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BroJones
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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Thanks... So, moving on to today's note from Dr. Mercola:
By Dr. Mercola

Seems like every week there is a new revelation of massive perversion in the food industry, resulting in more corporate profits and a greater risk to your health. From arsenic in fruit juice and chicken to "pink-slime" ground beef treated with ammonia, nasty tidbits about the foods you're putting in your body are now so commonplace as to be expected.

But it does make you wonder what next … what else is there that you don't know about that dinner on your table?

To help with that, the featured article offers a list of nine factoids you need to know about the food you eat. If you're squeamish, now would be a good time to cover your eyes – or, actually, to open them so you can learn how to find food that doesn't make you cringe.

1. Growth Hormone in Your Milk

About one-third of the dairy cows in the United States are injected with a synthetic, genetically engineered growth hormone called rBGH. RBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, is a synthetic version of natural bovine somatotropin (BST), a hormone produced in cows' pituitary glands. Cows are injected with it to boost their milk production.

Monsanto developed the recombinant version from genetically engineered E. coli bacteria, and though it is banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and in the 27 countries of the European Union because of its dangers to human health, it is the largest selling dairy animal drug in America.


RBGH milk differs from natural milk nutritionally, pharmacologically, immunologically, and hormonally, and one of the most glaring examples of this is its IGF-1 levels. IGF-1 is a potent hormone that acts on your pituitary gland to induce powerful metabolic and endocrine effects, including cell growth and replication.

Elevated IGF-1 levels are associated with breast and other cancers. When cows are injected with rBGH, their levels of IGF-1 increase up to 20-fold, and this IGF-1 is excreted in the milk.i Not to mention, the cows receiving this synthetic hormone suffer massively high rates of mastitis, a painful infection of their udders, along with high rates of other conditions like infertility, hoof disorders and lameness.

You very well may be drinking rBGH milk, or eating rBGH cheese or yogurt, as no labeling is required. The good news is, as increasing numbers of consumers and dairies choose to avoid rBGH, you can find labels that say "rBGH-free" or a similar variation. Organic milk is also rBGH-free.

Download Interview Transcript

2. Factory Farmed Eggs Contaminated With Salmonella

Over half a billion eggs were recalled in 2010 after authorities linked them to Salmonella poisoning across the United States. The massive egg recalls came from the Iowa farms Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, both of which use Quality Egg for supplies of young chickens and feeds. Both Quality Egg and Wright County Egg are owned by Austin Jack DeCoster, a businessman who has been cited for health and safety violations so many times he's known as a "habitual violator."

I think it's safe to say most Americans would choose to buy their eggs elsewhere -- if they knew what was really going on behind the scenes.

This was not an "isolated" incident by any stretch, as there are many other confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that are still selling eggs raised in filthy, inhumane conditions. The eggs, which are sold under numerous brand names and shipped to various locations from institutions to restaurants, bear little evidence of their past once nestled into an innocent-looking egg carton and placed on your grocery store shelf. That is, until people start getting sick.

By then, of course, it is too late, which is why I so strongly urge you to avoid eggs that come from CAFOs, and instead get eggs from a local farmer you know and trust.

Ordinarily, eggs are one of the healthiest foods in the world, and in my opinion are at their very best if you eat them raw. Under ideal farming conditions, the risks of contamination are very remote, but the U.S. food system is not set up to support these ideals. Instead, most agribusiness "farms" produce eggs in such a way that makes contamination risks soar.

3. Drugs and Heavy Metals in Your Factory Farmed Meat

A report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2010 called into question the national Food Safety and Inspection Service's (FSIS) ability to adequately monitor the safety of U.S. meat for potentially toxic residues, after revealing that drug residues and heavy metals are common in U.S. meat.ii

Residues of veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals enter the food system when producers bring animals to slaughter that still have these toxins in their system. This occurs more often than you might think.

For instance, in the dairy industry if a farmer determines a sick cow is going to die, he will sell the animal as quickly as possible, even if it still has veterinary drugs in its system. This ensures he will get some return on his investment, at the expense of the Americans' health who end up eating the medicated meat. So-called "waste milk," which is produced by medicated dairy cows and banned for human consumption, is also fed to veal calves, which then pass the meds on to the consumers that eat them.

The FSIS is supposed to monitor for such "residues" in your food, but the USDA report found their regulatory practices to be woefully inadequate. It may look like a steak and it may smell like a steak … but the only way to really know what you're eating -- if you got your meat at the supermarket that is -- is to send it out for lab testing! A far better option is to get your meat from a source you can trust, such as a small local farmer or rancher.

4. Antibiotics in Non-Organic Factory Farmed Food and Non-Filtered Water

About 80 percent of all the antibiotics produced are used in agriculture -- not only to fight infection, but to promote unhealthy (though profitable) weight gain. Feeding livestock continuous, low-dose antibiotics creates a perfect storm for widespread disease proliferation – and, worse yet, antibiotic-resistant disease. This link is so clear-cut that the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed has been banned in Europe since 2006!

Antibiotics are not only embedded in your meats, they have made their way into your produce as well, as slow-to-biodegrade antibiotics are transferred, via the manure used as fertilizer, into your corn, lettuce, potatoes, and other crops. Even U.S. waterways, and drinking water, are being impacted.

Sadly, even eating organically may not entirely alleviate this problem, since organic crops, which cannot be fertilized with synthetic fertilizers, are the ones most often fertilized with manure. As it stands, conventional, factory-farmed animal manure containing antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria is still allowed under the USDA organic label.

5. Lackadaisical Food Inspectors

Inspectors from the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), started in 2000, are supposed to be evaluating meat safety. But in reality they simply make sure that companies are following their self-imposed standards. No wonder HACCP has been dubbed "Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray."

According to AlterNet:

"Once upon a time, federal meat inspectors visually examined carcasses for wholesomeness. But under the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), implemented in 2000, inspectors now simply ratify that companies are following their own self-created systems--as in "Trust us."

Soon after HACCP, 80 percent of inspectors surveyed said that HACCP limited their ability to enforce the law and the public's right to know about food safety. Almost 20 percent said they'd been told to not document violations. And 62 percent of inspectors said they allowed contamination like feces, vomit, and metal shards in food on a daily or weekly basis since HACCP."

6. Foie Gras – A Cruel Delicacy?

Foie gras, translated literally from French means "fatty liver," and is considered a delicacy by many. But it's a highly controversial food, considered by many to be cruel to animals, because it involves a force-feeding process called "gavage." When produced on CAFOs, the animals (typically ducks in the United States) live in complete darkness in cramped, filthy cages. The ducks are confined inside these dark sheds and force-fed several times a day from the time they're just a few months old, until they soon become grossly overweight with livers up to 10 times their normal size.

Foie gras production has been banned in 16 countries simply because it's considered to be too cruel to the animals, including the UK. Unfortunately, all this has done is open the door for mass production of it in countries like China, which has become somewhat notorious for lacking food quality standards and having little regard for animal welfare.

Foie gras has also been banned from being sold in certain areas in the U.S., even though the U.S., like Canada, is a large producer of foie gras.

7. Extreme Growth Promoters in Factory Farmed Meat

Ractopamine, aka Paylean and Optaflexx, is banned in 160 countries, including Europe, Taiwan and China. If imported meat is found to contain traces of the drug, it is turned away, while fines and imprisonment result for its use in banned countries.

Yet, in the United States 45 percent of pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle, and an unknown percentage of turkeys are pumped full of this drug in the days leading up to slaughter because it increases protein synthesis. In other words, it makes animals more muscular … and this increases food growers' bottom line.

Adding insult to injury, up to 20 percent of ractopamine remains in the meat you buy from the supermarket, even though the drug is marked "Not for use in humans," and is known to increase death and disability in livestock.


While other drugs require a clearance period of around two weeks to help ensure the compounds are flushed from the meat prior to slaughter (and therefore reduce residues leftover for human consumption), there is no clearance period for ractopamine. Food growers intentionally use the drug in the last days before slaughter in order to increase its effectiveness.

8. Mad Cow Disease

Mad Cow Disease is the common term for Bovine Spongiform Encepholopathy (BSE), a progressive neurological disorder of cattle that can be transmitted to other species, including humans. The human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease, Cruetzfeldt-Jakob Disease, causes memory loss, emotional instability including inappropriate outbursts, an unsteady gait, progressing to marked weakness, severe rapidly progressive dementia and death, often within a year of the onset of symptoms.

In Europe, all older cattle are tested for Mad Cow Disease, and in Japan every cow slaughtered for human consumption is tested, a move that experts say would add just pennies to a pound of beef.iii The most recent case occurred in California in May 2012, but U.S. regulators are still only testing 40,000 of the 35 million cattle slaughtered annually.

As the featured article details:

"Does anyone remember the government's misinformation and ineptitude with the first three mad cows, now that the disease is baaaaacck? With the first cow, a government report said all "potentially-infectious product" had been "disposed of " in a landfill but the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times said it went to California restaurants where it was eaten.

That's very different. With the second cow, authorities did not even realize it had mad cow disease for seven months! The government's final report says the farmer who sold the cow was "relatively sure" he had not kept any offspring but "there were essentially no records maintained." Want more reassurances? The ranch was cleared to resume selling meat within one month."

9. Cloned Animals May be on Your Dinner Plate

In 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a formal recommendation to allow milk and meat from cloned animals on grocery store shelves, without labels indicating them as such. Their most recent recommendation also gives the green light to cloned animals being used for food:iv

"FDA has concluded that meat and milk from cow, pig, and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones are as safe as food we eat every day."

Research says otherwise, as AlterNet reported:

"The FDA says clones and their offspring are no different from other food animals and won't be labeled. (See: rBGH.) But in its own 2008 report it cites cloned calves with elevated glucose, elevated growth indicators, early mammary development, umbilical abscesses and high white blood cell counts. Even the meat and milk is different in one study, the FDA admits."

Unfortunately, if you eat beef from conventional sources, there's a possibility you've already eaten this type of food, as some ranchers admit cloned cattle have made it into the food chain and, quite possibly, your dinner table. Even Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack couldn't say for sure whether cloned meat was already on the market when asked whether Americans are eating unlabeled clones right now …

""I can't say today that I can answer your question in an affirmative or negative way," replied Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to the question in 2010. (Why should the ag secretary know?) "I don't know. What I do know is that we know all the research, all of the review of this is suggested that this is safe," AlterNet reported."

Finding Food Grown the Way Nature Intended

If you want to optimize your health, it is vital for you and your family to return to the basics of healthy food choices and typically this includes buying your food from responsible, high-quality, sustainable sources. This will help you avoid virtually all of the problems previously discussed in this article.

This is why I encourage you to support the small family farms in your area, particularly organic farms that respect the laws of nature and use the relationships between animals, plants, insects, soil, water and habitat to create synergistic, self-supporting, non-polluting, GMO-free ecosystems.

You can do this not only by visiting the farm directly, if you have one nearby, but also by taking part in farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture programs and food coops.

Now that summer is near here in the United States, fresh produce and other wonderful whole foods grown with the laws of nature in mind are available in abundance. Here are some great resources to obtain wholesome food that supports not only you but also animal welfare and the environment:

* Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
* Farmers' Markets -- A national listing of farmers' markets.
* Local Harvest -- This Web site will help you find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
* Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals -- The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
* Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) -- CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.
* FoodRoutes -- The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSA's, and markets near you.


References:

* i Analyst. 1998 Dec;123(12):2429-35
* ii FSIS National Residue Program for Cattle (PDF)
* iii Fox News May 18, 2012
* iv FDA Animal Cloning

jonesde
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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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This is an interesting article, and thoroughly points out that you can't trust government regulation or inspectors to keep you safe. There are a few issues with government inspectors:

1. they have no financial or legal liability if they fail to prevent or quickly detect a problem
2. consumers have little or no choice about the inspection agencies they trust, in many cases the government even holds a monopoly on inspection services and standards
3. government inspection agencies have the power to use force to solve problems, generally the least effective approach (and certainly the least effective for most food industry problems), so they don't even try to use other means of improving things or resolving problems

In the absence of government interfering with these sorts of things there would be more opportunity (in same just plain opportunity where there is none now) for trusted inspection organizations to arise and people could choose food based on the inspection organizations they trust.

Inspection orgs could even offer insurance if anyone is harmed by things they inspect for. Would government ever willingly take on that sort of liability?

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Now we can see one of the reasons we may have been told to eat meat sparingy. Other lives are put through h--- just because we have out-of-control appetites.
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together....

Author unknown...

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BroJones
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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

Post by BroJones »

jonesde wrote:This is an interesting article, and thoroughly points out that you can't trust government regulation or inspectors to keep you safe. [snip]

Inspection orgs could even offer insurance if anyone is harmed by things they inspect for. Would government ever willingly take on that sort of liability?
Good points! and thanks, MossMan also.

Today's Mercola emphasizes Intermittent Fasting and reducing inflammations -- and is well done, IMHO:
By Dr. Mercola

You've heard of mind hacks for being more efficient in the office and tech hacks for keeping your computer humming.

So if you've been wondering if somebody will ever come up with some tricks for living a longer, happier, healthier life, there's good news: Best Health Degrees.com has a colorful way of telling it like it is, beginning with chronic inflammationi.

Chronic inflammation is the source of many diseases, including cancer, obesity, and heart disease, which essentially makes it the leading cause of death in the U.S. To address that issue, Best Health offers a range of strategies that will help you live a longer, healthier life. To see the graphic, please refer to the source below. Here, I will expound on some of the key points.

The Importance of Combating Chronic Inflammation

Inflammation is a normal and beneficial process that occurs when your body's white blood cells and chemicals protect you from foreign invaders like bacteria and viruses.

You actually need some level of inflammation in your body to stay healthy, however it's also possible, and increasingly common, for the inflammatory response to get out of hand. If your immune system mistakenly triggers an inflammatory response when no threat is present, it can lead to excess inflammation in your body, a condition linked to asthma, allergies, autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer and other diseases, depending on which organs the inflammation is impacting.

Unfortunately, chronic inflammation typically will not produce symptoms until actual loss of function occurs somewhere. This is because chronic inflammation is low-grade and systemic, often silently damaging your tissues over an extended period of time. This process can go on for years without you noticing, until a disease suddenly sets in.

Diet accounts for about 80 percent of the health benefits you reap from a healthful lifestyle, and keeping inflammation in check is a major part of these benefits. It's important to realize that dietary components can either trigger or prevent inflammation from taking root in your body. For example, whereas trans fats and sugar, particularly fructose, will increase inflammation, eating healthy fats such as animal-based omega-3 fats found in krill oil, or the essential fatty acid gamma linolenic acid (GLA) will help to reduce them.

If you have not already addressed your diet, this would be the best place to start, regardless of whether you're experiencing symptoms of chronic inflammation or not. To help you get started, I suggest following my free Optimized Nutrition Plan, which starts at the beginner phase and systematically guides you step-by-step to the advanced level.

But diet is not the only component that will have a profound impact on your health and longevity. It's really about addressing your total lifestyle. Below, I will discuss a few of the components I believe have the greatest impact. All of these components affect chronic inflammation, but they also have other health ramifications.

Optimizing Your Insulin Levels is Paramount for a Long, Healthy Life

Having high insulin levels is a surefire way to speed up your aging process. According to Dr. Ron Rosedale, if there's a single marker for lifespan, it would be insulin, specifically insulin sensitivity. Insulin resistance is the basis of virtually ALL of chronic diseases of aging, and one of the primary reasons for this is because it promotes chronic inflammation throughout your body.

Unfortunately, many health care practitioners are still ignorant of the profound influence that insulin has on health. Please understand that a firm appreciation of insulin's role is one of the most important things you can do to optimize your health and outlive the naysayers. The two most important elements for normalizing your insulin levels and avoiding insulin resistance are:

1. Avoiding sugar/fructose and grains (remember that beverages play a paramount role here, as high fructose corn syrup from soda is one of the primary sources of calories in the US)
2. Regular exercise

For an excellent, in-depth review of just how damaging sugar (especially fructose) is to your health, please watch this lecture by Dr. Lustig if you haven't done so already. It's a shocking eye-opener that explains the many intricacies of how sugar affects your body.

Using Grounding to Address Inflammation

Another simple lifestyle strategy that can help prevent chronic inflammation is grounding or earthing. Stated in the simplest terms possible, earthing is simply walking barefoot; grounding your body to the Earth. Your skin in general is a very good conductor, so you can connect any part of your skin to the Earth, but if you compare various parts there is one that is especially potent, and that's right in the middle of the ball of your foot; a point known to acupuncturists as Kidney 1 (K1). It's a well-known point that conductively connects to all of the acupuncture meridians and essentially connects to every nook and cranny of your body. By looking at what happens during grounding, the answer to why chronic inflammation is so prevalent, and what is needed to prevent it, is becoming better understood.

When you're grounded there's a transfer of free electrons from the Earth into your body. And these free electrons are probably the most potent antioxidants known to man. These antioxidants are responsible for the clinical observations from grounding experiments, such as beneficial changes in heart rate, decreased skin resistance, and decreased levels of inflammation.

Furthermore, researchers have also discovered that grounding thins your blood, making it less viscous. This discovery can have a profound impact on cardiovascular disease, which is now the number one killer in the world. Virtually every aspect of cardiovascular disease has been correlated with elevated blood viscosity. It turns out that when you ground to the earth, your zeta potential quickly rises, which means your red blood cells have more charge on their surface, which forces them apart from each other.

This action causes your blood to thin and flow easier. It also causes your blood pressure to drop. By repelling each other, your red blood cells are also less inclined to stick together and form a clot. Additionally, if your zeta potential is high, which grounding can facilitate, you not only decrease your heart disease risk but also your risk of multi-infarct dementias, where you start losing brain tissue due to micro-clotting in your brain.

To learn more, please see my interview with Dr. Oschman, who is widely recognized as an authority in the biophysics of energy medicine.

Chronic Stress and Lack of Relaxation Takes a Heavy Toll on Your Health

The classic definition of stress is "any real or imagined threat, and your body's response to it." Celebrations and tragedies alike can cause a stress response in your body. Some stress is unavoidable. Some mild forms of stress can even be helpful in some situations. But a stressor becomes a problem when:

* Your response to it is negative.
* Your feelings and emotions are inappropriate for the circumstances.
* Your response lasts an excessively long time.
* You're feeling continuously overwhelmed, overpowered or overworked.

It's important to realize that all your feelings create physiological changes. Your skin, heart rate, digestion and assimilation of food, joints, muscle energy levels, the hair on your head, and countless cells and systems you don't even know about change with every emotion. For example, feeling chronically stressed:
Dramatically decreases blood flow to your digestive system Decreases your metabolism Decreases enzymatic output in your gut by as much as 20,000-fold
Causes excretion of nutrients, such as water-soluble vitamins, calcium, micro- and macrominerals Raises triglycerides Raises cholesterol
Decreases beneficial gut flora populations, which can weaken your immune function Raises cortisol levels Raises insulin levels



While you cannot eliminate stress entirely, you can work to provide your body with tools to compensate for the bioelectrical short-circuiting caused by it. I prefer The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), but there are many other energy psychology tools out there to choose from. Other helpful strategies that can help you deal with stress and unwind each day, include:

* Exercise. Studies have shown that during exercise, tranquilizing chemicals (endorphins) are released in your brain. Exercise is a natural way to bring your body pleasurable relaxation and rejuvenation.
* Proper sleep
* Meditation (with or without the additional aid of brain wave synchronization technology)

A Healthy Lifestyle Includes Getting Proper Sleep

Good sleep is one of the cornerstones of health that should not be overlooked. Sleep deprivation prematurely ages you by interfering with your growth hormone production, normally released by your pituitary gland during deep sleep (and during certain types of exercise, such as Peak Fitness Technique). Growth hormone helps you look and feel younger. But that's not all. Interrupted or impaired sleep can also:

* Dramatically weaken your immune system
* Accelerate tumor growth—tumors grow two to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions
* Cause a pre-diabetic state, making you feel hungry even if you've already eaten, which can wreak havoc on your weight
* Seriously impair your memory; even a single night of poor sleep—meaning sleeping only 4 to 6 hours—can impact your ability to think clearly the next day and impair your performance on physical or mental tasks

One study has even shown that people with chronic insomnia have a three times greater risk of dying from any cause. The good news is, there are many natural techniques that can help you restore sound sleeping habits. Below I'll list just a few of the ones I think can have the greatest impact. For more, please see my 33 Guidelines to a Good Night's Sleep.

1. Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible as even the tiniest bit of light in the room can disrupt your internal clock and your pineal gland's production of melatonin. Make sure to cover your windows—I recommend using blackout shades or drapes.
2. Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is quite cool, between 60 to 68 degrees. Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep.
3. Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can disrupt the pineal gland and the production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. (To do this, you need a gauss meter.) Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house.
4. Avoid using loud alarm clocks. It is very stressful on your body to be suddenly jolted awake. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, an alarm may even be unnecessary. I gave up my alarm clock years ago and now use a sun alarm clock. The Sun Alarm™ SA-2002 provides an ideal way to wake up each morning if you can't wake up with the REAL sun.
5. Avoid watching TV or using your computer or other light-emitting electronic gadgets at least two hours before going to bed, as the light will hamper melatonin production.

If You Want to Live Longer—Get Moving!

High-intensity interval-type training—which is an integral part of my Peak Fitness program—also boosts human growth hormone (HGH) production, which is also essential for optimal health, strength and vigor. I've discussed the importance of HGH for your health on numerous occasions, so for more information please review this previous article.

Normalize Your Blood Pressure

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is such a common health problem that one out of three of you reading this has it, and uncontrolled hypertension is a serious health concern that can cause heart disease and increase your risk of having a stroke. It's especially danger­ous because it often has no warning signs or symptoms. The good news is that over 85 percent of those with hypertension can normalize their blood pressure through simple lifestyle modifications.

It's important to realize that drugs that treat hypertension will not change, modify, or in any way address the underlying cause of your high blood pressure. Additionally, statistics show that over half of people taking multiple medications for high blood pressure are still not able to manage their condition, so for many these drugs simply don't work as promised.

For the most part, high blood pressure is related to your body producing too much insulin. As your insulin levels rise, it causes your blood pressure to increase. This crucial connection between insulin resistance and hypertension is yet another example of how wide-ranging the debilitating effects of high insulin, leptin and blood glucose levels can have on your body. Hence the remedy is the same as that for normalizing your insulin levels: avoiding sugars and grains, and getting regular exercise. However, two additional factors can have a significant impact include:

1. Normalizing your vitamin D levels – It has recently become clear that normalizing your vitamin D levels can have a powerful effect on normalizing your blood pressure. Lower vitamin D levels is also unquestionably associated with an increased risk for heart disease.
2. Balancing your omega-6 to omega-3 fat ratio – Most Americans eating a standard American diet have a ratio of 25:1, which is highly unbalanced. The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats is 1:1. Therefore, you'll want to lower the amount of vegetable oils in your diet, and make sure you have a high quality, animal-based source of omega-3s, such as krill oil.

I recommend you get a fasting insulin level test done by your doctor. The level you want to strive for is about 2 or 3. If it's 5, or over 10, you have a problem and you definitely need to lower your insulin levels to lower your risk of high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems.

Do You Need Three Square Meals a Day to Stay Healthy?

As the featured source states, the idea that you need three square meals a day for optimal health has been tossed out the window. Mounting research suggests this may actually not be in your best interest at all.

If you're already off to a good start on a healthy fitness plan, and you're looking for ways to take it to the next level, you may want to consider a form of fasting called Scheduled Eating, or intermittent fasting. One simple way to do this is to simply skip breakfast, unless you're really hungry. Fasting is historically common-place as it has been a part of spiritual practice for millennia. But modern science has confirmed there are many good reasons to fast intermittently, including:

* Normalizing your insulin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health as insulin resistance (which is what you get when your insulin sensitivity plummets) is a primary contributing factor to nearly all chronic disease, from diabetes to heart disease and even cancer
* Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as "the hunger hormone"
* Promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production, which plays an important part in health, fitness and slowing the aging process
* Lowering triglyceride levels
* Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage

There's also plenty of research showing that fasting has a beneficial impact on longevity in animals. There are a number of mechanisms contributing to this effect. Normalizing insulin sensitivity is a major one, but fasting also inhibits the mTOR pathway, which plays an important part in driving the aging process. The fact that it improves a number of potent disease markers also contributes to fasting's overall beneficial effects on general health.

Exercising while in a fasted state has also been shown to produce many beneficial changes. To learn more about this strategy, please see this previous article by fitness expert Ori Hofmekler.

References:

* i Best Health Degrees May 2012
* ii Mechanisms of Aging and Development February 2010;131(2):165-7

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

Post by BroJones »

Today's article regards ubiquinol and CoQ10:

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Barry focuses on clinical research development and collaboration and on the development of the technical, business and commercial translation of products and technology.

Dr. Barry earned his bachelor's degree in biology from Boston College; his Ph.D. in chemistry/biochemistry from the University of Maryland; postdoctoral research in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School; and was a staff researcher in neuropathology at Harvard Medical School.

He is an active member of numerous professional associations including the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

What's the Difference Between Ubiquinol and CoQ10?

There is a good reason why CoQ10 is one of the most popular supplements sold today. Largely because it is a highly effective metabolic agent and when people use it they tend to notice an improvement, especially in their energy levels.

Ubiquinol is the reduced, electron-rich form of coenzyme Q10. Although it was well known within research circles since the late 1950's, it wasn't introduced commercially until about 2006. Ubiquinol is highly unstable, and therefore not suitable to be put into pill or capsule form. That all changed once a company finally developed the appropriate technology to stabilize ubiquinol.

"The thing with ubiquinol is, because it's electron rich, it's called 'reduced, this is a chemical term that means it has a couple extra electrons… [which makes it] unstable in light and air. In other words, it will oxidize," Dr. Barry says.

Conventional CoQ10 (also known as ubiquinone) is in essence oxidized CoQ10; it is "electron deficient." Why does this electron deficiency make CoQ10 a less preferable alternative compared to the more electron-rich ubiquinol? And why do you need either of these substances in the first place?

Dr. Barry explains:

"In terms of the molecular structure… when we are talking about oxidized and reduced coenzyme Q10 It's the same molecule; either with, or without, those two extra electrons.

The fundamental importance of ubiquinol and coenzyme Q10 is metabolic energy… It's an essential component of the electron transport chain in the mitochondria facilitating the generation of ATP. The mitochondria are responsible for production of around 95 percent of the ATP you produce in your body, and CoQ10 is an essential component of that.

… Ubiquinol has two extra electrons. Because it has those two extra electrons and can donate them, it is a very strong lipid soluble antioxidant… Strong enough to help regenerate vitamin E and vitamin C [in your body]… Those are the two main functions [of CoQ10 in either form]. There are other functions, such as gene expression... [and] cell signaling as well. [But] the two main functions is cellular energy and cellular protection."

When trying to tease out the real difference between ubiquinol and CoQ10, it can help to compare them to two other antioxidants: vitamin E and vitamin C. In essence, taking CoQ10 is like taking oxidized vitamin C or E—something that would not be recommended—so why wouldn't you take un-oxidized ubiquinol?

"The vitamin C and vitamin E that you buy is the reduced form," Dr. Barry explains. "After it acts as an antioxidant in your body it becomes oxidized. No one would ever sell oxidized vitamin C or would ever sell oxidized vitamin E. Nor would you want to buy it. If you took your vitamin C pill and put it out on the counter today, tomorrow morning it would be brown. It would be oxidized. "

More Reasons Why Ubiquinol is the Better Alternative

According to Dr. Barry, every single publication on ubiquinol to date has shown that the bioavailability is higher with ubiquinol when compared to CoQ10, in some cases the difference is very small, while in others it is a large difference. Even though the per mg dose costs more, it is FAR more cost effective than conventional CoQ10 as much less is needed to achieve the same or better result. The increased absorption rate means you only need to take about one-third the amount of ubiquinol compared to CoQ10. In general, ubiquinol is therefore about two-thirds cheaper than a CoQ10 supplement, and you get greater benefits. However all of this depends upon your age and state of health.

Interestingly, although it's a lipid (fat) soluble antioxidant, which typically means it's more difficult to absorb, ubiquinol is 'peculiar' in that its rate of absorption appears to be based on your body's metabolic demand—which is great. Meaning, if you're healthy, you absorb less, and when you're ill, or struggle with chronic disease, your body will absorb more. Its absorption rate is basically self-adjusting so it becomes very difficult to take too much.

That said, since it is lipid soluble, you do need to take it with a meal - or if not with a meal then with a teaspoon of peanut butter or olive oil -to ensure optimal bioavailability and absorption.

When it comes to safety, the two versions are virtually identical. The reduced form, ubiquinol, has the same safety profile as conventional coenzyme Q10, which is extremely safe. There are no known side effects or drug-drug interactions, and both have been shown safe even in large dosages.

Even better, a number of studies have demonstrated that CoQ10 is absorbed and metabolized in exactly the same way as CoQ10 from a food source. And according to Dr. Barry, you'd have to consume close to three pounds of sardines a day to get the recommended dose of CoQ10. (Dark leafy green vegetables and organ meats are also CoQ10-rich sources.)
As for dosage, studies indicate that ubiquinol is ideally taken chronically, meaning every day for extended periods of time. Studies show that if you currently do not take any Q10 then taking 200 to 300 milligrams a day, (preferably divided and taken twice a day) to start plasma levels plateau after about two to three weeks, you can then cut that down to a 100 mg/day maintenance dose. If you're acutely or chronically ill, you can keep taking the larger dosage.

Can Ubiquinol Slow Down the Aging Process?

One of the most dramatic benefits of ubiquinol lies in its potential to slow down the aging process. There's compelling evidence indicating this, which was instrumental in convincing me of its clinical benefits, and motivating me to start taking ubiquinol personally.

One powerful example of ubiquinol's anti-aging effects was an early mouse study, performed by researchers at a major medical center in Japan. Specially-bred mice that age very rapidly were used to test CoQ10 and ubiquinol against a control group that did not receive supplementation. At the end of the study, when the mice were the equivalent age of 90 to 100 in human years, the differences between the control group and the ubiquinol groups were quite dramatic.

While the control mice were near death, the ubiquinol mice ran around like teenage mice, and the only difference during their entire lifespan was taking ubiquinol.

"What we found is that, in just about every study that has been conducted with ubiquinol (and each one is necessarily a direct comparison to coenzyme Q10), there is a very dramatic metabolic and physiological effect seen with ubiquinol that you don't necessarily see with conventional coenzyme Q10. That study convinced me that there was something different going on with ubiquinol. It also convinced Kaneka," Dr. Barry says.

"… [Kaneka] realized that there is something very profound going on here. There is a very dramatic difference between the two… That's when we knew we really had a tiger by the tail. We were looking at something that's very different from conventional coenzyme Q10. Again, that's been reflected in almost every study since, either to a slight degree in some cases or to a very dramatic degree in every publication since then."

Needless to say, this may have profound implications for humans as well.

Now, we know that ubiquinol plays a vital role in ATP production—which is the basic fuel for every cell in your body; without this most basic cellular energy production you die. Your body does produce ubiquinol naturally, in fact it is the predominant form in most healthy cells, tissues and organs, but as you age, not only does this conversion become less efficient; your cellular energy (ATP) production also diminishes. And that's when you start seeing chronic and acute disease associated with aging and the aging process itself.

"Without the efficient production of ATP (energy produced in your mitochondria) in each cell in your body, that [age-related] deterioration is even faster," Dr. Barry explains.

"As we age we produce less CoQ10 and more importantly the efficiency of conversion to the reduced ubiquinol form diminishes hence we become more susceptible to the deleterious effects of aging; much more susceptible to acute and chronic disease. So it's very important to keep those energy levels up. It doesn't even have to be acute or chronic disease… Fatigue is one of the top five complaints by adults in the U.S… There is a reason for that and there is a connection with ubiquinol in terms of energy production.

… In the mitochondria, there is a thing called the electron transport system. What happens in the transfer of electrons, in that electron transport chain is fundamental to ATP production in every mitochondria in every cell in our body. Ubiquinol is an essential component in the electron transport chain and If ubiquinol is not there… you don't get the ATP production.

So it's not that it's this intangible thing that may or may not work, that you may or may not need, it's absolutely critical. You do produce it in your body… but that [natural production] diminishes as you age.
Importantly, [if] the conversion of oxidized coenzyme Q10 to reduced ubiquinol in your body [is] not efficient, then you'll have problems."

Other Diseases that May Benefit from Ubiquinol

Another area where ubiquinol is a crucial supplement is for those taking statins to lower their cholesterol. Statin drugs are very effective in reducing cholesterol levels but not very selective. Statins inhibit a key enzyme (HMG CoA Reductase) that also share a common metabolic pathway with CoQ10 production. Therefore statins also reduce your body's ability to produce CoQ10 and therefore ubiquinol, and once your body gets depleted, you're putting your heart health at great risk. Remember, ubiquinol is absolutely vital for optimal energy production within each cell, and your heart is one of the most energy demanding organs in your body. Since statins diminishes your ubiquinol, these drugs also promote premature aging throughout your entire body…

But ubiquinol isn't just for those taking statins or those wanting to prolong life in general. Against diseases such as Huntington's and Parkinson's in particular, CoQ10/ubiquinol has been found to slow progression of the disease. Research over the years has also looked into its benefits for diseases such as:
Alzheimer's Huntington's disease Periodontal disease
Parkinson's disease ALS Renal disease

More Information

To learn more about ubiquinol and CoQ10, there are independent sites that offer good information, such as http://www.ubiquinol.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; where you can learn more.

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Today, Dr Mercola again addresses intermittent fasting. It is working for me, I must say -- helping me get off a plateau in losing the fat/weight:


By Dr. Mercola

Could fasting for two days a week prevent age-related brain shrinkage, heart disease, diabetes, and possibly even cancer? New research suggests that fasting triggers a variety of health-promoting hormonal and metabolic changes. Fasting - quantified as consuming somewhere between 500 and 800 calories in a day - has been shown to reduce:

* Growth factor - a hormone linked with cancer and diabetes
* "Bad" LDL cholesterol
* Cholesterol
* Inflammation levels

Overall, it also helps lessen damage from free radicals (dangerous molecules that cause damage in your body). Furthermore, according to the featured article in the Daily Maili:

"Suddenly dropping your food intake dramatically... triggers protective processes in the brain... similar to the beneficial effect you get from exercise.This could help protect the brain against degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's."

Intermittent Fasting: A Good Alternative to Constant Calorie Restriction

While it's long been known that restricting calories in certain animals can increase their lifespan by as much as 50 percent, more recent research suggests that sudden and intermittent calorie restriction appears to provide the same health benefits as constant calorie restriction.

This is good news, as it may be easier to do for some people who cannot commit to chronically restrictive diet. The Daily Mail reports:

"Professor Mattson is one of the pioneers of research into fasting - a few years ago he made a breakthrough when he found rats could get nearly all the benefits of calorie restriction if the scientists only cut back their calories every other day.

On the next day the rats could eat as much as they liked and yet they showed the same benefits as rats on a low-calorie regimen all the time. Suddenly it looked as if humans could benefit from a form of calorie restriction regimen that, unlike daily restriction, is feasible to follow.

Now results of other trials are revealing the benefits.

In one study, reported last year in the International Journal of Obesity, a group of obese and overweight women was put on a diet of 1,500 calories a day while another group was put on a very low 500-calorie diet for two days, then 2,000 calories a day for the rest of the week. Both groups were eating a healthy Mediterranean-style diet. '

We found that both lost about the same amount of weight and both saw a similar drop in biomarkers that increase your risk of cancer,' says Dr Michelle Harvie, a dietitian at Manchester University who led the research.

'The aim was to find which was the most effective and we found that the women in the fasting group actually had a bigger improvement in sensitivity to insulin.' Improved insulin sensitivity means better control of blood sugar levels."

While I don't generally promote calorie restriction, it is an important piece of the puzzle, and this type of intermittent fasting may be helpful for many - especially in light of the compelling research supporting calorie restriction. Remember, fasting does not mean abstaining from ALL food, but rather a dramatic reduction of calorie intake.

You need to cut your daily calories at least in half, but can go as low as 500-800 calories a day. The KEY to successful calorie restriction, however, lies in which calories you cut, which I will review in a moment. But first, let's take a look at some of the health benefits of intermittent fasting.

The Surprising Health Benefits of Calorie Restriction

Interestingly, some of the mechanisms largely responsible for weight loss and diabetic control when fasting are also the ones responsible for the benefits to your brain. Research suggests that calorie restriction can protect brain cells and make them more resilient against stress. This protective effect is in part due to fasting's effect on leptin and ghrelin; two hormones involved in appetite regulation. According to Professor Mattson, these hormones are also involved in the process of renewing brain cells - especially in the hippocampus - when you are not overweight.

Your hippocampus is the area of your brain where most of your memory functions are located, and there's a strong relationship between the size of your hippocampus and memory performance.

According to the featured articleii:

"If you start putting on weight, levels of ghrelin drop and brain cell replacement slows. 'The effect is particularly damaging in your 40s and 50s, for reasons that aren't clear yet,' he [Professor Mattson] says. 'Obesity at that age is a marker for cognitive problems later.' The good news is that this brain-cell damage can be reversed by the two-day fasting regime, although so far Professor Mattson has shown this only in rats. A human trial is starting soon. There is reason to think it should work.

Fasting every other day had a striking effect on people with asthma in a small study he ran a few years ago. 'After eight weeks they had lost eight percent of their body weight, but they also benefited from the ability of calorie restriction to reduce inflammation. Tests showed that levels of inflammation markers had dropped by 90 per cent. As levels came down, their breathing became much easier,' says Professor Mattson."

There is one important caveat, however. Mattson's research showed that symptoms returned about two weeks after quitting the intermittent fasting, so it's really a lifestyle commitment, not a temporary fix. Some can handle intermittent fasting long-term whereas others might find it too challenging. Still, it's an option to consider if you're having health issues or weight problems.

Fasting and Exercise: Are They Compatible?

I've previously interviewed fitness expert Ori Hofmekler on the issue of fasting and exercise. According to Ori, fasting also has the surprising benefit of helping you reconstruct your muscles when combined with exercise. This is due to an ingenious preservation mechanism that protects your active muscle from wasting itself. In a nutshell, if you don't have sufficient fuel in your system when you exercise, your body will break down other tissues but not the active muscle, i.e. the muscle being exercised.

That said, neither Ori nor I advocate starvation combined with rigorous exercise. It's important to be sensible. And you need to consume sufficient amounts of protein in order to prevent muscle wasting. Also, while there's more science in support of calorie restriction than any other diet in the world today, there are side effects to chronic calorie restriction, such as decreased thyroid function and decreased testosterone.

In my own personal experimentation, I have definitely fasted too long and lost loads of muscle mass. So now I tend to use fasting if I have consumed foods that caused me to gain a few extra pounds. I will skip my breakfast and exercise fasting. My next meal will be lunch, and then I'll have dinner. This has worked quite well and allows me to easily drop a few pounds and get my body fat into the ideal range. It has worked so well that I am in the process of considering doing this on a permanent basis as it just makes loads of sense to replicate ancestral eating patterns that clearly did not have access to food 24/7,

Cut the Correct Calories...

One important fact that many tend to gloss over or ignore entirely when it comes to calorie restriction is which type of calories to restrict. From a biological standpoint, the important part is not really how many calories you eat per day; it's about getting the right nutrients. It's important to realize that all calories are NOT created equal, and will not have identical effects your weight or health. Their value depends on the types of food (nutrients) they're attached to.

In the US, six of the top 10 sources of calories are carbohydrates from sugars and grainsiii, and this is a major reason why so many Americans are overweight. They're simply eating far too many sugars. It's very important to restrict carbs when doing a calorie restrictive diet. Your body does not require sugars for optimal health, but it does require protein and fats.

When you cut out the sugars and carbs it is wise to replace them with high quality non-processed fats. Some of my favorites include organic grass-fed raw butter, eggs, coconut oil, avocados, and almonds.

There's very compelling evidence showing that calories from fat are far more beneficial for your health than calories from carbohydrates. And fear not... It's already been well established that stearic acid (found in cocoa and animal fat) has no effect on distorting your healthy cholesterol ratios at all, and actually gets converted in your liver into the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid. The other two, palmitic and lauric acid, do raise total cholesterol. However, since they raise "good" cholesterol as much or more than "bad" cholesterol, you're still actually lowering your risk of heart disease. And there are additional benefits.

Lauric acid (as from coconut oil) has shown to boost thyroid hormone activity along with the body's metabolic rate. This is obviously a huge advantage to those interested in weight loss or those who suffer from underactive thyroid.

I couldn't encourage you more to implement this program. It has radically improved my personal confidence in using diet choices to achieve high level wellness and optimal body fat. Cutting down on your grains and sugars, replacing them with high quality fats and skipping some meals, especially before exercise, seem to be a powerful combination to help you Take Control of Your Health.

References:

* i The Daily Mail February 27, 2012
* ii The Daily Mail February 27, 2012
* iii Report of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Not from Dr Mercola, but a nice summary of alternative cancer treatments that I'd like to record here:

http://www.dailypaul.com/226732/alterna ... eo-library" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am not saying that I endorse all these; but I do endorse doing research and taking charge of one's own health concerns!

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Funny, but after I posted above re: alternative cancer treatments (Don't say "cures"!!) -- then I have this today from Dr Mercola on the same theme!
By Dr. Mercola

If your child were diagnosed with a very serious, very rare form of brain cancer, what would you do?

Where would you turn?

This is the situation that Rick Schiff, a police sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department, and his family were faced with back in 1994.

His 4 year old daughter, an identical twin, had a brain tumor growing in the left ventricle of her brain which was causing sudden neurological side effects.

The prognosis of this particular tumor was that it would spread rapidly and kill her within weeks.

So they did what most people would consider the logical next step – they consulted with an oncologist and proceeded with the recommended treatment, which, as is often the case, included a toxic combination of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, not so much as a cure but rather to extend her life for as long as possible.

In the video interview above, Rick explains the rest of his heart-breaking story, which unfortunately has a tragic ending, and what might have been prevented if natural cancer treatments were more widely available and recognized in the United States.

First, Conventional Cancer Treatment Poisons Child

Like most well-meaning parents, Rick and his wife decided to follow through with the oncologists' recommended treatment protocol. First came surgery, which had an initial positive outcome but because of the severity of the cancer, its spread was imminent. As Rick said:

" … literally in a matter of weeks we would be right back to where we were. In the end, [doctors] convinced us that what we would do is an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy and radiation simultaneously … We progressed through their treatment. She started the treatment on her fourth birthday. After six months, we had finished all the chemo and radiation that you could possibly have given her."


She ended up living longer than the few weeks first expected, but the cancer came back within six months. Rick continued:

"Her hair was burnt so badly that it never grew back. She literally, for want of a better description, looked like Golum in The Hobbit. She was a fried wretched little child, emaciated, unable to process nutrients, had shingles, had suffered immeasurably. We had rubber gloves to change her diaper because her urine was so toxic from the chemotherapy. The problem is I get six months through this and then I stop and I said, "Okay, what do we do now?" They said, "She dies.""

It was at that point that Rick realized he had made "a terrible mistake."

"I was now exactly where I was six months ago, my daughter was suffering. She had now suffered immeasurably at the hands of not only the doctors but myself and for what?" he said.


Then, Rick came across another option he hadn't been aware of before. In a book given to him by friends months earlier, a chapter about Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, who employs novel gene-targeted therapies in the treatment of cancer, picqued his interest. He spoke to Dr. Burzynski directly, and then to several of his patients.

"Oddly enough, each of them said Dr. Burzynski was great. The treatment is working fantastically. This is in stark contrast to what our own oncologist had told us. They all told us not to go but we went anyway."

Cancer Disappears Using Dr. Burzynski's "Forbidden" Treatment

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski is known for developing a gene-specific treatment using a combination of cancer-fighting peptides he developed called antineoplastons to target specific cancers, conventional cancer drugs, and natural complementary strategies, including customized diets and exercise.

I interviewed Dr. Burzynski about his cancer treatment and also reviewed his recently released documentary, Burzynski, The Movie. It's an absolute jaw-dropper, as not only did the U.S. federal government spend 14 years actively suppressing a cancer treatment that had a FAR greater success rate than any other treatment available, they also spent well over $60 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars trying to put Dr. Burzynski in jail in order to steal his patents and either suppress or cash in on his discovery.

The treatment has surpassed all other conventional cancer treatments on the market, but you can't just walk in and receive it. Due to regulatory red tape, you're only "allowed" to see Dr. Burzynski if you've already had chemotherapy and radiation and failed to recover. Even then it is often a struggle

In a similar case involving Thomas, the son of Jim Navarro, who was also diagnosed with a form of brain cancer (and ended up dying from respiratory failure due to chronic toxicity of chemotherapy), it took 18 months of legal wrangling with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to get Thomas approved for treatment by Dr. Burzynski. By then he had already received his second brain surgery, had already been forced to undergo chemotherapy, and had already suffered recurring tumors—likely induced by the chemotherapy itself. After all that, he finally fulfilled all the requirements to be allowed to try Dr. Burzynski's treatment, which resulted in a 33 percent reduction in tumors. As Navarro said:

"A father's hope is, had he not been polluted and poisoned with chemotherapy, had we not been stopped, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he would be alive today."

Unfortunately, the case involving Rick's daughter, Chrissie, had a similar outcome.

Chrissie Died, Cancer-Free, From the Effects of Chemotherapy and Radiation

Like Jim's son, Chrissie showed remarkable improvement following Dr. Burzynski's treatment:

"Within a number of months, the enhancement in the actual tumor had dissipated … My daughter got better and better and better … The tumor slowly drifted away. As it drifted away over the period of the next year though, her other side effects became more and more prominent. Those were from the chemo and radiation. Even the doctors admitted that she began to have vision problems, hearing problems. Again, was malnourished based on her inability to process food.

At the same time, as she progressed and got better, the neurosurgeons who followed the surgery and so forth, they seemed very curious and optimistic but the oncologist got further and more distant from us and more inexplicably just plain rude, just unpleasant. At one point, the oncologist refused to see us although there was no real explanation for that. The head of pediatrics had to send in a general physician to take over for their practice because the oncologists were unwilling to deal with us and again, inexplicably. You would think that my daughter's progression towards a cure was miracle."

Chrissie had gone nearly a year cancer-free, but her body was too weakened from the conventional cancer treatments to survive and she passed away.

" … we brought Chrissie back and they did an autopsy. The autopsy showed that she died absolutely cancer-free with no sign of cancer and both the oncologist and the radio oncologist were there. We were looking through optics, slides of my daughter's brain. They all confirmed that the damage that they saw was a result of the chemotherapy and radiation. So we know that she died cancer free. The only child of that diagnosis that's ever been cancer free and we know what killed her."


Do Oncologists Really Know How to Treat Cancer?

Most conventional cancer treatments tend to add insult to injury by doing more harm than good -- a fact that has been largely swept under the rug by the medical industry. The real culprits—the underlying causes—are completely ignored, and that is, I believe, the root of the problem.
The cancer industry has become a massive for-profit business that is doing everything in its power to maintain the status quo. It is, quite simply, not interested in truly reducing cancer rates; it's interested in treating cancer.

From that perspective, the more cancer cases the better... Even many oncologists, whom most regard as the go-to specialist upon receiving a cancer diagnosis, may be better described as chemotherapy specialists than cancer specialists.

As Rick continues:

"One of the great fallacies of modern medicine is that an oncologist knows anything about cancer because that's not what they are. An oncologist is generally speaking a hematologist. But what an oncologist is is a toxic chemotherapist. They understand toxic chemotherapy. Do they understand cancer? … What do they understand about the causes of cancer?

I went to UCSF under the belief that I was going to talk to a cancer specialist and that's not what I got. What I got was a specialist in surgery who did a magnificent job at what he was supposed to do – a specialist in oncology who did only what they knew, not what was in the best interest of my child, and a radio oncologist who not only lied to us and did nothing to benefit my daughter but ultimately specifically killed my daughter.

He gave my daughter a lethal dosage of radiation. There was no child that was going to survive 6000 rads of whole brain radiation particularly in simultaneous conjunction with chemotherapy. From his perspective, the child was going to die and I would never know the long term effects.

So you're going to go look at this [alternative treatment] website and you're going to see this treatment and you're going to come back and you're going to talk to somebody who knows absolutely nothing about it but who has a financial vested interest in your receiving their treatments. I think the combination of those two really keeps the number of patients that go to Dr. Burzynski down or the number of patients that enroll in any clinical trial that aren't advocated for by these oncologists."

What Can You do to Help Protect Your Freedom of Choice in Health Treatments?

Dr. Burzynski is just one of the alternative cancer specialists out there. There are many others as well, such as the Gerson Therapy and Dr. Nick Gonzalez's nutritional approach – or even medical marijuana. Unfortunately, the system, as currently configured, is stacked against you receiving these potentially life-saving therapies (and others like them).

Rick states:

"I think what's most frustrating about being me is that my daughter died in 1996 at the age of 6-1/2 with an identical twin sister who will never be the same, who is traumatically affected; with brothers and sisters, mother and father who will never be the same, with people who worked very hard to try and save her, whose lives were affected and for what?

Using Dr. Burzynski again as an example, it's now … 2012 and what have I accomplished? There are still parents who have children who should be going to, as an example, Dr. Burzynski. That should be the very first modality, the non-toxic, most effective treatment. He has FDA clinical trials for brainstem glioma that are greater, have shown better results than all clinical studies for brainstem glioma put together anywhere in the world. And yet, a parent can't just pick up the phone or fly on an airplane to Houston and get the treatment.

They have to cross hurdles and as they cross those hurdles, they get more and more dissuaded from going forward and eventually as you pointed out in many cases, they just got simply told no. I'm sorry. The government won't allow you to have this curative agent."

Deaths like that of Rick's daughter are shocking in that they aren't necessary. If the FDA and the oncologists had simply given them the opportunity to exercise freedom of choice to seek whatever therapy they thought appropriate, she may still be alive.

So, what can you do to address this kind of medical injustice and stop it from happening to you or someone you love? First off, Rick suggests if you're looking to receive an unapproved treatment, contact your local politicians:

"First of, my experience started when I chose to go to Dr. Burzynski's there was no lawful method for which I could get the treatment for my daughter in the State of California. So I went to my congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and I went to my senator Dianne Feinstein and the two of them pulled together and got me what was called a compassionate IND (Investigational New Drug) use permit, which allowed me to be the only lawful person bringing this into the State of California at the time."

Knowledge is always one of the highest forms of power, so I also recommend you share this information with your friends and loved ones. The film, Cut Poison Burn, which documents the Navarro's story, is an easy and powerful way to do so, and is being sold on a 'value-priced' basis to help the Navarro's pay off Thomas' medical bills, meaning you can download a copy of the film for $1.99 and up, depending on how much you're willing to pay. You can also purchase a DVD copy for $9.99.

A percentage of the proceeds from the film will go to cancer organizations that donate 100 percent of their proceeds to families fighting cancer—not the American Cancer Society. I'm also making the DVD available on my site. Of these proceeds, 80 percent will go to the producers and Jim Navarro's family. I'm giving the remaining 20 percent to the Grassroots Health's Breast Cancer Prevention Project. All monies donated to them from the sale of Cut Poison Burn will be used to enroll women 60 and over in a project aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of vitamin D in breast cancer prevention. More information about this project can be found at here.

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Sugary drinks larger than 15 ounces may be banned in NYC.. but diet drinks OK...
________

By Dr. Mercola

If you've paid any attention to the US news over the past week, you've surely heard that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a ban on the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces, in an effort to combat obesity.

The announcement was made just days before Mayor Bloomberg celebrated National Donut Day in Madison Square Park, where, on June 1, the largest box of Entenmann's Donuts ever created was proudly unveiledi...

Bloomberg's plan would prohibit the sale of cups or bottles of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from restaurants, delis, movie theaters, sports arenas, street vendors, and any other establishment that is regulated by the New York City Department of Health. According to CNN, the NYC Department of Health will submit the proposed measure to the Board of Health on June 12. The board will then accept comments for next three months, after which it will make its decision. If approved, the proposal would take effect six months later—as early as March of next year—and restaurant owners would have nine months from the adoption of the proposal to comply before any fines would be levied.

According to Bloomberg, New York City spends $4 billion a year on medical care for overweight people, and he wants to "do" something about that. CNN recently quoted the Mayor as sayingii:

"This is something we think we have the legal authority to do. We¹re not taking away anybody's right to do something; we're simply making it different for them in how they do it." He said he hoped the move will help lead to different behaviors."

Why Impose a Measure that Cannot Achieve its Stated Aim?

Folks, this is a perfect example of nonsensical Big Brother intervention. It's a knee-jerk "solution" that doesn't solve anything.

Prohibiting people from buying one large rather than two smaller sized sodas is in no way, shape or form going to solve the problem of obesity. Of all the hare-brained ideas out there, this one really takes the cake. All it will do is increase profits for the manufacturers and sellers, as people who want more will buy more, and drive up industry consumption of plastic and create more waste... I truly do not believe that this plan will have any major impact on altering consumer behavior.

While it is encouraging to see the increased appreciation of the contribution of soda to the obesity epidemic, it's extremely disappointing to see such short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness among our political leaders. This legislation will actually encourage people who want the large sizes to select diet sodas, which are not included in the ban. This will have the paradoxical effect of actually worsening obesity rates, as many studies show diet soda is worse than regular soda at increasing obesity.

Clearly, soda is one of the absolute worst things you can consume, and yes, it certainly contributes to obesity.

But placing prohibitions on serving sizes is not a real solution because it does not address the fundamental problem; which is that people have been, and still are, being lied to by health officials and industry-owned media on virtually every health and dietary issue there is. In fact, most of the nutritional information distributed by our public health agencies was created and /or manipulated by the processed food and beverage industry. Public dietary recommendations have no real basis in actual knowledge of nutrition, and commonly used tools such as the food pyramid are designed to protect profits of industries such as Big Sugar and Big Ag, which is now led by multi-national corporations like Monsanto, which is now fighting tooth and nail to prevent having to disclose genetically engineered products on food labels...

Without accurate and truthful information, how will the average consumer know how to optimize their health?

If our government truly wants to address the obesity problem, they must stop supporting and protecting the profits of the industries that are running our food and health system into the ground. That's a tall order, and a measure like this one is nothing but political grandstanding that will have no real effect whatsoever, other than indoctrinating the public into thinking it's okay for our government to dictate what foods and drinks you are and are not allowed to buy.

Devil's Advocate

All of that said, there are those who stand behind Bloomberg's proposal. In a recent article for Time Magazine, Shannon Brownlee writesiii:

"NYC's mayor wouldn't be trying to outlaw giant sugary drinks if we hadn't lost all sense of a normal serving size...

Bloomberg has gotten a lot of flack from the beverage industry and free marketeers, but he's right to propose such a ban: we shouldn't really be drinking anything out of those bathtub-sized cups but water, and certainly not a 7/11 Double Gulp that contains 55 ounces and more than 700 calories. But huge has become the new normal. The fact that such a ban is even being proposed shows you how out of whack our sense of proportion has become.

When I was a kid, Coca-Cola came in 6-ounce glass bottles, and that seemed like plenty. It wasn't all that long ago that a 12-ounce soda was considered perfectly sufficient—even large. But walk into any pizzeria or deli these days and you'll have a very hard time even finding 12-ounce cans of anything. 20-ounce plastic bottles are now considered the standard single-serving size.

... The ban on large drinks, on the other hand, could reset our notion of what a normal beverage serving looks like, and that could make all the difference."

She makes an excellent point. Many if not most Americans have indeed lost all sense of proportion. Especially our youth, to whom "bathtub-sized" portions are the norm. Still, I believe there are many problems with Mayor Bloomberg's proposal. Besides the fact that it places unnecessary restrictions on personal freedom of choice, it does nothing to address the core issue of public education about the dangers of sugar, particularly fructose in the form of high fructose corn syrup. Furthermore, the measure does not apply to diet sodas (which are even more pernicious), fruit juices, dairy-based drinks, "enhanced" water beverages, or alcohol.

This is a clear sign that the Mayor simply does not understand the basics of nutrition and obesity, as not only is there is no major difference between soda and other fructose-laden drinks, but diet soda is in many ways even more hazardous to your health than regular soda. In fact, studies have shown that diet sodas, which contain artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, actually boost your risk of obesity more than regular soda does! Artificial sweeteners are also associated with an increased risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome—just like regular soda.

I'm certainly not proposing that all of these excluded drinks be placed under the same size-prohibition; I'm simply pointing out that singling out certain types of sugary drinks and restricting sale of larger sizes is not a viable or sensible solution. What's needed is proper education by people who are not beholden to industry interests, along with fundamental changes to the entire food industry, starting with our agricultural subsidies.

Skyrocketing Obesity is Related to Misleading the Public on Health Issues

Obesity is the result of inappropriate lifestyle choices, and unfortunately, our government has done an abysmal job at disseminating accurate information about diet and health. For example, conventional advice that is driving public health in the wrong direction includes:

* Avoiding saturated fat: The myth that saturated fat causes heart disease has undoubtedly harmed an incalculable number of lives over the past several decades, even though it all began as little more than a scientifically unsupported marketing strategy for Crisco cooking oil. Most people actually need at least 50 percent of their diet to include healthful saturated fats such as organic, pastured eggs, avocados, coconut oil, real butter and grass-fed beef in order to optimize their health
* Cutting calories: Not all calories are created equal, and counting calories will not help you lose weight if you're consuming the wrong kind of calories
* Reducing your cholesterol to extremely low levels: Cholesterol is actually NOT the major culprit in heart disease or any disease, and the guidelines that dictate what number your cholesterol levels should be to keep you "healthy" are fraught with conflict of interest -- and have never been proven to be good for your health
* Choosing diet foods will help you lose weight: Substances like Splenda and aspartame may have zero calories, but your body isn't fooled. When it gets a "sweet" taste, it expects calories to follow, and when this doesn't occur it leads to distortions in your biochemistry that may actually lead to weight gain

This is just a tiny sampling of the misleading information on weight and obesity disseminated by our government agencies. A more complete list of conventional health myths could easily fill an entire series of books. The reason behind this sad state of affairs is the fact that the very industries that profit from these lies are the ones funding most of the research; infiltrating our regulatory agencies; and bribing our political officials to support their financially-driven agenda through any number of legal, and at times not so legal, means.

How Much Fructose Do You Consume Daily?

The average American now consumes 1/3 of a pound of sugar daily. That's five ounces or 150 grams, half of which is fructose, which is 300 percent more than the amount that will trigger biochemical havoc. And many Americans consume more than twice that amount.

If everyone could easily keep their total grams of fructose to below about 25 grams per day then I believe we would start seeing some radical changes in obesity statistics. But the key issue is that while that is theoretically possible, few people are actually doing it, and the reliance on processed food is the primary reason for this failure.

Soda is certainly a MAJOR culprit, but again, restricting the sale of Big Gulps is not going to do much to curb this epidemic as long as people fail to realize the metabolic ramifications of fructose—the majority of which is hidden in processed foods. High fructose corn syrup is used in virtually everything, making it very difficult to determine just how much fructose you're consuming every single day. So the problem is much bigger than the fact that it's "too easy" to order a larger size drink when you're in a fast food restaurant... The entire meal is laden with sugar!

Even infant formula and baby starter foods contain massive amounts of fructose, even though babies have absolutely no biological need for it. The fact of the matter is, it's a cheap ingredient that makes the food taste good, which, naturally, is good for sales. Sugar also has the same addictive quality as cocaine, which further promotes incessant snacking and overeating, in addition to overconsumption of soda and other sweet beverages.

Fructose Wreaks Metabolic Havoc in Your Body...

Thanks to the excellent work of researchers like Dr. Robert Lustig, and Dr. Richard Johnson, we now know that fructose:

* Is metabolized differently from glucose, with the majority being turned directly into fat
* Tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism, as it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.
* Rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
* Over time leads to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers.

If you have not yet taken the time to watch Dr. Lustig's excellent lecture on sugar, I urge you to do so now. This is the kind of information that needs to be taught to school children and nutritionists across the country if we're ever going to change consumer behavior.

This is a Flash-based video and may not be viewable on mobile devices.

Two Keys that Can Curb Out-of-Control Obesity

As explained by Dr. Robert Lustig, fructose is 'isocaloric but not isometabolic." This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count. The reason for this is primarily related to the fact that different nutrients provoke different hormonal responses, and those hormonal responses determine, among other things, how much fat you accumulate. This is why the idea that you can lose weight by counting calories simply doesn't work.

After fructose, other sugars and grains are likely the most excessively consumed food that promotes weight gain and chronic disease. Other sugars can easily include items that are typically viewed as healthy, such as fruit juice or even large amounts of high fructose fruits. In large amounts these items will adversely affect your insulin, which is a crucially potent fat regulator.

I believe there are two primary dietary recommendations that could make all the difference in the world, were they to be widely advocated. Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen anytime soon, because accepting these recommendations would mean cutting profitability for the food industry—not to mention the fact that major health agencies would have to confess that they've been misleading you for a very long time!

The two primary keys I'm talking about are:

1. Severely restricting carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet, and
2. Increasing healthy fat consumption

While health authorities insist that sugar is fine "in moderation," and that grains are an essential part of a healthy diet and can actually help you prevent heart disease, they fail to take into consideration that:

1. Fructose is the NUMBER ONE source of calories in the US, which means our consumption of it is far from "moderate." As stated earlier, this is not at all surprising when you consider that fructose, primarily in the form of cheap high fructose corn syrup, is in just about everything—even food items you'd never expect would need it, including diet foods and 'enhanced' water products
2. Refined carbohydrates (breakfast cereals, bagels, waffles etc) quickly breaks down to sugar, increase your insulin levels, and cause insulin resistance, which is the number one underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease known to man, including heart disease

Take Control of Your Own Health

Clearly, we need to address obesity. But that entails addressing our entire food system—from agricultural subsidies, to advertising, to public dietary recommendations; school lunches, and nutritional education in general. In order to do that, we must face these giant food and beverage industries head on... Bloomberg is obviously not up for that task. Hopefully some day, someone will be.

In the meantime, I urge you to take control of your own health, and take the time to educate yourself about the facts of how to achieve optimal health. My web site contains tens of thousands of articles addressing virtually every facet of health, from how to optimize your diet and exercise routine, to the dangers of various drugs and the safest alternatives.

To get you started, I recommend reviewing my Nutritional Plan, which will guide you step-by-step from the beginner's level to advanced. Making small incremental changes is perhaps the easiest way to change your lifestyle into one that will support and promote good health well into your old age.

References:

* i CBS News June 1, 2012
* ii CNN News May 31, 2012
* iii Time Magazine June 4, 2012

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Today Dr M recommends use of curcumin, found in the spice turmeric / curry.
Cuts down inflammation, naturally. If you don't know what RA is -- count your blessings.

By Dr. Mercola

If you're looking for a way to help fight rheumatoid arthritis (RA) without drugs, then you need look no further than the spice shelf at your local market. New research published in the spring of 2012 showed that curcumin, the active ingredient in the curry spice turmeric, possesses potent anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritic properties.

The clinical study evaluated the safety and effectiveness of curcumin alone, and in combination with an NSAID drug (Voltaren) in patients with active RA... and the results speak for themselves.

A Novel Approach for Treating RA With a 60-90 Percent Likelihood of Improvement

At least 2 million Americans have definite or classical rheumatoid arthritis, a number that has been increasing in recent years. It is a much more devastating illness than previously appreciated. This is NOT the same condition as the far more common and generally less serious osteoarthritis or degenerative joint disease. Although interestingly most of the same treatments discussed below will also work for osteoarthritis.

Most patients with rheumatoid arthritis have a progressive disability, and the natural course of the condition is quite remarkable in that less than 1 percent of people with the disease have a spontaneous remission. Some disability occurs in 50-70 percent of people within five years after onset of the disease, and half will stop working within 10 years. The annual cost of this disease in the U.S. is estimated to be over $1 billion.

Most authorities believe that remissions rarely occur. Some experts feel that the term "remission-inducing" should not be used to describe ANY current rheumatoid arthritis treatment, and a review of contemporary treatment methods shows that medical science has not been able to significantly improve the long-term outcome of this disease.

This devastating prognosis is what makes this novel form of treatment so exciting, as it has a far higher likelihood of succeeding than the conventional approach.

Over the years I have treated over 3,000 patients with rheumatic illnesses, including SLE, scleroderma, polymyositis and dermatomyositis. Approximately 15 percent of these patients were lost to follow-up for whatever reason and have not continued with treatment. The remaining patients appear to have a 60-90 percent likelihood of improvement on this treatment regimen. This level of improvement is quite a stark in contrast to the typical numbers quoted above which are experienced with conventional approaches, and certainly provide a strong motivation to try the protocol I discuss below.

Changes to My Rheumatoid Arthritis Video and Protocol

Many of you may know that I treated many RA patients based on a protocol developed by a maverick but well respected rheumatologist, Dr. Thomas Brown. He died in 1989 shortly after I started using his approach. I first became aware of Doctor Brown's protocol, which focused on the elimination of mycoplasma, in 1989 when I saw him on ABC's 20/20. This was shortly after the introduction of the first edition of his book, The Road Back. Unfortunately, Dr. Brown died from prostate cancer shortly after the 20/20 program and I never had a chance to meet him.

I eventually wound up treating a few thousand RA patients and had quite a following as most got really great results. As I learned more about natural medicine I integrated more of that wisdom into Dr. Brown's original protocol and consolidated that into an article I wrote in 1995 and presented at a conference. Many of the key points are summarized below.

I further revised that paper with the video above but there have been further modifications to the RA protocol since I recorded this video. One of the primary ones is the strong recommendation to use low dose naltrexone as an adjunct to help wean off the nearly universal experience of toxic drugs that most RA patients are put on. Astaxanthin is also a powerful anti-inflammatory antioxidant that could have very powerful benefits in controlling the joint pain. Additionally, I would also strongly encourage working up to 4-6 ounces a day of fermented veggies, which will supply about ten trillion beneficial bacteria, which is about 10% of the population of your gut. Ideally one should consume them regularly if not daily.

Another important change is to make sure you are getting loads of beneficial bacteria. Many people do this by taking a high quality probiotic like the one we have in our store. But even better is to prepare your own fermented foods at home and work your way up to 4 to 6 ounces per day. We have done analysis on the number of bacteria in this size serving of fermented vegetables and it is close to ten trillion which is about 10% of the bacteria in your body, or equal to about one whole bottle of a high potency probiotic. The best way to learn how to prepare them properly is to get the GAPS book or listen to my interview with Caroline Barringer

Lastly of course, as the featured study suggests, one can also consider the use of curcumin as discussed below.

Curcumin Works Better Than Drugs

The study revealed that a highly bioavailable form of curcumin was more effective in alleviating RA symptoms, including tenderness and swelling of joints, than the drug. Not only that, those who were taking the curcumin only, actually experienced the most improvement across the board.

Along with relieving the most symptoms, the curcumin group had another benefit – lack of any observed adverse effects. No one in the curcumin group withdrew from the study due to side effects, but 14 percent of those in the NSAID group did so. Researchers noted: i

"Interestingly, the curcumin group showed the highest percentage of improvement... and these scores were significantly better than the patients in the diclofenac sodium [Voltaren] group. More importantly, curcumin treatment was found to be safe and did not relate with any adverse events. Our study provides the first evidence for the safety and superiority of curcumin treatment in patients with active RA."

Several years back, in 2006, another study also found that turmeric supplements, which contain curcuminoids, profoundly lessened joint inflammation and destruction, ii presumably by blocking inflammatory pathways and thereby preventing the increased production of a protein that triggers swelling and pain. Curcumin is most known for its potent anti-inflammatory properties. It has been shown to influence more than 700 genes, and it can inhibit both the excessive activity and the synthesis of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) and 5-lipooxygenase (5-LOX), as well as other enzymes that have been implicated in inflammation.

Tips for Increasing Your Absorption of Curcumin

If you want to give curcumin a try for RA, it is widely available in supplement form, but relatively high doses are required to achieve its therapeutic effects, and curcumin is generally not absorbed that well. Typical therapeutic doses are up to three grams of bioavailable curcumin extract, three to four times daily, and this is difficult to achieve using standard curcumin powders.

One alternative is to make a microemulsion by combining a tablespoon of curcumin powder with 1-2 egg yolks and a teaspoon or two of melted coconut oil. Then use a hand blender on high speed to emulsify the powder.

Another strategy you can use to increase absorption is to put one tablespoon of the curcumin powder into a quart of boiling water. It must be boiling when you add the powder, as it will not work as well if you put it in room temperature water and heat the water and curcumin together.

After boiling it for 10 minutes you will have created a 12% solution and you can drink this once it has cooled down. The curcumin will gradually fall out of the solution over time and in about six hours it will be a 6% solution, so it is best to drink the water within four hours. It does have a woody taste, but this is done more for therapeutic benefits than flavor.

One caution: curcumin is a very potent yellow pigment and can permanently discolor surfaces if you aren't careful. You can also use turmeric liberally in your cooking; it has an earthy, peppery flavor. Choose a pure turmeric powder, rather than a curry powder, as at least one study has found that curry powders tend to contain very little curcumin.

We are currently sponsoring some clinical trials with a concentrated highly absorbable form of curcumin that we hope to have available in the next year or so.

Why You Need to be Careful With NSAIDs

One of the primary problems with RA is controlling pain. Effective pain relief is obviously very important, and if this is not achieved, you can go into a depressive cycle that can worsen your immune system function and cause the RA to flare up. But the conventional treatment typically includes using very dangerous drugs like prednisone, methotrexate, and drugs that interfere with tumor necrosis factor, like Enbrel. Many also depend on non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen (Motrin) to manage this pain, but the regular, chronic use of these types of medications is associated with close to 100 significant, and very serious, side effects, including: iii

* Cardiovascular problems
* Gastrointestinal harm
* Kidney and/or liver damage
* Hearing Loss
* Miscarriage

If you are taking an NSAID and you have a history of heart disease, you are at a 10-fold increase in the risk of congestive heart failure (CHF). iv And even if you don't, your risk of CHF will still be increased by 60 percent if you take NSAIDs.

Ulcers are another major risk, and up to 60 percent of regular NSAID users will have gastrointestinal side effects related to these drugs. In fact, regular use of NSAIDs is the second major cause for ulcers. v Given the risks, having a natural alternative to NSAIDs for pain relief is invaluable, especially for a painful condition like RA -- and curcumin is emerging as one of the safest and most effective options out there.

Lifestyle Changes Crucial to Control this Vicious Disease

Improving your diet using my nutritional guidelines is crucial for your success. In addition, there are some general principles that seem to hold true for virtually everyone and these include:

* Eliminating sugar, especially fructose, and most grains. For most people with RA, you'll want to be very careful to limit fructose to just 15 grams per day or less, and this includes fructose from whole fruit.

Limiting sugar is a critical element of the treatment program. Sugar has multiple significant negative influences on your biochemistry. First and foremost, it increases your insulin levels, which is the root cause of nearly all chronic disease. It can also impair your gut bacteria. In my experience if you are unable to decrease your sugar intake, you are far less likely to improve. One of the first steps you can take is to phase out all soda, and replace it with pure, clean water.

* Eating your food organic, locally grown and as close to raw as possible
* Getting plenty of high-quality animal-based omega-3 fats. Krill oil seems to be particularly helpful here, as it appears to be a more effective anti-inflammatory preparation. It is particularly effective if taken concurrently with 4 mg of astaxanthin, which is a potent antioxidant carotenoid derived from algae
* As astaxanthin offers potent protection against cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, 4 to perhaps 20 mg per day for anyone placed on prednisone
* Incorporating regular exercise into your daily schedule, as described in detail below

Early Emotional Traumas are Pervasive in Those with RA

With the vast majority of the patients I treated, some type of emotional trauma occurred early in their life, before the age their conscious mind was formed, which is typically around the age of 5 or 6. However, a trauma can occur at any age, and has a profoundly negative impact. If that specific emotional insult is not addressed with an effective treatment modality then the underlying emotional trigger will continue to fester, allowing the destructive process to proceed, which can predispose you to severe autoimmune diseases like RA later in life.

In some cases, RA appears to be triggered by an infection, and it is my experience that this infection is usually acquired when you have a stressful event that causes a disruption in your bioelectrical circuits, which then impairs your immune system. This early emotional trauma predisposes you to developing the initial infection, and also contributes to your relative inability to effectively defeat the infection. Therefore, it's very important to have an effective tool to address these underlying emotional traumas.

In my practice, the most common form of treatment used is called the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Although EFT is something that you can learn to do yourself in the comfort of your own home, it is important to consult a well-trained professional to obtain the skills necessary to promote proper healing using this amazing tool.

Vitamin D Deficiency Rampant in Those with RA

The early part of the 21st century brought enormous attention to the importance and value of vitamin D, particularly in the treatment of autoimmune diseases like RA. From my perspective, it is now virtually criminally negligent malpractice to treat a person with RA and not aggressively monitor their vitamin D levels to confirm that they are in a therapeutic range of 65-80 ng/ml.

This is so important that blood tests need to be done every two weeks, so the dose can be adjusted to get within that range. Most normal-weight adults should start at 10,000 units of vitamin D3 per day. If you are in the US, then Lab Corp is the lab of choice for this testing.

Please note that the video above has dated recommendations on vitamin D. It used to be thought that 5,000 IU a day was a good maintenance dose for adults, but according to new research published by GrassrootsHealth from the D*Action study, the average adult needs to take 8,000 IU's of vitamin D per day in order to elevate his or her levels above 40 ng/ml -- the bare minimum requirement necessary for disease prevention. As mentioned, if you have RA you'll want your levels to be higher than this, in the 65-80 ng/ml range, so you'll need to have your blood tested and tweak your dose/sun exposure accordingly.

For more detailed information on how to optimize your vitamin D using the sun, you can review this recent article.

Low-Dose Naltrexone

Another newer addition to the protocol is low-dose Naltrexone, which I would encourage anyone with RA to try. It is inexpensive and non-toxic and I have a number of physician reports documenting incredible efficacy in getting people off of all their dangerous arthritis meds. Although this is a drug, and strictly speaking not a natural therapy, it has provided important relief and is FAR safer than the toxic drugs that are typically used by nearly all rheumatologists.

Exercise for Rheumatoid Arthritis

It is very important to exercise and increase muscle tone of your non-weight bearing joints, as disuse results in muscle atrophy and weakness. Additionally, immobility may result in joint contractures and loss of range of motion (ROM). Active ROM exercises are preferred to passive. There is some evidence that passive ROM exercises increase the number of white blood cells (WBCs) in your joints.

If your joints are stiff, you should stretch and apply heat before exercising. If your joints are swollen, application of 10 minutes of ice before exercise would be helpful. The inflamed joint is very vulnerable to damage from improper exercise, so you must be cautious. People with arthritis must strike a delicate balance between rest and activity, and must avoid activities that aggravate joint pain. You should avoid any exercise that strains a significantly unstable joint.

A good rule of thumb is that if the pain lasts longer than one hour after stopping exercise, you should slow down or choose another form of exercise. Assistive devices are also helpful to decrease the pressure on affected joints. Many patients need to be urged to take advantage of these. The Arthritis Foundation has a book, Guide to Independent Living, which instructs patients about how to obtain them.

Of course, it is important to maintain good cardiovascular fitness as well. Walking with appropriate supportive shoes is another important consideration, and if your condition allows, it would be wise to move toward a Peak Fitness program that involves high-intensity burst-type exercises designed for reaching optimal health.

If You Must Use Drugs for Pain Relief...

Ultimately, the goal is to implement the lifestyle changes discussed above as quickly as possible, so you can start to reduce these toxic and dangerous drugs, which do absolutely nothing to treat the cause of the disease. The idea is to be as comfortable and pain free as possible with the least amount of drugs. However, effective pain relief is important, so first try these natural anti-inflammatory alternatives. If you still aren't finding relief, the safest prescription drugs to use for pain are the non-acetylated salicylates such as:

* Salsalate
* Sodium salicylate
* Magnesium salicylate (i.e., Salflex, Disalcid, or Trilisate).

They are also much gentler on your stomach than the other NSAIDs and are the drug of choice if you have problems with peptic ulcer disease. Unfortunately, all these benefits are balanced by the fact they may not be as effective as the other agents and are less convenient to take. You need to take 1.5-2 grams twice a day, and tinnitus, or ringing in your ear, is a frequent side effect. You need to be aware of this complication and know that if tinnitus does develop, you need to stop the drugs for a day and restart with a dose that is half a pill per day lower. You can repeat this until you find a dose that relieves your pain and doesn't cause any ringing in your ears.

Conclusion

There is no doubt in my mind that the protocol described above is highly effective for the treatment of autoimmune arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis. I strongly encourage anyone with this disease to adopt the program to help prevent the nearly inevitable poor outcomes that are the result of seeing a conventional rheumatologist. In my experience they have very little to offer except dangerous drugs that only relieve symptoms and do nothing to address the underlying cause of the disease, which continues to ravage the body and cause crippling joint deformities.

References:

* iPhytotherapy Research March 9, 2012
* ii Arthritis and Rheumatism November 2006; 54(11): 3452-3464
* iii GreenMedInfo.com, 100 NSAID-Associated Adverse Effects
* iv Arch Intern Med. 2000;160(6):777-784.
* v American College of Gastroenterology, Aspirin and NSAIDs

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Another alternative health article regarding cancer treatments -- this one not from Dr. Mercola.
A.M. Freyed

June 11, 2012
Here’s an unpalatable truth: The global elites that control Big Pharma have continually repressed promising cancer treatments because the current regimes of drugs, chemotherapy and radiation are immensely profitable.

But in the past few years, thanks to the Internet, various potential cures have emerged – some of them featuring intravenous treatments such as Vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide.

Two of the most promising use ingredients from the human body itself: One well known and the other still a top secret. This article will provide information about both. The second one, far less well known than the first, apparently holds the promise of curing cancer as we know it.

It may be that powerful! Thanks to the Internet, it is becoming impossible to suppress information about such advances.

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s potential cure is the well-known one. It is now in the throes of being approved in Japan, though it is (predictably) lagging in the US. Burzynski won a protracted legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration to continue his research in the area of targeted medicines called Antineoplastons.


Antineoplastons have currently completed Phase II FDA-supervised clinical trials and Burzynksi is apparently still searching for the US$300 million he needs to fund the final phase of FDA clinical trials. The treatments provides cancer patients with peptides (pieces of protein) that is in the blood of healthy people but curiously not in cancer patients.
Various peptide mixtures – Anteneoplastons – are customized for cancer sufferers. They have been targeted to some of the most difficult and aggressive cancers, such glioma and brain tumors. Antineoplastons are set to be approved in Japan long before the United States.

The other potential cancer cure is perhaps even more intriguing.
This one is hush-hush. We just learned about it from sources that are hoping to help bring it to the public’s attention. They told us that the Swiss secret cancer cure – around some 30 years or more – may soon receive top level “scientific” testing in the United States.

The effective agent is known as “Tauroline,”
though the website Tetrahedronsci.com tells us that Tauroline in various forms is known as “Taurolidine” or “Taurultam.”
Sources tell us that right now the only way to get tauroline is to go to company that makes it in Switzerland. Wikipedia has information on taurolidine, as follows:
Taurolidine ([bis(1,1-dioxoperhydro-1,2,4-thiadiazinyl-4)-methane) is a drug with antimicrobial and anti-lipopolysaccharide properties. Derived from the amino acid taurine, its immunue modulatory action is reported to be mediated with priming and activation of macrophages and polymorphonuclear leukocytes.
Taurolidine has been used to treat patients with peritonitis and as an antiendoxic agent in patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Additionally, taurolidine demonstrates some anti-tumor properties, with positive results seen in early-stage clinical investigations using the drug to treat gastrointestinal malignancies and tumors of the central nervous system.

Taurolidine has been investigated for the prevention of central venous catheter-related infections; while there is positive in vivo and in vitro evidence supporting such an application, the current evidence is “insufficient to warrant routine use of taurolidine”.

We can see from this Wikipedia squib that Tauroline (AKA Taurolidine) is reputed to have “positive results seen in early-stage clinical investigations using the drug to treat gastrointestinal malignancies and tumors of the central nervous system.”
But this is apparently understating the significance of Tauroline considerably.

“It is effective with every kind of cancer,” our sources told us. “It shrinks them, retards the growth of the blood supply and creates an environment where the cancer cannot return. Everyone who uses it goes into remission.”
Everyone?
Yes! claims our source. And without side effects.
Those involved with Tauroline have struggled to bring it to market. The Swiss pharmaceutical establishment made it very difficult, putting many obstacles in the way. The reason the treatment survived nonetheless, is because it is produced by a pharmaceutical company.

Thus, the manufacturer of Tauroline is part of the “club.” But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy. Our main source – who claims to have had first-hand experience with this supposed miracle drug – told us that for a long time Tauroline had been delivered intravenously and there were problems with the dosage. But recently an oral delivery system had been developed.
It is the oral system that is being advanced now, making Tauroline a patentable curative. Before oral delivery, the basic ingredient had complicated the process of bringing Tauroline to market because there was no way to patent a physical process.
Tauroline, from what one source told us, is a human enzyme that has been reconfigured. Because the base is human-derived, there are few if any side effects.
The Internet is a hotbed for fantasy as well as reality. But if one sorts through the false flags – intentional or not – one can arrive at some significant truths.
Regardless of the eventual efficacy (or not) of the above potential treatments, one such truth would seem to be that there are promising treatments for cancer that are on their way to becoming available. They simply cannot be suppressed anymore.
For additional links see http://www.AmericanFreed.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Re: low-dose aspirin.
By Dr. Mercola

It has been more than a decade since I stopped recommending aspirin for the prevention of heart disease. The evidence in support of aspirin has always been quite weak, and over the last decade it has become even weaker.

In fact, it looks as though aspirin, even "low-dose aspirin" (LDA), may do more harm than good. It is debatable whether or not aspirin may have some beneficial actions in heart disease protection.

However, recent scientific studies have uncovered a number of serious side effects that suggest any benefits of aspirin, just like statins, may be overshadowed by its risks, especially when safe and effective alternative measures of prevention exist.


As is true with nearly all medications, the longer we look at side effects, the more we find—even for drugs like aspirin that have been around for more than 100 years.

Aspirin's Effectiveness has Been Overvalued

Nearly ten years ago, Dr. John G. F. Cleland, a cardiologist from the University of Hull in the U.K., wrote an excellent article published in the British Journal of Medicinei casting doubt upon the efficacy of aspirin therapy for prevention of heart attacks.

Based on a series of meta-analyses from the Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaborationii, which is an enormous body of research following more than 100,000 patients at high risk for cardiac events, Dr. Cleland concluded aspirin therapy was NOT shown to save lives.

He made the following main points:

* Antiplatelet activity of aspirin is not as safe and effective as widely believed.
* All large, long-term trials involving people treated with aspirin after having a heart attack show no benefit for mortality. In other words, those who take aspirin don't live any longer than those who don't.
* Aspirin seems to change the way vascular events present themselves, rather than preventing them. The number of non-fatal events may be reduced, but there is an INCREASE in sudden deaths. Aspirin may conceal a cardiac event in progress.

He wrote that the studies claiming aspirin is beneficial are seriously flawed, and interpretation of those studies is biased. In the years since Cleland's original research, there have been numerous studies pointing out aspirin's questionable benefit, as well as its sizeable risks.

More Science Showing Aspirin's Dismal Failure

In 2004, Dr. Cleland published the results of a new study (Warfarin/Aspirin Study in Heart Failure, or WASH) in the American Heart Journal in which he investigated antithrombotic strategies in 279 patients with heart failure. He found that the patients who received aspirin treatment actually showed the worst cardiac outcomes, especially worsening heart failure. Dr. Cleland concluded there was "no evidence that aspirin is effective or safe in patients with heart failure."

Then in 2010, another studyiii looked into whether or not patients taking aspirin before an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) were at higher risk of recurrent problems or mortality. ACS is a term used for any condition brought on by sudden, reduced blood flow to the heart, such as a heart attack or unstable angina. The study found that patients who were taking aspirin showed a higher risk for recurrent heart attack and associated heart problems.

Thus far, aspirin's performance is quite unimpressive. But what about aspirin's benefits specifically for women? As it turns out, aspirin fares no better with women.

In 2005, Harvard conducted a studyiv to investigate whether or not low-dose aspirin offered cardiovascular benefits for women. They followed nearly 40,000 healthy women for a full 10 years. Again, the results did not show any heart benefit from aspirin therapy; researchers concluded aspirin did NOT lower the risk of heart attack or death from cardiovascular causes among women.

Aspirin Never Proven Safe or Effective for Diabetics

Cardiovascular disease is a serious concern if you have diabetes, and a number of studies have set out to determine whether aspirin can offer a degree of protection. Three studies have shown the benefits to be either inconclusive, or nonexistent.

1. In 2009, a study in the British Medical Journalv found no clear evidence that aspirin is effective in preventing cardiovascular events in people with diabetes. Results differed between men and women, but overall, they found no clear benefit and called for more studies on aspirin's toxicity.
2. Also in 2009, a Swedish studyvi examined the effects of aspirin therapy in diabetic patients. Researchers found no clear benefit that aspirin is beneficial for diabetics but did note that it can increase the risk for serious bleeding in some of them. They stated that the current guidelines for aspirin therapy should be revised until further study is done.
3. In 2010, a meta-analysisvii in the U.K. examined six trials consisting of 7374 diabetic patients, comparing the relative cardiac risks for aspirin users and non-users. They concluded, as did the other researchers, that aspirin did not reduce heart attack risk for diabetic individuals.

It's pretty clear that aspirin isn't all that it's cracked up to be when it comes to preventing you from having a heart attack. But is it doing any harm? Well, as it turns out, the answer is yes—in a number of possible ways.

Aspirin Increases Your Risk of Hemorrhage, GI Damage, and Several Other Problems

Routine use of aspirin has been associated with the following problems:

* Bleeding, especially in the gastrointestinal tract
* Duodenal ulcers, GI damage, and diverticular disease
* Increased risk of ER/PR-negative breast cancer in women
* Increased risk of kidney failure
* Cataracts, hearing Lossviii and tinnitusix

In fact, there are studies listed on Greenmedinfox showing aspirin's connection with 51 different diseases! The most well established side effect of aspirin is bleeding, which results from aspirin's interference with your platelets—the blood cells that allow your blood to clot. According to one scientific articlexi, long-term low-dose aspirin therapy may DOUBLE your risk for gastrointestinal bleeding.

You can certainly understand how a bleed is possible, given what is known about the effects aspirin has on your GI tract.

For example, a studyxii done earlier this year investigated the effects of low-dose aspirin on the gastrointestinal tracts of healthy volunteers. After only two weeks, the group receiving aspirin showed "small bowel injuries" capable of interfering with blood flow (diagnosed upon endoscopic examination). And a 2009 Australian studyxiii showed that aspirin causes gastroduodenal damage even at the low doses used for cardiovascular protection (80mg).

The damage to your duodenum—the highest part of your intestine into which your stomach contents pass—can result in duodenal ulcers, which are prone to bleeding. A Japanese studyxiv found a higher incidence of bleeding at the ulcer cites of patients with duodenal ulcers taking low-dose aspirin therapy, versus those not taking LDA. More than 10 percent of patients taking low-dose aspirin develop peptic ulcers.

The risk of bleeding is particularly pronounced in the elderly, which is very concerning as the elderly are often put on aspirin prophylactically to protect against cardiovascular disease. With all of these adverse effects, why risk it when there are safer and more effective alternatives? One of those alternatives is a relatively new emerging field called Earthing—meaning, grounding your body to the Earth.

How Earthing can Affect Your Blood

Earthing may actually be one of the best-kept secret strategies for preventing blood clots. In its simplest terms, Earthing (or grounding your body) is what occurs when you walk barefoot upon the Earth. There is a transfer of free electrons from the Earth to your body. And these free electrons are probably some of the most potent antioxidants known to man. These antioxidants are responsible for the clinical observations seen in Earthing experiments, such as:

* Beneficial changes in heart rate
* Decreased skin resistance
* Decreased inflammation

Earthing has been shown to produce a number of health benefits, including decreasing pain and inflammation, improving sleep, and even slowing the aging process. One very important discovery, and one of the most recent, is that Earthing thins your blood, making it less viscous. This discovery could have profound implications for cardiovascular disease.

Virtually every aspect of cardiovascular disease has been correlated with elevated blood viscosity.

Earthing experts Dr. Stephen Sinatra and Dr. James Oschman measure blood viscosity using a method called zeta potential, which is a measure of how quickly your red blood cells migrate in an electrical field. When you ground to the earth, your zeta potential quickly rises, which means your red blood cells have more charge on their surface, forcing them away from each other.

Earthing causes your blood to flow more easily and your blood pressure to drop.

It follows then when your red blood cells become more electro native they are less inclined to stick together and form a clot. They actually repel each other similar to two magnets with the same pole.

Blood clots don't have to be very big to form a mass that could kill you instantly (such as pulmonary embolus), so this is an important part of lowering your risk for heart attack, stroke, and multi-infarct dementias, where you start losing brain tissue due to micro-clotting in your brain.

This is what many physicians erroneously believe low-dose aspirin is doing for you, and why it's so widely prescribed. The problem is, as you have seen from the studies summarized above, science just hasn't been able to prove that aspirin does what it was intended to do. Rather, studies show that aspirin has several dangerous side effects.

Other Recommendations for a Healthy Heart

The real key to preventing heart disease is to use a combined approach, one that treats all facets of your physical and emotional health. Make sure you are addressing the following lifestyle factors:

* Restrict your consumption of fructose to less than 25 grams per day. High sugar intake, especially fructose, is directly tied to cardiovascular disease.
* Avoid processed foods, preservatives, additives, artificial sweeteners and grains as much as possible, and eat a good proportion of your food raw. Make sure your diet contains abundant fresh organic vegetables and high quality protein.
* Incorporate a high quality animal based omega-3 fats into your diet to optimize your omega 6:3 ratio. An excellent animal source of omega-3 is krill oil.
* Make sure you are getting adequate vitamin D (ideally from sun exposure) and vitamin K, since both are necessary for good cardiovascular health.
* Be sure you're getting enough exercise, and the right kinds of exercise. I highly recommend taking a look at my Peak Fitness program.
* Optimize your sleep, which is essential for every aspect of your health.
* Optimize your body weight and composition, and keep an eye on your blood pressure, blood glucose and insulin levels, iron level and lipid profile.

References:

* i See All References [links]

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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"Unplanned Pregnancies 20 Times More Likely on Birth Control Pill than IUD
June 21 2012 | 9,511 views | + Add to Favorites

By Dr. Mercola

If you think your birth control pill is the best pregnancy prevention tool there is, you may be surprised by new research looking into its failure rates.

Compared to other forms of protection, the Pill failed miserably, which only adds to the myriad of reasons why you should heavily question its use.

The Pill Fails 20 Times More Often

About 99 percent of sexually active women use at least one method of birth control, the most common of which is the birth control pill (oral contraceptives). The Pill was used by nearly 11 million U.S. women from 2006-2008.i

Meanwhile, nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended.ii Certainly not all of these are due to a birth control failure, but some of them -- estimates suggest about half -- undoubtedly are. Which brings me to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.iii Out of the 7,500 women in the study, who used various forms of birth control including an intrauterine device (IUD), implant, birth control pills, patch, ring and contraceptive injection, 334 became pregnant, 156 of which were due to birth control failure.

The contraceptive failure rate among pills, patch or ring was 4.55 percent, compared to 0.27 percent among participants using reversible contraception such as intrauterine devices. The effectiveness—or non-effectiveness—was no different in adolescents or young women. The implications—that birth control pills are 20 times more likely to fail than IUDs—should give some women a pause to think about the method of contraception they want to use.

As for the varying degrees of effectiveness, the Pill must be taken daily, preferably around the same time for it to work its best. Study author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, noted:iv

"This study is the best evidence we have that long-acting reversible methods are far superior to the birth control pill, patch and ring. IUDs and implants are more effective because women can forget about them after clinicians put the devices in place ... If there were a drug for cancer, heart disease or diabetes that was 20 times more effective, we would recommend it first."

Hormone-Based Contraceptives Have Steep Risks

Unintended pregnancy is clearly a big one, but artificially manipulating your hormones using oral contraceptives, the patch or ring, or an injection like Depo-Provera is also a very risky proposition. Most birth control pills are a combination of the derivatives of the hormones estrogen and a synthetic progesterone (progestin). They work by disrupting the hormones in your body, essentially fooling your intricate hormonal reproductive system into producing the following effects:

* Preventing your ovaries from releasing eggs
* Thickening your cervical mucus to help block sperm from fertilizing an egg
* Thinning the lining of your uterus, which would make it difficult for an egg to implant, should it become fertilized

However, it is naive to believe that these are the only impacts the synthetic hormones are having. Your reproductive system does not exist in a bubble ... it is connected to all of your other bodily systems as well. The Pill, too, does not only influence your reproductive status; it's capable of altering much more.

Ten years ago, in 2002, one of the largest and best-designed federal studies of hormone replacement therapy was halted because women taking these synthetic hormones had a such a higher risk of breast cancer, heart attack, stroke and blood clots that continuing forward with the study would have been unethical. The news made headlines because millions of women were already taking these synthetic hormones, but fortunately it prompted many of them to quit. And what do you think happened a year after millions of women quit taking hormone replacement therapy? Incidents of breast cancer fell dramatically -- by 7 percent!

What does this have to do with the Pill? Birth control pills contain the SAME type of synthetic hormones -- estrogen and progestin -- that were used in the ill-fated study!

That's just one risk. Oral contraceptives have been linked to more than two dozen conditions, including heart disease, liver cancer, deep vein thrombosis and inflammatory bowel disease.v Research suggests they are not only carcinogenic (cancer-causing) but also cardiotoxic (toxic to your heart) and endocrine disrupting.

Why I Advise Most Women to Stop Hormonal Contraceptives

Birth control pills are rarely, if ever, necessary or beneficial. In exchange for the convenience of preventing pregnancy (which you can do naturally perhaps even more effectively, and I'll explain how below), you are putting yourself at risk of a myriad of health issues.

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that several types of hormone-based birth control methods increased women's risk of heart attack and stroke.vi The link was found between oral contraceptives as well as contraceptive patches and the vaginal ring. Women using the ring were found to have a 2.5 times greater risk of stroke compared to those not using hormonal contraceptives, whereas the other methods increased the risk to varying degrees.

Other known health risks of hormone-based birth control include:

Cancer: Women who take birth control pills increase their risk of cervical and breast cancers, and possibly liver cancer as well. Fatal blood clots: All birth control pills increase your risk of blood clots and subsequent stroke. Thinner bones: Women who take birth control pills have lower bone mineral density (BMD) than women who have never used oral contraceptives. Impaired muscle gains: A study found that oral contraceptive use impairs muscle gains from resistance exercise training in women.vii
Long-term sexual dysfunction: The Pill may limit the availability and/or action of testosterone, leading to long-term sexual dysfunction, including decreased desire and arousal. Heart disease: Long-term use of birth control pills may increase the buildup of arterial plaque, which may raise your risk of heart disease and cardiac mortality.viii Migraines and nausea Weight gain and mood changes
Irregular bleeding or spotting Breast tenderness Yeast overgrowth Yeast infection

The other hormonal-based options are not much better. Birth control patches (Ortho Evra) have resulted in an avalanche of lawsuits over the past several years due to the overwhelming health problems women have experienced from using them. One of the reasons the patch is so risky is that you absorb up to 60 percent more synthetic estrogen than if you were taking an oral contraceptive. Side effects of the patch include:

Raised risk of heart attack and stroke Irregular bleeding Problems wearing contact lenses Fluid retention or raised blood pressure
Nausea Headache Breast tenderness Mood changes
Menstrual cramps Abdominal pain Skin irritation or rashes at site of patch

As far as injections like Depo-Provera, or depo medroxyprogesterone (DMPA), go, this synthetic analogue of natural progesterone known as a progestin interferes with hormone signaling to prevent your ovaries from releasing eggs. Progestins carry with them a vast array of negative side effects, including:

Side Effects of Depo-Provera

* Weight gain
* Headaches
* Breast swelling and tenderness
* Decreased sexual desire
* Depression
* Bloating
* Swelling of the hands and feet
* Nervousness
* Abdominal cramps
* Dizziness
* Weakness of fatigue
* Leg cramps
* Nausea
* Vaginal discharge or irritation



* Backache
* Insomnia
* Acne
* Pelvic pain
* Lack of hair growth or excessive hair loss
* Rashes
* Hot flashes
* Joint pain
* Convulsions
* Jaundice
* Urinary tract infections
* Allergic reactions
* Fainting
* Paralysis
* Osteoporosis



* Lack of return to fertility
* Deep vein thrombosis
* Pulmonary embolus
* Breast and cervical cancers
* Abnormal menstrual bleeding
* Increased risk for STDs
* Unexpected breast milk production
* Changes in speech, coordination, or vision
* Swelling of face, ankles or feet
* Mood changes
* Unusual fatigue

Is an IUD a Better Option?

Intrauterine devices are small, plastic, T-shaped sticks with a string attached to the end. The IUD is placed inside the uterus and prevents pregnancy by rendering the sperm unable to fertilize an egg, and by changing the lining of the uterus so that it is less supportive for an embryo. It also works by releasing hormones into your body, specifically a progestin hormone called levonorgestrel, which is often used in birth control pills.

One of its major advantages, and what contributes to its increased effectiveness rate, is that it essentially eliminates the compliance failure issue as all you do is insert it once. There is no daily task to remember to do. However, it, too, carries significant risks, including some that are unique to a foreign body being placed inside your uterus. Among them:

* Pelvic infection: IUDs may lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, a serious infection
* The device may attach to or go through the wall of the uterus
* Pregnancy while using an IUD can be life threatening, and may result in loss of the pregnancy or fertility
* Ovarian cysts may occur
* Bleeding and spotting

Take Charge of Your Body Using Natural Birth Control Methods

You may not be aware that there are many effective and safe methods for preventing pregnancy. Some of the more common, barrier methods are:

* Male condoms: Condoms have a 98 percent effectiveness rate when used correctly. A water-based lubricant will increase the effectiveness; do not use an oil-based lubricant, however, as they break the latex and usually are petrochemical in origin.
* Female condoms: These thin, soft polyurethane pouches fitted inside the vagina before sex are 95 percent effective. Female condoms are less likely to tear than male condoms.
* Diaphragm: Diaphragms, which must be fitted by a doctor, act as a barrier to sperm. When used correctly with spermicidal jellies, they are 92 to 98 percent effective.
* Cervical cap: This heavy rubber cap fits tightly against the cervix and can be left in place for 48 hours. Like the diaphragm, a doctor must fit the cap. Proper fitting enhances the effectiveness above 91 percent.
* Cervical sponges: The sponge, made of polyurethane foam, is moistened with water and inserted into the vagina prior to sex. It works as a barrier between sperm and the cervix, both trapping and absorbing sperm and releasing a spermicide to kill them. It can be left in for up to 24 hours at a time. When used correctly, the sponge is about 89-91 percent effective.

Many people are familiar with these barrier methods, and less familiar with natural family planning (NFP) tools, which a woman uses to track when she is ovulating, and then avoid sex during that time (or does so only using a back-up barrier method). Many women feel empowered by NFP because it allows them to get in touch with their fertility cycle.

Some of the most popular methods include:

* Calendar Method: Abstention from sex during the week the woman is ovulating. This technique works best when a woman's menstrual cycle is very regular. The calendar method doesn't work very well for couples who use it by itself (about a 75 percent success rate), but it can be effective when combined with the temperature and mucus methods described below.
* The Temperature Method: This is a way to pinpoint the day of ovulation so that sex can be avoided for a few days before and after. It involves taking your basal body temperature (your temperature upon first waking) each morning with an accurate "basal" thermometer, and noting the rise in temperature that occurs after ovulation.

Illness or lack of sleep can change your body temperature and make this method unreliable by itself, but when it is combined with the mucus method, it can be an accurate way of assessing fertility. The two methods combined can have a success rate as high as 98 percent.
* The Mucus Method: This involves tracking changes in the amount and texture of vaginal discharge, which reflect rising levels of estrogen in your body. For the first few days after your period, there is often no discharge, but there will be a cloudy, tacky mucus as estrogen starts to rise. When the discharge starts to increase in volume and becomes clear and stringy, ovulation is near. A return to the tacky, cloudy mucus or no discharge means that ovulation has passed.

I encourage you to become actively involved in fertility awareness, and embrace natural family planning or barrier methods that will not interfere with your hormones and health. Some excellent reading to get you started on this path include:

1. The Ovulation Method: Natural Family Planning, by John J. Billings
2. Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health, by Toni Weschler
3. Honoring Our Cycles: A Natural Family Planning Workbook, by Katie Singer

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Today Dr Mercola talks about mosquitoes, genetic engineering and dengue fever.
By Dr. Mercola

Australian research scientists have developed a strategy for fighting Dengue fever, a viral disease spread by mosquitoes that affects more than 50 million people annually and causes fever and crippling joint and muscle pain—and in some cases even death.

Dengue kills FAR more people worldwide than influenza, yet it is rarely even mentioned by Western media.

A bacterium named Wolbachiapipientis naturally infects many insect species and has the ability to interfere with its host's reproductive ability in such a way that entire populations become infected within just a few generationsi. When Wolbachia infects mosquitoes, the mosquitoes' ability to transmit Dengue virus is almost completely blocked.

Researchers are encouraged that these bacterially infected mosquitoes are safe to humans and, once set loose, are capable of spreading on their own and overtaking the wild mosquito populations that transmit disease to humans.

In two northern Australian towns, between 10,000 and 20,000 of these infected mozzies were released ("mozzie" is Australian for mosquito), and wild mosquito infection rates neared 100 percent—meaning, mosquitoes that can infect humans were almost completely replaced by the ones that can't.

This approach is a change from the swarms of genetically engineered mosquitoes being bred by companies like Oxitec, a British biotechnology company that has released millions of mutant mosquitoes into the fields of unsuspecting Australians.

Oxitec has found a way to genetically manipulate Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species mainly responsible for transmitting Dengue and yellow fever viruses to humans. These "frankenskeeters" represent a new and terrifying twist in potential GMO (genetically modified organisms) dangers—another product of modern science outpacing common sense when big money is thrown into the equation.

Dengue is a Far Worse Problem than Influenza

Dengue fever is on the rise worldwide and spreading faster than any other insect-borne viral disease. It is a threat to people in more than 100 countries, potentially affecting 2.5 billion people worldwide. Dengue infection typically causes high fever, crushing headache, severe pain behind your eyes, rash, and excruciating pain in your joints and spine, which is why it's sometimes called "break bone fever." Dr. Renu Daval-Drager of the World Health Organization says some cases of Dengue can be fatal, particularly the more serious Dengue hemorrhagic fever.

This under-recognized infectious disease used to be restricted to tropical areas; however, it has recently made its way into Texas, Florida and other southern states and is endemic in 125 countries. And Dengue has reached epidemic levels in Central America.

Outbreaks of Dengue virus occur primarily in areas where Aedes aegypti and sometimes Aedes albopictus mosquitoes live and breed. This includes most tropical areas of the world—the same places where malaria is found. Dengue is also spread by travelers who become infected while visiting Dengue-infested regions.

In the Americas, all four Dengue virus types are now present. Worldwide, there are about three to five million cases of influenza annually. However, there are about 100 million cases of Dengue fever annually, worldwide—20 times more cases than influenza!

In the past, the best means for preventing the spread of Dengue involved sustainable, community-based, integrated mosquito control, with limited reliance on chemical insecticides. However, new high-tech strategies are being developed to further combat the spread of this deadly virus. Some of these strategies involve genetically manipulating mosquitoes and then releasing them back into the wild, which can have any number of unforeseen consequences.

No Biotechnology is Without Some Risk

The scientific community has expressed concern about introducing a new type of mosquito that is infected with a bacterium that could be transmitted to humans. However, researchers claim Wolbachia bacterium is completely benign to humans.

According a report by Institute of Science in Society (ISIS)ii:

"In our research Wolbachia-infected insects are feeding on our researchers all the time and there is no sign of any human illness associated with insect Wolbachia. Wolbachia is an insect bacterium that has not been detected living inside humans or any other vertebrates. It can be made to infect human tissue culture cells in the laboratory but these laboratory systems are very artificial and do not predict the actual ability of Wolbachia to infect an actual human being."

However, Daniel Strickman, national program leader for veterinary and medical entomology at the US Department of Agriculture, remains unconvinced. Strickman expresses some discomfort with releasing an agent that could spread out of control, in a way that does not occur in nature. He states there is a risk that, by making the mosquitoes less susceptible to dengue infection, they may become more susceptible to other viruses such as Japanese encephalitis.

Lead Australian Wolbachia researcher Scott O'Neill claims this problem is "extremely unlikely" as mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia are actually less susceptible to a wide range of pathogens they would normally transmit.iii

One thing can be said for certain—this approach to combating Dengue fever renders all attempts at genetically engineered (transgenic) mosquitoes obsolete. Transgenic mosquitoes are less effective, less efficient, more costly and far more risky.iv Unfortunately, GE "mutant mosquitoes" have already been released into the environment, without public consent, in several countries.

How all these changes affect other species consuming these altered insects remains to be seen.

Genetically Modified "Suicide Mosquitoes" Secretly Released in Grand Cayman Island

Can scientists simply release flying, human-biting genetically modified creatures into the air anytime they wish? Apparently, the answer to this question is "yes." And they have.

Oxitec has created male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that live long enough in the wild to mate, but their offspring die before reaching adulthood, reducing the rates at which they can transmit Dengue virus to humans. The genetically engineered bugs contain a gene that kills them unless they are given tetracycline, a common antibiotic. In the lab, with tetracycline provided, multiple generations of the mosquitoes can be bred. Males are then released into the wild, where tetracycline is not available, and their offspring die without it.

The company claims the technique is safe because only the males are released into the environment—it's only female mosquitoes that bite and spread diseases.

The problem is, millions of these GE bugs have been released into the open air by Oxitec as a means of field-testing their new "Dengue-proof" mosquitoes, without sufficient review and public consultation. They have conveniently chosen several countries with weak regulations. In 2009, Oxitec released their designer insects onto Grand Cayman Island, an island in the Caribbeanv.

The experiment will go down in scientific history as the first release of GM insects that could bite humans. Not surprisingly, it was conducted in secret.

Once the locals got wind of this, they responded with a fair amount of public outrage—and rightly so! But it didn't stop there. Oxitec subsequently released their frankenskeeters in Malaysia, Brazilvi, Panama, India, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. And they are seeking approval from the US Agriculture Department to perform similar open-air testing in the Florida Keys.

Even supporters of this technology worry that public reaction will be similar to the one that has stalled acceptance of genetically engineered crops. Regulation has not caught up with science, and GE insects are a brand new adversary in this brave new world of genetic modification. Many companies are "making hay" while regulations are lacking.

Oxitec reports the results of their open-air testing exceeded expectations. The genetically engineered males were found to be only half as successful in mating as the wild ones, which is a rate sufficient to repress the population. Oxitec also reports that a 2010 trial on Cayman Island reduced the population of the targeted mosquitoes by 80 percent for three months. But what is the price of this progress? What will be the cost to humans and to the environment?

Just as with genetically engineered (GE) foods, the long-term effects of GE insects are completely unknown—the Earth and its inhabitants are being used as a laboratory for grand scale genetic experiments. It's a blatant violation of human rights with regard to human experimentation.

Antibiotic-Dependent, Blood-Sucking Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes… What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Unfortunately, like so many other things, neither the government nor the biotech companies can offer peer-reviewed scientific proof of the safety of their biotechnology—they have blithely rushed ahead without any concern about the long-term effects. Once released, these insects cannot be "recalled." There are several problemsvii with the assumption that these genetically engineered bugs are safe for the human population. For starters:

1. The potential exists for these genes, which hop from one place to another, to infect human blood by finding entry through skin lesions or inhaled dust. Such transmission could potentially wreak havoc with the human genome by creating "insertion mutations" and other unpredictable types of DNA damage.viii
2. According to Alfred Handler, a geneticist at the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, mosquitoes can develop resistance to the lethal gene and might then be released inadvertently. Todd Shelly, an entomologist for the Agriculture Department in Hawaii, said 3.5 percent of the insects in a laboratory test survived to adulthood, despite presumably carrying the lethal gene.
3. The sorting of male and female mosquitoes is done by hand. As a result, up to 0.5 percent of the released insects are female. Even that small of a percentage could lead to a temporary increase in the spread of Dengue—not to mention potentially transmitting the altered gene to humans.
4. Tetracycline and other antibiotics are now showing up in the environment, in soil and surface water samples. These genetically engineered mosquitoes were designed to die in the absence of tetracycline, assuming they would NOT have access to that drug in the wild. With tetracycline exposure (for example, in a lake) these mutant insects would actually thrive in the wild, potentially creating a nightmarish scenario.

The problem is that genetically modified female mosquitoes can still bite humans. This means the protein, which kills their own larvae, might be injected into humans when the mosquitoes suck their blood, with unknown and potentially ghoulish consequences.

And those are just the mosquitoes…

Moths, Too

Oxitec is also the creator of genetically engineered pink bollworm moths, and swarms of this creature have already been unleashed over the fields of Arizona in an effort to overtake natural bollworm populations, which are a pest.5 The company appears to be edging its way toward becoming the next "Monsanto," already having a monopoly on genetically modified insects. Their next frankenbug is a genetically engineered diamond-back or cabbage moth, slated for release over England.

Other groups are also developing genetically modified insects. One group has created Anopheles mosquitoes that are immune to the malaria parasite they normally carry, and also manufacturing male Anopheles that lack sperm.9

Realizing genetic engineering is risky technology, the World Health Organization is finalizing new guidelines about how GE insects must be deployed in developing countries, which it expects to release by the end of 2012ix.

Your Best Defense Against Dengue

Building a strong immune system is your best defense against this nasty virus. Your immune health depends on the lifestyle choices you make every day. By supporting your body's own natural ability to defend itself against pathogens, you will not only have resistance to Dengue fever but to every other infectious illness that comes your way. Make sure you address each of the following:

* Consume a diet rich in fresh, whole foods with abundant organic vegetables, pasture-raised meats, organic eggs and raw dairy; avoid sugar, chemicals and processed foods; be sure to get plenty of omega-3 fats; refer to my nutrition plan for more dietary information
* Optimize your vitamin D level
* Exercise regularly
* Address your stress, and make sure to get plenty of sleep
* Practice good hand washing technique

References:

* i See All References

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Elizabeth
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Dr. MERCOLA -- mobile phone dangers

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Pregnant women would also be wise to avoid cell phones as much as possible. In 2008, researchers analyzed data from nearly 13,000 children and found that exposure to cell phones while in the womb, and also during childhood, were linked to behavioral difficulties.viii Using handsets just two or three times a day during pregnancy was enough to raise the risk of their babies developing hyperactivity and difficulties with conduct, emotions, and relationships by the time they reached school age—and the risk became even greater if the children also used the phones themselves before the age of seven.

Overall, the study revealed that mothers who used mobile phones were 54 percent more likely to have children with behavioral problems. Later on, when the children began using cell phones themselves, they were:

80 percent more likely to suffer from behavioral difficulties
25 percent more at risk from emotional problems
34 percent more likely to suffer from difficulties relating to their peers
35 percent more likely to be hyperactive
49 percent more prone to problems with conduct
Experts Adamantly Claim Harmful Effects are Now Provable

Experts in the area of the biological effects of electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) and wireless technologies believe there's virtually no doubt that cell phones and related gadgets are capable of causing not only cancer but contributing to a wide variety of other conditions, from depression and diabetes to heart irregularities and impaired fertility. Researchers have now identified numerous mechanisms of harm, which explain how electromagnetic fields impact your cells and damages your DNA.

One such expert is Dr. Martin Blank, PhD, one of the most experienced researchers of the cellular and molecular effects of electromagnetic fields in the U.S. He gave an informative speech at the November 18, 2010 Commonwealth Club of California program, "The Health Effects of Electromagnetic Fields," co-sponsored by ElectromagneticHealth.org. In it, he explained why your DNA, with its 'coil of coils' structure, is especially vulnerable to electromagnetic fields of all kinds.

As described in the International Journal of Radiation Biology, April 2011ix, DNA possesses the two structural characteristics of fractal antennas: electronic conduction, and self-symmetry.

These properties contribute to greater reactivity of DNA to electromagnetic fields than other tissues, making the long-term consequences of repeated microwave exposures to our genetic material of great concern. Dr. Blank is adamant when he says that there IS evidence of harm, and that the harm can be significant. He also points out that the science showing harmful effects has been peer-reviewed, published, and that the results have been replicated, evaluated and "judged by scientists capable of judging it." I wrote an in-depth article about these findings back in January of last year. If you missed it, go ahead and review it now.

An analysis of the range of known mechanisms of action, including DNA effects, was published in November 2010 in "Non-Thermal Effects and Mechanisms of Interaction Between Electromagnetic Fields and Living Matterx." Furthermore, the mobile industry's own research in the 13-country Interphone studyxi showed a 40 percent increased risk of brain cancer from 1,640 or more hours of cell phone use, and independent Swedish research published in 2007 showed a 540 percent increased risk of brain cancer from greater than 2,000 hours of cell phone usexii.

My Top Tips for Cell Phone Safety: It's worth remembering that the telecommunication industry is much larger than the medical industrial complex, and they have far more influence than the drug companies. They're also mirroring many of the same tactics as the tobacco industry to pedal their wares. This includes attempting to discredit researchers who publish unfavorable cell phone studies.

As Dr. Davis shows in her lecture above, the results of any study can be accurately predicted by looking at its sponsorship. According to a review by Dr. Lai in 2008, the probability that a study will find "no effect" is two to three times higher in industry-funded studies, while independently-funded studies into the health effects of mobile technology are TWICE as likely to find a positive result.

So please, be aware that there is already robust scientific evidence that cell phones and other wireless devices pose significant health risks to all of us—especially to children and pregnant women. So while such findings are not being widely publicized as of yet, it makes sense to take action now to protect yourself and your children. You can help to minimize your exposure to electromagnetic radiation from cell phones and other wireless devices by heeding the following advice:

Children Should Always Avoid Using Cell Phones: Barring a life-threatening emergency, children should not use a cell phone, or a wireless device of any type.
Reduce Your Cell Phone Use: Turn your cell phone off more often. Reserve it for emergencies or important matters. As long as your cell phone is on, it emits radiation intermittently, even when you are not actually making a call. If you're pregnant, avoiding or reducing your cell phone use may be especially important.
Use a Land Line at Home and at Work: Although more and more people are switching to using cell phones as their exclusive phone contact, it is a dangerous trend and you can choose to opt out of the madness. SKYPE offers a portable number via your computer that can plug into any Ethernet port while traveling.
Reduce or Eliminate Your Use of Other Wireless Devices: You would be wise to cut down your use of these devices. Just as with cell phones, it is important to ask yourself whether or not you really need to use them as often as you do. And most importantly, do not even consider having any electronic or wireless devices in the bedroom that will interfere with the quality of your sleep.
If you must use a portable home phone, use the older kind that operates at 900 MHz. They are not safer during calls, but at least many of them do not broadcast constantly even when no call is being made. Note the only way to truly be sure if there is an exposure from your cordless phone is to measure with an electrosmog meter, and it must be one that goes up to the frequency of your portable phone (so old meters won't help much). As many portable phones are 5.8 Gigahertz, we recommend you look for RF meters that go up to 8 Gigahertz, the highest range now available in a meter suitable for consumers.

Alternatively you can be very careful with the base station placement as that causes the bulk of the problem since it transmits signals 24/7, even when you aren't talking. So if you can keep the base station at least three rooms away from where you spend most of your time, and especially your bedroom, they may not be as damaging to your health. Another option is to just simply turn the portable phone off, only using it when you specifically need the convenience of moving about while on a call.

Ideally it would be helpful to turn off your base station every night before you go to bed.

You can find RF meters as well as remediation supplies at http://www.emfsafetystore.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. But you can pretty much be sure your portable phone is a problem if the technology is DECT, or digitally enhanced cordless technology.

Use Your Cell Phone Only Where Reception is Good: The weaker the reception, the more power your phone must use to transmit, and the more power it uses, the more radiation it emits, and the deeper the dangerous radio waves penetrate into your body. Ideally, you should only use your phone with full bars and good reception.
Avoid Carrying Your Phone on Your Body as that merely maximizes any potential exposure. Ideally put it in your purse or carrying bag. Placing a cell phone in a shirt pocket over the heart is asking for trouble, as is placing it in a man's pocket if he seeks to preserve his fertility.
Don't Assume One Cell Phone is Safer than Another: There's no such thing as a "safe" cell phone. This is particularly true for industry promoted SAR ratings, which are virtually useless in measuring the true potential biological danger as most all of the damage is not done by heat transfer, which SAR measures.
Keep Your Cell Phone Away From Your Body When it is On: The most dangerous place to be, in terms of radiation exposure, is within about six inches of the emitting antenna. You do not want any part of your body within that area.
Respect Others Who are More Sensitive: Some people who have become sensitive can feel the effects of others' cell phones in the same room, even when it is on but not being used. If you are in a meeting, on public transportation, in a courtroom or other public places, such as a doctor's office, keep your cell phone turned off out of consideration for the 'second hand radiation' effects. Children are also more vulnerable, so please avoid using your cell phone near children.
If you are using the Pong case, which redirects the cell phone radiation away from the head and successfully lowers the SAR effect, realize that in redirecting the radiation away from your head this may be intensifying the radiation in another direction, perhaps toward the person next to you, or, if in your pocket, increasing radiation intensity toward your body. Caution is always advised in dealing with any radiation-emitting device. We recommend cell phones be kept 'Off' except for emergencies.

Use Safer Headset Technology: Wired headsets will certainly allow you to keep the cell phone farther away from your body. However, if a wired headset is not well-shielded -- and most of them are not -- the wire itself acts as an antenna attracting ambient radio waves and transmitting radiation directly to your brain.
Make sure that the wire used to transmit the signal to your ear is shielded.

The best kind of headset to use is a combination shielded wire and air-tube headset. These operate like a stethoscope, transmitting the information to your head as an actual sound wave; although there are wires that still must be shielded, there is no wire that goes all the way up to your head.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... 4_SNL_MV_1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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If you think the jury's still out on whether cell phones can be dangerous to your health, then you might want to take the time to listen to this video. Dr. Devra Davis, author of the book, "The Secret History of the War on Cancer," has been researching the safety hazards of radiation emanating from your cell phone.

Like many people, Dr. Davis just didn't believe the possibility of cell phones being dangerous―until she studied it. And now, with the toxicological and epidemiological evidence to back up her claims, she's trying to get the word out that cell phone radiation is not only dangerous, but can be downright lethal.

In her lecture, Dr. Davis explains how the biological impact of your cell phone is notrelated to its power, which is quite weak, but rather to the erratic nature of its signal and its ability to disrupt resonance and interfere with DNA repair. This is now believed to be the most plausible theory for understanding the wide array of health impacts discovered, which includes cancer...

Can Your Cell Phone Cause Cancer?One interesting case that can serve as an illustrative warning of the cancer-causing potential of cell phones is that of a young woman with no other predisposing risk factors for cancer who came down with multi-focal breast cancer. The case was revealed in the May issue of the Environmental Health Trust's newsletteri. As it turns out, the young lady had the curious habit of tucking her cell phone into her bra...

Two cancer specialists, Robert Nagourney and John West, concluded there was only one other possibility that might have directly contributed to her breast cancer. "We connected the dots," the patient said. And the dots―quite literally the pattern of the cancer, and distribution of the cancerous cells―lined up perfectly with the shape of her cell phone.

While her doctor can't prove the cell phone caused her cancer, it should serve as a potent warning not only to other women who might tuck their phones in their bras, but also to those of you who keep your phones in your pants pocket or shirt pocket as well. As a general rule, you'll want to avoid carrying your phone anywhere on your body. Keep in mind that the most dangerous place to be, in terms of radiation exposure, is within about six inches of the emitting antenna. You do not want any part of your body within that proximity.

Why Carrying Your Cell Phone on Your Body is a Bad Idea...

Regardless of the area exposed to the continuous radiation emitted by your cell phone, there's the potential for harm, although certain areas are clearly more vulnerable than others.

For example, research published in 2009 showed evidence that wearing a cell phone on your hip may weaken an area of your pelvisii. Using an X-ray technique used in the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with osteoporosis, researchers measured pelvic bone density in 150 men who regularly carried their cell phones attached to their belts. The men carried their phones for an average of 15 hours each day, and had used cell phones for an average of six years. The researchers found that bone mineral density was lowered on the side of the pelvis where the mobile phones were carried, raising the possibility that bone density could be adversely affected by the electromagnetic fields emitted by cell phones.

It's important to realize that as long as your cell phone is on, it emits radiation intermittently, even when you are not actually making a call. So wearing a cell phone on your hip for 15 hours a day is giving that area of your body nearly continuous radiation exposure.

Previous studies have found that cell phone radiation can affect men's sperm count, and the quality and motility of their sperm, and this may be a far greater issue than its effect on bone density. One such study, published in PLoS Oneiii found that:

"RF-EMR in both the power density and frequency range of mobile phones enhances mitochondrial reactive oxygen species generation by human spermatozoa, decreasing the motility and vitality of these cells while stimulating DNA base adduct formation and, ultimately DNA fragmentation. These findings have clear implications for the safety of extensive mobile phone use by males of reproductive age, potentially affecting both their fertility and the health and wellbeing of their offspring."

Men in particular may want to reconsider carrying their cell phones on their belts or in their pocket, in close proximity of their reproductive organs. In addition, you have a number of other sensitive organs in that general area, including liver, kidneys, colon and bladder—all of which are susceptible to radiation.

Recent Evidence Identifies Strong Cell Phone Cancer Link

Last year, an Israeli research group reported a sharp increase in the incidence of parotid gland tumors over the last 30 years, with the steepest increase happening after 2001. Your parotid gland is a type of salivary gland, located closest to your cheek—the same area where most people typically hold their cell phones. The researchers found a four-fold increase in parotid gland cancers from 1970 to 2006, while rates of other salivary gland cancers remained stableiv.

That same year, Dr. Siegal Sadetzki, the principle investigator of a 2008 study, testified at a U.S. Senate Hearing that cell phones were identified as a contributor to salivary gland tumors. The report states that your risk of getting a parotid tumor on the same side of your head that you use for listening to the mobile phone increases by:

• 34 percent if you are a regular cell phone user and have used a mobile phone for 5 years.
• 58 percent if you had more than about 5,500 calls in your lifetime.
• 49 percent if you have spoken on the phone for more than 266.3 hours during your lifetime.
World Health Organizaion Classifies Cell Phone Radiation as Class B Carcinogen

Cell phone subscriptions are now estimated at 5.9 billion globallyv—that's 87 percent of the world population! I think it's safe to say, we've already passed the point of no return when it comes to this technology. But as cell phone use continues to grow unabated, a growing body of researchers is speaking out against the technology, warning that it may have serious biological side effects that must be acknowledged and remedied.

Fortunately, their warnings are slowly but surely beginning to be heard.

On May 31, 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO)/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a report admitting cell phones might indeed cause cancer, classifying radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" (Class 2B)vi. The classification came in part in response to research showing wireless telephones increase the risk for brain cancer.

According to the press releasevii:

"Dr Jonathan Samet (University of Southern California, USA), overall Chairman of the Working Group, indicated that "the evidence, while still accumulating, is strong enough to support a conclusion and the 2B classification. The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk."

"Given the potential consequences for public health of this classification and findings," said IARC Director Christopher Wild, "it is important that additional research be conducted into the long‐term, heavy use of mobile phones. Pending the availability of such information, it is important to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure such as hands‐free devices or texting."

Children are at Greatest Risk—Including While in Utero. Sadly, children and teens are at greatest risk—both for parotid gland tumors and brain tumors—as their thinner skull bones allow for greater penetration of cell phone radiation. The radiation can enter all the way into their midbrain, where tumors are more deadly. In addition, children's cells reproduce more quickly, so they're more susceptible to aggressive cell growth. Children also face a far greater lifetime exposure. According to Professor Lennart Hardell of Sweden, those who begin using cell phones heavily as teenagers have 4 to 5 times more brain cancer as young adults!

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Elizabeth
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Dr. MERCOLA -- mobile phone dangers

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNNSztN7 ... r_embedded" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJib5GHx ... r_embedded" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Elizabeth
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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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How do we reconcile the warnings re vaccinations given by Dr Mercola, and the LDS Church sponsoring vaccination of people around the world ?

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Elizabeth
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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Some food additives are worse than others. Food Matters suggests these as the top ones to avoid:

Artificial Sweeteners

Aspartame, also known as Nutrasweet and Equal, is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions than all other foods and food additives combined.

The artificial sweetener Acesulfame-K has been linked to kidney tumors. All artificial sweeteners are bad news.

High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) increases your LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels and contributes to the development of diabetes.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
MSG is used as a flavor enhancer. It is an excitotoxin, a substance that overexcites cells to the point of damage or death.

Trans Fat
Numerous studies show that trans fat increases LDL cholesterol levels and increases your risk of heart attacks, heart disease and strokes.

Common Food Dyes
Artificial colorings may contribute to behavioral problems in children and lead to a significant reduction in IQ.

Sodium Sulphite
This is a preservative used in processed foods. People who are sulfite sensitive can experience headaches, breathing problems, and rashes. In severe cases, sulfites can actually cause death.

Sodium Nitrate/Sodium Nitrite
This common preservative has been linked to various types of cancer.

BHA and BHT
Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydrozyttoluene (BHT) are preservatives that affect the neurological system of your brain, alter behavior and have the potential to cause cancer.

Sulphur Dioxide
Sulphur additives are toxic and in the U.S., they have been prohibited in raw fruit and vegetables. Adverse reactions include bronchial problems, low blood pressure, and anaphylactic shock.

Potassium Bromate
This additive is used to increase volume in some breads. It is known to cause cancer in animals, and even small amounts can create problems for humans.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... avoid.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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I personally stay away from vaccines, Sweet&Noble... Here's more on the subject today from Dr. Mercola:

By Dr. Mercola

Many parents don't think twice about taking their children in for routine vaccinations, as they are an integral and heavily promoted part of the conventional medical system. But this decision has had life altering, and sometimes life-ending, ramifications for more children than you might expect.

Many hard core health activists are distressed that I do not promote the avoidance of all vaccines outright. Instead, I strongly urge you to invest the time to educate yourself about the potential benefits and risks of each vaccine prior to vaccination, and to make educated decisions based on what you conclude is likely to be the best course of action for your child.

While some vaccines appear to be safer than others, it's important to realize that each vaccination carries a certain amount of risk and vaccine risks can be greater for some than others due to biological and environmental factors, and the timing and types of vaccines given. The risks of vaccination may be exponentially increased when revaccination takes place after an individual has already had a previous vaccine reaction, or when multiple vaccines are administered at the same time.

There are vaccines that historically have been associated with more side effects than others, and the combination measles, mumps and rubella vaccine - MMR shot - is one of those.

The health risks associated with the MMR vaccine has been in the news for about 15 years, and we're undoubtedly going to see a re-emergence of questions about this vaccine in the coming days and weeks because the Italian health ministry recently conceded that the MMR vaccine caused autism in a now nine-year-old boy, who suffered brain inflammation and permanent brain damage after he was vaccinated.

Italian Court Rules MMR Vaccine Caused Autism

Valentino Bocca was given an MMR shot in 2004, at the age of 15 months. According to his parents, the change in his behavior was immediate. That same night he refused to eat, and he developed diarrhea during the night. It quickly went downhill from there. Within days he was no longer able to put a spoon to his mouth, and he spent nights crying in pain. His parents immediately suspected the vaccination, but were told this was "impossible." Valentino progressively regressed, and received the diagnosis of autism a year later.

In the final analysis, the Italian Health Ministry disagreed with the initial conclusion of the pediatrician, conceding that the vaccine was at fault.

As a result, a court in Rimini, Italy recently awarded the Bocca family a 15-year annuity totaling 174,000 Euros (just under $220,000), plus reimbursement for court costs, ruling that Valentino "has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)i." According to a featured article in the UK newspaper, The Independentii, about 100 similar cases are now being examined by Italian lawyers, and more cases may be brought to court.

"Luca Ventaloro the family lawyer, said yesterday: "This is very significant for Britain which uses, and has used, an MMR vaccine with the same components as the one given to Valentino.

It is wrong for governments and their health authorities to exert strong pressure on parents to take children for the MMR jab while ignoring that this vaccine can cause autism and linked conditions." The number of autism cases has risen sharply since the 1970s, with one in 64 British children affected," The Independent reportsiii .

Why is US Media in Black-Out on this Story?

It’s well worth mentioning that this story has yet to be addressed in the US media... The Daily Mail was the first paper in the UK to talk about it on June 15iv. The Independent was the second to print an article, on June 17. The Daily Mail was the most substantive of the two. Their version included the following statements:

"Judge Lucio Ardigo, awarding compensation to the family... said it was ‘conclusively established’ that Valentino had suffered from an ‘autistic disorder associated with medium cognitive delay’ and his illness, as Dr Barboni stated, was linked to receiving the jab. Lawyer Mr Ventaloro explained yesterday: ‘This is very significant for Britain which uses, and has used, an MMR vaccine with the same components as the one given to Valentino. ‘It is wrong for governments and their health authorities to exert strong pressure on parents to take children for the MMR jab while ignoring that this vaccine can cause autism and linked conditions.’

Claudio Simion, a leading member of the lobby group Association for Freedom of Choice in Vaccination (Comilva), adds: ‘The Rimini judgment is vitally important for children everywhere. The numbers with autism are growing. It is a terrible thing that the authorities turn a blind eye to the connection between the MMR vaccination and this illness.’”

The complete lack of coverage of this case in the US media is a potent example of how health information is flat out censored in the US. Is it any wonder so many Americans are still in the dark? Whether hearing about this case in the US media would sway you to believe vaccines may cause autism or not, the REAL story here is the fact that you’re not even being allowed to learn about it in the first place!

"Controversial" MMR Vaccine Research Replicated and Accurate

It's virtually impossible to read an article about the MMR vaccine without coming across a reference to British gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield's 1998 research published in The Lancet, which suggested there may be a link between the MMR vaccine, chronic bowel disease, and autism. Ever since the article's publication, it has remained one of the most cited yet controversial studies on the topic of vaccine safety.

Few public health officials or doctors speaking about vaccination in the media today fail to drive home the point that Wakefield's research was subsequently "discredited" by the General Medical Council in Britain, while completely ignoring the facts about what his research actually showed, and the long list of studies done since then by other researchers that back up his initial findings.

Dr. Wakefield's 1998 study involved a retrospective case series analysis, which essentially reviews the clinical histories of a group of patients with a constellation of signs and symptoms that link them together and create a pattern. In this case, it was a group of autistic children with gastrointestinal problems, which led to the discovery of a novel bowel disease that Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London first described.

But rather than celebrating the discovery of a tangible, treatable and potentially preventable serious health problem that could help those suffering with similar health issues, Wakefield's discovery became a hotly debated controversy in which Dr. Wakefield's personal and professional reputation was smeared.

Why?

Because the clinical story didn't end with bowel disease; it also included symptoms of regressive autism after receiving the MMR vaccine...

In the years following his 1998 finding, which linked the MMR vaccine to inflammatory bowel disease and symptoms of autism, Dr. Wakefield published another 19 papers on the vaccine-induced bowel disorder. All were peer reviewed, and none have been retracted. However, none of these 19 papers are ever discussed in the media.

The only study that keeps seeing the light of day is the original Lancet article from 1998. Another interesting fact is that, since that study, a large number of replication studies have been performed around the world, by other researchers, that confirm Wakefield's initial findings. Yet you never hear a word about those either!

Download Interview Transcript

For a list of 28 studies from around the world that support Dr. Wakefield's controversial 1998 findings, please see this previous article.

As one example of many, at the 2006 International Meeting for Autism Research, Stephen J. Walker, Ph.D. shared preliminary research findings that confirmed Dr. Wakefield's contested findings.

A research team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina had examined children with regressive autism and bowel disease, and of the 82 tested at the time of his presentation, 70 were positive for the vaccine strain of the measles virus (as opposed to the wild strain of measles). What this proved was that a majority of children diagnosed with regressive autism had the vaccine strain of measles in their gastrointestinal tract, which is exactly what Dr. Wakefield had found back in 1998.

This doesn't automatically prove the vaccine was the cause of the autism, but it does at the very least suggest a link between these three factors—the presence of MMR vaccine strain of measles in the digestive tract; chronic bowel inflammation; and symptoms of regressive autism. Which brings us to even more recent research into the ramifications of chronic bowel inflammation.

The Connection Between Your Gut and Your Brain

Is it really so unlikely that chronic bowel inflammation from a measles virus could lead to autistic behavior? After all, the gastrointestinal system is often referred to as your "second brain," containing some 100 million neurons—more than in either your spinal cord or your peripheral nervous system!

The research of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride shows there's a profound dynamic interaction between your gut, your brain, and your immune system, and she has developed what might be one of the most profoundly important treatment strategies for preventing autism, as well as a wide range of other neurological-, psychological-, and autoimmune disorders—all of which are heavily influenced by your gut health.

I believe her Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and Gut and Physiology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional program is vitally important for MOST people, as the majority of people have such poor gut health due to poor diet and toxic exposures, but it's particularly crucial for pregnant women and young children.

According to Dr. Campbell-McBride, children who are born with severely damaged gut flora are at a significantly increased risk of vaccine damage, which may help explain why some children develop symptoms of autism after receiving one or more childhood vaccinations, such as the MMR vaccine, while others do not.

In a previous interview, she explained the chain of events that is typical for many, if not most, autistic children:

"What happens in these children [is that] they do not develop normal gut flora from birth… As a result, their digestive system—instead of being a source of nourishment for these children—becomes a major source of toxicity. These pathogenic microbes inside their digestive tract damage the integrity of the gut wall. So all sort of toxins and microbes flood into the bloodstream of the child, and get into the brain of the child.

That usually happens in the second year of life in children who were breast fed because breastfeeding provides a protection against this abnormal gut flora. In children who were not breastfed, I see the symptoms of autism developing in the first year of life. So breastfeeding is crucial to protect these children."

If a child with abnormal gut flora and damaged digestive tract receives a vaccine, the added toxic burden may prove too great to bear. Keep in mind that this toxic burden is NOT necessarily limited to thimerosal (mercury-based preservative) or aluminum-based adjuvants found in some vaccines. The MMR vaccine for example does not contain thimerosal or aluminum. Instead, it appears the measles virus in the vaccine may contribute to chronic inflammation of the bowel, thereby unleashing a cascade of harmful effects on the brain.

"... If the child's brain is clogged with toxicity, the child misses that window of opportunity of learning and starts developing autism depending on the mixture of toxins, depending on how severe the whole condition is, and how severely abnormal the gut flora is in the child," Dr. Campbell-McBride explains.

It's important to understand that the gut flora your child acquires during vaginal birth is dependent on your—the mother's—gut flora. So if your microflora is abnormal, your child's will be as well. Autism isn't the only potential outcome in this case.

GAPS may manifest as a conglomerate of symptoms that can fit the diagnosis of either autism, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, just to name a few possibilities. Digestive issues, asthma, allergies, skin problems and autoimmune disorders are also common outgrowths of GAPS, as it can present itself either psychologically or physiologically.

A Simple, Inexpensive Solution to Reduce Risks of Vaccine Damage

Dr. Campbell-McBride's book Gut and Psychology Syndrome contains an entire chapter outlining what health care professionals need to do to improve the vaccination strategy, because the standard vaccination protocol is bound to damage GAPS babies. She explains:

"It's a matter of the last straw breaking the camel's back. If the child is damaged enough, the vaccine can provide that last straw. But if it doesn't provide that last straw in a particular child, then it will get the child closer to the breaking point."

Fortunately, it's possible to rather inexpensively identify GAPS within the first weeks of your baby's life, which can help you make better-informed decisions about vaccinations, and about how to proceed to set your child on the path to a healthy life.

The entire process for identifying children who would be at risk for developing autism from a vaccine is described in her book, but to sum it up, in her practice she starts out by collecting a complete health history of the parents, and their gut health is assessed.

Then, within the first few days of life, the stool of the child can be analyzed to determine the state of her gut flora, followed by a urine test to check for metabolites, which can give you a picture of the state of your child's immune system.

These tests are available in most laboratories around the world and cost a very reasonable amount, about $80-100 per test -- peanuts compared to the incredible expense of treating an autistic child once the damage is done.

In my view it is absolutely VITAL to perform this analysis BEFORE you consider vaccinating your child. As Dr. Campbell-McBride states, she has yet to find an autistic child with normal bowel flora. If you find that your baby has abnormal gut microflora, or begins to develop symptoms of autism a year or two later, the GAPS program should be started immediately, as the younger the child is when you start the treatment, the better the results.

You should seriously evaluate the potential increased risks of giving a child vaccines before their microflora tests normal. For more information about the GAPS Nutritional Program, including the two types of GAPS diets, and the importance of fermented foods, please review this previous article.

MMR Vaccine Linked to Brain Inflammation

Whereas the research of Dr. Wakefield and others provide compelling evidence that MMR vaccine can cause chronic inflammatory bowel disease, other researchers have found links between the MMR and inflammation of the brain. Dr. Harold Buttram has written about the MMR vaccine's potential link to autism, due to the vaccine's potential to cause brain inflammation. He explains:

"First and perhaps foremost, MMR is incubated in chick embryo culture medium, which necessarily includes precursors of all the organ systems of the chick, including myelin basic protein. Merck Pharmaceuticals, which produces MMR vaccine, claims that all traces of the chick embryo are removed before the vaccine is released for use.

This may be true, but it is probably irrelevant as it does not take into account the process of mobile genetic elements, more commonly referred to as "jumping genes." Viruses being made up entirely of genetic material, they are highly susceptible to this process.

It has been shown that viruses are genetically changed by accepting genetic material from cell cultures.' The genetic imprint of the chick myelin basic protein, which is foreign to the human system because of its chick origin, may be programmed to induce antibodies against human myelin basic protein, once injected into the human system.

This in turn, potentially resulting in encephalitis."

If you don't want to take his word for it, take a look at the package insert for Merck's MMR vaccinev , which, on page seven, lists encephalitis as a potential side effect. Type 2 diabetes (diabetes mellitus) is another, along with a number of other potentially life altering conditions. Rarely, if ever, will your pediatrician calmly inform you of these reported side effects, which is why you'd be wise to read through the vaccine manufacturer product inserts as part of your own personal research, prior to vaccination.

Other Acknowledged Cases of MMR Vaccine Brain Damage

In 2009, the US District Court of Claims, also known as the "Vaccine Court," ruled in favor of awarding federal vaccine injury compensation to a young boy, who developed Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD), a constellation of symptoms of brain dysfunction that includes autism and other learning disorders.

The parents of Bailey Banks argued that their son had a seizure 16 days after his first MMR vaccination. That, they said, led to a type of brain inflammation called Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which, in turn, led to PDD.

The court agreed that the MMR vaccine had, indeed, caused him to suffer Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis leading to permanent brain damage. According to the court decision, there was, "a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay."

As you can see, what we're seeing in some cases is little more than semantics, really, because what's the difference, in practical terms, between PDD and autism? Both words describe chronic brain dysfunction. They are essentially two ways to describe the same brain disorder at different points along a spectrum.

Essentially, this is how many people are misled and kept in the dark, because when the word "autism" is not used, everyone can keep insisting that "there's no evidence linking vaccines to autism." Still, for a parent and their affected child, the end result is the same

The case of Hannah Poling is another important case to ponder when discussing potential vaccine damage. In her case, it was found that vaccines "significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder," resulting in a brain disorder "with features of autism spectrum disorder."

Mitochondria are the powerhouses in your body's cells that produce energy. The US Court of Claims and government health agencies again stopped short of admitting a direct link between autism and vaccines, saying instead that vaccines may only be a danger for children who have a "rare" mitochondrial dysfunction.

The problem is that mitochondrial "dysfunction" may not be as rare as initially thought. According to some estimates, the prevalence may be as high as 1 in 50 children—which is pretty darn close to the current prevalence of autism.

But is it possible that what the government is calling a genetic predisposition for mitochondrial dysfunction is actually a biological or cellular response to numerous environmental assaults? You bet!

A brand new meta-analysis published in the March issue of Molecular Psychiatryvi discovered that, while five percent of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) had mitochondrial dysfunction (MD)—far higher than that found in the general population—79 percent of them were NOT associated with any kind of genetic abnormality! Seventy-four percent of children with ASD were also found to have gastrointestinal abnormalities, again supporting the link between chronic bowel disorders and autistic symptoms.

According to the authors:

"Neuroimaging, in vitro and post-mortem brain studies were consistent with an elevated prevalence of mitochondrial dysfunction (MD) in ASD. Taken together, these findings suggest children with ASD have a spectrum of mitochondrial dysfunction of differing severity...

The prevalence of developmental regression (52%), seizures (41%), motor delay (51%), gastrointestinal abnormalities (74%), female gender (39%), and elevated lactate (78%) and pyruvate (45%) was significantly higher in ASD/MD compared with the general ASD population.

The prevalence of many of these abnormalities was similar to the general population of children with mitochondrial dysfunction, suggesting that ASD/MD represents a distinct subgroup of children with MD.

Most ASD/MD cases (79%) were not associated with genetic abnormalities, raising the possibility of secondary mitochondrial dysfunction. Treatment studies for ASD/MD were limited, although improvements were noted in some studies with carnitine, co-enzyme Q10 and B-vitamins.

... Overall, this evidence supports the notion that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with ASD. Additional studies are needed to further define the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in ASD." [Emphasis mine]

A Pediatrician Responds

In response to the Italian case, Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, MDvii, posted the following statement on his Facebook page:

“One of the reasons the measles vaccine was originally administered to children was to prevent against the unfortunate, but rare complication of a measles infection-SSPE (Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis). Before the measles vaccine was licensed for use in the US in 1963, the CDC reports that 400,000 cases of measles infections occurred each year in the US. Yet, the incidence rate of measles encephalitis (SSPE) was only .0061 %. Encephalitis is another term for brain inflammation, and it occurs rarely after a measles infection due to a slow viral infection of the brain weeks, months or even years after the resolution of a measles infection.

According to the CDCviii , there were 368 cases of SSPE in US citizens between 1969 and 1981. 55 % (202) of the cases had only a history of having had a measles infection. 14 % (51) had a history of only having received the measles vaccine, and 17% had a history of having had both the natural measles infection and the measles vaccine. 14% (52) gave no history of either having had the measles infection or the vaccine. These data clearly show that SSPE can occur after a subset of people have received the measles vaccine.

The development of encephalitis is not just limited to people, who experience a natural measles infection. According to the CDC, 1 in 88 US children have received the diagnosis of autismix. In children with autism, we are finding that they too have a considerable amount of brain inflammation. In other words, children with autism also suffer from encephalitis.

Since the CDC points out that encephalitis can occur in people who receive the measles vaccine, it is scientifically valid to say that in a subset of the 1 in 88 children who suffer from autism, i.e., brain inflammation, the measles vaccine they received may have contributed to the onset of their brain inflammation. So, here's the tradeoff. We've gone from an encephalitis incidence rate post measles infection of .0061% to an encephalitis incidence rate post measles vaccination of 1.14% (1 in 88 children).

As a result of the use of the measles vaccine, we see fewer obvious cases of acute measles infections. Instead, however, we now have many more clinical cases of chronic brain inflammation, the very complication of a natural measles infection that the vaccine was supposed to protect against.

I'd say the measles vaccine program has failed to accomplish what it was meant to do, and now, as a result of our attempts to minimize the rare complication of a measles infection by stopping children from experiencing a measles infection, we have created the very problem of an inordinate amount of children with chronic brain inflammation. “

Why Don't Health Agencies Look At Risks of Excess Vaccinations?

Bear in mind that vaccine safety is not just about individual vaccines. Dr. Russell Blaylock has written an excellent paper that explains the connection between excessive vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism that is definitely worth reading.

Dr. Blaylock is suggesting that vaccines can over-stimulate your child's immune system and, when several vaccines are administered together, or in close succession, their interaction may completely overwhelm your child's developing immune system.

It's your child, so it's up to you to make an informed decision. For parents who are looking for the truth about vaccinations, I invite you to continue your journey by searching this site and other reliable resources like the National Vaccine Information Center for more information.


Why We Must Insist on Invoking the Precautionary Principle

If multiple toxic exposures and poor nutrition is to blame, then trying to tease out "the" primary culprit for autism will get us nowhere. I believe we must tackle the issue of ASD with a much wider aim, and that is to:

1. Reduce ALL toxic exposures
2. Improve nutrition for pregnant women and young children
3. Improve digestive health of pregnant women and young children, and test all newborns to evaluate their digestive flora to help determine the safest time to vaccinate, for those who choose to do so

This tactic includes but is not limited to reducing the vaccine load, especially in the US where children receive the most vaccines of any country on the planet. I believe it's imperative to invoke the precautionary principle with respects to vaccines, and, at the very least, allow people to opt out if they so choose.

While vaccine advocates tend to stress the importance of so-called "herd immunity," saying the vaccine will not work unless the majority is vaccinated, there's a great price to pay by forcing everyone into a one-size-fits-all mold.

Not only are some children at greater risk for vaccine damage than others, but we also eliminate the ability to evaluate the health risks of vaccinations if no one is allowed to opt out. We NEED to conduct comparison studies to evaluate the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, yet such studies are not done.

An oft-cited reason for that is that it would be unethical to not vaccinate certain children... But this is not really a reasonable excuse today, as many parents want to opt out of one or more vaccines for their children.

Deciding whether or not to vaccinate your child is a VITAL decision with very high stakes. I implore you to avoid exclusively relying on the advice of public health officials and the media, which are clearly biased and influenced by vaccine industry money. There is a revolving door between many federal regulatory, policymaking and research agencies, like the FDA, CDC and NIH. Former heads of several of these government health agencies are now executives in two of the largest pharmaceutical corporations marketing vaccines in the world.

There are major conflicts of interest between the vaccine industry and government health agencies, which virtually makes it impossible to receive objective advice from them. It is crucial to investigate the other side of the vaccine story and evaluate the risks of vaccines before you make your decision.


One good place to start is NVIC.org as they have been providing accurate and balanced vaccine information and insights to parents on this topic for the last 30 years.

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I encourage you to read the following; very insightful IMHO.
Last evening, Lezlee and I watched part of the movie "Burzynski", regarding a doctor and his discovery of a cancer treatment, and his valiant patients fighting against the ... well, you'll see.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... movie.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food and Drug Administration in American history.

In the 1970’s, Dr. Burzynski made a remarkable discovery that threatened to change the face of cancer treatment forever. His non-toxic gene-targeted cancer medicine could have helped save millions of lives over the last two decades had his discovery not been criminally suppressed by the US government, as his therapy, called “antineoplastons,” have been shown to effectively help cure some of the most “incurable” forms of terminal cancer.

This documentary takes you through the treacherous 14-year journey Dr. Burzynski and his patients have had to endure in order to finally obtain FDA-approved clinical trials of antineoplastons.

His story is yet another testament that fact can be far stranger than fiction, as the film exposes the powerful, unscrupulous forces that work to maintain the status quo of the medical- and pharmaceutical industry at any cost—including the lives of millions of people.


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Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski was born in the early 1940's in Poland, and was trained as both a biochemist and a physician. He's spent the last 35 years developing and successfully treating cancer patients suffering with some of the most lethal forms of cancer at his clinic in Houston, Texas.

I recently interviewed Dr. Burzynski about his cancer treatment—a gene-targeted approach using non-toxic peptides and amino acids, known as antineoplastons. Here, I will follow up with a review of his recently released documentary, Burzynski, The Movie.

It's an absolute jaw-dropper...

For anyone who has ever been affected by cancer, either directly or indirectly, the facts presented in this film will hit you like a rude slap in the face.

You will learn that not only did the US Federal government spend 14 years actively suppressing a cancer treatment that had a FAR greater success rate than any other treatment available, they also spent well over $60 million of US taxpayer dollars trying to put the inventor of the treatment in jail in order to steal his patents and either suppress or cash in on his discovery.

This film is an absolute MUST-SEE, as the summary I'm about to present below simply cannot do it justice. It's available for purchase at BurzynkiMovie.com, where you can view the first half-hour for free. The site also contains a large number of video clips, as well as a full transcript of the entire film, along with links to all the documentation presented.

What's so Special about Dr. Burzynski's Treatment?

The story begins back in the early 1970's when Dr. Burzynski discovered that people with cancer lacked a certain peptide, while those who were cancer free had a plentiful supply of it.

This finding eventually led him to create a medical treatment referred to as antineoplastons. The drug contains a mixture of peptides and derivatives of amino acids. These were known to act as molecular switches, but as genome research blossomed and science progressed, Dr. Burzynski discovered they also work as genetic switches, and that is why antineoplastons work so well. They're actually able to turn on cancer suppressing genes, while simultaneously turning oncogenes (cancer genes) off.

As explained in the film:

"Our bodies contain two categories of genes that allow cancer to flourish: oncogenes, and tumor suppressor genes. When someone has cancer, they have a higher level of oncogenes switched on, with a higher level tumor suppressor genes switched off.

The goal is to tell the body to both switch back on the tumor suppressor genes, and turn off as many oncogenes as possible."

While other gene targeting cancer drugs now exist, they're only capable of targeting a small number of specific cancer genes. Antineoplastons, on the other hand, targets a wide spectrum of cancer genes—about 100 of them at once. In a very simplistic way, antineoplastons are to cancer what a broad-spectrum antibiotic is to infectious disease.

Success Rates of Chemo and Radiation versus Antineoplastons

The film features several remarkable case stories of people who were successfully cured of cancer, but it's when the clinical trial data of conventional therapies versus antineoplastons are stacked against each other that the benefits of antineoplastons become really obvious:

Radiation or Chemotherapy Only Antineoplastons Only
5 of 54 patients (9 percent)
were cancer free at the end of treatment 5 of 20 (25 percent)
were cancer free at the end of treatment
Toxic side effects No toxic side effects
Tackling Childhood Brain Tumors

Dr. Burzynski was so confident in his antineoplastons that he even accepted the most difficult and "hopeless" cases, such as childhood brain tumors. Conventional medicine has little or nothing to offer in these cases, and the side effects can be as horrific as the disease itself, if not more. Furthermore, the best outcome conventional treatment can offer is to slow down the growth of the tumor.

Using antineoplastons, however, Dr. Burzynski has been able to successfully cure many of these otherwise hopeless cases, such as Jessica Ressel.

She was 11 years old when she was diagnosed with brainstem glioma—an incurable brain tumor. After learning that she would die no matter what toxic drugs and radiation treatments she underwent, the family decided to not put her through it. When they found Dr. Burzynski, they literally had nothing to lose...

Twelve months later—after having initially been told she had but a few months to live, and given no chance of survival at all—MRI's confirmed she was cancer-free. Her brain tumor was completely resolved. Today, Jessica is a healthy 24-year old woman, pregnant with her second child.

When comparing FDA-supervised studies of treatments for lethal childhood brainstem gliomas, antineoplastons again comes out as a clear winner:

Chemotherapy Only Antineoplastons Only
1 of 107 patients (0.9 percent)
were cancer free at end of treatment 11 of 40 patients (27.5 percent)
were cancer free at end of treatment
0 of 107 patients (0 percent)
survived past five years 11 of 40 patients (27.5 percent)
survived past five years

Even more interesting, while some of Dr. Burzynski's patients did eventually die after the five-year mark, most who did NOT undergo chemotherapy prior to getting antineoplastons have gone on to live normal, healthy lives—yet another indication that in many cases, the conventional treatments are more lethal than the disease itself.

Side Effects of Chemotherapy Drugs

Here's just a sampling of the side effects of three conventional chemotherapy drugs:

* Doxorubicin (nick-name: Red Death)—leukemia, heart failure, infertility, mouth sores
* Etoposide—leukemia, nerve damage, inability to fight infections
* Cisplatin—kidney damage, hearing damage, nerve damage, infertility

Another chemo drug, Mitotane, which is derived from DDT, is also used for pediatric patients even though no studies have ever been performed to ascertain its safety or effectiveness in children.

Dr. Burzynski's Troubles Begins...

The legal battle Dr. Burzynski found himself embroiled in over his invention is convoluted to say the least. There are many bizarre twists and turns, and I strongly urge you to watch the documentary to fully appreciate what happened.

Dr. Burzynski had tried to get the FDA to review and approve antineoplastons since 1977, to no avail. To make sure he would not get into trouble for using the experimental therapy in his practice, his legal team reviewed federal and Texas state laws, confirming that he was acting within the laws and could use antineoplastons in his own practice "to meet the immediate needs of patients," since he was a licensed physician. Particularly if no other alternatives were available to the patient. He could not engage in interstate commerce, however, so he had to restrict the use of the drug to his home state of Texas.

But word spread, and patients started traveling to his office from out of state.

Suddenly, in 1984, he found out that agents from the Texas board of medical examiners were traveling to patients across the country trying to convince them to file charges against him.

What followed next truly challenges the rational mind.

Texas Board of Medical Examiners Try to Strip Away his Medical License

In 1988, despite not breaking any laws, and having produced more evidence than was required to show that his treatment was effective and that no harm was coming to his patients from it, the Texas medical board charged him with breaking a law that didn't exist, claiming it was grounds for revoking his medical license.

They didn't have a case, but kept the charges going by continuing to file slightly amended complaints, until finally, in 1993, the case went to trial. By then, 60 of Dr. Burzynski's patients had filed a petition for the medical board to stop harassing their doctor—a petition that the board successfully eliminated from the trial by filing a motion to strike it from the record.

Testifying on Dr. Burzynski's behalf, however, was a leading expert from none other than the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Dr. Nicholas Patronas, MD, a board certified radiologist since 1973, and the founder and chief of Neurology at the NCI. Even he recognized the absurdity of the board's case, and put his own career on the line to testify.

The judge ruled in Dr. Burzynski's favor, confirming that no laws had been broken.

You'd think that would be the end of it. But not so in this case. Instead of accepting defeat, the Texas medical board filed charges against Dr. Burzynski with the Texas Supreme Court.

The Method Behind the FDA's Madness

It eventually came to light that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had pressured the Texas medical board to revoke Dr. Burzynski's medical license—despite the fact that no laws were broken, and his treatment was proven safe and effective.

But WHY?

It's been stated many times that a crime can be solved simply by following the money, and this case is no exception. The FDA and the pharmaceutical industry had realized that if Dr. Burzynski's discovery—which he owned the patent for—received a fair review, chemotherapy and radiation would rapidly dwindle into obscurity, effectively crippling the industry. Not only that, but if antineoplastons were approved, billions of dollars of cancer research funds would get funneled over to one single scientist who had exclusive patent rights...

Dr. Richard Crout, Director of the FDA Bureau of Drugs, once wrote in a 1982 newsletter:

"I never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited finances."

It became clear that ever since 1977, when Dr. Burzynski first tried to get antineoplastons approved, the FDA had begun scheming to eliminate the threat he and his discovery posed to the entire cancer industry...

The Harassment Continues Unabated

The FDA, under the direction of Commissioner Dr. David Kessler, called no fewer than FOUR different grand jury investigations into Dr. Burzynski's practice, despite the fact that none of the grand juries ever found him to be at fault, and no indictment ever came from any of the investigations.

But the FDA did not let up.

Finally, in 1995, just days after the final grand jury investigation, which also had found no fault, Dr. Burzynski was inexplicably indicted on charges of fraud, and 75 counts of violating federal law. If found guilty, he now faced 290 years in federal prison, and $18.5 million in fines.

A year later, in a bizarre twist brought about by congressional and public pressure, the FDA agreed to accept all of Dr. Burzynski's patients into a series of 72 FDA-supervised phase 2 clinical trials.

A 1996 article in The Washington Post noted:

"The prosecution marks the first time the FDA has tried to jail a scientist for using a drug on which he is conducting FDA authorized clinical trials."

Federal Government Spent $60 Million Trying to Bury Dr. Burzynski

This second trial cost American tax payers a whopping $60 million just in legal fees alone—that's not counting the cost of continually harassing him (including several raids on his office) and his patients over the preceding 11 years. Dr. Burzynski spent $2.2 million on his own defense, $700,000 of which was raised by Dr. Julian Whitaker through requests for donations in his newsletter Health & Healing.

On March 4, 1997, the judge declared it a mistrial, due to a deadlocked jury. However, after stating the government had not presented sufficient evidence in its case, he ordered that Dr. Burzynski be acquitted of 42 of the 75 counts.

But the FDA wasn't done yet. They took him to court AGAIN!

Third Time's the Charm...

At this point, many were becoming increasingly aware that something very bizarre and unusual was going on. Jurors from the first trial even joined patients in protests outside the court house. One clear-headed juror from the previous trial stated:

"Please don't waste my money abusing the system to make sure that you maintain your power!"

On May 28, 1997, after three hours of deliberation, the jury came back with their final verdict: Not Guilty.

By now you're probably thinking that this victory surely must mark the end of the wrongful harassment of Dr. Burzynski.

But no. It gets worse.

Secret Dealings Hide True Intents

While this ongoing drama unfolded over the course of more than a decade, something even more sinister was taking place behind the scenes, unbeknownst to Dr. Burzynski and his legal counsel.

In 1989, Dr. Burzynski had retained Dr. Dvorit Samid as a research consultant, and she did a lot of work with the antineoplaston ingredients. At the time, Dr. Samid worked at the Uniformed Services Medical School in Baltimore. She later transferred to the National Cancer Institute.

By 1990—while the Texas medical board kept filing one amended complaint after the other against Dr. Burzynski, in an effort to revoke his license—he had decided that the easiest way to keep the government from putting him out of business or in prison, was to partner with a pharmaceutical company. As luck would have it, he'd treated the sister-in-law of the Chairman and CEO of Élan Pharmaceuticals, and Élan eagerly drafted a letter of intent stating they would aggressively pursue the filing of the necessary protocols with the FDA for approval and marketing of antineoplastons.

Dr. Samid began working closely with Élan on the project. But once the financing, licensing agreements and royalties had been negotiated and agreed upon, Élan suddenly changed its tune, stating they had significant doubt as to whether the active substances could be patented, which would render an agreement meaningless.

As it turns out, Élan had instead partnered with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where Dr. Samid got the position of section chief. They then co-sponsored laboratory research and clinical trials on just one of the antineoplastons' ingredients—an ingredient that Dr. Burzynski had NOT been able to patent due to the fact that it was already known. However, he had also already determined it to be very limited in terms of effectiveness on its own, over a decade ago.

Élan and the NCI spent tens of millions of dollars testing this single ingredient... Not surprisingly, it failed. Dr. Burzynski had already established that the ingredients must be used in combination in order to be effective. After realizing they could not duplicate the effectiveness of Dr. Burzynski's antineoplastons, the NCI finally agreed to conduct his clinical trials under the direction of Dr. Michael Friedman.

Sabotaging Trials—Par the Course for the National Cancer Institute

How do you sabotage a clinical trial?

It's actually easier than you might think. You'll have to watch the film to get all the details, but in summary, the trials were closed prior to completion, and were written off with the statement that "no conclusion can be made about the effectiveness or toxicity of antineoplastons." But it was clear, based on the study data, that seven of the nine patients enrolled received NO antineoplastons whatsoever! The others received dosages that were far lower than recommended.

Adding insult to injury, in 1999, about a year after Dr. Burzynski had been acquitted a third and final time, the NCI published these invalid trials in the medical literature, citing antineoplastons as a complete failure. So sure, Dr. Burzynski was a free man; cleared of all charges and free to practice medicine, but now the National Cancer Institute had effectively undermined the credibility and commercial viability of his medical discovery...

What the film reveals next, truly boggles the mind.

After the National Cancer Institute intentionally violated all protocols of their own antineoplaston trials, and after all state and federal agencies had failed in their 14-year campaign to remove Burzynski from society—after all of the dust settled—a profound truth began to emerge.

Theft and Patent Infringement—All in a Day's Work

In October 1991—while the Texas medical board kept filing amended complaints against him in an effort to revoke his license, due to pressure from the FDA—the National Cancer Institute (NCI) had conducted a site visit to Dr. Burzynski's clinic, and verified that "anti-tumor activity was documented by the use of antineoplastons."

As it turns out, a mere 17 days after this visit, the United States of America as represented by "The Department of Health and Human Services," filed a patent for antineoplastons AS2-1... one of the two antineoplastons Dr. Burzynski had already patented.

The inventor listed?

"Dr. Dvorit Samid," Dr. Burzynski's former research consultant. The patent states:

"The invention described herein may be manufactured, used and licensed by or for the government, for governmental purposes, without the payment to us of any royalties thereon."

Over the next four years, while the witch hunt to put Dr. Burzynski behind bars was in full swing, the US Government filed 10 more patents antineoplastons.

By the summer of 1995, around the time that Burzynski was indicted for fraud and 75 counts of violating federal law, Dr. Michael Friedman—who sabotaged the NCI antineoplastons trials—had left the NCI and become Deputy Commissioner of Operations for the FDA, working directly under FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler—the man responsible for dragging Dr. Burzynski in front of no less than four different grand juries a few years earlier.

In November of 1995, a month into Dr. Burzynski's trial, where he faced 290 years in prison, the US Patent office approved the first US Government patent for antineoplastons. Between 1995 and 2000, the US Patent office approved all 11 copycat patents on antineoplastons AS2-1....

Who Pays for Their Crimes?

By now your head is probably spinning, so let's recap.

Dr. Burzynski developed a cancer treatment that surpassed all other treatments on the market, and the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, and the National Cancer Institute all knew it. They also knew he was the sole owner of the patents for this therapy, and these two facts combined, threatened the entire paradigm of the cancer industry.

The cancer paradigm is based on very expensive machines and toxic drugs. There's an enormous amount of money to be made in this paradigm, and Dr. Burzynski single-handedly threatened to overturn it.

So they tried to copy his invention using a single non-patented ingredient. It failed. The next step was to steal the whole thing right from under him. There was just one problem. They knew they couldn't use the stolen patents as long as Dr. Burzynski walked free and had the ability to defend his rights to them... So they concocted 75 fraudulent charges to tuck him away in jail for the rest of his life.

Fortunately for us, they failed in that too.

Dr. Whitaker sums it up nicely when he says:

"How can the US Patent office be corrupted to the point they issue patents for a medical treatment that's already been patented and issue them to someone who had nothing to do with their discovery or use? And how can the Patent office then assign these fraudulent patents to some of the most powerful institutions in the American government? And, imagine, all of this was done while these same agencies were spending millions of taxpayer dollars trying to put Dr. Burzynski in jail, so he could not fight the criminal theft of his discovery!"

As I said in the beginning, the facts of this case challenge the mind of any sane and rational person, but make no mistake about it: These things did happen, and Dr. Burzynski has all the documentation to back it up.

The US Government did harass and intimidate, and they did try to falsely imprison a brilliant scientist, simply because he'd discovered an effective cancer therapy, while simultaneously engaging in patent infringement.

Now, while this was an enormous personal hardship for Dr. Burzynski, the US Government also, through their enormous greed, in a very direct way prevented millions of cancer patients to receive a non-toxic therapy that could have saved their life. Remember, Dr. Burzynski has been trying to get antineoplastons reviewed and approved since 1977, to no avail. It's absolutely heartbreaking to consider the cost of this criminal behavior in terms of human life, including young children.

The Deadly, But Highly Profitable, Cancer Paradigm

While the stolen patents are filled with useful information about the benefits and efficacy of antineoplastons, one statement in particular sums up the problem with the current cancer paradigm:

"Current approaches to combat cancer rely primarily on the use of chemicals and radiation, which are themselves carcinogenic and may promote recurrences and the development of metastatic disease."


Dr. Burzynski's therapy, as you may recall, is non-toxic, giving patients the option to at least not suffer more grievous harm from the treatment itself, in addition to a significantly greater chance of being cured.

I'm sure that whenever someone donates their hard-earned money or participates in a pink-ribbon walkathon, they believe they're doing a good thing. They believe they're helping fund vital cancer research that will hopefully, some day, find a cure for cancer. Little do they know that much of this money goes toward perpetuating the status quo of cancer treatment, namely highly toxic drugs and expensive machines—the same old paradigm centered around profit.

As of 2010, the National Cancer Institute's annual budget is $5.2 billion. Dr. Burzynski cannot get a single dime of it. All of his research into antineoplastons over the past 35 years has been self-funded.

Think about that for a moment. Not one dime has been funneled toward developing one of the most promising cancer therapies to emerge in the past three decades... Are you still convinced they have your best interest at heart, and are diligently working to "find a cure for cancer"?


Sources:

* Burzynskimovie.com

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Seen this movie, very interesting. Sadly the FDA and government are trying to shut him down.

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

Post by BroJones »

karend77 wrote:Seen this movie, very interesting. Sadly the FDA and government are trying to shut him down.
Agreed, VERY sad ... and note that while the Feds have tried to shut down Dr Burzynski, they have gone ahead with US patents on the SAME antineoplaston approach that Dr Burzynski pioneered! Its explained in the movie, "Burzynski".

Along the same lines, a Dr. Gonzales has also provided a highly successful cancer treatment approach involving DIET changes -- and (wouldn't you guess it?) the Feds are trying to shut him down. Fortunately, we still have freedom of FOOD CHOICE in this country...
Dr. Mercola's Comments:



Alternative cancer treatments are a kind of "forbidden area" in medicine, but Dr. Gonzalez chose to go that route anyway, and has some remarkable success stories to show for his pioneering work.

He didn't set out to treat cancer at first however, let alone treat patients. His original plan was to be a basic science researcher at Sloan-Kettering, a teaching hospital for Cornell Medical College. He had a chance meeting with William Kelley, a controversial dentist who was one of the founders of nutritional typing. Dr. Kelley had been practicing alternative- and nutritional approaches for over two decades at the time, led him to begin a student project investigation of Kelley's work, in the summer of 1981.

"I started going through his records and even though I was just a second year medical student, I could see right away there were cases that were extraordinary," he says. "Patients with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer, metastatic breast cancer in the bone, metastatic colorectal cancer… who were alive 5, 10, 15 years later under Kelley's care with a nutritional approach."

This preliminary review led to a formal research study, which Dr. Gonzalez completed while doing his fellowship in cancer, immunology and bone marrow transplantation.

The "Impossible" Recoveries of Dr. Kelley's Cancer Patients

After going through thousands of Kelley's records, Dr. Gonzalez put together a monograph, divided into three sections:

1. Kelley’s theory
2. 50 cases of appropriately-diagnosed lethal cancer patients still alive five to 15 years after diagnosis, whose long-term survival was attributed to Kelley’s program
3. Patients Kelley had treated with pancreatic cancer between the years 1974 and 1982

According to Dr. Good, the president of Sloan-Kettering who had become Gonzalez' mentor, if Kelley could produce even one patient with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer who was alive 5-10 years later, it would be remarkable. They ultimately tracked down 22 of Kelley's cases. Ten of them met him once and didn't do the program after being dissuaded by family members or doctors who thought Kelley was a quack.

The average survival for that group was about 60 days.

A second group of seven patients who did the therapy partially and incompletely (again, dissuaded by well-intentioned but misguided family members or doctors), had an average survival of 300 days.

The third group consisting of five patients, who were appropriately diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and who completed the full program, had an average survival of eight and a half years! In Dr. Gonzalez' words, this was "just unheard of in medicine."

One of those patients included a woman diagnosed by the Mayo Clinic with stage four pancreatic cancer who had been given six months to live. She'd learned about Kelley's program through a local health food store. She completed his treatment and is still alive today, 29 years later.

The Truth about Medical Journals: Why Gonzalez's Book Was Never Published

However, despite—or rather because of—the remarkable success of the treatment, Gonzalez couldn't get his findings published.

"We tried to publish case reports in the medical journals; the whole book, parts of the book, individual case reports—with no success," he says.

This is an important point that many fail to realize.

Those of us who practice natural medicine are frequently criticized for not publishing our findings. My justification for that is that it's not going to be published anyway, and Dr. Gonzalez' anecdotal story confirms this view.

His mentor and supporter, Dr. Good, was one of the most published authors in the scientific literature at that point, with over 2,000 scientific articles to his name. He'd been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, and yet he was refused because the findings were "too controversial," and flew in the face of conventional medical doctrine.

If the cream of the crop is refused, how does a general primary care physician get an article published?

He doesn't…

"Robert Good was at the top of his profession: President of Sloan-Kettering, father of modern immunology, and did the first bone marrow transplant in history. Yet, he couldn't get it published," Gonzalez says. "He couldn't even get a single case report published.

In fact, I have a letter from one of the editors, dated 1987, who wrote a blistering letter to Good saying "You've been boondoggled by a crazy quack guy. Don't you see this is all a fraud?"

It was just the most extraordinary, irrational letter... [Because] the patients' names were there, the copies of their pertinent medical records were there… Any of them could have called these patients, like Arlene Van Straten who, 29 years later, will talk to anyone… But no one cared. They wouldn't do it; they didn't believe it.

They couldn't believe it.

It was very disturbing to me because I say, "It is what it is." I come out of a very conventional research orientation, and it was astonishing to me—I had assistance; I had the president of Sloane-Kettering who couldn't get this thing published because it disagreed with the philosophy that was being promoted in medicine; that only chemotherapy, radiation, or immunotherapy can successfully treat cancer, even though the success rate was abysmal.

The idea that medical journals are these objective and unbiased repositories of the truths about science is total nonsense. Most of them are owned by the drug companies. They won't publish anything that disagrees with their philosophy."

By the end of 1987, it was clear that the work would never get published, and since Dr. Good had retired from Sloan-Kettering, they no longer had the power-base to conduct clinical trials.

Dr. Kelley, realizing his work would never be accepted, let alone get published, "went off the deep end," in Dr. Gonzalez' words, and stopped seeing patients altogether.

"When I last spoke to him in the summer of 1987, he accused me of being part of a CIA plot to steal his work, and I knew that I had to move on," Dr. Gonzalez says.

"To this day, of course, I give him credit for his brilliant innovation. It's kind of like Semmelweis, who ended up going crazy during the 19th century after showing doctors should wash their hands before delivering babies and no one accepted that. Semmelweis just went off the deep end, and that's what kind of what happened to Kelley, I say with great sadness."

Starting the Alternative Cancer Treatment Practice

Dr. Gonzalez set up a practice in New York together with his associate, Dr. Linda Isaacs, and started seeing patients using Kelley's three-pronged approach. The results were impressive.

One of his remarkable success stories includes a woman diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, which is the most aggressive form. She'd been given a death sentence.

Today, over 23 years later, she's still alive and well, and cancer free.

"Here's a woman that was given six months to a year to live AND developed metastases while getting aggressive multi-agent chemotherapy, yet 23 and a half years later, she's alive and well, enjoying her life and just doing so well.

We could see that Kelley's approach really worked and when I report these cases I'm giving Kelley the credit because he developed this treatment," Dr. Gonzalez says.

Recognition from the National Cancer Institute

In 1993, as part of a legitimate effort to reach out to alternative practitioners, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) invited Dr. Gonzalez to present 25 of his cases in a closed-door, invitation-only session. On the basis of that presentation, the NCI suggested he conduct a pilot study with patients diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer, which in conventional medicine is known to be an untreatable, highly lethal form of cancer.

Interestingly, Nestle stepped in to finance this pilot study. It may seem an odd choice, but the business motivation was the same then as it is today—making junk food appear healthier is a good business move, even if it's only in theory.

Supervised directly by Dr. Ernst Wynder, a premier cancer researcher, the study was completed in early 1999 and published in June that year. According to Dr. Gonzalez:

"It showed the best results for the treatment of pancreatic cancer in the history of medicine."

Chemo Therapy vs. the Kelley Treatment

To put his results in perspective, the chemo drug, Gemzar, approved for pancreatic cancer dates back to 1997, and the major study that led to its approval had 126 patients. Of those, 18 percent lived one year. Not a single patient out of the 126 lived beyond 19 months.

Dr. Gonzalez' study had 11 participants, of which:

* Five survived for two years
* Four survived three years
* Two survived five years

Based on these results, the NCI decided to fund a large scale clinical trial, to the tune of $1.4 million, to test his nutritional approach against the best chemo available at the time.

"My friends say "Why did you get involved with something like this? How could you trust the NCI?"

Well, the NCI had been very fair, up to that point, and the then-director, Richard Klausner, in face-to-face meetings with him said he thought I was doing something really interesting and needed to be properly supported," Dr. Gonzalez says.

But that goodwill soon disappeared.

How to Sabotage a Clinical Study 101

About a year after the study was approved, Klausner left the NCI and was replaced by new management with a wholly different attitude.

"[F]rom our first meeting, we knew something has changed significantly," Dr. Gonzalez says, "and all the people that had initially been assigned to the study, who were supportive and believed we were doing something useful, were taken off it. In fact one of them couldn't even talk to me. She said she'd be fired if she talked to me; if she took my phone call.

I was told by another person who had supported me at the NIH that I shouldn't call him at his office; that he was afraid his line was tapped, and I should only call him at home.

That's how insane the politics over this clinical study got. I couldn't believe it! I thought this was just something you'd read about or see on TV, or that some paranoid or crazy person would make up. But here I was living it. Coming out of Robert Good's group, I don't say that to impress people, but my background is so pure and conventional! It was unbelievable to see that the profession I respected and wanted to join could behave like this."

Unfortunately, the study was, in the end, sabotaged.

"Turned out the principal investigator at Columbia, who's supposed to be completely neutral, had helped develop a chemo regimen that was being used against us—a conflict of interest that was never declared," Dr. Gonzalez explains.

"[T]here are specific requirements for entry into a clinical study. Ours is a nutritional program, and when the first protocol version was written, we had a list of specified criteria… They have to be able to eat…Ours is a nutritional program, so patients have to be able to eat. If they can't eat, they can't do the therapy. They have to be able to take care of themselves…

This is a program the patients have to follow at home.

… Initially, the patients could do it and responded to the treatment. Then, there was a sudden change, around 2000-2001, when the Columbia group took total control of the entry of patients in the study. We were excluded from that process, except during the initial months. The thinking was that if we were involved in the admission process, we'd enter the dreaded bias, whereas if conventional doctors were in control, they couldn't possibly be biased.

Of course, the chief investigator helped develop the chemo regimen used in the study. That's virtually the definition of a 'potential bias'!

He started sending us patients that couldn't eat. We had patients that were so sick we would never have accepted them into our private practice. That were so sick, they died before they got the treatment.

Whether it was a trick to the protocol or not, the Columbia team, the NCI, and the NHI insisted that we had an "intent to treat provision into protocol". This means that the minute a patient is accepted into the trial, they're considered treated, even if they never do the therapy. So the chief of the study at Columbia would enter patients that were so sick, several died before they could pursue their treatment. But because of this intent to treat provision into protocol, they were considered treatment failures.

Ultimately, 39 patients were entered for treatment. Maybe at best, being kind and optimistic, maybe five or six actually did it, the great majority were so sick they couldn't do it."

As a result, the chemo treatment appeared to be a clear winner in this head-to-head evaluation of treatments against incurable pancreatic cancer.

In 2006, Dr. Gonzalez and his partner filed a complaint with the Office of the Human Research Protection (OHRP), which is a group responsible for making sure federal-funded clinical trials are run properly. After a two-year investigation, the OHRP determined that 42 out of 62 patients had been admitted inappropriately. Unfortunately, this never made it to the media, and the Columbia team was able to publish the research findings without mentioning the results of the OHRP review.

"So the study was a total boondoggle; a waste of $1.4 million," Dr. Gonzalez says. "Even though I won the grant, all the money went to Columbia. It's all gone. The data, as far as I'm concerned, is worthless, and the NIH and NCI are using it to show that my therapy doesn't work.

So that's how this long journey of 30 years, from when I first met Kelley, has gone.

"I tell people now regarding the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I wouldn't send a dog to that group.

They're not there to help you objectively investigate alternative therapies; they're there to undermine them. It gives the illusion that the government's interested in alternative therapies, when in fact that office is being used, as it was in my case, to help undermine promising useful alternative therapies."

Gonzalez's Three-Pronged Approach to Cancer Treatment

Although most of the studies done on this approach were done on pancreatic cancer, Dr. Gonzalez uses it to treat ALL cancers, from brain cancer to leukemia. His treatment, which is based on Kelley's work, consists of three protocols: diet, supplements and enzymes, and detoxification.

The Dietary Protocol:

The cornerstone of the treatment is a personalized diet based on your nutritional- or metabolic type.

Dr. Kelley originally had 10 basic diets and 90 variations that ranged from pure vegetarian and raw food, to heavy-protein meals that included red meat three times a day.

"In terms of diet, Kelley… found that patients diagnosed with the typical solid tumors: tumors of the breast, lungs, stomach, pancreas, liver, colon, uterus, ovaries, and prostate needed a more vegetarian diet," Dr. Gonzalez explains. "But he had all gradations of a vegetarian diet; one that was 80 percent raw, one that was 80 percent cooked. So even on the vegetarian side, there were all different variations.

Some had minimal animal protein, some had fish, some had also red meat.

A patient with immune cancer (leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, and sarcomas,( which are connective tissue cancers that are related to immune cancers) tended to do best on a high-fat, high meat diet.

… Then there are balanced people that do well with a variety of foods, both plant foods and animal products, but they don't tend to get cancer.

Cancer tends to occur on the extremes, the extreme vegetarians—those that tend to be too acid—or extreme meat eaters, who tend to be too alkaline. Balanced people don’t tend to get cancer too much. So we continued the individualized approach, as did Kelley."

Individualized Supplementation and Enzyme Protocol:

The second component is an individualized supplement protocol, designed for your particular metabolism.

"For example, our vegetarian patients need completely different supplements from our meat eaters. The vegetarians do very well with most of the B vitamins, while the meat eaters don't. The vegetarians don't do well with vitamin A, but the meat eaters do. The vegetarians do well with vitamin D; the meat eaters not so well with large doses, and so on," Dr. Gonzalez explains.

"The meat eaters do well with calcium ascorbate as a vitamin C source, while the vegetarians do well with large doses of ascorbic acid. So the supplement protocols are very individualized and very precisely engineered."

Omega-3 fats are also prescribed, but even here Dr. Gonzalez prescribes different types of omega-3's depending on the patient's nutritional type. In his experience, vegetarians, or carbohydrate types, tend to fare better on flaxseed oil, which contains alpha linoleic acid (ALA) – a plant-based omega 3.

"It is thought that the conversion of the plant-based ALA into the fish-oil based eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is not that efficient," he says, "But we find that our vegetarian patients actually do it very well and don't use the fish oil or animal-based omega-3 fatty acids as effectively."

Chia and hemp seed oils can also be used.

Protein types, on the other hand, appear to need the EPA and the DHA and do better on animal-based omega-3 such as krill oil.

"They don't do well with flaxseed," he says. "Those are the people who can't make the conversion."

In addition to vitamins, minerals and trace elements, he also prescribes large doses of pancreatic enzymes.

"The essence of Kelley's work was based on the work of Dr. Beard, which goes back to the turn of the last century, about 110 years ago. Beard was a professor at the University of Edinburg, an embryologist actually, not a medical researcher, who first proposed that pancreatic proteolytic enzymes are the main defense against cancer in the body and are useful as a cancer treatment," he explains.

When treating cancer, however, he found it's important to take the right ratio of active and inactive enzymes. The inactive precursors are particularly active against cancer. They also have far longer shelf life, and are more stable.

"That would be my advice – get an enzyme that isn't completely activated," Dr. Gonzalez says. "More active isn't better when it comes to pancreatic enzymes, just like more and more D isn't better than getting the right dosage. You want the right proportions of activated and inactive—most of it as an inactive precursor."

His proprietary enzyme formula is manufactured by NutriCology. According to Dr. Gonzalez, pancreatic enzymes are not only useful as treatment for active cancer but are also one of the best preventive measures.

Antioxidants, such as astaxanthin, are also very helpful, both in the prevention and treatment of cancer.

The Detoxification Protocol:

The third component is a detoxification routine. Coffee enemas are used to help your liver and kidneys to mobilize and eliminate dead cancer cells that have been broken down by the pancreatic enzymes.

Coffee enemas, although often scoffed at today, were actually used as part of conventional medicine all the way up to the 1960s, and were included in the Merck Manual, which was a handbook for conventional medical treatments into the 1970s.

"They fell out of favor not because they didn't work, but because the drug industry took over medicine, so things like coffee enemas were kind of laughed at," Dr. Gonzalez says. "So Kelley learned about coffee enemas from conventional literature and incorporated them into his program and found them extremely helpful."

When you drink coffee, it tends to suppress your liver function, but when taken rectally as an enema, the caffeine stimulates nerves in your lower bowels, which causes your liver to release toxins as a reflex. Other detox strategies include colon cleanses and liver flushes developed by Kelley.

It's important to realize, however, that conventional coffee should NOT be used for enemas. The coffee MUST be organic, naturally caffeinated coffee, and were you to do this at home, you'd also want to use non-bleached filters to avoid introducing toxins into your colon.

"[Organic coffee] is loaded with antioxidants," Dr. Gonzalez says. "In fact, there are recent studies showing that coffee loaded with antioxidants can have an anti-cancer effect and that coffee may actually help suppress cancer.

But you have to use organic coffee, it has to have caffeine, and you have to use a coffee maker that doesn't have aluminum, and preferably no plastic."

Dr. Gonzalez also relies on sodium alginate as a detoxifying agent.

"We have a preparation that we put together and it's very effective... It's an algae and it chelates heavy metals and halides. I never use intravenous chelation; we just use sodium alginate."

He recommends taking three capsules three times a day, away from meals, for six weeks to detoxify your body of heavy metals, such as mercury, and halides.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever done, and it is chock full of information—far more than I can summarize here. So please, I urge you to take the time to listen to the interview in its entirety.

In addition to expounding on the subjects mentioned above, Dr. Gonzalez also reviews the benefits of optimizing vitamin D during cancer treatment, and how iodine supplementation can benefit breast cancer—not to mention help protect against thyroid cancer, in light of the current nuclear crisis in Japan.

We discuss the benefits of juicing and chiropractic adjustments, and the importance of regular exercise for cancer patients. We also review the dangers of electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure, in terms of how it may aggravate cancer growth and hinder cancer recovery, and the benefits, along with some surprising precautions, of Earthing or grounding.

For more information about Dr. Gonzalez and his practice, see http://www.dr-gonzalez.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. He's also working on a series of books, two of which have already been published and received five-star reviews: The Trophoblast and the Origins of Cancer, and One Man Alone: An Investigation of Nutrition, Cancer, and William Donald Kelley , which is the original monograph of Dr. Kelley's work that he couldn't get published 23 years ago.

This written summary is only a small glimpse of the insights that were shared in our interview. If you or anyone you know struggles with cancer I would strongly encourage you to listen to the entire interview

Thankfully Dr. Gonzalez is still on the front lines and actively engaged in helping people by helping coach them with natural alternatives to toxic drugs and radiation.
His office is in Manhattan and he can be reached at 212-213-3337.

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

Post by BroJones »

Exercise and eating protein OR carbs? Dr Mercola explains... especially if you seek fat-reduction/ more fitness!

I'm trying to cut down EIGHT pounds by July 15th... and break through the "plateau" that I seem to be stuck on. So here we go --

By Dr. Mercola

When scientists at the University of Florida realized their student athletes needed a quick source of energy and hydration, the carbohydrate-loaded sports drink Gatorade was born.

In the 40 or so years since then, a boatload of carbed-up diet plans and so-called performance-boosting drinks and foods have hit the market, all espousing the benefits of carbohydrates and the concept of carbohydrate-loading. The idea is to saturate yourself with carbs so your muscles will have plenty of glycogen to go on while you exercise.

This worked fine for really fit athletes that were intensely working out and sweating copiously, as they needed to replace those fluids and carbs. However, it is totally inappropriate to transfer this to the vast majority of non-athletes that exercise casually, or just to get healthy, in which they are typically losing large amounts of sweat or burning carbs during their workout.

In fact new research shows there’s more to it than just stuffing yourself with carbs. Proteins, glutamic acid, leucine, and other essential amino acids also play a part in energy and sports nutrition―and there’s a certain timing of consumption that goes with them to assure that you’re getting the best results for your efforts.

The featured article in Functional Ingredients discusses the use of carbohydrates, protein and amino acids, caffeine, beta-alanine and creatine in sports nutrition.

While I agree on many points, such as the importance of whey for stimulating muscle protein synthesis, I strongly disagree with the article's stance on using multiple types of sugars to replenish glycogen stores. As I'll discuss below, the focus on carbs is one of the most detrimental pieces of advice that is still widely promoted to athletes and non-athletes alike.

Additionally, the article does not review the exciting new research on the potential benefits of intermittent fasting to boost exercise benefits, which I will expound upon below. This is an oft-ignored factor that can have a potent impact, although it's not necessarily recommended for everyone, or for every circumstance.

Sports Nutrition—Going Beyond Carb-Loading

The food you eat has an immense impact not only on your general health, but on the benefits you will ultimately reap from your workouts. What you eat can either add to or detract from your exercise benefits, and if you're devoting the time to exercise, you'd be well advised to harness your meals to support your goals, not detract from them.

First and foremost, contrary to popular advice, to maximize the benefits of exercise, you'll want to avoid fructose and other sugars unless you are engaged in intensive and prolonged cardio exercises that will allow you to burn these sugars, especially fructose, and not store them as fat.

This means that most casual exercisers and those seeking to improve body composition and optimize health and fitness rather than boost athletic performance or competitiveness, need to ditch the energy drinks, sports drinks, most energy bars and even "healthy" drinks like vitamin water, as these will effectively sabotage your exercise benefits. Fructose, which is found primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup, is particularly detrimental as it tricks your body into gaining weight by turning off your body's appetite-control system.

This happens because fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"). The end result is that you end up eating more causing uncontrolled accumulation of sugar metabolites in your liver, which then leads to insulin resistance. Fructose also rapidly leads to decreased HDL (“good” cholesterol), increased LDL (“bad” cholesterol), elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e. classic metabolic syndrome. And if that’s not bad enough, fructose has shown to increase the levels of TNF-α, a pro-inflammatory cytokine known to inhibit fat burning and promote muscle wasting.

Exercise, which in and of itself improves insulin sensitivity will NOT compensate for excessive use of fructose.

Now, in terms of its impact on your fitness, it’s important to realize that consuming fructose, including that from processed fruit juices, within two hours of your workout (before or after) will also decimate your natural human growth hormone (HGH) production.

Increasing your HGH level is a major benefit of exercise, provided you’re using high-intensity interval training, which is the primary way to boost HGH naturally (you can also use super-slow weight training to accomplish similar results). HGH is also known as “the fitness hormone,” and some athletes pay a lot of money for HGH injections. There are significant drawbacks to doing that, and the combination of eliminating fructose and using high-intensity interval training while fasting is definitely the preferred way to optimize your HGH..


Three Factors of Effective Fitness Nutrition

Fitness expert Ori Hofmekler, author of Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat, and Unlocking Your Muscle Gene, was responsible for first enlightening me to the curious paradox of boosting muscle building by exercising while fasted (meaning on an empty stomach). As it turns out, amino acids and protein serve not just as building blocks for tissues and muscle. Certain amino acids can also signal genes in your muscle to grow and to build protein, and they do that even during times of food deprivation as long as these amino acids are circulating through your blood stream.

Moreover, scientists have found that the ratio between protein and carbohydrates is critically important, especially as you age. Many make the mistake of eating too many carbs in relation to protein and fat. Research shows that high-carbohydrate diets fail to build muscle, even in younger people due to their detrimental effect on insulin. Again and again, it's the high-protein/high-fat/low-carbohydrate diet that proves the most effective both for muscle building and weight loss.

To summarize, there are three primary factors involved in effective fitness nutrition, to which you can then add the strategy of exercising while in a fasted state to further boost results:

1. A high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet. Keep in mind that most people need between 50-70 percent healthy fats in their diet, which take the place of the carbs you're eliminating. In order to build muscle, you clearly need calories, but there's compelling evidence showing that calories from fat are far better than calories from carbohydrates

2. Certain amino acids, the most notable of which is leucine (others can also be useful. Beta-alanine/carnosine, for example, has been found to improve performance in high intensity exercise and can help reduce muscle soreness). But remember that it is crucial that you avoid amino acid supplements of leucine. It is far better to get it from whole foods. Note that as free form amino acids, leucine has shown to disrupt insulin activity and cause insulin resistance. The highest source of leucine is high quality whey protein that is minimally processed and not whey protein isolate, which is overproccessed, and typically yields a massive distortion of protein and a loss of nutritional co-factors.
3. Whether you choose to exercise on an empty stomach or not, your post exercise meal is crucial to stop the catabolic process in your muscle and shift the process toward repair and growth.

If you fail to feed your muscle at the right time after exercise, the catabolic process will go too far and can potentially damage your muscle. The correct time to eat is within 30 minutes after your workout. Your meal should include fast-assimilating proteins, such as high-quality whey protein with no sugar added. To learn more, please see this previous article that discusses the use of whey protein for optimal muscle building

If you cannot exercise in a fasted state due to fatigue, or simply opt not to for some other reason, you can also consume whey protein before exercise. It's an excellent breakfast choice. A 2010 study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercisei demonstrated that consuming whey protein (20g protein / serving) 30 minutes before resistance training can boost your body's metabolism for as much as 24 hours after your workout. It appears as though the amino acids found in high-quality whey protein activate certain cellular mechanisms (mTORC-1), which in turn promote muscle protein synthesis, boost thyroid, and also protect against declining testosterone levels after exercise.

In practical terms, consuming 20 grams of net protein from quality whey before exercise and another serving of 20-30 g net protein afterward will most likely yield the double benefit of increasing both fat burning and muscle build-up at the same time. Again, not everyone will need to eat something prior to exercise, but if you do, a high-quality whey protein is your best bet. It'll curb your hunger while still optimizing fat burning.

The only exception is if you are doing strength training, as when you are fasting for 14-18 hours you typically deplete most of you glycogen stores so it is difficult to lift your maximum weight to failure. Hence, if you are doing heavy lifting to failure, you may want to avoid training while fasting on those days. In these cases it is likely helpful to consume some healthy slow releasing starchy carbs the night before working out so your glycogen stores won’t be depleted in the morning. Then, have whey protein as a pre-exercise meal to grant sufficient supply of branched chain amino acids for optimum muscle fueling during your workout.

Boost Fitness Results with Intermittent Fasting

Exercising on an empty stomach has been shown to have a number of health and fitness benefits. It may even be a key to keep your body biologically young. This is most easily accomplished if you exercise first thing in the morning, before breakfast.Part of the explanation for why exercising while fasted is beneficial is that this regimen complements your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) along with your capacity to burn fat. Your body's fat burning processes are controlled by your SNS, and your SNS is activated by exercise, and by lack of food.

The combination of fasting and exercising maximizes the impact of cellular factors and catalysts (cyclic AMP and AMP Kinases), which force the breakdown of fat and glycogen for energy. This is why training on an empty stomach will effectively force your body to burn fat.


Regardless of when you choose to exercise, remember that you need to eat 30 minutes after your workout, which will effectively break your fast. If you exercise in the late morning or early afternoon, you could break your fast by including 20 grams net protein from a fast-assimilating source like a high-quality whey protein concentrate 30 minutes before you start your exercise, and then have another recovery meal 30 minutes after.

Exercise and fasting yield acute oxidative stress, which keeps your muscles' mitochondria, neuro-motors and fibers intact. You may have heard of oxidative stress before in a negative light, and indeed, when it is chronic it can indeed lead to disease. But acute oxidative stress, such as occurs due to short intense exercise or periodic fasting, actually benefits your muscle.

As explained by Ori Hofmekler:

". . . it's essential for keeping your muscle machinery tuned. Technically, acute oxidative stress makes your muscle increasingly resilient to oxidative stress; it stimulates glutathione and SOD production in your mitochondria along with increased muscular capacity to utilize energy, generate force and resist fatigue. Hence, exercise and fasting help counteract all the main determinants of muscle aging. But there is something else about exercise and fasting. When combined, they trigger a mechanism that recycles and rejuvenates your brain and muscle tissues.

Growing evidence indicates that fasting and exercise trigger genes and growth factors, which recycle and rejuvenate your brain and muscle tissues. These growth factors include brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), Insulin Like Growth Factor (IGF-1), and muscle regulatory factors (MRFs); they signal brain stem cells and muscle satellite cells to convert into new neurons and new muscle cells respectively. Incredibly, BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. This means that exercise while fasting signals your body to keep your brain, neuro-motors and muscle fibers biologically young."

Amino Acids—Essential Building Blocks to Strengthen Muscles

As mentioned earlier, the amino acid leucine is one of the most important for fitness. It’s part of branched-chain amino acid found in certain foods, and serves multiple functions in your body, one of which is signaling the mTOR (Mammalian Target of Rapamycin) mechanism, which signals protein to be created and builds your muscle. But that’s not all.

Ori Hofmekler explains:

"Leucine has shown to promote the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin 15 (IL-15), which has been regarded as the most powerful fitness promoting protein produced by your muscle. IL-15 acts as an anti-inflammatory, anti-obesity, muscle-regenerating signaling agent with unmatching effects on body transformation and anti-aging.

Furthermore leucine along with calcium blocks the obesity promoting effect of excess Vitamin D calciferol in adipose tissues (excess of vitamin d in fat cells induces central obesity which can be blocked by calcium/leucine intake such as from dairy, particularly whey protein). Finally, leucine/IL 15 anti-inflammatory actions have been linked to mitochondrial biogenesis, increased thermogensis, and increased energy utilization efficiency probably via activation of the longevity gene SIRT-1.”

Leucine also indirectly promotes the increase of glutathione in your body, as its anti-inflammatory actions can help spare glutathione molecules that would have otherwise be recruited to counteract inflammatory processes.

However, in order to be effective, you need far more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of leucine. The reason for this is because even though leucine is relatively abundant in our food supply, it does not appear in high concentrations, and is often wasted as an energy substrate or used as a building block rather than an anabolic agent. This means that to establish the right anabolic environment, you need to increase leucine consumption beyond maintenance requirements.

That said, keep in mind that using leucine as a free form amino acid can be highly counterproductive as when free form amino acids are artificially administrated, they rapidly enter your circulation while disrupting insulin function, and impairing your body's glycemic control. Food based leucine is really the ideal form that can benefit your muscles without side effects. The highest concentrations of leucine and other branched chain amino acids (BCAA) are found in dairy products; particularly whey protein. and quality cheese.

Based on nitrogen-balance measurements, the requirement for leucine to maintain body protein is 1-3 grams daily. To optimize its anabolic pathway, you need an estimated 8g - 16g of leucine daily. The following chart presents leucine content in common foods. As you can see, whey protein is ideal for getting sufficient amounts of leucine in your diet. You only need three ounces of whey protein, compared to a pound and a half of chicken to get 8 grams of leucine:

Leucine Content in food / per 100g
Whey Protein Concentrate 8.0g
Raw Cheddar Cheese 3.6g

Lean Beef 1.7g
Salmon 1.6g
Almonds 1.5g
Chicken 1.4g
Chick Peas 1.4g
Raw Eggs 1.0g
Egg Yolk 1.4g
Sheep Milk 0.6g
Pork 0.4g
Cow Milk 0.3g

What's Your Goal? Fitness or Longevity?

In closing, I want to share some additional insights from Ori Hofmekler with regards to intermittent fasting. It’s important to realize that when it comes to diet and exercise, you actually have to tailor them to your end goal—either maximum fitness, or maximum longevity. You cannot accomplish both at the same time... This is even more pronounced for women, who also trade extreme fitness for their reproductive capacity. Below, Ori expounds on these issues.

By Ori Hofmekler

Gender is certainly an important factor in human and animal studies. Female-specific responses to fasting raise an interesting scientific phenomenon. Researchers have been finding evidence that there is indeed a tradeoff between virility and longevity of organisms. Apparently the same genes that promote human longevity may trigger biological mechanisms that suppress female reproductive capacity. Hence, fasting and intense exercise protocols, known to promote longevity, also lower estrogen level and thereby modulate body composition and suppress female reproductive capacity.

This is apparently part of an early adaption mechanism to primordial conditions of food scarcity and hardship, which requires increased strength and durability on the account of reproductivity. Hence, hard conditions are not biologically suitable times for pregnancy and child bearing.

I discussed this issue with Dr. Marc Mattson, Prof. of Neurosciences at Johns Hopkins University a few years ago. According to Mattson, women who fast or are on calorie restriction, have the tendency to get leaner, become increasingly addicted to physical exercise, and lose their menstrual cycle. Nonetheless, they seem to gain substantial improvements in all main biological markers of longevity – i.e. increased insulin sensitivity, increased GH secretion, improved lipid profile, improved anti-inflammatory cytokine profile, improved cognitive function, etc.

Note that fasting triggers the longevity gene SIRT-1, which regulates mitochondrial energy production along with the gene transcription promoter protein PGC-1α, which increases mitochondrial biogenesis and density in the muscle.

Yes, mitochondrial energy utilization efficiency is a key to longevity.

One of the most notable benefits of fasting is its profound anti-inflammatory effect.
Fasting increases production of anti-inflammatory cytokines while suppressing pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-6. Note that pro-inflammatory cytokines produced by fat cells (adipokines) are associated with insulin resistance, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and a shorter life span; whereas anti-inflammatory cytokines, such as adiponectin and IL-15, are associated with improved insulin sensitivity, increased thermogenesis, decreased fat storage, increased muscle regeneration and increased life span (this probably deserves another article).

Finally, in view of the current epidemic of excess estrogen in females and males, caused by estrogenic chemicals and foods (such as petrochemicals and soy), fasting and IF can be used as an effective therapeutic strategy to balance estrogen and prevent related metabolic disorders and cancer.

To sum this up, the female-specific response to fasting or intermittent fasting is no different than the female response to intense exercise. There is indeed a tradeoff between benefits and side effects. And the question "should women fast" raises the same issues as the question "should women exercise intensely".

References:

* i Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise May 2010: 42(5); 998-1003
________________

OK -- exercise BEFORE breakfast/while fasting; leucine; and IMHO adequate sleep!

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Re: Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

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Dr Mercola warns about dangers FROM hospitals and doctor-errors:
By Dr. Mercola

It's no secret that medical errors are one of the leading causes of death in the United States.

At a quarter million every year, they're so prevalent that if you were to add them all up, they most likely would be at least No. 3 on the death list, according to Dr. Peter Pronovost, and anesthesiologist and critical care physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

What's shocking is that the harm often is preventable.

In an effort to help consumers become their own patient advocates, CNN has compiled this list of the top 10 mistakes hospitals make, and what you can do prevent them.

1. Treating the Wrong Patient

If your identity gets mixed up with someone else's, you can get the wrong medications or even the wrong surgery. Most hospitals now give patients a wristband with your full name, date of birth and a unique barcode. Make sure this is checked and verified before every medical procedure.

2. Surgical Souvenirs

Surgical tools or other objects are left inside people after surgery far more often than you'd like to think. This is often the result of surgical staff failing to count, or miscounting, equipment during the procedure. Unexpected pain, fever and swelling after surgery are all indications that you could have a surgical tool still inside you.

Just how often does this occur? One study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that about 1,500 Americans have objects left inside of them following surgery every year.i Surgical sponges, which can fill up with blood and resemble bodily tissues, are by far the most common item left behind, but incidents involving clamps, retractors, electrodes and other objects have also been reported. If you have an emergency surgery, your likelihood of being impacted by an object left behind increases by 900 percent, and by 400 percent if unexpected changes occur during the procedure. Being overweight or obese also increases the risk.

Before heading in to surgery, alert your surgeon and attendants that you are aware of this issue, and ask them to be especially careful. Also make sure counts of surgical equipment are routine at the institution where the surgery is being performed.

3. Lost Patients

Patients with dementia or other mental disorders can wander off, get lost, become trapped in closets and even die from hypothermia, dehydration and other hazards. A GPS tracking bracelet can ensure that your loved one will always be easily locatable.

4. Fake Doctors

Sometimes con artists like to pretend they're doctors, offering medical treatments that make them rich but will only make you sicker. CNN gave the example of Sarafina Gerling, who wore a back brace advertised online by a man found guilty of insurance fraud. Gerling thought the brace would help her scoliosis, but it only made the condition worse. Make sure any health care practitioner you receive treatment from is, in fact, qualified to do so.

5. The ER Waiting Game

Emergency rooms and hospitals only have so much space, so when beds are full it can mean you're forced to wait for medical care — and that wait time can sometimes be the difference between life and death, or the loss of limbs, as happened to Malyia Jeffers, a baby who waited five hours for medical care while flesh-eating bacteria spread through her body.

6. Air Bubbles in Blood

If the hole in your chest isn't sealed correctly (airtight) after a chest tube is removed, air bubbles can enter the wound and cut off blood supply to your lungs, heart, kidneys and brain — a life-threatening event. Before having a chest tube removed, ask the nurse how you should be positioned to avoid air bubbles, and make sure the hole will be sealed airtight.

7. Operating on the Wrong Body Part

It can happen if a surgeon misreads your chart, or if the chart is incorrect. Surgical drapings can also cover marks made on a person's body to indicate where the surgery is to be performed. If you are having surgery, make sure you confirm with the surgeon, nurses and other staff that they have the correct body location on which to operate — and if any marks are drawn to indicate the area, make sure they are in the proper location.

8. Infection Infestation

Hospital-acquired infections are alarmingly common, and sadly they're often deadly. In the United States, more than 2 million people are affected by hospital-acquired infections each year, and a whopping 100,000 people die as a result. According to the 2011 Health Grades Hospital Quality in America report,ii analysis of approximately 40 million Medicare patients' records from 2007 through 2009 showed that 1 in 9 patients developed such hospital-acquired infections!

The saddest part is, most of these cases could likely have been easily prevented with better infection control in hospitals—simple routines such as doctors and nurses washing their hands between each patient, for example. Be aware and make sure doctors, nurses and other health care providers wash their hands before touching you; if you feel uncomfortable speaking up … realize that doing so could literally save your life.

9. Lookalike Tubes

Medical tubing serves a variety of unique purposes in hospitals, for instance delivering medication, fluids, food, gases or blood to different areas of the body — the veins, arteries, stomach, lungs, etc. Unfortunately, many varieties of medical tubing are interchangeable and easily connectable, meaning it is very simple to mistakenly connect a feeding tube to an intravenous line, or IV fluids to an oxygen tube, leading to suffocation.

There have been cases reported where a spinal anesthetic used for pain relief during childbirth was mistakenly put into a vein, killing the 16-year-old recipient, and a healthy young pregnant woman and her unborn daughter died after a feeding tube was mistakenly connected to an intravenous line, sending liquid food directly into her veins -- a fatal, and completely avoidable, mistake.iii

With nurses often working overtime or covering too many patients at once, it is all too easy to connect a tube improperly, leading to an often fatal outcome for the patient. A simple solution would be to change the design of the tubes so tubing for different functions are no longer compatible with one another, but so far the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been slow to take action. Until that change takes place, protect yourself by asking nurses to trace all medical tubing back to its original source to prevent mishaps.

10. Waking up During Surgery

If you receive an under-dose of anesthesia, your brain may be "awake" even if you can't move your muscles. Unable to move or speak, you may still feel the surgery taking place. Express any concerns you have with your surgeon and anesthesiologist prior to surgery, including asking about options for local anesthesia in lieu of being put to sleep.

Medical Errors are Alarmingly Common — How to Save Your Life if You're Admitted to the Hospital

Download Interview Transcript

According to the 2011 Health Grades report, the incidence rate of medical harm occurring in the United States is estimated to be over 40,000 harmful and/or lethal errors each and EVERY day.iv

In my recent interview (above) with Dr. Andrew Saul, co-author of Hospitals and Health: Your Orthomolecular Guide to a Shorter Hospital Stay (which is available on Amazon), he explained that the lowest estimate makes hospitals one of the top 10 causes of deaths in the United States ... and the highest estimate makes hospital and drugs the number one cause of death in the United States.

One of the reasons I am so passionate about sharing the information on this site about healthy eating, exercise, and stress management with you is because it can help keep you OUT of the hospital. But if you do have to go there, you need to know how to play the game.

My primary suggestion is to avoid hospitals unless it's an absolute emergency and you need life-saving medical attention. In such cases, it's worth taking one of Dr. Saul's recommendations, which is to bring a personal advocate -- a relative or friend who can speak up for you and ensure you're given proper care if you can't do so yourself. If you're having an elective medical procedure done, remember that this gives you greater leeway and personal choice—use it!

Many believe training hospitals will provide them with the latest and greatest care, but they can actually be far more dangerous.

As a general rule, avoid elective surgeries and procedures during the month of July because this is when brand new residents begin their training. According to a 2010 report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, lethal medication errors consistently spike by about 10 percent each July, particularly in teaching hospitals, due to the inexperience of new residents.v Also be cautious of weekends.

I recommend you watch the video above for more potentially life-saving tips in the event you find yourself in a hospital. Knowing how to prevent disease so you can avoid hospitals in the first place is clearly your best bet. But knowing what to do to make your hospital stay as safe as possible is equally important.

Understand that you, the patient, are the most powerful entity within the entire hospital system. However, the system works on the assumption that the patient will not claim that power. Knowing your rights and responsibilities can help ensure your hospital stay is a safe and healing one.

References:

*N Engl J Med 2003; 348:229-235
ii
HealthGrades 2011 Healthcare Consumerism and Hospital Quality in America
Report
iii
New York Times August 20, 2010
iv
HealthGrades 2011 Healthcare Consumerism and Hospital Quality in America
Report
v
"A July Effect in Fatal Medication Errors: A Possible Effect of New Medical
Residents," Journal of General Internal Medicine, August 2010: 25(8); 774-779

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