Dogs Are Truly “Man’s Best Friend”: How This 16 Year Old Dog Saved His Owner Makes Me Shed Tears

I always love stories about heroism especially when the knight is a dog. Who would forget the touching stories of  Hachiko and Mari and the three puppies? These stories are based on real life events that inspired many and showed the true meaning of love, friendship, loyalty and happiness. Dogs are truly man’s best friend and here is another true story that will prove it. This is the heart breaking story of a dog named Mason, who died in bravery by giving his life to his owner.

Just a warning: You may want to prepare yourself because it’s gonna be an onion cutting one.  This beautiful story will make you love dogs even more.

This is Steve Mason, the most incredible dog I have ever met and my best friend of the past 16 years. And this is the story of how he died saving my life one last time

Steve Mason, “Mason” to his friends was a Husky, Lab, Rottweiler mutt with insanely fluffy ears and markings on his face that made it look like he was always wearing Harry Potter specs. I picked him out of a litter of puppies because while all the others yipped and squealed and played, he was the only one to stop and snuffle the flowers.

He and I went on enough adventures to shame the Fellowship, and hit the top of more mountains than I can honestly remember. He always had this way of perking up his ears that could spur me to keep going, either to the top of a ridge line or out of what ever ridiculous angst I found myself muddled in.

He was obsessed with shortening sticks and tearing up any cardboard he could find. He was extremely meticulous and many a vacuum clear died trying to tidy up his messes.

Mason was a best friend and rock steady companion for my older brother and a traveling companion like no other. And every time he saw my brother, even if five years had gone by, he’d still try and jump in his arms like a puppy.

veryone who met him came away saying that he was a remarkable dog, and many could honestly say he was the nicest person they’d ever met.

Over the past two years he began to show his age. His hearing and much of his eyesight abandoned him, along with his sense of balance.

I kept expecting him to die in his sleep or collapse on a hike.

My worst fear was that he would grow so old and infirm that we’d have to put him down. I honestly didn’t think I’d be able to go through what I’ve had to do for so many other dogs with him. He was far too special. He just seemed so old.

But he just kept on going, refusing to take it easy. He moved slower, and couldn’t go as far, but he never seemed to mind.

This winter I’d been sure to get as many adventures in with him as possible, knowing our days together might be numbered. On March 5th, he and I, along with my family’s three younger dogs took off for what was meant to be a quick hike around our property before I had to go to work.

We were about a mile from home on our snowshoe trail when I noticed a figure following us about a quarter mile back. I recognized it as a wolf right away. I hadn’t seen a wolf in my valley for about fifteen years, but wolves are shy and usually hide from humans, especially one with four dogs. Trying to be respectful, I turned us towards home, thinking we’d give the wolf room to escape and think no more about it.

Mason and I ended up fighting side-by-side. The wolf kept staring me in the eyes, but it was clear she was after the dogs. She finally pinned the smallest dog and Mason lunged at her. Suddenly my frail old man looked huge, bigger than I’d ever seen him before. He knocked her off the puppy, but she got Mason by the throat. It was over in a split second. I have never screamed so loud. Every fiber in my being was telling me to kill her, stab her in the eye, tear her throat out if I could. But that would have only gotten me killed too, and there were three other dogs I had to get out of there. It was too late anyway. He was dead and she was eating him.

This is the wolf. This picture was taken the morning after by some guards and the nearby border station when she wandered past. Though all I wanted to do in the moment was kill her, she really is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And now that it’s done, I hold no hate for her. She was starving to death and did what she had to to survive. I think she went into the fight knowing she might be the one to get killed, and it was simply the luck of the draw that she got him first. I only hope she leaves this valley safely.

I miss Mason like there is a hole in my chest. Though I know there was nothing else I could have done, I can’t escape the thought that I failed to save him. But most dogs at sixteen die bye the fireside, slowly and painfully of old age. Mason went out of this world like a thunderbolt, saving my life and the lives of the three younger dogs. He was my puppy, my “grizzly”, my brother, my friend, and he died as he lived: My hero. I love you, buddy. Goodbye.

Source:

Source: Imgur via Reddit

How to Naturally Improve Your Eyesight With Juicing

Our eyesight is vital for a healthy, independent and fulfilling life. Yet, more and more people experience different eyesight problems, including cataracts, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy (common diabetic eye disease and a leading cause of blindness). By 2020, 3 million Americans are expected to be affected by age-related macular degeneration, which is the biggest cause of blindness.  What can you do to protect your eyes? Find out about foods that nourish your eyes and get a juicing recipe that will help you to protect your eyes and keep your eyesight in top condition.

It’s never too late to start looking after your precious eyes. Eating the right foods is definitely an important step in the right direction and an even more convenient way is to juice certain foods to naturally protect and even improve your eyesight.

The juice recipe that you can find towards the end of this post contains many of the following vitamins and nutrients.

Key Vitamins and Nutrients that Help your Eyes Stay Healthy

Vitamin A

Vitamin A deficiency can cause night vision problems and increase your risk of macular degeneration and cataracts. This essential vitamin is important not only for your eyes, but also for the heart, kidneys, lungs, bones and general immunity.

The best dietary sources include beef or chicken liver, cod liver oil, milk and eggs. Indirectly, your body can also obtain it from colorful vegetables and fruits (pro-vitamin A carotenoids – see below).

With vitamin A, you need to be careful not to consume it over-keenly, as excessive amounts may be harmful. If you ingest over 2,800 micrograms (9,333 IU) per day, you can develop vitamin A toxicity, which manifests as headaches, dizziness, joint pain and skin changes. The recommended daily intake is 600 micrograms of vitamin A obtained from a varied diet of both plant and animal foods.

Pro-vitamin A carotenoids

These include alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and beta-cryptoxanthin, which the body transforms into vitamin A during the digestive process.

Good sources of carotenoids are leafy greens and orange, yellow and red fruits and vegetables (kale, spinach, leaf lettuce, carrots, bell peppers, tomatoes, tomato juice, sweet potatoes, broccoli, squash, watermelon, pink grapefruit, apricots).

Lutein and zeaxanthin

These two are potent antioxidants and can reduce your risk of developing macular degeneration and other common eye problems.

Five good sources of lutein and zeaxanthin are:

• Kale
• Kiwifruit
• Orange bell peppers
• Beetroot with the beet greens

These fruits and veges can all be used to make delicious, vision promoting juices. Eggs are also a good dietary source.

According to some studies, you need at least six to ten milligrams of lutein daily.

Lycopene

Lycopene is a pigment that makes tomatoes red. Similar to lutein and zeaxanthin, it reduces the risk of macular degeneration. It has also been connected to cancer prevention.

The redder the tomato, the more lycopene it contains. It’s also found in tomato juice. Other good sources include watermelon, pink grapefruit, apricots and blood oranges. You can also reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease with tomatoes.

Vitamin E

This vitamin helps the body produce red blood cells and acts as an antioxidant.

The recommended daily allowance for vitamin E is 15 milligrams (22.5 IU). It is best supplied in the form of nuts and some oil-rich foods (almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, avocado, olive oil). It’s also found in whole grains and spinach.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is mainly known for its immunity boosting effect. It’s also a stress fighter, which means that if your stress levels are high, you should consume more of it.

Best foods for vitamin C include guava, sweet red pepper (bell pepper), kiwifruit, oranges, grapefruit, tomato, strawberries and green pepper.

The recommended daily allowance is 75 milligrams for adult women and 90 milligrams for men.

Bioflavonoids

Also known as flavonoids. These are usually found in fresh fruit in veges that is also rich in vitamin C. They are powerful antioxidants and are praised for their ability to fight cardiovascular disease and certain cancers. They also protect the eyes and reduce the risk of cataracts and macular degeneration.

Juicing for Healthy Eyes

Juicing is a great way of consuming fruits and vegetables. Juicing machines take out the fiber content of fruits and vegetables. This means that you absorb the nutrients more effectively and quickly. Regular juicing is a great way to improve your eyesight. However, if you prefer to consume it as a smoothie and enjoy the extra fiber it provides, use a blender and add liquid to your desired consistency.

You can start your day with the following juice, which includes fruits and vegetables rich in eyesight-promoting substances.

The Vision Saver juice recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 stalks of celery (contain Pro-vitamin A carotenoids)
• 1 carrot (contains Pro-vitamin A carotenoids)
• 1 orange bell pepper (contains Vitamin C)
• 2 oranges  (contain Vitamin C)
• 1 beet with greens (contain Lutein and zeaxanthin)

You can also add berries (see more information below on berries and how they can improve your vision).

Preparation:

1. Wash your produce. If non-organic, you can use apple cider vinegar to remove the toxic chemicals (see my post on how to easily remove pesticides from your fruits and vegetables).
2. Peel the oranges, but you can leave the seeds inside the bell pepper.
3. Feed the fruits and veges through the juicer.
4. Stir well and serve with ice.
5. You can add a dash of raw honey and coconut oil for sweetness and extra health effect (coconut oil has many health benefits).

More Tips for Healthy Eyes and Vision

Eat More Berries

Berries are real super foods, they are rich in nutrients and fiber and are full of antioxidants. Certain types of berries such as bilberries and Goji berries can also improve your vision.  If you have a problem with your eyes, such as blurred vision or inability to focus, then bilberries can help. They improve the circulation to the ocular area and enhance the pigmented area of the eyes.

People who have eyesight problems may experience improvement of their eyesight problems when consuming Goji berries. This is
because of the high beta-carotene content in these berries.

You can find more useful information about berries and how they can improve your health in my e-book The Healing Berry Guide which will teach you how to transform your health with berries.

Herbs That Can Protect Your Eyes

• Rosemary – A common herb used in cooking, rosemary contains powerful antioxidants that may help retard the growth of cataracts. Take rosemary as a tea, mixing with lemon balm. Drink at least one cup of hot tea per day.
• Turmeric – Turmeric has a high concentration of antioxidants, especially the top three known to help prevent cataracts, vitamins A, C and E.

Herbal treatments are very versatile and effective. If you are interested in natural and herbal remedies, you can find more useful information in my e-book The Herbal Remedies Guide. This guide will teach you how to treat common ailments using herbs.

Tips for Healthy Eyes and Vision

• Start with good eating habits as early in life as possible. If you consume a balanced diet already in your teens, it’s less likely you will develop chronic diseases – and many of these are connected to eye problems – later in life. The same goes for your children and their eating habits.
• Eat healthy oils, such as coconut oil and olive oil, as some vitamins and antioxidants are fat soluble, so fatty acids need to be present for the body to absorb them.
• Take frequent breaks when you work behind the computer to give your eyes the much needed rest. The eyes will greatly benefit from a 5 minute respite after an hour of staring at the computer screen. Just look out for a while. Or, shut your eyes and let them relax.

Sources:

www.healthambition.com

www.allaboutvision.com

ods.od.nih.gov

www.lenntech.com

www.healthyandnaturalworld.com

Israeli Scientists Develop Bionic Eye For People Born Blind

A tiny camera receives visual information from the environment and transmits signals to a bionic contact lens.

Israeli scientists have developed a technology that may enable people who are blind from birth to see, with the help of a bionic contact lens.

The new technology, developed by a team at Bar-Ilan University, has yet to receive approval forclinical trials, but its feasibility is currently being tested on seeing individuals, with the aid of a model simulating the bionic lens.

The technology consists of a tiny camera that receives visual information from the environment and transmits signals to a bionic contact lens. The lens passes the signals via electrodes to the cornea and from there to sensory brain areas, generating a stimulus that simulates visual information.

“This technology is good news for humanity, especially in bringing sight to people blind from birth without requiring surgery or damaging other vital senses or organs,” says Prof. Zeev Zalevsky, head of Electrical Engineering and Nanophotonics at Bar-Ilan University, who headed the research team.

In recent years, several companies around the world have developed a bionic eye, but all of them rely on a technology which is of little help to those who are congenitally blind. This system, which bypasses the retina, is intended for those who suffer from retinal degeneration. It consists of a tiny camera implanted in the eye that transmits electric signals directly to the sight nerves attached to the retina, bypassing the retina and generating visual stimulation.

In addition, that system is invasive and requires surgery. It also depends on the stimulation of brain areas that process sight, which are developed in childhood. This makes it unsuitable for those who are blind from birth, since those areas of the brain are not developed in congenitally blind people. The U.S. company Second Sight, the German company Retina Implant AG, the Australian company Bionic Vision and the Israeli company Nano Retina all use this technology.

The visual resolution in existing bionic eyes is about 16 pixels, compared to a million (1 mega) pixels in a normal eye. This enables people with bionic eye implants to distinguish between light and darkness and shadows, but not to make out entire objects or letters, or to be independently mobile.

In contrast, the new Israeli technology is non-invasive and is intended to provide sight to the congenitally blind.

“The new technology attempts to deal with the problems of existing bionic eye technologies to enable even people who are blind from birth, in whom the brain region that processes visual information is not developed, to see,” explains Zalevsky.

The bionic lens stimulates the corneal nerves in the eye’s external part, which are connected in the brain to areas that process sensory information.

The technology consists of a tiny camera with an image compressor and an electric signal amplifier located outside the patient’s body and can be attached to his eye glasses or to a cellular device. Super resolution techniques are used “to encode an image of numerous pixels and compress it into few pixels,” explains Zalevsky.

“The encoding enables compressing static visual sights, reducing the pixels yet allowing transmission of visual information similar to a healthy person’s vision,” he says.

The compressed information is transmitted, after being electrically amplified, from the minute camera by wireless technology to a bionic contact lens in the eye. The proposed lens will have some 10,000 tiny electrodes enabling cornea stimulation. “The cornea is the richest eye part in sensory nerves and has tens of thousands of sensory points to which the tiny electrodes on the lens can connect with,” says Zalevsky.

It’s already possible today to place tiny electrodes, even opaque ones from metallic material, on contact lenses that look transparent. The electrodes stimulate the cornea’s sensory points by transmitting tension, without direct contact with the cornea, due to the compressed signal amplification in the external apparatus.

The stimuli are passed from the cornea via the nervous system to various brain regions that process visual information.

“In this way even a person who is blind from birth can see. In blind people, the sensory areas that receive the information from the cornea are developed, like regions enabling them to read Braille with the sense of touch,” says Zalevsky.

He says the new technology is like “a Braille lens that enables blind people to see in a way similar to Braille reading.”

The Bar-Ilan technology has yet to be approved for clinical testing. But in the last few months the system’s feasibility has been tested on 10 seeing subjects with a model simulating the bionic lens, which transmits stimuli to the finger rather than the cornea.

The scientists have taught the testees to decode simple images and then to transmit, with finger signals, images received by an external camera.

At this state the visual stimulus among the subjects enables spatial vision in black, white and gray, in low 100-pixel resolution.

“But the actual lens will consist of 10,000 electrodes that will enable receiving visual images of much higher resolution and perhaps color in the future,” says Zalevsky.

An article about the technology has recently been published in Optical Engineering and the development will be exhibited in the Israel BioMed conference in June.

source

Scientists Studied What Psychedelics Do To The Brain And It’s Not What You’ve Been Told

It turns out that psychedelics aren’t just good for turning into an elf and jousting a car. Psychiatrists, psychologists and specialists in addiction and recovery from traumatic experiences have been investigating the use of hallucinogens in treatment programs, and the results indicate that psychedelics actually have practical therapeutic uses. And one drug has proven particularly useful. Repeated studies have found the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, can help people move past major life issues — like beating alcoholism and becoming more empathetic.

The research: One study concluded that controlled exposure to psilocybin could have long-lasting medical and spiritual benefits. In 2011, Johns Hopkins researchers found that by giving volunteer test subjects just the right dose (not enough to give them a terrifying bad trip), they were able to reliably induce transcendental experiences in volunteers. This provoked long-lasting psychological growth and helped the volunteers to find peace in their lives, all without side effects. Nearly all of the 18 test subjects, average age 46, were college graduates. Seventy-eight percent were religious and all were interested in finding a scientific experience.

Fourteen months later, 94% said their trip on magic mushrooms was one of the five most important moments of their lives. Thirty-nine percent said it was the most important thing that had ever happened to them. Their colleagues, friends, and family members said the participants were kinder and happier; the volunteers had positive experiences ranging from more empathy and improved marriages to less drinking.

Lead author Roland Griffiths told TIME’s Healthland that “The important point here is that we found the sweet spot where we can optimize the positive persistent effects and avoid some of the fear and anxiety that can occur and can be quite disruptive.”

What’s more, the researchers say that those changes in personality are highly atypical, because personalities tend to be pretty set in stone after the age of 25-30. According to postdoctoral researcher Katherine MacLean, who contributed to the study, “This is one of the first studies to show that you actually can change adult personality.”

“Many years later, people are saying it was one of the most profound experiences of their life,” she continued. “If you think about it in that context, it’s not that surprising that it might be permanent.”

This is strictly do-not-try-this-at-home. Maclean says that “in an unsupervised setting, if that sort of fear or anxiety set in, the classic bad trip, it could be pretty dangerous.” But “On the most speculative side, this suggests that there might be an application of psilocybin for creativity or more intellectual outcomes that we really haven’t explored at all.”

More research: Within the past few decades, interest in hallucinogens has expanded from the counter-culture to dedicated, methodological research. For example, another study published in 2010 conducted research into whether psilocybin can lend some comfort to terminal cancer patients — finding evidence that it reduced death anxiety and experienced significantly less depression. According to study researcher Dr. Charles Grob, “Individuals did speak up and tell us that they felt it was of great value.” NYU’s Dr. Stephen Ross, who conducted a similar study, told SCPR that “To me it’s been some of the most remarkable clinical findings I’ve ever seen as a psychiatrist.”

Psychologist Clark Martin, Ph.D., who participated in the study as a volunteer, describes his experience below

As well as participant Janeen Delaney: As a result of the studies, a joint UCLA, NYU and Johns Hopkins team is conducting large-scale phase three trial next year.

Cluster headache patients say (with the backing of some doctors) that psilocybin and LSD provide them with significant relief, which researchers argue need further study.

A 2012 study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found evidence that psilocybin “enhances autobiographical recollection,” suggesting psychiatric uses in “the recall of salient memories or to reverse negative cognitive biases.” A review of the pyschiatric research performed on psilocybin concluded that the risks of therapy were acceptable and that “most subjects described the experience as pleasurable, enriching and non-threatening.” And this year, Zürich researchers released a study in which they administered psilocybin to 25 volunteers. The treatment was found to be associated with an “increase of positive mood in healthy volunteers.”

So basically, there’s at least some hard evidence that this:

… Has the potential to be helpful, leading to introspection, self-reflection, and relief from psychiatric conditions.

Other drugs: Other illegal drugs have been linked to positive psychological outcomes. Trials with MDMA have had positive results in patients suffering from PTSD. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies founder Rick Doblin, who works with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, discusses why MDMA might be the first psychedelic to “open the door into traditional psychiatry and psychology”:

So why isn’t there more evidence? The federal government is only now beginning to loosen its restrictions on medical uses of mind-altering substances, and it’s doing so very cautiously. In 2013, a group of psychiatrists released a review saying government restrictions made even researching psychoactive drugs “difficult and in many cases almost impossible.” Source: higherperspective.com