Glandulars Study: Glandular Therapy
( Advanced Overall Health and Fitness Research Sciences & Compelling Articles ) ..
That's right - glandulars. They're making a comeback. Now that steroids arc getting major attention from local and national law enforcement, many health enthusiasts are pushing glandulars again. Not long ago I noticed at least five major publications carrying hill-page ads attesting
to the magnificent benefits that can be derived from ingesting glandulars.
Actually, glandulars were really hot In the late '70s and early '8Os. At that time, I really wasn't into nutrition, but I had been told two or three times by Individuals who were supposedly "in the know" that a normal, well-fed human being could never be improved upon by any type
of nutritional supplementation. I had also read a great deal of research concerning nutrition, all of which dearly indicated that such supplements as vitamins, amino acids and food supplements were worthless as ergogenic aids. Consequently, nutrition to me meant RC Colas, Moon
Pies and Domino's supreme pizzas without onions. Still, the talk about glandulars had me wondering.
You see, there were so many lifters running around saying that to be successful you had to take glandulars, that I wondered if the substance might not be worth an investigation. I went out and caught one of those lifters to find out what glandulars were all about. Surprisingly,
all he knew about glandulars was that to be successful, you had to take them. The funny thing was that I ran down just about every one of those glandular-promoting lifters, and not a single one of them could explain how glandulars worked. In fact, the only thing they could say was
that they worked as good, if not better, than steroids.
Now that's saying something. However, rather than accepting the claimed ergogenic effects of glandulars as the product of some type of sympathetic magic, I decided to research the matter myself. What I found was quite interesting.
Simply stated, glandular therapy is the use of glandular and organ substances to enhance the functions of an individual's organs and glands. The key concept behind this therapy is that like cells help like cells.
For instance, this theory holds that if you eat liver, your own liver will be improved. The logic is that glandular tissue contains intrinsic factors that are distinct from vitamins, minerals, hormones or enzymes, and that these intrinsic factors are cell-specific - meaning that the
cells we eat will specifically affect like cells in our body. In simpler terms, if you want to improve the activity of a particular gland, eat that particular gland. If you want a highly active brain, eat brain tissue. Demented, but that's what this theory says.
AS THE WORM TURNS
During my research, I actually found a laboratory study that seemed to indicate that very possibility In 1960, Revva Kimble, Barbara Humphries and James Mcconnell conducted an experiment to see if they could transfer intelligence from one planarian (flatworm) to another. The first
thing they did was to condition the flatworm to respond to light. They put a bunch of flatworms into a trough of water and then passed an electrical current through the water. Of course, the flatworms contracted violently, as would most animals who received such a shock.
In this case, the shock is an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) and the contracting of the worms is the unconditioned response (UCR). In other words, the worms didn't have to learn to contract when they were shocked. What the researchers wanted to do, though, was to condition the worms
to contract when they saw a light without the shock being presented.
No big deal; they simply paired the shock with the light just like Pavlov paired the bell with food. After a number of trials of pairing the light with the shock, the worms eventually developed an association reflex between the light and the contracting response. The worms had
learned to contract when they saw the light, even though the shock wasn't given. The light had become a conditioned stimulus (CS) and the contracting, a conditioned response (CR). Once the researchers had conditioned the planarians to the light, they chopped them into little
bits and fed the untrained flatworms.
Another group of flatworms were fed bits of other flatworms that were not conditioned to the light. As it turned out, the planarians that had eaten the conditioned worms responded to the light (CS), while the planarians who ate the unconditioned worms didn't respond to the light.
It seems that the Intelligence of the flatworms had been enhanced by eating their educated kin.
.. to be continued
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