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Again:

It is important to understand the effect of specific deficiencies on the brain and the mind, that can cause extreme sadness and helplessness in what is commonly termed depression. Mental health is frequently regarded as being connected with the condition of the mind as opposed to the brain as an organ. Naturally, any deficiency that interferes with the chemical processes necessary for the correct operation of the brain as a physical entity will interfere with human consciousness or psyche that is an abstract manifestation of the way the brain works.

Vitamins known and accepted as affecting mental processes include the B vitamins, of which even slight deficiencies can have an adverse effect on mental health. Significant deficiencies can be related to serious mental illnesses such as severe depression. Each one of the B vitamins is known to have a specific effect.

Thiamine (Vitamin B1) deficiency can lead to depression, anxiety, fearfulness and irritability. The B vitamins are used to create specific enzymes needed for some of the functions in the brain, and it is a lack of these enzymes that ultimately leads to psychiatric disorders. Studies have determined a thiamine deficiency in a large proportion of psychiatric patients. Alcoholics and patients suffering from malnutrition have also been found to suffer from psychiatric disorders, and both of these conditions can lead to a deficiency in thiamine.

Riboflavin, too, has been studied in relation to psychosis. A few studies have indicated a deficiency of riboflavin, vitamin B2, to be associated with increased levels of depression and hysteria. Riboflavin, like thiamine, is essential for the formation and proper use of brain enzymes. The other B vitamins are also known to be essential in the biochemistry of the brain, and depression is a common result of a vitamin B12 deficiency. Other symptoms include psychosis, memory defects and a slowing of the mental processes in general.

In all of these cases, a vitamin B complex supplement appears to have fairly rapid positive results, especially in the treatment of depression. Whether the more severe conditions are helped or not is uncertain since vitamin treatment has rarely been a significant part of the treatment of severe cases of psychosis. It is difficult to see how it could do harm, though while it makes sense for any deficiency to be treated with a corresponding supplement, the damage is generally caused by the presence, or lack of, a chemical farther down the biochemical pathway.

It is well known and accepted that depression is a symptom of insufficient vitamin C intake. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant, and is also needed for the production of serotonin. Produced by the pineal gland deep in the brain, serotonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for mood and depression, and sometimes called the 'molecule of happiness'. A lack of serotonin leads to depression.

It is not only vitamins that are essential for good mental health, however. Mineral deficiencies also feature in some mental problems, particularly magnesium and zinc. Take zinc first: this mineral is responsible for a large number of enzyme syntheses in the body, and influences nerve impulse transmissions and also the activity of the thyroid gland. A deficiency will give several symptoms including depression and bevioural problems.

Magnesium takes part in hundreds of biochemical reactions, and a deficiency can be caused by stress since stress increases the demand for magnesium. The deficiency then affects the ability of the heart to react to the stress, and it becomes a vicious circle. The magnesium deficiency manifests in the form of personality changes, depression, irritability and anxiety.

These are known effects and many studies have been carries out to confirm that knowledge. Many more vitamins and minerals, such as folic acid, manganese, iron and potassium, are known to be necessary components of the human biochemical pathways that lead ultimately to chemicals essential for the proper functioning of the brain as an organism, and deficiencies of which can affect the mind. Mild depressions have been significantly reduced by use of the appropriate supplements but should not be regarded as a cure.

Since these known deficiencies cause known psychiatric defects, particularly depression and anxiety, it is only sensible to assume that intelligent and appropriate supplementation should help to avoid them, if not cure them. Some deficiencies are due to alcoholism and malnutrition. In alcoholism, the B vitamins are rapidly depleted in the body by the alcohol, even though there is no deficiency in the diet. Malnutrition speaks for itself, and while supplements can have a dramatic effect in that case, alcoholics must be cured for the effects of vitamin supplements to take real effect.

Vitamin and mineral supplements can be used to avoid many of the mental problems that a deficiency can cause. Of these, the various members of the vitamin B complex is that which is indicated most, and also zinc and magnesium supplementation are amongst the essential minerals required.

The treatment of minor disorders with supplements has had a degree of success but it is doubtful if any significant advantages can be gained by using them for severe symptoms. The more traditional methods have been found to be more effective, though some herbal supplements such as St. John's Wort might have some beneficial effects. These remedies, however, cannot be regarded as cures for depression or any other psychiatric disorder. The connection between mental health and supplements can be used towards finding a cure for many mental conditions.

& lets not forget the side effect where your pee turns a VERY bright yellow, thought I'd digested an internal organ of some sort when I first noticed that...

Something that can really change the color of urine is the vitamin B2 (riboflavin). If you swallow a vitamin B2 supplement, and the amount is more than your body needs, the vitamin is excreted in the urine. The urine will be a VERY bright yellow - almost fluorescent (except it probably will not glow in the dark!). But there is nothing wrong with you when this happens - it is just your body getting rid of extra vitamin B2. Some health authorities use this as an example that taking large doses of vitamins only makes expensive urine. However, nutritionists who advocate large vitamin supplementation counter by saying that it is only when the excess amounts of vitamins spill over into the urine that you know for sure that your body is getting the maximum amount of the vitamins.

Because riboflavin is fluorescent under UV light, dilute solutions (0.015-0.025% w/w) are often used to detect leaks or to demonstrate cleanability in an industrial system such a chemical blend tank or bioreactor. (See the ASME BPE section on Testing and Inspection for additional details.)

To avoid deficiency, adults should consume about 1.2-1.5 mg of vitamin B2 each day. This can come through dietary intake, or vitamin supplements. When taking vitamin B2 supplements, the dosage is usually about 50 mg, with the excess accounting for some of the body’s non-absorption of the riboflavin.

As to my claim that vitamins and minerals increase cognition and clear thinking

I'm sure if I said, "in my opini0n paganism is evil" or "in my opinion atheists are immoral" you'd be all over it.

And, yes, I know you said "IMO", but it's a claim and it should be supported.

It goes right to the core of "wars and atrocities committed in the name of religion". They aren't committed in the name of religion. That is just what the winners of today's society wrote about these wars and atrocities.

The crusaders marched on Jerusalem to retain control of lands held by European allies, which included the Byzantine Empire. Please read post 231.

Again, you discount anything that contradicts your opinion. That is self-invalidation, a known property of the mind.

On the contrary, I gave you a dose of your own medicine, and you didn't like it, because my application of your usage was far more appropriate than your attempt was. Try harder.

I just look at the Irish - Catholic against Protestant - anybody really believe that is about religion - no - its a battle over land and power - the labels just identify the combatants - Really believe Sin Fein is a religiously motivated organization?

FORCE, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void, like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air, they recoil and bruise itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone;--not growth and progress. It is Polyphemus blinded, striking at random, and falling headlong among the sharp rocks by the impetus of his own blows.

The blind Force of the people is a Force that must be economized, and also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the ponderous iron arms and turning the large wheels, is made to bore and rifle the cannon and to weave the most delicate lace. It must be regulated by Intellect. Intellect is to the people and the people's Force, what the slender needle of the compass is to the ship--its soul, always counselling the huge mass of wood and iron, and always pointing to the north. To attack the citadels built up on all sides against the human race by superstitions, despotisms, and prejudices, the Force must have a brain and a law. Then its deeds of daring produce permanent results, and there is real progress. Then there are sublime conquests. Thought is a force, and philosophy should be an energy, finding its aim and its effects in the amelioration of mankind. The two great motors are Truth and Love. When all these Forces are combined, and guided by the Intellect, and regulated by the RULE of Right, and Justice, and of combined and systematic movement and effort, the great revolution prepared for by the ages will begin to march. The POWER of the Deity Himself is in equilibrium with His WISDOM. Hence the only results are HARMONY.

It is because Force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove fail-tires. Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from those high mountains that domineer over the moral horizon, Justice, Wisdom, Reason, Right, built of the purest snow of the ideal after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky in their transparency, and been swollen by a hundred affluents, in the majestic path of triumph, suddenly lose themselves in quagmires, like a California river in the sands.

The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. Deeds of daring dazzle history, and form one class of the guiding lights of man. They are the stars and coruscations from that great sea of electricity, the Force inherent in the people. To strive, to brave all risks, to perish, to persevere, to be true to one's self, to grapple body to body with destiny, to surprise defeat by the little terror it inspires, now to confront unrighteous power, now to defy intoxicated triumph--these are the examples that the nations need and the light that electrifies them.

There are immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society; in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below the people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are ignored, and of progress there is no thought. This populace has two mothers, both of them stepmothers--Ignorance and Misery. Want is their only guide--for the appetite alone they crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be employed. The lowly sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted, purified by fire, may become resplendent crystal. They have the brute force of the HAMMER, but their blows help on the great cause, when struck within the lines traced by the RULE held by wisdom and discretion.

Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of which it has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sulla. Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a deformity of baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. The foulness of the slaves is a direct result of the atrocious baseness of the despot. A miasma exhales from these crouching consciences that reflect the master; the public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapsed, consciences shrunken, souls puny. This is so under Caracalla, it is so under Commodus, it is so under Heliogabalus, while from the Roman senate, under Cæsar, there comes only the rank odor peculiar to the eagle's eyrie."

It is the force of the people that sustains all these despotisms, the basest as well as the best. That force acts through armies; and these oftener enslave than liberate. Despotism there applies the RULE. Force is the MACE of steel at the saddle-bow of the knight or of the bishop in armor. Passive obedience by force supports thrones and oligarchies, Spanish kings, and Venetian senates. Might, in an army wielded by tyranny, is the enormous sum total of utter weakness; and so Humanity wages war against Humanity, in despite of Humanity. So a people willingly submits to despot-ism, and its workmen submit to be despised, and its soldiers to be whipped; therefore it is that battles lost by a nation are often progress attained. Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.

Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate--that is, enyoke the people. Then they plough with them as men do with oxen yoked. Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is reduced by bayonets, and principles are struck dumb by cannon-shot; while the monks mingle with the troopers, and the Church militant and jubilant, Catholic or Puritan, sings Te Deums for victories over rebellion.

The military power, not subordinate to the civil power, again the HAMMER or MACE of FORCE, independent of the RULE, is an armed tyranny, born full-grown, as Athenè sprung from the brain of Zeus. It spawns a dynasty, and begins with Cæsar to rot into Vitellius and Commodus. At the present day it inclines to begin where formerly dynasties ended.

Constantly the people put forth immense strength, only to end in immense weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in indefinitely prolonging things long since dead; in governing mankind by embalming old dead tyrannies of Faith; restoring dilapidated dogmas; regilding faded, worm-eaten shrines; whitening and rouging ancient and barren superstitions; saving society by multiplying parasites; perpetuating superannuated institutions; enforcing the worship of symbols as the actual means of salvation; and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth to mouth, with the living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the fatalities of Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles with phantoms, with superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, the formulas of error, and the pleas of tyranny. Despotisms, seen in the past, become respectable, as the mountain, bristling with volcanic rock, rugged and horrid, seen through the haze of distance is blue and smooth and beautiful. The sight of a single dungeon of tyranny is worth more, to dispel illusions, and create a holy hatred of despotism, and to direct FORCE aright, than the most eloquent volumes. The French should have preserved the Bastile as a perpetual lesson; Italy should not destroy the dungeons of the Inquisition. The Force of the people maintained the Power that built its gloomy cells, and placed the living in their granite sepulchres.

The FORCE of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and fitful action, maintain and continue in action and existence a free Government once created. That Force must be limited, restrained, conveyed by distribution into different channels, and by roundabout courses, to outlets, whence it is to issue as the law, action, and decision of the State; as the wise old Egyptian kings conveyed in different canals, by sub-division, the swelling waters of the Nile, and compelled them to fertilize and not devastate the land. There must be the jus et norma, the law and Rule, or Gauge, of constitution and law, within which the public force must act. Make a breach in either, and the great steam-hammer, with its swift and ponderous blows, crushes all the machinery to atoms, and, at last, wrenching itself away, lies inert and dead amid the ruin it has wrought.

It is not religion it is that people allow themselves to be led like sheep, by wolves.

It is only religion, however, that can claim to know what god wants for you.

No government could ever threaten you with hell.

As an example the Catholic church says that it is the only true church but there are many others, its claim has no weight without the sword arm of governance.

So the religion is not the problem it is the governments that force conformity of certain beliefs and those that allow themselves to be governed in that form.

" I, along with other academics who work in religious studies, find a frequently-heard comment quite superficial: "If it were not for religion, there would be no violence and no wars." There's no question that religious systems, Christianity included, have "played into" wars regularly and violently. But that religion, per se, separable from economic and other factors, alone is responsible for war strikes me as a historically problematic kind of claim. "

My comment: This is a position any sane person would agree with. Anyone capable of saying "If it were not for religion, etc" is utterly unWAIS. Alan Luxenberg calls our attention to an article on the subject: See the Spring 1998 Orbis on "Faith and Statecraft."

Ronald Hilton - 2/05/01

A governments threats of hell and punishment for non conformity by far out weigh a pastors and can be felt at the end of the whip with the only appeal to the government holding the whip.

If you don't like what one religious creed tells you to do, you can change your creed, only the government can force you to be a certain religion, and even then you need only show outward conformity to the governments religious mandates.

The Irish catholic/protestant situation is an excellent example of religion motivating violence. I will also present reference to THAT as well...

To sum up, although not the only motivation for violence, it certainly plays a role, along with nationalism and politics.

Strawman ya self
Changed ya tune

I don't think that there are any cases where religion is the cause of war. The cause is expansion, resources, control, power etc., but the easiest and cheapest flag to rally the masses under is religion. Why pay a man to fight if you can get him to fight for God.

The Islamic fundamentalist for example are using Islam to call the people to action against the evil imperialist west. The cause is not Islam the cause is the imperialist west the rally cry is Islam.

The Spanish Conquistadors slaughtered the natives for land, gold and slaves the rally cry to the masses was to convert the savage heathen to Christianity and save their souls.

The European settlers of North America slaughtered the Natives for land and resources the cause, The rally cry was that the were heathens.

The Nazi slaughtered the Jews for power, control, resources again the cause the rally cry was that they were a devil race and killed Christ.

The old testament Hebrews slaughtered the inhabitants of the land they were to inherit for the land the cause again the rally cry was for God and country.

The Islamic fundamentalist for example are using Islam to call the people to action against the evil imperialist west. The cause is not Islam the cause is the imperialist west the rally cry is Islam.