Dr. MERCOLA --> alternative health and fitness

[BroJones]

"Exercise is one of the best-kept secrets to preventing and treating depression."

TRUE! I experienced the healing effects of exercise when I suffered depression myself. Walking in the hills above Prove hour by hour, day after day. Often with my son Nathan (bless his heart!)

It truly works! Exercise coupled with thankfulness. I often said a prayer of thanks when I walked along. I liked to use hiking poles, to work my upper body also.

[BroJones]

Important:

How Baby-Fed Weaning Can Help Promote Good Oral- and Physical Health in Your Child
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By Dr. Mercola

A topic rarely discussed, yet phenomenally important, relates to the food children and babies are fed, and they way in which they are weaned. This can have a profound impact on your child’s future dental- and physical health.

Dr. Kevin Boyd is an attending dentist at Lurie Children’s (formerly Children’s Memorial) Hospital, the leading pediatric institution in Chicago area. Incidentally, this is where I did some training as a resident. It’s a phenomenal training hospital associated with Northwestern University.

He’s also trained in nutritional biochemistry, and serves on a board with Joy Moeller who is the leader in the United States for oral myofunctional therapy.

Dr. Boyd’s interest in diet, health and dental health began during a stint in an experimental Peace Corps volunteer program in Honduras, where kids suffered terrible dental decay.

“ugar cane is the abundant crop there. The kids start eating it at birth, and their front teeth rot out,” he says.

He eventually obtained a master’s degree in nutritional biochemistry and did his research in the area of unhealthy eating as it affects bodyweight and susceptibility to diabetes and tooth decay. After that, he entered dental school.

Weight Gain and Cavities Have the Identical Root Cause

As Dr. Boyd explains, the foods that cause weight gain are the same foods that cause tooth decay—primarily simple carbohydrates. This realization led him to investigate ultimate causes versus approximate causes, meaning the evolutionary significance of diet and tooth decay. He’s now pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology and evolutionary medicine, looking at historical patterns of Westernization of the food supply and how it impacted internal- and oral disease.

“To suggest that this epidemic of tooth decay is because of poor brushing is not sound from an evolutionary perspective,” he says. “It’s not evidence-based. It’s important to brush. But plaque – the stuff that forms on the teeth after you eat – from food residue is not intrinsically acid-producing. It doesn’t produce gum disease. It doesn’t produce tooth decay unless it becomes activated.”

What activates it are simple carbohydrates – starches and sugars – that are not conjugated to its native fiber. All sugars in nature, such as the fructose in fruits, are conjugated to fiber, which actually provides mechanical cleansing of teeth.

“I think brushing is important, but not activating plaque with simple sugars is more important,” he says.

Introducing alkalinity in the form of baking soda can also help decrease the acid level in your mouth at the tooth- and gum surface, which can help prevent plaque formation. I can personally attest to the effectiveness of brushing and flossing with baking soda.

This is something I learned from Dr. Tim Rainey, who is a pioneer in biological dentistry. Despite eating healthy for well over a decade I was still having problems with persistent plaque formation.

I noticed a significant change after introducing fermented vegetables (which provide me with tens of trillions of beneficial bacteria or probiotics each day) but what really made the difference was adding baking soda irrigation to my daily regimen. I follow this with coconut oil pulling as it puts a protective coat back on the teeth that the baking soda irrigation tends to remove.

The Vital Importance of Baby-Led Weaning

The Ph.D. dissertation Dr. Boyd hopes to pursue would compare modern Westernized infant and early childhood feeding regimens with what he calls ‘ancestral-type infant and early childhood feeding regimens.’ Fossil records show that up until the last 300 years or so, babies were more or less exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life. Interestingly enough, this can actually be determined from fossilized teeth.

“You can tell when a baby stops breastfeeding in a 30,000-year-old tooth. We can analyze it,” Dr. Boyd explains. “There’s something called the natal line. That shows when the baby just came into the world and stopped feeding off of the placenta. And then we can tell when they are starting to wean and completely weaned just by looking at teeth and bones.”

The reason you’ve likely never heard of this from your doctor or dentist is because it’s not taught in dental- or medical schools. Anthropologists, however, have known this for decades.

“Dental schools need to have evolutionary biologists on their teaching staff. They just do,” he says. “My whole mission – I’m dedicating the rest of my career to this – is to integrate this into dental education in dentistry. I call it evolutionary oral medicine or Darwinian dentistry.”

An ancestral-type infant and early childhood feeding regimen is defined by six months of exclusive breastfeeding, after which the child undergoes a period of weaning. This weaning period includes breastfeeding on demand, combined with the gradual introduction of regular foods, via a process now referred to as “baby-led weaning.” This type of feeding schedule is what the human genome was adapted to.

Modern-day baby-led weaning has been popularized by one of Dr. Boyd’s anthropology colleagues, Gill Rapley in England, and includes premasticating regular whole foods in lieu of serving processed baby foods. Dr. Boyd explains:

“It’s called kiss feeding. Modern-day hunter-gatherers (there’s not many of them left, but some aboriginal cultures still do these practices) will pre-chew the food like a bird does and spit it into the child’s mouth. It sounds gross, but it’s actually not. It’s quite wonderful.

...Usually, by seven-, eight-, and certainly nine-months-old – even though a child didn’t have that many, if any, teeth – they were chewing with their gums everything that anyone in the tribe was chewing. Certainly by a year old, there was no difference in what a child ate. That would continue into the third year of life. Children are typically breastfed on demand while weaning on to firm, regular foods into the third year of life and sometimes beyond. That’s consistent throughout the human history.”

This natural process actually trains the child’s tongue to position itself upward and forward, and to lateralize toward the sides of the jaws. When your tongue pushes upwards and forward, it expands the palate in the middle, which allows your palate and jaw to settle into the anatomically correct positions.

As a result of this ancestral-type of feeding, which allows the oral cavity to develop naturally and properly, our ancestors were not plagued with crooked teeth and poorly aligned jaws. The anthropological evidence shows that such problems really didn’t arise until about 350 years ago. At present, an estimated 92 percent or more of all Westernized people have some degree of malocclusion, such as crowding of the teeth, narrowing of the jaws, or both. (This is where Joy Moeller’s oral myofunctional training comes in—her protocol helps correct the oral defects and misalignments created by modern feeding.)

This has ramifications for breathing and sleeping, which in turn can lead to what we’ve now dubbed “attention deficit disorder.”

“We now know that snoring children and children that don’t get a good-quality –good REM sleep – are far more susceptible to having behavioral and brain dysfunction like ADD,” Dr. Boyd says. “Giving a stimulant to a child for ADD is not the right thing to do for a child who needs better sleep. Sometimes just changing the architecture of their jaws early in life (I’m not saying that’s the only thing), getting them myofunctional training, and getting them to chew harder, fresher, more nutritious foods can preclude all kinds of problems that we’re throwing drugs at right now.”

How Breastfeeding Promotes Proper Oral Development

When a child is fed the way he was genetically designed to be fed, it stimulates the structure of the mouth and facial bones to develop in an optimal way. This begins with exclusive breastfeeding, ideally for the first six months. However, if you cannot breastfeed, for whatever reason, there are alternatives that can mimic the stimulus created by breastfeeding, which will promote proper formation of your child’s oral cavity.

According to Dr. Boyd, baby bottles are NOT the way to go if you cannot breastfeed. Instead, feeding your child from a cup is much better. Not a lidded sippy cup, however, but an unlidded cup with a small cutout.

“Panera Bread’s little kid cups can be easily modified. I tell parents to go to Panera Bread and ask for their little cups. You can just cut out a little mouth piece on it. You just cut a little loop in it, a little arc.”

Dr. Boyd Supplying an Image/Illustration?

This may surprise many, but baby bottles actually do not mimic the natural suction a baby exerts on the breast. Baby bottles were created under the mistaken belief that babies deform the mother’s nipple, elongating it all the way back to the soft palate. This is why baby bottle nipples are designed the way they are. It was also assumed that babies massage the milk via a peristaltic wave motion, pressing the nipple up against the roof of the mouth. Alas, all of these assumptions have been solidly disproven by Dr. Donna Geddes.

“You can go on a website called Bumpology, and hit Ultrasound Breastfeeding. Donna put an ultrasound probe underneath the mother’s breast while she was breastfeeding and totally disproved the assumption that babies elongated nipple back to the gag reflex and massage it against the mid-palatal suture. That isn’t what happens,” Dr. Boyd says.

Instead, what really happens is that a vacuum is created when the middle of the baby’s tongue comes down, which helps express milk from the breast. Next, the forward part of the baby’s tongue pushes the mother’s nipple inside, right behind the two front teeth. This motion explains why ancestral feeding widens the jaw, and pushes both the upper and lower jaws forward. It also pushes the cheekbones in the mid-face forward.

“It’s like a piston that pushes out on the mid-face. There’s an incisive suture that goes all the way up to your nose that pushes the whole mid-face forward,” he explains.

How to Do Baby-Led Weaning

First of all, babies should not be given any solid food, including pureed baby food, until they are able to sit up on their own. This typically occurs around six months, which coincides with when our ancestors stopped exclusive breastfeeding. Dr. Boyd also advises parents to wait to introduce solid foods until your baby can grasp them. This is because the ability to firmly grasp something in their hand coincides with the development of the gag reflex, which is nature’s way of making sure your baby will not choke on the food. (Naturally, you still must observe and supervise your baby while she’s eating on her own.)

That said, even before your baby can sit up on her own, you should let her lick, smell, see and touch real food in order to get used to it.

“Because they’re born with a visceral suck-swallow, they think Gerber baby food puree is thick milk, and they’re going to try to suck it. And that’s where the deviant tongue-swallowing pattern starts,” Dr. Boyd says. “They’re not being allowed to transition from a visceral, hardwired suck-swallow to a more mature, lateralizing chew-swallow. That’s what baby-led weaning along with breastfeeding do. It teaches the tongue how to transition from an infantile, immature suck-swallow to a mature chew-swallow.

Then, by six- to seven-months-old, in that first month, you can chop fresh foods up. Let your baby pick them up and make a mess on their tray. Let them hold the food to their mouth. Let them pick up things that are big, you know, carrots. They can gnaw on it.”

For those who want to incorporate “kiss feeding,” you can either premasticate, meaning pre-chew, the food before giving it to your baby, or you can buy what’s called a “mesh feeder”—a net bag into which you place chopped up fresh foods, which then turns into a puree as your baby chews on the mesh bag. This way, your baby gets the benefit of the challenge to his jaws. This also provides the proper tongue training. Once pureed, you can empty the contents out onto a plate and allow your baby to feed himself with his hands.

“Gradually, making the foods a little more course, a little less chopped, until really, certainly by 10, 11, to 12 months for sure, a child should be eating everything that the adults are eating,” Dr. Boyd says.

Five Recommendations to Optimize Your Baby’s Oral Health

The top five recommendations issued by Dr. Boyd to promote oral health in your child are:

Find a pediatric dentist by age one, and get checkups at least twice to three times per year
Establish healthy eating habits, based on whole foods and no- or low sugar. If your child does not eat sugar, his teeth will not decay, even if he does not brush religiously. During infancy, make sure to only feed your child breast milk during the night. If they get any other type of commercial carbohydrate (most infant formulas are actually loaded with sugar), breast milk can become toxic to the teeth.

“If it’s just breast milk, lactoferrin kills the bacteria that cause tooth decay,” Dr. Boyd explains. “As soon as you can get your children to where they don’t have to breastfeed through the night, they’re less risky of getting decay. But as long as it’s just breast milk, don’t worry about it.”

Brush teeth three times a day. Ideally, you’ll want to start massaging your child’s gums before his teeth erupt, using either your finger, a Q-tip, or a square of gauze.

When your child starts to show teeth around six or seven months, you can start brushing them with a baby toothbrush. The night time brushing is the most important one. The morning and midday brushing you can let your child do on her own. “If they can hold the toothbrush, they’re going to do enough,” Dr. Boyd says.

Children typically will not need to floss until the age of about three or four years old, when the spaces between the teeth begin to tighten
Drink pure water as the primary beverage, and
If drinking juice, eat a whole piece of fruit along with it (so if drinking four ounces of orange juice, eat eight slices of orange). This way, your child gets the fiber of the fruit, which slows down absorption, and helps to mechanically clean his teeth. Then rinse the mouth with water afterward. Personally I would advise against drinking any juice. Just provide your child with fresh fruit

Work with Genetic Adaptation Rather Than Against It...

It’s quite clear that following a feeding program that includes breastfeeding (or using cup feeding in lieu of bottle feeding) and baby-led weaning can have a tremendously beneficial impact on your child’s future development; from allowing natural tongue-, jaw- and facial development to occur, to promoting better dental health, to avoiding common problems like snoring, mouth-breathing and sleeping problems that can contribute to behavioral- and learning disabilities.

All it takes are minor modifications, such as ditching the baby bottle for a modified lidless feeding cup, and using “kiss feeding” or a mesh feeder instead of processed baby food.

To learn more about Dr. Boyd’s work, check out his website at dentistry4children.net. For more information about baby-led weaning, Dr. Boyd recommends the book Baby-Led Weaning, by Gill Rapley and Tracey Murkett. You can also learn more on babyledweaning.com.1

[BroJones]

A friend of mine in Spring City says that RAW milk can help clear the arteries of junk, specifically benefitted him measurably..

But raw milk is strongly opposed now by the feds (think how many prophets drank raw milk! )

By Dr. Mercola

As you're probably aware of by now, there's a war being waged against raw milk. While raw milk sales or distribution are legal in many US states, and progress has been made toward improving access, there’s strong opposition to this trend. Each victory is hard-won.

Our federal health agencies claim to be protecting us from this 'dangerous' product. As you walk down the aisles of junk food at your local grocery store, pass by the liquor section, and watch individuals buying cartons of cigarettes - you have to wonder is this really about our personal safety or the safety of the milk industry.

Criminal trials centering around raw milk are scheduled to take place in both Minnesota and Wisconsin this year, and a new bill threatens to make herdshare illegal in North Dakota1.

(A herdshare is a private agreement between a farmer and an individual in which the farmer is paid to take care of an animal, cow for example, that belongs to one or more people. You essentially pay a onetime purchase fee to “buy a share” of a farmer’s herd, which entitles you to the benefits of owning that cow, such as a certain amount of milk each week.)

On May 20, the trial of Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger began at the Sauk County Courthouse. Hershberger is charged with four criminal misdemeanors that could result in a jail sentence of up to 30 months, along with fines totaling more than $10,000.

As previously reported, Hershberger’s farm was targeted by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) for supplying a private buying club with raw milk and other fresh produce.

It’s important to realize that there’s much more at stake than what meets the eye here. As stated in the featured article by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund2:

“DATCP has charged Hershberger with, among other things, operating a retail food establishment without a license. Hershberger repeatedly rejects this, citing that he provides foods only to paid members in a private buying club and is not subject to state food regulations.

“There is more at stake here than just a farmer and his few customers,” says Hershberger, “this is about the fundamental right of farmers and consumers to engage in peaceful, private, mutually consenting agreements for food, without additional oversight.

... “Hershberger, and other farmers around the country, are facing state or federal charges against them for providing fresh foods to wanting individuals. In recent months the FDA has conducted several long undercover sting operations and raids against peaceful farmers and buying clubs that have resulted in farms shutting down and consumers without access to the food they depend on.”

Each day, following the day’s hearings, which began on May 20 and is expected to go on for about a month, supporters are scheduled to gather at the Al Ringling Theater across the street from the Sauk County Courthouse where leaders in the food rights movement will hold live presentations and lectures.

Scheduled speakers include Virginia farmer Joel Salatin, Mountain Man show star Eustace Conway, and food rights organizer from Maine, Deborah Evans.

Raw Grass-Fed Milk is SAFER than Pasteurized, So Why the Persecution?

One of the most common excuses given for why farmers are raided, prosecuted, and shut down is that raw foods may be potentially harmful to human health. But to think that pasteurized milk is safer than raw milk from a healthy, grass-fed cow is simply not true.

And for those of you who have been lucky enough to try this illegal product as raw dairy milk, cheese, and yogurt - you know what an incredible difference there is in taste and texture. Tests have shown substantial nutritional benefits from raw milk as well, over the pasteurized and defatted products you typically find at your grocery store.

While the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns that raw milk can carry disease-causing bacteria, what they completely overlook is the fact that these bacteria are the result of industrial farming practices that lead to diseased animals, which may then in turn produce contaminated milk. They make no distinction whatsoever between disease-riddled factory farmed milk and the milk from clean, healthy, grass-fed cows.

The former MUST be pasteurized in order to be safe for consumption. The latter does not. You definitely avoid drinking any raw milk from a conventionally-raised feed-lot cow! But drinking raw milk produced by grass-fed cows from clean, well-run farms, on the other hand, is actually far LESS dangerous than drinking pasteurized milk. In fact, not only does raw milk contain good bacteria that are essential for a healthy digestive system, raw milk also offers protection against disease-causing bacteria.

CDC data3 shows there are about 412 confirmed cases of people getting ill from pasteurized milk each year, while only about 116 illnesses a year are linked to raw milk. And research by Dr. Ted Beals4, MD, featured in the summer 2011 issue of Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, shows that you are about 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw milk!

The science is equally clear on the above points, but that’s not why farmers like Hershberger are getting slapped with criminal charges. The larger issue at stake is the issue of food freedom—the right to sell, buy, and consume fresh food that hasn’t been produced by some multinational conglomerate.

Farmers have been getting a raw deal for some time now, as the dairy industry wants to keep a majority of the profits in their pockets. The local farmer to consumer model is not very beneficial to the big corporations, as they have brought the farmers share of many of these products down to less than 7 cents to the dollar in the retail market. Manufacturers, distributors and retailers are taking the majority of the profits from the farmer's labor.

It’s really nothing more than Mafia strong arm tactics aimed at shutting down the competition. The reason why small-scale organic dairy farms are so threatening to the dairy industry is because they simply cannot produce safe raw milk in a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO). Cows raised under such conditions produce milk that must be pasteurized in order to be safe to drink, as the unnatural diet and environment dramatically alters the nutritional and bacterial composition of the milk.

Why are Farmers Being Jailed while Big Business Gets Off Scot Free?

Meanwhile, real criminal activities that place you and your family’s health at grave risk are being ignored, if not outright condoned, by the same agencies that are trying to jail small-scale farmers like Hershberger. For example, no less than 19 drug companies made AllBusiness.com's Top 100 Corporate Criminals List for the 1990s. Their crimes included defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and even the FDA; international price-setting; false claims; hiding serious problems with their drugs and, in one case (Ortho, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), obstruction of justice and eight counts of persuading employees to destroy documents in a federal investigation.

Yet not a single person from any of those companies has seen the inside of a jail cell. Not even when Pfizer was ordered to pay $2.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil charges relating to the painkiller Bextra in 2009, or when GlaxoSmithKline was found guilty in the largest health fraud settlement in US history last year.

Why is it that a company, which is run by individuals, can harm and kill tens of thousands of people and get off paying fines that really amount to pocket change, while small farmers face serious jail time for selling healthful food to willing buyers? We simply must band together to support our local farmers against such injustice, and protect your own right to buy and eat whatever food you see fit for your family.

Join the Fight for Food Freedom

The fight over raw milk stands as a symbol of the much larger fight for food freedom. Who gets to decide what you eat? You? Or the FDA? If the FDA and state agencies are allowed to impose their view of “safe food” on consumers, raw milk won’t be the only thing lost—all food will be pasteurized, irradiated, and genetically engineered. The effort to reclaim our right to buy and consume raw milk is leading the way for everyone who wants to be able to obtain the food of their choice from the source of their choice. So please, get involved! I urge you to get involved with the following action plan to protect your right to choose your own foods:

Get informed: Visit http://www.farmtoconsumer.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; or click here to sign up for action alerts.
Join the fight for your rights: The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) is the only organization of its kind. This 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization provides a legal defense for farmers who are being pursued by the government for distributing foods directly to consumers. Your donations, although not tax deductible, will be used to support the litigation, legislative, and lobbying efforts of the FTCLDF. For a summary of FTCLDF’s activities in 2012, see this link.
Support your local farmers: Buy from local farmers, not the industry that is working with the government to take away your freedoms.
How to Identify a High-Quality Producer of Raw Milk

If you're still unsure of where to find raw milk, you can locate a raw milk source near you at the Campaign for Real Milk Web site5. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund6 (which helps farmers that have been raided and/or charged with a crime, like Hershberger) also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws7.

Getting your raw milk from a local organic farm is one of the best ways to ensure you're getting high quality milk. If you're thinking about purchasing milk from a small farmer, it would be very wise to visit the farm in person. Look around and ask questions, such as:

Does the farmer and his family drink the milk themselves?
How long has he been producing raw milk?
Are the cows clean?
What conditions are the cows raised in?
Are there any obvious sanitation questions?
Additionally, look for the following general conditions. If a cow is covered in filth and manure, stinks, is wet and cold and doesn't look particularly comfortable, that could be a warning sign that her milk is less than ideal for raw consumption, even if it's from a small, local farm.

Low pathogenic bacteria count (ie does the farmer test his milk regularly for pathogens?) The milk comes from cows raised naturally, in accordance with the seasons The cows are not given antibiotics and growth hormones to increase milk production
The milk is quickly chilled after milking The cows are mainly grass-fed Cows are well cared for
Support Your Local Farmers

Hershberger is just one of many farmers who has been unreasonably harassed and victimized in the war against raw food. There are many other examples. And every year there seems to be one bill or another aimed at taking away your rights to feed your family with whatever foods you see fit. For example, right now a new bill threatens to make herdshare illegal in North Dakota8.

This fight is about much more than just raw milk. It’s a fight for the most fundamental of rights—the right of farmers and consumers to engage in private, mutually consenting agreements for food, without additional oversight. We’re not dealing with drugs here. We’re dealing with FOOD!

Yet while Big Pharma can sell hazardous goods without major repercussions, farmers can’t sell healthful food without being harassed! This must end. One of the best ways you can support this movement is to support your local farmers by buying their food. You can also help make inroads by supporting the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund with a financial pledge.

[BroJones]

The importance of intense (anaerobic) exercise -- for short spurts.


Intense But Short Exercise Is All You Need to Boost Calorie Burning
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By Dr. Mercola

If you have a difficult time fitting exercise into an already crammed schedule, you'll be excited to know you can reap truly remarkable results in a very limited amount of time. Can you carve out 20 minutes two to three times a week?

If so, you can dramatically improve your overall fitness and health – as long as you engage in high-intensity interval training, that is.

Research presented at the Integrative Biology of Exercise VI meeting1, 2 in Colorado on October 10-13 this year, demonstrated that high-intensity interval training burns more calories in less time – a mere 2.5 minutes, divided into five 30-second sprint intervals at maximum exertion, each followed by four minutes of light pedaling to recuperate, can burn as much as 220 calories.

According to lead researcher Kyle Sevits:3

"You burn a lot of calories in a very short time... Nearly all the calories are burned in those 2.5 minutes; you burn very few during the rest period."

Besides burning more calories, high-intensity interval training, which is part of my total Peak Fitness program, has also been shown to produce greater health benefits overall than conventional aerobic training, such as increasing insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance – both of which are critical components of optimal health. Back in April, I reported on a study that found doing just three minutes of high-intensity exercise per week for four weeks, could lead to a 24 percent improvement in insulin sensitivity.

Another important benefit of high-intensity interval training is its ability to naturally increase your body's production of human growth hormone (HGH), also known as "the fitness hormone." HGH is a synergistic, foundational biochemical underpinning that promotes muscle and effectively burns excessive fat.

It also plays an important part in promoting overall health and longevity. This too is something you cannot get from conventional, aerobic endurance training. Other benefits associated with high-intensity interval training include:
Decrease in body fat Improved muscle tone
Improved athletic speed and performance Ability to achieve your fitness goals much faster
Increase in energy and sexual desire Firmer skin and reduces wrinkles

Are You Maximizing the Health Benefits from Your Fitness Routine?

The key that unlocks the many health benefits associated with exercise is intensity. To perform anaerobic exercises correctly, regardless of how you do them (sprinting outdoors, using a stationary bike or elliptical machine, or using weights), you'll want to raise your heart rate to your anaerobic threshold, and to do that, you have to give it your all for those 20 to 30 second intervals.

Different studies will use different intervals of exertion and recuperation. For example, in the featured study, 30-second bouts of exertion were separated by four-minute rest intervals. I use and recommend the program developed by Phil Campbell, where you go all out for 30 seconds, followed by 90 seconds of recuperation. If you do the recommended eight repetitions, you'll be done in 20 minutes or less.

Depending on your level of fitness when you're first starting out, you may only be able to do two or three repetitions of the high-intensity intervals. That's okay. As you get fitter, just keep adding repetitions until you're doing eight during your 20 minute session. Here's a summary of what a typical interval routine might look like using an elliptical:

Warm up for three minutes
Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should be gasping for breath and feel like you couldn't possibly go on another few seconds. It is better to use lower resistance and higher repetitions to increase your heart rate
Recover for 90 seconds, still moving, but at slower pace and decreased resistance
Repeat the high-intensity exercise and recovery 7 more times

Greater Intensity = Greater Need for Recovery

To optimize results, do these types of peak exercises twice or three times a week. Again, you only need about 20 minutes per session, and you don't even need a gym membership to do them. If you have beach access, you may want to take to sprinting barefoot by the water's edge. However, before you give it a go, make sure to review some basic safety guidelines, which I discussed in depth in my previous article, Proper Sprinting and Warm-Up Techniques to Optimize Your Workout and Avoid Injury.

You can also turn your weight training session into an anaerobic exercise by following the guidelines presented by Dr. Doug McGuff. The key that turns strength training into a high-intensity exercise is the speed. Reducing the speed increases the intensity.

Whichever way you choose to do them, you do not need to do high-intensity exercises more frequently than three times a week. In fact, doing so can be counterproductive, as your body needs to recover between sessions. The importance of recovery should not be overlooked, as your body needs time to rebuild itself in order to function optimally. As explained by Dr. Jeff Spencer:

"To achieve the most beneficial effects from your workouts in the shortest time it's essential to understand the concept of total load. Total Training Load refers to the total amount of training 'strain' on the body over time. For example, one single super-hard workout can strain the body as much as several moderate intensity workouts done back to back can.

The Total Training Load can be increased by increasing the number of exercise repetitions, resistance, length of workout sets and by increasing the speed of repetitions and, also, by shortening the rest interval between exercise sets. If the Total Training Load is in excess too long, the body breaks down, and illness, over-training, burnout, and injury occur."

Recovery also includes giving your body the proper nutrients it needs in the recovery phase, as your post-workout meal can support or inhibit the health benefits of exercise. For instance, fast-assimilating protein such as high-quality whey protein, eaten within 30 minutes of your workout, will essentially "rescue" your muscle tissue out of the catabolic state and supply it with the proper nutrients to stimulate repair and rejuvenation.

The Synergy Between Exercise and Diet, and Boosting Results with Intermittent Fasting

It's well worth noting that your choice of breakfast food may play a significant role in altering your metabolic functioning, which can either improve or deter weight loss. For example, eating carbohydrates for breakfast will inhibit your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and reduce the fat burning effect of your exercise. Instead, it activates your parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS), which promotes storage of fat – the complete opposite of what you're aiming for.

Avoiding fructose and other grain carbohydrates is a critical element of a successful weight loss strategy. This includes sports or energy drinks and fruit juices (even if they're freshly squeezed). Exercise cannot counteract the harmful effects of a high-fructose diet. It's also important to remember that if you consume fructose within two hours before or after high-intensity exercise, you effectively negate the ability of the exercise to produce HGH – one of the MAJOR benefits of interval training.

If you're ready to take your fitness routine to the next level, you may even want to consider skipping breakfast altogether and work out on an empty stomach. You can review the article I recently wrote on this here. This is a form of intermittent fasting and I believe it's one of the most profound new developments in weight loss management. This can radically improve your ability to shift to fat burning mode and effectively burn fat rather than glucose.

Also, exercising in a fasted state can help your cells rebuild and repair, keeping them biologically young. I've previously interviewed fitness expert Ori Hofmekler on the issue of fasting and exercise. According to Ori, fasting actually has the surprising benefit of helping you reconstruct your muscles when combined with exercise. This is due to an ingenious preservation mechanism that protects your active muscle from wasting itself.

In a nutshell, if you don't have sufficient fuel in your system when you exercise, your body will break down other tissues but not the active muscle, i.e. the muscle being exercised. That said, neither Ori nor I advocate starvation combined with rigorous exercise. It's important to be sensible. And you need to consume sufficient amounts of protein in order to prevent muscle wasting. While most people need to address the foods they DO eat before considering skipping meals, intermittent fasting can provide you with many benefits, and is another tool you can experiment with to help you reach your goals. Research has shown that the combined effect of intermittent fasting (IF) with short intense exercise may help you to:
Turn back the biological clock in your muscle and brain Boost growth hormone Improve body composition
Boost cognitive function Boost testosterone Prevent depression

Being Fat-Adapted Can Help Improve Your Health

If you follow the recommendations mentioned above, which include:

High-intensity interval training
Avoiding grain carbs and sugars, especially fructose
Exercising in a fasted state

another side effect will eventually become apparent: you'll become increasingly "fat-adapted." Fat-adaption describes the ability to burn fat directly via beta-oxidation. It is the normal, preferred metabolic state of the human body, in which your body burns fat rather than glucose as its primary source of energy. Sadly, the bodies of many, if not most, Americans operate in a state of sugar-dependency, which is an abnormal metabolic state that inevitably results in insulin resistance and related chronic disease. Signs that you're a sugar-burner and are heading down a path of disease include:

Low satiety
Persistent hunger
Carb cravings

As Mark Sisson explains in a recent article, if you are fat-adapted, you:

Can effectively burn stored fat for energy throughout the day.

If you can handle missing meals and are able to go hours without getting ravenous and cranky (or craving carbs), you're likely fat-adapted.
Are able to effectively oxidize dietary fat for energy.

If you're adapted, your post-prandial fat oxidation will be increased, and less dietary fat will be stored in adipose tissue.
Can rely more on fat for energy during exercise, sparing glycogen for when you really need it.

Being able to mobilize and oxidize stored fat during exercise can reduce an athlete's reliance on glycogen. This is the classic "train low, race high" phenomenon, and it can improve performance, save the glycogen for the truly intense segments of a session, and burn more body fat.

According to Sisson, once you can go three hours or more without feeling hungry, you're on your way toward being fat-adapted. If you can handle exercising without having to carb-load, you're probably fat-adapted. And if you can work out effectively in a fasted state, you're definitely fat-adapted.

[BroJones]

OK, some good news, finally.

The Connecticut state Senate has amended and passed GMO labeling bill HB 6527 by an overwhelming vote of 134-3 after days of negotiation. A major step in the right direction, the bill signifies the growing opposition against Monsanto and GMOs at large within the United States that I have continued to support — but the bill does have a major flaw.

Coming right after the successful March Against Monsanto campaign, which was blacked out by the media despite an impressive turnout, the GMO labeling bill could not have picked a better time when it comes to support for the initiative. That said, the bill actually requires four other states enact mandatory labeling before the Connecticut law goes into operation. In other words, there was likely some cash thrown around between the politicians as we’ve seen in the past that led to a ‘compromise’ on the bill — one that effectively shuts it down.

We’ve seen similar things happen in the past, which is one of the reasons I published an extensive list of politicians paid off by Monsanto on NaturalSociety.



Now that said, this is still headline-topping news that pushes the fight for food freedom to the next level. It also sets a powerful legislative precedent for further bills to come forward that activate GMO labeling in individual states as well as Connecticut. There’s no question that what we truly need to do is ban GMOs at large and criminally prosecute Monsanto for crimes against humanity (for more reasons than just GMOs), but sadly the United States government is Monsanto’s #1 fan.

We are seeing major victories, such as in the markets of Europe, where Monsanto has actually stopped trying to even get into due to complete public hatred. And we’re seeing it here in the United States as well in the form of powerful activism, we just know that the United States government continues to openly support Monsanto. So much so that the State Department has actually been caught funding Monsanto’s marketing and overseas ventures. In fact, this has now been admitted by Reuters following data leaks. It’s absolutely outlandish, but it’s reality.



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[BroJones]

Wow - a surprising way to improve memory-recall:



By Dr. Mercola

The simple body movement of clenching your fist may temporarily change the way your brain functions by boosting your memory, according to new research.

This trick works because making a fist can increase activity in your brain on the opposite side (so if you clench your right fist, activity in the left brain hemisphere increases).

If you’re right-handed, the left side of your brain encodes information while the right side helps you retrieve memories, while the opposite is true for left-handed people. Interestingly, researchers were able to show that by strategically clenching their fists, people were able to improve their memories significantly.

Fist-Clenching for Memory Improvement

In the study, 50 right-handed students were asked to remember a list of words. Those who clenched a ball in their right hand before memorization and in their left hand before recall boosted their memory scores by 15 percent compared to a control group.1

If you’re right-handed and you wanted to try this, you would make a fist with your right hand when you need to remember something, like a name or phone number. Then when you need to recall it, clench your left fist.

This trick has also been found to trigger emotions, with right-hand clenching leading to “approach” emotions controlled by the left brain, such as happiness and anger, and left-hand clenching leading to “withdrawal” emotions like sadness and anxiety.2

‘Brain Farts’ Versus True Memory Loss: What’s the Difference?

If you’ve reached middle age or beyond, you may have noticed that your memory is not as quick as it used to be. So-called "senior moments" happen to all of us… even those who are far from reaching their golden years. You forget where you parked your car, misplace your keys, forget the name of someone you met last week -- all of these scenarios are part of life, and they're completely normal.

Meanwhile, brain farts, or as neuroscientists call them "maladaptive brain activity changes," are those "oops" moments when you make a really obvious mistake. These occur because your brain perceives many of your daily tasks as patterns, and may revert to its default mode network (DMN), the part of your brain responsible for your inward-focused thinking, such as daydreaming, during this time.

This can be a problem as the DMN competes, in a sense, with other areas of your brain for resources, and in order for you to carry out a task that requires focused attention, your brain must inhibit the DMN.

So if your brain takes a "time out" during a task that requires your full attention, a brain fart, such as sending an important email to the wrong person, is likely to occur. Fortunately, DMN blips are typically short-lived, and once you realize you've made an error your brain will likely kick into overdrive to try and correct the mistake.

On the other hand, changes in your memory function could be a sign that your brain is on a gradual decline -- and it's time for you to take action to protect and restore your cognitive function. How can you tell the difference?

Even Mild Memory Loss Is a Sign to Take Control of Your Health

Your brain should not feel foggy all the time, nor should you be experiencing episodes of forgetfulness that are so severe they interfere with your ability to function normally. Even very mild memory loss appears to be linked to the presence of the same type of damage seen in more serious cases of cognitive decline.

These mild changes in your cognitive function -- once thought to be a "normal" sign of aging -- is actually one of the first signs of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.3 So if you notice that your mind is not as sharp as it used to be, don't ignore it -- take action to help reverse, or at least minimize, further damage.

Do You Want to Give Your Memory a Boost? 5 Important Tips

Clenching your fists may work temporarily to give your memory a quick boost, but what about longer-term strategies to boost your memory and brain health? Embracing the strategies that follow may give a hearty boost to your brainpower, help keep you mentally healthy and ultimately even make you smarter.

1. Exercise

Exercise encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by stimulating nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage. 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.

A 2010 study on primates published in Neuroscience4 also revealed that regular exercise not only improved blood flow to the brain, but also helped the monkeys learn new tasks twice as quickly as non-exercising monkeys, a benefit the researchers believe would hold true for people as well. To get the most out of your workouts, I recommend a comprehensive program that includes Peak Fitness high-intensity exercise, strength training, stretching and core work.

2. Vitamin B12

Mental fogginess and problems with memory are two of the top warning signs that you have vitamin B12 deficiency. Vitamin B12, or rather a lack thereof, has been called the "canary in the cobalamine" for your future brain health, and recent research has bolstered the importance of this vitamin in keeping your mind sharp as you age.

According to the latest research, people with high levels of markers for vitamin B12 deficiency were more likely to score lower on cognitive tests, as well as have a smaller total brain volume,5 which suggests a lack of the vitamin may contribute to brain shrinkage.

Vitamin B12 is available in its natural form only in animal food sources. These include seafood, beef, chicken, pork, milk, and eggs. If you don't consume enough of these animal products (and I don't recommend consuming seafood unless you know it is from a pure water source) to get an adequate supply of B12, or if your body's ability to absorb the vitamin from food is compromised, vitamin B12 supplementation is completely non-toxic and inexpensive, especially when compared to the cost of laboratory testing. I recommend an under-the-tongue fine mist spray, as this technology helps you absorb the vitamin into the fine capillaries under your tongue.

3. Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats

Docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, an omega-3 fat, is an essential structural component of both your brain and retina. Minus the water content, approximately 60 percent of your brain is composed of fats—25 percent of which is DHA. DHA is found in high levels in your neurons -- the cells of your central nervous system, where it provides structural support. When your omega-3 intake is inadequate, your nerve cells become stiff and more prone to inflammation as the missing omega-3 fats are substituted with cholesterol and omega-6 instead. Once your nerve cells become rigid and inflamed, proper neurotransmission from cell to cell and within cells become compromised.

Exciting research is showing that degenerative conditions can not only be prevented but also potentially reversed with omega-3 fats. For example, in one study, 485 elderly volunteers suffering from memory deficits saw significant improvement after taking 900 mg of DHA per day for 24 weeks, compared with controls.6

Omega-3 fats such as DHA are considered essential because your body cannot produce it, and therefore must get it from your diet. DHA-rich foods include fish, liver, and brain—all of which are no longer consumed in great amounts by most Americans. To compensate for our inherently low omega-3 diet, a high quality animal-based omega-3 supplement is something that I recommend for virtually everyone, especially if you're pregnant. I prefer krill oil compared to all other animal-based omega-3s because krill oil is absorbed up to 10-15 times as well as fish oil, due to its molecular composition, and is less prone to oxidation (rancidity) because it is naturally complexed with the potent fat-soluble antioxidant astaxanthin.

4. Proper Sleep

The process of growth, known as plasticity, is believed to underlie the brain's capacity to control behavior, including learning and memory. Plasticity occurs when neurons are stimulated by events, or information, from the environment. However, sleep and sleep loss modify the expression of several genes and gene products that may be important for synaptic plasticity. Furthermore, certain forms of long-term potentiation, a neural process associated with the laying down of learning and memory, can be elicited in sleep, suggesting synaptic connections are strengthened while you slumber.

Research from Harvard indicates that people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas after sleeping, but few realize that their performance has actually improved. Sleep is also known to enhance your memories and help you "practice" and improve your performance of challenging skills. In fact, a single night of sleeping only four to six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day. If you want a quick brain boost, a mid-day nap has been found to dramatically boost and restore brainpower among adults.7 You can also find 33 tips to help you get the shut-eye you need here.

5. Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels

Activated vitamin D receptors increase nerve growth in your brain, and researchers have also located metabolic pathways for vitamin D in the hippocampus and cerebellum of the brain, areas that are involved in planning, processing of information, and the formation of new memories. In older adults, research has shown that low vitamin D levels are associated with poorer brain function, and increasing levels may help keep older adults mentally fit.8

Appropriate sun exposure is all it takes to keep your levels where they need to be for healthy brain function. If this is not an option, a safe tanning bed is the next best alternative, followed by a vitamin D3 supplement. It now appears as though most adults need about 8,000 IU's of vitamin D a day in order to get their serum levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the lowest they should be. Ideally, your serum levels should be between 50-70 ng/ml, and up to 100 ng/ml to treat cancer and heart disease. However, it's important to realize that there's no magic dosage when it comes to vitamin D. What's important is your serum level, so you need to get your vitamin D levels tested to make sure you're staying within the optimal and therapeutic ranges as indicated below.

vitamin d levels

Too Much Sugar Is Also Detrimental to Your Brain Health…

No discussion of brain health would be complete without discussing the importance of a proper, healthful diet, and with that comes careful attention to limiting your intake of fructose and other sugars.

A UCLA study published last year was the first to show how a steady diet high in fructose can damage your memory and learning.9 Rats fed fructose syrup showed significant impairment in their cognitive abilities—they struggled to remember their way out of a maze. They were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. Their brain cells had trouble signaling each other, disrupting the rats' ability to think clearly and recall the route they'd learned six weeks earlier.

Researchers concluded that a high-fructose diet harms your brain, as well as the rest of your body. So if you want to ensure your memory stays sharp as you age, learning the fist-clenching trick is a novel option. But in the long run, making sure you’re eating a healthful diet is the key to stellar brain health. In terms of fructose, you’ll want to limit your intake to 25 grams per day (or less), and 15 grams or less if you are overweight or have diabetes, pre-diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

How Vitamin D Performance Testing Can Help Optimize Your Health

Additionally, a robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for good health and disease prevention. Vitamin D affects your DNA through vitamin D receptors (VDRs), which bind to specific locations of the human genome. Scientists have identified nearly 3,000 genes that are influenced by vitamin D levels, and vitamin D receptors have been found throughout the human body.

Is it any wonder then that no matter what disease or condition is investigated, vitamin D appears to play a crucial role? This is why I am so excited about the D*Action Project by GrassrootsHealth. It is showing how you can take action today on known science with a consensus of experts without waiting for institutional lethargy. It has shown how by combining the science of measurement (of vitamin D levels) with the personal choice of taking action and, the value of education about individual measures that one can truly be in charge of their own health.

In order to spread this health movement to more communities, the project needs your involvement. This is an ongoing campaign during the month of February, and will become an annual event.

To participate, simply purchase the D*Action Measurement Kit and follow the registration instructions included. (Please note that 100 percent of the proceeds from the kits go to fund the research project. I do not charge a single dime as a distributor of the test kits.)

As a participant, you agree to test your vitamin D levels twice a year during a five year program, and share your health status to demonstrate the public health impact of this nutrient. There is a $65 fee every 6 months for your sponsorship of the project, which includes a test kit to be used at home, and electronic reports on your ongoing progress. You will get a follow up email every six months reminding you "it's time for your next test and health survey."

[BroJones]

Monsanto again, and engineered wheat.

By Dr. Mercola

Monsanto has really done it this time.

As recently reported by CNBC1 and other media outlets,2, 3 an unapproved strain of genetically engineered (GE) wheat has been found growing on a farm in Oregon. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the anomaly on May 29.

As it turns out, the Roundup Ready (i.e. glyphosate-resistant) strain of wheat was developed by Monsanto and field tested in 16 different states between 1998 and 2005.

Plans to bring it to market were abandoned due to opposition against genetically engineered wheat. Many countries importing US wheat do not permit GE ingredients in their food, or require such foods to be labeled.

About 50 percent of the wheat grown in the US is exported. The finding of illegal GE wheat contamination may dramatically alter this ratio however.

Japan and Korea has already suspended orders of US wheat4 in response to the findings. The EU has ordered member states to test imported wheat for contamination.

The economic impact to wheat farmers could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Washington and Kansas wheat farmers have already filed lawsuits against Monsanto due to the immediate harm this disaster has created.

The effects will not be limited to wheat, as importing countries question what other genetic experiments may have escaped the lab and contaminated natural varieties. Monsanto has clearly stated they will leverage the fact they followed government protocol and therefore cannot be held accountable for this mess. The biotech industry is also defending Monsanto, suggesting 'activists' must have set them up.

The biotech industry has so strongly infiltrated and influenced the government agriculture and 'health' agencies they should be considered subsidiaries. [This is called, "fascism"]

How Did Unapproved GE Wheat Survive More than a Decade After Last Field Trial?

Monsanto and other biotech companies have repeatedly promised that their creations will not escape its intended confines. Today, after hundreds of farmers have been sued for patent infringement after Monsanto’s patented seeds were found growing where they weren’t supposed to, we know how ridiculous such assertions are.

The present situation is even more disturbing, as it shows that field trials alone might have the potential to cause permanent cross-contamination. During a seven-year period, between 1998 and 2005, field tests were conducted in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming.5

Monsanto resumed field trials of Roundup Ready wheat last year, planting 150 acres in Hawaii. Furthermore, according to a report by Bloomberg:6

“Another permit allows Monsanto to test wheat with multiple traits, including Roundup tolerance, on 300 acres in North Dakota this year. Monsanto said May 29 in a statement that it ended its program to develop Roundup Ready wheat nearly a decade before the USDA announced this week that the experimental crop was discovered growing on an Oregon farm. The Roundup Ready wheat in the new field trials is 'an entirely different event' than the escaped crop reported by the USDA, Monsanto said.

'This research is still in the very early phases and at least a decade away from commercial approval,' Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said in an e-mail response to questions today. 'The Roundup Ready wheat project that is the subject of the USDA report was previously discontinued.'”

So, by their own admission, Monsanto agrees that the presence of GE wheat in Oregon is not due to any recent activity on their part, but must be the result of escaped wheat going back to field tests well over a decade ago! I wonder if they even realize how significant such an admission is as it seems to be proof positive that they have no control over what happens to their products. No GE wheat seed was ever permitted to be sold, and the last field trial in Oregon was in 2001. As to how the farmer made the discovery in the first place, NPR7 reports:

“About a month ago, a farmer in eastern Oregon noticed some wheat plants growing where he didn’t expect them, and they didn’t die when he sprayed them with Roundup. The farmer sent samples of these curious plants to Carol Mallory-Smith, a scientist at Oregon State University who has investigated other cases in which genetically engineered crops spread beyond their approved boundaries. She found that this wheat was, in fact, genetically engineered. She passed samples on to the US Department of Agriculture, which confirmed her results.”

View NPR transcript

Good Going Monsanto... US Wheat Exports Now at Risk

In 2006, traces of unapproved genetically engineered rice were discovered in the American rice harvest. This led to several countries banning US grown rice and exporters lost millions of dollars as a result. Bayer CropScience, the company responsible for developing and field testing the GE rice ended up agreeing to pay $750 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by 11,000 American rice farmers.

The export market for wheat is far larger than that for rice, and while Steve Mercer with the US Wheat Associates has gone on record saying that “there’s no indication” that wheat exports will be affected in a similar fashion, his statements appear to have been premature. As mentioned earlier, Japan—frequently the top export customer of US wheat—has already canceled orders of white wheat originating in the Pacific Northwest8 and other importers are keeping a close eye on the matter. Japan also canceled orders on some feed-grade wheat.

According to Mercer, the GE wheat issue is confined to “a few isolated plants growing in eastern Oregon.” Or is it?

The day after the USDA’s announcement, the organic food blogger and activist Vani, aka Foodbabe, reported9 that one of her British readers had sent her a photo of the label on a Kraft Mac & Cheese box imported from the US, and in addition to informing buyers of the presence of artificial colors linked to attention disorders in children, the label clearly states that it’s made with genetically modified wheat.

Now... since GE wheat is not, and never was, approved for commercial planting in the US, how could Kraft’s Mac & Cheese, manufactured in the US, be made with GE wheat? Vani notes: “It is uncertain at this time who places this label on products once they are imported into the UK. And this is something I am still investigating.” Lynne Galia, a spokesperson for Kraft Foods, released the following10 statement to MSN News:

"Genetically engineered (GE) wheat is not available for commercial use. We do not use genetically engineered wheat in KRAFT Mac & Cheese or any other Kraft product. So anyone who is saying or implying there is GE wheat in KRAFT Mac & Cheese or any other Kraft product is wrong. In addition, we don’t export Mac & Cheese to the UK and have no authorized distributor there. The company that has applied this sticker is not authorized by Kraft to sell our products. They are not a customer of Kraft. They are getting the product from someone else and reselling our product in the UK. We’re continuing to investigate, but because we are not dealing with authorized distributors of our products, we may not get to the bottom of this issue anytime soon."

Make no mistake about it. The USDA recognizes what a major problem this could be for the US economy. As much as 90 percent of wheat grown in Oregon is sent overseas,11 and in 2011, the state’s wheat crop sold for $492 million. According to US Wheat Associates, US wheat exports totaled $8.1 billion in 2012. 12

Many if not most countries do not permit GE wheat (along with many other genetically engineered crops), so this contamination is going to have massive implications for wheat growers. All the while, Monsanto just shrugs and says they don’t know how their product escaped their well-controlled labs, and the USDA and FDA backs Monsanto up by pretending to know there are absolutely no potential safety issues involved. Truly, the situation is unacceptable.

As Worldwide Activism Against Monsanto Increases, US Government Shields Big Biotech

May 25 saw activists rallying against Monsanto in 36 countries across the globe. In Europe, activists are concerned that the company is trying to overturn EU disclosure laws, and many in the US hit the streets to voice their opinion about the "Monsanto Protection Act" that was silently slipped into the 2013 Federal Appropriations Bill. This is an act that gives biotech immunity from federal prosecution for planting illegally approved GE crops.

Mainstream media took little notice of this global phenomenon. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that just two days prior to the worldwide protests, US senators overwhelmingly voted against the right of states to pass their own GMO labeling laws.13 Best to keep news of Monsanto’s poor image at bay while legislators are hard at work protecting the beast’s rights to continue its wanton slaughter of human rights. [The first beast = the whore Babylon]



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

The Sanders amendment No. 965 to the farm bill (introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders) would have supported the existing right of states to enact their own laws with regards to GMO labeling. So far this year, 26 states have introduced state labeling laws. Yet on May 23, the US senate voted down the Sanders amendment 71-27. As reported by the Organic Consumers Association:

“Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) have admitted privately that they've 'lost the battle' to stop GE food labeling at the state level, now that states are aggressively moving forward on labeling laws.

On May 14, Maine's House Ag Committee passed a GMO labeling law. On May 10, the Vermont House passed a labeling bill, 99-42, despite massive lobbying by Monsanto and threats to sue the state. And though Monsanto won a razor-thin victory (51 percent to 49 percent) in a costly, hard fought California GMO labeling ballot initiative last November, biotech and Big Food now realize that Washington State voters will likely pass I-522, an upcoming ballot initiative to label GE foods, on November 5. 'If Monsanto can't stop states from passing laws, then the next step is a national preemptive measure,' Cummins said. 'And all signs point to just such a power grab.'"

Protecting State Rights Is Not an Option—It’s a MUST!

Preserving state rights to label genetically engineered foods is absolutely imperative at this juncture. It’s the ONLY way to preserve the constitution and protect ourselves from a corrupt, fascist government controlled by industrial lobbying interests. {He said it! }

Now, the Congressional House Agricultural Committee readies to vote on an amendment to the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013, which would lend support to a potential nullification of states’ rights to label GMOs. The amendment in question, the King Amendment No. 71 (Protect Interstate Commerce Act), introduced by Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) and adopted during the House Agriculture Committee’s markup of H.R. 1947, is guised as a bill to protect interstate commerce by barring states from imposing their own animal-welfare standards on “agricultural products” brought in from other states.



However, the provision is so broad and “agricultural products” defined in such sweeping terms that it could also prevent a wide variety of state laws from being enforced, including preventing states from enforcing GMO labeling requirements.

This is because the act would bar a state from imposing its own laws on foods brought in from another state—in order to protect interstate commerce, see? Take Maine as an example. While Maine may have a law calling for foods containing genetically engineered ingredients to be labeled when sold in Maine, this law would be null and void if the food in question comes from a state that does not have such a law... As Wayne Pacelle with the Humane Society recently wrote:14

“King’s goal is to overturn every voter-approved animal welfare ballot measure relating to agriculture – Prop 2 in California (banning extreme confinement crates for pigs, veal calves, and laying hens), Prop 6 in California (forbidding the sale of horses for slaughter for human consumption), Prop 204 in Arizona (banning veal and gestation crates), and Amendment 10 in Florida (outlawing gestation crates). The amendment could also nullify six other state bans on gestation crates, horse slaughter bans in a half-dozen other states, the comprehensive animal welfare standards adopted by the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board, and a raft of anti-downer laws and other animal protection laws designed to shield farm animals from abuse and extreme confinement.

But the reach of his amendment goes further. It seeks to nullify every state, county, or local law that creates any standard or condition relating to an agricultural production activity – so we’d have no state laws for agricultural facilities relating to worker rights, animal welfare, environmental protection, or public health. It’s hard to overstate how sweeping and far-reaching the King amendment is.”

Tell Your Congressman to REJECT the King Amendment!

A call to action has been issued by the Organic Consumers Association:15

“The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today called on all members of Congress to reject the King Amendment and any other amendments or riders to the 2013 Farm Bill that would take away states' rights to enact laws requiring the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The OCA also launched a national petition asking consumers to tell their Congress members that if they pass a Farm Bill with the King Amendment, or other similar riders or amendments, their constituents will vote - or throw - them out of office.

'If the King Amendment survives, and is included in the 2013 Farm Bill, it will wipe out more than 150 state laws governing agriculture, food and food safety,' said Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the OCA. 'The biotech industry knows that it's only a matter of time before Washington State, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut and other states pass GMO labeling laws. Rather than fight this battle in every state, Monsanto is trying to manipulate Congress to pass a Farm Bill that will wipe out citizens' rights to state laws intended to protect their health and safety.'"



Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods



While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November, by a very narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where the people's initiative 522, "The People's Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act," will require food sold in retail outlets to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients. As stated on LabelitWA.org:

"Calorie and nutritional information were not always required on food labels. But since 1990 it has been required and most consumers use this information every day. Country-of-origin labeling wasn't required until 2002. The trans fat content of foods didn't have to be labeled until 2006. Now, all of these labeling requirements are accepted as important for consumers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also says we must know with labeling if our orange juice is from fresh oranges or frozen concentrate.

Doesn't it make sense that genetically engineered foods containing experimental viral, bacterial, insect, plant or animal genes should be labeled, too? Genetically engineered foods do not have to be tested for safety before entering the market. No long-term human feeding studies have been done. The research we have is raising serious questions about the impact to human health and the environment.

I-522 provides the transparency people deserve. I-522 will not raise costs to consumers or food producers. It simply would add more information to food labels, which manufacturers change routinely anyway, all the time. I-522 does not impose any significant cost on our state. It does not require the state to conduct label surveillance, or to initiate or pursue enforcement. The state may choose to do so, as a policy choice, but I-522 was written to avoid raising costs to the state or consumers."

Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn't have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let's not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.

No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
For timely updates on issues relating to these and other labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the Washington initiative.

[BroJones]

An apple a day...
From Natural Health:

Apples Found to Reduce Oxidative Stress, Reduce Blood Pressure, Boost Heart Health
Elizabeth Renter
by Elizabeth Renter
June 18th, 2013

Found to Reduce Oxidative Stress, Reduce Blood Pressure, Boost Heart

HealthScientists with the University of Michigan Health System presented a report at the ADA’s Annual Food and Nutrition Conference and Exposition detailing how apples can actually reduce oxidative stress while reducing blood pressure and cholesterol levels. In essence, apples are fabulous for promoting heart health.

Their research was performed on mice who were predisposed to obesity. Half of the mice were given apples and the other half were not. Both groups had identical calories, sugar, and fiber amounts in their diet, but, at the end of the study, those in the apple group saw less incidence of heart disease as well as overall health improvements.

A similar study published in the Journal of Functional Foods, this one on humans, found that eating apples every day could reduce hardening of the arteries. Study participants ate one apple daily for a period of four weeks, finding that the intake reduced oxidation of LDL (commonly referred to as “bad” cholesterol). By stopping oxidation, the arteries avoid developing plaque associated with heart disease. As a matter of fact, participants with established coronary artery disease (CAD) who were put on the apple regimen were able to reverse their arterial damage.

Similar benefits were reproduced with capsules containing active polyphenols, though the results didn’t last as long. The researchers went so far as to say that these polyphenols derived from apples are “significantly more effective at lowering oxidized LDL than other antioxidants studied, including the spice-based compound curcumin, green tea and tomato extract.”

This doesn’t mean that you should stop drinking green tea or using turmeric (the spice where curcumin is found), because these foods have a wealth of benefits. However, you may want to take the age-old advice of eating an “apple a day” to help keep your heart healthy.

—

If a fruit’s shape has anything to do with its health benefits, it should be no surprise that apples are good for your heart. And in this day and age—when heart disease is the number one killer of Americans, we need all the help we can get. If preventing heart disease is as simple as an “apple a day”, everyone should be partaking of this fruit basket staple.

Heart disease risk increases as the health of your diet decreases. Meaning, the more processed your diet, the greater your risk of being diagnosed with heart disease or even cancer. Processed, unnatural foods don’t only lead to cholesterol oxidation and the resulting hardening of the arteries, but they take the place of healing foods—like apples.

[BroJones]

Avoiding STROKE

By Dr. Mercola

According to the National Stroke Association,1 stroke is the number one cause of long-term disability and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. The most common type of stroke is called "ischemic stroke," which results from an obstruction in a blood vessel supplying blood to your brain. Once you suffer a stroke, the damage, should you survive it, can be absolutely devastating.

Thankfully, up to 80 percent of strokes are preventable. According to researchers,2 lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, body mass index, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and smoking can have a direct bearing on your individual risk.

There’s also compelling evidence showing that your vitamin D status, grounding, stress, and use of statin drugs and hormone replacement therapy and/or birth control pills play a role.

Even Small Changes in Habits Can Make a Big Difference

Daniel Lackland, a professor of neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina and a spokesman for the American Heart Association, has developed a scale of lifestyle factors that have a bearing on stroke risk, called the “Life’s Simple Seven” scale, 3 which includes:

Get active
Control your cholesterol
Eat better
Manage your blood pressure
Lose weight
Reduce your blood sugar, and
Stop smoking
The really good news here is that even minor changes can reduce your stroke risk. As reported by the featured NPR article:4

“[The] scientists dug into a large study that tracked 30,239 people to see how much improvement it takes to prevent stroke....The good news is it doesn't take much to make a difference.

Each risk factor for stroke was scored from 0 to 2, with 0 being crummy, 1 kind of OK, and 2 terrific. Even a one-point improvement in the total score across all seven factors significantly reduced stroke risk.

Each improvement of a point on the 14-point scale meant an 8 percent reduction in stroke. ‘The neat thing of this finding is that anything makes a difference... If you make a small change, you make an improvement," Lackland says. "If you make a bigger change, you make a bigger improvement.’

Some changes can give you a really great payoff. The study showed that reducing your systolic blood pressure by 20 millimeters (regardless of how high your blood pressure currently is) decreases your risk of stroke by 50 percent. Reduce it by another 20 mm, and you cut your individual risk in half yet again. Not smoking, or quitting smoking equated to a 40 percent lower risk.

Beware of Flawed Dietary Recommendations

First, with regards to cholesterol and stroke risk, what we’re talking about is having low levels of HDL (good) cholesterol and high levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. Proper balance between these two ratios is best achieved through a healthy diet, as outlined in my Nutrition Plan, and exercise. It’s well worth noting that cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins have been found to boost stroke risk.

When it comes to diet, you’d be well advised to scrutinize the standard recommendations,5 which include cutting down on saturated fats and dietary cholesterol.

It’s important to understand that cholesterol is in fact essential for your good health, as it carries out essential functions within your cell membranes, and is critical for proper brain function and production of steroid hormones. Vitamin D is also synthesized from a close relative of cholesterol: 7-dehydrocholesterol. In fact, we now have evidence showing that cholesterol deficiency has a detrimental impact on virtually every aspect of your health.

For example, there's reason to believe that low-fat diets and/or cholesterol-lowering drugs may cause or contribute to Alzheimer's disease, and violent behavior, due to adverse changes in brain chemistry.

Furthermore, studies have shown that dietary cholesterol has little to do with raising your serum cholesterol. For example, although egg yolks are relatively high in cholesterol, numerous studies have confirmed that eggs have virtually nothing to do with raising your cholesterol. For instance, research published in the International Journal of Cardiology showed that, in healthy adults, eating eggs every day did not produce a negative effect on endothelial function (an aggregate measure of cardiac risk); nor did it increase cholesterol levels.

But that’s not all. One 2009 study6 discovered that proteins in cooked eggs are converted by gastrointestinal enzymes, producing peptides that act as ACE inhibitors—common prescription medications for lowering blood pressure, which would actually lower your stroke risk!

Most Saturated Fats Are Actually Good for You

The same can be said for saturated fats, which provide the building blocks for cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances in your body. They also act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. Dietary fats are also needed for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes. When you eat saturated fats as part of your meal, they also slow down absorption so that you can feel satiated longer.

It's important though to understand that not all saturated fats are the same. There are subtle differences that have profound health implications, and if you avoid eating all saturated fats, your health will likely suffer. There are in fact more than a dozen different types of saturated fat, but you predominantly consume only three: stearic acid, palmitic acid and lauric acid.

It's already been well established that stearic acid (found in cocoa and animal fat) has no adverse effects on your cholesterol levels, and actually gets converted in your liver into the monounsaturated fat called oleic acid. The other two, palmitic and lauric acid, do raise total cholesterol. However, since they raise "good" cholesterol as much or more than "bad" cholesterol, you're still actually lowering your risk of heart disease. Sources of healthy fats include:

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 or pecans, and seeds Grass-fed meats

Trans fats, on the other hand, should clearly be avoided. They are known to promote inflammation, which is a hallmark of most chronic and/or serious diseases,

not just strokes and heart disease. For example, in one 2010 study,7 post-menopausal women who consumed the most daily dietary trans fat had a 30 percent higher incidence of ischemic strokes. So please, understand that while most health journalists and "experts" will lump saturated fats and trans fats together, they have markedly different health impacts, and the vilification of saturated fat, which arose from an unproven hypothesis from the mid-1950s, is a myth that has since been firmly debunked by nutritional science.

Fiber May Also Be Important for Stroke Prevention, Study Shows

In related news,8, 9 researchers have found that for every seven-grams more fiber you consume on a daily basis, your stroke risk is decreased by seven percent.10 This conclusion was drawn based on data from eight observational studies. Fiber is the non-digestible parts of plants, which can be either soluble or non-soluble. Water soluble fiber was found to reduce stroke risk the most. Soluble fiber can also help propel food, sugars, cholesterol and fats cleanly through your digestive tract, and aids in the formation of beneficial bacteria in your gut, which is a critical aspect of optimal health. Healthful sources of soluble fiber include:

Chia seeds
Berries
Vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts
Root vegetables and tubers, including onions and sweet potatoes
Almonds
While conventional recommendations call for 25 grams of fiber daily, I believe most people need upwards of 32 grams a day. Most Americans get nowhere near this amount. According to the New York Times:11

“...the current average fiber intake in the United States is about 13 grams a day for women and 17 for men. Increasing these amounts by seven grams a day would bring them close to the recommended levels of 21 to 25 grams for women and 30 to 38 for men. ‘Seven grams a day increase is an achievable goal,’ Dr. Burley said. ‘You’re talking about... increasing vegetable and fruit by two portions a day.'”

Ideally, your diet will have foods high in both soluble and insoluble fiber, such as:

Psyllium seed husk, flax and chia seeds
Green beans
Cauliflower
Dried beans
Peas
Other Stroke-Prevention Guidelines

It's important to realize that the vast majority—up to 80 percent, according to the National Stroke Association—of strokes are preventable, so your lifestyle plays a major role in whether or not you're going to become a statistic here. Exercise is clearly at the top of the list in terms of recommendations, as maintaining a regular fitness program will go a long way toward improving your insulin and leptin receptor signaling.

I recommend a comprehensive program that includes Peak Fitness exercises along with super slow strength training, Active Isolated Stretching and core work. If you've had a stroke, exercise is also very important, as research shows it can significantly improve both your mental and physical recovery.12 Besides exercise and the specific dietary factors already discussed above, other lifestyle factors that can have a direct impact on your stroke risk include:

Processed meats: Certain preservatives, such as sodium nitrate and nitrite found in smoked and processed meats have been shown to damage your blood vessels, which could increase your risk of stroke. I recommend avoiding all forms of processed meats, opting instead for organic, grass-fed or pastured meats
Diet soda: Research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference in 2011 showed that drinking just one diet soda a day may increase your risk of stroke by 48 percent. Ideally, strive to eliminate all soda from your diet, as just one can of regular soda contains nearly twice my recommended daily allowance for fructose in order to maintain good health and prevent disease.

Vitamin D deficiency: According to research presented at the American Heart Association's (AHA) Annual Scientific Sessions in 2010,13 low levels of vitamin D—the essential nutrient obtained from exposure to sunlight—doubles the risk of stroke in Caucasians. To get your levels into the healthy range of 50-70 ng/ml, appropriate sun exposure is your best bet. If sun exposure is not an option, a safe tanning bed (with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields) can be used.
As a last resort, a vitamin D3 supplement can be taken. Research suggests the average adult needs to take 8,000 IU's of vitamin D per day in order to elevate their levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the absolute minimum for disease prevention. If you opt for a supplement, you also need to make sure you’re getting sufficient amounts of vitamin K2, as it works synergistically with vitamin D and activates matrix GLA protein, which inhibits arterial calcification.

Stress. According to a 2008 study,14 the more stressed you are, the greater your risk of suffering a stroke. The researchers actually found that for every notch lower a person scored on their well-being scale, their risk of stroke increased by 11 percent. Not surprisingly, the relationship between psychological distress and stroke was most pronounced when the stroke was fatal. My favorite overall tool to manage stress is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). It's a handy, free tool for unloading emotional baggage quickly and painlessly, and so easy that even children can learn it. Other common stress-reduction tools with a high success rate include prayer, meditation, laughter and yoga, for example. For more tips, see my article 10 Simple Steps to Help De-Stress.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and birth control pills. If you're on one of the hormonal birth control methods (whether it's the pill, patch, vaginal ring or implant), it is important to understand that you are taking synthetic progesterone and synthetic estrogen -- something that is clearly not advantageous if you want to maintain optimal health. These contraceptives contain the same synthetic hormones as those used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which has well-documented risks, including an increased risk of blood clots, stroke, heart attack, and breast cancer.
Statins. Statin drugs are frequently prescribed to reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke. However, research shows that these cholesterol-lowering drugs actually increase your risk of a second stroke if you’ve already had one. There are two reasons why this might happen: the drugs may either lower cholesterol too much, to the point that it increases your risk of brain bleeding, or they may affect clotting factors in your blood, increasing the bleeding risk.
Chances are greater than 100 to 1 that you do not need a statin drug. Seventy-five percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. Therefore, if you optimize your insulin level, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol. For a refresher on how to do this, please see my recent article, Statin Nation: The Great Cholesterol Cover-Up.

Grounding. Walking barefoot, aka “grounding,” has a potent antioxidant effect that helps alleviate inflammation throughout your body. The human body appears to be finely tuned to "work" with the earth in the sense that there's a constant flow of energy between our bodies and the earth. When you put your feet on the ground, you absorb large amounts of negative electrons through the soles of your feet.
In today's world, this is more important than ever, yet fewer people than ever actually connect with the earth in this way anymore. High-sugar diets, smoking, radiofrequencies and other toxic electromagnetic forces, emotional stress, high cholesterol, and high uric acid levels are examples of factors that make your blood hypercoagulable, meaning it makes it thick and slow-moving, which increases your risk of having a blood clot or stroke.

Grounding helps thin your blood by improving its zeta potential. This gives each blood cell more negative charge which helps them repel each other to keep your blood thin and less likely to clot. This can significantly reduce your risk of stroke. Research has demonstrated it takes about 80 minutes for the free electrons from the earth to reach your blood stream and transform your blood, so make it a point to regularly walk barefoot on grass or on wet sand for about 1.5-2 hours, if possible.

[BroJones]

I like Dr Mercola -- he discusses alternative health approaches - based on experimental studies, and he seems to practice what he preaches.

By Dr. Mercola

Is it a good idea to “starve” yourself just a little bit each day, or a couple of days a week? Mounting evidence indicates that yes, intermittent fasting (IF) could have a very beneficial impact on your health and longevity.

I believe it’s one of the most powerful interventions out there if you’re struggling with your weight and related health issues. One of the primary reasons for this is because it helps shift your body from burning sugar/carbs to burning fat as its primary fuel.

As discussed in the featured article,1 intermittent fasting is not about binge eating followed by starvation, or any other extreme form of dieting. Rather what we’re talking about here involves timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting.

I prefer daily intermittent fasting, but you could also fast a couple of days a week if you prefer, or every other day. There are many different variations.

To be effective, in the case of daily intermittent fasting, the length of your fast must be at least eight hours long. This means eating only between the hours of 11am until 7pm, as an example. Essentially, this equates to simply skipping breakfast, and making lunch your first meal of the day instead.

You can restrict it even further — down to six, four, or even two hours if you want, but you can still reap many of these rewards by limiting your eating to an eight-hour window each day.

This is because it takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores; after that you start to shift to burning fat. However, if you are replenishing your glycogen by eating every eight hours (or sooner), you make it far more difficult for your body to use your fat stores as fuel.

Intermittent Fasting — More a Lifestyle Than a Diet

I have been experimenting with different types of scheduled eating for the past two years and currently restrict my eating to a 6- to 7-hour window each day. While you’re not required to restrict the amount of food you eat when on this type of daily scheduled eating plan, I would caution against versions of intermittent fasting that gives you free reign to eat all the junk food you want when not fasting, as this seems awfully counterproductive.

Also, according to research published in 2010,2 intermittent fasting with compensatory overeating did not improve survival rates nor delay prostate tumor growth in mice. Essentially, by gorging on non-fasting days, the health benefits of fasting can easily be lost. If so, then what’s the point?

I view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, not a diet, and that includes making healthy food choices whenever you do eat. Also, proper nutrition becomes even more important when fasting, so you really want to address your food choices before you try fasting.

This includes minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthful fats, like coconut oil, olive oil, olives, butter, eggs, avocados, and nuts. It typically takes several weeks to shift to fat burning mode, but once you do, your cravings for unhealthy foods and carbs will automatically disappear. This is because you’re now actually able to burn your stored fat and don’t have to rely on new fast-burning carbs for fuel. Unfortunately, despite mounting evidence, many health practitioners are still reluctant to prescribe fasting to their patients. According to Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat:3

“Health care practitioners across the board are so afraid to recommend eating less because of the stigma involved in that recommendation, but we are more than happy to recommend that someone start going to the gym. If all I said was you need to get to the gym and start eating healthier, no one would have a problem with it. When the message is not only should you eat less, you could probably go without eating for 24 hours once or twice a week, suddenly it’s heresy.”

The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Aside from removing your cravings for sugar and snack foods and turning you into an efficient fat-burning machine, thereby making it far easier to maintain a healthy body weight, modern science has confirmed there are many other good reasons to fast intermittently. For example, research presented at the 2011 annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans4 showed that fasting triggered a 1,300 percent rise of human growth hormone (HGH) in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men.

HGH, human growth hormone, commonly referred to as "the fitness hormone," plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from the practice (as long as they don't overtrain and are careful about their nutrition). The only other thing that can compete in terms of dramatically boosting HGH levels is high-intensity interval training. Other health benefits of intermittent fasting include:

Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health Improving biomarkers of disease
Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as "the hunger hormone" Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage
Lowering triglyceride levels Preserving memory functioning and learning
Intermittent Fasting Is as Good or Better Than Continuous Calorie Restriction

According to Dr. Stephen Freedland, associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke University Medical Center, “undernutrition without malnutrition” is the only experimental approach that consistently improves survival in animals with cancer, as well as extends lifespan overall by as much as 30 percent.5 Interestingly enough, intermittent fasting appears to provide nearly identical health benefits without being as difficult to implement and maintain. It’s easier for most people to simply restrict their eating to a narrow window of time each day, opposed to dramatically decreasing their overall daily calorie intake.

Mark Mattson, senior investigator for the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has researched the health benefits of intermittent fasting, as well as the benefits of calorie restriction. According to Mattson,6 there are several theories to explain why fasting works:

"The one that we've studied a lot, and designed experiments to test, is the hypothesis that during the fasting period, cells are under a mild stress, and they respond to the stress adaptively by enhancing their ability to cope with stress and, maybe, to resist disease... There is considerable similarity between how cells respond to the stress of exercise and how cells respond to intermittent fasting.”

In one of his studies,7 overweight adults with moderate asthma lost eight percent of their body weight by cutting their calorie intake by 80 percent on alternate days for eight weeks. Markers of oxidative stress and inflammation also decreased, and asthma-related symptoms improved, along with several quality-of-life indicators.

More recently, Mattson and colleagues compared the effectiveness of intermittent fasting against continuous calorie restriction for weight loss, insulin sensitivity and other metabolic disease risk markers. The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2011,8 found that intermittent fasting was as effective as continuous calorie restriction for improving all of these issues, and slightly better for reducing insulin resistance. According to the authors:

“Both groups experienced comparable reductions in leptin, free androgen index, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, total and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and increases in sex hormone binding globulin, IGF binding proteins 1 and 2. Reductions in fasting insulin and insulin resistance were modest in both groups, but greater with IER [intermittent fasting] than with CER [continuous energy restriction].”

How Intermittent Fasting Benefits Your Brain

Your brain can also benefit from intermittent fasting. As reported in the featured article:

“Mattson has also researched the protective benefits of fasting to neurons. If you don't eat for 10–16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy, and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the bloodstream. This has been shown to protect memory and learning functionality, says Mattson, as well as slow disease processes in the brain.”

Besides releasing ketones as a byproduct of burning fat, intermittent fasting also affects brain function by boosting production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). 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,9 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.

Give Intermittent Fasting a Try

If you’re ready to give intermittent fasting a try, consider skipping breakfast, make sure you stop eating and drinking anything but water three hours before you go to sleep, and restrict your eating to an 8-hour (or less) time frame every day. In the 6-8 hours that you do eat, have healthy protein, minimize your carbs like pasta, bread, and potatoes and exchange them for healthful fats like butter, eggs, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil and nuts — essentially the very fats the media and “experts” tell you to avoid.

This will help shift you from carb burning to fat burning mode. Once your body has made this shift, it is nothing short of magical as your cravings for sweets, and food in general, rapidly normalizes and your desire for sweets and junk food radically decreases if not disappears entirely.

Remember it takes a few weeks, and you have to do it gradually, but once you succeed and switch to fat burning mode, you'll be easily able to fast for 18 hours and not feel hungry. The “hunger” most people feel is actually cravings for sugar, and these will disappear, as if by magic, once you successfully shift over to burning fat instead.

Another phenomenal side effect/benefit that occurs is that you will radically improve the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Supporting healthy gut bacteria, which actually outnumber your cells 10 to one, is one of the most important things you can do to improve your immune system so you won’t get sick, or get coughs, colds and flus. You will sleep better, have more energy, have increased mental clarity and concentrate better. Essentially every aspect of your health will improve as your gut flora becomes balanced.

Based on my own phenomenal experience with intermittent fasting, I believe it’s one of the most powerful ways to shift your body into fat burning mode and improve a wide variety of biomarkers for disease. The effects can be further magnified by exercising while in a fasted state. For more information on that, please see my previous article High-Intensity Interval Training and Intermittent Fasting - A Winning Combo.

Clearly, it’s another powerful tool in your box to help you and your family take control of your health, and an excellent way to take your fitness to the next level.

[BroJones]

Anti-biotic resistance.... and super-bugs... Here's what Dr Mercola says.
NB: Could this lead to the prophesied "overflowing scourge" in the last days?

By Dr. Mercola

The frivolous use of antibiotics, not just in medicine but also in food production, is the root cause of skyrocketing antibiotic resistance.

Data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control1 (ECDC) shows a significant rise of resistance to multiple antibiotics in Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli in just the last four years alone, affecting more than one-third of the EU, and the primary cause for this man-made epidemic is the widespread misuse of antibiotics.

Between the years of 1993 and 2005, the number of Americans hospitalized due to the antibiotic-resistant “superbug” MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) skyrocketed from about 2,000 to 370,000.

Currently, MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant infections kill about 60,000 Americans annually, and account for billions of dollars in health care costs.2 Antibiotic-resistant disease is not the only danger associated with the misuse of these drugs. Excessive exposure to antibiotics also takes a heavy toll on your gastrointestinal health, which can predispose you to virtually any disease.

Abnormal gut flora may actually be a major contributing factor to the rise in a wide variety of childhood diseases and ailments, from bowel disorders and allergies to autism.

Agricultural uses of antibiotics account for about 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the US,3 so it's a MAJOR source of human antibiotic consumption. Animals are often fed antibiotics at low doses for disease prevention and growth promotion, and those antibiotics are transferred to you via meat, and even via the manure used as crop fertilizer.

Protecting your gut health and reducing the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are significant reasons for making sure you're only eating grass-fed, organically-raised meats and animal products.

Gut Viruses Confer Antibiotic-Resistance to Bacteria, New Research Shows

When used properly, in the correct contexts and with responsibility, antibiotics can and do save lives that are threatened by bacterial infections. But there is one important variable that wasn't considered when the widespread use of these "miracle medicines" began, and that is that bacteria are highly adaptable.

They are clearly capable of outsmarting antibiotics, and they are doing so with a vengeance. According to the CDC's National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System:4

"Antibiotics kill or inhibit the growth of susceptible bacteria. Sometimes one of the bacteria survives because it has the ability to neutralize or evade the effect of the antibiotic; that one bacteria can then multiply and replace all the bacteria that were killed off.

Exposure to antibiotics therefore provides selective pressure, which makes the surviving bacteria more likely to be resistant. In addition, bacteria that were at one time susceptible to an antibiotic can acquire resistance through mutation of their genetic material or by acquiring pieces of DNA that code for the resistance properties from other bacteria.

The DNA that codes for resistance can be grouped in a single easily transferable package. This means that bacteria can become resistant to many antimicrobial agents because of the transfer of one piece of DNA."

Interestingly, these bacteria have previously unknown allies that supply them with the antibiotic-resistant genes necessary for their survival. Researchers at the Wyss Institute have discovered that gut viruses known as bacteriophages, a.k.a. “phages” are actually instrumental in conferring antibacterial resistance to bacteria.5, 6 Most importantly:

“[Phage] deliver genes that help the bacteria to survive not just the antibiotic they've been exposed to, but other types of antibiotics as well...

That suggests that phages in the gut may be partly responsible for the emergence of dangerous superbugs that withstand multiple antibiotics, and that drug targeting of phages could offer a potential new path to mitigate development of antibiotic resistance,” the Institute’s press release7 states.

Phages Are Actually an Important Part of Your Body’s Defense System

More than 90 percent of the DNA in your body is not yours, but actually belongs to a wide variety of microbes, and these findings just go to show how intricately tied your health is to the microorganisms that live inside you. And, while the word “virus” brings to mind all things “bad” for you, this is not necessarily true.

Another recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences8 found that many of these viruses (phages) actually serve as immune helpers—not enemies—and form an important part of your body’s defense system.9

Wherever bacteria reside, you will also find phages, because phages depend on bacteria for their survival. Phages specialize in breaking open and killing certain kinds of bacteria, hijacking them in order to replicate.

Most phages have hollow heads, which store their DNA and RNA, and tunnel tails designed for binding to the surface of their bacterial targets. According to phages.org, once a phage has attached itself to a bacterium:

“The viral DNA is then injected through the tail into the host cell, where it directs the production of progeny phages, often over a hundred in half an hour. These 'young' phages burst from the host cell (killing it) and infect more bacteria.”

The researchers found evidence that these phages partner with animals and humans to stave off bacterial infections and control the composition of friendly microbes in your body. The researchers speculate that some phages might protect bacteria that benefit their hosts (i.e. you), while destroying those that cause harm.

Which brings us back to the featured research, which suggests that these phages may also play a significant role in the rapid rise of antibiotic resistance... In essence, it would appear our zealous overuse of antibiotic drugs is causing these helpful viruses to boost the survivability of bacteria during the onslaught of a deadly foe—the antibiotic—only in this case, the end result is disastrous rather than helpful for the host... On the upside, these findings may confer new hope for effective treatments. According to Don Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director of the Wyss Institute:10

"Antibiotic resistance is as pressing a global health problem as they come, and to fight it, it's critical to understand it. [These] novel findings offer a previously unknown way to approach this problem -- by targeting the phage that live in our intestine, rather than the pathogens themselves."

Colloidal Silver Dramatically Boosts Effectiveness of Antibiotics

The use of silver in the battle against pathogenic bacteria goes way back into antiquity. Hippocrates was one of the first to describe its antimicrobial properties in 400 B.C. Over the past few years, several studies have demonstrated the fact that silver is indeed one of the most effective agents in the battle against antibiotic-resistant super pathogens. Yet conventional medicine has largely dismissed such claims, relegating colloidal silver to the “woo-woo” section of medical myth.

They may be inclined to change their tune however, in light of the latest research11, 12 which shows that low doses of silver can make antibiotics up to 1,000 times more effective, and may even allow an antibiotic to successfully combat otherwise antibiotic-resistant bacteria. As reported by Medical News Today:13

“...[N]ot only did silver boost the ability of a broad range of commonly used antibiotics so as to stop mice dying of otherwise lethal infections, but it made at least one resistant bacterium succumb to antibiotics again. The addition of silver also broadened the effect of vancomycin, an antibiotic that is usually only effective at killing Gram-positive bacteria like Staph and Strep; aided by silver it killed Gram-negative bacteria such as those that cause food poisoning and dangerous hospital-acquired infections.”

For example, by adding a small amount of silver to the antibiotic, a powerful synergism occurred, and a urinary tract infection caused by tetracycline-resistant E. coli was successfully eradicated. Silver also helped save the lives of 90 percent of mice suffering with a life-threatening abdominal inflammation by adding it to the antibiotic vanomycin. In the group receiving vanomycin only, a mere 10 percent survived. The researchers discovered two mechanisms that help explain how silver can boost the effectiveness of an antibiotic:

Silver interferes with the bacteria’s metabolism, increasing production of reactive oxygen species14 (ROS); products of normal oxygen consuming metabolic processes in your body that, in excess, can damage cell membranes and DNA. Many antibiotics are believed to kill bacteria by producing ROS compounds, and here, the researchers found that adding a small amount of silver boosted the antibiotic’s ability to kill anywhere from 10 and 1,000 times more bacteria
Silver makes the bacteria’s cell membrane more permeable. This may explain the beneficial effect of silver on gram-negative bacteria, the cells of which are often impenetrable to antibiotics due to the molecular size of the drugs

What About Potential Toxicity of Colloidal Silver?

As for toxicity, the researchers found that the doses of silver required were far smaller than the dose needed to harm either mice or cultured human cells, suggesting that oral and injectable silver should be quite safe. That said, quality is extremely important, as misrepresentation of colloidal silver by less scrupulous manufacturers has in the past led to some of its more negative connotations. According to a Commercial Product Report15 by silver-colloids.com, a site that provides detailed laboratory analyses of colloidal silver products, there are three distinctly different types of silver products on the market that are all labeled and sold as “colloidal” silver:

True colloidal silver
Ionic silver
Silver protein: Due to the high concentration of large silver particles, silver protein products are known to cause argyria, which turns your skin blue-gray color.

When purchasing colloidal silver, it’s very important to avoid silver protein formulas. True colloidal silver seems to be the most recommended, but ionic silver could probably also be used. In the featured study, they used ionic silver (Ag) in a silver nitrate salt (AgNO3), which, again, was found to be quite non-toxic in animals and human cell cultures. Substantial antimicrobial activity was found at 30 microns (μM) against E. coli. If you take ionic silver products according to the manufacturer’s recommended dosage, ionic silver will not cause argyria. That said, since there are potential health risks involved if you select the wrong formula, I recommend you use colloidal silver only under the guidance and supervision of a qualified alternative health practitioner who can help you select a high-quality product.

Statin Users Beware... Your Cholesterol Medication May Not Mix Well with Antibiotics!

In related news, Canadian researchers16 warn that patients —especially the elderly—taking cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Lipitor, should avoid the antibiotics clarithromycin and erythromycin, as these antibiotics inhibit the metabolism of statins. Increased drug concentrations in your body may cause muscle or kidney damage, and even death. As reported by WebMD:17

"'These drugs do interact and cause difficulties for patients,' said lead researcher Dr. Amit Garg, a professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. These adverse reactions are rare, Garg added. 'Most people will be fine,' he said. 'But at a population level, hundreds of preventable hospitalizations are occurring.' For someone taking a statin, the study suggests that substituting a different antibiotic -- azithromycin -- is safer because it doesn't interfere with the metabolism of statins. Another strategy is to stop the statin until the antibiotic course is finished, Garg said."

What You Can Do to Help Stop the Spread of Antibiotic-Resistant Disease

You can help yourself and your community by using antibiotics only when absolutely necessary and by purchasing organic, antibiotic-free meats and other foods. Even though the problem of antibiotic resistance needs to be stemmed through public policy on a nationwide level, the more people who get involved on a personal level to stop unnecessary antibiotic use the better.

Remember, not every bacterial infection needs to be treated with a drug. First, as an all-around preventive measure, you’ll want to make sure your vitamin D level is optimized year-round, especially during pregnancy, along with vitamin K2. But there are also a number of natural compounds that can help boost your immune system function to help rid you of an infection, including:

Oregano (oil of oregano)
Garlic
Echinacea
Manuka honey (for topical application)

Last but not least, the use of silver compounds appears to bring new hope against antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Still, creating more potent antibiotics, regardless of how that’s achieved, will not help us in the long run unless we also address the root causes of antibiotic resistance, which is rampant overuse—in medicine, but perhaps even more importantly, in agriculture.

If you live in the United States and want to get involved on a national level, Food Democracy Now! has created a petition against the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production.18 If you care about this issue, I suggest you use this petition to make your voice heard.

[BroJones]

The Book of Mormon notes that the Lord prepared herbs for the benefit of the people in the new world.

How about curcumin? I regularly take curcumin (capsule form) and quite often cayenne pepper, garlic and ginger.

By Dr. Mercola

Most spices have powerful medicinal properties, which is precisely why they've been used to promote healing for thousands of years prior to the advent of modern, synthetic drug-based medicine.

One such spice is turmeric, the yellow-pigmented "curry spice" often used in Indian cuisine. Turmeric contains curcumin, the polyphenol identified as its primary active component and which exhibits over 150 potentially therapeutic activities, which include antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.1

Curcumin is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, which is one reason why it holds promise as a neuroprotective agent in a wide range of neurological disorders. Researchers have investigated curcumin for its potential role in improving Parkinson's disease .

Preliminary results indicate that it may hold even more promise than the drugs currently used for this disorder, many of which (ironically) have serious neurotoxic side effects, including dyskinesia – a movement disorder identical to the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Natural Curcumin Extract Outshines Parkinson's Drugs

Parkinson's is a neurodegenerative disease caused by a steady depletion of dopamine-producing nerve cells, particularly in the area of your brain referred to as the substantia nigra. Most of the current drug treatments for Parkinson's disease, known as dopamine agonists, focus on replenishing dopamine.

Although such treatments provide symptomatic relief during early Parkinson's disease, they are ineffective in the long term where they may actually increase symptoms such as tremor, postural instability and cognitive deficits that are common with this disease. They are also associated with motor complications and a laundry list of other strange and disturbing side effects, including:
Euphoria Nausea
Hallucinations Insomnia
Causing or worsening psychosis Unusual tiredness or weakness
Orthostatic hypotension (a dizzy spell caused by a sudden drop in blood pressure) Dizziness, drowsiness, lightheadedness, or fainting
Increased orgasmic intensity Twitching, twisting, or other unusual body movements
Weight loss Pathological addiction (gambling, shopping, internet pornography, hypersexuality)



As researchers noted in the journal Current Pharmaceutical Design:2

"Most of the current pharmacotherapeutic approaches in PD [Parkinson's disease] are aimed at replenishing the striatal dopamine. Although these drugs provide symptomatic relief during early PD, many patients develop motor complications with long-term treatment. Further, PD medications do not effectively tackle tremor, postural instability and cognitive deficits.

Most importantly, most of these drugs do not exhibit neuroprotective effects in patients. Consequently, novel therapies involving natural antioxidants and plant products/molecules with neuroprotective properties are being exploited for adjunctive therapy."

Unlike Parkinson's drugs, curcumin is neuroprotective and several studies strongly support its use for the treatment of Parkinson's. For example:

Curcumin showed neuroprotective properties in an animal model of Parkinson's disease; the beneficial effect was thought to be related, in part, to its antioxidant capabilities and its ability to penetrate the brain.3
Curcumin alleviated the effects of glutathione depletion, which causes oxidative stress, mitochondria dysfunction and cell death – and is a feature of early Parkinson's disease.4
The c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling pathway is involved in dopaminergic neuronal degeneration, which is in turn associated with Parkinson's. Curcumin prevents dopaminergic neuronal death through inhibition of the JNK pathway, and thereby offers a neuroprotective effect that may be beneficial for Parkinson's.5
Slow-wriggling alpha-synuclein proteins can cause clumping, which is the first step for diseases such as Parkinson's. Curcumin helps prevent the proteins from clumping.6

Curcumin Is a Powerful Ally for Your Brain Health

For years now turmeric, and its active ingredient curcumin, have shown powerful benefits to your brain health. One of the ways that it works, similar to vitamin D, is modulating large numbers of your genes; in fact, curcumin has been shown to influence more than 700 genes.

The potential healing power of this spice, which is an important part of Eastern cultural traditions including traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, perhaps first came about when it was noticed that the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease among older adults in India is more than four times lower than the rate in the United States.

Why such a significant difference?

Some researchers believe the answer for this drastic disparity in Alzheimer's disease prevalence is a direct result of curcumin. Research has shown that curcumin may help inhibit the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, as well as break up existing plaques. People with Alzheimer's tend to have higher levels of inflammation in their brains, and curcumin is perhaps most known for its potent anti-inflammatory properties. The compound can inhibit both the activity and the inflammatory metabolic byproducts of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) and 5-lipooxygenase (5-LOX) enzymes, as well as other enzymes and hormones that modulate inflammation.

And that's not all. The growing interest in curcumin over the past 50 years is understandable when you consider the many health benefits researchers have found when studying this spice. According to an ever-expanding clinical body of studies, curcumin may help:
Support healthy cholesterol levels Prevent low-density lipoprotein oxidation Inhibit platelet aggregation
Suppress thrombosis and myocardial infarction Suppress symptoms associated with type 2 diabetes Suppress symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis
Suppress symptoms of multiple sclerosis Suppress symptoms of Alzheimer's disease Inhibit HIV replication
Suppress tumor formation Enhance wound healing Protect against liver damage
Increase bile secretion Protect against cataracts Protect against pulmonary toxicity and fibrosis

Two More Important Tools for Parkinson's: Vitamin D and Omega-3

There is a correlation between insufficient levels of vitamin D and the development of early Parkinson's disease, and research has suggested that long-term deficiency may play a role in the pathogenesis of the disease. There are three major points you want to remember about vitamin D:

Your best source for this vitamin is exposure to the sun, without sunblock on your skin, until your skin turns the lightest shade of pink. While this isn't always possible due to the change of the seasons and your geographic location (and your skin color), this is the ideal to aim for. A safe tanning bed is the next best option, followed by oral vitamin D3 supplementation.
If you do supplement with vitamin D, you'll only want to supplement with natural vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Do NOT use the synthetic and highly inferior vitamin D2, which is the one most doctors will give you in a prescription most of the time unless you ask specifically for D3.
Get your vitamin D blood levels checked! The only way to determine the correct dose is to have your blood tested since there are so many variables that influence your vitamin D status. I recommend using Lab Corp in the U.S. Getting the correct test is the first step in this process, as there are TWO vitamin D tests currently being offered: 1,25(OH)D and 25(OH)D.

From my perspective, the preferred test your doctor needs to order is 25(OH)D, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is the better marker of overall D status. This is the marker that is most strongly associated with overall health. You'll want to optimize your levels according to the chart below. If you currently have Parkinson's disease you will want to keep your vitamin D level in the higher 70-100 ng/ml range to help fight the disease.

vitamin d levels

Animal-based omega-3 fats are also a powerful defense against Parkinson's, as they contain two fatty acids crucial to human health, DHA and EPA. Most of the neurological benefits of omega-3 oils are derived from the DHA component rather than the EPA component.

In fact, DHA is one of the major building blocks of your brain. About half of your brain and eyes are made up of fat, much of which is DHA -- making it an essential nutrient for optimal brain and eye function. Your brain activity actually depends greatly upon the functions provided by its outer, fatty waxy membrane to act as an electrical nerve-conduction cable. In your brain alone, DHA may help to ward off Parkinson's by:

Reducing brain inflammation
Stimulating neuron growth, and development and repair of synapses. (Your brain is a vast complex system of nerve cells sending and receiving electrical impulses across junctions called synapses. The small space between the two cells is where the action occurs. One neuron may synapse with as many as 1,000 other neurons.)
DHA protects your brain's function by supporting optimal glutamate function. Glutamate and GABA are considered your brain's 'workhorse' neurotransmitters. They work together to control your brain's overall level of excitability, which controls many body processes.

I believe krill oil is your best option for getting animal-based omega-3 fats because of the fact that the omega-3 is attached to phospholipids that dramatically increase its absorption, especially into brain tissue.

Lifestyle Changes to Help Prevent Parkinson's

Parkinson's disease is related to lifestyle factors, including the following:
Environmental toxins and pesticides Aspartame consumption
Petroleum-based hydrocarbon solvents, like paint and glue Deficiencies in vitamin D and vitamin B folate
Excess iron in your body Pasteurized milk



In addition to avoiding these toxic exposures, I recommend lifestyle adjustments including:

Exercise regularly, including high-intensity exercise like Peak Fitness. It's one of the best ways to protect against the onset of symptoms of Parkinson's disease
Get plenty of sunshine to optimize your vitamin D levels
Avoid pesticide and insecticide exposure (as well as exposure to other environmental toxins like solvents)
Eat more organic vegetables, which are high in folate, the natural form of folic acid (folate after all comes from foliage)
Make sure your body has healthy levels of iron and manganese (neither too much nor too little of either)
Consider supplementing coenzyme Q10, which may help to fight the disease. But remember, the oxidized form of coenzyme Q10 called ubiquinone or plain CoQ10 is actually found in elevated levels in neurodegenerative conditions involving enhanced oxidative stress, as it is a residual marker of lipid peroxidation (brain rancidity). This is why ubiquinol, the reduced form that is capable of donating electrons to quench brain-damaging free radicals, while at the same time providing a boost to brain mitochondrial function, is the only logical choice in Parkinson's disease and related neurodegenerative conditions.

As for getting the full benefits that curcumin has to offer, look for a turmeric extract that contains 100 percent certified organic ingredients, with at least 95 percent curcuminoids. The formula should be free of fillers, additives and excipients (a substance added to the supplement as a processing or stability aid), and the manufacturer should use safe production practices at all stages: planting, cultivation, selective harvesting, and then producing and packaging the final product.

Unfortunately, at the present time there really are no formulations available for the use against cancer. This is because relatively high doses are required and curcumin is not absorbed that well. There is much work being done to provide a bioavailable formulation in the near future.

In the event you need higher doses (such as in the case of treating cancer), use the curcumin powder and make a microemulsion of it by combining a tablespoon of the powder and mixing it into 1-2 egg yolks and a teaspoon or two of melted coconut oil. Then use a high-speed hand blender to emulsify the powder (be careful when doing so as curcumin is a very potent yellow pigment and can permanently discolor surfaces if you aren't careful).

Another strategy that can help increase absorption is to put one tablespoon of the curcumin powder into a quart of boiling water. It must be boiling when you add the powder; it will not work as well if you put it in room temperature water and heat the water and curcumin. After boiling it for 10 minutes you will have created a 12 percent solution that you can drink once it has cooled down. It will have a woody taste. The curcumin will gradually fall out of the solution, however. In about six hours it will be a 6 percent solution, so it's best to drink the water within four hours.

[BroJones]

Just took some turmeric and cayenne and garlic - good herbs! (see previous post)

Today Dr Mercola talks about unnecessary surgeries.

Doctors Perform Thousands of Unnecessary Surgeries: Are You Getting One of Them?
July 10, 2013 | 15,060 views

By Dr. Mercola

If your physician tells you that you need surgery, unless it is an emergency, I would strongly recommend to get a second opinion first.

In many cases, you may find that you don’t need surgery after all, saving not only a considerable amount of money but also avoiding the potentially deadly risks that any surgery carries.

In fact, according to a new USA Today review of government records and medical databases, tens of thousands of patients undergo unnecessary surgery each and every year!1 And according to some experts, that number may actually be in the millions. According to USA Today:

“'It's a very serious issue, (and) there really hasn't been a movement to address it,' says Lucian Leape, a former surgeon and professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Leape, a renowned patient safety expert...

He began studying unnecessary surgery after a 1974 congressional report estimated that there were 2.4 million cases a year, killing nearly 12,000 patients. Leape's take today? "Things haven't changed very much.'”

Many Doctors ‘Lack the Competence’ to Know When a Surgery Isn’t Necessary

There are multiple reasons why unnecessary surgeries take place. In some cases they’re the result of criminal acts, in which surgeons intentionally prey on patients, performing surgeries even though they know they are not medically justified.

USA Today cited the case of Michael Rosin, a dermatologist who was sentenced to 22 years in prison and fines of more than $7 million for intentionally misdiagnosing his patients with skin cancer so he could perform surgeries to remove benign lesions.

Far more often, however, are the physicians who perform unnecessary surgeries out of incompetence or a lack of training in less-invasive alternatives. Many health care providers may believe that surgery is the only answer, even when the success rates are minimal and better non-surgical treatment options exist.

Then there are those providers who perform the surgery simply because the profit will increase their income, and they can justify them as medically ‘necessary.’ USA Today reported:2

“'I think there are a very small percent of doctors who are crooked, maybe 1 or 2%,' says John Santa, a physician and former health system administrator who became director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center in 2008.

'I think there's a higher percentage who are not well trained or not competent' to determine when surgery is necessary, Santa says. 'Then you have a big group who are more businessmen than medical professionals — doctors who look at those gray cases and say, 'Well, I have enough here to justify surgery, so I'm going to do it.''”

Personally, I think USA Today is being very kind in their low-ball estimate of 1-2%. Those numbers seem quite low and from my experience I suspect it is significantly higher.

Six Common Surgeries That Are Often Unnecessary

It’s worth getting a second opinion before you have virtually any non-emergency surgery. However, if you’re scheduled for one of the following procedures, it becomes even more imperative to seek another expert’s opinion, as these surgeries carry a high risk of being done without medical necessity.3

Yes I realize there is a cost and significant hassle factor, but I strongly encourage to do your due diligence. The extra time and resources you invest in confirming the necessity of the surgery could have a major impact on your ability to enjoy the rest of your life.

1. Cardiac Angioplasty, Stents

This invasive procedure involves inflating a thin balloon in a narrowed artery to crush plaque deposits; a stent (a wire mesh tube) is often then left behind to keep the vessel open. When used during a heart attack, an angioplasty can quickly open a blocked artery to lessen the damage to your heart, and when used in this way can be lifesaving.

However, oftentimes heart disease patients receive angioplasties even though they have not had a heart attack -- a decision that goes against the latest medical guidelines. One 2011 study found that 12 percent of all angioplasty procedures (in cases that did not involve an acute heart attack) were not medically necessary.4 Separate research also revealed that angioplasty offers no benefit compared to less invasive treatment of heart disease.5

2. Cardiac Pacemakers

Pacemakers are used to correct heartbeat irregularities, but research shows that more than 22 percent of these implants may be unnecessary.6

3. Spinal Fusion Back Surgery

If you have low back pain and see different specialists you will get different tests: rheumatologists will order blood tests, neurologists will order nerve impulse tests, and surgeons will order MRIs and CT scans. But no matter what tests you get, you'll probably end up with a spinal fusion because it's one of the "more lucrative procedures in medicine," author Shannon Brownlee says – even though the best success rate for spinal fusions is only 25 percent!

According to one review, more than 17 percent of patients told they needed spinal surgery actually showed no abnormal neurological or radiographic findings that would require surgery.7

4. Hysterectomy

The surgical removal of the uterus may be recommended inappropriately in 70 percent of cases, often because of a lack of adequate diagnostic evaluation and failure to try alternative treatments before the surgery.8 Some surgeons also remove healthy ovaries during hysterectomy as a ‘precaution,’ sometimes without the patient providing their consent or being informed as to the severe adverse effects the ovariectomy may produce on their remaining quality of life.

5. Knee and Hip Replacement, and Arthroscopic Knee Surgery

Patients who were informed about joint replacements and alternative treatments had 26 percent fewer hip replacements and 38 percent fewer knee replacements than those who did not.9 Arthroscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritis is also one of the most unnecessary surgeries performed today, as it works no better than a placebo surgery.

Proof of this is a double-blind placebo-controlled multi-center (including Harvard’s Mass General Hospital) study published in one of the most well-respected medical journals on the planet, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) over 10 years ago.10

Recent research has also shown arthroscopic knee surgery works no better than placebo surgery, and when comparing treatments for knee pain, physical therapy was found to be just as effective as surgery, but at significantly reduced cost and risk.11 And yet another study showed exercise is just as effective as surgery for people with chronic pain in the front part of their knee, known as chronic patellofemoral syndrome (PFPS), which is also frequently treated unnecessarily with arthroscopic surgery.12

6. Cesarean Section

Cesarean delivery is the most commonly performed surgical procedure in the US and rates are increasing. But research shows rates vary 10-fold among hospitals, even among low-risk pregnancies,13 suggesting that practice patterns, not necessity, are driving these high surgery rates.

According to the World Health Organization, no country is justified in having a cesarean rate greater than 10 percent to 15 percent. The US rate, at nearly 32 percent, is the highest rate ever reported in the US and is higher than in most other developed countries.

Diagnostic Errors Permanently Injure or Kill Up to 160,000 Americans a Year

Unnecessary surgeries are only one problem facing the conventional medical system. Medical errors are also alarmingly common, and diagnosis errors, in particular, appear to be occurring at very high rates. Researchers recently wrote in BMJ Quality & Safety:14

“Among malpractice claims, diagnostic errors appear to be the most common, most costly and most dangerous of medical mistakes. We found roughly equal numbers of lethal and non-lethal errors in our analysis, suggesting that the public health burden of diagnostic errors could be twice that previously estimated.”

The study involved more than 350,000 malpractice claims, of which nearly 29 percent involved a missed, wrong or delayed diagnosis. Such errors may account for the permanent injury or death of up to 160,000 patients each year, the study found, with researchers noting that “it is probably a lot higher than that.”15 Case in point, when all medical errors, not just diagnosis errors, are taken into account, the rate of medical harm occurring in the US is estimated to be over 40,000 harmful and/or lethal errors each and EVERY day.16

Hospitals Profit Off of Surgical Errors and Medical Mishaps

Part of the problem is that hospitals and providers have little incentive to change, as the more surgeries performed, the more money they make. And if complications are involved, so much the better from a financial perspective.

One revealing JAMA study found that major surgical complications actually earn hospitals more money on privately insured or Medicare-covered patients.17 This isn’t exactly shocking, of course, since the more complications suffered, the longer the hospital stay and the more associated medications, tests and procedures that will be ordered. Hospitals are a business, after all, and the more “services” used by any one patient, the more money they make.

Where money is concerned, a hospital therefore has no incentive to reduce surgical errors and other medical mishaps, which may actually be a key moneymaker for them. And, as the Health Business Blog astutely reported,18 unlike most businesses, which suffer financially when mistakes occur, hospitals get to charge you even more money to treat you for avoidable complications or mistakes they make. Decreasing surgical complications may therefore have adverse financial consequences for many hospitals, the researchers concluded, and the same goes for reducing unnecessary surgery rates, as well.

It’s Your Body: Take Control of Your Health

My primary suggestion is to avoid hospitals and surgeries unless it's an absolute emergency and you need life-saving medical attention. If you're going to have an elective medical procedure, always get a second opinion—and possibly a third and fourth.

The other KEY is to be proactive and start pursuing a healthy lifestyle today so you don't become a victim of an unnecessary medical procedure. I have compiled my best tips in a customized 100-page nutrition plan to help you take control of your health. It is customized to three different levels and you can start at any level, but be sure and read from the beginning, as reviewing the basics is the best way to reinforce healthy patterns.

As much as possible, be proactive in using a healthy lifestyle to support and protect your health and, if illness does occur, use natural methods that will allow your body to heal itself without the need for unnecessary surgery, drugs or other invasive medical procedures.

[BroJones]

An important article about SLEEP and melatonin:

By Dr. Mercola

Sleep deprivation is such a pervasive condition in these days of artificial lights and non-stop entertainment, that you might not even realize you’re not getting enough sleep. It’s important to recognize that sleep is an absolutely crucial component of optimal health and disease prevention.

For example, the link between impaired sleep and cancer has been repeatedly confirmed. Tumors grow two to three times faster in laboratory animals with severe sleep dysfunctions, primarily due to disrupted melatonin production.

Melatonin inhibits the proliferation of a wide range of cancer cell types, as well as triggering cancer cell apoptosis (self-destruction). The hormone also interferes with the new blood supply tumors required for their rapid growth (angiogenesis).

Poor sleep is also associated with an increased risk of insulin resistance and weight gain—two additional factors that also play an important role in cancer development.

Less Sleep = Higher Risk of Cancer

Most recently, a study published in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention1 found that men who had trouble sleeping were twice as likely to develop prostate cancer compared to those who slept well. According to the featured article:2

"This association was even stronger in cases of advanced prostate cancer, and the risk increased relative to the severity of the sleep problems... The lead researcher, Lara Sigurdardottir, Ph.D., expects that, ‘If our results are confirmed in future studies, sleep may become a potential target for intervention to reduce the risk of prostate cancer."

Another recent study3 found that insufficient sleep may be a contributing factor in both the recurrence of breast cancer, and more aggressive forms of breast cancer among post-menopausal women. According to the study’s co-author Dr. Li Li:4

"Short sleep duration is a public health hazard leading not only to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but also cancer...

Effective intervention to increase duration of sleep and improve quality of sleep could be an under-appreciated avenue for reducing the risk of developing more aggressive breast cancers and recurrence."

Sleeping less than six hours per night has also been implicated as a risk factor for colorectal adenomas, which may develop into cancer if left untreated. In fact, those who slept less than six hours a night were found to have a 50 percent increased risk compared to those who got seven hours or more of sleep per night.5

Insulin resistance and disrupted melatonin production are two potent mechanisms through which chronic sleep problems affect your cancer risk. The fact that poor sleep can have such a dramatic impact on insulin resistance is why I keep repeating that you simply cannot be optimally healthy unless you also sleep well—even if you eat right and exercise...

Insulin Resistance Drives Both Weight Gain and Cancer

In one 2005 study6 aptly titled: "Sleep loss: a novel risk factor for insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes," the authors note that “sleep exerts marked modulatory effects on glucose metabolism.” Lack of sleep also decreases levels of the fat regulating hormone leptin while increasing the hunger hormone ghrelin. The resulting increase in hunger and appetite can easily lead to overeating and weight gain.

According to a recent study in the journal Sleep,7 later bedtimes correlate to greater weight gain even in healthy, non-obese people.

Late-night snacking further increases that risk, which shouldn’t come as a great surprise. In fact, avoiding food at least three hours prior to bedtime is one of my standard recommendations as it helps to make sure that your body is burning fat as its primary fuel which will keep you lean. As reported in Medical News Today:8

"Andrea Spaeth and team had one group of participants sleeping just from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. each night for five nights running, and compared them to a control group who were in bed from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. The investigators found that those who slept much less consumed more food, and therefore calories, compared to the normal-hours sleepers... Lead author, Andrea Spaeth... said:

'Although previous epidemiological studies have suggested an association between short sleep duration and weight gain/obesity, we were surprised to observe significant weight gain during an in-laboratory study.'"

The link between insulin resistance/weight gain and cancer may be of particular concern for women... Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and obese women are thought to be up to 60 percent more likely to develop cancer than those of normal-weight. The reason for this increased risk is because many breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, a hormone produced in your fat tissue. So the more body fat you have, the more estrogen you’re likely to produce.

How Working the Night Shift May Affect Your Health

Confirming the need for regular sleep during night-time hours, researchers have also noted a link between night shift workers and higher rates of breast, prostate, colorectal cancer, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Working the night shift also raises your risk of diabetes and obesity.

A Danish study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine,9 found that women who worked night shifts were significantly more likely to develop breast cancer compared to those who did not work nights.

After taking confounding effects into account, such as use of birth control pills, childbirth, hormone replacement therapy, age, and sunbathing, women who worked nights had an overall 40 percent higher risk of breast cancer. As reported by Time Magazine last year:10

“The effect was cumulative: women who worked at least three night shifts a week for six years had twice the risk of breast cancer as those who worked one to two night shifts a week. Most surprising, though, was the fact that women who worked night shifts and described themselves as being ‘morning’ people — that is, they preferred to wake up early, rather than stay up late at night — had a four times higher risk of breast cancer than women who worked during the day.”

Interestingly, this study was also able to discount vitamin D deficiency as a culprit, as night shift workers were found to have greater levels of sun exposure compared to those working indoors during the day. This suggests that hormone disruptions (such as the insulin, leptin, ghrelin and melatonin disruptions discussed above) play a key role in cancer development that vitamin D alone cannot counteract. So again, a healthy lifestyle simply isn’t complete without enough proper sleep.

What You Need to Know About Sleeping Pills

According to a recent report by The Sleep Council,11 nearly half of those polled responded that stress and worry keep them tossing and turning at night, and nearly seven million Americans resort to sleeping pills in order to get some rest. While it may be tempting to look for a pill to quickly help you sleep, they will not address any of the underlying causes of insomnia.

In fact, researchers have repeatedly shown that sleeping pills don’t work, but your brain is being tricked into thinking they do... In one meta-analytic study, they found that, on average, sleeping pills help people fall asleep approximately 10 minutes sooner. From a biomedical perspective, this is an insignificant improvement.

On average, sleeping pills increase total sleep time by about 15-20 minutes. But here is the catch: This study also discovered that while most sleeping pills created poor, fragmented sleep, they also created amnesia, so upon waking, the participants could not recall how poorly they’d actually slept! Worse yet, sleeping pills have also been linked to a wide variety of health hazards, including a nearly four-fold increase in the risk of death, along with a 35 percent increased risk of cancer.

Additionally, most people do not realize that over-the-counter (OTC) sleeping pills -- can have a half life of about 18 hours. So, if you take them every night, you're basically sedated much of the time. Not surprisingly, they're associated with cognitive deficits in the morning. Trust me, there are far better, safer and more effective ways to get a good night's sleep...

Tips to Help You Sleep Better

There are many variables that impact how well you sleep. I suggest you read through my full set of 33 healthy sleep guidelines for all of the details, but to start, making some adjustments to your sleeping area can go a long way to ensure uninterrupted, restful sleep.

Cover your windows with blackout shades or drapes to ensure complete darkness. Even the tiniest bit of light in the room can disrupt your pineal gland's production of melatonin and the melatonin precursor serotonin, thereby disrupting your sleep cycle.

So close your bedroom door, get rid of night-lights, and refrain from turning on any light during the night, even when getting up to go to the bathroom. If you have to use a light, install so-called "low blue" light bulbs in your bedroom and bathroom. These emit light that will not suppress melatonin production.
Keep the temperature in your bedroom at or below 70 degrees F (21 degrees Celsius). Many people keep their homes and particularly their upstairs bedrooms too warm. Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is quite cool, between 60 to 68 degrees F (15.5 to 20°C). Keeping your room cooler or hotter can lead to restless sleep.
Check your bedroom for electro-magnetic fields (EMFs). These can also disrupt your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. To do this, you need a gauss meter. You can find various models online, starting around $50 to $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house.
Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your head. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least three feet.
Reduce use of light-emitting technology, such as your TV, iPad, and computer, before going to bed. These emit the type of light that will suppress melatonin production, which in turn will hamper your ability to fall asleep, as well as increase your cancer risk (melatonin helps to suppress harmful free radicals in your body and slows the production of estrogen, which can contribute to cancer). Ideally, you'll want to turn all such light-emitting gadgets off at least one hour prior to bedtime.

As previously discussed by Dr. Rubin Naiman, a leader in integrative medicine approaches to sleep and dreams, sleep is the outcome of an interaction between two variables, namely sleepiness and what he refers to as "noise." This is any kind of stimulation that inhibits or disrupts sleep. In order to get a good night's sleep, you want your sleepiness level to be high, and the “noise” level to be low. Under normal conditions, your sleepiness should gradually increase throughout the day and evening, peaking just before you go to bed at night. However, if noise is conceptually greater than your level of sleepiness, you will not be able to fall asleep.


Improving Your Sleep Hygiene Pays Off in Health Dividends

As you can see, you can have the healthiest diet on the planet, doing vegetable juicing and using fermented veggies, be as fit as an Olympic decathlete, be emotionally balanced, but if you aren’t sleeping well it is just a matter of time before it will adversely, and potentially seriously, affect your health. Sure, we all lose sleep here and there, and your body can adjust for temporary shortcomings, but if you develop a chronic pattern of sleeping less than five or six hours a night, then you're increasing your risk of a number of health conditions, including insulin resistance and diabetes, weight gain, heart disease, and cancer.

To make your bedroom into a suitable sleep sanctuary, begin by making sure it’s pitch-black, cool, and quiet. Remember, even the tiniest bit of light can disrupt your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin. For this reason, I highly recommend adding room-darkening blinds or drapes to your bedroom, or if this is not possible wear an eye mask to block out any stray light.

If you're even slightly sleep deprived I encourage you to implement some of these tips tonight, as high-quality sleep is one of the most important factors in your health and quality of life.

[BroJones]

By Dr. Mercola

Millions of US children are taking powerful mind-altering drugs, often before they’re even old enough to attend school.

Oftentimes the side effects are far worse than the conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for which they’re prescribed, and rival illegal street drugs in terms of their dangerous risks to health.

In children, the long-term effects are often largely unknown, while in the short term, we’ve seen shocking increases in violent and aggressive acts committed by teens taking one or more psychotropic drugs.

With the problem getting increasingly worse instead of better, now is a perfect time to view Gary Null’s excellent documentary, The Drugging of Our Children.

The number of prescriptions for psychotropic drugs for children more than doubled between 1995 and 2000; the documentary details the devastating consequences of this excessive medicating of our children, with a focus on children who have been diagnosed with ADHD.

Most Children Diagnosed with ADHD Are Given Drugs Even Though Misdiagnosis Is Common

As the documentary points out, many of you reading this probably don’t remember any kids in your class at school who were taking mind-altering drugs. And that’s likely because the vast majority were not.

In contrast, one in 10 US children is now claimed to have ADHD, which is a 22 percent increase since 2003.1 About two-thirds of the children diagnosed with ADHD are on some form of prescription medication, which is unfortunate not only because there are far better (and safer) treatment options but also because many are misdiagnosed.

ADHD seems to have become more or less the catchall designation for children who do not “behave well” -- and one study determined that about 20 percent of children have likely been misdiagnosed.2 That’s nearly 1 million children in the US alone.

The study found that many of the youngest children in any given grade level are perceived as exhibiting “symptoms” of ADHD, such as fidgeting and an inability to concentrate, simply because they’re younger and being compared to their older, more mature classmates.

The documentary, too, points out that an ADHD diagnosis is often made, in part, on the highly subjective observations of teachers or guardians, based on signs nearly every child will display at some point (fidgeting, easily distracted, difficulty waiting his or her turn, and so on), and with little regard for other factors that could be aggravating a child’s behavior, such as diet or home environment.

The outcome is, sadly, typically the same: another child placed on powerful drugs, of which parents are often completely unaware of the extreme side effects they carry.

We’re Talking Hard-Core ‘Class 2’ Narcotics

Drugs prescribed for ADHD are not "mild" by any means. These are hard-core, "class 2" narcotics, regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency as a controlled substance because they can lead to dependence. The majority of kids diagnosed with ADHD will be prescribed these potentially dangerous drugs, the most common being Ritalin.

By definition, Ritalin stimulates your central nervous system and may certainly interfere with the delicate and complex workings of your brain and personality. According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),3 side effects include:

Sudden death in people who have heart problems or heart defects Stroke and heart attack Increased blood pressure
New or worse behavior and thought problems New or worse bipolar illness New or worse aggressive behavior or hostility
New psychotic symptoms (such as hearing voices, believing things that are not true, are suspicious) New manic symptoms Increased heart rate
Slowing of growth (height and weight) in children Seizures Eyesight changes or blurred vision


There are reports of children committing suicide while taking the drug, and the long-term effects are unknown. Researchers have also revealed that Ritalin appears to delay puberty, an effect that was previously unknown, raising questions about what other effects may have yet to be uncovered. Another common ADHD drug is Adderall, which contains amphetamine (aka "speed") and dextroamphetamine, and is used to reduce impulsiveness and hyperactivity in patients with ADHD. Like Ritalin, Adderall can cause potentially life-threatening side effects. Among them:

Aggressive behavior or hostility Bipolar illness Worse behavior or thought problems
Psychotic symptoms (hearing voices, believing things that are not true) or manic symptoms Sudden death in patients who have heart problems or heart defects Stroke or heart attack
Increased blood pressure and heart rate Seizures and eyesight changes Slowing of growth in children
Kids Turned Into ‘Lifetime Paying Patients’

As Drugging of Our Children reveals, there is big money to be made in prescribing medications to kids – especially when those medications are intended to be taken for life, as many psychotropic drugs are. What happens to kids once they become medicated at a very young age, during some of his or her key formative years?

Do these children grow up never knowing who they really are? What passions they may have had if not under the drug's influence? And will they be able to quit when they are older, or will they be turned into life-long addicts? The answers to these questions are unknown.

Further, a prescription for one medication has a tendency to snowball into more prescriptions. If a child isn’t responding to a medication, for instance, or is displaying side effects from the drug, additional mind-altering drugs like antidepressants (which are linked to suicide in kids and teens), sleeping pills or anxiety medications may be prescribed.

The Diagnosis of Mental Illness in Kids Is Often Subjective

Remember, what makes this all the more appalling is that the diagnosis of mental illness in children is far from an exact science. Modern psychiatry has expanded its reach to the point that even the most normal of emotions and mental states now fall under one labeled "disorder" or another. They have been able to cleverly redefine mental illness with the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This book is created by members of the American Psychiatric Association.

You would think that diseases are put in this book after evaluating carefully executed scientific trials, but nothing could be further from the truth. Additions and changes to this manual are determined by votes by its members. This categorization is NOT based on science at all!

It is well documented that psychiatric drugs in general and atypical antipsychotics specifically, are misused across the board. Children as young as 18 months are now receiving antipsychotic drugs, despite the fact that the diseases they're designed to treat rarely develop before adolescence. So why are toddlers receiving these potent drugs? Sadly, one of the key reasons these drugs are used is because of their sedative effect. They're typically prescribed to control "disruptive" behavior – not to treat severe mental illness.

It’s also come to light recently that the Harvard psychiatrists who invented the pediatric bipolar diagnosis were disciplined for conflicts of interest4 after it was revealed they'd all received millions of dollars in undeclared drug company monies.

Parents Jailed for Not Wanting Their Kids on Drugs?

Perhaps one of the most disturbing trends covered in the documentary are parents being treated like criminals, and in some cases sent to prison, for making a conscious decision to keep their kids off drugs.

While certain US states have already enacted legislation to protect against this very issue, and prevent schools and child protection officials from forcing parents to give their children drugs, it still happens more often than you might think. More and more, we're seeing courts siding with misguided government officials in closed family-court proceedings. Parents are increasingly cut out of the decision-making process about what's in their child's best interest with regard to their health.

And it’s not only an issue in the US, either. Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) issued controversial draft guidelines last year that imply a child could be taken into protective custody if a parent refuses to give their child ADHD drugs. In the case of Australia's NHMRC, the committee's guidelines were already mired with controversy, as its original chairman, Daryl Effron, reportedly resigned because he was affiliated with drug companies that produce ADHD drugs!

Seek Effective Alternatives Before Resorting to Drugs

As a parent, you must be your child’s advocate and fight against allowing the profit of powerful corporations to come before your children's health. If your child is suffering from an emotional or mental challenge, please seek help, but do so from someone who does not regard psychotropic drugs as a first line of defense. Please understand that behavioral problems in children – including what might appear to be serious mental disorders – are very frequently related to improper diet, emotional upset and exposure to toxins.

Increasingly, scientific evidence shows that nourishing your gut flora with the beneficial bacteria found in traditionally fermented foods (or a probiotic supplement) is extremely important for proper brain function, and that includes psychological well-being and mood control. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride has successfully demonstrated the power and effectiveness of this theory. In her Cambridge, England clinic, she successfully treats children and adults with a wide range of conditions, including autism, ADD/ADHD, neurological disorders, psychiatric disorders, immune disorders, and digestive problems using the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) Nutritional Program, which she developed.

Her GAPS theory – which is fully explained in her excellent book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome – is an elegant description of how such conditions can develop as a direct result of gastrointestinal toxicity. Another helpful tool is my three-part interview with renowned children's health expert, the late Dr. Lendon Smith, on Non-Drug Treatment of ADD/ADHD. Here are a few additional guidelines to help you address underlying toxins in your child, without, or at least BEFORE, you agree to any kind of drug therapy:

Severely limit or eliminate fructose from your child's diet as sugar/fructose has been linked to mental health problems such as depression and schizophrenia.
Avoid giving your child ANY processed foods, especially those containing artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives. This includes lunchmeats and hot dogs, which are common food staples in many households.
Replace soft drinks, fruit juices, and pasteurized milk with pure water. This is HUGE since high fructose corn syrup is a primary source of calories in children.
Make sure your child is getting large regular doses of healthy bacteria, either with high-quality fermented organic foods and/or high-quality probiotic supplements.
Give your child plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats like krill oil. Also, make sure to balance your child's intake of omega-3 and omega-6 fats, by simultaneously limiting their intake of vegetable oils.
Include as many whole organic foods as possible in your child's diet, both to reduce chemical exposure and increase nutrient content of each meal. See my nutrition plan for a comprehensive guide to healthful eating.
Also reduce or eliminate grains from your child's diet, especially wheat. Beyond the fact that even healthy organic whole grains can cause problems as they too break down into sugars, gluten-containing grains have pharmacologically active peptides that can contribute to cognitive and behavioral issues in susceptible children.
Additionally, whole and even sprouted wheat contains physiologically significant amounts of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), which can have adverse effects on mental health due to its neurotoxic actions. Wheat can also interfere with the production of serotonin, the largest concentration of which can, again, be found in your intestines, not your brain. Try eliminating all gluten-containing grains first for 1-2 weeks and see if you don't notice a significant improvement in your child's behavior.

Avoid artificial sweeteners and colors of all kinds.
Make sure your child gets plenty of exercise and outdoor playtime, remembering that midday sunlight provides the UVB wavelengths necessary to produce vitamin D3.
Get them out into the sun to help maintain optimal vitamin D levels. Scientists are now beginning to realize vitamin D is involved in maintaining the health of your brain, as they've recently discovered vitamin D receptors in the brain, spinal cord, and central nervous system. There's even evidence indicating vitamin D improves your brain's detoxification process. For children and pregnant women, getting enough vitamin D is especially crucial, as it may play a major role in protecting infants from autism.
If natural sun exposure is not feasible, for whatever reason, you can use either a safe tanning bed or an oral vitamin D3 supplement.

Give your child a way to address his or her emotion health. Even children can benefit from the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which you or an EFT practitioner can teach them to use.
Be sure you are also providing positive praise to your child. Dr. Smith believed parents should be able to say nice things to their child twice as often as they give commands or ask questions. If you are shouting and scolding more than you are complimenting and rewarding your child, it could be contributing to psychiatric problems.
Prevent exposure to toxic metals and chemicals by replacing personal care products, detergents and household cleaners with all natural varieties. Metals like aluminum, cadmium, lead and mercury are commonly found in thousands of different food products, household products, personal products and untold numbers of industrial products and chemicals. Also be aware of exposure to metals from vaccinations and dental fillings. The presence of toxic metals in your child's body is highly significant, as they are capable of causing serious health problems by interfering with normal biological functioning. The health effects range from minor physical ailments to chronic diseases, and altered mood and behavior.

[farfromhome]

Great thread, thanks.

[farfromhome]

Not Dr Mercola, but interesting research and along the same path IMO:

CDC Admits 98 Million Americans Received Polio Vaccine Contaminated With Cancer Virus
OCTOBER 21, 2013 BY ADMIN2
8


The CDC has quickly removed a page from their website, which is now cached, ( but now has been removed) admitting that more than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine within an 8-year span when a proportion of the vaccine was contaminated with a cancer causing polyomavirus called SV40. It has been estimated that 10-30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of the vaccine.






V40 is an abbreviation for Simian vacuolating virus 40 or Simian virus 40, a polyomavirus that is found in both monkeys and humans. Like other polyomaviruses, SV40 is a DNA virus that has been found to cause tumors and cancer.

SV40 is believed to suppress the transcriptional properties of the tumor-suppressing genes in humans through the SV40 Large T-antigen and SV40 Small T-antigen. Mutated genes may contribute to uncontrolled cellular proliferation, leading to cancer.

Michele Carbone, Assistant Professor of Pathology at Loyola University in Chicago, has recently isolated fragments of the SV-40 virus in human bone cancers and in a lethal form of lung cancer called mesothelioma. He found SV-40 in 33% of the osteosarcoma bone cancers studied, in 40% of other bone cancers, and in 60% of the mesotheliomas lung cancers, writes Geraldo Fuentes.

Dr. Michele Carbone openly acknowledged HIV/AIDS was spread by the hepatitis B vaccine produced by Merck & Co. during the early 1970s. It was the first time since the initial transmissions took place in 1972-74, that a leading expert in the field of vaccine manufacturing and testing has openly admitted the Merck & Co. liability for AIDS.






The matter-of-fact disclosure came during discussions of polio vaccines contaminated with SV40 virus which caused cancer in nearly every species infected by injection. Many authorities now admit much, possibly most, of the world’s cancers came from the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines, and hepatitis B vaccines, produced in monkeys and chimps.

It is said mesothelioma is a result of asbestos exposure, but research reveals that 50% of the current mesotheliomas being treated no longer occurs due to asbestos but rather the SV-40 virus contained in the polio vaccination. In addition, according to researchers from the Institute of Histology and General Embryology of the University of Ferrara, SV-40 has turned up in a variety other tumors. By the end of 1996, dozens of scientists reported finding SV40 in a variety of bone cancers and a wide range of brain cancers, which had risen 30 percent over the previous 20 years.

The SV-40 virus is now being detected in tumors removed from people never inoculated with the contaminated vaccine, leading some to conclude that those infected by the vaccine might be spreading SV40.

Soon after its discovery, SV40 was identified in the oral form of the polio vaccine produced between 1955 and 1961 produced by American Home Products (dba Lederle).

Both the oral, live virus and injectable inactive virus were affected. It was found later that the technique used to inactivate the polio virus in the injectable vaccine, by means of formaldehyde, did not reliably kill SV40.

Just two years ago, the U.S. government finally added formaldehyde to a list of known carcinogens and and admitted that the chemical styrene might cause cancer. Yet, the substance is still found in almost every vaccine.

According to the Australian National Research Council, fewer than 20% but perhaps more than 10% of the general population may be susceptible to formaldehyde and may react acutely at any exposure level. More hazardous than most chemicals in 5 out of 12 ranking systems, on at least 8 federal regulatory lists, it is ranked as one of the most hazardous compounds (worst 10%) to ecosystems and human health (Environmental Defense Fund).

In the body, formaldehyde can cause proteins to irreversibly bind to DNA. Laboratory animals exposed to doses of inhaled formaldehyde over their lifetimes have developed more cancers of the nose and throat than are usual.

Facts Listed on The CDC Website about SV40

-SV40 is a virus found in some species of monkey.

-SV40 was discovered in 1960. Soon afterward, the virus was found in polio vaccine.

-SV40 virus has been found in certain types of cancer in humans.


Additional Facts

-In the 1950s, rhesus monkey kidney cells, which contain SV40 if the animal is infected, were used in preparing polio vaccines.

-Not all doses of IPV were contaminated. It has been estimated that 10-30 million people actually received a vaccine that contained SV40.

-Some evidence suggests that receipt of SV40-contaminated polio vaccine may increase risk of cancer.


A Greater Perspective on Aerial Spraying and SV40

The Defense Sciences Office of the Pathogen Countermeasures Program, in September 23, 1998 funded the University of Michigan’s principal investigator, Dr. James Baker, Jr. Dr. Baker, Director of Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences under several DARPA grants. Dr. Baker developed and focused on preventing pathogens from entering the human body, which is a major goal in the development of counter measures to Biological Warfare. This research project sought to develop a composite material that will serve as a pathogen avoidance barrier and post-exposure therapeutic agent to be applied in a topical manner to the skin and mucous membranes. The composite is modeled after the immune system in that it involves redundant, non-specific and specific forms of pathogen defense and inactivation. This composite material is now utilized in many nasal vaccines and vector control through the use of hydro-gel, nanosilicon gels and actuator materials in vaccines.

Through Dr. Baker’s research at the University of Michigan; he developed dendritic polymers and their application to medical and biological science. He co-developed a new vector system for gene transfer using synthetic polymers. These studies have produced striking results and have the potential to change the basis of gene transfer therapy. Dendrimers are nanometer-sized water soluble polymers that can conjugate to peptides or arbohydrates to act as decoy molecules to inhibit the binding of toxins and viruses to cells. They can act also as complex and stabilize genetic material for prolonged periods of time, as in a “time released or delayed gene transfer”. Through Dr. Baker’s ground breaking research many pharmaceutical and biological pesticide manufacturers can use these principles in DNA vaccines specific applications that incorporate the Simian Monkey Virus SV40.

WEST NILE VIRUS SPRAYING

In 2006 Michael Greenwood wrote an article for the Yale School of Public Health entitled, “Aerial Spraying Effectively Reduces Incidence of West Nile Virus (WNV) in Humans.” The article stated that the incidence of human West Nile virus cases can be significantly reduced through large scale aerial spraying that targets adult mosquitoes, according to research by the Yale School of Public Health and the California Department of Public Health.

Under the mandate for aerial spraying for specific vectors that pose a threat to human health, aerial vaccines known as DNA Vaccine Enhancements and Recombinant Vaccine against WNV may be tested or used to “protect” the people from vector infection exposures. DNA vaccine enhancements specifically use Epstein-Barr viral capside’s with multi human complement class II activators to neutralize antibodies. The recombinant vaccines against WNV use Rabbit Beta-globulin or the poly (A) signal of the SV40 virus. In early studies of DNA vaccines it was found that the negative result studies would go into the category of future developmental research projects in gene therapy. During the studies of poly (A) signaling of the SV40 for WNV vaccines, it was observed that WNV will lie dormant in individuals who were exposed to chicken pox, thus upon exposure to WNV aerial vaccines the potential for the release of chicken pox virus would cause a greater risk to having adult onset Shingles.

CALIFORNIA AERIAL SPRAYING for WNV and SV40

In February 2009 to present date, aerial spraying for the WNV occurred in major cities within the State of California. During spraying of Anaheim, CA a Caucasian female (age 50) was exposed to heavy spraying, while doing her daily exercise of walking several miles. Heavy helicopter activity occurred for several days in this area. After spraying, she experienced light headedness, nausea, muscle aches and increased low back pain. She was evaluated for toxicological mechanisms that were associated with pesticide exposure due to aerial spraying utilizing advanced biological monitoring testing. The test results which included protein band testing utilizing Protein Coupled Response (PCR) methods were positive for KD-45. KD-45 is the protein band for SV-40 Simian Green Monkey virus. Additional tests were performed for Epstein-Barr virus capside and Cytomeglia virus which are used in bio-engineering for gene delivery systems through viral protein envelope and adenoviral protein envelope technology. The individual was positive for both; indicating a highly probable exposure to a DNA vaccination delivery system through nasal inhalation.

The question of the century is how many other viruses and toxins are within current day vaccines that we’ll only find out about in a few decades?

Dave Mihalovic is a Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in vaccine research, cancer prevention and a natural approach to treatment.

[BroJones]

Study shows that exercise/fitness DE-creases incidence of Alzheimer's -

Individuals with the highest levels of cardiorespiratory fitness during middle age were significantly less likely to develop dementia in their senior years, a long-term prospective study suggested.

Among nearly 20,000 participants in the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study, those in the highest quintile of cardiorespiratory fitness at roughly age 50 were 36% less likely than those in the lowest quintile (adjusted hazard ratio 0.64, 95% CI 0.54 to 0.77) to be diagnosed with dementia after age 65, according to Laura F. DeFina, MD, of the Cooper Institute in Dallas, and colleagues.

The risk of all-cause dementia did not appear to be affected by whether participants had a stroke during follow-up, nor did educational attainment appear to make a difference, the researchers reported online in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Although the observational study could not prove that cardiorespiratory fitness actually prevents onset of dementia later on, DeFina and colleagues indicated that such a causal connection is plausible.

For example, greater fitness would reduce the incidence of other known risk factors for dementia such as diabetes and hypertension, the researchers noted. Fitness has also been linked to greater brain volume, and some evidence points to connections between physical activity and neural plasticity, neurotrophic factors, and beta-amyloid protein deposits.

"Future studies should address the dose-response relationship with physical activity needed to modify fitness levels to inform public health recommendations for dementia prevention," DeFina and colleagues wrote.

"In addition, studies on the effect of midlife physical activity and fitness levels on brain structure and function may further elucidate the mechanism(s) of the protective effect of fitness levels."

In an accompanying editorial, a prominent researcher in dementia agreed that a causal relationship was credible enough to warrant action by clinicians.

"Physical activity seems to be a reasonable prescription for dementia prevention," wrote Mary Sano, PhD, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, given the weight of evidence to which the current study adds.

Another dementia expert, David Geldmacher, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told MedPage Today that the potential benefit for dementia risk is worth bringing up with patients, even though recommendations of physical activity and fitness are familiar to everybody.

Compared with the benefit of exercise for cardiovascular health, "many physicians are not as clear that [the benefit] also translates to dementia risk," Geldmacher said.

"Many patients will [say] that, 'Well, it's not so bad if I die of a heart attack,' but they fear Alzheimer's disease very much. So knowing that fitness can reduce the Alzheimer risk may give them further motivation to follow through with an exercise and fitness plan."

The current study drew on data collected as part of the long-running Cooper Center study, begun more than 40 years ago under the leadership of Kenneth Cooper, MD, the famous advocate of aerobic exercise. It began with individuals who came to Cooper's wellness-oriented clinic, with later participation by people referred to it as part of employer-based programs.

DeFina and colleagues analyzed data on 19,458 participants, after excluding about 9,000 for whom later Medicare records were not available or with incomplete baseline data, those with a history of heart attack or stroke at baseline, those entering Medicare because of disability or a need for renal dialysis, and those with dementia or stroke prior to 2000 or at age 65 or younger (67 or younger for dementia).

All participants had a treadmill test when entering the study. Their mean age was 50. Fitness was calculated from time on the treadmill and the final speed and grade.

Participants' Medicare records were examined for diagnoses of dementia at ages 70, 75, 80, and 85. DeFina and colleagues calculated the risk for such a diagnosis according to quintiles of cardiorespiratory fitness, after adjusting for sex, age at baseline exam, year of exam, and other baseline factors including fasting glucose, cholesterol, body mass index, blood pressure, and smoking status.

Mean treadmill times for the five quintiles ranged from 8.1 maximal metabolic equivalents in the lowest to 13.3 in the highest.

Kaplan-Meier curves calculated in the study showed that, by age 92, about 52% of surviving participants in the two highest quintiles remained dementia-free, compared with 40% of those in the lowest quintile (P<0.001).

The risk did not appear to differ between participants with a stroke recorded prior to dementia diagnosis versus those without stroke (0.74 in both groups for the highest quintile relative to the lowest). This finding suggests "that the association between higher fitness level and risk for dementia is independent of intervening cerebrovascular disease," DeFina and colleagues wrote.

There was also no statistically significant relationship between dementia risk and educational level. But the authors cautioned that education data was available for only about 20% of the sample and, in those participants, the average attainment was relatively high (mean 15.7 years, SD 2.6).

[BroJones]

Thinking a loved one might have Alzheimer's? Here's a test based on smelling peanut butter...

Two Exciting Alzheimer’s Advances: A Novel Early Detection Test Using Peanut Butter, and a Study Evaluating Coconut Oil
November 07, 2013 | 286,626 views
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By Dr. Mercola

At present, some 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association's 2011 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures.1

By 2050, this is expected to jump to 16 million, and in the next 20 years it is projected that Alzheimer's will affect one in four Americans, rivaling the current prevalence of obesity and diabetes.

Since treatments are few and rarely effective, early diagnosis and prevention become all the more important.

Interestingly, simple tools like a tablespoon of peanut butter and a ruler could potentially be used to confirm a diagnosis of the disease in its early stages. As reported by Medical News Today:2

“Jennifer Stamps, a graduate student in the University of Florida (UF) McKnight Brain Institute Center for Smell and Taste, and her colleagues reported the findings of a small pilot study in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences.3

Stamps came up with the idea of using peanut butter to test for smell sensitivity while she was working with Dr. Kenneth Heilman, one of the world's best known behavioral neurologists, from the UF College of Medicine's department of neurology.

...The ability to smell is associated with the first cranial nerve and is often one of the first things to be affected in cognitive decline... She thought of peanut butter because, she said, it is a 'pure odorant' that is only detected by the olfactory nerve and is easy to access.”

The pilot study tested the ability to smell of 24 patients diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. To perform the test, the patient was asked to close their eyes and mouth, and hold one nostril closed while breathing normally through the other.

Using a ruler, the clinician measured the distance between the open nostril and the peanut butter, marking the distance at which the patient was able to detect the distinct odor. After a 90 second delay, the procedure was repeated with the other nostril.

They discovered that those diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s (which was done through other clinical testing) experienced a significant difference in their ability to detect the odor between the two nostrils. According to the featured report:

“[T]he left nostril was impaired and did not detect the smell until it was an average of 10 cm closer to the nose than the right nostril had made the detection in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

This was not the case in patients with other kinds of dementia; instead, these patients had either no differences in odor detection between nostrils or the right nostril was worse at detecting odor than the left one.”

Of course, it’s too early to tell whether this test might be reliable enough to become widely used. More research needs to be done. But according to Stamps, the test can be used to confirm a diagnosis. The team is planning to study patients with mild cognitive impairment next, to assess whether it might help predict a future diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.

Benefits of Coconut Oil Make Headlines Again

In related news, Florida researchers are also looking into whether coconut oil might be of benefit against Alzheimer’s. Three years ago, I published Dr. Mary Newport’s theory that ketone bodies, an alternative fuel for your brain that your body makes when digesting coconut oil, might offer profound benefits in the fight against Alzheimer's disease.

At the time I said that, should her theory turn out to be accurate, it could be one of the greatest natural health discoveries in a long time. Now, Dr. Newport's research is being used to launch one of the first clinical trials of its kind to test her theory. The research is being done at the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute.

Sixty-five patients diagnosed with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s have been enrolled to evaluate the effects of coconut oil on the disease, compared to a placebo. Dr. Newport hopes to have the results within a year.

This issue strikes close to home for Dr. Newport, whose husband has been battling the disease for years. As reported by CTV News:4

“While there is currently no clinical data showing the benefits of coconut oil on the prevention and treatment of dementia, Newport -- whose husband Steve was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 51 -- said she began to see improvements after starting him on four teaspoons of coconut oil per day.

‘Before the coconut oil, he could not tie his shoes. His weird slow gait… That improved. He walked normally and he was able to start running again.

He was able to start reading again, his conversation improved dramatically and then over several months we saw improvements in his memory,’ Newport said. Prior to starting him on coconut oil, Newport said none of the existing medications were working.”

Coconut Oil Appears to Be an Ideal Brain Food

There are only two types of fuel your body can convert into energy: carbs/sugar, or fat. Again, ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy. And a primary source of ketone bodies are the medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) found in coconut oil. In fact, coconut oil contains about 66 percent MCTs.

Medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) are fats that are not processed by your body in the same manner as long-chain triglycerides. Normally, a fat taken into your body must be mixed with bile released from your gallbladder before it can be broken down in your digestive system.

But medium-chain triglycerides go directly to your liver, which naturally converts the oil into ketones, bypassing the bile entirely. Your liver then immediately releases the ketones into your bloodstream where they are transported to your brain to be readily used as fuel.

While your brain is quite happy running on glucose, there’s evidence suggesting that ketone bodies may actually help restore and renew neurons and nerve function in your brain, even after damage has set in. Interestingly, the mechanism of this MCT-ketone metabolism appears to be that your body treats MCTs as a carbohydrate and not a fat. This allows the ketone energy to hit your bloodstream without the normal insulin spike associated with carbohydrates entering your bloodstream. So in effect, coconut oil is a fat that acts like a carbohydrate when it comes to brain fuel.

How Much Coconut Oil Might You Need?

Therapeutic levels of MCTs have been studied at 20 grams per day. According to Dr. Newport's calculations,5 just over two tablespoons of coconut oil (about 35 ml or seven level teaspoons) would supply you with the equivalent of 20 grams of MCT, which is indicated as either a preventative measure against degenerative neurological diseases, or as a treatment for an already established case.

While more research certainly needs to be done in this area as well, I see no reason not to incorporate coconut oil in your diet, or the diet of a loved one who is exhibiting symptoms of brain degeneration. Coconut oil has so many profound health benefits; it’s not going to do any harm.

It’s worth noting that people tolerate coconut oil differently, and you may have to start slowly and build up to these therapeutic levels. My recommendation is to start with one teaspoon, taken with food in the mornings. Gradually add more coconut oil every few days until you are able to tolerate about four tablespoons. It’s best to take it with food, to avoid upsetting your stomach.

Low-Fat Craze Has Likely Contributed to Dramatic Rise in Alzheimer’s

A number of seriously flawed nutritional guidelines have contributed to more than a few health problems in the US, and the low-fat craze (aimed at preventing heart disease) is toward the top of that list. Not only does avoiding healthful fat promote heart disease, it also promotes brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.

According to neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter, fat avoidance and carbohydrate overconsumption are at the heart of the Alzheimer’s epidemic—which is an entirely preventable disease, driven by lifestyle factors such as diet. Dr. Perlmutter’s book, Grain Brain, provides a powerful argument for eliminating grains from your diet to protect your brain health. Another major factor is the development and increased consumption of genetically engineered (GE) grains, which are now pervasive in most processed foods sold in the US. Unfortunately, despite dire need, there’s little money available for research into treatments using regular food items. As Amanda Smith, Medical Director at University of South Florida (USF) Health Byrd Alzheimer's Institute told CTV News:

“The pharmaceutical industry is in this -- of course to make money for their companies, and of course they want to help people theoretically -- but at the end of the day it is about dollars and cents, and so money gets invested in things that are new or patentable rather than things that are sitting on the shelf already.”

Intermittent Fasting Can Also Increase Ketone Production

There are two additional ways to increase ketone production: restricting carbohydrates, and intermittent fasting. Personally, I believe all three of these strategies are best applied together, as you need to replace the lost carbs with high quality fat (and coconut oil certainly fits that bill), and intermittent fasting will help your body shift to burning fat as its primary fuel. It takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores, after which you start to shift to burning stored fat, and hence producing ketone bodies.

Contrary to more stringent and challenging fasts, intermittent fasting simply involves timing your meals to allow your body to enter the fat-burning “window.” To be effective, the length of your fast must be at least 16 hours. For example, this would mean eating only between the hours of 11am until 7pm, or noon until 8pm. You can restrict it even further — down to six, four, or even two hours if you want, but you can still reap many of the health benefits associated with intermittent fasting by limiting your eating to an eight-hour window each day.

I recommend easing yourself into this type of eating schedule. Start by not eating anything for three hours prior to bed, and then gradually extend the time before you eat breakfast each day to the point that you have skipped breakfast and have your first meal at lunch. This typically takes a few weeks to a few months. Also, this is not something that needs to be done continuously once your body has shifted to fat burning mode. However, your desire to eat will be dramatically reduced so you won’t feel the need to eat like you did before shifting your body’s primary fuel burning preference.

Tips for Maintaining Healthy Brain Function and Avoiding Alzheimer's Disease

Knowing that Alzheimer’s is a preventable disease, predicated on your lifestyle choices, puts the power into your hands. Diet is paramount, and the beauty of following my optimized nutrition plan is that it helps prevent and treat virtually ALL chronic degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease.

People who experience very little decline in their cognitive function up until their deaths have been found (post-mortem) to be free of brain lesions, showing that it's entirely possible to prevent the damage from occurring in the first place… and one of the best ways to do this is by leading a healthy lifestyle. The following guidelines will help you protect your brain health well into old age:

Avoid sugar and refined fructose. Ideally, you’ll want to keep your sugar levels to a minimum and your total fructose below 25 grams per day, or as low as 15 grams per day if you have insulin resistance or any related disorders.
Avoid gluten (primarily wheat). Research shows that your blood-brain barrier, the barrier that keeps things out of your brain where they don’t belong, is negatively affected by gluten. Gluten also makes your gut more permeable, which allows proteins to get into your bloodstream, where they don’t belong. That then sensitizes your immune system and promotes inflammation and autoimmunity, both of which play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s.
Optimize your gut flora by regularly eating fermented foods or taking a high-potency and high quality probiotic supplement.
Increase consumption of all healthful fats, including animal-based omega-3. Beneficial health-promoting fats that your brain needs for optimal function include organic butter from raw milk, clarified butter called organic grass-fed raw butter, olives, organic virgin olive oil and coconut oil, nuts like pecans and macadamia, free-range eggs, wild Alaskan salmon, and avocado.
Contrary to popular belief, the ideal fuel for your brain is not glucose but ketones. Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy. The medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) found in coconut oil are GREAT source of ketone bodies, because coconut oil is about 66 percent MCTs. In fact, ketones appear to be the preferred source of brain food in patients affected by diabetes or Alzheimer's.

Also make sure you’re getting enough animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil. (I recommend avoiding most fish because, although fish is naturally high in omega-3, most fish are now severely contaminated with mercury.) High intake of the omega-3 fats EPA and DHA help by preventing cell damage caused by Alzheimer's disease, thereby slowing down its progression, and lowering your risk of developing the disorder.

Reduce your overall calorie consumption, and/or intermittently fast. As mentioned above, ketones are mobilized when you replace carbs with coconut oil and other sources of healthy fats. A one-day fast can help your body to “reset” itself, and start to burn fat instead of sugar.
As part of a healthy lifestyle, I prefer an intermittent fasting schedule that simply calls for limiting your eating to a narrower window of time each day. By restricting your eating to a 6-8 hour window, you effectively fast 16-18 hours each day. To learn more, please see this previous article.

Improve your magnesium levels. There is some exciting preliminary research strongly suggesting a decrease in Alzheimer symptoms with increased levels of magnesium in the brain. Unfortunately, most magnesium supplements do not pass the blood brain levels, but a new one, magnesium threonate, appears to and holds some promise for the future for treating this condition and may be superior to other forms.
Optimize your vitamin D levels with safe sun exposure. Strong links between low levels of vitamin D in Alzheimer's patients and poor outcomes on cognitive tests have been revealed. Researchers believe that optimal vitamin D levels may enhance the amount of important chemicals in your brain and protect brain cells by increasing the effectiveness of the glial cells in nursing damaged neurons back to health.
Vitamin D may also exert some of its beneficial effects on Alzheimer's through its anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties. Sufficient vitamin D is imperative for proper functioning of your immune system to combat inflammation that is also associated with Alzheimer's.

Keep your fasting insulin levels below 3. This is indirectly related to fructose, as it will clearly lead to insulin resistance. However, other sugars (sucrose is 50 percent fructose by weight), grains and lack of exercise are also important factors. Lowering insulin will also help lower leptin levels which is another factor for Alzheimer’s.
Eat a nutritious diet, rich in folate, such as the one described in my nutrition plan. Vegetables, without question, are your best form of folate, and we should all eat plenty of fresh raw veggies every day.
Avoid and eliminate mercury from your body. Dental amalgam fillings, which are 50 percent mercury by weight, are one of the major sources of heavy metal toxicity, however you should be healthy prior to having them removed. Once you have adjusted to following the diet described in my optimized nutrition plan, you can follow the mercury detox protocol and then find a biological dentist to have your amalgams removed.
Avoid aluminum, such as antiperspirants, non-stick cookware, vaccine adjuvants, etc.
Exercise regularly. It's been suggested that exercise can trigger a change in the way the amyloid precursor protein is metabolized,6 thus, slowing down the onset and progression of Alzheimer's. Exercise also increases levels of the protein PGC-1alpha. Research has also shown that people with Alzheimer's have less PGC-1alpha in their brains7 and cells that contain more of the protein produce less of the toxic amyloid protein associated with Alzheimer's. I would strongly recommend reviewing the Peak Fitness Technique for my specific recommendations.
Avoid flu vaccinations as most contain mercury, a well-known neurotoxic and immunotoxic agent.
Eat blueberries. Wild blueberries, which have high anthocyanin and antioxidant content, are known to guard against Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases. Like any fruit though, avoid excesses here.
Challenge your mind daily. Mental stimulation, especially learning something new, such as learning to play an instrument or a new language, is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer's. Researchers suspect that mental challenge helps to build up your brain, making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with Alzheimer's disease.
Avoid anticholinergics and statin drugs. Drugs that block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, have been shown to increase your risk of dementia. These drugs include certain nighttime pain relievers, antihistamines, sleep aids, certain antidepressants, medications to control incontinence, and certain narcotic pain relievers.
Statin drugs are particularly problematic because they suppress the synthesis of cholesterol, deplete your brain of coenzyme Q10 and neurotransmitter precursors, and prevent adequate delivery of essential fatty acids and fat-soluble antioxidants to your brain by inhibiting the production of the indispensable carrier biomolecule known as low-density lipoprotein.

Other Natural Treatments for Your Anti-Alzheimer's Arsenal

Finally, there are a few other nutritional recommendations worth noting for their specific benefits in preventing and treating dementia. So, although your fundamental strategy for preventing dementia should involve a comprehensive lifestyle approach, you may want to consider adding a few of these natural dietary agents to your anti-Alzheimer's arsenal. These four natural foods/supplements have good science behind them, in terms of preventing age-related cognitive changes:

Astaxanthin is a natural pigment with unique properties and many clinical benefits, including some of the most potent antioxidant activity currently known. As a fat-soluble nutrient, astaxanthin readily crosses your blood-brain barrier. One study8 found it may help prevent neurodegeneration associated with oxidative stress, as well as make a potent natural "brain food."
The molecules of astaxanthin neutralize free radicals and other oxidants without being destroyed or becoming pro-oxidants themselves in the process. It's is a unique molecule whose shape allows it to precisely fit into a cell membrane and span its entire width. In this position, astaxanthin can intercept potentially damaging molecules before they can damage your cells.

You can get some astaxanthin by taking krill oil, which is a fantastic omega-3 fat supplement. But you can boost your astaxanthin even MORE by adding a pure astaxanthin supplement to your nutritional regimen. For optimal absorption, make sure to take krill oil and/or astaxanthin with a fat-containing meal, since both are fat-soluble.

Gingko biloba: Many scientific studies have found that Gingko biloba has positive effects for dementia. Gingko, which is derived from a tree native to Asia, has long been used medicinally in China and other countries. A 1997 study from JAMA showed clear evidence that Gingko improves cognitive performance and social functioning for those suffering from dementia. Research since then has been equally promising. One study in 2006 found Gingko as effective as the dementia drug Aricept (donepezil) for treating mild to moderate Alzheimer's type dementia. A 2010 meta-analysis found Gingko biloba to be effective for a variety of types of dementia.

Alpha lipoic acid (ALA): ALA can stabilize cognitive functions among Alzheimer's patients and may slow the progression of the disease.

Vitamin B12: A small Finnish study published in the journal Neurology9 found that people who consume foods rich in B12 may reduce their risk of Alzheimer's in their later years. For each unit increase in the marker of vitamin B12, the risk of developing Alzheimer's was reduced by two percent. Remember, sublingual methylcobalamin may be your best bet here.

[BroJones]

Next - on meat, and growing sprouts (the latter is a great thing to do; I need to get back at it) -

[quote]
American Meat—An Inside Look at Sustainable Farming in America
November 23, 2013 | 32,531 views

Thanksgiving is a time when many of us come together and share food and conversation with our family and friends. It's a time when we celebrate our loved ones, and reflect on that which we are thankful for. In the spirit of the holiday, we are offering our documentary American Meat to you and yours during this special week of Thanksgiving, for free. We hope that it will spark constructive conversations about how we can build a better agriculture in America.

If after enjoying a free screening of American Meat, you would like to purchase a DVD or a digital download of the film (perhaps as a holiday gift...) you can do so by clicking HERE!



We're thankful for our farmers, and we're thankful for you. We hope you enjoy our documentary American Meat, and that you have a wonderful holiday season.

Visit the Mercola Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

If you put good old-fashioned organically-raised, pasture-fed and finished meat in a nutrition analyzer, you’d find it’s one of the most nutritious foods you can eat.

However, many are still in the dark about the vast differences between Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) and organically-raised, grass-fed meats, in terms of nutrient content and contamination with veterinary drugs, antibiotics, genetically modified organisms, and disease-causing pathogens.

Differences in the animals’ diets and living conditions create vastly different end products. For example, most CAFO cows are fed grains (oftentimes genetically engineered grains, which make matters even worse), when their natural diet consists of plain grass.

If you’re under the age of 40 or so, and have never spent time on a real farm, chances are you have a rather dim concept of just how different today’s food production is from traditional, time-tested farming practices.

These differences have monumental ramifications for our environment, for the health and wellbeing of the animals being raised, and for your own health.

There are basically two very 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.

American Meat

The featured documentary, American Meat,1 is “a pro-farmer look at chicken, hog and cattle production in America.” The film features full-time organic farmers Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface farms in Virginia; Chuck Wirtz, a life-long hog farmer; and Dr. Fred Kirschenmann, who manages a family farm in North Dakota.

“Beginning with a history of our current industrial system, the feedlots and confinement operations are unveiled, not through hidden cameras, but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there.

From there, the story shifts to Polyface Farms, where the Salatin family has developed an alternative agricultural model based on rotational grazing and local distribution. Nationwide, a local-food movement of farmers, chefs, and everyday people has taken root.” ~ American Meat2

As a physician, it's obvious to me - and I'm sure most of you viewing this - that the food you eat plays a major role in your health. Sadly, as a society, we've strayed so far from our dietary roots and become so disconnected from our food sources that our health is now in serious jeopardy.

About 90 percent of the money Americans spend on food is spent on processed foods,3 and the health of the average American is a testament to the abject failure of such foods to support good health. It's a proven fact that factory farmed and processed foods are far more likely to cause illness than unadulterated, organically-grown foods.

Fortunately, more and more people are now beginning to recognize this, and are making efforts to get back to real food - the kind of food grown by the dedicated farmers featured in this film.

The Invention of CAFOs

Chickens, like most animals and humans, depend on sunlight to produce vitamin D, and as such spend a great deal of time outdoors pecking around for bugs, which is their natural diet.

Alas, once farmers realized they could simply add vitamin D and other vitamins and medications to chicken feed, they also realized they no longer had to let the chickens outdoors. And with that the CAFO chicken farm was born...

Chicken CAFO’s took root in the 1950’s, followed by cattle and hog CAFO’s in the 1970’s and ‘80’s respectively. Today, CAFO’s dominate all livestock and poultry production in the US, and gone are hundreds of thousands of small farms that simply could no longer compete in this new market setup.

The intensive animal farming methods of today were developed to increase food production while pushing down prices. And while successful in that respect, it has given rise to a number of significant problems that probably were not considered at the outset, when increasing capacity to feed the sprawling suburbs were foremost on everyone’s mind.

For example, about 95 percent of the eggs produced in the US now come from gigantic egg factories housing millions of hens under one roof. You can only imagine how difficult – if not impossible – it is to keep millions of birds in one location and still produce a product that's safe to eat.

CAFO’s Promote Food-Borne and Antibacterial-Resistant Disease

Chickens raised in these unsanitary conditions are far more likely to be contaminated with pathogens, and to lay contaminated eggs. In one British study, 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.

The problem of contamination is not limited to the eggs these chickens produce, but also to the meat. To combat the potent threat of disease caused by crowded conditions, unnatural diets and inability to roam free, cage-raised chickens have to be given routine doses of antibiotics and other drugs, all of which have serious health implications, including the spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in humans.

It has even been suggested that a growing number of antibiotic-resistant cases of urinary tract infections in women are linked to the overuse of antibiotics in chickens, and their resultant drug-resistant bacteria strains transferring to humans.4

The lesson here is, the closer you can get to the "backyard barnyard," the better. You'll want to get your chickens and eggs from smaller community farms with free-ranging hens, organically fed and locally marketed. This is the way poultry was done for centuries... before it was corrupted by politics, corporate greed and the blaring ignorance of the food industry.

Fortunately, finding high-quality pastured chickens and organic eggs is relatively easy, as virtually every rural area has small farmers with chickens. If you live in an urban area, visiting the local health food stores and farmers' markets are typically the quickest route to finding high-quality local egg sources.

Why I Only Recommend Eating Organic Grass-Fed Beef

When it comes to red meat, pasture-fed and finished beef is vastly superior to grain-fed beef, and in my view it’s the only beef worth eating. Keep in mind that it’s far more important to choose “grass-fed” than “organic,” as most grass-fed beef are also organic anyway. Not only is grass-fed beef raised in a more sustainable way for the environment, and a more humane way for the animal, but it’s the superior choice for your health.

That said, be aware that there is a load of deception when it comes to grass-fed beef, so be sure to ask your seller if it is grass finished as that is the key to make sure the animals are not fed grains. Ideally the pasture should be raised on a cocktail cover crop and provide high quality pasture for the cattle.

The natural diet for ruminant animals, such as cattle, is grass. When left to feed on grass-only diets, levels of conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA are three to five times more than those fed grain-based diets. And that's just for starters. A joint effort between the USDA and Clemson University researchers in 2009 determined a total of 10 key areas where grass-fed beef is better than grain-fed for human health.5 In a side-by-side comparison, they determined that grass-fed beef was:

Lower in total fat Higher in total omega-3s
Higher in beta-carotene A healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84)
Higher in vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) Higher in CLA (cis-9 trans-11), a potential cancer fighter
Higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin Higher in vaccenic acid (which can be transformed into CLA)
Higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease
Avoid Consuming too Much Meat

While I’m a strong advocate of regularly consuming animal protein for its nutritional benefits, it is my observation that most people eat too much animal protein overall. It would be very unusual for most people reading this to need more than four to six ounces of beef or chicken a day. That is not very much. Additionally, if a personal or spiritual belief limit or prevent you from eating meat, fish, eggs, or dairy, these food items can easily be substituted. However you’ll still want to limit your protein to about one-half gram per pound of lean body mass unless you are doing strength training or are pregnant, in which case you would benefit from about 25 percent more protein per day.

Yes, You CAN Grow and Raise Your Own Food

Real Meat reveals many of the simple and age-tested techniques used to raise chickens, pigs and other livestock at Polyface Farm, run by Joel Salatin. I’ve previously toured Salatin’s farm and interviewed him about his methods as well. Salatin is a sustainable farming pioneer who has also devised a number of creative processes that allow small farmers to grow food in a more efficient manner. One of Salatin’s inventions is the “Egg Mobile,” which allows the farmer to easily move chickens from one paddock to another. By dividing the land into sections (paddocks), and rotating cattle and chickens through the paddocks in turn, you can take full advantage of their symbiotic relationships.

Every couple of days, cows are moved into a new paddock where there’s fresh grass. The cows eat the grass and deposit manure, which attracts insects and worms. When the cows are moved into the next paddock, the chickens are wheeled into the first, where there’s now plenty of natural food for the chickens to eat. This system can work quite well for many small farmers. You don’t have to become a full-fledged farmer to raise your own food, however.

Growing sprouts is probably the easiest, least time-consuming and most inexpensive way to get started growing your own nutritious food. Unlike a conventional vegetable garden, you’ll have food ready for harvest in about one week, and sprouts are among the most nutrient-dense foods out there. Depending on the sprout, the nutrient content can increase as much as 30 times the original value within just a few days of sprouting!

When it comes to animals, chickens are well-suited for a wide variety of locales, and raising chickens for fresh eggs can be another great way to “get your feet wet,” provided you have the right setting, and a little more time. Depending on the breed of the chicken, and the amount of daylight it receives, a chicken will typically lay one egg every 36 hours or so. (They will typically stop laying eggs over the winter, unless artificial day light is provided.) If you are interested in the possibility of raising a few chickens yourself, a good place to begin is by asking yourself the following questions. You can also visit Joel's Polyface Farm Web site for more details on raising chickens.

Can I dedicate some time each day? You can expect to devote about 10 minutes a day, an hour per month, and a few hours twice a year to the care and maintenance of your brood.
Do I have enough space? They will need a minimum of 10 square feet per bird to roam, preferably more. The more foraging they can do, the healthier and happier they'll be and the better their eggs will be.
What are the chicken regulations in my town? You will want to research this before jumping in because some places have zoning restrictions and even noise regulations (which especially applies if you have a rooster).
Are my neighbors on board with the idea? It's a good idea to see if they have any concerns early on. When they learn they might be the recipients of occasional farm-fresh eggs, they might be more agreeable.
Can I afford a flock? There are plenty of benefits to growing your own eggs, but saving money isn't one of them. There are significant upfront costs to getting a coop set up, plus ongoing expenses for supplies.
Support Sustainable Agriculture by Buying “Real” Food

If you want to optimize your health, you simply must return to the basics of healthy food choices. And, as Joel Salatin says in the film, you CAN farm! It’s all a matter of scale. As just mentioned, you can start really small by growing some sprouts to eat with your daily meal. This can progress to a larger organic garden; using pots and planters if you live in an apartment, or by dedicating a part of your back yard to a vegetable garden. If you have the time and space, you could move up to chickens.

Besides growing and raising your own, buying your food from responsible, high-quality, sustainable sources is your best bet, and I strongly encourage you to support the small family farms in your area. This includes not only visiting the farm directly, if you have one nearby, but also taking part in farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture programs. Not only is the food so much tastier and healthier when you get it from sustainable, non-CAFO sources, but there is something about shopping for fresh foods in an open-air, social environment that just feels right. If you want to experience some of these benefits first-hand, here are some great resources to obtain wholesome food that supports not only you but also the environment:

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

[BroJones]

This from Dr. Stengler (IMO another outside-the-box MD):

Most conventional sleep remedies are so scary -- you'd be hard pressed to find an alternative doctor to recommend any of them! But not this. This revolutionary breakthrough is something that's natural and non-addictive. And the only side effect is a great night's sleep!

It's so easy and so effective -- some patients report falling asleep in 20 minutes or less!

And now, in this exclusive video, this doctor's sleep secret will be revealed -- so you won't need an appointment to find out about it. Watch this short video right now and see how this sleep phenomenon could help you get all the sleep you need so you feel alive and alert everyday...
_______
The belly is connected to the heart

If you've let yourself go a little over the years, you're hardly alone. But if you think you can be overweight or obese and still be healthy, I've got a new study you need to see.

It puts to bed the myth that it's OK to be obese as long as you're healthy by other standards -- because it shows how extra weight alone, even without any other risk factors, can lead directly to heart disease. Or worse, leave you staring straight down the barrel of a heart attack

If you're obese, your risk of a heart attack is double what it should be, and your risk of heart disease is 64 percent higher, according to the new study. And if you're overweight but not obese, your heart attack risk is 38 percent higher and your heart disease risk is 25 percent higher.

Now, that alone isn't a surprise. If anything, I'd say the numbers are a tad on the low side.

No, what some people have found surprising (but not me) is that the risks were high even when the researchers pulled out all the other possible risk factors for heart problems -- especially the "big three" that make up metabolic syndrome: high blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Yes, all of those conditions will raise your heart risk no matter how much you weigh. But if you're overweight or obese, they're not the main reason you face a higher risk of heart problems.

In fact, the study finds those risk factors account for between 12 percent and 26 percent of the heart risk in the overweight and the obese.

The rest comes from those extra pounds you're lugging around.

So if you're overweight or obese but believe you're otherwise healthy, consider this your wakeup call -- because along with heart attack and heart disease, too much body fat can increase your risk of everything from arthritis to cancer.

(In fact, obesity is the number two cause of cancer... second only to smoking! Click here to learn more.)

If your BMI is higher than 25, you're officially overweight. If it's above 30, you're obese. While these numbers alone aren't the final word in your health, they make for a pretty good starting point -- and if you're above them, it's time to get to work on your waistline.

One of the safest, easiest and most painless ways to get it done is with the Mediterranean diet that's been proven to help lose weight, fight heart disease and prevent heart attack and stroke.

For more information, read this free report from my House Calls archives.

Up next: One thing you DON'T want to do to lose weight. Keep reading!
...
Metformin falls short

Mainstream docs are giving out metformin like it's going out of style -- and these days, many of the patients taking this diabetes drug aren't even diabetic. It's routinely given off-label for any number of conditions, including weight loss and heart disease.

But now, new research confirms it's not especially good for either of those things.

In fact, metformin won't protect your heart by just about any mainstream measure: It won't slow the hardening of the arteries, reduce arterial plaque, cut triglyceride levels, lower total cholesterol, improve blood pressure or raise levels of HDL ("good" cholesterol).

The researchers behind the new study claim at least it helped patients to lose some weight, and did so about as well as some of the other weight-loss drugs out there -- but that's not really saying much.

Weight-loss drugs have been notoriously ineffective, and metformin is certainly no better: During the 18-month study, patients lost an average of just 7 pounds.

For that tiny bit of weight loss -- and no reduction in heart risk -- you have to put up with some pretty awful side effects, including gastrointestinal problems (including notoriously bad and embarrassing gas) as well as a risk of a potentially deadly condition called lactic acidosis.

But who needs the drug anyway? There are much better ways to shed a few pounds -- or a whole lot of pounds -- and protect your heart, slash your blood sugar levels and prevent diabetes at the same time.

All you need to do is make some basic lifestyle changes and, in some cases, try a few supplements that are proven to bring blood sugar levels down.

And if you're interested in a little extra help in whittling down that waist skip the dangerous drugs and gimmicky weight-loss supplements and try something natural instead. I have all the details on an incredible plant combo that's been scientifically proven to help burn fat in my January issue of Health Revelations....

God bless,

Dr. Mark Stengler

[Moss Man]

Not Dr Mercola, but interesting research and along the same path IMO:

CDC Admits 98 Million Americans Received Polio Vaccine Contaminated With Cancer Virus
OCTOBER 21, 2013 BY ADMIN2
8


The CDC has quickly removed a page from their website, which is now cached, ( but now has been removed) admitting that more than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine within an 8-year span when a proportion of the vaccine was contaminated with a cancer causing polyomavirus called SV40. It has been estimated that 10-30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of the vaccine.

Do you have a link for this article?

[BroJones]

Not Dr Mercola, but interesting research and along the same path IMO:

CDC Admits 98 Million Americans Received Polio Vaccine Contaminated With Cancer Virus
OCTOBER 21, 2013 BY ADMIN2
8


The CDC has quickly removed a page from their website, which is now cached, ( but now has been removed) admitting that more than 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine within an 8-year span when a proportion of the vaccine was contaminated with a cancer causing polyomavirus called SV40. It has been estimated that 10-30 million Americans could have received an SV40 contaminated dose of the vaccine.

Do you have a link for this article?

google "doses of polio vaccine within an 8-year span when a proportion of the vaccine was contaminated with a cancer causing " gives a few links. Its been too long for me to recall the link, but googling may help you.

[sarahmj]

Krill oil; Omega-3's

By Dr. Mercola

For many years now, my favorite source of omega-3 fats has been krill oil.

Every time a new study about krill oil hits the journals, its list of health benefits grows longer and the differences between fish oil and krill oil become more pronounced.

Krill oil is often compared to fish oil as a source of animal-based omega-3 fats.

But krill consistently comes out on top in the research—and the latest study published in the July 2011 issue of Frontiers in Genetics1 is no exception.

This study compared the livers of mice fed krill oil to those fed fish oil by looking at the gene expression triggered by each.

Researchers found that krill oil is VASTLY superior to fish oil when it comes to influencing your genes.

What do your genes have to do with your metabolism?

Everything! Every aspect of your metabolism is controlled by how your genes express themselves.

New Study Shows Krill Oil Flips on Key Metabolic Genes

Genes have “switches” that can be flipped on and off, which control virtually every biochemical process in your body. And nutrients like omega-3 fats control those switches. Your liver plays a major role in controlling how your body uses carbohydrates and lipids, utilizing omega-3 and omega-6 fats to sense your nutritional state and influence gene expression accordingly. Fatty acids help to direct key metabolic processes such as glucose production, lipid synthesis, cellular energy, oxidation, and dozens of others. We now know that various types and sources of omega-3 fat affect liver tissue differently, which is what this study was designed to examine.

Krill oil actually influences your metabolism and genes to improve! The referenced study found that, although both fish oil and krill oil contain omega-3s, they differ greatly in how they affect the genes controlling your metabolism. Krill oil:

* Enhances glucose metabolism in your liver, whereas fish oil does not
* Promotes lipid metabolism, whereas fish oil does not
* Helps regulate the mitochondrial respiratory chain, whereas fish oil does not
* Decreases cholesterol synthesis, whereas fish oil increases it

So, krill will help lower your triglyceride and cholesterol levels and increase your energy production, whereas fish oil does neither and in fact may even raise your cholesterol level, according to the latest research. According to the researchers:

“Elevated hepatic glucose production is associated with metabolic disease in humans (Natali and Ferrannini, 2006), and we observed that krill oil supplementation favorably alters the expression of genes regulating hepatic glucose metabolism.”

Prior studies show that krill oil may lower your blood glucose level by increasing glucose uptake by tissues other than your liver. In another study that directly compared krill oil with fish oil, krill oil was significantly more effective in reducing liver triglyceride levels. These studies all suggest krill oil may offer significant benefits for those with the metabolic dysregulation seen in obesity and type 2 diabetes—which is a problem of epidemic proportions in today’s world.

Omega 3 fats affect your cellular health and DNA chiefly by how they influence your cell membranes. It is these cell membranes that are critical in switching your genes on and off, because the membranes contain receptors that respond to hormones and other agents, and these are affected by the fatty acids on their surface. Your cell membranes contain EPA, DHA and phospholipids, and all help to shuttle molecules into and out of your cells. Therefore, having ample high quality fatty acids in your system is crucial to keeping your cell membranes working like well-oiled little machines.

Other Advantages of Krill

It is important to understand that krill oil has a number of other advantages over fish oil:

1. Some studies have shown that krill oil may be 48 times more potent than fish oil. This means you need far less of it than fish oil, as confirmed by a 2011 study published in the journal Lipids2.
2. This is because krill oil contains phospholipids, so the omega-3 fats are already in the form that your body can use. This bioavailability means krill oil is absorbed very quickly and crosses your blood-brain barrier, so is able to reach important brain structures. Also, phospholipids are one of the principle compounds in high-density lipoproteins (HDL), which you want more of.
3. Fish oil is quite prone to oxidation, and oxidation leads to the formation of free radicals. Consuming free radicals further increases your need for antioxidants. Fish oil is weak in antioxidant content, whereas krill oil is rich in antioxidants. Krill oil contains astaxanthin—probably the most potent antioxidant in nature—which is why it is so stable and resistant to oxidation.
4. Many, if not most, fish and fish oil are now contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals; even fish that is thousands of miles away from coal plants and other environment-polluting industries. Antarctic krill is not prone to this contamination.
5. Krill is also far more sustainable as a food source than is fish because it's the largest biomass in the world, making krill harvesting one of the most sustainable practices on the planet.

Could Omega-3 Deficiency be Killing More People than Breast Cancer?

Three studies in 2009 showed that omega-3 fat deficiency might cause or contribute to up to 96,000 premature deaths each year. Compare that number to the estimated 40,000 women who die from breast cancer in the U.S. annually3, and the implications of omega-3 deficiency become quite clear.

Omega-3 fats from krill have been shown to be far more effective than fish oil in reducing fat levels in your heart and liver. The latest study adds to the mountain of research that krill oil can lower your risk for metabolic syndrome, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

In one study, krill oil was found to reduce fat levels in the hearts of rats by 42 percent, compared to just two percent for fish oil. Similarly, krill was found to reduce fat in the liver by 60 percent, compared to 38 percent for fish oil. The buildup of fat in your liver can lead to insulin sensitivity, metabolic syndrome and eventually full-blown type 2 diabetes, just as the buildup of fat in your heart can predispose you to a heart attack.

Krill Oil Can Also Help Protect Your Brain

Some omega-3 fats—especially DHA—are critical for your nervous system, particularly your brain. DHA is converted into substances called neuroprotectins. Alzheimer's disease is associated with a shortage of these neuroprotectins. Fats make up about two-thirds of your brain tissue. Myelin, the protective sheath that covers your neurons, is composed of 30 percent protein and 70 percent fat. These fats are not just important for adults. Omega-3s are crucial for proper brain and eye development in infants and children.

Two different studies have shown that taking 800 to 900 mg of DHA per day for 16 to 24 weeks resulted in significant improvements in memory, verbal fluency scores, and rate of learning.

Low concentrations of EPA and DHA are known to accelerate cognitive decline and increase your risk for mood swings and mood disorders. Those suffering from depression have been found to have lower levels of omega-3 in their blood, compared to nondepressed individuals. A 2010 study involving 46 depressed elderly women4 concluded that omega-3 supplementation can improve quality of life and effectively treat depression.

According to a report published in 2007 in the Alternative Medicine Review5, DHA and EPA in krill oil can lessen a variety of brain and mental disorders, including autism and dyslexia. DHA also protects your cells from gene mutations that can lead to brain diseases such as Parkinson's and some forms of Alzheimer's disease, by preventing "misfolding" of certain proteins that occur as a result of those mutations.

Krill Oil is a Potent Anti-Inflammatory

A major reason krill oil has such impressive benefits is that it powerfully reduces inflammation in your body. They produce compounds called resolvins and protectins, which help quell inflammation before it can do too much damage to your tissues. Several studies have been published on the remarkable effectiveness of krill oil in combating inflammation-related disorders, such as arthritis.

One 2011 study in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that women with the highest omega-3 levels had a 44 percent reduced risk of dying from inflammatory diseases. Studies have proven krill oil’s ability to reduce pain, stiffness, and functional impairment in people with inflammatory disorders in just one to two weeks6and reduce the symptoms for both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis sufferers7 8.

Krill May Even Slow Down Aging

One of the most exciting recent studies found that increased dietary intake of omega-3 fat is associated with prolonged survival in patients with coronary artery disease. The benefit has to do with actually preventing telomere shortening. The study9, published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), followed 608 people in California with stable coronary artery disease for five years. At the end of the five years, those with the highest blood levels of DHA and EPA showed the smallest change in telomere length.

If you aren't familiar with telomeres, telomeres may be one of the KEYS to understanding aging. They are found at the tip of each arm of your chromosomes. Throughout your life, your telomeres shorten every time a cell divides. Free radicals can also cleave telomeres, which is thought to accelerate aging. So, we have seen that krill oil can benefit your metabolism, heart and brain, and maybe even slow your aging process and help reduce your chances of dying from many causes… but it can do even more.

The Verdict is in: Krill Oil May Help with Literally DOZENS of Diseases

GreenMedInfo.com now lists more than than 25 different diseases krill may help prevent or reverse. Of course, if you extend the search to include everything related to omega-3 fats, the list of benefits expands even more, since the gifts of krill oil include everything known to be good about omega-3s. The implications are truly profound, and I'm sure you'll be seeing much more krill research in the future. The following table includes links to a number of studiesspecific to krill oil, by disease. There is much more information about krill and omega-3 fats on the GreenMedInfo website.
Cardiovascular disease, hyperlipidemia Inflammation, and C-Reactive Protein Oxidative stress
Arthritis: Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) Metabolic syndrome, including obesity and fatty liver Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and dysmenorrhea
Brain disease: Cognitive dysfunction, memory loss, brain aging, learning disorders and ADHD Cancer Kidney disease

A Final Note on Krill Oil Supplements

Please remember that I don't advocate taking large amounts of supplements. It is far better to receive you nutrients from food. If it weren't for the polluted waterways of the world, I would recommend your getting your omega-3 fats from fish rather than supplements, but unfortunately, most fish are now so contaminated with mercury and other toxins, I just cannot recommend it any longer.

As you can see from the research above, animal-based omega-3 fats are essential for optimal health. I recommend you consider taking a high quality omega-3 supplement, and I think krill oil is your best option.

The only kind of krill oil I recommend is from genuine Antarctic krill. Look for a brand that is cold-processed, which preserves its biological benefits. Please make sure that hexane is not used to extract the oil from the krill as some of the most popular krill oils on the market use this dangerous chemical agent. It should also be free of heavy metals, PCBs, dioxins and other contaminants.

Thanks for the info Dr Jones. I have been diagnosed with Joint Hypermobility Syndrome, a genetic condition that affects about 1 in 10 000, I have been having various joint related problems for the past year and a half. So I am going to give Krill oil a go and see if it makes a difference!

[BroJones]

Sara - I'm taking krill oil, too. Pls let us know how it goes for you.

FDA Pertussis Vaccine Study Shatters Illusion of Vaccine-Induced Immunity
December 10, 2013 | 57,872 views
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By Dr. Mercola

Recent vaccine research again reveals the gulf between what you’re told about vaccines—how they work and how effective they are at preventing infectious disease—versus what is truly known about naturally acquired and vaccine acquired immunity.

Nearly a century after the release of the whooping cough (B. pertussis) vaccine, mounting evidence suggests that widespread mandated use of the vaccine could potentially be doing more harm than good in the long term—in addition to having been found lacking in the effectiveness department. As reported by The Washington Post:1

“The research suggests that while the vaccine may keep people from getting sick, it doesn’t prevent them from spreading whooping cough — also known as pertussis — to others.

‘It could explain the increase in pertussis that we’re seeing in the US,’ said one of the researchers, Tod Merkel of the Food and Drug Administration...

Last year was the nation’s worst year for whooping cough in six decades— US health officials received reports of more than 48,000 cases, including 18 deaths... Some studies have concluded the newer vaccine doesn’t last as long as the old one. But the study by Merkel and his colleagues offers a new wrinkle.”

New ‘Wrinkle’ Busts Major Hole in Pro-Mandatory Vaccination Argument

The “new wrinkle” revealed in the featured FDA baboon study is that while the vaccine can cut down on serious clinical disease symptoms, it doesn’t eliminate transmission of the disease.2 This busts a major hole in the entire argument that vaccines achieve herd immunity, which is used as justification for mandatory vaccination campaigns.

According to the Washington Post:3

“'t was thought that people only spread the disease when they had coughs and other symptoms,' said Dr. Erik Hewlett, a University of Virginia whooping cough researcher who was not involved in the FDA study but has collaborated with Merkel.

Health officials have sought to protect small children by vaccinating the people who are in contact with them such as grandparents and baby sitters— a strategy called ‘cocooning.’ But that may not work as well as hoped if infected people who don’t show any symptoms can still spread it, the research suggests. ‘This is a whole new way of thinking of the problem,’ Hewlett said.”

Whooping Cough Vaccination Makes You an ‘Asymptomatic Carrier’

The study, titled: “Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate model,”4 used infant baboons to test the hypothesis that "current acellular pertussis vaccines fail to prevent colonization and transmission" of B. pertussis.

The acellular pertussis vaccines that were licensed in 1996 for infants to replace reactive whole-cell pertussis vaccines contain lower levels of certain toxins (such as endotoxin) as well as purified antigens instead of all the components of whole killed B. pertussis bacteria.

The study concluded that infant baboons given Sanofi DTaP (Daptacel) vaccine at two, four, and six months of age were protected against developing outward clinical symptoms of pertussis after being exposed to B. pertussis at seven months of age, but they were still able colonize and transmit B. pertussis to other baboons.

The baboons that were vaccinated with whole cell pertussis (GlaxoSmithKline's Infanrix) also colonized B. pertussis upon exposure to B. pertussis, but they cleared the infection much faster than the acellular pertussis vaccinated baboons—in 18 days compared to 35 days.

Now, the researchers did not say that DTaP vaccine causes vaccine strain pertussis infection. B. pertussis vaccines (both whole cell DPT and acellular DTaP/Tdap) are inactivated vaccines and do not cause vaccine strain infection the way some attenuated live virus vaccines can—such as live oral polio (OPV) and varicella zoster (chickenpox) vaccines.

However, the lead author Tod Merkel did comment to the New York Times5 that when exposed to B. pertussis after recently getting vaccinated, you could be an asymptomatic carrier and infect others, saying:

“When you’re newly vaccinated, you are an asymptomatic carrier, which is good for you, but not for the population.”

Pertussis Vaccine May Not Curb Transmission of Illness

According to the researchers, acellular pertussis vaccine (Daptacel) induces high antibody titers, which is used to measure efficacy. Whole cell DPT (Infanrix) and natural B. pertussis infection also induce high antibody titers.

But, while acellular pertussis vaccinated baboons did not develop serious clinical disease symptoms—such as loss of appetite and cough—when they were directly challenged with B. pertussis (meaning exposed to the B. pertussis bacteria), they still colonized B. pertussis in their throats and were capable of transmitting the infection to other baboons.

Since acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccines are the only type of pertussis vaccines now given to American children at the ages of two, four, six and 15-18 months, as well as between the ages of four and six years and at 11-12 years, the researchers said:

"These data suggest that cocooning is unlikely to be an effective strategy to reduce the burden of pertussis in infants. However, it is important to note that our data in combination with human data show that vaccination with acellular pertussis provides excellent protection from severe pertussis.

Therefore, any short-term plan for addressing the resurgence of pertussis should include continued efforts to enhance acellular pertussis immunization. However, to protect the most vulnerable members of the population and achieve optimal herd immunity, it will be necessary to develop a vaccination strategy that effectively blocks pertussis infection and transmission."

What You Need to Know About ‘Herd Immunity’

The issue of “herd immunity” as it pertains to vaccinations is a widely misunderstood subject. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases describes vaccine-induced herd immunity (also labeled “community immunity” by public health doctors) as follows:6

“When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak. Even those who are not eligible for certain vaccines—such as infants, pregnant women, or immunocompromised individuals—get some protection because the spread of contagious disease is contained. This is known as ‘community immunity.’"

What many people don’t realize is that there is such a thing as natural herd immunity. The problem is that public health officials assume that vaccines will work the same way. However, vaccines do not confer the same kind of immunity as experiencing and recovering from the natural disease.

The science clearly shows that there's a big difference between naturally acquired herd immunity and vaccine-acquired herd immunity, even as scientific knowledge about the biological mechanisms involved in naturally acquired and vaccine acquired immunity is incomplete. These facts are usually ignored because to openly acknowledge them opens the door to some very unwelcome questions about the overall effectiveness of mandatory vaccination programs.

Vaccines are designed to trick your body's immune system into producing an immune response that includes making protective antibodies that are needed to resist future exposure to the infectious viral or bacterial microorganism. However, your body is smarter than that. The artificial manipulation of your immune system by vaccines containing lab altered bacteria and viruses, as well as chemicals and other ingredients, simply does not exactly replicate the response that your immune system mounts when naturally encountering the infectious microorganism. This is one reason why vaccine policymakers say you need to get “booster” shots because vaccine acquired immunity is only temporary and wears off, sometimes rather quickly.

The featured study also provides evidence of this fact, showing that a vaccine-induced immune response differs from the immune response when naturally encountering the B. pertussis organism. The FDA researchers further suggested that there are also differences in immune responses to whole cell DPT vaccine, which contains the whole B. pertussis bacteria, and acellular pertussis vaccine, which contains lower levels of toxins and uses purified antigens. They said “Vaccination with wP [whole cell pertussis vaccine] and previous infection induced a more rapid clearance compared with naïve and aP[acelullar pertussis[-vaccinated animals.”

As reported by Medical Daily:7

“The researchers also found something revealing when they looked at the specific immune response of each group of monkeys. 'Although all vaccinated and previously infected animals had robust serum antibody responses, we found key differences in T-cell immunity,' the authors wrote in PNAS.

Specifically, previously infected animals and whole-cell-vaccinated animals both exhibited the same kind of boost in immune response while the acellular pertussis vaccination elicited a response that was slightly different. 'The observation that acellular pertussis, which induces an immune response mismatched to that induced by natural infection, fails to prevent colonization or transmission, provides a plausible explanation for the resurgence of pertussis...'"

Although the FDA researchers say they found differences between immune responses to the whole cell DPT vaccine acellular DTaP vaccine, they also admit that “neither vaccine was able to prevent colonization as well as immunity from a previous infection” and that “relative protection afforded by Th17 or Th1 responses in vaccinated or convalescent baboons or humans is not known.”

Bottom line: there are huge gaps in scientific knowledge about both B. pertussis vaccination and B. pertussis infections.

Which Is More Ideal—Permanent or Temporary Immunity?

To learn more, I urge you to listen to the following video, in which Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), discusses the concept of herd immunity. In it, she brings up some very important questions that need to be seriously considered and answered through rigorous scientific investigation—investigation that has so far been largely ignored:

" In most cases natural exposure to disease would give you a longer lasting more robust qualitatively superior immunity because it gives you both cell mediated immunity and humoral immunity... The fact that manmade vaccines cannot replicate the body's natural experience with the disease is one of the key points of contention between those who insist that mankind cannot live without mass use of multiple vaccines and those who believe that mankind's biological integrity will be severely compromised by their continued use.

The fact that manmade vaccines cannot replicate the body's natural experience with the disease is one of the key points of contention between those who insist that mankind cannot live without mass use of multiple vaccines and those who believe that mankind's biological integrity will be severely compromised by their continued use.

... s it better to protect children against infectious disease early in life through temporary immunity from a vaccine, or are they better off contracting certain contagious infections in childhood and attaining permanent immunity? Do vaccine complications ultimately cause more chronic illness and death than infectious diseases do? These questions essentially pit trust in human intervention against trust in nature and the natural order, which existed long before vaccines were created by man."



Download Interview Transcript

What We Don’t Understand Can Hurt Us

My main point of contention with those who insist that vaccines are the best answer for disease prevention, without regard for constitutional differences between people, is that the science is still grossly lacking when it comes to safety. We simply do not know if vaccination is an ideal choice for all people, all the time—even though that’s what public health officials and others promoting one-size-fits all mandatory vaccination policies would like you to believe. The evidence weighs rather heavily against such a blanket position, in my opinion.

Take the recent news of healthy teenagers dying following flu vaccination for example. In January of this year, a 14-year old Carly Christenson passed away from complications from influenza type-A, despite being vaccinated against the flu.8




Most recently, healthy 19-year old Chandler Webb became violently ill the day after receiving a flu shot—the first flu shot he had ever received.9, 10 His symptoms included violent shaking, headache and vomiting. He was hospitalized with encephalitis (brain inflammation). As the swelling of his brain progressed, Chandler’s doctors frantically tested him for various infectious diseases and treated him with broad spectrum antibiotics. Apparently, they did not think to consider whether he’d been recently vaccinated. His brain became so inflamed that doctors told his mother the massive swelling crushed his brain stem. He died 28 days after his first and last dose of influenza vaccine.

Chandler’s mother wants to raise awareness about the potential of vaccines to cause serious complications like brain inflammation and is urging medical personnel to consider vaccine reactions when searching for potential causes and treating encephalitis and other possible vaccine-related health problems. In this case, the doctors are now claiming they were not able to confirm the cause of Chandler’s death, and are declining to comment because they say they are legally prohibited from making any statements about the case.11


Main Take-Home Points and Limitations of the Latest Pertussis Vaccine Study

To recap, FDA researchers conducting the featured baboon study found that the whole cell pertussis vaccine (GSK's Infanrix DPT), the acellular pertussis vaccine (Sanofi's Daptacel DTaP), and natural pertussis infection all induced high antibody titers in infant baboons. High antibody titer after vaccination is currently the gold standard for proving that a vaccine confers “immunity” and inability to colonize or transmit infection.

However in this study, high B. pertussis antibody titers after vaccination did NOT correlate with immunity and inability to colonize or transmit B. pertussis infection to other baboons—effectively challenging the idea that high antibody titer following vaccination is evidence that vaccination will prevent infection in the vaccine recipient and the recipient will not be able to infect others. Furthermore, the study authors found that:

Baboons vaccinated with a whole cell pertussis vaccine (DPT) colonized B. pertussis upon direct challenge but cleared infection almost twice as fast as animals vaccinated with an acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP)—which is the type used by American children since 1996. This suggests that children recently given DTaP vaccine, who are exposed to B. pertussis may be astymptomatic carriers and transmitters of the infection for a longer period of time compared to children who get the older, more reactive whole cell DPT vaccine and clear infection more quickly.
Previous B. pertussis infection prevented colonization with B. pertussis in baboons better than having received either whole cell pertussis (Infanrix) or acelullar pertussis vaccine (Daptacel). In short, natural immunity offered greater protection against the ability to become infected and transmit infection after exposure to B. pertussis than either of the two vaccines.
That said, the researchers acknowledged the baboon study had limitations and among them were the fact that:

Baboons are not humans and the study authors admitted that "relative protection afforded by Th17 and Th1 responses in vaccinated or convalescent baboons or humans is not known."
Only one type of whole cell DPT and one type of acellular DTaP vaccine was used in this study but there are many different kinds of DPT and DTaP containing different components. Considering the known variability of measured efficacy and effectiveness of DPT and DTaP vaccines in clinical studies, the FDA study conclusions can only be limited to those two specific DPT and DTaP vaccines.
The Illusion of Vaccine-Acquired Immunity

The concept of vaccine induced herd immunity is built on the assumption that vaccination does protect the vast majority of vaccinated persons in a population from becoming infected with- and transmitting infection to others in the same way that naturally acquired immunity in a population protects acquisition and transmission of infection. The featured FDA research suggests this is not the case and offers a clue as to why whooping cough outbreaks have been occurring and spreading primarily within the vaccinated population. To quote NVIC’s Barbara Loe Fisher:

“In my opinion, this study in infant baboons suggests that pertussis vaccine-acquired immunity has been an illusion. Although the vaccines may protect against severe B. pertussis clinical symptoms of the disease—such as paroxysmal coughing—they do not prevent colonization of B. pertussis bacteria and transmission of the infection to others.

In this study at least, recovery from previous B. pertussis infection was more effective in preventing colonization with B.pertussis upon direct challenge than either whole cell DPT (Infanrix) or acellular DTaP (Daptacel) and that suggests transmission of the infection to others after exposure to B pertussis would also be less likely when there is a history of naturally acquired immunity.”

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.