in their new environment. In each generation, some of the microbes
would mutate. Most of the mutations would
be harmful, killing the bacteria or making them grow more slowly. Others would be beneficial allowing them to
breed faster in their new environment.
They would gradually dominate the population, only to be replaced when a
new mutation arose to produce an even fitter sort of microbe.
Over the generations, the bacteria did
indeed evolve into faster breeders. The
bacteria in the flasks today breed seventy-five percent faster on average than
their original ancestor. Lenski and his
colleagues have pinpointed some of the genes that have evolved along the way;
in some cases, for example, the same gene has changed in almost every line, but
it has mutated in a different spot in each case. Lenski and his colleagues have also shown how
natural selection has demanded trade-offs from the bacteria; while they grow
faster on a meager diet of glucose, they’ve gotten worse at feeding on some
other kinds of sugars.
But that’s not all. In addition to becoming faster breeders, they
also became larger.[61] And then the
bacteria had abandoned their glucose-only diet and had evolved a new way to
eat.[62]
After 33,127 generations, Lenski and his
students noticed something strange in one of the colonies. The flask started to turn cloudy. This happens sometimes when contaminating
bacteria slip into a flask and start feeding on a compound in the broth known
as citrate. Citrate is made up of
carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; our own cells produce citrate in the long chain
of chemical reactions that lets us draw energy from food. Many species of bacteria can eat citrate, but
in an oxygen-rich environment like Lenski’s lab, E. coli can’t. The problem
is that the bacteria can’t pull the molecule in through their membranes. In fact, their failure has long been one of
the defining hallmarks of E. coli.
If citrate-eating bacteria invade the
flasks, however, they can feast on the citrate, and their exploding population
turns the flask cloudy. This has only
happened rarely in Lenski’s experiment, and when it does, he and his colleagues
throw out the flask and start the line again from its most recently frozen
ancestors.
So in one remarkable case, they discovered
that a flask had turned cloudy without contamination. It was E.
coli thriving on the citrate. The
researchers found that when they put the bacteria in pure citrate, the microbes
could use it as their sole source of nutrition and energy.
What was going on? What was it that suddenly happened to that
one tribe? If a mutant could discover
how to deal with citrate, a bonanza would open up for it. This is exactly what happened with that one
tribe. This tribe, and this tribe alone,
suddenly acquired the ability to eat citrate as well as glucose, rather than
just glucose. The amount of available
food in each successive flask in the lineage therefore shot up. The only explanation was that this one line
of E. coli had evolved the ability to
eat citrate on its own.[63]
Glycosis (glī-kō’sĭs)
Why are there some people who consume quite
a lot of sugar but are not overweight?
John Yudkin in Pure, White and
Deadly (1988) proposed that some lucky people have the facility of burning
off surplus calories.[64] That may or
may not be true; but, why should some be luckier than others? In all likelihood it is because they are
better adapted to that fare than others.
Adaptedness is the morphological,
physiological, and behavioural equipment of a species or of a member of a
species that permits it to compete successfully with other members of its own
species or with individuals of other species and that permits it to tolerate
the extant physical environment.
Adaptation, as measured by evolutionary success, consists of a greater
ecological-physiological efficiency of an individual than is achieved by most other
members of the population or at least by the average. Adaptation is achieved by the greater
survival or higher reproductive success of certain individuals owing to the
fact that they possess ecological-physiological traits not, or only partially,
shared by other individuals of their population, traits that are useful in the
struggle for existence.[65]
Surely every fish is adapted for its life in
water and yet in the history of the vertebrates, ten thousands of species of
fish have become extinct, either because they were not sufficiently well-adapted
to some component of the environment or because they lost in the competition
with some “better adapted” other species.
The same is true for individuals within a species. All have the same species-specific
adaptations and yet only a small minority will survive into the next
generation. Thus, it is evident that we
have “adapted” and “better adapted.”
This is precisely the process of natural selection, which, on average,
favors those that are “better adapted.”[66]
Proposed is a word to indicate relative
maladaptedness to carbohydrates: glycosis.
It is defined as the quantifiable maladaptation to one or more specific
carbohydrates in a given species. For
example, if a species that uses glucose as its sole food source is fed a
different carbohydrate, the survival rate would serve as the measure of
adaptation or maladaptation to that carbohydrate, depending on whether the
value was high or low. If a hundred
percent of the population survives, then there is no adaptational benefit to
any select few and the species as a whole is adapted. If they all die out, then they are completely
maladapted.
Quantifying adaptation in humans is complex
because carbohydrates are not essential macronutrients. Homo
sapiens need exogenous amino acids, DHA and EPA fatty acids, energy, water,
vitamins, electrolytes and minerals; but, we never need to eat
carbohydrates.[67] Although we get all
the glucose we need endogenously from our livers, adaptation to carbohydrates
as an energy source can theoretically be calculated.
Population glycosis could be depicted as the
percent of people suffering from CNCDs related to NSC consumption such as
obesity, overweight, diabetes mellitus, some types of heart disease, some
cancers, gout, etc. Diseases related to
the use of tobacco (Nicotiana spp.)
and alcohol—ethanol, the product of carbohydrate fermentation—could be
included. Thus, the higher the
consumption of NSCs, the higher the prevalence of CNCDs, the higher the
maladaptation to those NSCs, the higher the glycosis.
Although there may be a lag between NSC
consumption levels and CNCD presentation, that 63% of the global population
expire as a result of CNCDs[68] implies that the current limit of glycosis in Homo sapiens is the same, given current
NSC consumption. In sub-populations with
known overweight rates of two-thirds or more, that’s an underestimation.
Like psychosis—abnormal condition of the
mind—the word glycosis at the individual level could be defined as the abnormal
condition of glucose in the blood.
People with diabetes mellitus of any type are most demonstrably
glycotic.
An analogy might be helpful. In an old TV commercial for “Off!,” a
name-brand mosquito repellent, two bare arms, each connected to a live human,
were placed consecutively into a glass tube full of hungry mosquitoes. The first arm, which can be thought of as the
experimental arm, was sprayed with a generous amount of “Off!,” and the second
arm, the control, wasn’t sprayed with anything.
Not surprisingly, the first arm, the one sprayed with “Off!,” suffered
fewer, if any, mosquito bites than that of the bare arm. This commercial is analogous to diabetes
mellitus if you imagine that the mosquito bites represent complications and the
“Off!” represents insulin. Carbohydrates
are equivalent to the actual placing of an arm into the mosquito-filled glass
container.
Ideally, one probably shouldn’t be placing
their arm into a container full of hungry mosquitoes. Similarly, for the obese and overweight
too—because insulin is the main hormone that stores fat and carbohydrates are the
most significant secretagogue of insulin—doesn’t it make sense to reduce
carbohydrate intake? That would be
congruent with recent research indicating that anything enabling the
reproduction and growth of microbial parasites—carbohydrates, nicotine, mental
stress, and low vitamin B, C and D levels, are primary risk factors for
cardiovascular disease.[69]
A New Found
Path
Once deranged metabolism manifests, the
simple way to proceed is to eat natural foods made up of mostly fat and
protein. Without carbohydrates in the
diet, the brain and central nervous system will run on ketone bodies, converted
from dietary fat and from the fatty acids released by the adipose tissue; on
glycerol, also released from the fat tissue with the breakdown of triglycerides
into free fatty acids; and on glucose, converted from the protein in the
diet. Since a carbohydrate-restricted
diet, unrestricted in calories, will, by definition, include considerable fat
and protein, there will be no shortage of fuel for the brain.[70]
Every fat is part saturated, part mono-unsaturated
and part polyunsaturated.[71] All
“saturated” means is that every carbon has a hydrogen attached to it; intake of
saturated fat is associated with reduced
progression of coronary atherosclerosis.
Greater NSC intake is linked to increased progression.[72], [73]
Of the many vertebrate protein sources
available, one necessitates clarity.
“Grass-fed beef” is a peculiar expression because cattle naturally eat
grass; they’re graminivores. The problem
becomes clear after considering three arguments: (1) grass stems are higher in
NSCs than leaves; but, (2) lush grass is much lower in NSCs than dry grass or
fruit, and, (3) the content of NSCs is higher when sampled closer to the
ground. Cattle and their bacteria are
best adapted to eat structural carbohydrates.[74]
For grass, high levels of NSCs enable them
to be more persistent under drought conditions.
Moreover, the distribution of NSCs being higher the lower they are in
the stem is an adaptive advantage. It
allows plants to maintain reserves for re-growth after the tops have been
consumed by grazing animals.[75] Hence,
feeding cattle corn—which although is fruit from
a grass, it contains a higher proportion of NSCs than their natural diet of
lush grass tops—is the bane of some cattle, not to mention in some people that
eat their beef.
While ruminant livestock enterprises benefit
from higher levels of NSCs in grass, various forms of carbohydrate intolerance
are recognized in horses. Obesity,
laminitis, insulin resistance, developmental orthopedic disease, polysaccharide
storage myopathy, all involve excess dietary NSC in their etiology.[76]
In those with diabetes, obesity, overweight,
etc., or the propensity to become so, risk may be mitigated by avoiding
carbohydrate intake. No, it’s not easy;
but, it is simple. For those free of
CNCDs, it’s also good policy. As there
used to be only one way to distinguish between edible and poisonous mushrooms,
so too might learning of one’s own maladaptedness to carbohydrates: it will be
in retrospect of having become less fit.
And that fits nicely into nature’s
scheme. Stephan Jay Gould eloquently
stated it at the conclusion of Wonderful
Life: “We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in
this diverse world, one indifferent to our own suffering, and therefore
offering us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.”[77]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Acknowledgements
The section "Obesity Today" was adapted from the work of Zoe Harcombe and many of the cited articles were made available by Lt. Col., Dr. Luca Mascitelli. The author is grateful to both.
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