The Rhyothemis princeps Brain Externalization Project

The eat 'five a day' (referring to servings of fruits and vegetables) recommendation of the World Health Organization and many national health agencies has new support based on findings by Wang et al. (2021) from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.   - link to open access article: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.048996 The study found a reduction in all-cause mortality as well as reductions in mortality due to respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease and cancer. The thresholds for reductions in mortality were achieved at two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables per day. No additional benefit was seen for over five servings. Sadly, there was no significant reduction found for neurodegenerative diseases (but see the Michley et al. (2017, open access) study on Parkinson disease re: fresh vs. canned/frozen). Wang et al. (2021) Above is Figure 1 from Wang et al. (2021); it is quite small and th

Fucoidan is a sulfated polysaccharide found in brown seaweed that varies in molecular weight and composition. Wakame ( Undaria pinnatifida ) is a brown seaweed commonly consumed in Japan and is a main ingredient in miso soup and is also served as a salad.  Recently it as been reported that fucoidan can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-00192-8 Of course it remains to be demonstrated in humans, but it's a start.  ~ Wakame fucoidan could be useful for Covid-19 since it inhibits thrombosis without increasing bleeding time: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22084059/ The  Min et al. (2011) study also found in comparison to wakame fucoidan, fucoidan from bladder wrack inhibited thrombus formation, but bleeding time was prolonged (but not as much as for heparin).  An important caveat when considering the therapeutic potential of seaweed/fucoidan is that there are differences in biological activities in fucoidans from different species as we