Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

Alternative/natural solution-based discussions of topics like health, medicine, science, food, etc.
Post Reply
User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Secrets of longevity
By Dr. Mercola

The search for "the fountain of youth" has a long history, from tracking down sacred, life-giving water sources in the days of antiquity, to the invention of "miracle pills" and stem cell research in the modern age, the fascination with extreme longevity is an enduring one.

One of the most recent studies1 on this topic investigated the blood of a woman who lived to be just over 115 years old. At her death, she only had two blood stem cells left, and stem cell exhaustion, the researchers believe, may explain why people eventually die at an advanced age despite being in good overall health.

How Blood Stem Cells May Affect Your Longevity

You are born with approximately 20,000 blood stem cells, which your body uses to replenish your blood. Over time, and depending on the "abuse" you put your body through, these cells become damaged and die. As your blood stem cells dwindle, your body becomes less efficient at repairing and regenerating itself.

In essence, your blood stem cells may be the proverbial "clock" that eventually runs out, no matter how well you take care of yourself. In the meantime, however, you have a great deal of control over how quickly those cells perish.

The woman also had hundreds of non-coding mutations in her white blood cells, leading the researchers to speculate that certain mutations may promote longevity.

Other recent research and accompanying editorial2 published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ)3, 4 found that low-intensity daily exercise leads to less disability in old age and a longer, healthier life, which shouldn't come as any great surprise. There are a number of other factors though that also appear to be instrumental for longevity, and many people fail to give them the consideration they deserve.

Is Your Personality Geared for Longevity?

According to results from The Longevity Project,5 a Stanford study spanning 80 years, your level of conscientiousness may have a great deal to do with how long you end up living. Having a personality that strives to do things well; being thorough and vigilant—this is a trait that most of the people who live the longest share. As noted in the featured Time Magazine article:6

"'The qualities of a prudent, persistent, well-organized person, like a scientist-professor — somewhat obsessive and not at all carefree' are the qualities that help lead to a long life. 'Many of us assume that more relaxed people live longer, but it's not necessarily the case.'

Why? Conscientious behavior influences other behaviors. Conscientious people tend to make healthier choices, including who they marry, where they work, and the likelihood they'll smoke, drive too fast, or follow doctors' orders."

The Longevity Project also dismisses the idea that hard work will kill you early. On the contrary, those who stayed productive and worked hard all their lives tended to be happier, healthier, and more social compared to those who didn't work as hard.

That's not to dismiss work stress as a factor that needs to be addressed and kept in check. There's plenty of evidence showing that chronic stress (and even acute and severe stress) can take a tremendous toll on your health.

But being productive can also lend a sense of purpose, which is also important for longevity. And working—especially in your later years—tends to keep you socially connected, which has repeatedly been shown to be an important factor for longevity.

For example, Harvard professor of public policy Lisa Berkman cites social isolation as a significant factor for premature death.7 This may be, at least in part, because those who don't have good social networks may not be able to get assistance if they become ill.

The following compilation of news segments highlights several of the oft-ignored factors that tend to promote longevity, including having a sense of purpose in life, honoring family, and even having a strong religious faith.



What and When You Eat May Greatly Impact Your Longevity Potential

No discussion about longevity would be complete without addressing diet. A processed, high-sugar diet is undoubtedly the quickest route to an early death, barring a lethal accident. This is because consuming sugar and grains increases your insulin and leptin levels, which is the equivalent of slamming your foot on your aging accelerator.

Besides that, research by Professor Cynthia Kenyon shows that carbohydrates have a direct and detrimental effect on two key genes that govern longevity and youthfulness.

One of the primary mechanisms that make intermittent fasting so beneficial is in fact related to its impact on your insulin sensitivity. While sugar is a source of energy for your body, it also promotes insulin resistance when consumed in the amounts found in our modern processed food diets. Insulin resistance, in turn, is a primary driver of chronic disease—from premature aging to heart disease and cancer.

Mounting research confirms that when your body becomes accustomed to burning fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel—which is what happens when you intermittently fast—you dramatically reduce your risk of chronic disease.


Becoming fat adapted may even be a key strategy for both cancer prevention and treatment, as cancer cells cannot utilize fat for fuel—they need sugar to thrive. Fasting also improves mitochondrial energy efficiency, which also helps to slow down aging and disease processes.

Ideally, you'll want to replace all forms of processed and refined sugars and grains with healthy fats such as butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado, grass-fed meats, and raw nuts.
Many would benefit from getting as much as 50-85 percent of their daily calories from fats.

While this may sound like a lot, consider that, in terms of volume, the largest portion of your plate would be vegetables, since they contain so few calories. Fat, on the other hand, tends to be very high in calories. For example, just one tablespoon of coconut oil is about 130 calories—all of it from healthful fat.

Most people also eat far too much protein for optimal health. Consider reducing your protein levels to one gram per kilogram of lean body weight unless you are in competitive athletics or are pregnant. In pounds, this equates to less than half a gram per pound of lean body mass. The reason for this recommendation is because excessive protein intake (you do need some) can have a great impact on cancer growth, by way of your mTOR pathway (short for mammalian target of rapamycin).

This pathway is ancient but has only become the subject of scientific investigation in the last 20 years. Odds are very high your doctor was never taught this in medical school and isn't even aware of it. Many new cancer drugs are actually designed to target this pathway. Other drugs using this pathway have been shown to radically extend the lifespan in animals. You don't need a drug to make this pathway work for you, though. You can "biohack" your body by restricting your protein intake and, again, replacing the decreased protein with healthy fats.

Mindfulness and Perpetual Motion—Two Oft-Ignored 'Fountains of Youth'

There's compelling evidence suggesting that having a calm mind and active body are two important ingredients for longevity. The meditative technique known as "mindfulness" has even been shown to have a beneficial effect on genetic expression. According to the featured article, meditation has also been found to affect the enzyme telomerase, which some researchers believe is actively involved with the process of aging. As for keeping your body active, avoiding sitting is perhaps of even greater importance than having a regular workout regimen.

The science is very clear on this point: sitting too much is a surefire way to take years off your life! And that applies even if you exercise vigorously a few times a week. Basically what the research is telling us is that getting too hung up on a once-a-day exercise routine is to put the cart before the horse. FIRST, you need to make sure you're engaging in more or less perpetual non-exercise movement
, as this is an independent risk factor for chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

You then want to add structured exercise on top of that to reap all the benefits associated with exercise. High-intensity interval training boosts human growth hormone (HGH) production, which is essential for optimal health, strength, and vigor. I've discussed the importance of Peak Fitness for your health on numerous occasions. To counteract the ill effects of sitting in my own life, I've taken to setting a timer for 15 minutes while sitting, and then stand up and do one legged squats, jump squats or lunges when the timer goes off. The key is that you need to be moving all day long, even in non-exercise, or as I now like to call them, intermittent movement activities.

To keep track of the 15 minutes, I use an XNote timer that can be downloaded for free. Rather than having an annoying alarm that might aggravate you more than anything, it simply flashes a light on your screen to remind you it's time to stand up and move. To learn more about the ins and outs about why sitting is so detrimental to your health, and what to do about it, please see my previous interview with Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division, and author of the book Sitting Kills, Moving Heals.

Being a Perpetual Student May Be One of the Most Important Secrets to a Longer Life

Education is also strongly correlated with a longer life. I personally believe it's crucial to be a perpetual student, no matter how old you get. If you think you know it all just because you went to high school or college, you might as well pack it up. It's all downhill from there. My perspective is to be a lifelong student. If I lived for several hundred years, I don't think there is enough time to learn all the topics I would like to. That said, merely getting an education can have a great impact, and perhaps it's because it teaches you to be a student. As noted in the featured article:

"A 2012 report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics found that people with a bachelor's degree or higher live about nine years longer than people who don't graduate high school. James Smith, a health economist at the RAND Corporation, is also an proponent of the argument for staying in school for better life expectancy. His findings show education may be an even bigger factor than race and income. Educated people are more likely to land better jobs, plan for their future, and make healthier lifestyle choices."

Lifestyle Choices Today That Can Multiply Your Tomorrows

The takeaway message here is that you have a great deal of control over your life expectancy, based on the personal choices you make—from how you think to how you move, and what you choose to eat—and when. For a comprehensive food guide, see my free nutrition plan, which also addresses intermittent fasting.

Naturally, there's also the issue of toxic exposures, which can take a toll on your health, so avoiding toxins is a given, right along with eating a wholesome diet of organic, unprocessed foods.
This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.

Another issue not addressed above, but which bears mentioning, is the importance of sleeping well, and getting enough of it. In a 22-year twin study,8 adults who slept more than eight hours per night, or less than seven, showed increased risk of death. Of course, the quality of your sleep is also important, not just the quantity. Optimizing your vitamin D levels through appropriate sun exposure and avoiding prescription drugs will also go a long way toward warding off an untimely death.

In the end, there is no quick fix when it comes to longevity. There is no magic pill and no fountain of youth. This makes it all the more important to find a physician who is well versed in the basic principles of a healthy lifestyle, as loading up on prescription medications will likely kill you sooner rather than later. Although some people seem to be blessed with longevity in spite of their lifestyle choices, this is the exception and not the rule. For most of us, becoming healthy Centenarians will require some effort and attention to the factors discussed above.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

This from Natural News:
Thursday, May 29, 2014 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: vaccines, immune overload, children''s health
(NaturalNews)

Immunity is crucial. But the artificial kind brought about by vaccines can be extremely damaging, especially when the body's immune response is too strong. A groundbreaking new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular and Genetic Medicine highlights the consequences of this vaccine-induced immune overload, stating that the majority of American children now suffer from the often debilitating condition.

Dr. J. Bart Classen, M.D., an immunologist with extensive knowledge about vaccine adverse events, recently investigated the current epidemic of inflammatory diseases among children. Cases of type-1 diabetes, type-2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune disorders, asthma and food allergies have been steadily increasing over the years, corresponding directly with an increase in the number of vaccines on the official vaccination schedule for children.

This is not a coincidence, according to Dr. Classen's research, as the immune responses generated by vaccines are known to cause inflammation in many people. When too many vaccines are given at once, or within a very short period of time, the body may experience an immune overload resulting in an inflammatory response.

"We have been publishing for years that vaccines are causing an epidemic of inflammatory diseases including diabetes, obesity and autism," says Dr. Classen. "However, the number of vaccines given to children has continued to rise to a point where we have reached a state of immune overload in roughly the majority of young U.S. children."


One-size-fits-all vaccines harm many children

Like with adding a standard amount of fluoride chemicals to public water supplies, the one-size-fits-all vaccine approach is problematic for many children. Each child is inherently unique, which means his or her immune system is also unique. But set vaccine schedules and doses based on age fail to take any of this into account, which ends up overwhelming many children's immune systems.

In order for vaccines to work as intended, explains Dr. Classen, each vaccine dose given at a certain age must generate the appropriate protective immune response in those with the weakest immune systems, and in at least 90 percent of children. But in the process of doing this, a great number of children end up having their immune systems over-stimulated.

"The process of over stimulating the immune system time and time again increases the risk of inflammatory diseases like autoimmune diseases, and allergies which cause even more inflammation," writes Dr. Classen in his paper. "Inflammation causes the release of cytokines which can trigger autoimmune diseases but also stimulate cortisol production, the major negative feedback loop of the immune system."

Increase in diabetes and pre-diabetes caused by immune overstimulation

It is this steady production of cortisol in response to inflammation that is so problematic. Individuals who suffer from this often tend to develop inflammation-related diseases like type-2 diabetes. They also tend to be obese and suffer from various symptoms of metabolic syndrome, demonstrating how a vaccine-induced immune response can ultimately trigger these and other diseases.

"The best data indicates that vaccine induced chronic disease is now of a magnitude that dwarfs almost all prior poisoning of humans including poisoning from agents like asbestos, low dose radiation, lead and even cigarettes," adds Dr. Classen.

"Most patients don't even realize that they are suffering from the adverse effects of vaccines. Even more concerning is that patients and/or their parents are being harassed and accused of practicing poor dieting and exercise habits, leading to the development of obesity and diabetes, when in fact they suffer from vaccine induced obesity and diabetes."

You can access a full PDF of Dr. Classen's peer-reviewed paper here:
http://www.vaccines.net/vaccine-induced ... erload.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/045351_vacci ... ealth.html#" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;#ixzz33DXoc7kJ

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

By Dr. Mercola

You don't have to diet every day to lose weight. This compelling concept is the focus of Dr. Krista Varady's book The Every-Other-Day Diet: The Diet That Lets You Eat All You Want (Half the Time) and Keep the Weight Off.

Dr. Varady is an associate professor of nutrition at my alma mater, the University of Illinois in Chicago, and in this interview, she reveals how intermittent fasting can help you achieve optimal health and weight without starving yourself every day. She explains what prompted her to investigate, and eventually write a book on this topic.

"I wanted to do a PhD in the area of calorie restriction and fasting," she says. "I wanted to find out: do you really have to diet every single day to lose weight? I noticed that people just weren't able to stick to calorie restriction programs for more than about a month or two. Everyone dropped off of their diet.

I thought: 'is there a way to manipulate that eating pattern that will allow people to stick to it longer? Maybe you could diet every other day?' That way you can always look forward to the next day, where you can eat whatever you want. Maybe that would help people kind of stick to these diets?"

As it turns out, her hunch was correct. Alternate-day fasting has a far greater retention- and compliance rate compared to conventional all-day fasting regimens. My preferred version of intermittent fasting, which simply calls for restricting your eating to a narrower window of about six to eight hours or so each day, also has a far greater success rate than more extensive fasting protocols.

Complete versus Intermittent Fasting

Complete fasting is when you consume nothing but water for 24 hours, midnight to midnight, at regularly recurring intervals. This kind of calorie restriction has well-documented health benefits, including life extension, but the compliance rate for this kind of program is low. It's just too severe for the vast majority of people.

Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term that covers a wide array of fasting schedules, including the 5:2 approach. As a general rule however, intermittent fasting involves cutting calories in whole or in part, either a couple of days a week, every other day, or even daily, as in the case of the scheduled eating regimen I use myself.

Dr. Varady's research shows that alternate-day fasting, where you consume about 500 calories on fasting days and can eat whatever you want on non-fasting days, works equally well for weight loss as complete fasting, and it's a lot easier to maintain this type of modified fasting regimen.

In her study, which was recently completed, participants ate their low-calorie fasting day meal either for lunch or dinner. Splitting the 500 calorie meal up into multiple smaller meals throughout the day was not as successful as eating just one meal, once a day.

The main problem relates to compliance. If you're truly eating just 500 calories in a day, you will lose weight. But when eating tiny amounts of food multiple times a day, you're far more inclined to want more, so the cheat rate dramatically increases.

What About Alternate-Day Fasting?

Alternate-day fasting is very much in alignment with Paleo perspectives that seek to replicate the behaviors of our ancient ancestors to optimize health. In our ancient past, people did not have access to food around the clock. They would cycle through periods of feast and famine, which modern research shows actually has biochemical benefits.

The reason so many struggle with their weight (aside from eating processed foods that have been grossly altered from their natural state) is because they're in continuous feast mode and rarely ever go without a meal. As a result, their bodies have adapted to burning sugar as its primary fuel, which down regulates the enzymes that utilize and burn stored fat. Fasting is an excellent way to "reboot" your metabolism so your body can start burning fat as its primary fuel, which will help you shed your unwanted fat stores.

"It takes about a week to 10 days or so to get used to that up-down pattern of eating," she says. "But it's amazing. Even though people struggle through the first week, they always say, 'After a week, I had no problem eating just 500 calories every other day.'"

Tips for Making It Through the Transition Period

The toughest part, of course, is getting through that initial transition, which can be anywhere from seven to 10 days. Maybe even longer for some people, depending on how insulin-resistant you are, and other factors, like your weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels, and if you are not consistent with the fasting and wind up cheating.

About 10 percent of people will report headaches as a side effect when they first start fasting, but the biggest complaint is feeling hungry. It may be helpful to remember that part of why you're craving food is because your body has not yet fully switched from burning sugar to burning fat as its primary fuel. Sugar is a fast-burning fuel, whereas fat is more satisfying. As long as your body is using sugar for fuel, it will "remind" you that it's running low and needs a refill at regular intervals. So part of the challenge is getting through that transition period. Another factor is purely psychological. As Dr. Varady explains:

"Many people are just used to eating constantly. Not only is it actual hormonal responses, but I think it's just habit... Most people eat just because they're bored. I think a lot of it is psychological—that's what takes people a while to get used to. In terms of helping people get through that, we always recommend drinking a lot of water (eight to 10 extra glasses of water a day). Because people will often think that they're hungry, but really they're thirsty...

We also tell people to watch less television. You don't realize how bombarded you are with food commercials; something like 60 percent of commercials are about food. That's why most people will end up getting a snack within half an hour when they're sitting down and watching TV."

The vast majority of Americans are overweight and most would therefore benefit from this type of eating regimen (adrenal-fatigued individuals are perhaps an exception to this rule). When done correctly, you will inevitably lose weight and your insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity will be optimized, which is really important for optimal health. The next question then becomes, do you have to continue on indefinitely with this alternate-day fasting schedule?

How Long Must You Remain on an Alternate-Day Fasting Schedule?

Dr. Varady is currently investigating this question through a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study is set up to be a year long, with six months of weight loss through alternate-day fasting, followed by six months of weight maintenance. She'll compare the results against a traditional approach of calorie restriction and traditional weight maintenance where you eat just 100 percent of your energy needs every day.

"We're almost done with the study," she says. "What we're noticing now is that people can use every-other-day dieting for weight maintenance. However, you need to tweak it a little bit in that you reduce the fasting days down to three days per week, and instead of consuming 500 calories on each of those days you'd consume 1,000... In terms of comparing it to daily calorie restriction, it actually does a little bit better. People in the every-other-day dieting group were actually able to maintain their weight a little bit better than people doing a traditional maintenance approach. "

So, it appears you do have a bit more flexibility once you've reached your weight loss goal. In terms of what to eat, Dr. Varady's book ultimately advocates transitioning into a Mediterranean-type diet.

"We do want people to slowly change their eating habits. But we find that if we kind of overwhelm people with not only the 'eat 500 calories every other day' but then tell them to change all their dietary patterns right away, people quit the diet and tend to do nothing," she says. "It's good if you can just start the actual up-down approach of eating, just the 500 calories every other day, and then slowly transition into whole foods and basically healthier foods."

So in summary, you don't have to keep on intermittently fasting forever if this is a lifestyle strategy that doesn't appeal to you long-term. If you need to lose 50 pounds, you're looking at about six months or so of intermittent fasting, after which you can revert back to eating more regularly. I strongly recommend paying careful attention to your food choices, however. Even on non-fasting days, I believe it's important to eat a diet that is:

High in healthy fats. Many will benefit from 50-85 percent of their daily calories in the form of healthy fat from avocados, organic grass-fed butter, pastured egg yolks, coconut oil, and raw nuts such as macadamia, pecans, and pine nuts
Moderate amounts of high-quality protein from organically raised, grass-fed or pastured animals. Most will likely not need more than 40 to 80 grams of protein per day.
Unrestricted amounts of fresh vegetables, ideally organic
Exercise Is an Important Part of the Weight-Loss Equation

The next question is whether or not it might be beneficial to exercise on fasting days. Will you have enough energy to exercise, and if so, what type of exercise is recommended?

"The main study that we ran on this was to see if you combined every-other-day dieting with exercise, when should you time the exercise session? And do people even want to do that?" Dr. Varady says. "We found out that, yes, you can exercise on the fast day. In general, it's better if you exercise before the fast-day meal. Because what happens is that about an hour or so after you exercise, a lot of people experience a hunger surge. If you have that fasting meal right after you exercise session, you get to eat the meal and you're happy."

Those who exercised after their fast-day meal oftentimes ended up cheating, and surpassing their 500-calorie goal for the day. So ideally, exercise before your scheduled meal for the day. In terms of the types of exercise that might be recommended, Dr. Varady has only studied endurance training. However, as I've discussed on many occasions, conventional endurance exercises like running are really among the least effective types of exercise for weight loss. From my perspective, you'd be far better off opting for some form of high intensity interval training, even on your fasting days, as this will really boost your body's ability to burn fat.

Previous research has also shown that high intensity interval training produces significant improvements in many of your hormone distributions, including brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and human growth hormone (HGH). It's also far more time efficient. Instead of 45 minutes to an hour on the treadmill, you can be done in 20 minutes. And you don't do it every day. You only do it two or maybe three times a week. No more than three because the recovery component is an important part of the program. I also recommend incorporating other types of exercise, such as strength training, core exercises, and stretching.

Who Should Use Extra Caution When Fasting, or Avoid It Altogether?

Intermittent fasting is appropriate for most people, but if you’re hypoglycemic or diabetic, you need to be extra cautious. People that would be best served to avoid fasting include those living with chronic stress (adrenal fatigue), and those with cortisol dysregulation. Pregnant or nursing mothers should also avoid fasting. Your baby needs plenty of nutrients, during and after birth, and there’s no research supporting fasting during this important time.

My recommendation would be to really focus on improving your nutrition instead. A diet with plenty of raw organic foods and foods high in healthy fats, coupled with high-quality proteins, will give your baby a head start on good health. You’ll also want to be sure to include plenty of cultured and fermented foods to optimize your—and consequently your baby’s—gut flora. For more information, please see this previous article that includes specific dietary recommendations for a healthy pregnancy, as well as my interview with Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride.

Hypoglycemia is a condition characterized by an abnormally low level of blood sugar. It’s commonly associated with diabetes, but you can be hypoglycemic even if you’re not diabetic. Common symptoms of a hypoglycemic crash include headache, weakness, tremors, irritability, and hunger. As your blood glucose levels continue to plummet, more severe symptoms can set in, such as:

Confusion and/or abnormal behavior
Visual disturbances, such as double vision and blurred vision
Seizures
Loss of consciousness
One of the keys to eliminating hypoglycemia is to eliminate sugars, especially fructose from your diet. It will also be helpful to eliminate grains, and replace them with higher amounts of quality proteins and healthy fats. You can use coconut oil to solve some of these issues as it is a rapidly metabolized fat that can substitute for sugar, and since it does not require insulin, it can be used during your fast. However, it will take some time for your blood sugar to normalize. You’ll want to pay careful attention to hypoglycemic signs and symptoms, and if you suspect that you’re crashing, make sure to eat something, like coconut oil. Ideally, you should avoid fasting if you’re hypoglycemic, and work on your overall diet to normalize your blood sugar levels first. Then try out one of the less rigid versions of fasting.

Alternate-Day Fasting: Key Points to Remember

Again, the alternate-day fasting regimen Dr. Varady promotes involves fasting every other day. On fasting days, you limit your food intake to 500 calories; ideally consumed in one meal, either at lunch or dinner. Eating your one meal for breakfast tends to set you up for failure, as you'll then spend the rest of the day thinking about how you'll have nothing to eat until the following morning. From a psychological and compliance perspective, it's easier to go without if you know you can eat something in the middle or toward the end of the day.

On non-fasting days, you can eat whatever you want, without counting calories. (I still recommend cleaning up your diet and not indulging in too many processed foods. For a comprehensive review and guide, please see my optimized nutrition plan.) Besides promoting greater compliance, mounting research also shows that skipping breakfast is actually better for your health. Most of the research supporting the notion that breakfast is the most important meal of the day is actually funded by cereal companies.

"I did a massive literature search and I found out that [skipping breakfast} is actually not that bad for you. You just have to look at who's funding the studies," Dr. Varaday notes. "Other things I definitely advocate with this diet, to make it easier, are drinking tons of fluids, particularly on your fast day. Try to consume protein on that day. It helps with satiety. It really depends on what your body size is but maybe 30 to 40 grams of protein.

I usually recommend a salad with some type of protein on it, like chicken. If you're vegetarian, use beans or that type of thing. The great thing is you don't have to count calories every other day. Every other day, you really get to kind of feel normal. A lot of people say that they actually have healthier cravings on the feast day. It's really interesting. The body's kind of like resetting itself."

I would add that you'll want to make sure you're getting plenty of healthy fat in your diet, both on fasting and non-fasting days. Good sources include the following.

Avocados Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk Raw dairy Organic pastured egg yolks
Coconuts and coconut oil Unheated organic nut oils Raw nuts, such as almonds, pecans, macadamia, and seeds Grass-fed meats
Fat is among the most satiating foods, and can go a long way toward preventing hunger pangs. Just keep track of your calorie intake, as you want to stay below 500 calories on fasting days if you follow Dr. Varady's alternate-day program. To learn more, I highly recommend picking up Dr. Varady's book, The Every-Other-Day Diet: The Diet That Lets You Eat All You Want (Half the Time) and Keep the Weight Off, co-authored with Bill Gottlieb.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

"If You Drink Artificial Sweeteners You Must See this Movie"

"Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World": A Compelling Documentary that Exposes the Real Dangers of Aspartame and
How it Became FDA Approved


Most anyone interested in natural health will understand that artificial sweeteners are not healthy for you. But nearly everyone of us leads busy lives that limits us from reading all we would like to, especially about things that may not be that much of a problem anyway.

After all, millions of people drink diet sodas every day and they aren't dropping dead like flies, and the government did approve this sweetener as safe so it can't be too bad.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

If you believe the above you are in for a sorry surprise. The beautiful aspect of this movie is that in a short ninety minutes you will easily in the relaxed comfort of your own home finally understand why aspartame is a toxic poison and needs to be avoided at all costs.

Personally I own Dr. Robert's $100 phone book size reference on Aspartame and a number of other books on the topic. However, I have never had the time to read them and understand at a foundational level why aspartame was so toxic. I just knew it was not natural and should be avoided and there were many that had problems with it. This movie allowed me to easily and passively learn the specific reasons and details on why aspartame is best avoided by all humans who are interested in staying healthy.

I had this movie for six months before I had a chance to finally have some free time and pop it in the DVD player to view it. Once I did I had to do some EFT and tapping to forgive myself for not watching this video sooner. It was one of the best DVDs I have seen on health and I highly recommend and endorse this movie.

If you, or someone you know and love, drinks diet soda or consumes aspartame in any form, then this video is an absolute must see for you.

Riveting Industry Case Study of a Food Supply in Crisis


"Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World" reveals one of the most pervasive, insidious forms of corporate negligence since tobacco.

The toxic long-term effects of aspartame are often dismissed as a "hoax" by the sweetener industry; however this new documentary thoroughly unravels something infinitely more alarming than merely a "hoax."

About 200 times sweeter than the refined sugar it is meant to replace, Aspartame is the artificial sweetener used in such brands as Equal and Nutrasweet. Not long ago, aspartame was on a Pentagon list of biowarfare chemicals submitted to Congress – yet this lethal product remains on grocery shelves and continues to be highly touted in the media.

FDA Approved Biomedical Genocide is Revealed

Aspartame complaints represent 80-85% of food complaints registered with the FDA. So-called "diet" products containing the chemical sweetener aspartame can have multiple neurotoxic, metabolic, allergenic, fetal and carcinogenic effects.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, many people still see aspartame as a safe diet aid – even though it has been demonstrated that the use of this product actually causes people to consume more food.

Aspartame is not your friend. In 1991, the National Institutes of Health listed 167 symptoms and reasons to avoid the use of aspartame, but today it remains a multi-million dollar business. Known to erode intelligence and affect short-term memory, the components of this toxic sweetener may lead to a wide variety of ailments including:

Brain tumors
Birth defects
Diseases like lymphoma, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue
Emotional disorders like depression and anxiety attacks
Epilepsy/seizures
Migraines
Numbness
Hearing Loss and ringing in the ears
Blindness, blurred vision and other eye problems
Stomach disorders
Your body does not do well with regular sugar, let alone poisonous synthetic sugars like aspartame. With some resources indicating that aspartame may be found in over 9000 consumable products, this man-made sweetener is becoming increasingly more difficult to avoid.

The American diet may well be one of the reasons 18 million of us suffer from migraines, with aspartame at the top of the list of possible culprits.

Eliminating aspartame from your diet would go a long way toward improving your health. If you aren't familiar with all the ailments associated with this artificial sweetener, "Sweet Misery" will indeed open your eyes to a biomedical genocide that has been covered up for far too long.


A Personal Journey Uncovers the Medical Horrors of Aspartame


Part documentary, part detective story, Sweet Misery starts with filmmaker and narrator Cori Brackett's poignant story about how she discovered aspartame's ill effect on her health. Brackett had a strange cause-and effect experience with the diet cokes she was drinking and quickly found herself disabled and diagnosed with MS.

Her condition quickly progressed to the point that she had double vision, slurred speech, and weak limbs forcing her to use a wheelchair. When she read an article about aspartame being connected to many health problems, Cori immediately quit using products that contain aspartame – like diet soda.

As if by magic, many of her symptoms disappeared. Through dietary changes and a host of therapies, Cori's condition improved and continues to do so to this day. After spending a decade in a mental fog, unable to do anything – today she is medication and symptom free.


Cori Brackett's journey takes us across the United States to learn more about the devastating effects of aspartame from an impressive list of medical experts – including renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock. Dr. Blaylock explains how aspartame is a slow neurotoxin that's particularly harmful for diabetics.

Brackett also consults two respected MDs and a psychologist to describe what aspartame does to the body and the brain. All agreed – aspartame is poison.

Another source of Brackett's inspiration came from Dr. Betty Martini, the director of the nonprofit group Mission Possible. Martini has been searching the globe for over 12 years for every shred of evidence that exists about the dangers of aspartame – attracting the expertise of principled professionals who have furthered our understanding of aspartame biochemistry to the point where no valid arguments counter claim the absolute conclusion that aspartame is a toxic poison unfit for human consumption.

Credible Evidence Validates Corporate Fraud and Manipulation

In "Sweet Misery" aspartame victims throughout the country are finally given a voice. A close examination of the process for approving aspartame by the FDA leads to examples of how powerful corporations are influencing once trusted institutions. Loaded with compelling interviews, this powerful examination includes:

Archival footage from G.D. Searle, the producer of aspartame, and federal officials to describe the amount of propaganda and "dirty tricks" big business used to push aspartame on the market.
Many heartfelt conversations with some of the aspartame victims. One victim, a middle-aged mother, suffers in a different and more agonizing way than most. This woman is serving a 50-year sentence for allegedly poisoning her late spouse, despite that many of the health signs point to her late husband's bad reaction to aspartame.
Key dialogue with Arthur Evangelista, a former Food and Drug Administration investigator, who exposes how far major conglomerates went to legalize the use of aspartame in the United States, and the resulting domino effect on its use in other countries
Consumer Attorney Jim Turner's candid report of his exchange with Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was the CEO of Searle, and, at the same time, part of Reagan's transition team when the FDA's board of inquiry was overruled to allow the marketing of Aspartame as a food additive. Until this time aspartame was unanimously rejected by the FDA.
A Must See Movie that Can Literally Save Your Life

For those who have seen Sweet Misery – adjectives like "incredible" are often used to encourage others to see the world's main experts on aspartame expose and invalidate the propaganda put out by the pharmaceutical industry. And those in the field of medicine who were directly involved with the making of this film maintain, "Anybody who sees this movie will now know the whole story."

The fact that tons of aspartame is pumped into the world population each year, knowingly and deliberately – especially with the historical and documented record of fraud and misrepresentation expertly defined by this movie – constitutes a conspiracy of the highest order, as well as criminal negligence.

The only rewards of continued use of aspartame are increased profits for the medical and pharmaceutical industries and chemical companies that produce aspartame and treat people suffering from its toxic deadly effects. I could not encourage you more strongly to watch this documentary – your life may well depend on it.

Order "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World" Today

You can now own the powerful documentary "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World" for just $17.95. If you are concerned about your health, and the health of your family and friends, this DVD will shed much needed light on the controversy surrounding aspartame. Don't miss this film – it can significantly change your health and your life!

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Inflammation and...
Gut Bacteria and Fat Cells May Interact to Produce “Perfect Storm” of Inflammation That Promotes Diabetes and Other Chronic Disease
June 05, 2014 | 408,245 views

By Dr. Mercola

A wide array of health problems, including but not limited to obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, periodontal disease, stroke, and heart disease all have inflammation as a part of the disease.

The majority of inflammatory diseases start in your gut.


Chronic inflammation in your gut can disrupt the normal functioning of many bodily systems. There also appears to be a connection between certain types of bacteria and body fat that produces a heightened inflammatory response and drives the inflammatory process.

For example, recent research1 suggests that superantigens—toxic molecules produced by pathogenic bacteria such as staph—may play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes through their effect on fat cells. As reported by the featured article:2

“The idea is that when fat cells (adipocytes) interact with environmental agents -- in this case, bacterial toxins -- they then trigger a chronic inflammatory process... acterial toxins stimulate fat cells to release molecules called cytokines, which promote inflammation...

All staph bacteria make toxins called superantigens -- molecules that disrupt the immune system. Schlievert's research has previously shown that superantigens cause the deadly effects of various staph infections, such as toxic shock syndrome, sepsis, and endocarditis.

... [T]he chronic inflammation caused by the superantigens may also hinder wound healing in diabetic foot ulcers. The ulcers, which affect 15 to 25 percent of people with diabetes, are notoriously difficult to heal and can often lead to amputation.”

'Perfect Storm' of Inflammation Promotes Diabetes

Previous research has shown that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than slim people. Lean people tend to have higher amounts of various healthy or beneficial bacteria compared to those who carry a lot of excess weight, who tend to have greater colonization of pathogenic bacteria.

For instance, the human adenovirus-36 (Ad-36) -- a cause of respiratory infections and pinkeye – might play a role in promoting obesity by transforming adult stem cells into fat cells that are capable of storing additional fat.

Researchers have also discovered that certain gut bacteria, including Staphylococcus aureus (staph) and E. coli, trigger fat cells to produce inflammatory cytokines. Researchers have proposed that this interaction can provoke the development of diabetes, which is a well-known “side effect” of obesity.

Staph bacteria in particular appear to play an important role in diabetes, and according to the featured article, there are two primary reasons for this:

Obese people have a tendency to become heavily colonized with staph bacteria
Staph bacteria is the most common bacteria found in diabetic foot ulcers
The featured study found that when both staph and E. coli are present (both of which produce superantigens), the inflammatory cytokine response in fat cells are further amplified, thereby boosting your risk of diabetes. According to the co-author of the study, Patrick Schlievert, Ph.D:

"The E. coli that resides in our gut produces LPS [lipopolysaccharide, a toxin] and every day a small amount of this toxin gets into our circulation, but it is generally cleared from the circulation by the liver. However, people colonized by staph bacteria are also chronically exposed to superantigens, which shut down the LPS detoxification pathway.

That creates a synergy between the 'uncleared' LPS and the superantigen. All these two molecules do is cause inflammation and cytokine production. So in essence, their presence together creates a perfect storm for inflammation."

Previous studies have come to similar conclusions. For example, one study3 found that babies with high numbers of bifidobacteria (beneficial bacteria) and low numbers of Staphylococcus aureus, appeared to be protected from excess weight gain.

This may also be one reason why breast-fed babies have a lower risk of obesity, as bifidobacteria flourish in the guts of breast-fed babies.

The Link Between Gum Inflammation and Heart Health

A related news item further highlights the role of inflammation in the development of chronic disease. According to Medical News Today:4

“Researchers at Columbia University in New York suggest that if you look after your gums, you could also be reducing your risk of heart disease. They claim that improving dental care slows the speed with which plaque builds up in the arteries.5”

This isn’t the first time researchers have found that your oral health can have a significant impact on your cardiovascular and heart health. For example, a 2010 study6 found that those with the worst oral hygiene increased their risk of developing heart disease by a whopping 70 percent, compared to those who brush their teeth twice a day.

In this prospective study, improved gum health was shown to significantly slow down the progression of atherosclerosis—the buildup of plaque in your arteries, which increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, and death. According to the featured article:7

“Previous studies have linked an increase in carotid IMT [intima-medial thickness] of 0.033 mm per year (about 0.1 mm over 3 years), to a more than double increase in risk of heart attack and stroke. In this study, the participants whose gum health got worse over the 3 years showed a 0.1 mm increase in carotid IMT, compared with the participants whose gum health improved.

Co-author Panos N. Papapanou, professor at Columbia's College of Dental Medicine, says: 'Our results show a clear relationship between what is happening in the mouth and thickening of the carotid artery, even before the onset of full-fledged periodontal disease. This suggests that incipient periodontal disease should not be ignored.'”

Here, bacteria are again playing a preeminent role, as periodontal disease is the result of the colonization of certain bacteria in your mouth. This bacterial profile, by the way, is again linked to an imbalance of beneficial and pathogenic bacteria in your gut. A few months after I added fermented vegetables to my daily diet, I was able to cut down my dental cleaning visits from every month to every quarter. I’ve had a longstanding problem of persistent plaque formation, and the addition of fermented foods proved to be an essential missing ingredient for me to successfully address this problem.

It’s important to realize that periodontal disease involves both bone and the tissue that is in contact with that bone. From this contact, bacteria and toxic inflammatory compounds can easily enter your blood stream. Once in your blood stream, these toxic compounds can harm the lining of your blood vessels, which can lead to both strokes and heart attacks. So, reducing inflammation is of primary importance for your overall health, and brushing your teeth regularly is one way to combat chronic inflammation in your body.

Findings such as these offer potent testimony to the fact that heart disease is a condition that can be prevented, most of the time, by leading a healthy lifestyle -- which includes the simple act of brushing your teeth regularly to prevent periodontal disease, and optimizing your gut health by eating foods that allow healthy bacteria to flourish and keep pathogenic bacteria in check.

Diet and Environmental Factors Affect Your Gut Flora

I have long stated that it's generally a wise choice to "reseed" your body with good bacteria, ideally by regularly eating non-pasteurized, traditionally fermented foods such as:

Fermented vegetables
Lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink)
Fermented milk, such as kefir
Natto (fermented soy)
One of the reasons why fermented foods are so beneficial is because they contain lactic acid producing bacteria, which has been shown to be particularly beneficial for weight loss, as well as a wide variety of other beneficial bacteria. Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re getting. If for whatever reason you decide not to eat fermented foods, taking a high-quality probiotic supplement is definitely recommended.

Keep in mind that eating fermented foods may not be enough if the rest of your diet is really poor. Your gut bacteria are an active and integrated part of your body, and as such are vulnerable to your overall lifestyle. If you eat a lot of processed foods for instance, your gut bacteria are going to be compromised because processed foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast. Your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to the following factors—all of which should ideally be avoided as much as possible in order to optimize your gut flora:

Antibiotics, including antibiotic-traces found in meats from factory farmed meats and animal products
Agricultural chemicals, especially glyphosate
Chlorinated water
Antibacterial soap
Pollution
Your Diet Is Key for Reducing Chronic Inflammation

As you can see, the running thread linking a wide variety of common health problems—from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and stroke—is chronic inflammation. Clearly, addressing your oral health is an important step, but the real key to reducing chronic inflammation in your body starts with your diet.

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. Research published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology8 two years ago again confirmed that dietary supplementation with krill oil effectively reduced inflammation and oxidative stress. To reduce or prevent inflammation in your body, you’ll want to AVOID the following dietary culprits:

Sugar/fructose and grains (If your fasting insulin level is not lower than three, consider eliminating grains and sugars until you optimize your insulin level, as insulin resistance this is a primary driver of chronic inflammation)
Oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs)
Foods cooked at high temperatures
Trans fats
Replacing processed foods with whole, ideally organic, foods will automatically address most of these factors, especially if you eat a large portion of your food raw. Equally important is making sure you’re regularly reseeding your gut with beneficial bacteria, as discussed above. The ideal way, again, is by adding a variety of non-pasteurized traditionally fermented foods to your daily diet. To help you get started on a healthier diet, 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.

Optimizing your vitamin D levels is another important aspect of optimizing your gut health and immune function. According to recent research, vitamin D appears to be nearly as effective as animal-based omega-3 fats in countering inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis for example. One of the reasons for this may be because it helps your body produce over 200 anti-microbial peptides capable of fighting all sorts of infections. In simple terms, if you’re vitamin D deficient, your immune system will not activate to do its job. And since vitamin D also modulates (balances) your immune response, it helps prevent overreaction in the form of inflammation.

Grounding—An Underused Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle Strategy

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 and blood pressure, decreased skin resistance, and decreased levels of inflammation. Furthermore, researchers have also discovered that grounding actually 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 about this simple but potent method, please see my interview with Dr. Oschman, who is widely recognized as an authority in the biophysics of energy medicine. Grounding may also work by increasing the structured water in your cells.

For Optimal Health, Address and Avoid Chronic Inflammation

Remember, the micro-organisms living in your digestive tract form a very important "inner ecosystem" that influences countless aspects of health. More specifically, the type and quantity of organisms in your gut interact with your body in ways that can either prevent or encourage the development of chronic inflammation, which is at the heart of many diseases, including heart disease and diabetes. The composition of your microflora may even dictate the ease with which you’re able to shed unwanted pounds.

Since virtually all of us are exposed to factors that destroy beneficial bacteria in your gut, such as antibiotics (whether you take them for an illness or get them from contaminated animal products), chlorinated water, antibacterial soap, agricultural chemicals, and pollution, ensuring your gut bacteria remain balanced should be considered an ongoing process.

Cultured foods like raw milk yogurt and kefir, some cheeses, and fermented vegetables are good sources of natural, healthy bacteria. So my strong recommendation would be to make cultured or fermented foods a regular part of your diet; this can be your primary strategy to optimize your body's good bacteria. If you do not eat fermented foods on a regular basis, taking a high-quality probiotic supplement would be a wise decision for most people.

Besides that, replacing processed foods, sugar/fructose and grains with whole foods is a critical step to address chronic inflammation. Optimizing your vitamin D levels and making sure you’re getting plenty of animal-based omega-3 fat
in your diet is also important, along with grounding, to keep inflammation in check.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

What do mitochondria have to do with mental health?
By Kelly Brogan, M.D.

Meet your mitochondria.1 With a laundry list of responsibilities ranging from creating energy to determining the time of a cell's death, mitochondria have increasingly become the focus of chronic disease research.2

The keeper of our mitochondria is our thyroid hormone.3 This is why, when thyroid hormone is deficient or poorly functioning, patients experience an array of symptoms, including fatigue, constipation, hair loss, depression, foggy thinking, cold body temperature, low metabolism, and muscle aches.

How much of what we call "mental illness" is actually thyroid-driven? In my experience, a vast majority, and certainly enough of a subset to warrant a more sophisticated appreciation for proper diagnosis and treatment in these patients.

To Reverse Pathology, You Need a Whole Mind-Body Approach

Thyroid health is so much more than pumping out a hormonal product – it is a sophisticated conversation between the brain, gland, hormones, and the receiving cells and tissues.

This circuitry is at the mercy of yet another hormone, cortisol,4 produced by your adrenal glands, signaled by your brain.

This is why hypothyroidism can also look like anxiety, palpitations, insomnia, and sweating, and why one person may feel restored on thyroid hormone and another decimated.

Once we ask about the state of adrenal function, we have to dig a step deeper and ask what is taxing the adrenals. From this point of inquiry, we are typically talking about gut, diet, and environmental immune provocation.

This is the model of medicine that prizes root-causes, considerations like gluten enteropathy, sugar imbalance, fluoride toxicity, and iodine deficiency as potential drivers of thyroid hypofunction. The many lifestyle and environmental factors that can influence this relationship are prime examples of the web-like, whole mind-body approach that medicine must take in an effort to truly reverse pathology.

Underdiagnoses and Mistreatment

When patients are tested for thyroid pathology, typically at their own request, they are often confronted with "reference range" rejection – physicians staring at numbers instead of the suffering humans before them.

Reference ranges that bracket your lab results are based on unscreened and clinically unassessed populations (many were active hypothyroid patients), never calibrated for diagnostic practice. Doctors are trained to look at a brain hormone – TSH – as an absolute indicator of whether or not a patient is living in a glandular hormonal deficiency state.

Dysfunction of the endocrine system at large is totally ignored by this metric that "diagnoses" only the lowest 2.5 percent of those in a given reference range, as hypothyroid, without looking at the whole picture of their hormone activity. There is also neglect for the significance of antibodies as a relevant indicator of endocrine/immune dynamics, and consideration of autoimmune drivers.

For those who do receive the label of hypothyroid, they remain obliquely objectified by their lab work as their doctors use synthetic T4 – Synthroid – to attempt to move their TSH within range, more often leaving them symptomatic but "treated" because of poor conversion to active thyroid hormone (T3) and suppression of natural T3 production because of their now lower TSH.

When patients are denied appropriate hormonal treatment, it can be a slippery slope to medications for their remaining symptoms, and one category of medications in particular – psychiatric.

The Psychiatric Slide

Psychiatry is often positioned to slap Band-Aids on the festering unwashed wounds of the population. When these patients are told that they are "fine" or "treated" but they continue to feel unwell, they are sent to a psychiatrist, or started on psychotropics by a nonspecialist. Are many psych patients actual thyroid patients?

The literature seems to suggest as much, particularly in pregnant women. An important premise, however, is that there is likely gross underdiagnosis taking place in the literature secondary to use of a single metric TSH. We will see the significance of thyroid autoantibodies in various psychiatric diagnosis.

This reflects what functional medicine and naturopathy have claimed for years – that immune dysregulation is the key factor in thyroid hypofunction, and may predate actual change in hormone production by up to seven years.5 The role of thyroid in brain health has been the subject of speculation for over a century. As noted in a 1949 paper in the British Medical Journal:6

"[Since] 1888 the Committee of the Clinical society of London reported on the mental changes observed in over 100 cases of Myxoedema and noted the general retardation, sluggishness and slowness of apprehension, which was associated with insanity in the form of melancholia, chronic mania and dementia."

Another study published in the journal Encephale7 in 2004 notes several actions of thyroid hormone on your brain:

"Thyroid hormones receptors are predominantly present in cerebral cortex, amygdala, plexus choroideus and structures of adult neurogenesis: hippocampus and olfactory bulb. Thyroid hormones modify expression of genes encoding myelin, neurotrophins, and proteins involved in intracellular signaling pathways. They have also neuroprotective and vasodilatory effects."

Dipping Hormones and Depression

In the case of depression, there is much dispute as to the significance of hypothyroidism in presentations of classical and treatment resistant cases. Estimates of "subclinical hypothyroidism" (where free hormones are low, but TSH is normal) are up to 52 percent in the resistant population,8 which is demonstrative of the importance of looking beyond TSH.

The specific suppression of free T3 levels in depressed patients has been evaluated in several studies including those which specifically identified poor conversion of T4 to T3 in depressed women who were less likely to improve with standard medication treatments.9, 10 In 10 years after initial hospital admission, those with evidence of thyroid dysfunction through a stimulation test (TRH) were significantly more likely to relapse.11 Antibodies to thyroid tissue are also present in 20 percent of depressed patients,12 as compared to 5-10 percent of the general population.

If All Else Fails, Add Some Thyroid

In both bipolar and unipolar depression, there have been six randomized, placebo-controlled trials conducted wherein thyroid hormone was used as an augmentation to an incompletely effective antidepressant (tricyclic) and found to be effective, particularly in women. In the STAR*D report,13 the largest and most expensive trial ever conducted on antidepressant treatments, T3 was found to result in remission in 24.7 percent of patients.

Predicting Postpartum?

Perhaps the best studied population when it comes to the predictive role of thyroid abnormalities, pregnant and postpartum women deserve the most vigilant screening. Of 31 inpatient women with a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis,14 19 percent had detectable thyroid autoantibodies and 67 percent of these women developed thyroid dysfunction by six months as compared to 20 percent in the controls. TSH at delivery has been shown to be a predictor of postpartum depression at six months postpartum.15, 16, 17 Even in the setting of "normal" TSH levels, thyroid autoantibodies are predictive of postpartum depression and anger18, 19 including in prospective trials.20, 21

Risks of hypothyroidism include adverse pregnancy outcomes such as hemorrhage, preeclampsia, fetal cardiac rhythm anomalies, and labor abnormalities.22 Thyroid antibodies, once again, represent a significant risk factor, not just for psychiatric pathology but for tripled odds of miscarriage and double of preterm birth.23 Importantly, in one randomized, placebo-controlled trial,24 supplementation with 200 micrograms (mcg) of selenium during pregnancy reduced antibody activity and improved hormone parameters likely owing to selenium's antioxidant properties in thyroid tissue.

Hypermania Hyperthyroid

In a recent review entitled "Gender differences in thyroid system function: relevance to bipolar disorder and its treatment,"25 the authors discuss high prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism in female bipolar patients with a focus on rapid cycling illness, resistant to treatment. Lithium, considered a gold-standard mood-stabilizer, interferes with thyroid hormone secretion, and may induce or unmask underlying pathology.

A randomized, placebo controlled trial26 of T4 treatment in bipolar depression showed improvement that was limited, statistically, by high rates of placebo response, and likely the same conversion limitations of using T4 as opposed to a T3 containing preparation. A rational extension of this finding was demonstrated in two studies that found elevated T3 in manic bipolar patients, one noting that patients with bipolar mania relative to controls were 2.55 times as likely to have abnormal free hormone levels.27, 28

Feeling like a mental patient? Look out for these offenders. The establishment of a relationship between suboptimal thyroid function and symptoms of mental illness tells us that appropriate and comprehensive screening is vital in this population. It also leads us to ask, why is the thyroid flagging, and what can we do about it. High on my list of causative offenders are:

Birth control pills:29 The synthetic hormones in this pharmaceutical product increase thyroid hormone binding globulin, effectively lowering available thyroid hormone even without perturbing lab values.
Gluten:30 In addition to its direct effects on the brain through opioid compounds, indirect effects through autoimmune and cytokine stimulation, gluten drives at least two pathologies – celiac and Hashimoto's – that are significantly associated with depression and other mental illnesses. The prevalence and causative role of gluten in Hashimoto's Disease (thyroid autoimmunity) has been established.31 The role of gluten in brain health is of increasing interest, and in celiac patients with thyroid autoantibodies, depression and panic disorder risk is greatly increased.32
Fluoride:33 Historically, fluoride was used, even in the milligram range, to suppress thyroid function in hyperthyroid patients. It interferes with multiple aspects of thyroid tissue integrity, hormone activation, and displacement of iodine, a critical and essential mineral for thyroid function.
Endocrine disruptors:34 From exposure in utero, 35 industrial and agricultural chemicals such as phthalates, flame retardants, and PCBs are pervasive toxicants that interfere with the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal signaling, stimulating the immune system and derailing hormones.
Summary of Recommendations

For all of the reasons listed above, my top recommendations for anyone experiencing symptoms of mood disturbance are to:

Clean up your local environment: from personal care products to cleaning agents, water, air, and electromagnetic fields
Clean up your diet: eliminate gluten, dairy, GMOs (soy, corn, and vegetable oils), and sugar
Clean up your mind: initiate a meditation practice to heal your adrenals and promote anti-inflammatory signaling.
In my article, "Thyroid Dysfunction and Treatment," I explore these interventions a bit further. The thyroid is a canary in the coalmine. In our fast-paced, technology-smothered, nutrient-depleted, and toxicant-replete lifestyles, your thyroid gland may be the first to come under siege. Recognize the profound significance of treating a thyroid condition with psychotropic medications, and choose to go to the root of the problem, first.


About the Author

Dr. Brogan is boarded in Psychiatry/Psychosomatic Medicine/Reproductive Psychiatry and Integrative Holistic Medicine, and practices Functional Medicine, a root-cause approach to illness as a manifestation of multiple-interrelated systems. After studying Cognitive Neuroscience at M.I.T., and receiving her M.D. from Cornell University, she completed her residency and fellowship at Bellevue/NYU.

She is one of the only physicians with perinatal psychiatric training who takes a holistic evidence-based approach in the care of patients with a focus on environmental medicine and nutrition. She is also a mom of two, and an active supporter of women's birth experience, rights to birth empowerment, and limiting of unnecessary interventions which is a natural extension of her experience analyzing safety data and true informed consent around medical practice. She is the Medical Director for Fearless Parent, and an advisory board member for GreenMedInfo.com and Pathways to Family Wellness. She practices in NYC and is on faculty at NYU/Bellevue.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

How important is eating breakfast? and other items relating to weight-loss
By Dr. Mercola

Contrary to popular belief, breakfast is not the most important meal of the day. In fact, omitting breakfast, as part of an intermittent fasting schedule, can have many important health benefits, from improving your insulin/leptin sensitivity to helping your body more effectively burn fat for fuel.

Longer bouts of fasting have also been shown to have potent health benefits, including the regeneration of your immune system, as demonstrated in recent research.

In the past, it was believed that skipping breakfast might hinder weight loss, or even make you gain weight, but recent research demonstrates there’s no truth to this theory.1 As noted by David Allison, senior investigator of the featured study and director of the UAB Nutrition Obesity Research Center:2

"The field of obesity and weight loss is full of commonly held beliefs that have not been subjected to rigorous testing; we have now found that one such belief does not seem to hold up when tested. This should be a wake-up call for all of us to always ask for evidence about the recommendations we hear so widely offered."

Eating Breakfast Doesn’t Aid Weight Loss Efforts

The featured study3 divided 309 overweight and obese but otherwise healthy adults into two random groups. Some were told to eat breakfast, while the others were told to skip it.

The researchers specifically wanted to find out whether eating or not eating breakfast had any impact on weight loss. After 16 weeks, the researchers found no difference in weight loss between the groups. In essence, it didn’t matter if they ate breakfast or not.

It’s worth noting that they didn’t control the food intake of any of the participants. Most likely, the reason why there was no notable weight loss difference between those who ate breakfast and those who didn’t, is that they may all have been eating an overall inappropriate diet, as most Americans do.

After all, if you’re eating large amounts of refined carbs and processed fructose throughout the day, skipping breakfast may not be enough to achieve weight loss, as this type of diet actively prevents your body from effectively burning fat.

Eating Breakfast Does Not Improve Metabolism, Study Finds

Skipping breakfast is one form of intermittent fasting in which you restrict your daily eating to a specific window of time, say between 11am and 7pm, as an example. This type of eating schedule typically does promote weight loss—but what you eat is another important factor.

This is especially true if you’re severely overweight and eat a standard American processed food diet. Many people find that eating breakfast leads to feeling hungry again soon thereafter, which can lead to unnecessary snacking. This is reflected in another recent study4 into the metabolic effects of eating or skipping breakfast.

As reported by Time Magazine:5

“...contrary to popular belief, having breakfast every day was not tied to an improvement in metabolism. Prior thought—supported by research—has shown that eating early in the day can prevent people from overeating later out of hunger, and it boosts their metabolism early. The new study which examined causal links between breakfast habits and energy balance couldn’t prove that.”

The study found that eating breakfast was linked to a greater overall dietary energy intake.
And again, the type of foods you eat for breakfast may be the key ingredient that is being overlooked in this type of research—both past and present. Typically, you will find that eating a carbohydrate-rich breakfast will tend to make you hungry again far sooner than a low-carb, high-fat breakfast will. The reason for this is because if your body is using sugar as its primary fuel, it will need a “refill” at regular intervals, as sugar is a very fast-burning fuel.

Fat, on the other hand, is a slow-burning fuel, allowing you to feel satiated longer, and the more important fact is that you have loads more fat available than sugar stored as glycogen in your muscles and liver. While glycogen stores will only last for less than a day, your fat store can last for weeks. In addition to that, eating first thing in the morning also coincides with your circadian cortisol peak, which has an exaggerated impact on your insulin secretion. When you eat during this time, it leads to a rapid and large insulin release and a corresponding rapid drop in blood sugar levels, more so than when you eat at other times of the day.

If you're healthy, your blood sugar level won't drop dangerously low (such as can occur with hypoglycemia) but they can drop low enough to make you feel hungry again, even though you recently ate. This effect is amplified when eating a carbohydrate-rich breakfast, such as pancakes, muffins, cereal, or bread, with a large glass of juice for example.

Fructose Turns On Your ‘Fat Switch’

The term “fat switch” was coined by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado, and author of the books The Sugar Fix, and The Fat Switch; the latter of which presents a groundbreaking approach to preventing and reversing obesity. As explained by Dr. Johnson, anytime we discuss sugar, we’re talking about ALL forms of sugar, including grain-carbohydrates, but some types are clearly more hazardous than others, in terms of their effect on your biochemistry.

Fructose is particularly troublesome, as it activates a key enzyme, fructokinase, which in turn activates another enzyme that causes your cells to accumulate fat and resist letting any of it go. This is especially true if you are overweight, but far less of an issue if you aren’t.

But grains also break down into sugar in your body, thereby promoting insulin and leptin resistance just like other sugars, which in turn promotes obesity and makes losing weight a real struggle... There are also circumstances in which carbohydrates can be converted to fructose in your body even when there’s no fructose in the carbs. The underlying mechanism for this is still unclear, but Dr. Johnson believes that insulin/leptin resistance may be one of the conditions that allows for this odd conversion to occur.

Intermittent Fasting Works Best When You Also Cut Down on Carbs

Dr. Johnson is a proponent of skipping breakfast, as it helps your body to enter into a more efficient fat burning phase. However, if you’re overweight, then step number one is to reduce your overall sugar and grain consumption. He suggests cutting sugar by one-half to one-third of your normal intake. I recommend keeping your total sugar/fructose intake below 25 grams a day, or as little as 15 grams a day if you have any health problems related to insulin and leptin resistance, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or heart disease, until your insulin/leptin sensitivity has been restored.

You can then further boost your fat loss efforts by incorporating the principles of intermittent fasting, and by exercising in a fasted state. A simple way to get started with intermittent fasting is to simply omit breakfast, making lunch the first meal of your day. I usually recommend this kind of eating schedule, but if you want to eat breakfast and skip dinner instead, that’s okay too. The key is to limit your eating to a specific, narrow window of time each day (about 6-8 hours), rather than eating every two to three hours, all throughout the day.

Intermittent fasting is by far the most effective way I know of to shed unwanted fat and eliminate your sugar cravings.
Since most of us are carrying excess fat we just can’t seem to burn, this is a really important benefit. When sugar is not needed as a primary fuel, your body will also not crave it as much when your sugar stores run low. Another mechanism that makes fasting so effective for weight loss is the fact that it provokes the secretion of HGH—a fat-burning hormone that has many well-recognized “anti-aging” health and fitness benefits.

Fasting for a Few Days Can Regenerate Your Immune System

In related news, another recent study6, 7 has found that a three-day long fast can regenerate your entire immune system, even if you’re elderly. The researchers described the findings as “remarkable.” Fasting for a few days, they found, has the power to kick-start your stem cells into producing more white blood cells, which are part of your body’s natural defense arsenal. As reported by Daily Life:8

“Scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) say the discovery could be particularly beneficial for those suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients on chemotherapy. It could also help the elderly whose immune systems become less effective...

‘‘And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting. Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or ageing, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.”

They discovered that longer fasts (two to four days) led to the reduction of an enzyme called protein kinase A (PKA), which previous research has linked to life extension in simple organisms.
Starving the body for a couple of days turns off the gene for PKA, and this is the trigger that tells your stem cells to shift into regeneration mode. According to Valter Longo, professor of gerontology and biological sciences at the University of Southern California, this is what “gives the OK for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system.” Fasting for three days also led to a reduction of IGF-1, a growth factor hormone linked to aging, cancer, and tumor growth. According to co-author Tanya Dorff:9 ‘‘The results of this study suggest that fasting may mitigate some of the harmful effects of chemotherapy.”

Other Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Fasting has been a part of spiritual practice for millennia. But modern science has confirmed there are many solid health reasons for fasting, including the following:

Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, and boosting mitochondrial energy efficiency: One of the primary mechanisms that makes intermittent fasting so beneficial for health is related to its impact on your insulin sensitivity. While sugar is a source of energy for your body, it also promotes insulin resistance when consumed in the amounts found in our modern processed junk food diets. Insulin resistance, in turn, is a primary driver of chronic disease—from heart disease to cancer. Intermittent fasting helps reset your body to use fat as its primary fuel, and mounting evidence confirms that when your body becomes adapted to burning FAT instead of sugar as its primary fuel, you dramatically reduce your risk of chronic disease
Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as "the hunger hormone"
Promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production: Research has shown fasting can raise HGH by as much as 1,300 percent in women, and 2,000 percent in men,10 which plays an important part in health, fitness, and slowing the aging process. HGH is also a fat-burning hormone, which helps explain why fasting is so effective for weight loss
Lowering triglyceride levels and improving other biomarkers of disease
Reducing oxidative stress: Fasting decreases the accumulation of oxidative radicals in the cell, and thereby prevents oxidative damage to cellular proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids associated with aging and disease
Longer fasts have also shown to promote 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. Intermittent fasting has also been identified as a potent ally for the prevention and perhaps even treatment of dementia. First, ketones are released as a byproduct of burning fat, and ketones (not glucose) are actually the preferred fuel for your brain.

In addition to that, intermittent fasting boosts production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which activate brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and trigger numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. It also protects your brain cells from changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Research by Dr. Mark Mattson, a senior investigator for the National Institute on Aging, suggests that alternate-day fasting (restricting your meal on fasting days to about 600 calories), can boost BDNF by anywhere from 50 to 400 percent, depending on the brain region.11

Can’t Fast for Three Days? Try an Intermittent Fasting Schedule

Most people find it really difficult to fast for three days. Fortunately, there are many ways to fast, from intermittent daily fasting, which is my personal preference, to fasting for one full day a couple of times per week, to longer fasts that last 48 hours or longer. More rigorous fasting schedules also call for abstaining from all foods and beverages with the exception of water. The trouble with longer fasts, and water fasts in particular, is that it’s difficult to maintain compliance.

Daily intermittent fasting tends to have the highest compliance rate, and mounting evidence suggests intermittent fasting can provide many if not most of the same benefits as longer, more rigorous fasts. Again, when you fast daily, you restrict your eating to a specific window of time, such as an eight-hour window. You do this every day until your insulin/leptin resistance improves (which means your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol ratios, or diabetes normalizes).

After that, you just need to do it as often as you need to maintain your healthy state. I used a six-hour window until I had fully shifted into fat-burning mode, and now I eat in a 9-10 hour window, and will snack on macadamia nuts if I feel hungry before or after my main meal during that period. I rarely eat anything for four or more hours before going to bed.

Compliance is always a critical factor in any of these approaches and it seems this is one of the easiest intermittent fasting schedules to implement. It really is amazing to me how the food cravings just vanish once you’ve regained your ability to burn fat for fuel. You don’t need iron willpower or enormous levels of self-discipline to maintain this eating schedule. Yes, you will get hungry, but your hunger will be appropriate and you will be surprised at how much less food will completely satisfy you once you regain your metabolic flexibility and no longer need to rely on stored sugar in your body for your primary fuel.

Contraindications

Both intermittent fasting and longer fasts are appropriate for most people, but there are some contraindications to be aware of. Ideally, you should avoid fasting if you’re hypoglycemic, and work on your overall diet to normalize your blood sugar levels first. Then try out one of the less rigid versions of fasting. Hypoglycemia is a condition characterized by an abnormally low level of blood sugar. It’s commonly associated with diabetes, but you can be hypoglycemic even if you’re not diabetic.

One of the keys to eliminating hypoglycemia is to eliminate sugars, especially fructose from your diet. It will also be helpful to eliminate grains, and replace them with higher amounts of quality proteins and healthy fats. You can use coconut oil to solve some of these issues as it is a rapidly metabolized fat that can substitute for sugar, and since it does not require insulin, it can be used during your fast.

However, it will take some time for your blood sugar to normalize. If you do attempt any kind of fasting schedule, be sure to pay careful attention to hypoglycemic signs and symptoms, and if you suspect that you’re crashing, make sure to eat something, like coconut oil. I also recommend avoiding fasting if you’re living with chronic stress (adrenal fatigue), or have cortisol dysregulation. Pregnant or nursing mothers should also avoid fasting. Your baby needs plenty of nutrients, during and after birth, and there’s no research supporting fasting during this important time.

Finding an Eating Schedule That Works

In conclusion, it is my experience that breakfast is not the most important meal of the day, and no matter how you tweak it, it might be causing you more harm than good. For most people, skipping breakfast might be the easiest way to remind your body how to effectively use fat for fuel.

Once you make this shift to fat burning mode, your hunger for unhealthy foods will dramatically and almost magically disappear, and you will not have to exert enormous amounts of self-discipline or will power to resist unhealthy foods that you know will increase your risk of disease.

However, it is important to understand that intermittent fasting is not something you need to do non-stop for the rest of your life. I believe that most who are insulin/leptin resistant would benefit from doing it continuously until the resistance resolves. However, once your weight is ideal, and you have no high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol ratios, or diabetes, then you can have more meals until or unless the insulin/leptin resistance returns.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Aspartame (google Rumsfeld) and Alzheimers...
By Dr. Mercola

Most public health agencies and nutritionists in the United States still recommend no- or low-calorie artificial sweeteners as an acceptable, and even preferred, alternative to sugar. This flawed advice can have very serious repercussions for those who follow it.

Artificial sweeteners of all kinds have been found to wreak havoc with your health in a number of different ways. Aspartame, which is perhaps the worst of the bunch, has a long list of studies indicating its harmful effects, ranging from brain damage to pre-term delivery.

Aspartame is also the number one source of side effect complaints to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with over 10,000 complaints filed and over 91 documented symptoms related to its consumption.

Most recently, studies are also starting to confirm lingering suspicions that artificial sweeteners like aspartame may play a role in the development of Alzheimer's disease, a serious form of dementia that is now thought to kill over half a million Americans each year.

The key mechanism of harm appears to be methanol toxicity—a much-ignored problem associated with aspartame in particular.


In a previous interview, toxicology expert Dr. Woodrow Monte (author of the book While Science Sleeps: A Sweetener Kills1), explained the links between aspartame and methanol toxicity and the formation of formaldehyde. In light of the latest research, this interview is more relevant than ever, which is why I included it again.

Methanol Toxicity Leads to Persistent Alzheimer's Symptoms

A recently published two-part paper2, 3 highlights what Dr. Monte has been saying for many years now—that methanol acts differently in animals and humans. In this case, the researchers also discovered changes in effect between mice and rhesus monkeys.

Methanol-fed mice presented with partial "Alzheimer's disease-like symptoms," while rhesus monkeys fed a 3% methanol solution developed persistent pathological changes related to the development of Alzheimer's. According to the authors:

"A recently established link between formaldehyde, a methanol metabolite, and Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology has provided a new impetus to investigate the chronic effects of methanol exposure.

This paper expands this investigation to the non-human primate, rhesus macaque... [M]ethanol feeding led to persistent memory decline in the monkeys that lasted 6 months beyond the feeding regimen...

Most notably, the presence of amyloid plaque formations in the monkeys highlighted a marked difference in animal systems used in AD investigations, suggesting that the innate defenses in mice against methanol toxicity may have limited previous investigations into AD pathology.

Nonetheless, these findings support a growing body of evidence that links methanol and its metabolite formaldehyde to AD pathology." [Emphasis mine]

The Link Between Aspartame and Methanol Toxicity

The artificial sweetener industry (and makers of artificially sweetened products) has fervently claimed that aspartame is harmless, and that there's "no biological explanation" for the health problems reported by so many after consuming aspartame.

But as explained by Dr. Monte, there is indeed a biological and scientific explanation for aspartame's pathway of harm, and as the latest research suggests, it's related to the effects of methanol and formaldehyde, both of which are extremely toxic.

Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine—the latter of which has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group. This is what provides the majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very weak, allowing the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol.

You may have heard the claim that aspartame is harmless because methanol is also found in fruits and vegetables. However, in these whole foods the methanol is firmly bonded to pectin, which allows it to be safely passed through your digestive tract. This is not the case for the methanol created by aspartame. There, it's not bonded to anything that can help eliminate it from your body. That's problem number one...

Problem number two relates to the fact that humans are the only mammals who are NOT equipped with a protective biological mechanism that breaks down methanol into harmless formic acid. This is why animal testing of aspartame does not fully apply to humans.

According to Dr. Monte, the fact that methyl alcohol is metabolized differently in humans compared to other animals has been known since 1940. And according to the featured paper, rhesus monkeys do not appear to have the same defenses against methanol toxicity as mice do. This basically negates much of the animal research that has been used to "prove" aspartame's safety.

Methanol Acts as a Trojan Horse in Your Body

As explained by Dr. Monte, in humans, methanol ends up acting as a Trojan horse, allowing toxic formaldehyde to wreak havoc in some of your most sensitive areas, such as your brain. Here's how it works: both animals and humans have small structures called peroxisomes in each cell. There are a couple of hundred in every cell of your body, which are designed to detoxify a variety of chemicals. Peroxisome contains catalase, which help detoxify methanol.

Your cells also contain alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which converts methanol to formaldehyde. Other chemicals in the peroxisome in turn convert the formaldehyde to formic acid, which is harmless—but this last step occurs only in animals. Human peroxisomes cannot convert the toxic formaldehyde into harmless formic acid.

Certain locations in your body, particularly in the lining of your blood vessels, and in your brain, are loaded with ADH that converts methanol to formaldehyde. But since there's no catalase present, the formaldehyde does not get converted into harmless formic acid. As a result, the formaldehyde is free to do enormous amounts of damage in your tissues.

Symptoms of methanol poisoning include: headaches, ear buzzing, dizziness, nausea, gastrointestinal disturbances, weakness, vertigo, chills, memory lapses, numbness, and shooting pains in the extremities, behavioral disturbances, and neuritis. The most well known problems from methanol poisoning are vision problems including misty vision, progressive contraction of visual fields, blurring of vision, obscuration of vision, retinal damage, and blindness. Formaldehyde, in turn, is a known carcinogen that causes retinal damage, interferes with DNA replication, and may cause birth defects.

Processed Foods Are Also High in Methanol

As I've discussed in previous articles, processed foods should be avoided as a proactive Alzheimer's prevention strategy. In his book, Grain Brain, neurologist Dr. Perlmutter reveals how the toxic activity of sugar and carbohydrates in your diet promote Alzheimer's disease. But we can also add methanol to the list of reasons for avoiding processed foods. Not only do many processed foods contain artificial sweeteners, but when fruits and vegetables are canned, for example, the methanol becomes liberated from the pectin.

At room temperature, it only takes one month for 10 percent of the methanol to be released. After about six months, virtually all of the methanol is liberated. Dr. Monte is convinced that methanol and the subsequent conversion to formaldehyde from certain processed foods (see listing below), as well as all foods containing aspartame, are a major culprit in a variety of diseases, especially multiple sclerosis (MS).

Again, methanol can slip through your blood brain barrier, and your brain is one of the areas where you find alcohol dehydrogenase, which converts methyl alcohol to formaldehyde. This causes the destruction of myelin basic protein, which is one of the triggers for MS. Demyelination also plays a role in the development of Alzheimer's and several other brain-related diseases. According to Dr. Monte:

"We know that methyl alcohol is known to be a demyelinating agent... [T]he symptoms associated with the demyelination... are identical between multiple sclerosis, and methanol poisoning, and people who consume aspartame."

He believes many diseases can be prevented if we start avoiding methanol from all sources, and he even offers a methanol-free diet on his website.4 Items to avoid include:

Cigarettes Tomato sauces, unless first simmered at least 3 hours, no lid on pan
Diet foods and drinks with aspartame Smoked food of any kind, particularly fish and meat
Fruit and vegetable products and their juices in bottles, cans, or pouches Chewing gum, as most chewing gum in the USA contains aspartame
Jellies, jams, and marmalades not made fresh and kept refrigerated Slivovitz and other fruit schnapps
Black currant and tomato juice products, fresh or processed Overly ripe or near rotting fruits or vegetables

The Neurotoxic Properties of Splenda

Another popular artificial sweetener is sucralose, sold under the brand name Splenda. Sucralose is a synthetic chemical created in a five-step patented process, in which three chlorine molecules are added to one sucrose (sugar) molecule. Some will argue that natural foods also contain chloride, which is true. However, in natural foods, the chloride is connected with ionic bonds that easily dissociate when ingested. In Splenda, they're in a covalent bond that does not dissociate.

And, since your body has no enzymes to break down this covalently bound chloride, harm can ensue... The reason why your body has no enzymes for this task is because, in nature, there are NO covalent chloride bonds to organic compounds—they only exist in synthetic, man-made form. Aside from Splenda, other examples of synthetic covalently bound chloride compounds include DDT, PCBs, and Agent Orange.

Previous research indicates that about 15 percent of sucralose is absorbed into your digestive system, and ultimately stored in your body fat. A 2008 animal study5 found that Splenda reduced the amount of beneficial intestinal bacteria by 50 percent, increased the intestinal pH level, and affected a glycoprotein that can have crucial health effects, particularly if you're on certain medications.

More recent research6 detailing Splenda's oxidative effects, suggests the sweetener may have neurotoxic properties, which doesn't surprise me in the least. The researchers, who assessed the effects of sucralose on water fleas, concluded that: "exposure to sucralose may induce neurological and oxidative mechanisms with potentially important consequences for animal behavior and physiology." As reported by GreenMedInfo.com:7

"Like so many novel patented chemicals released onto the market without adequate pre-approval safety studies, we do not know if this preliminary toxicological research will be applicable to human exposures. In fact, there are only 318 study citations on this chemical in existence since it first began to be researched in the 70's. This most recent study is the first in existence to look at its effect on the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which is found in all animals.

This information deficit is all the more remarkable when you consider there are over 7,000 published studies in existence on either turmeric or its primary polyphenol curcumin, which is still not readily administered by the conventional medical establishment mostly due to 'safety concerns,' despite what the voluminous positive data on its relevance to over 600 health conditions indicates."

FDA Approval Means Little When It Comes to Ascertaining Safety

As previously noted by Dr. Janet Hull,8 many tend to excuse the negative health effects of aspartame simply because it has received the stamp of approval by the FDA. But as discussed in her article, "Abusing the FDA Approval Process,"9 the FDA requires that the industry do its own research, and actually places the burden of proof on the company making the product. Rarely is the industry research reviewed by independent researchers. Should you still be confused on this issue, thinking that the buck somehow stops at the FDA, FDA spokesman Theresa Eisenman recently clarified who is ultimately responsible for making sure a food product is safe, stating that:10 "Manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that their food products are safe and lawful..."

But what company would really make a serious effort to find problems with the very products they want to capitalize on? Despite this illogical premise, the FDA trusts corporations to be honest in their research and evaluations. How likely do you think it is that this "honor system" will actually ensure that each product released to market is safe?

When it comes to artificial sweeteners, aspartame in particular, there's no doubt in my mind that the system has protected industry profits at consumers' expense. And we've not seen the last of it. Despite mounting evidence showing that artificial sweeteners as a group have adverse health effects, the FDA has just approved yet another artificial sweetener called Advantame,11, 12, 13 concocted from a combination of aspartame and vanillin, an artificial vanilla flavor.

Being 20,000 times sweeter than refined sugar, Advantame is the sweetest artificial sweetener so far. To put this into perspective, aspartame, sucralose, and saccharine range from 200 to 700 times sweeter than sugar. Also, as reported by the LA Times:14

"Like aspartame, advantame contains phenylalanine, which is metabolized with difficulty by people with a rare genetic disorder, phenylketonuria. But because of its intense sweetness, advantame would be used at much lower volumes than is asparatame. As a result, the FDA has declared that it can be safely consumed by those with phenylketonuria."

Having a Hard Time Giving Up Artificial Sweeteners?

When you consume artificial sweeteners, your brain actually craves more calories because your body receives no satisfaction on a cellular level by the sugar imposter. This can contribute to not only overeating and weight gain, but also an addiction to artificial sweeteners. To break free, I recommend addressing any emotional component of your food cravings using a tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). A version of EFT specifically geared toward combating sugar cravings is called Turbo Tapping. The video below with EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman also demonstrates how to use EFT to fight food cravings of all kinds.



If you still have cravings after trying EFT or Turbo Tapping, you may need to make some changes to your diet. My free nutrition plan can help you do this in a step-by-step fashion. As for safer sweetener options, you could use stevia or Luo Han, both of which are safe natural sweeteners. That said, if you struggle with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or extra weight, then you have insulin sensitivity issues and would likely benefit from avoiding ALL sweeteners.

Last but not least, if you experience side effects from aspartame or any other artificial sweetener, please report it to the FDA (if you live in the United States) without delay. It's easy to make a report — just go to the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator page, find the phone number for your state, and make a call reporting your reaction.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Stress hormones lead to deleterious changes in the brain... Counter/regenerate with exercise and... (Dr Mercola explains)
By Dr. Mercola

Studies have found links between acute and/or chronic stress and a wide variety of health issues, including your brain function.

Most recently, an animal study reveals that higher levels of stress hormones can speed up short-term memory loss in older adults.1 The findings indicate that how your body responds to stress may be a factor that influences how your brain ages over time. As reported by Business Standard:2

"[R]ats with high levels of the stress hormone corticosterone showed structural changes in the brain and short-term memory deficits.

Robert Sapolsky, PhD said that older animals with higher levels of stress hormones in their blood have 'older' frontal cortexes than animals with less stress hormones, thus, stress may act as a pacemaker of aging in this key brain region."

Previous research3 has also linked chronic stress with working memory impairment. Other recent research suggests that stress may even speed up the onset of more serious dementia known as Alzheimer's disease, which currently afflicts about 5.4 million Americans, including one in eight people aged 65 and over.4

Fortunately, there's compelling research showing that your brain has great plasticity and capacity for regeneration, which you control through your diet and lifestyle choices.

Based on the findings linking dementia with chronic stress, having effective tools to address stress can be an important part of Alzheimer's prevention, not to mention achieving and maintaining optimal health in general.

The Effects of Stress on Memory Function and the Aging Brain

As reported by the University of Iowa,5 where the featured research was done, elevated levels of cortisol affect your memory by causing a gradual loss of synapses in your prefrontal cortex.

This is the brain region associated with short-term memory. Cortisol—a stress hormone—basically has a "corrosive" effect, over time wearing down the synapses responsible for memory storage and processing:

"Short-term increases in cortisol are critical for survival. They promote coping and help us respond to life's challenges by making us more alert and able to think on our feet.

But abnormally high or prolonged spikes in cortisol—like what happens when we are dealing with long-term stress—can lead to negative consequences that numerous bodies of research have shown to include digestion problems, anxiety, weight gain, and high blood pressure."

The researchers suggest that you may be able to protect your future memory function by normalizing your cortisol levels. Such intervention would be particularly beneficial for those who are at high risk for elevated cortisol, such as those who are depressed or are dealing with long-term stress following a traumatic event.

Stress May Trigger Clinical Onset of Alzheimer's

Last year, Argentinean researchers presented evidence suggesting that stress may be a trigger for the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The study found that 72 percent—nearly three out of four—Alzheimer's patients had experienced severe emotional stress during the two years preceding their diagnosis.

In the control group, only 26 percent, or one in four, had undergone major stress or grief. Most of the stresses encountered by the Alzheimer's group involved:

Bereavement; death of a spouse, partner, or child
Violent experiences, such as assault or robbery
Car accidents
Financial problems, including "pension shock"
Diagnosis of a family member's severe illness
According to lead author, Dr. Edgardo Reich:6

"Stress, according to our findings, is probably a trigger for initial symptoms of dementia. Though I rule out stress as monocausal in dementia, research is solidifying the evidence that stress can trigger a degenerative process in the brain and precipitate dysfunction in the neuroendocrine and immune system. It is an observational finding and does not imply direct causality. Further studies are needed to examine these mechanisms in detail."

Stress Wrecks Your Health in Multiple Ways



Robert Sapolsky, PhD, quoted in reference to the featured study, has spent three decades investigating the role of stress on human health. In the 2008 National Geographic special, Killer Stress, he reveals how it affects your body and brain. By understanding how stress affects your biology, you are better equipped to combat it, and mitigate its detrimental impact.

To give you a quick overview, when you're experiencing acute stress, your body releases stress hormones (such as cortisol) that prepare your body to either fight or flee the stressful event.

Your heart rate increases, your lungs take in more oxygen, your blood flow increases, and parts of your immune system become temporarily suppressed, which reduces your inflammatory response to pathogens and other foreign invaders.

When stress becomes chronic, your immune system becomes less sensitive to cortisol, and since inflammation is partly regulated by this hormone, this decreased sensitivity heightens the inflammatory response and allows inflammation to get out of control.7 Inflammation, in turn, is a hallmark of most diseases, from diabetes to heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's.

It's not so surprising then that researchers have found links between stress and ailments ranging from physical pain8 and chronic inflammation,9 to stillbirths10 and poor gut health (which is critical to maintaining mental and physical health).

Researchers have even found that stress-induced anxiety can rewire your brain in such a way as to alter your sense of smell,11 transforming normally neutral odors into objectionable ones, and, as I will discuss in further detail in a later article featuring an upcoming interview with Greg Marsh, stress is also associated with a loss of visual acuity, and by correcting it, many can eliminate their glasses or contacts.

Conquer Your Stress with Energy Psychology

While it's virtually impossible to eliminate all stress from your life, there are tools you can use that will allow your body to effectively compensate for the bioelectrical short-circuiting that takes place when you're stressed or anxious. Remember, some stress is necessary in life. In many ways it is like exercise, but like exercise, it needs to be addressed properly. My favorite tool for stress management is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It's an energy psychology tool that can help reprogram your body's reactions to everyday stress, thereby reducing your chances of developing adverse health effects.

EFT was developed in the 1990s by Gary Craig, a Stanford engineering graduate specializing in healing and self-improvement. It's akin to acupuncture, which is based on the concept that a vital energy flows through your body along invisible pathways known as meridians. EFT stimulates different energy meridian points in your body by tapping them with your fingertips, while simultaneously using custom-made verbal affirmations. This can be done alone or under the supervision of a qualified therapist.12

By doing so, you reprogram the way your body responds to emotional stressors. Since these stressors are usually connected to physical problems, many people's diseases and other symptoms can improve or disappear as well. For a demonstration, please see the following video featuring EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman, in which she discusses EFT for stress relief. For serious or deep-seated emotional problems, I strongly recommend seeing an experienced EFT therapist, as there is a significant art to the process that requires a high level of sophistication if serious problems are to be successfully treated.



Other Tips for Relieving Stress

Exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and meditation are also important "release valves" that can help you manage your stress. Aromatherapy can also have anxiety-inhibiting effects, as can spending time in nature.
In fact, so-called eco-therapy is becoming increasingly validated, with many proponents in the mental health field. Two recent articles in The Guardian13, 14 investigates how spending time in nature can "unlock a healthier mind" and promote a sense of inner peace and happiness. Oliver James writes:

"Ecotherapy encompasses a wide variety of interventions, whether they be prolonged periods in wilderness, gardening or individual therapy. They are all united by the concept that exposure to nature will improve wellbeing and healthy living...

[E]gocentricity... is often reduced by awareness of something much bigger than them, whether it be mountains, wide open plains or huge skies. The feeling that the client is the centre of the universe is called into question by the sheer scale and complexity of nature... The solitude and lack of pressure to satisfy the demands of peers and family lead to significant improvements in such self-attributes as esteem, efficacy and control.

There are many reports of clients of all ages having spiritual experiences as a result of exposure to wilderness... A heightened awareness of plants, animals and landscape leads them to ponder existence beyond themselves. The power of nature encourages a sense of higher powers and of connection both to self and to others."

A winning combination is to exercise outdoors. Not only is exercise known to relieve stress and ease depression, it also directly benefits your physical brain. It encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by stimulating nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage. Also, during exercise, nerve cells release proteins known as neurotrophic factors. One in particular, called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health, and directly benefits cognitive functions, including learning.
For more stress-busting tips, please see my previous article, "13 Mind-Body Techniques That Can Help Ease Pain and Depression." Clearly, stress is an inescapable part of life—it's how you deal with it that will determine whether it will translate into health problems later on.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Brain function and "good" gut bacteria
By Dr. Mercola

The bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms that comprise your body’s microflora actually outnumber your body’s cells 10 to 1, and it’s now becoming increasingly clear that these tiny organisms play a MAJOR role in your health—both physical and mental.

The impact of your microflora on your brain function has again been confirmed by UCLA researchers who, in a proof-of-concept study, found that probiotics (beneficial bacteria) indeed altered the brain function in the participants.

As reported by UCLA:1

"Researchers have known that the brain sends signals to your gut, which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected but until now had been proved only in animal studies: that signals travel the opposite way as well.

'Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut,' [Dr. Kirsten] Tillisch said. 'Our study shows that the gut–brain connection is a two-way street.'"

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Gastroenterology,2 claims the discovery “carries significant implications for future research that could point the way toward dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function.” Naturally, I urge you to embrace dietary changes here, opposed to waiting for some “miracle drug” to do the work for you...

Yes, Your Diet Affects Your Brain Function

The study enlisted 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55 who were divided into three groups:

The treatment group ate yogurt containing several probiotics thought to have a beneficial impact on intestinal health, twice a day for one month
Another group ate a “sham” product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics
Control group ate no product at all
Before and after the four-week study, participants’ underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, both while in a state of rest, and in response to an “emotion-recognition task.” For the latter, the women were shown a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces, which they had to match to other faces showing the same emotions.

“This task, designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to a visual stimulus, was chosen because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors,” UCLA explains.

Interestingly, compared to the controls, the women who consumed probiotic yogurt had decreased activity in two brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation:

The insular cortex (insula), which plays a role in functions typically linked to emotion (including perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience) and the regulation of your body's homeostasis, and
The somatosensory cortex, which plays a role in your body’s ability to interpret a wide variety of sensations
During the resting brain scan, the treatment group also showed greater connectivity between a region known as the “periaqueductal grey” and areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with cognition. In contrast, the control group showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions. According to UCLA:

“'The researchers were surprised to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion,' Tillisch said...

'There are studies showing that what we eat can alter the composition and products of the gut flora — in particular, that people with high-vegetable, fiber-based diets have a different composition of their microbiota, or gut environment, than people who eat the more typical Western diet that is high in fat and carbohydrates,' [senior author Dr. Emeran] Mayer said. 'Now we know that this has an effect not only on the metabolism but also affects brain function.'"

What is really remarkable to me is that this study showed any improvement at all, since they used commercial yogurt preparations that are notoriously unhealthy foods loaded with artificial sweeteners, colors, flavorings, and sugar. Most importantly the vast majority have virtually clinically insignificant levels of beneficial bacteria. Clearly, you would be far better off making your own yogurt from raw milk.

Your Gut May Hold the Key to Better Brain Health

You may not be aware that you actually have two nervous systems:

Central nervous system, composed of your brain and spinal cord
Enteric nervous system, which is the intrinsic nervous system of your gastrointestinal tract
Both are created from identical tissue during fetal development—one part turns into your central nervous system while the other develops into your enteric nervous system. These two systems are connected via the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve that runs from your brain stem down to your abdomen. It is now well established that the vagus nerve is the primary route your gut bacteria use to transmit information to your brain.

While many think of their brain as the organ in charge, your gut actually sends far more information to your brain than your brain sends to your gut... To put this into more concrete terms, you've probably experienced the visceral sensation of butterflies in your stomach when you're nervous, or had an upset stomach when you were very angry or stressed. The flip side is also true, in that problems in your gut can directly impact your mental health, leading to issues like anxiety and depression.

For instance, in December 2011, the Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility3 reported the novel finding that the probiotic (good bacteria) known as Bifidobacterium longum NCC3001 has been shown to help normalize anxiety-like behavior in mice with infectious colitis. Separate research4 also found the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus had a marked effect on GABA (an inhibitory neurotransmitter that is significantly involved in regulating many physiological and psychological processes) levels in certain brain regions and lowered the stress-induced hormone corticosterone, resulting in reduced anxiety- and depression-related behavior.

Just as you have neurons in your brain, you also have neurons in your gut -- including neurons that produce neurotransmitters like serotonin, which is also found in your brain. In fact, the greatest concentration of serotonin, which is involved in mood control, depression and aggression, is found in your intestines, not your brain. It’s quite possible that this might be one reason why antidepressants, which raise serotonin levels in your brain, are often ineffective in treating depression, whereas proper dietary changes often help...

Your Gut Microbes Can Affect Your Health in Numerous Ways

In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that the microbes in your gut play a much more vital role in your health than previously thought possible. In fact, probiotics, along with a host of other gut microorganisms, are so crucial to your health that researchers have compared them to "a newly recognized organ." Besides research implicating gut bacteria in mental health and behavior, other research has shown that your microbiota also has an impact on:

Immune system function: Biologist Sarkis Mazmanian5 believes bacteria can train your immune system to distinguish between "foreign" microbes and those originating in your body. His work is laying the groundwork for new therapies using probiotics to treat a variety of diseases, particularly autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's.
Mazmanian and colleagues were recently awarded the MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for identifying an organism that originates in the human body (opposed to a fermented food) that has demonstrable health benefits in both animal and human cells. The organism has been named Bacteroides fragillis, and is found in 15-20 percent of humans. His group hopes to one day be able to test this body-originated bacteria in human clinical trials.

Gene expression: Researchers have discovered that the absence or presence of gut microorganisms during infancy permanently alters gene expression. Through gene profiling, they were able to discern that absence of gut bacteria altered genes and signaling pathways involved in learning, memory, and motor control. This suggests that gut bacteria are closely tied to early brain development and subsequent behavior. These behavioral changes could be reversed as long as the mice were exposed to normal microorganisms early in life. But once the germ-free mice had reached adulthood, colonizing them with bacteria did not influence their behavior.
In a similar way, probiotics have also been found to influence the activity of hundreds of your genes, helping them to express in a positive, disease-fighting manner.

Diabetes: Bacterial populations in the gut of diabetics6 differ from non-diabetics, according to a study from Denmark. In particular, diabetics had fewer Firmicutes and more plentiful amounts of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria, compared to non-diabetics. The study also found a positive correlation for the ratios of Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes and reduced glucose tolerance. The researchers concluded:
"The results of this study indicate that type 2 diabetes in humans is associated with compositional changes in intestinal microbiota."

Obesity: The make-up of gut bacteria tends to differ in lean vs. obese people. This is one of the strongest areas of probiotic research to date, and you can read about a handful of such studies here. The bottom line is that restoring your gut flora should be an important consideration if you're struggling to lose weight.
Autism: Establishment of normal gut flora in the first 20 days or so of life plays a crucial role in appropriate maturation of your baby's immune system. Hence, babies who develop abnormal gut flora are left with compromised immune systems and are particularly at risk for developing such disorders as ADHD, learning disabilities and autism, particularly if they are vaccinated before restoring balance to their gut flora.
To get a solid understanding of just how this connection works, I highly recommend reviewing the information shared by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in this previous interview.



Total Video Length: 1:13:21

Download Interview Transcript

Your Gut Flora Is Constantly Under Attack

Your gut bacteria are vulnerable to your diet and lifestyle. If you eat a lot of sugar, refined grains, and genetically engineered foods (i.e. processed foods and beverages of all kinds, as they are typically loaded with high fructose corn syrup and/or soy, both of which are primary GE crops in the US), your gut bacteria are going to be compromised because processed foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast. Your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to and can be harmed by:

Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary (and when you do, make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a probiotic supplement) Conventionally-raised meats and other animal products, as CAFO animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics, plus genetically engineered grains, which have also been implicated in the destruction of gut flora Processed foods (as the excessive sugars, along with otherwise “dead” nutrients, feed pathogenic bacteria)
Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water Antibacterial soap Agricultural chemicals
How to Optimize Your Gut Flora

Considering the fact that an estimated 80 percent of your immune system is located in your gut, reseeding your gut with healthy bacteria is important for the prevention of virtually ALL diseases, from colds to cancer. To do so, I recommend the following strategies:

Avoid processed, refined foods in your diet.
Eat traditionally fermented, unpasteurized foods: Fermented foods are the best route to optimal digestive health, as long as you eat the traditionally made, unpasteurized versions. Some of the beneficial bacteria found in fermented foods are also excellent chelators of heavy metals and pesticides, which will also have a beneficial health effect by reducing your toxic load. Healthy choices include:
Fermented vegetables
Lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner)
Fermented milk, such as kefir
Natto (fermented soy)
Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re consuming. Fermented vegetables, which are one of my new passions, are an excellent way to supply beneficial bacteria back into our gut. And, unlike some other fermented foods, they tend to be palatable, if not downright delicious, to most people.

As an added bonus, they can also be a great source of vitamin K2 if you ferment your own using the proper starter culture. We tested samples of high-quality fermented organic vegetables made with our specific starter culture, and a typical serving (about two to three ounces) contained not only 10 trillion beneficial bacteria, it also had 500 mcg of vitamin K2, which we now know is a vital co-nutrient to both vitamin D and calcium. Most high-quality probiotic supplements will only supply you with a fraction of the beneficial bacteria found in such homemade fermented veggies, so it’s your most economical route to optimal gut health as well.

Take a high-quality probiotic supplement. Although I'm not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics is an exception if you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis.
Nurturing Your Gut Flora Is One of the Foundations of Optimal Health

Mounting research indicates the bacterial colonies residing in your gut may play key roles in the development of cancer, asthma, allergies, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and even brain, behavioral and emotional problems like ADHD, autism and depression. When you consider the fact that the gut-brain connection is recognized as a basic tenet of physiology and medicine, and that there's no shortage of evidence of gastrointestinal involvement in a variety of neurological diseases, it's easy to see how the balance of gut bacteria can play a significant role in your psychology and behavior as well.

With this in mind, it should also be crystal clear that nourishing your gut flora is extremely important, from cradle to grave, because in a very real sense you have two brains, one inside your skull and one in your gut, and each needs its own vital nourishment. Eating fermented foods should be your primary strategy, but if you don't enjoy the taste of fermented foods, taking a probiotic supplement is definitely advised. I recommend looking for a probiotic supplement that fulfills the following criteria, to ensure quality and efficacy:

The bacteria strains in the product must be able to survive your stomach acid and bile, so that they reach your intestines alive in adequate numbers
The bacteria strains must have health-promoting features
The probiotic activity must be guaranteed throughout the entire production process, storage period and shelf life of the product

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

A reminder about EXERCISE.
By Dr. Mercola

Over the last several years, researchers have slowly but surely reached the consensus that high intensity interval training (HIIT), which is characterized by relatively short bursts of intense exercise followed by periods of rest, far outperforms conventional aerobic endurance type exercises.

Not only does it beat conventional cardio as the most effective and efficient form of exercise, it also provides health benefits you simply cannot get from regular aerobics, such as a tremendous boost in human growth hormone (HGH), aka the "fitness hormone."

Perhaps best of all, HIIT requires only minutes, compared to hours, each week. In the featured video, Dr. Michael Mosley, author of Fast Exercise: The Simple Secret of High-Intensity Training, shares his own experiences with HIIT.

The Truth About Exercise

As Dr. Mosley reports in the featured BBC special, groundbreaking research suggests that as little as three minutes of high intensity training per week can produce significant health benefits.

Dr. Mosley was able to improve his insulin sensitivity by 24 percent by putting in a mere 12 minutes of intense exercise per week, for four weeks. Such an effect is truly amazing, and indeed important, as improving and maintaining good insulin sensitivity is perhaps one of the most important aspects of optimal health.

He performed the exercises on a stationary bike. After warming up, he cycled “all-out” for 20 seconds, rested for a couple of minutes, and then gave it his all for another 20 seconds.

The HIIT approach I personally prefer and recommend is the Peak Fitness method of a 50% longer exercise time of 30 seconds of maximum effort followed by less recovery of only 90 seconds for a total of eight repetitions.

When you're first starting out, depending on your level of fitness, you may only be able to do two or three repetitions, which is perfectly alright. As you get fitter, just keep adding repetitions until you’re doing eight.

About a year ago, I personally modified the number of repetitions I do from eight to six, as it was sometimes just too strenuous for me to do all eight. By listening to my body and cutting it back to six reps, I can now easily tolerate the workout and go full out. Plus, I no longer dread doing it.

I also do alternatives to elliptical now where I will do six sets with a barbell and ten pounds on it and do deadlifts, bent over rows, upright rows, squats, clean and jerks and bicep curls all in rapid succession with no breaks. It is not quite as intense but goes for about 60 seconds and really pushes me metabolically. I also rest for a few minutes until I recover. I think the variety is good.

Another tweak I made is to incorporate Buteyko breathing, which means I do most of the workout breathing only through my nose. This raises the challenge to another level.

There are very compelling reasons for trading your hour-long walk on the treadmill for a 20-minute high intensity routine, and research shows that in this case, less time can indeed lead to a greater payout, if done correctly. As Dr. Mosley writes in his book, Fast Exercise:

“I believe that we have now produced sufficient data to be able to recommend short bursts of high-intensity exercise as a safe and effective alternative to conventional workouts, removing the ‘time barrier’ as an excuse for not exercising.

This will hopefully boost compliance and help people take up an approach that will lead to a healthier way of life. The great thing about HIIT is that it can be done in the workplace or at home without preplanning or missing an episode of your favorite TV show.”

Even Brief Intense Exercise Produces Genetic Changes That Promote Fat Loss

A study published in the journal Cell Metabolism1 in 2012, showed that when healthy but inactive people exercise intensely, even if the exercise is brief, it produces an immediate change in their DNA. While the underlying genetic code in the muscle remains unchanged, exercise causes important structural and chemical changes to the DNA molecules within the muscles.

This contraction-induced gene activation appears to be early events leading to the genetic reprogramming of muscle for strength, and to the structural and metabolic benefits of exercise. Several of the genes affected by an acute bout of exercise are genes involved in fat metabolism. Specifically, the study suggests that when you exercise, your body almost immediately experiences genetic activation that increases the production of fat-busting proteins! Besides lowered body fat, other benefits associated with high intensity interval training include:

Improved muscle tone
Firmer skin and fewer wrinkles
Higher energy levels
Improved athletic speed and performance
Boosted sex drive
Intermittent Movement—Another Crucial Piece of the Puzzle

In the video, Dr. Mosley also meets with Dr. James Levine, a Mayo Clinic obesity expert whose research suggests that the best way to lose weight is to increase your non-exercise activity thermogenesis, also referred to as NEAT. This is the calories you expend during your day-to-day living, through body movement that have nothing to do with traditional exercise.

Similar research has been conducted by Dr. Joan Vernikos, former director of NASA’s Life Sciences Division and author of Sitting Kills, Moving Heals.

Mounting research clearly shows that undisrupted sitting for long periods of time is an independent risk factor for chronic disease and early death—even if you exercise vigorously each week. More and more, we’re starting to realize the importance of keeping your body in perpetual motion—bending, stretching, reaching, standing up...

Using so-called “fidget pants,” Dr. Levine measures how much Dr. Mosley and other volunteers move during any given day, and how that non-exercise movement translates into calories burned. As it turns out, even slight increases in daily motion can result in several hundreds of calories burned.

When asked which might be more important for health: intermittent bursts of high intensity exercise a few times a week, or more or less non-stop non-exercise movement throughout the day, Dr. Levine notes that those who exercise regularly will clearly continue to do so because they love it.

But a large section of the population gets no exercise whatsoever and think nothing of it. For those people, paying careful attention to their intermittent movements—the movement inherent in their daily living—becomes incredibly relevant and important for their health. In a nutshell, the key to optimal health is to “keep off your bottom as much as possible.” It’s just that simple. That in no way detracts from the importance or benefits you can reap from a regular fitness regimen though.

According to Dr. Levine, “there should never be an hour where you’re sitting down.” One solution, provided your job can accommodate it, is to do your work standing up. Another solution, suggested by Dr. Vernikos, is to make sure you stand up at least once every 15 minutes or so. In a previous article, I collected a list of 30 videos demonstrating quick and simple exercises you can do when you stand up.

What Makes High Intensity Exercise So Effective

Getting back to high intensity exercise, part of the key that makes HIIT so effective is that it engages far more of your muscle tissue than conventional aerobic cardio exercise. You have three different types of muscle fibers: slow, fast, and super-fast. Only ONE of these muscles, the super-fast fibers, will impact your production of human growth hormone (HGH), which is KEY for strength, health, and longevity. The vast majority of people, including many athletes such as marathon runners, only train using their slow muscle fibers. In fact, neither traditionally performed aerobic cardio nor strength training will work anything but your slow muscles. These are the red muscles, which are filled with capillaries and mitochondria, and hence a lot of oxygen.

The fast type of fiber, which is also red muscle that oxygenates quickly, is five times faster than the slow fibers. Power training, or plyometric burst-type exercises, will engage these fast muscles. The super-fast ones are the white muscle fibers. They contain far less blood and less densely packed mitochondria. These muscle fibers are what you use when you do anaerobic, short burst exercises. High intensity burst-type exercises are the ones that will engage these super-fast fibers. They're 10 times faster than slow fibers, and activating them is the key to producing growth hormone! To further maximize your growth hormone release, you’ll want to:

Get a good night's sleep
Optimize your vitamin D levels
Avoid sugar, especially fructose. (If you consume sugar or fructose, especially within two hours post-exercise, you will virtually obliterate the production of growth hormone!)
Tips for Building a High-Quality Fitness Regimen

Ideally, intense exercise should be balanced with strength training, proper stretching, core strengthening, stress reduction, restorative sleep, and good nutrition. You'll find much more information about HIIT and other types of exercise in the fitness section of my website. When putting together your exercise routine, I recommend incorporating the following:

Stand Up Every 15 Minutes. Compelling research now tells us that prolonged sitting can have a tremendously detrimental impact on your health, even if you exercise regularly. Your body needs to interact with gravity in order to function properly, and this has to be ongoing, throughout your day. Whenever you have a chance to move your body, do so! I invite you to look at our list of 30 videos for ideas about what you can do when you stand up.
Interval Peak Fitness (Anaerobic) Training: Interval training involves alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods, and are central to my Peak Fitness routine.
Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a one-set strength training routine
will ensure that you're really optimizing the health benefits of your fitness program. You can also "up" the intensity by slowing it down. For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high intensity interval exercise, please see my interview above with Dr. Doug McGuff, and my video about super slow workouts at the top of this section.
Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen, and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury, and improve your balance and stability. Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, is an integral first step of a larger program he calls "Modern Moveology," which consists of a catalog of exercises.
Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is Active Isolated Stretching (AIS). With AIS, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US and Canada and Europe.
Dr Mercola discusses heart health.
What Leonardo Taught Us About the Heart
July 12, 2014
By Dr. Mercola

Leonardo da Vinci is known as one of the world’s greatest artists, counting such famous paintings as the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” among his many accomplishments. But Leonardo was much more than a painter.

By day, he was an artist, an architect, and an engineer, but his hobby was science. Throughout his life, Leonardo filled extensive notebooks with scientific theories, inventions, and drawings of the human skull, skeleton, muscles, and organs. More than 4,000 pages have been discovered so far.

With little formal education, and a “day job” as an artist, Leonardo’s drawings were never published and stayed largely undiscovered until more than 250 years after his death.

Cardiothoracic surgeon Francis Wells has spent years studying Leonardo’s extensive anatomical drawings, especially of the human heart, and even published a book on the topic titled The Heart of Leonardo.

According to Dr. Wells, Leonardo’s insights are “quite astonishing” and describe inner workings of the heart that even modern-day cardiologists often get wrong.1

Leonardo da Vinci’s Early Insights Into the Human Heart

While many of Leonardo’s drawings are based on animal hearts, he did carry out dissections on human hearts as well, including one in which he described the “first known description of coronary artery disease.” Many of his drawings and writings on the heart turned out to be spot on, and he is credited with:2

Accurate descriptions of how the arterial valves close and open (a topic that is now researched using MRI technology) Recognizing that currents in blood flow, created in the aorta artery, help heart valves close
Suggesting that arteries create a health risk if they “fur up”
Realizing that the blood is in a circulation system (which may have influenced William Harvey’s 1616 discovery that the heart pumps blood around the body)
Showing that the heart is a muscle that does not warm the blood
Being the first anatomist to correctly note the number and root structure of human teeth

It’s thought that, had Leonardo’s insights been recognized earlier, it may have changed early treatment for heart disease (and many other health conditions). To this day, much of the heart’s workings remain a mystery, which only adds to the wonderment of Leonardo’s early drawings (another interesting tidbit: Leonardo wrote backwards, from right to left).

Perhaps most of all, what we can learn from Leonardo da Vinci – a man with an insatiable curiosity and love of learning -- is to continue questioning, exploring, and discovering, even among topics that are assumed to be well established. BBC News reported:3

“According to Mr. Wells, Leonardo's legacy is that we should follow the Renaissance Man's example and continue to challenge, question and enquire rather than listen to accepted wisdom.”

Top Heart Myths That Might Surprise You

In keeping with Leonardo’s example, I want to share some information about heart health that may surprise you…

Saturated Fat Does Not Promote Heart Disease

As of 2010, recommendations from the US Department of Agriculture4 (USDA) call for reducing your saturated fat intake to a mere 10 percent of your total calories or less. It's virtually impossible to estimate how many people have been prematurely killed by the persistent promulgation of this myth that lowering naturally occurring saturated fat intake is good for your heart.

Grown from a flawed study published over half a century ago that has since been soundly debunked by many decades of research, it’s now known that the avoidance of saturated fat actually promotes poor health in a number of ways.

Recently an editorial in the British Medical Journal titled "From the Heart, Saturated Fat is Not the Major Issue," firmly busted this pervasive myth.5 As stated by the author, Aseem Malhotra, an interventional cardiology specialist registrar at Croydon University Hospital in London:

"The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades. Yet scientific evidence shows that this advice has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risks...

The aspect of dietary saturated fat that is believed to have the greatest influence on cardiovascular risk is elevated concentrations of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.

Yet the reduction in LDL cholesterol from reducing saturated fat intake seems to be specific to large, buoyant (type A) LDL particles, when in fact it is the small, dense (type B) particles (responsive to carbohydrate intake) that are implicated in cardiovascular disease.

Indeed, recent prospective cohort studies have not supported any significant association between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular risk. Instead, saturated fat has been found to be protective."
[Emphasis mine]

Natural Salt Is Essential for Your Health

Salt is another oft-vilified food for the heart, and it’s true that overindulgence in the typically used commercially processed table salt can lead to fluid retention, high blood pressure, swelling of your limbs, and shortness of breath. In the long term, it is thought to contribute to high blood pressure, kidney and heart disease, heart attacks, and heart failure.

However, salt provides two elements – sodium and chloride – that are essential for life. Your body cannot make these elements on its own, so you must get them from your diet.

Compelling evidence suggests that while processed salt can indeed cause fluid retention and related health problems, numerous studies have, overall, refuted the salt-heart disease connection.

For example, a 2011 meta-analysis of seven studies involving more than 6,000 people found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes, or death.6 In fact, salt restriction actually increased the risk of death in those with heart failure.

Similarly, research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that same year revealed that the less sodium excreted in your urine (a marker of salt consumption), the greater the risk of dying from heart disease.7


That said, it’s clear that many are consuming far too much processed table salt and not enough natural salt. Natural salt contains 84 percent sodium chloride, and 16 percent naturally occurring trace minerals, including silicon, phosphorus, and vanadium.

Processed (table) salt, on the other hand, contains 97.5 percent sodium chloride and the rest is man-made chemicals, such as moisture absorbents and flow agents. If you’re interested in the role of salt in your heart health, consider, too, that potassium deficiency may be more responsible for hypertension than excess sodium, and too much sodium along with too little potassium has been found to more than double your risk of death from a heart attack, compared to eating about equal amounts of both nutrients.8

[In the salt shaker I use, there is "Lite salt", which is potassium chloride mixed with ordinary sodium choride, half and half. I sometimes use sea salt, which contains other minerals. -DrJones]

Shunning the Sun May Harm Your Heart

Do you avoid regular sun exposure, or slather on sunscreen every time you go outdoors? These behaviors are linked with vitamin D deficiency, which is detrimental to your heart. Even if you're considered generally "healthy," if you're deficient in vitamin D, your arteries are likely stiffer than they should be, and your blood pressure may run higher than recommended due to your blood vessels being unable to relax.

Recent research also confirmed that postmenopausal women with higher vitamin D levels had higher HDL (good) cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels.9 Further, cholesterol, sulfur, and vitamin D from sun exposure are all interrelated, and the status of each promotes or prevents the disease process known as cardiovascular disease.

Too Much Exercise Can Backfire for Your Heart Health

Several recent scientific studies indicate that endurance exercises, such as marathon and triathlon training, pose significant risks to your heart, some of which may be irreversible and life threatening. Long-distance running, for instance, can lead to acute volume overload, inflammation, thickening and stiffening of the heart muscle and arteries, coronary artery calcification, arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac arrest. A safer and more effective exercise is high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which consists of short bursts of intense exertion. HIIT maximizes the benefits for your heart, while optimizing your human growth hormone (HGH) and insulin levels.

Heart Disease Is One of the Leading Causes of Death in the US

About 800,000 people die of heart disease in the US each year. At one in every three deaths, this makes heart disease ostensibly the leading cause of death for both men and women.10 In addition, 720,000 Americans have a heart attack every year, the majority of which (515,000) are a first heart attack.11 Bear in mind that, contrary to the conventional ideology, your total cholesterol level—which includes HDL, LDL, triglycerides, and Lp(a)—is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is above 300.

However, many have argued that the flawed medical paradigm is actually the leader, killing far more including many of those that die from heart disease. Still, high total cholesterol can in some instances indicate a problem, provided it's your LDL and triglycerides that are elevated and you have a low HDL. I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their high HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen even more who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:

HDL/Cholesterol ratio. This is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That ratio should ideally be above 24 percent
Triglyceride/HDL ratio. Here, you divide your triglyceride level by your HDL. This ratio should ideally be below 2
That said, these are still simply guidelines, and there's a lot more that goes into your risk of heart disease than any one of these numbers. In fact, it was only after word got out that total cholesterol is a poor predictor of heart disease that HDL and LDL cholesterol were brought into the picture. They give you a closer idea of what's going on, but they still do not show you everything. Additional risk factors for heart disease include:

Your fasting insulin level: Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates like fructose and refined grains generates a rapid rise in blood glucose and then insulin to compensate for the rise in blood sugar. The insulin released from eating too many carbs promotes fat accumulation and makes it more difficult for your body to shed excess weight. Excess fat, particularly around your belly, is one of the major contributors to heart disease, while elevated insulin levels can also lead to insulin resistance, a major risk factor for heart disease
Your fasting blood sugar level: Studies have shown that people with a fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dl had a nearly 300 percent increase higher risk of having coronary heart disease than people with a level below 79 mg/dl

Your iron level: Iron can be a very potent cause of oxidative stress, so if you have excess iron levels you can damage your blood vessels and increase your risk of heart disease. Ideally, you should monitor your ferritin levels and make sure they are not much above 80 ng/ml. The simplest way to lower them if they are elevated is to donate your blood. If that is not possible, you can have a therapeutic phlebotomy and that will effectively eliminate the excess iron from your body

Heart Disease Can Be Prevented with Healthy Lifestyle

A quarter of the 800,000 annual heart disease deaths in the US—or about 200,000—could be prevented through simple lifestyle changes, and more than half (6 out of 10) of the preventable heart disease and stroke deaths happen to people under age 65, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).12 In my mind the conventional medical system is largely responsible for many of these deaths, as their dietary recommendations for the prevention of heart disease are diametrically opposed to what you actually need for optimal heart health. For over 60 years, saturated fats have been blamed for heart disease, resulting in the promulgation of a dangerous low-fat, high-sugar diet.

In reality, a diet that promotes health is high in healthy fats and very, very low in sugar and non-vegetable carbohydrates... Research coming out of some of America's most respected institutions now confirms that sugar is actually a primary dietary factor driving chronic disease development.
If you’re wondering what a "proper diet" is for heart health, I suggest reviewing my Nutrition Plan, which is designed to guide you through the dietary changes in a step-by-step fashion, moving from beginner to intermediary to advanced. When properly applied, it can improve just about anyone's health, including your heart health. Following is a summary of the basic recommendations:

Limit or eliminate all processed foods
Eliminate all gluten and highly allergenic foods from your diet
Eat organic foods whenever possible to avoid exposure to harmful agricultural chemicals such as glyphosate
Eat at least one-third of your food uncooked (raw), or as much as you can manage
Increase the amount of fresh vegetables in your diet
Avoid artificial sweeteners of all kinds
Swap all synthetic trans fats (partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, margarine, etc.) for healthy fats like avocado, raw butter, and coconut oil
To rebalance your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, take a high-quality omega-3 supplement, such as krill oil, and reduce your consumption of processed omega-6 fats from vegetable oils
Drink plenty of pure water
Optimize your vitamin D levels, either through appropriate sun exposure, a safe tanning bed, or as last resort, an oral vitamin D3 supplement
Limit fructose to less than 25 grams per day, from all sources, including whole fruits. If you have insulin resistance, diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease, you'd be well advised to keep your fructose below 15 grams per day


Four More Lifestyle Habits for Heart Health

In addition to avoiding the dietary hazards just mentioned—particularly sugar/fructose, grains, and processed foods of all kinds—here are a few more recommendations that can have a profound impact on reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease.

Optimize your insulin and leptin levels. If your fasting insulin level is above three, consider limiting (max 15 grams of fructose per day) or eliminating your intake of grains and sugars until you optimize your insulin level. Following my nutrition plan will automatically limit your intake of foods that raise insulin levels.
Exercise regularly. One of the primary benefits of exercise is that it helps normalize and maintain a healthy insulin level. A 2011 study published in the Lancet, which included several hundred thousand people, found that a mere 15 minutes of exercise a day can increase your lifespan by three years—even if you have cardiovascular disease risks.13
Regularly walk barefoot to ground with the earth. When you do, free electrons are transferred from the earth into your body, and this grounding effect is one of the most potent antioxidants we know of, and helps alleviate inflammation throughout your body.
Grounding helps thin your blood by improving its zeta potential, which means it improves the negative electrical charge between your red blood cells thus repelling them and keeping your blood less likely to clot.

In fact, grounding's effect on blood thinning is so profound that if you are taking blood thinners, you must work with your health care provider to lower your dose -- otherwise you may overdose on the medication. Research has demonstrated it takes about 80 minutes for the free electrons from the earth to reach your bloodstream and transform your blood.

Avoid drugs that promote heart disease. Statin drugs and antidepressants are two commonly prescribed types of medications that have been shown to promote heart disease.
Wow!

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

How to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes, Why Insulin May Actually Accelerate Death, and Other Ignored Facts
July 14, 2014 | 93,923 views

By Dr. Mercola

Great Britain, like the United States, has seen a remarkably rapid rise in pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes over the last decade. According to a recent BBC News1 report, more than one-third of British adults are now pre-diabetic.

In 2003, 11.6 percent of Britons had pre-diabetes. By 2011, that figure had more than tripled, reaching 35.3 percent. Researchers warn that this will lead to a massive avalanche of type 2 diabetics in upcoming years, which will have serious consequences for health care and life expectancy.

In the United States, nearly 80 million people, or one in four has some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes. What's worse, both type 1 and type 2 diabetes among children and teens has also skyrocketed.

The most recent data,2, 3 reveals that, between 2001 and 2009, incidence of type 1 diabetes among children under the age of 19 rose by 21 percent. Incidence of type 2 diabetes among children aged 10-19 rose by 30 percent during that same timeframe!

Conventional Medicine Has It All Wrong...

Statistics such as these point to two very important facts. First, it tells us that diabetes cannot be primarily caused by genetics, and secondly, it literally screams that something we're doing, consistently and en masse, is horribly wrong, and we need to address it.

In this case, that "something" is a seriously flawed diet and lack of physical activity. Unfortunately, Dr. Ron Rosedale wrote in 2005, doctors cause diabetics to D.I.E from their flawed prescriptions, which stem from a basic lack of insight into the root cause of this disease. D.I.E., here, is a clever acronym for "Doctor Induced Exacerbation," which does indeed include early death.

Conventional medicine has type 2 diabetes pegged as a problem with blood sugar rather than the underlying problem of improper insulin and leptin signaling. The reality is that diabetes is a disease rooted in insulin resistance4 and perhaps more importantly, a malfunction of leptin signaling, caused by chronically elevated insulin and leptin levels.

This is why the medical community's approach to its treatment is not getting anywhere. Treating type 2 diabetes with insulin is actually one of the worst things you can do...

Recent research has come to the same conclusions that Dr. Rosedale warned us about nearly a decade ago, which is that treating type 2 diabetes with insulin can lead further to the development of type 1 diabetes.

And, not only are conventionally-trained doctors wrong about the cause of the disease, but they continue to pass along seriously flawed nutritional information as well, which allows the disease to increase to epidemic proportions.

Definitions of Terms

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of causes and treatments for diabetes, let's clarify the difference between type 1 and type 2, and the emergence of what some are now referring to as "type 3" diabetes. The terms "pre-diabetes" and "metabolic syndrome" also need to be explained.

Pre-diabetes, also known as impaired glucose tolerance, is a term used to describe an earlier state of progressing insulin resistance. It is conventionally diagnosed by having a fasting blood sugar between 100 and 125 mg/dl.
Pre-diabetes is very easy to turn around. Simply swapping processed foods for whole organic foods lower in sugar and sugar-forming carbohydrates combined with a few minutes of daily exercise will quickly put you on the road to reversing this condition.

Metabolic syndrome. As your insulin resistance progresses, your liver makes too much sugar and fat, and your skeletal muscles are less able to burn them and make glycogen, which is how glucose is stored in your muscles and liver. In turn, there is an increase in sugar and fats in your bloodstream which leads to high triglyceride levels and increased body fat--especially abdominal fat, and higher blood pressure.
Having 3 or more of a group of symptoms caused by insulin (and now we also know leptin) resistance -- high triglycerides, low HDL, higher blood glucose and blood pressure, and increased belly fat—is referred to as metabolic syndrome (in the past it was called Syndrome X).

Type 1: insulin-dependent diabetes. Traditionally, type 1 diabetes develops before the age of 20. It used to be relatively uncommon, but as noted above, its incidence is rapidly rising.
Type 1 diabetes is classically an autoimmune disease in which your immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells of your pancreas, resulting in an inability to produce any significant insulin which that, if left untreated, will cause death in days to weeks from a hyperglycemic coma.

This deficiency of insulin is why type 1 is called "insulin-dependent" diabetes. There is currently no known way to completely reverse this.

However recent research suggests glimmers of hope. For example, Columbia University scientists claim that by turning off a particular gene, human gut cells can be converted into cells that produce insulin in response to dietary sugar.5, 6

Type 2: non-insulin-dependent diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas is producing some insulin, in fact usually too much, but is unable to recognize the insulin and use it properly. This is an advanced stage of insulin resistance, which is typically caused by a diet that is too high in sugars and sugar forming foods.
When you have inadequate insulin signaling, sugar cannot get into your cells and instead builds up in your blood. While anyone can get type 2 diabetes, you are typically considered at highest risk if you are overweight, sedentary, if you are a woman who had gestational diabetes, have family members with type 2 diabetes, or have metabolic syndrome. However, all of these really have the same underlying root of insulin and leptin resistance.

Type 2 diabetes represents the vast majority of all diabetics, and contrary to conventional medical and media teaching, it's nearly 100 percent curable7 through lifestyle changes alone (if these are instituted before conventional medical therapy/drugs kills the cells in the pancreas that makes insulin, causing type 1 diabetes too; see below).

Study Confirms: 'Insulin Therapy May Do More Harm Than Good'

A study published in the June 30, 2014 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine8 concluded what Dr. Rosedale has been saying for two decades, that insulin therapy in type 2 diabetic patients may indeed do more harm than good. As reported by Medical News Today:9

"In the US, type 2 diabetes is diagnosed when hemoglobin A1c levels reach 6.5 percent or higher. The higher A1c levels are, the greater the risk of other health problems. Sometimes the condition can be managed through changes in diet, but other patients with type 2 diabetes may need medication - such as insulin or metformin - to help lower their blood sugar levels, and ultimately, reduce the risk of diabetes complications.

But the researchers of this latest study... claim that the benefits of such treatment - particularly for people over the age of 50 - may not always outweigh the negatives. 'In many cases, insulin treatment may not do anything to add to the person's quality life expectancy,' says study co-author John S. Yudkin... 'If people feel that insulin therapy reduces their quality of life by anything more than around 3-4 percent, this will outweigh any potential benefits gained by treatment in almost anyone with type 2 diabetes over around 50 years old.'

For example, they estimate that a person with type 2 diabetes who begins insulin therapy at age 45 and lowers their hemoglobin A1c levels by 1 percent may experience an extra 10 months of healthy life. But for a patient who starts treatment for type 2 diabetes at age 75, they estimate the therapy may only gain them an additional 3 weeks of healthy life. The researchers say this prompts the question - is 10-15 years of pills or injections with possible side effects worth it?"

New Kid on the Block: Type 3 Diabetes, or 'Brain Diabetes,' May Be Responsible for Alzheimer's Disease and Glaucoma

A growing body of research suggests there's a powerful connection between your diet and your risk of both Alzheimer's disease and glaucoma,10 via similar pathways that cause type 2 diabetes. Alzheimer's disease was tentatively dubbed "type 3 diabetes" in early 2005 when researchers learned that the pancreas is not the only organ that produces insulin. Your brain also produces insulin, and this brain insulin is necessary for the survival of your brain cells.

A drop in insulin production in your brain may contribute to the degeneration of your brain cells, and studies have found that people with lower levels of insulin and insulin receptors in their brain often have Alzheimer's disease. Researchers have now discovered that insulin does far more than simply regulating blood sugar. Your brain does not require glucose, and actually functions better burning alternative fuels, especially ketones. In fact, Dr. Rosedale believes that it is the constant burning by the brain of glucose that is primarily to blame for Alzheimer's and other brain disorders

Insulin is actually a "master multitasker" that helps with neuron glucose-uptake, and the regulation of neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, which are crucial for memory and learning. This is why reducing the level of insulin in your brain impairs your cognition. Other research11 shows that type 2 diabetics lose more brain volume with age than expected—particularly gray matter. This kind of brain atrophy is yet another contributing factor for dementia. "Brain diabetes" may also be responsible for glaucoma, according to recent research. As reported by Medical News Today:12

"Researchers [in India]... have proposed a new mechanism of glaucoma which suggests that diabetes can occur in the brain and may be the cause of many neurodegenerative disorders including glaucoma... an irreversibly blinding disorder with almost 65 million sufferers worldwide. There is no cure...

The recent paper titled 'Glaucoma: Diabetes of the brain - a radical hypothesis about its nature and pathogenesis', published in Medical Hypotheses... explore glaucoma and related neurodegenerative diseases from many perspectives and come up with a multifaceted and internally coherent concept of glaucoma being 'the diabetes of the brain.'"

It's becoming increasingly clear that the same pathological process that leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may also hold true for your brain. As you over-indulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes overwhelmed by the consistently high levels of glucose and insulin that blunts its insulin signaling, leading to impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, eventually causing permanent brain damage.

Additionally, when your liver is busy processing fructose (which your liver turns into fat), it severely hampers its ability to make cholesterol, an essential building block of your brain that is crucial for optimal brain function. Indeed, mounting evidence supports the notion that significantly reducing fructose consumption is a very important step you can take to prevent Alzheimer's disease.

Root Causes of Type 1 Diabetes

Contrary to type 2 diabetes, type 1 is not may not be rooted in insulin and leptin dysfunction caused by excessive sugar (and carbohydrate) consumption. However, over the past several years, research has given us important clues about its predisposing conditions. Two important ones that you have more or less complete control over are:

Vitamin D deficiency. Research suggests that sun avoidance may play a major role in the development of insulin dependent diabetes. The further you move away from the equator the greater your risk of being born with, or developing type 1 diabetes. A major key to preventing type 1 diabetes in children is to ensure that pregnant mothers have optimal vitamin D stores. There is also strong evidence that this can decrease your child's risk of autism. Once your child is born, ensuring he or she gets optimal sun exposure (and/or wise use of oral vitamin D supplementation) could virtually eliminate the risk for type 1 diabetes.
Abnormal gut flora. An excessive focus on a germ-free environment is another potential contributing factor that impairs immune function. In 2008, animal research13 suggested that beneficial bacteria could protect against the development of type 1 diabetes. There is a good deal of evidence that a contributor to the rising rates of type 1 diabetes is raising our children in too sterile an environment. Many parents religiously use antibacterial soaps and keep their children away from the natural dirt, germs, viruses and other grime of childhood.14
Antibiotics, which kill all of the good and bad bacteria in the gut, are also overused in childhood. The lesson here is, it's okay to let your child get dirty. Use plain soap and water for washing. Avoid antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, and feed them naturally fermented foods such as yogurt, pickles and sauerkraut.15

Root Causes of Insulin Resistance, Pre-Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, and Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes involves loss of insulin and leptin sensitivity. This makes it easily preventable and nearly 100 percent reversible without drugs. One of the driving forces behind type 2 diabetes is excessive dietary fructose, which has adverse effects on all of metabolic hormones—including two key players: insulin and leptin.

There is no question in my mind that regularly consuming more than 25 grams of fructose per day will dramatically increase your risk of insulin/leptin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer, heart disease, arthritis, and Alzheimer's. It's important to realize that even though fructose is relatively "low glycemic" on the front end, it actually reduces the receptor's affinity for insulin, leading to chronic insulin resistance and elevated blood sugar on the back end. So, while you may not notice a steep increase in blood sugar immediately following fructose consumption, it is likely changing your entire endocrine system's ability to function properly behind the scenes...

Another major cause of type 2 diabetes is the consumption of the vast amount of glucose derived from the high carbohydrate diet that has been recommended for the last half century by conventional medical and media recommendations. All carbohydrates that are not fiber will be quickly metabolized into sugar, and it makes little sense to eat large amounts of sugar to keep your blood sugar lower.

The misconception of the cause of diabetes may be the biggest problem. Conventional medicine describes diabetes as a disease characterized by elevated blood sugar. This "dysregulation of blood sugar control" is typically explained as "an inability of your body to produce enough insulin." To control diabetes with that view, it would be rational to prescribe insulin or drugs that raise insulin to counteract the elevated blood sugar. The reality however is that type 2 diabetes is NOT the result of insufficient insulin production. It's actually the result of too much insulin being produced on a chronic basis primarily from eating the high carbohydrate, low fat diet recommended by the ADA and AHA to prevent and treat this.

This overwhelms and "deafens" your insulin receptors, hence the term "insulin resistance." It's the chronically elevated insulin levels that make your body "resistant" to understanding the signals sent by the insulin. This also occurs with leptin. It's really important to realize that T2 diabetes is not caused by elevated blood sugar or "insulin deficiency" per se. The root cause is insulin and leptin resistance which is why prescribing insulin is one of the WORST things you can do for type 2 diabetes, as it will actually worsen your insulin and leptin resistance over time. You do not need more insulin. You need to restore the sensitivity of your insulin and leptin receptors by keeping their levels low!

If you're still having trouble understanding why taking insulin is a terrible choice in type 2 diabetes consider this; when your blood sugar becomes elevated, insulin is released to direct the extra energy (sugar) into storage. A small amount is stored as a starch called glycogen, but the majority is stored as fat. Therefore, insulin's primary role is not to lower your blood sugar, but rather to store this extra energy as fat for future needs when food may not be available. The fact that insulin lowers your blood sugar is merely a "side effect" of this energy storage process. Taking more insulin just makes you fatter!

Your body's cells become desensitized to insulin, leptin, and other hormones, by being overexposed to these hormones—be it by eating food that causes excessive secretion, or by injection. Diabetes treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar by adding insulin therefore tend to worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

As Dr. Rosedale has previously stated: "Type 2 diabetes is brought on by constantly having too much insulin and leptin circulating secondary to the same diet that has been recommended to treat diabetes and heart disease, a high carbohydrate, low-fat diet. Then giving these diabetics more insulin is adding gasoline to the fire. Doctors couldn't be doing more harm if they tried."

Leptin—An Oft-Ignored KEY Player in Type 2 Diabetes Development

While much conventional advice centers around insulin, leptin is another hormone that plays an integral role in the development of type 2 diabetes. Leptin is produced in your fat and other cells, and one of its primary roles is regulating your appetite and body weight. Leptin tells your brain when to eat, how much to eat, and most importantly, when to stop eating. Leptin also instructs your brain as to what to do with the available energy.

Now remember, when your blood sugar becomes elevated, insulin is released to direct the extra energy into storage—the majority of which is stored as fat, and leptin is produced in these fat cells. The more fat you have, the more leptin is produced. Furthermore, as the sugar gets metabolized in your fat cells, the fat releases further surges in leptin. This is why I typically talk about insulin and leptin resistance, as they work in tandem. Moreover, leptin is largely responsible for the accuracy of insulin signaling and whether or not you become insulin-resistant. If you're insulin resistant, you're more than likely leptin resistant as well, especially if you're overweight or obese.

Why?

Because when you develop leptin resistance, your brain can no longer hear leptin's signals, resulting in chronic hunger, overeating, inability to properly burn fat and, typically, obesity. Insulin resistance, and ultimately type 2 diabetes, follow suit. Just as with insulin, the only known way to reestablish proper leptin signaling is through proper diet. High consumption of carbohydrates, especially fructose, are again the prime culprit and the root cause of leptin resistance. Lack of exercise and abnormal gut flora also contribute and/or exacerbate insulin and leptin resistance. Leptin's importance in blood glucose control and diabetes is powerfully illustrated by recent studies that show its ability, even in low doses, to lower blood glucose in both type 1 and 2 diabetics, and this is an exciting new potential treatment.

Magnesium Deficiency—Another Factor That Raises Your Risk for Insulin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes

Magnesium deficiency is also worth mentioning while still on the subject of root causes of type 2 diabetes. Magnesium actually plays an important role in glucose and insulin homeostasis,16 and magnesium deficiency is widespread these days. Magnesium is also required to activate tyrosine kinase, an enzyme that functions as an "on" or "off" switch in many cellular functions and is required for the proper function of your insulin receptors.

It is well known that people with insulin resistance also experience increased excretion of magnesium in their urine, which further contributes to diminished magnesium levels. This magnesium loss appears to be secondary to increased urinary glucose, which increases urinary output.17 Therefore, inadequate magnesium intake seems to prompt a vicious cycle of low magnesium levels, insulin resistance, elevated insulin and glucose levels, and excess magnesium excretion. In other words, the less magnesium your body has, the less it appears to you'll be able to "hang onto it."18

Rarely do so many studies,19, 20, 21 from around the world find universal agreement on a subject, but here the evidence is clear: if you want to optimize your metabolism and keep your risk for type 2 diabetes low, one of the things you need to do is consume adequate magnesium. One 2013 study involving pre-diabetics found that most had inadequate magnesium intake, and those with the highest magnesium intake reduced their risk for blood sugar and metabolic problems by a whopping 71 percent.22

Current government guidelines for magnesium intake among adults call for 300 to 420 mg per day (depending on your gender, age, pregnancy and lactation), but many people consume less than 300 mg per day. Research suggests many would benefit from a much higher intake, about 700 mg per day or more. Magnesium is lost in sweat during exercise and used up in higher amounts when you're stressed.

I believe that magnesium threonate is one of the best supplemental sources, as it seems to penetrate cell membranes, including your mitochondria, which results in higher energy levels. Additionally, it also penetrates your blood-brain barrier and seems to do wonders to treat and prevent dementia and improve memory. Whatever supplement you choose, be sure to avoid any containing magnesium stearate, a common but potentially hazardous additive.

New Warning: Insulin Can Rapidly Produce Type 1 Diabetes in Type 2 Diabetics

Please understand that medications and supplements are not the answer for type 2 diabetes. Diabetes drugs fail to address the underlying problem, and many, like Avandia, can have dangerous side effects. Avandia is linked to 43 percent increased risk of heart attack and 64 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death, compared with other treatments. Instead, type 2 diabetes is best controlled by restoring your insulin and leptin sensitivities. This is done by eliminating grains and sugars—especially fructose—from your diet, getting plenty of healthy fats, exercising, and sleeping well. Further details on this will be provided below, in the treatment section.

As noted earlier, recent research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism23 confirms what Dr. Ron Rosedale has stated for the last two decades, which is that insulin treatment can provoke otherwise reversible type 2 diabetes to progress into type 1 insulin deficient and therefore insulin-dependent diabetes. The study found that giving genetically engineered recombinant insulin to type 2 diabetics with certain genetic susceptibility can trigger their bodies to produce antibodies that destroy their insulin producing cells (pancreatic islet cells). You may not realize that all human insulin, the type typically used, is GMO or genetically modified which might be responsible for this autoimmune reaction.

Basically, it triggers an autoimmune disease response, producing a condition in which you have both type 1 and type 2 diabetes simultaneously. The average time of type 1 diabetes onset was 7.7 months. One study participant developed type 1 diabetes in just over one month! According to the authors, acute deterioration of blood glucose control after administering insulin is a warning sign of this problematic side effect. According to this study, the genes predisposing you to this autoimmune-type response to insulin are:

Type 1 diabetes high risk HLA class II (IDDM1), thought to play a role in about half of all type 1 diabetes cases
VNTR genotype (IDDM2), which is believed to predispose you to type 2 diabetes
This is yet another way conventional diabetic treatment pushes diabetics into premature death... Research24 published last year revealed that treating type 2 diabetes with insulin more than doubled patients' risk of all-cause mortality. It also leads to:

Twice as many myocardial infarctions 1.4 time more strokes 2.1 time more neuropathy 1.4 times more cancer
1.7 time more major adverse cardiac events 3.5 times more renal complications 1.2 times more eye complications 2.2 times more deaths
Another study published in Diabetologia25, 26 in May of this year, found that diabetic cancer patients also have a significantly elevated risk of death. Diabetic patients using insulin at the time of their cancer diagnosis had a four times higher mortality rate one year after cancer diagnosis, compared to non-diabetic patients, or those who did not use insulin to control their diabetes. While this was an observational study, which means it cannot establish causality, it is worth noting nonetheless.

Dr. Rosedale has also said; "All of these increased rates of chronic diseases caused by taking insulin may be because it is doing exactly the opposite of what has been shown in many studies to reduce cancer, total mortality, and extend lifespan; reducing insulin. In fact, T2 diabetes is often considered to be a model of accelerated aging because of the high insulin. In other words, treating diabetics by overly raising insulin, either with drugs or insulin itself, is only further accelerating their aging, associated chronic diseases, and death, and should be considered malpractice."

Warning #2: Beware of Future Diabetic Vaccines

As noted by GreenMedInfo.com,27 these findings also raise serious warnings against diabetic vaccines:

"[T]here are a number of trials underway to produce vaccines containing insulin intended to induce a 'tolerogenic immune response' and therefore ameliorate autoimmune type 1 diabetes. Clearly, however, their findings run contrary to this expectation, revealing that it is possible that introducing exogenous forms of insulin may stimulate the opposite reaction and induced autoimmunity against the hormone, or the cells in the pancreas responsible for producing it."

It also raises questions about the safety and effectiveness of synthetic insulin. Virtually all of the insulin sold in the US is synthetic, synthesized from recombinant DNA technology, which differs considerably from natural animal-derived insulin. Interestingly, it could be that it's the "inactive" ingredients or additives, such as polysorbate 20, that produce an exaggerated immune response in susceptible individuals—similar to that encountered with vaccines. Sayer Ji also notes that:28

"Furthermore, synthetic insulin does not have the same conformational state – i.e. it does not assume the same complex folded form – of natural human insulin, or more closely related pig insulin. This presents a 'recognition' problem from the perspective of the immune system which may identify the foreign protein as 'other' generating acute or sustained autoimmune reactions to it as a result...

Research29 dating back to the early 1980s compared synthetic E. Coli derived insulin with porcine (pig) derived insulin in diabetic children and found that porcine insulin was more effective at lowering HbA1 values (a marker of damage associated with elevated blood sugar), superior at reducing fasting glucose concentrations, and less antibody reactive to insulin than synthetic insulin. While pig derived insulin has its limitations, especially considering there are limits to how much can be produced, clearly it is more appropriate than synthetic versions if it is true that the latter is incapable of reproducing the same therapeutic outcome for diabetics."

How to Prevent and Treat Insulin/Leptin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes

Now that you have an understanding of the root causes of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, it's time to outline a program to reverse this condition. Remember, type 2 diabetes is curable, and in the vast majority of cases does not require any form of medication.

The following nutrition and lifestyle modifications should be the foundation of your diabetes prevention and treatment plan. Also, make sure to monitor your FASTING insulin level. This is every bit as important as monitoring your fasting blood sugar. You'll want your fasting insulin level to be between 2 and 4. The higher your level, the greater your insulin resistance and the more aggressive you need to be in your treatment plan, especially when it comes to altering your diet.

Swap out processed foods, all forms of sugar—particularly fructose—as well as all grains, for whole, fresh food. A primary reason for the failure of conventional diabetes treatment over the last 50 years has to do with seriously flawed dietary recommendations. Fructose, grains, and other sugar forming starchy carbohydrates are largely responsible for your body's adverse insulin reactions, and all sugars and grains—even "healthful" grains such as whole, organic ones—need to be drastically reduced.
If you're insulin/leptin resistant, have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, or are overweight, you'd be wise to limit your total fructose intake to 15 grams per day until your insulin/leptin resistance has resolved. This includes about 80 percent of Americans. For all others, I recommend limiting your daily fructose consumption to 25 grams or less, to maintain optimal health.

The easiest way to accomplish this is by swapping processed foods for whole, ideally organic foods. This means cooking from scratch with fresh ingredients. Processed foods are the main source of all the primary culprits, including high fructose corn syrup and other sugars, processed grains, trans fats, artificial sweeteners, and other synthetic additives that may aggravate metabolic dysfunction.

Besides fructose, trans fat (NOT saturated fat) increases your risk for diabetes30 by interfering with your insulin receptors. Healthy saturated fats do not do this. Since you're cutting out a lot of energy (carbs) from your diet when you reduce sugars and grains, you need to replace them with something. The ideal replacement is a combination of:

Low-to-moderate amount of high-quality protein. Substantial amounts of protein can be found in meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, and nuts. When selecting animal-based protein, be sure to opt for organically raised, grass-fed or pastured meats, eggs, and dairy, to avoid potential health complications caused by genetically engineered animal feed and pesticides.
Most Americans eat far too much protein, so be mindful of the amount! I believe it is the rare person who really needs more than one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. Those that are aggressively exercising or competing and pregnant women should have about 25 percent more, but most people rarely need more than 40-70 grams of protein a day.

To determine your lean body mass, find out your percent body fat and subtract from 100. This means that if you have 20 percent body fat, you have 80 percent lean body mass. Just multiply that by your current weight to get your lean body mass in pounds or kilos. To determine whether you're getting too much protein, simply calculate your lean body mass as described above, then write down everything you're eating for a few days, and calculate the amount of daily protein from all sources.

Again, you're aiming for one-half gram of protein per pound of lean body mass, which would place most people in the range of 40 to 70 grams of protein per day. If you're currently averaging a lot more than that, adjust downward accordingly. You could use the chart below or simply Google the food you want to know and you will quickly find the grams of protein in the food.

Red meat, pork, poultry and seafood average 6-9 grams of protein per ounce.

An ideal amount for most people would be a 3 ounce serving of meat or seafood (not 9 or 12 ounce steaks!), which will provide about 18-27 grams of protein Eggs contain about 6-8 grams of protein per egg. So an omelet made from two eggs would give you about 12-16 grams of protein.

If you add cheese, you need to calculate that protein in as well (check the label of your cheese)
Seeds and nuts contain on average 4-8 grams of protein per quarter cup Cooked beans average about 7-8 grams per half cup
Cooked grains average 5-7 grams per cup Most vegetables contain about 1-2 grams of protein per ounce

As much high-quality healthy fat as you want (saturated31 and monounsaturated). For optimal health, most people need upwards of 50-85 percent of their daily calories in the form of healthy fats. Good sources include coconut and coconut oil, avocados, butter, nuts, and animal fats. (Remember, fat is high in calories while being small in terms of volume. So when you look at your plate, the largest portion would be vegetables.)
As many non-starchy vegetables as you want
Exercise regularly and intensely. Studies have shown that exercise, even without weight loss, increases insulin sensitivity.32 High intensity interval training (HIIT), which is a central component of my Peak Fitness program, has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity by as much as 24 percent in just four weeks.
Improve your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. Today's Western diet has far too many processed and damaged omega-6 fats, and is far too little omega-3 fats.33 The main sources of omega-6 fats are corn, soy, canola, safflower, peanut, and sunflower oil (the first two of which are typically genetically engineered as well, which further complicates matters). Our bodies evolved for an optimal 1:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. However, our ratio has deteriorated to between 20:1 and 50:1 in favor of omega-6. This lopsided ratio has seriously adverse health consequences.
To remedy this, reduce your consumption of vegetable oils (this means not cooking with them, and avoiding processed foods), and increase your intake of animal-based omega-3, such as krill oil. Vegetable-based omega-3 is also found in flaxseed oil and walnut oil, and it's good to include these in your diet as well. Just know they cannot take the place of animal-based omega-3s.

Maintain optimal vitamin D levels year-round. New evidence strongly supports the notion that vitamin D is highly beneficial not only for type 1 diabetes as mentioned before, but also in type 2 diabetes. The ideal way to optimize your vitamin D level is by getting regular sun exposure, or by using a safe tanning bed. As a last resort, consider oral supplementation with regular vitamin D monitoring, to confirm that you are taking enough vitamin D to get your blood levels into the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml. Also please note that if you take supplemental vitamin D, you create an increased demand for vitamin K2.
Get adequate high-quality sleep every night. Insufficient sleep appears to raise stress and blood sugar, encouraging insulin and leptin resistance and weight gain. In one 10-year long study34 of 70,000 diabetes-free women, researchers found that women who slept less than five hours or more than nine hours each night were 34 percent more likely to develop diabetes symptoms than women who slept seven to eight hours each night. If you are having problems with your sleep, try the suggestions in my article "33 Secrets to a Good Night's Sleep."
Maintain a healthy body weight. If you incorporate the diet and lifestyle changes suggested above you will greatly improve your insulin and leptin sensitivity, and a healthy body weight will follow in time. Determining your ideal body weight depends on a variety of factors, including frame size, age, general activity level, and genetics. As a general guideline, you might find a hip-to-waist size index chart helpful. This is far better than BMI for evaluating whether or not you may have a weight problem, as BMI fails to factor in both how muscular you are, and your intra-abdominal fat mass (the dangerous visceral fat that accumulates around your inner organs), which is a potent indicator of leptin sensitivity and associated health problems.
Incorporate intermittent fasting. If you have carefully followed the diet and exercise guidelines and still aren't making sufficient progress with your weight or overall health, I strongly recommend incorporating intermittent fasting. This effectively mimics the eating habits of our ancestors, who did not have access to grocery stores or food around the clock. They would cycle through periods of feast and famine, and modern research shows this cycling produces a number of biochemical benefits, including improved insulin/leptin sensitivity, lowered triglycerides and other biomarkers for health, and weight loss.
Intermittent fasting is by far the most effective way I know of to shed unwanted fat and eliminate your sugar cravings. Intermittent fasting has also been identified as a potent ally for the prevention and perhaps even treatment of dementia. Ketones are released as a byproduct of burning fat, and ketones (not glucose) are actually the preferred fuel for your brain. Keep up your intermittent fasting schedule until your insulin/leptin resistance improves (or your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol ratios, or diabetes normalizes). After that, you only need to do it "as needed" to maintain your healthy state.

Optimize your gut health. Your gut is a living ecosystem, full of both good bacteria and bad. Multiple studies have shown that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than lean people. The more good bacteria you have, the stronger your immune system will be and the better your body will function overall. Fortunately, optimizing your gut flora is relatively easy. You can reseed your body with good bacteria by regularly eating fermented foods (like natto, raw organic cheese, miso, and cultured vegetables).
You CAN Prevent and Treat Diabetes

You don't have to be a part of the diabetes epidemic that is taking place before your eyes; you merely need to make some lifestyle changes and be mindful about your habits. The changes, detailed above, will prevent you from heading down the diabetes path, and can be the U-turn you've been looking for if you're already insulin resistant or diabetic. None of these strategies are expensive or overly time-consuming. However, they do require a measure of honest reflection and discipline.

Now that you have an understanding of what diabetes really is and how it develops, you can steer clear of behavior patterns that harm your health, and incorporate those that will enhance your quality of life. Again, type 2 diabetes involves loss of insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is easily preventable, and nearly 100 percent reversible without drugs, by addressing your diet and other lifestyle habits, such as exercise, sleep, and intermittent fasting. I suggest taking a lifestyle inventory to see where you might have room for improvement. For example:

Review your eating patterns. How much sugar and sugar-forming carbohydrates are you eating daily? Is corn syrup a primary staple of your diet, hidden in the processed foods you buy on a regular basis? Are you spending your time in the middle of the grocery store, or around the periphery? (Most processed foods come from the middle aisles.)
Are you an "emotional eater"? Do you tend to overindulge in comfort foods when you are feeling sad or angry? If so, review the information on my website about EFT, which you might find very helpful.
Evaluate your activity level. Are you getting enough exercise each week?
Are you getting enough sunlight? Have you measured your vitamin D levels lately? Unless you are deeply tanned, that is the only way to know your level. Do you need to consider a vitamin D supplement?
Are you getting enough magnesium in your diet? Early signs of magnesium deficiency include loss of appetite, headache, nausea, fatigue, and weakness. An ongoing magnesium deficiency can lead to more serious symptoms, including muscle spasms and abnormal heart rhythms. To learn more, please see my interview with Dr. Carolyn Dean, author of The Magnesium Miracle.
What patterns are you inadvertently passing along to your children? What example are you setting for your kids, in terms of nutrition and exercise? Are they getting the message that health is a priority? Getting healthy can and should be a family activity! When everyone is involved, you can support each other and give kudos for positive strides, making it more fun for everyone. The payoffs to your health will be great, and you will be passing along good lifestyle habits to your children, which will serve them for years to come.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Page changes here seem to come with # of posts rather than with length...
Here's Dr Mercola about MILK; and I've decided to cut way down on pasteurized/homogenized milk. Does anyone agree / disagree?
Processing Is the Problem

The path that transforms healthy milk products into allergens and carcinogens begins with modern feeding methods that substitute high-protein, soy-based feeds for fresh green grass and breeding methods to produce cows with abnormally large pituitary glands so that they produce three times more milk than the old fashioned scrub cow. These cows need antibiotics to keep them well.

Their milk is then pasteurized so that all valuable enzymes are destroyed (lactase for the assimilation of lactose; galactase for the assimilation of galactose; phosphatase for the assimilation of calcium).

Literally dozens of other precious enzymes are destroyed in the pasteurization process. Without them, milk is very difficult to digest. The human pancreas is not always able to produce these enzymes; over-stress of the pancreas can lead to diabetes and other diseases.

The butterfat of commercial milk is homogenized, subjecting it to rancidity. Even worse, butterfat may be removed altogether. Skim milk is sold as a health food, but the truth is that butter-fat is in milk for a reason.

Without it the body cannot absorb and utilize the vitamins and minerals in the water fraction of the milk. Along with valuable trace minerals and short chain fatty acids, butterfat is America's best source of preformed vitamin A.

Synthetic vitamin D, known to be toxic to the liver, is added to replace the natural vitamin D complex in butterfat. Butterfat also contains re-arranged acids which have strong anti-carcinogenic properties.

Non-fat dried milk is added to 1% and 2% milk. Unlike the cholesterol in fresh milk, which plays a variety of health promoting roles, the cholesterol in non-fat dried milk is oxidized and it is this rancid cholesterol that promotes heart disease.

Like all spray dried products, non-fat dried milk has a high nitrite content. Non-fat dried milk and sweetened condensed milk are the principle dairy products in third world countries; use of ultra high temperature pasteurized milk is widespread in Europe.

Other Factors Regarding Milk

Milk and refined sugar make two of the largest contributions to food induced ill health in our country. That may seem like an overly harsh statement, but when one examines the evidence, this is a reasonable conclusion.

The recent approval by the FDA of the use of BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) by dairy farmers to increase their milk production only worsens the already sad picture.

BGH causes an increase in an insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) in the milk of treated cows. IGF-1 survives milk pasteurization and human intestinal digestion. It can be directly absorbed into the human bloodstream, particularly in infants.

It is highly likely that IGF-1 promotes the transformation of human breast cells to cancerous forms. IGF-1 is also a growth factor for already cancerous breast and colon cancer cells, promoting their progression and invasiveness.

It is also possible for us to absorb the BGH directly from the milk. This will cause further IGF-1 production by our own cells.

BGH will also decrease the body fat of cows. Unfortunately, the body fat of cows is already contaminated with a wide range of carcinogens, pesticides, dioxin, and antibiotic residues. When the cows have less body fat, these toxic substances are then transported into the cows' milk.

BGH also causes the cows to have an increase in breast infections for which they must receive additional antibiotics.

Prior to BGH, 38%of milk sampled nationally was already contaminated by illegal residues of antibiotics and animal drugs. This will only increase with the use of BGH. One can only wonder what the long term complications will be for drinking milk that has a 50% chance it is contaminated with antibiotics.

There is also a problem with a protein enzyme called xanthine oxidase which is in cow's milk. Normally, proteins are broken down once you digest them.

However, when milk is homogenized, small fat globules surround the xanthine oxidase and it is absorbed intact into your blood stream. There is some very compelling research demonstrating clear associations with this absorbed enzyme and increased risks of heart disease.

Ear specialists frequently insert tubes into the ear drums of infants to treat recurrent ear infections. It has replaced the previously popular tonsillectomy to become the number one surgery in the country.

Unfortunately, most of these specialists don't realize that over 50% of these children will improve and have no further ear infections if they just stop drinking their milk.

This is a real tragedy. Not only is the $3,000 spent on the surgery wasted, but there are some recent articles supporting the likelihood that most children who have this procedure will have long term hearing losses.

It is my strong recommendation that you discontinue your milk products. If you find this difficult, I would start for several weeks only, and reevaluate how you feel at that time.

This would include ALL dairy, including skim milk and Lact-Aid milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. If you feel better after several weeks you can attempt to rotate small amounts of one form of milk every four days.

You probably are wondering what will happen to your bones and teeth if you stop milk. The majority of the world's population takes in less than half the calcium we are told we need and yet they have strong bones and healthy teeth.

Cows' milk is rich in phosphorous which can combine with calcium -- and can prevent you from absorbing the calcium in milk. The milk protein also accelerates calcium excretion from the blood through the kidneys.

This is also true when you eat large amount of meat and poultry products. Vegetarians will need about 50% less calcium than meat eaters because they lose much less calcium in their urine.

It is possible to obtain all your calcium from dark green vegetables (where do you think the cow gets their's from?). The darker the better. Cooked collard greens and kale are especially good. If you or your child is unable to take in large amounts of green vegetables, you might want to supplement with calcium.

If you can swallow pills, we have an excellent, inexpensive source called Calcium Citrate, which has a number of other minerals which your body requires to build up maximally healthy bone.

It is much better than a simple calcium tablet. You can take about 1,000 mg a day. For those who already suffer from osteoporosis, the best calcium supplement is microcrystalline hydroxyapatite.

It is also important that you take vitamin D in the winter months from November to March. Normally your skin converts sunshine to vitamin D, but the sunshine levels in the winter are very low unless you visit Florida or Mexico type areas.

Most people obtain their vitamin D from milk in the winter; so if you stop it, please make sure you are taking calcium with vitamin D or a multi vitamin with vitamin D to prevent bone thinning.

Most people are not aware that the milk of most mammals varies considerably in its composition. For example, the milk of goats, elephants, cows, camels, wolves, and walruses show marked differences, in their content of fats, protein, sugar, and minerals. Each was designed to provide optimum nutrition to the young of the respective species. Each is different from human milk.

In general, most animals are exclusively breast-fed until they have tripled their birth weight, which in human infants occurs around the age of one year. In no mammalian species, except for the human (and domestic cat) is milk consumption continued after the weaning period. Calves thrive on cow milk. Cow's milk is designed for calves.

Cow's milk is the number one allergic food in this country. It has been well documented as a cause in diarrhea, cramps, bloating, gas, gastrointestinal bleeding, iron-deficiency anemia, skin rashes, atherosclerosis, and acne.

It is the primary cause of recurrent ear infections in children. It has also been linked to insulin dependent diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, infertility, and leukemia.

Hopefully, you will reconsider your position on using milk as a form of nourishment. Small amounts of milk or milk products taken infrequently, will likely cause little or no problems for most people.

However, the American Dairy Board has done a very effective job of marketing this product. Most people believe they need to consume large, daily quantities of milk to achieve good health. NOTHING could be further from the truth.

Public health officials and the National Dairy Council have worked together in this country to make it very difficult to obtain wholesome, fresh, raw dairy products. Nevertheless, they can be found with a little effort. In some states, you can buy raw milk directly from farmers.

Whole, pasteurized, non-homogenized milk from cows raised on organic feed is now available in many gourmet shops and health food stores. It can be cultured to restore enzyme content, at least partially. Cultured buttermilk is often more easily digested than regular milk; it is an excellent product to use in baking.

Many shops now carry whole cream that is merely pasteurized (not ultra pasteurized like most commercial cream); diluted with water, it is delicious on cereal and a good substitute for those allergic to milk.

Traditionally made creme fraiche (European style sour cream), it also has a high enzyme content.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

From Natural News,
Natural News Blogs > Fitness > Fitness Nutrition
15 Reasons You Should Be Drinking Lemon Water Every Morning



By Amy Goodrich
Posted Thursday, July 3, 2014 at 06:37pm EDT
Keywords: healing lemons, healing properties of lemon, health benefits of lemon water, healthy morning routine, Lemon Water
If you are looking for an easy trick to improve your life and overall health, than look no further. Drinking lemon water first thing in the morning is a pretty simple routine to get into and will have tremendous effects on your overall health.

Since I started this simple and surprisingly healthy habit a few years ago, I definitely noticed the difference. Not only does the refreshing taste wake me up in the morning, it helps to kick start digestion and finalizes my body’s natural detoxification processes… And lemons are packed with vitamin C, B, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, enzymes, antioxidants, and fibers.

According to the Ayurvedic philosophy, choices you make regarding your daily routine either build up resistance to diseases or tear it down.

So what are you waiting for to jump start your day with this incredible easy morning routine. Its benefits are endless and I listed the 15 most important ones for you in this article.

1. Improves Digestion

Lemon juice has a similar structure to your stomach’s juices and helps to loosen and flush out toxins from the digestive tract. Lemon juice can help ease indigestion, heartburn, and bloating. It also helps to move your bowels in the morning, hydrates your colon, stimulate bile production, and infuses water in your stool.

2. Boost Immune System.

Lemon juice is rich in vitamin C, which helps strengthen the immunes system and fights cold and flu. But not only vitamin C is important for a good working immune system, iron is another important nutrient, and lemons improve the ability to absorb more iron from the food you eat.

3. Hydrates Your Body

It is important to stay hydrated. Especially during the summer months. Plain water is best, but many people find this boring and are not drinking enough of it. That’s where lemon comes into play to make things more interesting. So feel free to not only start your day with lemon water, but drink as many glasses as you wish during the day to stay hydrated.

4. Boost Energy

Lemon water gives you an instant boost of energy and improves your mood right at the start of your day.

5. Promote Healthy And Rejuvenated Skin

Lemons are a rich sources of antioxidants that prevent free radical damage. These free radicals are responsible for pre-mature aging of your skin. Vitamin C helps to maintain your skin’s elasticity to prevent the formation of wrinkles and decrease blemishes.

6. Reduce Inflammation

Lemons have the ability to remove uric acid from your joints. Uric acid built-ups are one of the major causes of inflammation.

7. Weight Loss Aid

Although lemon water on its own is no weight loss miracle, it can definitely help you to achieve faster and long term results. Lemons assist in fighting hunger cravings, boost metabolism, and give you a stuffed feeling, making it less likely to snack in between meals.

8. Alkalize Your Body

Although lemons have a sour taste, they are one of the most alkalizing food sources on Earth. Too much acids can cause inflammation, obesity, and major diseases like cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Click here to learn more about the importance of alkalizing your body.

9. Cleansing Properties

Lemons help your entire body to flush out more toxins to prevent built-ups and damage to your cells, tissues, and organs. It stimulates your liver to produce more enzymes and work more efficiently. Lemon juice works as a diuretic to keep your urinary tract toxin-free and can also change the pH levels which discourage bacterial growth. This is very helpful for people who often suffer from UTI (urinary tract infection). And like mentioned before, lemons loosen and flush out waste from your digestive tract and cleanse your colon.

10.Antibacterial and Antiviral Properties

Lemons have antibacterial and antiviral properties. They help fight the flu, cold, and soothe a sore throat. Although people who drink their daily lemon water every day are less likely to get these in the first place.

11.Reduce Mucus And Phlegm

Lemon water helps to reduce mucus and phlegm formation. People who drink cow’s milk are often more sensitive for mucus production. So starting your day with lemon water can definitely help to lessen mucus if you’re not ready to go dairy-free.

12.Freshen Breath

Lemons freshen your breath and fight mouth bacteria. Although lemons are great for your overall oral health, avoid drinking or using it undiluted. The citric acid can erode tooth enamel, so don’t brush your teeth with it, but have a glass of lemon water instead.

13.Boost Brain Power

The high levels of potassium and magnesium show beneficial effects on our brain and nerve health. Lemon water can give you the boost you need to fight depression and stress. It creates mental clarity and more focus, making it a great drink for students or people with busy and stressful jobs.

14.Anti-cancer

Lemon’s antioxidants not only protect your skin from ageing, but also reduce the risk of several types of cancer. They are great in neutralizing acids as well. Cancer loves to grow in an acidic environment. Alkalizing your body may stop cancer cells to grow and may reduce the risk of getting cancer in the first place.

15.Get Of Caffeine

Many people are able to get off caffeine by replacing their morning coffee by lukewarm lemon water. It gives a similar energy boost to wake your body and boost energy as one cup of coffee would.



How To Make Lemon Water

Making lemon water is super simple. It takes less than 5 minutes of your precious morning time. Just squeeze half a lemon in lukewarm water. If you weigh more than 150 pounds, use a whole lemon.

Why use lukewarm (or room temperature) instead of cold or hot water to make this healing morning drink? Well, hot or cold water takes more energy to process, so your first glass in the morning should be lukewarm or at room temperature to slowly wake your body and kick start digestion.

If you love the taste feel free to add more lemon water to your diet during the rest of the day, cold or hot. It adds up to your daily water need, is less boring than plain water, and adds tons of benefits for body and mind.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Remember how Jesus warned us about "conspiring men" in the last days, and therefore gave us the Word of Wisdom?
And in it, he says to eat meat "sparingly"? (IMHO)

OK - put those together to get more understanding perhaps - as you read these data from Dr Mercola:
Factory Farmed Chicken May Be Cheap, But the Ultimate Price You Pay Is High
July 23, 2014 | 29,512 views
Spread the Word to
Friends And Family
By Sharing this Article.
268

2
11
85
Email to a friend Email
Print



Visit the Mercola Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

Demand for food at cheaper prices has dramatically altered the entire food chain. Today, food production revolves around efficiency—the ability to produce more for less.

This mindset has significant ramifications for both animal and human health, and the environment.

Today, nearly 65 billion animals worldwide, including cows, chickens, and pigs, are crammed into confined animal feeding operations known as CAFOs. These animals are imprisoned and tortured in crowded, unhealthy, unsanitary, and cruel conditions.

As noted by the Cornucopia Institute,1 the price of chicken has dropped dramatically over the past few decades, becoming the cheapest meat available in the US. As a result, consumption has doubled since 1970.

Seeing how chicken is supposed to be a healthy source of high-quality nutrition, the fact that it has become so affordable might seem to be a great benefit. But there's a major flaw in this equation. As it turns out, it's virtually impossible to mass-produce clean, safe, optimally nutritious foods at rock bottom prices.

CAFOs Are Hotbeds for Disease

A typical poultry CAFO measuring 490 feet by 45 feet can hold at least 30,000 chickens or more. Animal Welfare Guidelines permit a stocking density that gives each full-grown chicken an amount of space equivalent to an 8.5-inch by 11-inch piece of paper.

An example of a poultry CAFO can be seen in the video above. It's a short clip from the film Food Inc. Sickness is the norm for animals raised in these CAFOs—the large-scale factory farms on which 99 percent of American chickens come from.

These animals are also typically fed genetically engineered (GE) corn and soybeans, which is a far cry from their natural diet of seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.

This unnatural diet further exacerbates disease promulgation. Processing byproducts such as chicken feathers and other animal parts can also be added to the feed.

To prevent the inevitable spread of disease from stress, overcrowding, lack of vitamin D (as CAFO chickens may never see the light of day), and an unnatural diet, the animals are routinely fed antibiotics (hormones, on the other hand, are not permitted in American-raised chickens).

Those antibiotics pose a direct threat to human health, and contaminate the environment when they run off into lakes, rivers, aquifers, and drinking water. According to a landmark "Antibiotic Resistance Threat Report" published by the CDC,2 two million Americans become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year, and at least 23,000 of them die as a direct result of those infections.

Research suggests you have a 50/50 chance of buying meat tainted with drug-resistant bacteria when you buy it from your local grocery store. In some cases, the risk may be even greater.

Last year, using data collected by the federal agency called NARMS (National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System), the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in:

81 percent of ground turkey
69 percent of pork chops
55 percent of ground beef
39 percent of raw chicken parts
Despite the well-documented health and environmental hazards, most consumers are still unaware that well over 90 percent of all chicken meat and eggs sold in the US come from CAFOs.


Most people are also unaware that these cheap CAFO foods are very different, from a nutritional standpoint, from animals raised on pasture, and that while they may be inexpensive at the checkout line, there are significant hidden costs associated with this kind of food production.

The Hidden Cost of Cheap Chicken

As discussed in the featured article,3 the hidden costs of cheap factory farmed chicken can be divided into three categories:

Ethical costs: Research has shown that chickens are not only quite smart, they experience suffering just as animals higher up in the food chain—including you.
"Chickens have nervous systems similar to ours, and when we do things to them that are likely to hurt a sensitive creature, they show behavioral and physiological responses that are like ours.

When stressed or bored, chickens show what scientists call 'stereotypical behavior,' or repeated futile movements, like caged animals who pace back and forth," Cornucopia writes.

Environmental costs: CAFOs are notorious for producing massive amounts of offensive waste that disturbs and pollutes the local ecosystem.
The featured article references a number of areas in which residents are battling nauseating odors and infestations of flies, rats, mice, intestinal parasites, and other disturbing health effects. As stated by Cornucopia:

"Tyson produces chicken cheaply because it passes many costs on to others. Some of the cost is paid by people who can't enjoy being outside in their yard because of the flies and have to keep their windows shut because of the stench. Some is paid by kids who can't swim in the local streams. Some is paid by those who have to buy bottled water because their drinking water is polluted. Some is paid by people who want to be able to enjoy a natural environment with all its beauty and rich biological diversity.

These costs are, in the terms used by economists, 'externalities' because the people who pay them are external to the transaction between the producer and the purchaser... In theory, to eliminate this market failure, Tyson should fully compensate everyone adversely affected by its pollution. Then its chicken would no longer be so cheap."

Human health costs: Besides the health ramifications suffered by those who happen to live near a CAFO and are exposed to the environmental contamination caused by these factory farms, cheap CAFO chicken and eggs are also taking a hidden toll on your health when you eat them.
In part because their nutrition is inherently inferior; in part because they're contaminated with antibiotics; and in part because they raise your risk of contracting a foodborne illness. Most recently, Foster Farms and Kirkland chicken brands issued recalls4 for Salmonella contamination that has affected hundreds of consumers across America since March 2013.

Recalled items have "use or freeze by" dates ranging from March 17, 2014 to March 31, 2014. The identifying plant marks on the recalled products are P-6137, P-6137A, or P-7632. You can find this plant mark inside the USDA mark of inspection. One of Foster Farms' processing plants was also shut down by government mandate5 after cockroaches were discovered during a Food Safety inspection. And last fall, yet another of its plants were threatened with closure due to the presence of Salmonella contamination.6

Follow Safe Handling Instructions for Raw Chicken

Your risk of foodborne illness is magnified if you fail to follow safe handling instructions. For example, washing your chicken increases your risk of food poisoning, as it allows dangerous campylobacter bacteria to spread.7, 8 As reported by Fox News:

"When washed, campylobacter from raw chicken can be transferred into water droplets, which may splash onto neighboring surfaces, hands, clothing, and cooking utensils. If the campylobacter bacteria are ingested directly or via unwashed cutting boards and utensils, they can cause campylobacteriosis, characterized by symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal pain, cramping, and fever."

Another important safety tip is to designate separate cutting boards for meat and vegetables. Do not cut vegetables on the same cutting board you just used to prepare your chicken (or other meats). Besides avoiding cross contamination in your kitchen, also make sure you cook the chicken thoroughly, to kill off any potentially harmful bacteria.


The Case Against Factory Farmed Foods

CAFOs represent a corporate-controlled system characterized by large-scale, centralized, low profit-margin production, processing, and distribution systems. It's important to realize that the factory farm system is NOT a system that ensures food safety and protects human health. On the contrary, it makes the food system far more vulnerable to pathogenic contaminations that have the capacity to kill—both the livestock, and the people who eat them.

For example, over the past year, nearly 10 percent of the entire swine population in the US has been wiped out by a highly lethal virus called Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv), which has been—at least in part—traced back to pig's blood used in piglet feed. In this case, the virus does not affect humans. But it's a valuable demonstration of how fragile the system becomes when you veer too far from the natural order of things.

Besides everything mentioned already, the factory feeding model also involves the mixing of animal parts (in this case, blood) from a large number of animals, which is then fed to large numbers of animals—the meat from which in turn are again mixed together in large processing plants, before it's ultimately sold in grocery stores across the nation. All this mixing and cross-contamination allows for pathogens to contaminate huge amounts of food products, and is the reason why a single food contamination can spread so far and wide, affecting people across multiple states.

Processing plant (i.e. plants where meat is cut or milk is pasteurized, for example) are primary culprits when it comes to the spread of pathogens. Due to regulations, traditional farmer-to-consumer practices have been outlawed. Now processors run the show and cut out the farmer's share, which has decimated small farmers and created this industrialized, disease-promoting mess.

Small-Scale Farming Makes for Far Safer Food

The weaknesses of the factory farm model are usually overlooked during food safety discussions. Instead, small-scale raw food producers—and raw dairy producers in particular—are targeted and vilified as sources of dangerous pathogens that threaten human health. Such attacks are completely out of order and do nothing to improve food safety on the whole, as the PRIMARY sources of pathogenic contamination actually originate in CAFOs, large-scale butchering and processing plants, and processed food manufacturing plants, where multiple ingredients are mixed together.

For example, late last year, Chobani Greek yoghurt was recalled following reports of gastrointestinal illness.9 The yogurt, which is pasteurized and not raw, was found to be contaminated with a fungus called Murcor circinelloides. In 2011, Cargill recalled a whopping 36 million pounds of ground turkey10 after an antibiotic-resistant strain of Salmonella in the meat was linked to 107 illnesses and one death.

Remarkably, as explained in a previous Food Safety News article,11 a large-scale meat producer can have 50 percent of its samples test positive for Salmonella, and still get the green light of approval from the USDA! When it hits 51 percent contamination, the meat is tagged "unsafe." But even at that point, USDA testing simply continues until illness is reported. This is factory farmed food safety for you...

Meanwhile, a small organic farmer will notice a health problem with an animal in his herd long before it gets sent for slaughter, and he can then treat that individual animal as necessary. And, should a pathogenic outbreak occur on a farm, the risk of public exposure is limited by the fact that the animal products are sold locally; they're not shipped long distances and mixed in with others. This is why a food borne outbreak on an organic farm may affect one or two people, whereas an outbreak originating from a processing plant can affect hundreds, or even thousands. One pasteurized milk contamination sickened 200,000 people!12

Organic, Pastured Chicken Is Your Best and Safest Alternative

If food safety, optimal nutrition and disease prevention really matters, the way forward is to shift into a socially responsible, small-scale system where independent producers and processors focus on providing food for their local and regional markets. This alternative produces high-quality food, and supports farmers who produce healthy, meat, eggs, and dairy products using humane methods. And it's far easier on the environment.

True free-range chickens and eggs come from hens that roam freely outdoors on a pasture, where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms. Keep in mind that when it comes to labels such as "free-range" and "natural," there are loopholes that allow the commercial egg industry to call eggs from their industrial egg laying facilities "free-range," so don't be fooled.

By far, the vast majority of food at your local supermarket comes from these polluting, inhumane farm conglomerations. If you want to stop supporting them, you first need to find a new place to shop. Your best source for pastured chicken (and fresh eggs) is a local farmer that allows his hens to forage freely outdoors. If you live in an urban area, visiting a local farmer's market is typically the quickest route to finding high-quality chicken and eggs. Again, free-range pastured chickens should be allowed outside, and to eat insects. To see how this looks in the real world, please watch my video below with farmer Joel Salatin.


Take Control of Your Health by Joining the Real Food Movement

If you really want to be sure your food is healthy and safe, it would be best to avoid grocery stores as much as possible, as conventionally-raised livestock, including chickens, are far from ideal. The more we all make it a point to only buy food from a source we know and trust, the faster factory farming will become a shameful practice of the past. Farmers and lovers of real food show us that change is possible. Here are a few suggestions for how you can take affirmative action to protect your and your family's health:

Buy local products whenever possible. Otherwise, buy organic and fair-trade products.
Shop at your local farmers market, join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or buy from local grocers and co-ops committed to selling local foods. The following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods in your local area that has been raised in a humane, sustainable manner:
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.
Farmers' Markets -- A national listing of farmers' markets.
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, CSAs, and markets near you.
Support restaurants and food vendors that buy locally produced food.
Avoid genetically engineered (GMO) foods. Buying certified organic ensures your food is non-GM.
Cook, can, ferment, dry, and freeze. Return to the basics of cooking, and pass these skills on to your children.
Grow your own garden, or volunteer at a community garden. Teach your children how to garden and where their food comes from.
Volunteer and/or financially support an organization committed to promoting a sustainable food system.
Get involved in your community. Influence what your child eats by engaging the school board. Effect city policies by learning about zoning and attending city council meetings. Learn about the federal policies that affect your food choice, and let your congressperson know what you think.
Spread the word! Share this article with your friends, family, and everyone else you know.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

He's sounding like Pres. Spencer W Kimball perhaps:
Reinventing Our Food System, One Small Farm at a Time
August 16, 2014 | 124,869 views


By Dr. Mercola

As a physician, it's very obvious to me that the food we eat plays a major role in our health. As a result, the health of the general population can give us a pretty accurate picture of the nutritional status of our food.

About 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food is spent on processed foods,1 and the health of the average American is a testament to the abject failure of such foods to support good health.

Countless health statistics unequivocally show us that the direction we've been going in is not in our best interest. We've simply strayed too far from our dietary roots and become so disconnected from our food sources.

Fortunately, more and more people are now beginning to recognize this, and are making efforts to get back to real food. Many are now sensing this disconnection from the sources of their food as a disconnection from life itself, and it's no wonder, because that's essentially what it is.

As the sustainer of life, food surely deserves to be regarded with some measure of reverence. And it certainly deserves to place high on anyone's list of priorities in life.

Necessity Breeds a New Generation of 'Greenhorn' Farmers

Fortunately, there's change afoot... People across America, from all walks of life, are taking part in a process to reinvent our food system.

The featured film, The Greenhorns,2 demonstrates how we can collectively transform the current industrial monoculture, chemical-based agricultural paradigm into a healthier, more sustainable way of feeding ourselves and our neighbors, while restoring the health of our ailing planet.

"The Greenhorns documentary film... explores the lives of America's young farming community – its spirit, practices, and needs.

It is the filmmaker's hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture – to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming.

The production of The Greenhorns is part of our grassroots nonprofit's larger campaign for agricultural reform... Today's young farmers are dynamic entrepreneurs, stewards of place.

They are involved in local politics, partnering with others, inventing new social institutions, working with mentors, starting their careers as apprentices, borrowing money from the bank, putting in long hours, taking risks, innovating, experimenting...

These young farmers have vision: a prosperous, satisfying, sustainable food system."

Real Food Is Key for Good Health

Our current food system is driven by policy and corporate control. And while those who promote it claim that it's the only way to feed an ever-growing population, it is in fact a highly unsustainable system. It may be financially profitable for a few large corporations, but it's driving the rest of us into the poor-house—as I am sure you are well-aware, it's not cheap to be sick in America!

My first passion and career was being a physician, then an Internet educator, and now I'm transitioning into biological gardening and agriculture because I really believe it's the most logical progression for most anyone radically committed to being healthy.

While this information is ancient, it's not widely discussed. There's only a small segment of the population that really understands natural farming systems anymore, and the potential it has for radically transforming the way we feed the masses and protect the environment at the same time.

Getting personally involved with the growing of your food can be very exciting. For the young farmers in the film, growing food truly is an important part of life itself.

For me, it has become a rather addictive hobby. So far, I've converted about 50 percent of the ornamental landscape around my home to an edible landscape. And once you integrate biological farming principles, you can get plant performances that are 200-400 percent greater than what you would typically get from a plant! All in a totally sustainable and environmentally friendly way.

What's more, not only do using organic principles improve the quantity, it also improves the quality of the food you're growing. These facts should really be at the forefront of everybody's mind when they think about farming, as it's the solution to so many pressing environmental and societal problems.

Two Models of Food Production

There are basically two different models of food production today. The first, and most prevalent, is the large-scale agricultural model that takes a very mechanistic view toward life, whereas the other—the local, sustainable farm model—has a biological and holistic view.

While efficient, the mechanistic, large-scale model has many unexpected adverse side effects. Confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) for example, have become a primary source of antibiotic-resistant disease, which has now reached epidemic levels in the US.

This side effect of our food system alone kills at least 23,000 Americans each year... It's a well proven fact that factory farmed and processed foods are far more likely to cause illness than unadulterated, organically-grown foods. For example, one study by the British government found that 23 percent of farms with caged hens tested positive for salmonella, compared to just over 4 percent in organic flocks, and 6.5 percent in free-range flocks. This connection should be obvious, but many are still under the mistaken belief that a factory operation equates to better hygiene and quality control, when the exact opposite is actually true.

Factory Farming Causes More Problems Than It Solves

A pig rolling in mud on a small farm is far "cleaner" in terms of pathogenic bacteria than a factory-raised pig stuck in a tiny crate, covered in feces, being fed an unnatural diet of genetically modified grains and veterinary drugs. Genetically engineered (GE) plants add another level of complexity and hazard to our food system. For starters, GE plants produce foreign proteins that make them highly allergenic.

Then there's the issue of agricultural chemicals. Scientists have now proposed that one of the most widely used herbicides in the world (nearly one billion pounds per year), glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup), may be dramatically contributing to the rise of chronic disease. Glyphosate also denatures the food by blocking nutrient uptake, and kills the microorganisms in the soil responsible for plant health and plants' natural defense systems against pests of all kinds.

In short, the widely adopted factory farm "bigger is better" food system has reached a point where the fundamental weaknesses of it are becoming readily apparent, and foodborne disease and loss of nutrient content are just two of the most obvious side effects. The question is, what kind of food system do YOU want? If every American decided to not eat at a fast food restaurant tomorrow, the entire system would collapse overnight. It doesn't take an act of Congress to change the food system. All that is required is for each and every person to change their shopping habits to support the system they prefer.

Yes, You Can Grow Your Own Food!

Even if you're not inclined to start up your own farm, you can still grow your own food. Even apartment-dwellers or college dorm students can join the revolution by sprouting. One can also grow a wide variety of herbs, fruits, berries, and vegetables in pots. Hanging baskets are ideal for a wide variety of foods, such as strawberries, leafy greens, runner beans, pea shoots, tomatoes, and a variety of herbs. And instead of flowers, window boxes can hold herbs, greens, radishes, scallions, bush beans, strawberries, chard, and chilies, for example.

While you will obviously need to use pots if you don't have a garden plot, avoid using many small pots. The smaller the pot, the faster it will dry out. Instead, opt for large yet lightweight containers. You may also want to consider self-watering pots, which will reduce the time you have to spend watering. Adding a top layer of wood chips will also reduce the amount of watering a plant will need. This is true no matter what the size of your garden.

Using woodchips is actually one of the single best ways to optimize soil microbiology with very little effort. One of the foundational principles of biological gardening and farming is to avoid tilling the soil as it will disrupt the soil microbes and important soil fungi called mycorrhizae. This is precisely what woodchips will allow you to do. After a few short months, you will develop lush soil underneath the chips that will happily support food or trees that you would like to grow—no tilling required. The longer you leave the chips on, and the deeper you put on the wood chips, the deeper the topsoil will be.

Woodchips will also help eliminate water evaporation from the soil, effectively reducing the need to water your garden. Another major benefit is the elimination of fertilizers. One of the reasons why industrial agriculture is so damaging is their use of chemical salts that decimate the soil microbes. When you use wood chips you not only radically increase the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes in the soil; they also attract earthworms, which create vermicompost, one of the best composts on the planet. Last but not least, you can eliminate expensive soil testing when you use chips, as they will optimize whatever soil you have.

Where to Find Real Food

A website called Real Food University3 offers a fascinating analysis of where our food comes from, and reveals that despite what you hear on the news, every year, we produce less and less of the food we really need. From massive industrial farming conglomerates to feedlot and confined animal operations (CAFOs) to contaminated imports, Real Food University delivers the scoop on what you probably have on your plate right now.

Fortunately, there are ways to get around these food disasters, and sourcing your foods from a local farmer is one of your best bets to ensure you're getting something wholesome. Every state has a sustainable agriculture organization or biological farming organization that is the nucleus of the farmers in that state. You can also find an ever increasing number of "eat local," and "buy local" directories, in which local farms will be listed. The following organizations can also help you locate farm-fresh foods in your local area:

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.
Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
Farmers' Markets -- A national listing of farmers' markets.
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.
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.
Weston A. Price Foundation has local chapters around the US where you can find organic, grass-fed milk and other organic foods
Resources for Gardeners and Farmers

I cannot encourage you strongly enough to take control of the food that you're eating, because the resources are out there. They exist. It may take a little time and effort, but it's well worth it. For fledging farmers who want to learn more, I suggest reading some of the many books and other publications available on organic, biodynamic farming. This includes but is certainly not limited to the following:

Books:

The Farm as Ecosystem by Jerry Brunetti
The Edible Balcony by Alex Mitchell
Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing by Dr. Daphne Miller, MD
Steps to Gardening with Nature by Dr. Ingham and Carole Ann Rollins
Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels
The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer by Joel Salatin
Magazine Subscriptions:

Acres USA
The Stockman Grass Farmer (the world leader in pasture-based how-to publications)
Websites:

PolyFaceFarms.com offers a wealth of information and resources for farmers and consumers alike, including an online store that also offers the actual physical hardware to make everything from fences to chicken feeders
Savory Institute
Weston A. Price Foundation
Eco Organics, a company specializing in mineral products for hydroponics and home gardens, run by Dr. August Dunning
Soil Foodweb Inc., a company created by research scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham, which helps farmers and gardeners understand the health of their soil

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

I've put on some weight lately - ugh!
Publicly-announced goal might help? I seek to shed 17 pounds in the next two months.
Here's a start -
This Doctor Changed His Life with Intermittent Fasting and High Intensity Exercise—You Can Too
August 17, 2014 | 35,950 views
| Available in EspañolDisponible en Español

Click HERE to watch the full interview!

Download Interview Transcript
Visit the Mercola Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

Is there such a thing as a fast diet? Dr. Michael Mosley, a physician like me, wrote a best-selling book on this subject, aptly called The Fast Diet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting, which answers that question.

As a journalist for BBC in the UK, Dr. Mosley has really helped popularize one of the most powerful medical interventions I’ve ever encountered for helping people normalize their weight, namely intermittent fasting.


I’ve previously featured some of his TV documentaries on intermittent fasting and high intensity exercise in this newsletter. In those programs, Dr. Mosley reveals his own health journey, showing how he went from being overweight, diagnosed with diabetes and high cholesterol, to regaining his health.

“My doctor wanted to start me on drugs. But I said, ‘I want to see if there’s something better and alternative out there,’” he says. “I started exploring, and came across intermittent fasting...

I ended up testing all sorts of different forms of fasting, including alternate-day fasting. Eventually, I came up with something that I called the 5:2 Diet, which is really counting calories two days a week and eating normally the other five days.

I stuck to that for about three months. During that period, I lost about 20 pounds of fat, my body fat went down from 28 percent to 20 percent, and my blood glucose went back to normal.

That was two years ago and it stayed completely normal since... I have to say it’s been absolutely life-changing.”

Different Types of Fasting Regimens

Intermittent fasting is an umbrella term that covers an array of different fasting schedules. As a general rule however, intermittent fasting involves cutting calories in whole or in part, either a couple of days a week, every other day, or even daily, as in the case of the scheduled eating regimen I use myself.

In his explorations, Dr. Mosley tried a number of these different approaches, including a five-day fast, alternate day fasting (promoted by Dr. Krista Varady), and the 5:2 fast.

The five-day fast was very effective in that he lost weight and improved some of his biomarkers. But it was quite difficult to go a full five days without nearly any food whatsoever. The alternate day fasting also worked, but he found it to be a bit inconvenient.

“And then I came across some work done in England by Dr. Michelle Harvie, which was [fasting] two days a week. I thought, ‘I can handle two days a week.’ In a way, I kind of combined a number of different techniques together and ended up with the 5:2 plan.

One of my inspirations was the Prophet Muhammad because he had told his followers they all need to fast on a monthly basis for Ramadan but also cut your calories two days a week – Mondays and Thursdays. That’s what I did.

I’m not a very religious person, but I do believe that great religions have a lot to teach us, whether it is mindful meditation or indeed some of the benefits of fasting. I think the reason that these ideas persist is there is something very profound about them.”

On the 5:2 plan, you cut your food down to one-fourth of your normal daily calories on fasting days (about 600 calories for men and about 500 for women), along with plenty of water and tea. On the other five days of the week, you can eat normally.



Yet another version of intermittent fasting, and the one I personally recommend for most people who are overweight, is to simply restrict your daily eating to a specific window of time, such as an eight-hour window. It is more aggressive and, as a result, people will see results sooner.

I too have experimented with different types of scheduled eating for the past three years, and this is my personal preference as it’s really easy to comply with once your body has shifted over from burning sugar to burning fat as its primary fuel.


It is important to note that this is not a permanent eating program and once your insulin resistance improves and you are normal weight, you can start eating more food as you will have reestablished your body’s ability to burn fat for fuel.

Intermittent Fasting Actually CURBS Your Hunger

Many are hesitant to try fasting as they fear they’ll be ravenously hungry all the time. But one of the most incredible side effects of intermittent fasting that I’ve found is the disappearance of hunger and sugar cravings.

I’m a fellow of the American College of Nutrition and have studied nutrition for over 30 years, and I’d never personally encountered or experienced hunger cravings just disappearing like they did when I implemented intermittent fasting.

Dr. Mosley had the same experience once he began fasting. Others have also contacted him saying they’re astonished to realize that hunger no longer dominates their lives; they’re back in control. Now, you get hungry because your body needs fuel. But the vast majority of people in the world, certainly in the developed world, are eating foods that severely inhibit their ability to produce lipase and use fat as an energy source. Lipase is inhibited because of high insulin levels, and your insulin rises in response to eating foods high in carbohydrates.

“Absolutely. I think we’re just beginning to discover what insulin is capable of –not just in managing blood glucose but also in managing fat deposition and probably its link with cancer and dementia. I think we’re just beginning to grasp just how important it is,” Dr. Mosley says. When fasting, I recommend paying attention not only to the timing of your meals but also the quality of the food you eat. I believe it's important to eat a diet that is:

High in healthy fats. Many will benefit from 50-85 percent of their daily calories in the form of healthy fat from avocados, organic grass-fed butter, pastured egg yolks, coconut oil, and raw nuts such as macadamia, pecans, and pine nuts
Moderate amounts of high-quality protein from organically raised, grass-fed or pastured animals. Most will likely not need more than 40 to 70 grams of protein per day
Unrestricted amounts of fresh vegetables, ideally organic
Dr. Mosley on Intermittent Exercise

Dr. Mosley is also a proponent of high intensity interval training (HIIT), and recently finished a new book called Fast Exercise.

“The reason I got into high-intensity exercise (and this was three years ago) was because I was making a documentary for the BBC called The Truth About Exercise. I met a professor and he said, ‘I can give you many of the benefits of exercise for just a few minutes a week.’ I didn’t believe him. I did the program; it changed my life.”

After that, he began looking into the science behind it, again discovering that there’s a huge body of science showing the benefits of HIIT. Dr. Mosley has also started doing a form of high intensity weight training, which is like the strength-training equivalent of HIIT, based on research he found from the University of Texas. But there’s also another piece of the fitness puzzle that many are still unaware of, and that is the importance of avoiding sitting. When I first started seeing the studies showing that even fit people had an increased risk of dying if they sat for long periods of time, I couldn’t believe it.

I researched it and eventually came across Dr. Joan Vernikos, who’s a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research scientist. She wrote the book Sitting Kills, Moving Heals. She really drove home the point of how important it is to engage in intermittent non-exercise movement throughout the day. As it turns out, your body needs to interact with gravity in order to function properly.

Ideally, you shouldn’t sit down for more than 15 minutes or so at a time. Personally, I set a timer to go off every 15 minutes. Once I got used to the routine of standing up several times an hour, I started adding some simple exercises to it. I’ve compiled a list of 30 videos for ideas about what you can do when you stand up, to maximize your benefits.

“I’m familiar with the work of Dr. James Levine from the Mayo Institute. He’s been shouting, ‘The chair is a killer!’ for a good 10 years now,” Dr. Mosley says. “I met him first about 10 years ago. He had very compelling evidence that you should get off your bottom and move around every 20 minutes or so, even if it’s only for a minute, and that being sedentary is itself a killer. It doesn’t matter if you go to the gym. You’re not going to undo 13 hours of sitting.”

Intermittent Fasting Benefits Your Brain

There’s exciting research indicating that intermittent fasting can have a very beneficial impact on your brain function, too. It may even hold the key to preventing Alzheimer’s disease.

“What really impressed me is when I went to the National Institutes on Aging and I met Dr. Mark Mattson. He’s got these genetically engineered mice. They’ve been genetically engineered so they will develop Alzheimer’s or dementia. Normally they’ll develop dementia around a year, which is the equivalent of about 40 or 50 in humans.

But when he put them on an intermittent fasting diet – alternate-day fasting diet in fact – they developed it at around two years, which is equivalent to being 90. When he put them on a junk diet, a junk food diet, they developed it at about nine months.

When he looked into their brains, he discovered that the ones who had been on intermittent fasting diet have grown 40 percent new brain cells particularly in the area associated with memory. He identified this thing called BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which seems to be driving those changes and also protecting the brains. He’s doing this big study in humans at the moment to see if the same thing happens with fasting humans.”

Mattson’s research suggests that fasting every other day (restricting your meal on fasting days to about 600 calories) tends to boost BDNF by anywhere from 50 to 400 percent, depending on the brain region. BDNF activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. This protein also protects your brain cells from changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. (The neuromotor is the most critical element in your muscle. Without the neuromotor, your muscle is like an engine without ignition. Neuro-motor degradation is part of the process that explains age-related muscle atrophy.) So BDNF is actively involved in both your muscles and your brain, and this cross-connection, if you will, appears to be a major part of the explanation for why a physical workout can have such a beneficial impact on your brain tissue — and why the combination of intermittent fasting with high intensity exercise appears to be a particularly potent combination.

Eating Like Our Ancestors Helps Optimize Biological Function

One of the arguments for intermittent fasting is that it mimics the way our ancestors ate. They didn’t have access to food 24/7, and underwent alternating intervals of “feast and famine.” The human body is adapted to this, and research shows that abstaining from food now and then actually optimizes biological function all-around.

“We know, for example, that it’s only in the periods when you don’t have food that your body goes into a sort of repair mode, because most of the time it’s going flat out. Your body’s really only interested in procreating, growing cells, always going on and on. But when you go without food for 12 to 14 hours, your body starts to think, ‘Well, let’s do a little bit of repair now.’ Some of the proteins get denatured. New ones get created. Your mitochondria cells originate. There’s a lot of fundamental biochemistry, which completely validates this argument,” Dr. Mosley says.

“As Dr. Mark Mattson said to me, in terms of the brain work, the time when you need to be smart is not when you have food. Because if you’re in a cave and you’ve got food, you reach out and grab it. You don’t have to be clever. The time you have to be smart is when you don’t have food. Because then you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get out, you’ve got a plan, you’ve got to remember where you left the food before or where you found the berries, and how to hunt. It’s actually being without food that makes you smarter.”

Optimizing your brain function is yet another amazing benefit of applying these two powerful approaches – intermittent fasting and intermittent exercise. You’re actually able to think clearer, get more done, and be far more efficient. It’s a phenomenal side effect of following this type of program.

“At the moment, I’m in contact with a group in Ireland who are doing research trying to combine the two approaches, because as far as I know, it hasn’t been properly tested together. I believe that together it’s going to be much more powerful than separately. It would be nice to have this sort of scientific basis for that [recommendation].”

Finding an Eating Schedule That Works

There are many reasons to implement an intermittent fasting schedule. Adding high intensity interval training and making sure you stand up at regular intervals (several times per hour) can go a long way toward eliminating not only unwanted weight, but also metabolic syndrome and most chronic disease—including heart disease and dementia.

Dr. Mosley and I have both had bouts of diabetes, and close family members have struggled with it as well. Both of us were able to completely reverse our diabetes and regain normal insulin and leptin sensitivity through diet, intermittent fasting, and exercise. Type 2 diabetes is basically 100 percent curable, but you have to give it a sincere effort, and not quit after a few days.

If you struggle with food cravings, especially sugar, know that once you make this shift to burning fat instead of sugar as your body’s primary fuel, your hunger for unhealthy foods will vanish, and you will not have to exert enormous amounts of self-discipline to resist unhealthy foods any longer. You will be back in control!

Perhaps best of all, intermittent fasting is not something you have to do non-stop for the rest of your life. I believe that most who are insulin/leptin resistant would benefit from doing it continuously until the resistance resolves. However, once your weight is ideal, and you have no high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol ratios, or diabetes, then you can have more meals until or unless the insulin/leptin resistance returns.

User avatar
Mr. Tissue Box
captain of 100
Posts: 106
Location: Southern California

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

Post by Mr. Tissue Box »

As for raw milk, it's definitely better for you than pasteurized milk as long as it comes from a clean source of healthy grazing cows. In my case, I still feel like I can only tolerate small amounts of raw milk, however I do much better with goat kefir.

http://chriskresser.com/kefir-the-not-q ... -superfood

Here's an article from Chris Kresser. I think kefir, especially goat kefir is a great option for anyone who has some trouble digesting dairy.

Thanks for the articles Dr. Jones.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

I do like goat's milk!


By Dr. Mercola

The vilification of salt is similar to that of fat. Just as there are healthy fats that are necessary for optimal health and unhealthy fats that cause health problems, there are healthy and unhealthy types of salt. The devil’s in the details, as they say, and this is definitely true when it comes to salt and fat.

Salt provides two elements – sodium and chloride – both of which are essential for life. Your body cannot make these elements on its own, so you must get them from your diet. However, not all salts are created equal.

Natural unprocessed salt, such as sea salt and Himalayan salt, contains about 84 percent sodium chloride (just under 37 percent of which is pure sodium1, 2). The remaining 16 percent are naturally-occurring trace minerals, including silicon, phosphorus, and vanadium
Processed (table) salt contains 97.5 percent sodium chloride (just over 39 percent of which is sodium3, 4). The rest is man-made chemicals, such as moisture absorbents and flow agents, such as ferrocyanide and aluminosilicate.
Besides the basic differences in nutritional content, the processing—which involves drying the salt above 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit—also radically and detrimentally alters the chemical structure of the salt

Appropriate vs. Inappropriate Salt Restriction

In the United States and many other developed countries, salt has been vilified as a primary cause of high blood pressure and heart disease. According to research presented at last year’s American Heart Association meeting,5 excessive salt consumption contributed to 2.3 million heart-related deaths worldwide in 2010.

However, it’s important to realize that most Americans and other Westerners get the majority of their sodium from commercially available table salt and processed foods—not from natural unprocessed salt.

This is likely to have a significant bearing on the health value of salt, just as dangerous trans fats in processed foods turned out to be responsible for the adverse health effects previously (and wrongfully) blamed on healthy saturated fats.

Current dietary guidelines in the US recommend limiting your salt intake to anywhere from 1.5 to 2.4 grams of sodium per day, depending on which organization you ask. The American Heart Association suggests a 1.5 gram limit.

For a frame of reference, one teaspoon of regular table salt contains about 2.3 grams of sodium.6 According to some estimates, Americans get roughly four grams of sodium per day, which has long been thought to be too much for heart health.

But recent research, which has been widely publicized,7, 8, 9, 10, 11 suggests that too little salt in your diet may be just as hazardous as too much. Moreover, the balance between sodium and potassium may be a deciding factor in whether your salt consumption will ultimately be harmful or helpful.

Too Little Salt Raises Heart Risks Too, Researchers Find

One four-year long observational study (the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study), which included more than 100,000 people in 17 countries, found that while higher sodium levels correlate with an increased risk for high blood pressure, potassium helps offset sodium’s adverse effects.

The results were published in two articles: "Association of Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion with Blood Pressure"12 and "Urinary Sodium and Potassium Excretion, Mortality, and Cardiovascular Events."13

I’ve discussed the importance of getting these two nutrients—sodium and potassium—in the appropriate ratios before, and I’ll review it again in just a moment.

In this study, those with the lowest risk for heart problems or death from any cause were consuming three to six grams of sodium a day—far more than US daily recommended limits.

Not only did more than six grams of sodium a day raise the risk for heart disease, so did levels lower than three grams per day. In short, while there is a relationship between sodium and blood pressure, it’s not a linear relationship.14 As noted by the Associated Press:15

"‘These are now the best data available,’ Dr. Brian Strom said of the new study. Strom, the chancellor of Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, led an Institute of Medicine panel last year that found little evidence to support very low sodium levels.

"‘Too-high sodium is bad. Too low also may be bad, and sodium isn't the whole story,’ Strom said. ‘People should go for moderation.’

The authors propose an alternative approach; instead of recommending aggressive sodium reduction across the board, it might be wiser to recommend high-quality diets rich in potassium instead. This, they surmise, might achieve greater public health benefits, including blood-pressure reduction.

As noted by one of the researchers, Dr. Martin O'Donnell16 of McMaster University, “Potatoes, bananas, avocados, leafy greens, nuts, apricots, salmon, and mushrooms are high in potassium, and it's easier for people to add things to their diet than to take away something like salt.”

Meta-Analysis Supports Lower Sodium Recommendations

Another study,17 published in the same journal, assessed how sodium contributes to heart-related deaths by evaluating 107 randomized trials across 66 countries. The researchers first calculated the impact of sodium on high blood pressure, and then calculated the relationship between high blood pressure and cardiovascular deaths. According to the authors:

“In 2010, the estimated mean level of global sodium consumption was 3.95 grams per day, and regional mean levels ranged from 2.18 to 5.51 grams per day. Globally, 1.65 million annual deaths from cardiovascular causes... were attributed to sodium intake above the reference level [2.0 grams of sodium per day]. These deaths accounted for nearly 1 of every 10 deaths from cardiovascular causes. Four of every 5 deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries, and 2 of every 5 deaths were premature (before 70 years of age).”

This appears to support current sodium recommendations in the US, and according to Dr. Elliott Antman, president of the Heart Association,18 “The totality of the evidence strongly supports limiting sodium.” However, as noted by Dr. Suzanne Oparil, M.D.:19 “[G]iven the numerous assumptions necessitated by the lack of high-quality data, caution should be taken in interpreting the findings of the study. Taken together, these three articles highlight the need to collect high-quality evidence on both the risks and benefits of low-sodium diets.”

Earlier Evidence

A long list of studies has in fact failed to prove that there are any benefits to a low-salt diet, and in fact many tend to show the opposite. In addition to the ones already mentioned above, the following studies also came up with negative results. For an even more comprehensive list of research, please see this previous salt article.

A 2004 meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration20 reviewed 11 salt-reduction trials and found that, in otherwise healthy people, over the long-term, low-salt diets decreased systolic blood pressure by 1.1 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and diastolic blood pressure by 0.6 mmHg. That equates to reducing your blood pressure from 120/80 to 119/79. In conclusion, the authors stated that:
"Intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programs, provide only minimal reductions in blood pressure during long-term trials."

A 2006 study in the American Journal of Medicine21 compared the reported daily sodium intakes of 78 million Americans to their risk of dying from heart disease over the course of 14 years. The study concluded that lower sodium diets led to HIGHER mortality rates among those with cardiovascular disease, which "raised questions regarding the likelihood of a survival advantage accompanying a lower sodium diet."
In 2011, the Cochrane Collaboration22, 23 conducted yet another review of the available data, concluding that when you reduce your salt intake, you actually increase several other risk factors that could theoretically eliminate the reduced risk for cardiovascular disease predicted from lowering your blood pressure!
Of particular note is the authors statement that: “sodium reduction resulted in a significant increase in plasma cholesterol (2.5 percent) and plasma triglyceride (7 percent), which expressed in percentage, was numerically larger than the decrease in BP [blood pressure]... The present meta-analysis indicates that the adverse effect on lipids, especially triglyceride, is not just an acute effect as previously assumed, but may be persistent also in longer-term studies.”

You Need Salt, But Make Sure It’s the Right Kind

From my perspective, the answer is clear: avoid processed salt and use natural salt in moderation. I believe it is hard for a healthy person to overdo it if using a natural salt, as salt is actually a nutritional goldmine—again provided you mind your sodium-potassium ratio. Some of the many biological processes for which natural salt is crucial include:

Being a major component of your blood plasma, lymphatic fluid, extracellular fluid, and even amniotic fluid Carrying nutrients into and out of your cells, and helping maintain your acid-base balance Increasing the glial cells in your brain, which are responsible for creative thinking and long-term planning. Both sodium and chloride are also necessary for the firing of neurons
Maintain and regulate blood pressure Helping your brain communicate with your muscles, so that you can move on demand via sodium-potassium ion exchange Supporting the function of you adrenal glands, which produce dozens of vital hormones
The beauty with Himalayan salt is that in addition to being naturally lower in sodium, it’s much higher in potassium compared to other salt—including other natural salt like sea salt or Celtic salt. Himalayan salt contains 0.28 percent potassium, compared to 0.16 percent in Celtic salt, and 0.09 percent in regular table salt. While this may seem like tiny amounts, Himalayan salt still has a better salt-potassium ratio than other salt, especially table salt. Again, remember that besides the basic differences in nutritional content, it’s the processing that makes table salt (and the salt used in processed foods) so detrimental to your health. What your body needs is natural, unprocessed salt, without added chemicals.

The Importance of Maintaining Optimal Sodium-Potassium Ratio

I agree with the PURE study’s authors when they say that a better strategy to promote public health would be to forgo the strict sodium reduction element, and focus recommendations instead on a high-quality diet rich in potassium, as this nutrient helps offset the hypertensive effects of sodium. Imbalance in this ratio can not only lead to hypertension (high blood pressure) but also contribute to a number of other diseases, including:

Heart disease and stroke Memory decline Osteoporosis Ulcers and stomach cancer
Kidney stones Cataracts Erectile dysfunction Rheumatoid arthritis
The easiest way to throw your sodium-potassium ratio off kilter is by consuming a diet of processed foods, which are notoriously low in potassium while high in sodium. (Processed foods are also loaded with fructose, which is clearly associated with increased heart disease risk, as well as virtually all chronic diseases.) Your body needs potassium to maintain proper pH levels in your body fluids, and it also plays an integral role in regulating your blood pressure. As indicated in the PURE study, potassium deficiency may be more responsible for hypertension than excess sodium. Potassium deficiency leads to electrolyte imbalance, and can result in a condition called hypokalemia. Symptoms include:

Water retention
Raised blood pressure and hypertension
Heart irregularities/arrhythmias
Muscular weakness and muscle cramps
Continual thirst and constipation
According to a 1985 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, titled "Paleolithic Nutrition,24” our ancient ancestors got about 11,000 milligram (mg) of potassium a day, and about 700 mg of sodium. This equates to nearly 16 times more potassium than sodium. Compare that to the Standard American Diet where daily potassium consumption averages about 2,500 mg (the RDA is 4,700 mg/day), along with 3,600 mg of sodium. This may also explain why high-sodium diets appear to affect some people but not others.

According to a 2011 federal study into sodium and potassium intake, those at greatest risk of cardiovascular disease were those who got a combination of too much sodium along with too little potassium. The research, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine,25 was one of the first and largest American studies to evaluate the relationship of salt, potassium, and heart disease deaths. Tellingly, those who ate a lot of salt and very little potassium were more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack as those who ate about equal amounts of both nutrients.

How to Optimize Your Sodium-to-Potassium Ratio

To easily determine your sodium to potassium ratio every day, you can use a free app like My Fitness Pal for your desktop, smartphone, or tablet that will easily allow you to enter the foods you eat and painlessly make this calculation for you. No calculating or looking up in multiple tables required like we had to do in the old days. So, how do you ensure you get these two important nutrients in more appropriate ratios?

First, ditch all processed foods, which are very high in processed salt and low in potassium and other essential nutrients
Eat a diet of whole, unprocessed foods, ideally organically and locally-grown to ensure optimal nutrient content. This type of diet will naturally provide much larger amounts of potassium in relation to sodium
When using added salt, use a natural salt. I believe Himalayan salt may be the most ideal, as it contains lower sodium and higher potassium levels compared to other salts
I do not recommend taking potassium supplements to correct a sodium-potassium imbalance. Instead, it is best to simply alter your diet and incorporate more potassium-rich whole foods. Green vegetable juicing is an excellent way to ensure you’re getting enough nutrients for optimal health, including about 300-400 mg of potassium per cup. By removing the fiber you can consume even larger volumes of important naturally occurring potassium. Some additional rich sources in potassium are:

Lima beans (955 mg/cup)
Winter squash (896 mg/cup)
Cooked spinach (839 mg/cup)
Avocado (500 mg per medium)
Other potassium-rich fruits and vegetables include:

Fruits: papayas, prunes, cantaloupe, and bananas. (But be careful of bananas as they are high in sugar and have half the potassium that an equivalent of amount of green vegetables. It is an old wives’ tale that you are getting loads of potassium from bananas; the potassium is twice as high in green vegetables)
Vegetables: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, avocados, asparagus, and pumpkin
How Much Salt Does Your Body Need?

Normally, the homeostasis of your body fluids is corrected primarily by your kidneys, and proper renal handling of sodium is necessary for normal cardiovascular function. Given that your survival and normal physical development are dependent on adequate sodium intake and retention, the question is – how much salt do you really need?

A strictly vegetarian diet contains about 0.75 grams of salt per day, and it’s been estimated that the Paleolithic diet contained about 1 to 1.5 grams, which was clearly sufficient for survival, even though it falls far below the currently recommended amount.

I believe it’s clear that most Americans consume FAR too much processed salt that is devoid of most any health benefit. But if you want to find out whether you’re eating the right amount of salt for your body, a fasting chemistry profile that shows your serum sodium level can give you the answer, so that you can modify your diet accordingly. As a general rule, your ideal sodium level is 139, with an optimal range of 136 to 142. If it is much lower, you probably need to eat more salt (natural and unprocessed varieties, of course); if it is higher, you’ll likely want to restrict your salt intake. Keep in mind that if you have weak adrenals, you will lose sodium and need to eat more natural salt to compensate.


User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Personal experience leads me to not trust "Big Pharma" and the doctors that seem to espouse it. I do trust the Lord!
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/artic ... =635727100" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Back-to-School Vaccines: Know the Risks and Failures
August 26, 2014 | 31,348 views

By Barbara Loe Fisher

As summer comes to an end, the drumbeat promoting back-to-school vaccinations grows louder and louder in America. Unlike children in Canada and the European Union,1, 2 our children must get dozens of doses of vaccines or they can't get a public school education.3

No Shots, No School, No Exceptions

Over the past century, denial of a public school education has been used like a club by public health and medical trade officials demanding that state legislators enact "No Shots, No School, No Exceptions" vaccine laws.4, 5, 6 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

In 1914, children had to get one dose of smallpox vaccine to go to school.13 In 2014, children entering kindergarten must get a minimum of 29 doses of 9 vaccines.14 Babies enrolled in daycare get even more vaccines.15

Medical Exemptions Rarely Granted

Parents in 48 states can file a religious or personal belief vaccine exemption, but some states make those exemptions very hard to get.16 A medical exemption is allowed in all states, but doctors rarely grant them to children anymore because almost all medical reasons for delaying or withholding a vaccine have been eliminated.17, 18, 19

Government and medical trade officials have narrowed medical contraindications to vaccination after Congress shielded doctors and vaccine manufacturers from vaccine injury lawsuits.20 Today, even children with severely compromised immune systems are given most vaccines.21

Doctors Practicing Authoritarian Medicine

Now that everybody is a candidate for vaccination all the time, liability-free doctors have been given a green light to practice authoritarian medicine.22, 23, 24 Distraught parents are contacting NVIC and telling us that pediatricians are dismissing their child's vaccine reactions as unimportant and refusing to make a report to the federal vaccine adverse events reporting system.

Mothers describe how pediatricians are screaming at them if they decline a vaccination or simply ask for fewer shots to be given to their child on the same day.25

Recently, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics26 proclaimed publicly that he is justified in getting angry at and discriminating against parents disobeying his orders to give their children every federally recommended vaccine on schedule27 which, by the way, means 49 doses of 14 vaccines between day of birth and age 6 with 20 more doses of vaccines by age 18.28

Calling those parents "a public health menace" and comparing them to "substance abusers," he refuses to treat their children. He said, "That person is a danger, not only to themselves but is a danger to society, a danger to other children in my practice, a danger to old people, a danger to everyone."29

Pediatricians Exempt from Vaccine Injury Lawsuits

It is sad and frightening when doctors demonize and threaten parents making thoughtful medical risk decisions for their children. The American Academy of Pediatrics knows that vaccines carry serious risks for some children because AAP leaders successfully lobbied Congress to be exempt from vaccine injury lawsuits.30, 31

Some People More Susceptible to Vaccine Reactions

But even if $3 billion in federal vaccine injury compensation had not already been awarded to vaccine victims in America,32 and even if the Institute of Medicine had not published a series of reports confirming that vaccines can cause injury and death,33, 34, 35, 36, 37 everybody knows that people do not all respond the same way to pharmaceutical products38 like vaccines.

Each one of us is born with unique genes and a unique microbiome39 influenced by epigenetics,40 which affects how we respond to the different environments we live in. Some of us are more susceptible to vaccine complications.41, 42 Public health officials have known this for a long, long time.43, 44

Late-Breaking News Addition to This Commentary: Girl Dies Hours After HPV Vaccination

Individual susceptibility to vaccine reactions may have been in play when 12-year-old Meredith Prohaska died within hours an HPV vaccination on July 30, 2014. According to the NY Daily News, Meredith's mother took her daughter to the doctor for a sore throat and, while Meredith was at the doctor's office, she was given an HPV shot. Within 30 minutes of the shot,

Meredith, who was a healthy athlete entering seventh grade, became very sleepy and slept all afternoon. When her mom came back from a short trip to get food, she found Meredith face down on the floor with purple lips and no pulse. Her mom is an EMT for the National Guard and performed CPR, but could not save her.

The initial autopsy report was "inconclusive" and further tests are being done. However, Meredith's death is not the first to occur after HPV vaccine. By June 14, 2014, there had been 171 deaths following HPV vaccinations (Gardasil or Cervarix) reported to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS).

One week before Meredith's HPV-vaccine related death, another Wisconsin teenager collapsed in her home shortly after receiving HPV and meningococcal vaccinations. Her mom reported that when her 17-year-old daughter got home after getting vaccinated, she could barely walk and collapsed, complaining of chest pain and that she was having trouble breathing. Her mom immediately took her to an Urgent Care facility and the doctors there called 911 and rushed her to the hospital ER, where she was treated and recovered.

Fox News recently discussed the Wisconsin HPV vaccine reaction cases and pointed out how difficult it is to get compensated for a vaccine injury or death. Even if parents do have enough information to understand their child has suffered a vaccine reaction and meet deadlines for filing a federal compensation claim within two years of a vaccine death or three years of a vaccine injury and an award is made (two out of three claimants are denied awards), compensation is capped at $250,000 for pain and suffering and $250,000 for death. There is no cap for those who require life-long care.


Learn How to Identify Vaccine Reactions

With so many pediatricians denying vaccine risks and failures, it is even more important for parents to do their own research. If your child is getting back-to-school shots, you should know how to identify symptoms of a vaccine reaction. Once your child has had a vaccine reaction, revaccination may cause a more serious reaction.45 Plus, you only have two years to file a claim in the federal vaccine injury compensation program after a vaccine-related death or three years after a vaccine injury.46, 47 A few of the more serious vaccine reaction symptoms are:

Convulsion or seizure symptoms include eyes fluttering and rolling back in the head; twitching, trembling, jerking, shaking or sudden rigidity of one or more parts of the body.48, 49, 50, 51
High fever between 103 and 105 degrees F. or more.52, 53
High-pitched screaming, also known as the encephalitic cry, is described as a shrill scream, shriek, or wail that goes on for hours. Mothers often say they have never heard this type of crying before. Sometimes babies arch their backs while screaming, which can be a sign of brain inflammation.54
Collapse/shock. The child may be pale, have bluish lips, and suddenly go limp and appear to be unconscious.55, 56
Excessive sleepiness is when the child sleeps deeply without moving for hours after vaccination and does not respond to noise, touch, or light and cannot be easily awakened to eat.57, 58, 59
Brain inflammation, also called encephalitis or acute encephalopathy, has been recognized as a very serious complication of vaccination since the first vaccine for smallpox. Symptoms can include convulsions, high-pitched screaming, collapse, and hours of unconsciousness.60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66
Encephalopathy or chronic brain dysfunction can include physical and mental regression, dramatic personality and behavior changes, loss of muscle control, speech, and other abilities, or the child may be unable to continue to meet developmental milestones.67, 68, 69, 70, 71
Vaccine Reactions May Take A Week or Longer to Appear

This is not a full list of vaccine reaction symptoms and there are other types of reactions affecting immune and brain function involving the skin,72, 73, 74 joints,75, 76 blood 77, 78 and other parts of the body that can be warning signs a child may be sensitive to one or more vaccines. Some reactions develop within hours of vaccination while others, like convulsions following MMR vaccination, can take a week or more to appear.79

Review Vaccine Manufacturer Information and Vaccine Ingredients

Before vaccination, read the vaccine manufacturer's product inserts so you are aware of the types of serious health problems reported in pre-licensure clinical trials and during post-marketing surveillance.80 Take a look at vaccine ingredients as well, because some children are allergic to antibiotics, gelatin, MSG, thimerosal, yeast, egg protein, and other vaccine ingredients.81, 82

Vaccine Immunity Not Permanent: Pertussis Vaccine Failures

Parents also need to know that vaccine-acquired immunity is not permanent and fully vaccinated children can still get and transmit infectious diseases.83 Vaccine failures and waning immunity is a real problem for vaccines like B. pertussis,84, 85 also known as whooping cough. The FDA reported last year that vaccinated persons still can be infected with and transmit pertussis, sometimes without even showing any symptoms.86 The majority of children in many pertussis outbreaks have been vaccinated.87, 88

Learn Symptoms of Pertussis (Whooping Cough)

Signs of B. pertussis whooping cough range from a low fever, loss of appetite, and a mild cough to violent paroxysmal coughing, with choking and vomiting of large amounts of sticky mucus for many weeks.89 Small infants can suffer brain damage or die from pertussis if they cannot clear mucus clogging their airways.90 Understanding vaccine risks and failures is a vital part of conscious parenting today.

Ask Eight Questions Before Vaccination

At NVIC.org:

You can find well-referenced information about vaccines and diseases, including vaccine manufacturer product inserts, and a brochure that lists 8 questions you should ask yourself before your child is vaccinated.
You can review vaccine reaction reports made to the federal vaccine adverse events reporting system.
You can read testimonials on the Cry for Vaccine Freedom Wall by Americans describing how they are being persecuted when they try to make informed, voluntary decisions about vaccination for themselves and their children.
You can sign up for the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal and work to secure informed consent protections in your state's vaccine laws.
Protect Your Right to Informed Consent and Defend Vaccine Exemptions



With all the uncertainty surrounding the safety and efficacy of vaccines, it's critical to protect your right to make independent health choices and exercise voluntary informed consent to vaccination. It is urgent that everyone in America stand up and fight to protect and expand vaccine informed consent protections in state public health and employment laws. The best way to do this is to get personally involved with your state legislators and educating the leaders in your community.



THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.

National vaccine policy recommendations are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level. It is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact. It is critical for EVERYONE to get involved now in standing up for the legal right to make voluntary vaccine choices in America because those choices are being threatened by lobbyists representing drug companies, medical trade associations and public health officials, who are trying to persuade legislators to strip all vaccine exemptions from public health laws.

Signing up for NVIC's free Advocacy Portal at http://www.NVICAdvocacy.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; gives you immediate, easy access to your own state legislators on your Smart Phone or computer so you can make your voice heard. You will be kept up-to-date on the latest state bills threatening your vaccine choice rights and get practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community. Also, when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up-to-date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips..

So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Share Your Story with the Media and People You Know

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury or death, please talk about it. If we don't share information and experiences with each other, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.

I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the "other side" of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.

We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies or public health officials promoting forced use of a growing list of vaccines to dominate the conversation about vaccination. The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than "statistically acceptable collateral damage" of national one-size-fits-all mandatory vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn't be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the website of the non-profit charity, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), at http://www.NVIC.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:

NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment and sanctions by doctors, employers, school and health officials for making independent vaccine choices.
Connect with Your Doctor or Find a New One That Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don't want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination.

However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they're starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child
.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Right - I need more exercise with weights!
How to Perform a Full-Body Workout Using a Pair of Dumbbells
August 29, 2014 | 59,778 views


Visit the Fitness Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

I believe that strength training is an integral part of a well-rounded exercise program and most experts recommend them for people of all ages, including children and seniors.

Using a pair of dumbbells and/or kettlebells is an excellent way to perform a broad range of exercises that will help you build muscle mass, while improving your cardiovascular health and strengthening your body from head to toe.

Unfortunately, many ignore weight training when devising their exercise plan, thinking they don't want to "bulk up." But gaining more muscle through resistance exercises has many benefits, from firing up your metabolism to losing excess fat and maintaining healthy bone and muscle mass as you age.

Strength training will help slow down (and in many cases stop) many of the diseases caused by a sedentary lifestyle, such as diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis.

It also provides "anti-aging benefits," such as helping you maintain good range of motion, balance, and stability, as well as reducing those pesky aches and pains. Strength training benefits at least 10 biomarkers of aging that you are capable of controlling:

Strength and muscle mass (which results in greater balance as you get older) Body composition Blood lipids
Bone density Cardiorespiratory fitness Blood pressure
Blood glucose control Aerobic capacity Gene expression and telomere length
Dumbbells for Dummies

First and foremost, proper form is essential when performing strength/resistance exercises. This not only includes your body position during the actual exercise, but also when you pick up and put away the weights! You might be surprised by how many people incur injuries while moving weights around, as people momentarily forget about body mechanics. Ideally, you'll want to include a variety of exercises in your strength training routine. Men's Fitness has an article1 that will help you with this, entitled "The Best Two-Dumbbell Workout."

The article features two full-body dumbbell workouts designed to be performed circuit-style (completing one set of each exercise in turn without resting in between). Alternately, you could use a pair of kettlebells. The sets involve a combination of planks, lunges, squats, deadlifts, push-ups, rows, step-ups, rows, and presses—all using just a single pair of dumbbells.

One of the nice things about these routines is you can adjust them for your load. So, if you have only two dumbbells available, the exercises can be modified by changing the speed and number of your reps. You can even perform these routines with a pair of "mismatched" dumbbells—meaning, two of different weights. If you're a visual learner, Dumbbell-Exercises.com has a number of animated illustrations to guide you, which may be especially helpful if you're new to strength training.2

Before Adding Weights, Master the Perfect Push-Up


The Men's Fitness dumbbell workouts include push-ups, which are excellent strengthening exercises—even without the dumbbells. Be especially careful about your form when you do push-ups, as an improperly performed pushup is a waste of your precious workout time and raises your risk for a strain. Common mistakes people make when performing push-ups include going too fast and using only a partial range of motion.

Pay particular attention to the alignment of your elbows. The ideal angle from your sides is about 45 degrees. This allows you to effectively work your chest muscles and prevent injuries from overextension. As you get stronger, you might add in a few reverse push-ups for added challenge. I recommend watching Darin's demonstration of proper push-up form, but here are some of his key points:

Keep your body stiff and straight as a plank
Elbows at a 45-degree angle from your sides
Breathe in on the way down
Lower your body all the way down, allowing your sternum to gently touch the floor
Breathe out on the way up
Take Advantage of Countless Squat Variations

The dumbbell series also incorporates squats, which are one of the best functional exercises out there. Adding dumbbells to your squats is a great way to add an extra challenge and boost your workout results. As with push-ups, pay attention to proper form when doing a squat. Once you have mastered the basic squat, there are squat variations that really kick up the challenge several more notches, such as the Isolated Squat Hold, Jump Squat (which is plyometric). You can also do the Goblet Squat, using dumbbells, kettlebells, or even a medicine ball. For instructions and video demonstrations on how to properly perform these variations, please see the hyperlink provided.

Dumbbells Can Eliminate Neck Pain—Who Knew?

Do you have neck or shoulder pain? Dumbbell exercises may provide some relief! Many office workers report frequent neck pain related to spending too much time in front of computers, known as "trapezius myalgia." Your trapezius, the large muscle that extends from the back of your head down your neck and into your upper back, can become irritated from too much desk or computer work.

Two studies found strength training that targets your neck and shoulder muscles to be very helpful in reducing trapezius myalgia.3, 4 Researchers found that the following five strength exercises, using hand weights, can substantially reduce this type of neck pain. (For video demonstrations and instructions, refer to this page.)

Dumbbell shrug
One-arm row
Upright row
Reverse fly
Lateral raise/shoulder abduction
Super Slow Lets You Do High Intensity Training with Dumbbells



Download Interview Transcript

Dr. Doug McGuff is one of the more popular people I have interviewed. I love his work as he has a great variation of high intensity training alternative to cardio that uses strength training. While there are Super Slow gyms that have special modified Nautilus equipment to perform the workouts, they can easily be done in the convenience of your home with your body weight and some dumbbells.

Please review the video or the interview I did with him for more details, but essentially, it involves using the dumbbell or body movement exercise very slowly, approximately 10 seconds up and 10 seconds down. I am doing these once a week now and it is really surprising how much they challenge your muscles. You know you did a workout after doing only one set of these and in less than 15 minutes I feel I have gotten a better workout than most one-hour weight training sessions. This is my regimen:

Pull Ups
Push-ups
Squats
Shoulder Press
Biceps Curls
Triceps Extensions
Use Whole Body Vibrational Training with Dumbbells for Advanced Training

Whole Body Vibrational Training (WBVT), also known as Acceleration Training, employs a vibrating platform like the Power Plate that forces your muscles to accommodate, resulting in dramatic improvement in strength, power, flexibility, balance, tone, and leanness.

You can do almost any exercise on the Power Plate and massively improve your results with less effort, because the machine does much of the work for you. The vibrational component will passively stimulate your type 2 muscle fibers and help stimulate growth hormone.

A study at Florida International University examined the energy people expended with squats on a Power Plate with the energy they expended doing conventional squats. They concluded that you can get the same metabolic bang for your buck on the Power Plate using significantly lighter weights, less risk of injury, and possibly faster recovery time. The Power Plate offers the additional advantage of activating more muscles.

Another great thing about the Power Plate is that it can be used safely by nearly everyone, including the elderly, injured, or disabled, because there is benefit to even passively standing or sitting or standing on it. This makes it ideal for helping to strengthen your legs even if you're unable to perform traditional leg-strengthening exercises like squats. If you want to see the Power Plate in action, check out the video above and visit my Power Plate Video page.

Basic Strength Training Dos and Don'ts

I firmly believe that most people would benefit from strength straining, but the key is to start slowly if you have any medical or physical concerns. Remember, while your body needs regular amounts of stress like exercise to stay healthy, if you give it more than it can handle, your health can actually deteriorate. So it's important to listen to your body and adjust your exercise routine accordingly. When doing a strength training session—whether it's with dumbbells or something else—you are wise to follow a few basic guidelines:

Use an appropriate amount of weight; using weights that are too heavy makes it difficult to maintain proper body form and sets you up for an injury
Don't rush
Don't ignore pain
Don't skip the warm-up, and make sure you are doing the right kind of warm-up. Dynamic stretching, an active type of stretching such as walking lunges, squats, or arm circles, has been shown to positively influence power, speed, agility, endurance, flexibility, and strength performance when used before your training session; you can also augment your warm-up with foam rolling
Allow full recovery of your muscles between strength training sessions, and alternate muscle groups; post-workout stretching does little to reduce lactate levels and is not necessary for muscle recovery, although it may help increase your flexibility
Tips for Building a High-Quality Fitness Program

Your strength training workouts should be part of an overall fitness program that incorporates intense interval exercise, core strengthening, proper stretching, stress reduction, restorative sleep, and good nutrition. You'll learn much more about how to put together a safe, effective, time-efficient exercise program for yourself in the fitness section of my website, but here are a few basics to consider:

Stand Up Every 15 Minutes. Compelling research now tells us that prolonged sitting can have a tremendously detrimental impact on your health, even if you exercise regularly. Your body needs to interact with gravity in order to function properly, and this has to be ongoing, throughout your day. Whenever you have a chance to move your body, do so! I invite you to look at our list of 30 videos for ideas about what you can do when you stand up.
Interval (Anaerobic) Training: Interval training involves alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods, and are central to my Peak Fitness routine.
Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen, and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury, and improve your balance and stability. Foundation Training, created by Dr. Eric Goodman, is an integral first step of a larger program he calls "Modern Moveology," which consists of a catalog of exercises.
Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is Active Isolated Stretching (AIS). With AIS, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body's natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Dr Mark Stengler on exercise:
Five minutes to save your life

Do you think you can run for five minutes?

It's tougher than most people realize, especially if the only "run" you've been on lately is a pizza run.

But right now, I'd like you to get up and give it a shot.

Go ahead. Run for five minutes. Run like death himself is chasing you, because in a way he is -- and if you can run for even five minutes, you can stay a step ahead of him.

A new 15-year study of 55,000 adults from the age of 18 all the way up to 100 finds that running regularly, even if it's just 5 or 10 minutes per day, will cut your risk of death from any cause by 30 percent and your risk of death from heart disease and stroke by 45 percent.

And if you keep at it -- if running becomes a regular habit for six years or more -- your risk of death from heart disease and stroke will be cut in half.

But let me give you a number that might mean a whole lot more to you than all the rest put together: Three.

Runners live an average of three years longer than non-runners, according to the study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Think of all you could do with those three extra years -- all that extra time with your family, friends and other loved ones.

If a short daily run could give you that gift, wouldn't it be worth the effort?

But don't stop there. If you want to maximize the health benefits of exercise, consider a 5-10 minute daily run to be your starting line. As you get better at it, run longer and further. Or you can stick to 5 or 10 minutes a day, but get active in other ways, too.

Studies have shown that the key to overall good health and longevity is to spend less time sitting and more time moving -- and you don't have to pony up big money to join a gym to accomplish that.

All you need to do is pick active hobbies you enjoy -- including hiking, biking, skating, dancing and tennis -- and keep at it.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

Good fats, bad fats.
Dangerous Than Trans Fats
August 31, 2014 | 37,549 views

By Dr. Mercola

Nina Teicholz is an investigative journalist and author of The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. Nina was one the reporters who initially broke the story on the dangers of trans fats, 10 years ago, in an article for Gourmet magazine.1

It received an enormous amount of attention, which eventually led to a contract for a book on trans fats. At the same time, she was working as a restaurant review critic, and the meals she received from the chef were foods she'd never eaten before.

"Liver, creamy sauces, cheeses, red meat – and I found them to be delicious. Rich, earthy textured foods. I also found that I lost this stubborn 10 pounds I had been fighting for the most of my adult life, and my doctor said my cholesterol levels were fine."

These are the types of foods that are said to be really bad for your health, yet she had the complete opposite experience. As an investigative reporter, she felt compelled to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Along the way, she also discovered that while trans fats are now increasingly on the "outs," the vegetable oils replacing trans fats may be even more harmful...

How Trans Fats Became the Backbone of the Food Industry

Most edible oil chemists are men, Nina notes, but there was one woman in the field, Mary Enig PhD, who had been warning people about trans fats starting in the late 1970s.

No one was listening to her though, and she was widely regarded as a bit of a crackpot. An independent thinker, Dr. Enig was also a pioneer in educating people—myself included—about the health dangers of unfermented soy.

"Trans fats come about when vegetable oil is hardened," Nina explains. "Vegetable oils only entered the American food supply in the early 1900s.

Before 1900, American housewives cooked with lard and butter. Then vegetable oils, first in the form of cottonseed oils, came in. The very first hardened vegetable oil product was Crisco, introduced in 1911.

That's when trans fats, which are produced when you harden oil through hydrogenation, entered the US food supply."

Hydrogenated vegetable oils and margarine quickly became the backbone of the food industry. They ramped up from zero percent of the food supply to seven or eight percent today.

According to Nina, the increase in the amount of vegetable oils we eat is the single biggest increase in any kind of food nutrient over the course of the 20th century.

According to one calculation, we now eat more than 100,000 times more vegetable oils than we did at the beginning of the century. Vegetable oils were virtually nonexistent at the beginning of the century. Now, they make up about 7-8 percent of all calories consumed by the American public.

"Every packaged food—every cookie, cracker, microwave popcorn, frozen food—everything was made with trans fats. And our French fries were fried in them," she says.

"But it turns out that trans fats – due to the work of Mary Enig (who signaled the alarm) and another researcher whom you've interviewed, Fred Kummerow – they were found to have health problems. They interfered in the basic cellular membrane functioning."

Trans Fat Harm Was Identified in the 1930s

Indeed, Dr. Fred Kummerow—now nearly 100 years old— realized the hazards of trans fats in the 1950’s, and was the first researcher to publish a paper on it in 1957. He discovered that it's not cholesterol that causes heart disease, rather the trans fats are to blame.

Still, trans fats didn't become a major issue in the US until the early 2000s, when it was found that they slightly raise your LDL cholesterol. Since the expert community is so focused on cholesterol to the exclusion of everything else, they started banning trans fats based on that cholesterol effect.

"That was also the reason that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to finally decide to put trans fats on the food label. They wanted consumers to know that foods contained trans fats because by the late 2000s, they were considered really to be a dangerous kind of fat," Nina says.

"To me, it's definitely true that trans fats are not healthy for us. But I'm not sure that they were condemned based on the right reason."

The Cholesterol Fallacy

In the 1950s, saturated fats were condemned on the basis of them raising your cholesterol. At that time, we had only a primitive understanding of what causes heart disease. But we could measure HDL and LDL cholesterol, and the research community focused in on LDL, which became known as the "bad cholesterol."

Since then, a large number of clinical trials have shown that LDL cholesterol levels, except in extreme cases, actually are very poor predictors of heart attack risk.

And, as our understanding of biomarkers has evolved over the last 15 years, it turns out there are other biomarkers that far more accurately predict heart risks, such as your LDL particle number.

"But going back to trans fat, it was condemned on the basis of LDL. It seems like the wrong piece of evidence against trans fats. There were plenty of other things that were worrisome about trans fats that make that perhaps not a bad decision, except for one big thing—nobody really thought about what would replace trans fats," Nina says.

Heated Vegetable Oils Create Harmful Oxidation Byproducts

On a side note, there's also the issue of glyphosate contamination and genetic engineering that make vegetable oils of today even more hazardous than the earlier varieties. That said, from the very beginning, vegetable oils always had the problem that they were unstable.

When heated, especially to high temperatures, they degrade into oxidation products. More than 100 dangerous oxidation products have been found in a single piece of chicken fried in vegetable oils, Nina says.

"That's the reason that vegetable oils were hardened to be able to be used in the first place," she says. "They couldn't be used simply as oil. Once there was a technology that figured out how to use them just as oils by actually changing the fatty acid structure in oils, vegetable oils in bottles like Westin Oil and Zola Oils came to the market, in the 1940s.

But even back then, in a number of animal experiments that were done, there were tremendously worrying results. Animals would get cirrhosis of the liver or enlarged liver. And then when they were eating heated vegetable oils, they would die prematurely."

So, while trans fats are being recognized as harmful and are in the process of being completely eliminated, we’re still faced with a huge problem, because restaurants and food service operations are reverting back to using regular vegetable oils (such as peanut, corn, and soy oil) again for frying. But these oils still have the worrisome problem of degrading into toxic oxidation products when heated!

Trans Fats Are Being Replaced with Equally Worrisome Oil Products

The latest issue of Wise Traditions, the Weston Price journal, has a great article that is an excerpt from her book, in which she discusses this topic. Most of you reading this are now well aware of the dangers of trans fats, and that the FDA is in the process of banning them completely. That's great news, but the question is, what is trans fat being replaced with? The answer is that the oils they're currently using in lieu of trans fats create toxic oxidation products, which in fact may be more toxic than trans fat.

"I stumbled on this topic because a vice president of Loders Croklaan, a big fats and oils producer, said to me, 'I just heard this terrifying talk by a man in a company who does all the cleaning for fast food restaurants.'... He said they have been having problems since restaurants started getting rid of trans fats in their fryers around 2007... The new oils were building up gunk in the drains and on the walls.

This kind of gunk would harden, and workers would scrape for days and not be able to get it off. The conventional cleaners didn't work anymore. It's turning out to be these highly volatile airborne chemicals. When the restaurants' uniforms would be cleaned, the chemicals were so volatile that they would have problems of piles of uniforms spontaneously combusting in the back of trucks. And then they would go to the dryers. The heat of the dryers, even after the restaurant uniforms were cleaned, would cause fires." [Emphasis mine]

The cleaning company ended up producing a more potent chemical cleaner to scrub off the polymers off the walls and uniforms. Unfortunately, the nutrition community is not studying these volatile vegetable oils. Others, primarily in the molecular biology and genetics fields are, but the different fields are not communicating with each other.

Even Low Levels of Aldehydes Cause Massive Inflammation

One group in Taiwan is studying this issue because women have much higher rates of lung cancer than men. They think it may be related to the fact that women, particularly in Asian countries, stir-fry in unventilated spaces using vegetable oils. In Norway, there's another research group trying to assess the effects on worker health in restaurants.

“[These volatile compounds] are very hard to study because they are very ephemeral, literally changing from one second to the next...They’re very unstable. They’re hard to isolate,” Nina explains. “One thing they did was simply to show that these products exist. There’s a whole category called aldehydes, which are particularly worrisome.

A group doing research on animals have found that at fairly low levels of exposure, these aldehydes in animals caused tremendous inflammation, which is related to heart disease. They oxidized LDL cholesterol, which is thought to be the LDL cholesterol that becomes dangerous. There's a link to heart disease. There's also some evidence that links these aldehydes in particular to Alzheimer's. They seem to have a very severe effect on the body."

One researcher has found that aldehydes cause toxic shock in animals through gastric damage. We now know a lot more about the role your gut plays in your health, and the idea that aldehydes from heated vegetable oils can damage your gastric system is frighteningly consistent with the rise we see in immune problems and gastrointestinal-related diseases.

"When the FDA got rid of trans fats... restaurants began to use these regular liquid oils instead... they were the cheapest possible option to use… The FDA really did not consider any of this literature about these oxidation products. When you implement a law, you're supposed to look at the risks. What will happen if you implement a new regulation? In this case, the FDA did not," Nina says.

In hearing this, it appears as though cooking with vegetable oil could be a "new" occupational hazard (having occurred within the last 10 years or so) for restaurant workers. If vegetable oils volatize and gum up into polymers that are nearly impossible to clean, and that are damaging fryers, equipment, and causing uniforms to spontaneously combust, what is it doing to the workers' lungs? Larger fast food chains are aware of this issue, and have implemented a number of fixes to address it. But smaller restaurants may be unaware of this problem, thereby placing workers at potential risk. The same applies if you're regularly cooking with vegetable oils in your home.

Saturated Fats Are Stable, and Therefore Ideal for Cooking

Tallow is a hard fat that comes from cows. Lard is a hard fat that comes from pigs. They're both animal fats, and used to be the main fats used in cooking. One of their benefits is that, since they're saturated fats, they do not oxidize when heated. And saturated fats do not have double bonds that can react with oxygen; therefore they cannot form dangerous aldehydes or other toxic oxidation products.

"They're solids at room temperature. That's why they make great cooking fats and have always made great cooking fats. But we don't think about that. This whole chain of events has happened because we demonized saturated fats," Nina notes.

Fortunately, we're now seeing cracks in the prevailing dogma about saturated fats. In March of this year, a groundbreaking meta-analysis reviewed the clinical trial evidence and the epidemiological evidence, and came to the conclusion that saturated fats really cannot be said to cause heart disease. Another meta-analysis three years earlier came to the same conclusion.

Saturated Fat—It Does a Body Good...

The benefits of saturated fat are many. Some appear to be uniquely traceable to saturated fat. For example, you need saturated fats for brain and immune system health. Another argument is that animal foods in general, including meat cheese, butter, dairy, and eggs, contain high amounts of vitamins. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble, and you have to have the fat that comes naturally in animal foods along with the vitamins in order to absorb those vitamins.

"If you're drinking skim milk, you don't have the fat you need to absorb the vitamins in milk. Without absorbing the vitamins, you can't absorb the minerals. These are uniquely nutrient-dense foods. Vitamin B6 and B12, you can't get in plant foods. They're really nutrient-dense foods that come packaged in the fat that you need to absorb them, along with protein. They're kind of a perfect package of nutrient-dense food," Nina says.

Nina also points out that many clinical trials over the past decade have clearly showed that a diet higher in fat and restricted in carbohydrate results in health improvements such as weight loss and a reduction in risk factors for diabetes, and heart disease. A high-fat diet typically means eating animal foods. Of course, there are very healthy saturated plant fats as well—coconut oil and palm oil, specifically. (Avocado, another healthy fat, is unsaturated.)

"[Coconut and palm oil] have been used for millennia in Asian cultures. They are making a big comeback in part because vegans who don't want to eat animal products have found that they still need a fat for cooking that doesn't oxidize when it's heated... Coconut oil fills that function. In the food industry, they've started to bring back palm oil, which has a lot of saturated fat in it and is a good way to make food that lasts long on a shelf, because again, saturated fats are more stable and long-lasting."

Healthy Eating Guidelines for the 21st Century

So, what's the general 21st century revised rule for healthy living and eating? One of the most important points is that you do not need to avoid saturated fats. Saturated fats were unfairly condemned in the 1950s based on very primitive evidence that has since been re-analyzed. The evidence now clearly shows that saturated fats do not cause heart disease. Moreover, your body needs saturated fats for proper function of your:

Cell membranes Heart Bones (to assimilate calcium)
Liver Lungs Hormones
Immune system Satiety (reducing hunger) Genetic regulation
"Another key piece of information is that a high-fat, carbohydrate-restricted diet looks healthier for losing weight, and making your heart disease biomarkers and diabetes biomarkers look better. There's a real range in how much carbohydrates people will tolerate," Nina says.

Many people need to increase the healthful fat in their diet to 50-85 percent of daily calories. This includes not only saturated fat but also monounsaturated fats (from avocados and nuts) and omega-3 fats. When it comes to cooking fats, few compare to tallow and lard in terms of health benefits and safety. These are the cooking fats that were originally used, and they're excellent frying fats. To learn more, I highly recommend reading Nina's book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat, and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, which contains nine years' worth of research.

User avatar
BroJones
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 8247
Location: Varies.
Contact:

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

Post by BroJones »

The value of going OUTDOORS, in nature.
By Dr. Mercola

If you live in North America, the unusually long cold winter may have had you cooped up indoors for far too long. Now that the weather is finally feeling like spring and summer, you're probably thrilled to spend more time outdoors… and hopefully your kids are too.

One of the most beneficial activities for children is simply spending time in nature. This encourages unstructured playtime, which is essential for kids to build their imagination, relieve stress, and simply be kids.

It also allows kids plenty of sun exposure to build and maintain their vitamin D levels. But there are benefits on a much deeper level, too, according to recent research in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture.1

Spending Time Outdoors Helps Kids Connect with Nature and Increases Happiness

The study, though small with just 10 children included, yielded incredibly meaningful results. Children who spent five to 10 hours a week outside developed a strong attachment to nature, a value that is important to both human development and well-being.

Children who spent a lot of time outdoors also experienced a wealth of positive emotions, including peacefulness, happiness, and a sense of belonging to the world. As you might suspect, parents of children with the strongest connections to nature also spent a lot of time outdoors during childhood, engaging in experiences that they believe helped to shape their adult lives and spirituality.2

Perhaps this study sheds some light on previous research that has found exposing children with ADHD to nature is an affordable, healthful way of controlling symptoms.3

Beyond this, growing research shows that humans of all ages need to maintain their connection with the natural world in order to achieve optimal health and wellness.

Did You Play Outside Until Your Mom Called You in for Dinner?

Many of you reading this probably remember spending every daylight hour outside with your friends. Likely these are among your favorite childhood memories, but times have certainly changed in that regard, and not necessarily for the better.

For many kids today, childhood is becoming increasingly overrun with technology, schedules, and time spent indoors, when the key to health and happiness lies just outside. As reported by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF):4

"In the last two decades, childhood has moved indoors. The average American boy or girl spends as few as 30 minutes in unstructured outdoor play each day, and more than seven hours each day in front of an electronic screen.

This shift inside profoundly impacts the wellness of our nation's kids. Childhood obesity rates have more than doubled the last 20 years; the United States has become the largest consumer of ADHD medications in the world; and pediatric prescriptions for antidepressants have risen precipitously.

Our kids are out of shape, tuned out and stressed out, because they're missing something essential to their health and development: connection to the natural world."

NWF has compiled a revealing list of facts that shows just how important outdoor time is for children… and how detrimental removing this inherent connection to nature may be.5 For the record, nature's benefits don't discriminate.

They're equally relevant to children and adults alike, with research showing people with access to nature have better health, increased levels of satisfaction, lower stress, and greater well-being.

Outdoor play increases fitness levels, fights obesity, and builds healthy bodies. Spending time outside raises levels of vitamin D, helping to protect children from heart disease, diabetes, bone problems, and more. Time outdoors improves distance vision and lowers the chance of nearsightedness.
Schools with environmental education programs score higher on standardized tests in math, reading, writing, and listening. Exposure to environment-based education improves students' critical thinking skills. Children's stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces.
Play protects children's emotional development while loss of free time and a hurried lifestyle may lead to anxiety and depression. Nature makes people nicer, enhances social interactions, and improves value for community and close relationships.
Summer Is the Perfect Time for Outdoor Family Activities

A warm sunny day has an allure that is difficult to resist. Go with your instincts and get outdoors when it calls to you. Remember, your kids are watching your every move, and if they see you enjoying the great outdoors, they will too.

Encourage your children to engage in activities that are naturally interesting to them, such as playing on the monkey bars, rollerblading, skateboarding, playing basketball with friends, or even helping you in the garden. Organized sports are great, but so are spontaneous romps through mud puddles, climbing trees, and spotting frogs in a nearby creek.

Opportunities to grow and appreciate nature are everywhere, so try to encourage your child's natural curiosity and sense of exploration by identifying birds on the way to the bus stop, talking about the insects you see around your yard, or helping your child plant a small flower or vegetable garden.

Above all, resist the urge to overly structure your child's outdoor time, instead encouraging natural active play, time together as a family, as well as, respect and appreciation for the outdoor world.

Are You Planning a Trip to the Pool? Chemical Safety Tips for Every Parent

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released new data showing that nearly 5,000 chemical-related pool injuries were treated in US emergency rooms in 2012.6 More than half of these injuries were among children and teens, most often occurring between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Swimming pool chemical injuries included respiratory problems from breathing in chemical fumes, eye injuries, and skin injuries. If you're uncertain whether the pool you're entering has recently been treated with chemicals, ask before taking a dip. If you own or operate a pool, the CDC offers the following tips:7

Store chemicals safely and securely to protect children and animals from accidental exposure, and keep children away from the area where chemicals are being handled
Avoid mixing different pool chemicals, especially chlorine products with acid
Do not pre-dissolve pool chemicals unless the label instructs you to do so
Add pool chemicals to the water. Do not add water to pool chemicals
For those of you who have ever wondered if the chlorine in a swimming pool poses a health risk, now you know that it certainly can. What you'll find even more unsettling to know, however, is that the disinfection byproducts (DBPs) created by chlorine reactions are far more dangerous.

Would You Know What Drowning Looks Like?

Aside from chemical safety, if you're planning a trip involving any form of water, please become familiar with what a drowning person actually looks like (it's not the way you see in the movies, with shouting and flailing arms). Drowning is the fifth leading cause of unintentional injury death in the US, where about 10 people die from drowning every day. The risk is even greater among children aged one to four, who have the highest drowning rates, and it remains the second-leading cause of accidental death (second only to motor vehicle accidents) for kids one to 14.8

What's shocking, however, is that many drowning deaths among children occur when the child is being supervised and may be only a short distance from an adult. Occurring quickly and quietly, a drowning can happen right before your eyes, before you even realize what happened. Many people believe a drowning person will flail about in the water, splash, and make noise to call for help. But this image is far from reality.

Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., a former lifeguard and educator, coined the term "instinctive drowning response" to describe what happens when a person is very close to drowning. When a person is drowning, nature takes over and the movements become a result of instinct. For starters, the person will not be able to call for help, as their body is working on struggling to breathe first and foremost.

They also will not be able to wave their arms to attract attention, as the instinctive response is for your arms to extend out laterally and press down against the water's surface in an attempt to keep your head above water. Children may even appear to be dog-paddling when in fact they're drowning. The other telltale sign of a drowning person is no movement from their legs; a drowning person will not kick but will instead remain upright in the water, sometimes appearing to be climbing an invisible ladder with their feet.


Five Signs That Drowning Is Imminent

If a person is shouting and waving for help, they may still be in distress and need assistance. However, the five signs that follow, reported in On Scene, the journal of US Coast Guard Search and Rescue,9 may occur when a person is only 20-60 seconds from disappearing below the surface:

Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary, or overlaid, function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
Drowning people's mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When drowning people's mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water's surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response, people's bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.
Other "quiet" signs of drowning reported by Mario Vittone, a former US Coast Guard rescue swimmer, include:10

Head low in the water, mouth at water level Head tilted back with mouth open Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
Eyes closed Hair over forehead or eyes Not using legs – Vertical
Hyperventilating or gasping Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway Trying to roll over on the back
Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder Children who are suddenly quiet
9 Top Ways to Get Outdoors as a Family

Are you looking for a few fun and creative ways to spend your summer outdoors with your family? Try out these simple and inexpensive outings:

1. Go on a Scavenger Hunt – Make a list of challenges (find an orange leaf, get a neighbor's signature, snap a photo of a tulip, etc.), split your family into teams, set a time limit, and then head off (on foot or on bike) to see who can complete the most items.

2. Have a Water Day – Tossing water balloons, splashing in a kiddie pool, and running through a sprinkler in the backyard are fun ways to stay cool while enjoying nature on a hot summer day.

3. Set "Mileage" Goals for the Weekend – Decide as a family how many steps, or how many miles, you want to travel over the weekend, then have fun trying to reach the goal. You can use pedometers to measure steps taken while going on nature hikes, playing tag, and more, and can challenge the family to increase your goal each weekend.

4. Wash the Car – Washing the car uses key core muscles and can be a fun, bonding outdoor experience, especially if you take time to cool off with the hose, too.

5. Family Olympics – Get together with a group of families and compete in outdoor events like hula-hoops, 50-yard dash, relay race, basketball shoot, and an obstacle course. You can even make it an annual event!

6. Do Outdoor "Chores" and Gardening – Weeding the garden, watering plants, planting a garden, and harvesting fruits and vegetables help your kids connect with nature while teaching your kids the value of responsibility. Make outdoor chores fun by setting a time limit and even turning on some music while you work together as a family.

7. Plan Seasonal Outdoor Activities – Swimming, biking, canoeing, and hiking are great in the summer, while, come winter, sledding, ice skating, building a snowman, or skiing are fun.

8. Play Together – Tag, hide-and-go-seek, hopscotch, doing cartwheels, and building an outdoor fort are fun for kids and adults alike.

9. Try Out Family Sports – A backyard game of softball or volleyball, shooting hoops, or taking a trip to a golf course give you quality time as a family while getting you outdoors.

Post Reply