Consumers are largely kept in the dark about the potential health benefits of foods and supplements. Why? Because current law makes it illegal for food and supplement producers to share this information.

Congressmen Jason Chaffetz (R–UT) and Jared Polis (D–CO) have introduced the Free Speech about Science Act (HR 1364). This landmark legislation protects basic free speech rights, ends censorship of science, and enables the natural health products community to share peer-reviewed scientific findings about natural health products with the public.

This is a small bill with vast potential leverage.

For this very reason, the bill will have opposition. It will be opposed by the FDA, which flatly forbids food and supplement manufacturers from mentioning any link between a product and a health condition, and by drug companies fearing competition from natural health approaches.

Dr. Mercola’s comment

The laws governing natural foods and supplements are among the most nonsensical of any ever established by the U.S. government. Did you know that it’s currently illegal for a producer to tell you about scientific studies showing that:

• Cherries can ease your symptoms of arthritis and gout

• Consuming walnuts can slow down the growth of your prostate tumor, or that

• Green tea can protect your heart

If a company is marketing vitamin D, they can be thrown in jail for claiming their product can lower your cancer risk, even though there are more than 800 scientific studies to back them up.

As unbelievable as it sounds, current law makes it illegal for natural supplement producers to share this life-saving information with you.

But the new bill proposed by representatives Chaffetz and Polis could change all of that!

It would pack a big punch, were it to pass, but you can expect fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical industry in the meantime.

You have the right to reliable information backed by legitimate scientific research, to assist you in making informed choices about your health — and this bill is a major step in that direction.

FDA Censors the Science of Natural Health

The FDA applies a totally biased standard to health claims for natural supplements — including claims substantiated by good science — a standard that violates your right to informed consent about your health care.

The FDA regulations currently prohibit manufacturers of dietary supplements or producers of food from referring to any scientific study documenting the potential effect of the substance on a health condition, punishable by large fines and even jail. Disclosure about the benefits of a dietary supplement or food, no matter how credible, places the food in the category of “unapproved drugs.”

In other words, if a product makes a medical claim, it’s automatically classified as a drug.

For example, cherry growers have been threatened by the FDA with jail time if their websites even contain links to scientific studies from Harvard and elsewhere, outlining the health benefits of cherries for gout or arthritis pain. Green tea growers have received similar threats.

This is because these studies are regarded as extensions of the product label, even if the study is merely referenced on the website, and not just on the packaging.

Imagine the drug companies not being permitted to tell you what their products could do for you … do you think they would roll over for that?

Not a chance!

And the FDA isn’t content with the existing regulations — they are on the verge of implementing new standards that are even MORE unfair to the dietary supplement industry, which could put many small manufacturers right out of business.

The American Association for Health Freedom (AAHF) states:

“The FDA ignores first amendment protections and censors the communication of valid scientific information. The agency seems to have lost sight of its mandate to protect the public and has instead come to see itself as the guardian of corporate interests.”

Natural Agents and Pharmaceutical Drugs Warrant Different Standards

The FDA’s current position is that foods such as cherries, broccoli, turmeric and the like should be subjected to the full FDA approval process. But this would cost as much as a billion dollars per food!

With few exceptions, it’s impossible for food producers to assume such costs for natural and therefore non-patentable products. It’s ludicrous for the FDA to require natural products to be “vetted” the same way as drugs. In nearly every case, natural products are safer and more effective than synthetic drugs, as science has shown, time after time.

Not to mention that natural agents are much cheaper than pharmaceuticals.

The drug companies KNOW what your decision would be if you were given the opportunity to make an informed choice between inexpensive, safe and effective natural remedies, versus expensive, dangerous and ineffective drugs—it would be a “no-brainer” that would severely cut into their bottom line!

I am thrilled that Congressmen Chaffetz and Polis are courageously taking on the FDA by introducing HR 1364, the Free Speech About Science Act of 2011 (FSAS), in hopes of finally ending this egregious censorship of science.

How HR 1364 Would Revolutionize Your Health Care Options

HR 1364 would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to allow the flow of legitimate scientific and educational information.

The new bill provides a limited and carefully targeted change to FDA regulations so that manufacturers and producers may reference legitimate, peer-reviewed scientific studies without converting a natural food or dietary supplement into an “unapproved drug.”

According to Rep. Chaffetz’s website, the provisions of HR 1364 do the following:

• Allow dietary supplements and healthy foods to cite legitimate scientific research

• Provide a clear definition of the types of research that may be referenced by growers and manufacturers

• Ensure that referencing such research does not convert a food or dietary supplement into an “unapproved (and therefore illegal) new drug”

• Retain the authority of FDA and FTC to pursue any fraudulent and misleading statements

According to Rep. Chaffetz:

“It is important for individuals and families to take charge of their personal health by making the right decisions to get and stay healthy. This includes accessing information so that individuals can adjust habits, eat healthfully, and take appropriate dietary supplements to prevent and even treat health conditions. 

The Free Speech About Science Act helps insure their access to legitimate scientific research to make the necessary decisions to improve their personal health and the health of their families.” 

Rep. Polis adds:

“Today’s science has shown that vitamins and nutritional supplements can offer successful, natural alternatives to drugs. As we begin to reform our nation’s healthcare system, supplements are an innovative way to help reduce costs. 

The Free Speech About Science Act is a common sense act that will make it easier for doctors and consumers to learn about the cheaper, healthier alternatives to costly medicines that food and nutritional supplements provide.”

Call to Action

More and more of you are taking charge of your own health, improving your diet and emphasizing preventive care. As you know, diet, natural supplements, and lifestyle choices play a huge role in prevention of disease.

The FDA should be at the forefront of this movement, rather than standing in its way. Instead, it blocks producers from giving you truthful scientific information — even spreading misinformation fed to it by powerful industry lobbyists.

Please lend HR 1364 your support by signing on as a co-sponsor TODAY.

Use the Alliance for Natural Health’s HR 1364 page to send a letter to your representative in support of this bill.

And forward or post this article to all of your friends and loved ones who care about their health and their right to informed consent. Don’t underestimate your power and influence!

Together, we can be a force for much-needed change.

by Suzy Cohen, R.Ph, Author of The 24-Hour Pharmacist, Diabetes Without Drugs,  and Drug Muggers: Keep Your Medicine from Stealing the Life Out of You

Statins are popular cholesterol-lowering drugs. They work in the liver by preventing your body from making cholesterol.  When you eat meals that have starches and sugar, some of the excess sugar goes to the liver, where the liver stores it away as cholesterol and triglycerides. Now stay with me — when you have a statin on board, it’s like a message to your liver saying, “No! Don’t make any more cholesterol, please stop.” So your liver sends the sugar back OUT to the bloodstream.

Many statin users come back to see their doctor for a routine visit and find that their cholesterol may be better, but now they have high blood sugar.  It’s entirely possible that some physicians mistakenly diagnose their patients with diabetes when in fact they just have hyperglycemia, the result of a medication that was prescribed to them months earlier.

It’s entirely possible that what you actually have is a known side effect of the most widely prescribed classes of medications in the world, and I personally think that this is one of the reasons now that millions of people think they have diabetes.

Obviously, there’s more to the story that you can sink your teeth into, so below are 3 links explaining exactly the mechanism of action.  It’s not something that is discussed freely in the media (they keep it hush hush).  It’s like the best kept secret.

By Russell L. Blaylock, MD
Neurosurgeon (retired)
Theoretical Neurosciences Research, LLC
Visiting Professor Biology
Belhaven University
Jackson, MS

At the outset I want to make clear, this is not a personal defense of Dr. Andrew Wakefield. I know Dr. Wakefield and have spoken to him on several occasions. He is a very nice, soft-spoken gentleman.

What is important is that the recent attack on the credibility of Dr. Andrew Wakefield is a study in political-corporate manipulation of societal perceptions of truth.

If this case was not so serious, I would find it incredibly humorous that such corrupt entities as academia, the media and the British and American regulatory agencies dare to speak of “fraud”. At virtually every turn, these agencies and entities engage in fraud that greatly exceeds that aimed at Dr. Wakefield. In fact, the attack itself is fraudulent in my view.

British Medical Journal’s Unjustified Vicious Attacks

Take for instance the statement by the editors of the British Medical Journal in their releases on the issue, where, for example, they state that Dr. Wakefield and co-authors in their article claimed to have identified a “new syndrome” of “regressive autism and bowel disease”. In fact, as the Lancet article clearly shows, this syndrome had been described in a number of published articles prior to the Wakefield article. Asperger, who described a form of autism, made the connection as early as 1961.

Certainly, these critics would not suggest that regressive autism had never before been described or that intestinal inflammation was associated with autism was a creation of Dr. Wakefield — because if that is what they are saying, it constitutes an “elaborate fraud” on the part of his attackers.

False Allegations Against Dr. Wakefield

As far as Brian Deer’s charges, that Dr. Wakefield accepted “consultancy fees from lawyers building a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers” and that “many of the children used in the study were referred by an antivaccine organization” the charges deserve some closer examination.

I am told that there is a video of this same Brian Deer admitting that the lawyers approached Dr. Wakefield after his research was well under way. I believe that switching a story around, if this is indeed true, to fit the “fraud charge” against Dr. Wakefield constitutes fraud itself.

As far as the un-named antivaccine group referring the children — so what. The only question would be, did these children meet the criteria of the study, which they certainly seemed to. It is a common practice for those wanting to test new pharmaceutical drugs, even dangerous drugs, to offer money to poor families and students desperate for money.

Is that ethical?

Objected Practices are Not Explicitly Defined

The statement by BMJ Editor-in-Chief, Fiona Godlee that the paper in question was deliberately designed to give the result Wakefield and his twelve co-authors wished is never clearly defined. Again, “massaging” of data to imply a favorable result in research papers is common fair, especially with money-making drugs like statins, the number one class of drug sold in the world.

Virtually all favorable statin papers are written by authors having multiple connections to pharmaceutical makers of the drug.¹

I find it ironic that none of his accusers have explicitly defined their objections to the study or even stated that his findings were not accurate, in terms of the primary goal of the research — that is, the presence of a well defined colitis linked with the MMR vaccine and the possibility of a link to “developmental disorders” and not “autism alone”.

Here is the exact sentence that begins the conclusion of their paper — “We describe a pattern of colitis and ileal-lymphoid nodular hyperplasia in children with developmental disorders.” (Italics mine)

In the abstract of the paper, they describe the behavioral disorders of the children — “Behavioral disorders included autism (nine), disintegrative psychosis (one), and possible postviral or vaccinal encephalitis (two)”. So, despite the image that these vicious attacks imply, they described more than just autism.

Pre-Existing Neurological Conditions Charge Incorrect

As to the charge that several of these children had pre-existing neurological problems, the paper in fact, discusses that — “Five had had early adverse reactions to immunization (rash, fever, delirium; and three cases, convulsions“. They then note “Parents were less clear about the timing of onset of abdominal symptoms because children were not toilet trained at the time or because behavioral features made children unable to communicate symptoms“.

He also clearly states that one child developed behavioral symptoms after a natural infection.

No Claim to MMR Vaccine Association and Autism Ever Made

As far as the paper claiming to prove a link between the MMR vaccine and behavioral regression in autism, they clearly state that the association may have occurred purely by chance. They then go on to explain why they think there is a link and, as all papers do, resort to referenced articles to support their view. This is perfectly acceptable in published studies, but apparently is not allowed in politically protected areas of policy.

One of the most telling sentences in the article in question and one that dispels any such charge of “blatant fraud” is this one — “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described”.

His attackers also committed fraud in stating that no one has confirmed Dr. Wakefield’s finding of a measles colitis of vaccine origin in neurodevelopmentally damaged children. In fact, in a new study, conducted at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, researchers found that 82 out of 70 children having regressive autism and colitis tested positive for measles virus in their intestine. Of great importance, just as in the Wakefield study, they found that in every case the measles virus came from the MMR vaccine.

Why Was Dr. Wakefield Singled Out?

Several questions must be asked at this juncture. Why was Dr. Wakefield singled out and why has the media completely avoided any investigation into who his accusers are and what connections do they have to those who have the most to gain should Dr. Wakefield be silenced and disgraced — that is, the pharmaceutical makers of vaccines?

In my view, he was singled out because, as even they state, they wanted to convince the public that the entire case for a link between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders in children was based on this single study. That itself is a monumental lie and they know it.

So, even their accusation is a fraud.

A number of papers had been published before the 1998 Wakefield and co-authors’ paper appeared and many scientists and clinicians suspected a link between the excessive number of vaccines added to the vaccine schedule in the 1980s and dramatic rise in neurodevelopmental disorders.²

I have written seven papers on the subject, four of which describe a detailed mechanism that explains the effects of excessive immune stimulation on brain development and behavioral problems.

U.S. Vaccine Court Acknowledge Vaccine Autism Connection

In fact, as Dr. Wakefield himself points out in his new book, Callous Disregard, the U.S. Vaccine Court and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had been settling cases of vaccine-caused autism and neurodevelopmental disorders since 1991. Of course they kept, with the help of the media, this quiet from the public.

And as CBS News reported at the time, they were settling these cases in court; while at the same time telling the public there was no connection between vaccines and autism.

So, who is really the fraud?

Real Purpose Behind Dr. Wakefield Vilification

Yet, if they can convince the public that the entire case for a link hinges on a single study, destroying the lead author of that study gives the appearance of settling the question once and for all. They know they can depend on the media to ignore all of the hundreds of studies indicating harm or even suggesting the possibility of harm; we no longer have investigative journalists, we have a corporate controlled media.

It is no secret that most media outlets are desperate for money, especially in this economy. The lifeblood of all media is advertising. Pharmaceutical companies spent $33.5 billion on promotion in 2004; almost twice as much as they spent on actual research.

Virtually every TV news network, magazine and newspaper is filled with very expensive pharmaceutical ads. These media outlets cannot afford to lose this money and this allows the pharmaceutical companies to set editorial policy. Stories criticizing vaccines are as rare as hen’s teeth.

With billions to use for influence, one witnesses massive corruption in academia and government regulatory agencies as well. The UK has one of the most aggressive vaccine policies in the world and British citizens do not like it — not because of Dr. Wakefield’s findings, but because of their own experiences.

The Real Root of Fraud in Science and Medicine

If we are really interested in rooting out fraud in science and medicine why don’t we start by investigating the financial links between the Fitness to Practice Panel of the General Medical Council, the BMJ editors, attack dogs in academia and other critics of those who want safe vaccines? Lets, for example, take a look at the fraud in the pharmaceutical industry, the real force behind this Star Chamber attack.

Recently, Life Extension Magazine editor, William Faloon wrote an article chronicling fraud by several major pharmaceutical companies.

For example, Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, after admitting to a felony charge of intent to defraud, was required to pay 2.3 billion dollars in fines. This was the fourth such charge since 2002. And it was a subsidiary of Pfizer who pled guilty to criminal charges of fraudulently selling the arthritis drug Bextra in doses not approved as safe. The 1.195 billion dollar fine was the largest criminal fine for any case in the United States.

Merck, also a vaccine manufacturer, paid out billions in lawsuit claims to tens of thousands harmed by the drug Vioxx. It has been estimated that as many as 150,000 people died as a result of this drug and that Merck knew beforehand that their drug was associated with an excess of heart attacks.

Court documents from the 2.3 billion dollar Pfizer case, found that the pharmaceutical giant was paying doctors kickbacks to prescribe their drugs — such as Lipitor, Viagra, Zyrtec and Norvasc as well as speaker’s fees, mentorships, preceptorships and other goodies. Another common practice by these companies was to sponsor medical meetings and worse, supplying actual speakers for the meetings. These fraudulent methods greatly influence unsuspecting physicians’ prescribing practices.

Massive Number of Article Ghost Writing in Medical Journals

One of the worse offenses by the Pharmaceutical vaccine makers and of the elite of the medical profession is the practice of “ghostwriting” medical articles. The process works like this. The Pharmaceutical manufacturer hires a company called Medical Education and Communications Company, MECC, to ghostwrite a fake or heavily doctored study that supports their drug or vaccine. MECC is paid anywhere from $13,000 to $18,000 to write the fraudulent article.

Then they go to an academic physician or physicians that are well known in the field and encourage them to put their name on the article. From there, they “massage” the article past peer review in one of the more prestigious medical journals, preferably one that strongly influences practicing doctors.

Once published, they purchase tens of thousands of copies of reprints to be distributed to doctor’s offices by their pharmaceutical detail representatives. The unsuspecting doctor thinks the study is reliable since it “appears” to be written by a leading name in the field and appears in one of the most prestigious medical journals in print.

The medical journal likes the arrangement because they can sell millions of dollars of reprints. It has been said that medical journals, which used to get thousands of dollars in profits, now get millions. This, my friends is blatant fraud, yet it is a common practice.

One physician told the story of his being approached by a pharmaceutical giant wanting him to put his name on one of these ghostwritten articles. He refused, but was surprised to see the very same article appear in a prestigious medical journal a short time later with another physician’s name on it.

Faloon states that Wyeth Pharmaceutical Company used this fraudulent ghostwriting practice to sell two of its drugs — Premarin and Prempro. Physicians prescribed these drugs based on some 20 ghostwritten papers. Recently, it was disclosed that Merck Pharmaceutical Company was secretly sending its agents around to female legislatures in a number of states, paying them money to support mandatory Gardasil vaccine legislation for girls as young as 11 years of age.

Drug Companies Committed to Seek and Destroy Physicians Who Disagree

Internal memos from Merck Pharmaceutical Company were released during a lawsuit involving Vioxx injuries in Australia. In these memos company executives stated that “Merck had to ‘neutralize’ dissent from doctors who questioned the safety of the drug”. One released email read — “We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live.”³

Are we to trust such people with our health and the health of our children? Vaccine safety should be a top priority, yet it is never even considered and anyone questioning vaccine safety is labeled “antivaccine” and an enemy of the public good.

The federal government has consistently refused to do well-designed studies looking at vaccine safety. The very real issue of vaccine contamination is never addressed. For instance, it is known that a majority, if not all, vaccines are contaminated with a number of foreign viruses, viral fragments, DNA fragments and toxic chemicals.

Are we to just take their word that these contaminants will not result in cancer or degenerative brain diseases decades from now?

If You Don’t Believe Me Read these Additional References

There are two books I would encourage people to read — Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s recently released book — Callous Disregard and Dr. Shiv Chopra’s book — Corrupt to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower. I know Dr. Chopra as man of enormous integrity and courage. For many years he worked for the Drug Advisory Bureau of Health Canada.

His book will take you into the heart of the beast. Each country has its own beast. We must understand how this system works or pay the ultimate price — loss of our health.

Russell L. Blaylock, MD
Neurosurgeon (retired)
Theoretical Neurosciences Research, LLC
Visiting Professor Biology
Belhaven University
Jackson, MS

You can learn more about Dr. Blaylock and his work by visiting his sites: www.russellblaylockmd.com and www.blaylockwellnesscenter.com

You can also read Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s own eye-opening statement about the study, the British Medical Journal’s eventual response to it, and the circumstances surrounding the controversy here.

References:

¹Dr. Beatrice Golomb — personal communication
²Too many articles to cite here; see the references of any of my articles on the subject
³See reference 3, Chapter 1 — Callous Disregard

By Dr. Mercola

You’ve probably heard a lot about bottled water. That it’s healthier for you than tap water, that it can replace your vitamins, that it’s really only tap water and how environmentally unfriendly it is.

With this type of conflicting information about water, it’s easy to get confused. Let’s see if we can help you cut through the clutter and lead you down the path to healthier water consumption.

Environmental Impact

There’s no sense in sugar-coating it. Bottled water is destructive to the environment. It is a fact that 67 million water bottles are thrown away each day.

That’s a staggering amount of waste considering only 10 percent of these water bottles are ever recycled. Despite the good reputation recycling has, this practice is not always best for the ecosystem as it is labor-intensive, costly and burns natural resources. Also, just because you are throwing your used water bottles into the recycling bin, it does not necessarily mean they are able to be recycled.

Another problem with bottled water is the incredible amount of fuel needed to transport these heavy loads of plastic (and sometimes glass) bottles to your local supermarket, home or office.

Where Your Bottled Water REALLY Comes From

About 40 percent of bottled water is nothing more than bottled tap water! So not only might you still be drinking all the chemicals you were trying to avoid in the first place, you may be exposing yourself to even MORE chemicals by drinking from plastic bottles …

The Dangers of Plastic

Drinking water from a plastic water bottle poses serious health risks to you and your family. Let’s take a look at some of these dangers  to give you a better idea of why bottled water is not the healthy choice you’ve been led to believe it is.

Plastic would obviously be an issue for most bottled waters but it also comes into play for home or commercially filtered waters, or even raw spring water in that you need a container to store your water before you consume it. Obviously the best container is glass because when you choose plastic you are potentially exposed to the following chemicals.

BPA – Bisphenol A or BPA is an estrogen-mimicking chemical that has been linked to a host of serious health problems including:

• Learning and behavioral problems
• Altered immune system function
• Early puberty in girls and fertility problems
• Decreased sperm count
• Prostate and breast cancer
• Diabetes and obesity

If you are pregnant or nursing, your child is also at risk. If you are feeding your baby or toddler from a plastic bottle, switch to glass to avoid BPA contamination.

Phthalates — Phthalates are widely used in the United States to make plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) more flexible.

Phthalates are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have been linked to a wide range of developmental and reproductive effects, including:

• Reduced sperm counts
• Testicular atrophy or structural abnormality
• Liver cancer

Further, in experiments on rats, phthalates have demonstrably blocked the action of fetal androgens, which affects gender development in male offspring, leading to undescended testes at birth and testicular tumors later in life.

Studies have also found that boys whose mothers had high phthalate exposures while pregnant were much more likely to have certain demasculinized traits and produce less testosterone.

Yet another study found that pregnant women who are exposed to phthalates gave birth more than one week earlier than women who were not exposed to them.

Pharmacy in a Bottle — As mentioned above, about 40 percent of bottled water is tap water. This means you are not only exposed to  dangerous BPA from the bottle, you may also be exposed to a variety of water contaminants such as fluoride, chlorine, arsenic, aluminum, disinfection byproducts and prescription drugs.

Although you may have been told that disposing your unused prescription or over-the-counter (OTC) drugs in the garbage instead of down the toilet means this eliminates the threat of your water supply being contaminated, this is simply not true. Water that drains through landfills, known as leach rate, eventually ends up in rivers. Although not all states source drinking water from rivers, many do.

According to studies, human cells do not grow normally when exposed to even minute amounts of prescription or over-the-counter drugs.

Some drugs that were never meant to be combined are mixed together in the drinking water you consume every day. Millions of people have drug allergies. Are you one of them? If so, how do you know the unusual symptoms you’ve been exhibiting are not due to ingesting small doses of the drugs you’re allergic to from your bottled water?

Ticking Time Bomb

Though drinking bottled water directly from a store shelf poses serious health risks, leaving this bottled water in your car or strapped to your bike and exposed to the hot sun will cause even more serious chemical exposure. Ultraviolet rays from the sun or high temperatures will accelerate leaching of the plastic chemicals mentioned above into the water.

Adding to this health threat is a toxic substance called dioxin, which is also released into bottled water when it is left in the sun. Dioxin has been strongly linked to the development of breast cancer.

Health-conscious people like to transport filtered water from home to ensure a safe supply on the go. If you’re one of these individuals, using a glass or steel bottle instead will bypass the risks associated with carrying filtered water in plastic.

“Vitamin Water” – As Unhealthy as Soda

One of the biggest scams soda manufacturers have come up with is, “vitamin water”. The marketers for this cleverly disguised “health drink” take advantage of your growing interest in health and try to make you believe it can measure up to the vitamins and minerals in food. It can’t even come close.

In truth, vitamin water is one of the worst types of bottled water you can drink!

Most vitamin waters contain health-harming additives such as high fructose corn syrup, which is a primary cause of  obesity and diabetes, and food dyes that can wreak havoc on your physical and emotional health.

Don’t be fooled. Skip the vitamin water. If you eat a healthy diet and follow my comprehensive nutritional plan, most of your vitamins will come from food. For more information about the health hazards of vitamin waters, please see this link.

Do Not Deliver

For years, you may have enjoyed the ease and convenience of having bottled water delivered straight to your door. The idea of being able to avoid the dangerous chemicals in tap water by having your very own water cooler full of fresh, mountain spring water to drink from may have seemed to good to be true.

Turns out, it was. Home water delivery is not an environmentally-friendly way to get the water you need.The plastic bottles they come in pose health risks that are less significant than the pint or quart water bottles as they have denser plastic and they typically are reused many times, unlike the smaller bottles.

Although some water home delivery companies will ship their water in glass, you still have no real idea where your water is coming from. Also, the load is that much heavier and requires that much more fuel to transport and heavy glass bottles can be difficult to manage and have been known to break and cut  seriously injure or even kill people.

The Truth about Fluoride

Tap water, and bottled water that originates from tap water, is loaded with fluoride. Though you may have been lead to believe this substance to be vital to the dental health of you and your family, this is simply not the case. Unfortunately, the belief that fluoride prevents cavities is a common misconception. In fact, the exact opposite is true.

As this  recent study done on children in India shows, fluoride is anything but a cavity fighter. Fluoride is a toxin that actually leads to an increased risk of cavities and can cause a wide range of health problems, including weakening your immune system and accelerating aging due to cellular damage.

One study, published in the September 2001 issue of International Journal of Pediatric Dentistry, found that South African children who drank water containing high levels of natural fluoride (3 ppm), had more tooth decay than children in other parts of South Africa who drank much lower concentrations (between 0.19 to 0.48 ppm).

And fluoride-saturated American teenagers had twice the rate of cavities as the South African children drinking low levels of natural fluoride!

Your Optimal Water Choices

Your most convenient solution is to filter your own tap water. African women spend five hours per day, on average, seeking out water and carrying it back to their villages. If you’re like most modern Americans, you have indoor plumbing in your home. So, why are you purchasing and transporting bottled water from your supermarket?

The most economical and environmentally sound choice you and your family can make is to purchase and install a water filter for your home.

My team has researched this issue extensively, and I’m pleased to announce that we will soon offer a superior water filtration system for your homecalled the Pure & Clear Whole House System.

Not many of the whole house water filtration systems my team looked at even came close to the level of certification earned by the Pure & Clear Whole House System.

By being tested and certified by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to ANSI/NSF Standard 42-2003 for chemical reduction of chlorine, the manufacturer of the Pure & Clear Whole House System delivered solid proof of its extraordinary performance.

So, if you really want to filter your entire house from chlorine, DBPs, and other contaminants, this extraordinary 3-stage filtration process is the system for you.

Alternatively, you can look around for sources of mountain spring water, which is about as close to ideal as you can get.

There’s a great website called FindaSpring.com where you can find a natural spring in your area. This is also a great way to get back to nature and teach your children about health and the sources of clean water. The best part is that most of these spring water sources are free!

Final Thoughts

Your body is made up of 80 percent water and you can only live a few days without this precious, life-giving substance. Most of you are dehydrated and not even aware of your body’s many cries for water.

But the quality, and hence the source of your water is vitally important for maintaining optimal health.

To learn even more about water, please visit my water index page for links to more articles on this important topic.

By Dr. Mercola

Have you noticed that practically every day a new story comes out in the media about the toxic side effects of living in the modern world?  Chemical and heavy metal dangers seem to be lurking everywhere you turn in the 21^st century!

Pesticides coat much of our fresh food supply, chemical by-products from manufacturing are routinely dumped into our air and water, and mercury amalgam fillings in your teeth may be releasing mercury into your body with every bite of food you take!

The seafood in our oceans are laden with heavy metals and mercury and pass these poisons up the food chain until potentially massive doses of both wind up on your dinner plate disguised as a healthy meal.

Underground water supplies have been tainted by chemical and pesticide run off from farms, factories and high technology industries.  In fact, acceptable levels of many poisons are allowed to come into your home through your drinking and bathing water, including fluoride, chlorine and low levels of many heavy metals.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that your body too is under attack from environmental pollution every single day.  You can seek to protect yourself and combat this hazard by eating foods that are free of pesticides and chemicals, but you simply cannot entirely remove all sources of toxins from your environment.  The damage to our world is just too widespread and pervasive.

You have to take it upon yourself to take measures to protect you and your family from this toxic world, and one of the best natural sources for moving these toxic materials out of your body is a whole-food based, green algae called chlorella.

How You Can Fight Systemic Pollution?

To address the harmful and unwanted chemicals your body picks up through the food you eat, the air you breathe, and the water you drink, it is wise to develop a proactive plan.  One of the most powerful parts of this plan is detoxification of the toxins you may have already built up inside your body.

Your body is naturally able to remove many of the harmful pathogens, chemicals and poisons you may come into contact with in the environment.  That’s how we are all designed. 

But in the 21^st century, we’re seeing an explosion of accumulated toxin-related diseases like cancer, auto-immune dysfunction, brain disorders like autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, nerve disorders and more common ailments like depression, learning disabilities and fatigue. 

It can become relatively easy to overwhelm your body’s ability to remove many of these toxins from your body.

Symptoms of toxic build-up due to chronic metal exposure include:

• Fatigue
• Digestive distress, and reduced ability to properly assimilate and utilize fats
• Aching joints
• Depression
• Impaired blood sugar regulation
• Female reproductive problems

Mercury is also a potent toxin in its own right that can damage your brain, central nervous system and kidneys, and is especially dangerous for children, fetuses, pregnant and nursing women and people who have high levels of mercury bioburden.

So it clearly pays dividends to detoxify your body of accumulated toxins these built up , to get yourself to a healthier state where your body can more effectively remove the toxins you’re exposed to every day.

Infrared Sauna

There are ten to 100 times more toxins in your fat than on in your blood, so one of the best ways to remove toxins is to decrease your body fat. That really is your firs defense.  Choosing the right foods and exercise are key here.

After that, one of the most effective detoxification strategies I know of is the use of an infrared sauna. This can be done for about one hour daily for a month. Remember, it’s important to hydrate well before and during the sauna treatment to avoid dehydration.

Additionally, you can exercise for 30-60 minutes immediately prior to help liberate some of the toxins from you fat.

Some clinicians have also found the use of NON timed release niacin useful, as it helps liberate toxins from the fat.  However, relatively high doses of 5,000 mg are needed. These high doses need to be slowly worked up to as niacin will cause flushing. However, about one fourth of people are simply unable to tolerate the niacin flush.

Please avoid timed release niacin as it can lead to chemical hepatitis.

Chlorella as a Powerful Detoxification Tool

One of the most exciting nutritional resources available today to help your body naturally fight environmental pollution is a whole-food based supplement called chlorella.

Chlorella is actually one of the most widely used supplements in Japan, where over 10 million people use it regularly.  The Japanese use of chlorella is more widespread than the North American use of vitamin C, our most popular supplement.

Do the Japanese know something we don’t?

One of the reasons the Japanese value chlorella so highly is its natural detoxification abilities.

Chlorella is a “green food,” a single-celled, micro-algae that is about two to ten microns in size.  It’s very small.  It is this small size and combined with its unique properties that make it such a useful detoxification tool. Its molecular structure, allows it to bond to metals, chemicals and some pesticides.

When chlorella is taken into your body, its natural action will bind it to lingering heavy metals, chemicals and pesticides found in your digestive tract, which is your body’s pathway to your bloodstream where these harmful toxins are delivered and deposited into your body’s cells.

So chlorella first and foremost will help your body eliminate unwanted metals and toxins.  But it does more than that.

Chlorella is uniquely designed to not bind to the minerals your body naturally needs to function optimally.  It does not bind to beneficial minerals like calcium, magnesium, or zinc.  It’s almost as if chlorella knows which metals belong in your body and which chemicals need to be removed.

Supplementing with chlorella is like unleashing a tiny army inside your body to fight the battle of removing toxins from your tissues and ushering them back outside your body where they belong.

The History of Chlorella

Chlorella is one of the most widely studied food supplements in the world.  Aside from being the subject of medical research in the USA, USSR, Germany, Japan, France, England and Israel, chlorella has been extensively studied as a food source since it is made up of a whopping 50 percent protein and is considered a complete amino acid-based food.

Even NASA has studied using chlorella as the one of first whole foods in space on the international space station!

Studies in Japan have shown chlorella may help reduce body fat percentage and may be useful in fighting obesity and weight related diabetes.  It may also help reduce both cholesterol and hypertension.

Chlorella’s cleansing action on your bowel and other elimination channels, as well as its protection of your liver, also helps promote clean blood. And clean blood helps assure metabolic waste get efficiently carried away from your tissues.

Chlorella is such a powerful detoxifier because it is rich in chlorophyll, which is known to:

• Aid you in processing more oxygen
• Cleanse key elimination systems like your bowel, liver, and blood
• Help purify your blood and clean away toxins
• Aid you in promoting optimal blood pressure
• Support elimination of molds in your body
• Help neutralize bad air you might breathe in
• Promote growth and repair of your tissues

Chlorella is actually very useful even beyond detoxification, and its range of health benefits includes:

• Boosting your immune system
• Improving your digestion, especially if constipation is a problem
• Provide B vitamins from an animal source
• Enhancing your ability to focus and concentrate
• Increasing your energy levels
• Balancing your body’s pH
• Normalizing your blood sugar and blood pressure
• Reducing your cancer risk
• Freshening your breath

A three-year double-blind metal detoxification study with over 350 people participating was undertaken at a Russian metal foundry, where more than 20 natural compounds were used in trials to remove heavy metals from people who had been exposed at very high levels to four main metals – antimony, lead, dadmium and arsenic.

What were the results of testing chlorella as a heavy metal detoxification agent?

The Russian trial using Broken Cell Wall chlorella combined with cilantro eliminated ALL heavy metals, including mercury!  With no side-effects!

In fact, the heavy metal binding power of chlorella was first discovered in the mining industry. Mixed with water, they pumped chlorella into mine shafts to collect the residual metals after bulk mining was completed.

Not All Chlorella is Created Equally

Unlike many food supplements, chlorella has one unique feature that makes the manufacturing process one of the primary concerns when considering a source of supplementation.

Chlorella is completely indigestible by humans, we simply do not have the enzymes to break down its cell wall.

Unlike other green foods, chewing and digesting chlorella will not release the powerful health benefits contained within this green algae.  This is because chlorella’s tough outer cell wall, which is also chemically responsible for binding with the toxins inside your body, cannot be broken down by your biology,

Therefore, it is imperative that the manufacturing process break down the tough outer cell wall for you, as this is the only way to make the chlorella biologically available to remove toxins from your body.

This is why I only recommend supplementing with Broken Cell Wall chlorella, because this is the only form that your body can use this powerful detoxification agent.

Another concern when choosing your chlorella is that the source waters where it is grown and harvested be free of any contamination.  Since chlorella is a natural green food, it will be affected by polluted water and will retain environmental toxins if it’s grown in contaminated waters.  So be certain any chlorella you supplement with comes from a naturally clean water source.

One other aspect of chlorella you need to be aware of is some people tolerate it better than others. 

You should always start any detox with chlorella gradually, taking just a small amount at first to see how your body tolerates this powerful detoxification tool. 

Some people also report benefits from beginning a detoxification by first eating small amounts of cilantro for a few days.  Cilantro also promotes a detoxification response in your body, but at a less intense level — which may help your body ease into a smoother detoxification response from chlorella.

The best results of using broken cell wall chlorella for detoxification have also been documented as coming from mixing chlorella with the green plant cilantro, so this might be another consideration for you when undertaking your detoxification program. 

I recommending finding an organic source of cilantro, to insure you are not putting more unwanted chemicals into your body as you try to detoxify your body’s already existing heavy metal burden.

Too Much Iron?

One other thing to be aware of when using chlorella is that this green algae does contain large concentrations of iron. 

Iron levels in women should not be a problem due to the loss of iron related to the menstrual cycle, but for men, or postmenopausal women, too much iron can become a problem.

So for men using chlorella, you want to have your blood iron levels checked regularly to ensure the iron in your blood is staying within healthy levels. The simple best screen is ferritin. Ideally it should be between 20 and 80 ng/ml.  Levels over 150 or higher become problematic and should be treated by blood donations or therapeutic phlebotomies.

Chlorella for Vegetarians and Vegans

Chlorella is also a great source of complete amino acid protein, and is made up of 50 percent protein.  So vegans and vegetarians can benefit not only from the detoxification properties of chlorella, but can also enhance their B vitamin and protein intake as well through chlorella supplementation.

Many claim that it can also be a useful source of vitamin B12. While chlorella does contain this vitamin most people develop deficiencies because they lose the ability to absorb it. So swallowing it will not provide the same benefit as injecting it or using it in a sublingual drop or spray.

To the best of my knowledge, chlorella is not an effective alternative to animal sources of vitamin B12 which can be an issue for vegans as there are a number of reports of strict vegans going blind after seven years due to vitamin B12 deficiency.

Final Thoughts on Chlorella

Sometimes living in the modern world can feel like you’re at war with the environment around you, and sources of pollution are often silent and unavoidable.

You can do your best to avoid pollution and toxins, eat only the healthiest organic foods, drink only filtered water, avoid exposure to harsh man-made chemicals, and yet still find yourself exposed daily to massive amounts of harmful pollutants that are totally outside of your control.

Maintaining optimum wellness includes creating defensive mechanisms to fight back against these pervasive and unavoidable environmental assaults on your good health. 

By implementing a detoxification program now you can help your body naturally remove the unwanted and harmful heavy metals, chemicals and pesticides you may unknowingly taken into your body.  And lessening your toxic burden has been shown to improve many common health ailments, from lack of energy and insomnia, to sluggish digestion, lack of immune response and mental fatigue. 

In fact, almost everything inside your body, including all of your organs, function better with reduced loads of systemic toxins.

And by removing the toxins now and not letting them accumulate to dangerous levels, you may be helping your body ward of such killers as cancer, diabetes, and hypertension, along with all of the now too common neurological disorders that may not manifest for decades to come.

Just remember to start slowly, perhaps using cilantro first, and gradually increase your intake of chlorella at a pace your body can tolerate. 

It took a long time for your body to accumulate these toxins and it will probably take you many weeks and even months to effectively remove them from your system.  So if you experience any indigestion or discomfort from chlorella supplements, you’re probably taking too much too fast.

It will be crucial to lower your body fat as low as possible as this will remove large amounts of toxins from your body that are stored there.  You can also use the infrared sauna in conjunction with exercise and niacin as described above.

Additionally one of the best defenses and one of the supplements (more like a whole green food) that I highly recommend in your battle against toxins is chlorella.

Be patient, stick with chlorella supplementation, and in a few weeks you’ll most likely begin to notice an overall improvement in your health as you naturally start to remove these heavy metals, chemicals and pesticides from your body.

By Dr. Mercola

It’s been seven years since I posted the comprehensive, footnoted research article, Death by Medicine, on this website.  Authored in two parts by Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, and Dorothy Smith PhD, it described in excruciating detail how the modern American medical system had bumbled its way into becoming the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.

From medical errors to adverse drug reactions to unnecessary procedures, heart disease, cancer deaths and infant mortality, the authors took statistics straight from the most respected medical and scientific journals and investigative reports by the Institutes of Medicine (IOM), and showed that on the whole American medicine caused more harm than good.

The purpose of this was not to frighten you, but to help you make informed choices about your health, and to provide you with the tools you need to take control of your own health

Seven years after the original  article was written, an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine November 25, 2010 piqued my interest – the researchers found that, despite efforts to improve patient safety in the past few years, the health care system hasn’t changed much at all.

Instead, 18 percent of patients were harmed by medical care (some repeatedly) and over 63 percent of the injuries could have been prevented.

In nearly 2.5 percent of these cases, the problems caused or contributed to a person’s death. In another 3 percent, patients suffered from permanent injury, while over 8 percent experienced life-threatening issues, such as severe bleeding during surgery.

In all there were over 25 injuries per 100 admissions!

Shocked, I decided to do some research of my own on the state of American health care today.

What I found is the grim picture that I’m sharing with you, as an update to the original Death by Medicine article.

Over 40,000 Mistakes EVERY Day!

Unfortunately, the NEJM article was just a reminder of something that the Thirteenth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study pointed out earlier this year.

HealthGrades has been studying the quality of care in the nation’s hospitals since 1988. This year they analyzed approximately 40 million Medicare patients’ records from 2007 through 2009, and found that 1 in 9 patients developed a hospital-acquired infection.

The HealthGrades report said that “the incidence rate of medical harm occurring is estimated to be over 40,000 each and EVERY day according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.”

Another study, in 2008, by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, also reported grave evidence that something is amiss in the hospital setting in America: One in seven Medicare beneficiaries who is hospitalized will be harmed as a result of the medical care they receive in the hospital, the study said.

Authors of this study found that physician reviewers determined nearly half, or 44 percent of the adverse and temporary harm events “were clearly or likely preventable.”

The cost of these mistakes was estimated at $324 million in October alone. The mistakes equate to 3.5 percent of the Medicare budget.

Hospital-Acquired Infections

Another study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine this year, showed that sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital-acquired infections killed 48,000 patients and ramped up health care costs by $8.1 billion in 2006 alone. Both these infections are mostly preventable through better infection controls.

The study also found that 20 percent of people who developed sepsis died; 11 percent of those who developed pneumonia died.

The authors noted that many hospital-acquired infections are super resistant to common antibiotics – and it’s not just sepsis and pneumonia that they’re talking about.

A different study in 2006 showed that “central-line-associated” bloodstream infections caused by catheters placed directly into veins resulted in a $26,839 loss for each patient that came down with this type of hospital-acquired infection.

This same study estimated that 2 million people come down with hospital-acquired infections of any type in every year, and that approximately 100,000 die from those infections.

Medication Errors Alone Kill Another 260,000 Every Year

In 2000 the Institutes of Medicine reported that medical errors were the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S., killing between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year. While the number of errors today is said to possibly be the fourth leading cause of death in a hospital, health officials agree that this type of death-by-medicine is still prevalent – and preventable.

In a June 2010 report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, study authors said that in looking over records that spanned from 1976 to 2006 (the most recent year available) they found that, of 62 million death certificates, almost a quarter-million deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors.

They also found that these errors spiked in July, and particularly in teaching hospitals.

There are four points in the medication use process at which errors may occur:

1. When the medication is ordered (written, electronic, or oral)
2. when the medication order is transcribed and verified
3. when it’s dispensed, and
4. when it’s administered

The June 2010 report narrowed the errors down to:

• drug overdose
• prescribing the wrong drug
• taking the wrong drug, or
• accidents involving medications during surgery or medical procedures

Older adults are at a higher risk of medication errors and have a greater propensity for experiencing harmful and fatal errors. The most common types of medication errors in older adults are omission and improper dose.

Nearly Half a Billion Preventable Adverse Drug Reactions

An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S. every year.

A study published in the Journal of Gerontology in 2006 showed that adverse drug reactions are very common in frail elderly persons after a hospital stay, and polypharmacy and warfarin use consistently increase the risk.

The costs of adverse drug reactions to society are more than $136 billion annually – greater than the total cost of cardiovascular or diabetic care.

Adverse drug reactions cause injuries or death in 1 of 5 hospital patients.

The reason there are so many adverse drug events in the U.S. is because so many drugs are used and prescribed – and many patients receive multiple prescriptions at varying strengths, some of which may counteract each other or cause more severe reactions when combined.

In 2009 there were nearly 3.68 billion prescriptions filled in the U.S. That averages to almost 12 prescriptions for every person in the U.S. Other interesting drug statistics are:

• Specialists give more than 2 prescriptions per visit
• Just over 89 percent of Medicare patients take prescription medicine daily
• 46 percent take 5 or more prescriptions chronically
• Nearly 54 percent take meds prescribed by more than one doctor

One thing that the drug companies don’t tell you, and that your physician may not realize, is that premarketing drug safety profiles may be very narrow: most new drugs have 3,000 or less short-term patient exposures.

Another fact the drug companies don’t advertise is that some drugs have rare toxicity possibilities, meaning very bad side effects could occur in as few as 1 in 20,000 patients. To detect such rare toxicity, more than 60,000 patients must be exposed AFTER the drug is marketed.

49^th in Life Expectancy, First in Health Care Costs

The latest study published in Health Affairs revealed that the United States now ranks 49^th in the world for both male and female life expectancy, down from 24^th in 1999.

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.

The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world.

U.S. infants also are in the basement when it comes to mortality rates;  according to 2009 data compiled by the World Bank, the U.S. is 41 places behind other countries in infant mortality.

Is American Medicine Working?

There’s no doubt that government health care officials are worried about this country’s reputation for safety in the hospital setting.

If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have set up the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, a task force charged with developing plans and strategies for making American health care safer.

The problem is that, as it always with government, things move very slowly when change is needed, so the nation has yet to have a nation adverse event reporting system for hospital medical errors.

We also don’t have any federal standards regarding state systems.

The question is whether living the status quo is going to make us any healthier or not, and if it doesn’t, what are we going to do to make a better life for ourselves?

What about Preventive Care?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the American health care system is skewed toward treating illnesses and diseases, not preventing them.

In 2003, my Death by Medicine report showed that judging by health care spending alone, the U.S. should be the healthiest country in the world with the best medicine available. But it wasn’t.

And today, it still isn’t.

One reason for that is because an obscure federal panel that most people never hear about not only defines what preventive medicine is, but decides what services your health care dollars will pay for.

Historically that panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has been accused of being ultra-conservative in the way of preventive care. But when it does approve it, the definition of preventive care means some kind of diagnostic test for a possible existing illness, not a strategy for staying well.

For example, if you take a look at the task force’s website, you’ll see lists of “preventive” medicine topics the group is considering that include such things as aspirin use and various types of disease screenings – with only one mention of vitamin supplements as a possible upcoming preventive strategy.

If you click on the task force’s A to Z topic guide of existing “preventive” health care, you’ll see that almost every single one is some type of disease screening or counseling for a condition you already have.

And that’s what’s wrong with U.S. health care, whether it was seven years ago or today – we are all too eager to embrace screenings for diseases or illnesses we may or may not have, and counseling and/or medical treatment in the form of pills and chemicals and surgeries for it, after we find out what disease it is we have.

According to the Kaiser Foundation and the CDC, the main drivers of health care costs in the U.S. are technology and prescription drugs; chronic disease; aging of the population; and administrative costs.

I agree that these are huge contributors to what is killing us as a nation financially and as a people. But I DON’T agree with the context in which they’re presented.

If you’ve followed all the information I’ve given you here, and even skimmed the 2003 Death by Medicine article, then I think you’ll see why I think the major contributors have a slightly different paradigm – and that the only way we are get healthier as a nation, and drive medical costs down too, is to change that paradigm.

That’s because the foundational causes of what’s driving health care costs in America are:

1. The emphasis on sickness and treatment, rather than health, fitness, and prevention which is primarily fostered by ultra-sophisticated marketing strategies employed by the drug cartel.
2. Fraud – by both consumers and providers, including the drug industry.
3. Unnecessary procedures, medications, hospitalizations and screenings
4. Medical mistakes, hospital-acquired infections, and surgical and device errors

If we were only to address these issues, beginning with changing the emphasis of our well-being to health and fitness, and then following the healthy lifestyle that paradigm suggests, I promise that the issue of sickness in America and what it’s costing us – as well as the death-by-medicine events will begin to fade away very quickly.

It’s time to quit bombarding your body with medical interventions and to reward yourself with the fit and healthy body that come from living fit and lean.

And until then – until our health care system as a whole – changes the emphasis of what we’re doing to health and healthful living, exercise, proper nutrition and diet, and vitamin supplementation, we’re not going to see anything in our health care system change, even if we wait another seven years to see how it’s going.

References:

Hanlon JT, Pieper CF, Hajjar ER, Sloane RJ, Lindblad CI, Ruby CM,Schmader KE. Incidence and Predictors of All and Preventable Adverse Drug Reactions in Frail Elderly Persons after Hospital Stay. Journals of Gerontology A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2006 May;61(5):511-5

Buerhaus PI, Needleman J. Policy implications of research on nurse staffing and quality of patient care. Policy Politics Nurs Practice 2000; 1(1):5-15.

The Department of Health and Human Services and The Department of Justice – Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2009

Adverse Events in Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Beneficiaries

By Dr. Mercola

It’s been seven years since I posted the comprehensive, footnoted research article, Death by Medicine, on this website.  Authored in two parts by Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, and Dorothy Smith PhD, it described in excruciating detail how the modern American medical system had bumbled its way into becoming the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.

From medical errors to adverse drug reactions to unnecessary procedures, heart disease, cancer deaths and infant mortality, the authors took statistics straight from the most respected medical and scientific journals and investigative reports by the Institutes of Medicine (IOM), and showed that on the whole American medicine caused more harm than good.

The purpose of this was not to frighten you, but to help you make informed choices about your health, and to provide you with the tools you need to take control of your own health

Seven years after the original  article was written, an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine November 25, 2010 piqued my interest – the researchers found that, despite efforts to improve patient safety in the past few years, the health care system hasn’t changed much at all.

Instead, 18 percent of patients were harmed by medical care (some repeatedly) and over 63 percent of the injuries could have been prevented.

In nearly 2.5 percent of these cases, the problems caused or contributed to a person’s death. In another 3 percent, patients suffered from permanent injury, while over 8 percent experienced life-threatening issues, such as severe bleeding during surgery.

In all there were over 25 injuries per 100 admissions!

Shocked, I decided to do some research of my own on the state of American health care today.

What I found is the grim picture that I’m sharing with you, as an update to the original Death by Medicine article.

Over 40,000 Mistakes EVERY Day!

Unfortunately, the NEJM article was just a reminder of something that the Thirteenth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study pointed out earlier this year.

HealthGrades has been studying the quality of care in the nation’s hospitals since 1988. This year they analyzed approximately 40 million Medicare patients’ records from 2007 through 2009, and found that 1 in 9 patients developed a hospital-acquired infection.

The HealthGrades report said that “the incidence rate of medical harm occurring is estimated to be over 40,000 each and EVERY day according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.”

Another study, in 2008, by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, also reported grave evidence that something is amiss in the hospital setting in America: One in seven Medicare beneficiaries who is hospitalized will be harmed as a result of the medical care they receive in the hospital, the study said.

Authors of this study found that physician reviewers determined nearly half, or 44 percent of the adverse and temporary harm events “were clearly or likely preventable.”

The cost of these mistakes was estimated at $324 million in October alone. The mistakes equate to 3.5 percent of the Medicare budget.

Hospital-Acquired Infections

Another study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine this year, showed that sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital-acquired infections killed 48,000 patients and ramped up health care costs by $8.1 billion in 2006 alone. Both these infections are mostly preventable through better infection controls.

The study also found that 20 percent of people who developed sepsis died; 11 percent of those who developed pneumonia died.

The authors noted that many hospital-acquired infections are super resistant to common antibiotics – and it’s not just sepsis and pneumonia that they’re talking about.

A different study in 2006 showed that “central-line-associated” bloodstream infections caused by catheters placed directly into veins resulted in a $26,839 loss for each patient that came down with this type of hospital-acquired infection.

This same study estimated that 2 million people come down with hospital-acquired infections of any type in every year, and that approximately 100,000 die from those infections.

Medication Errors Alone Kill Another 260,000 Every Year

In 2000 the Institutes of Medicine reported that medical errors were the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S., killing between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year. While the number of errors today is said to possibly be the fourth leading cause of death in a hospital, health officials agree that this type of death-by-medicine is still prevalent – and preventable.

In a June 2010 report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, study authors said that in looking over records that spanned from 1976 to 2006 (the most recent year available) they found that, of 62 million death certificates, almost a quarter-million deaths were coded as having occurred in a hospital setting due to medication errors.

They also found that these errors spiked in July, and particularly in teaching hospitals.

There are four points in the medication use process at which errors may occur:

1. When the medication is ordered (written, electronic, or oral)
2. when the medication order is transcribed and verified
3. when it’s dispensed, and
4. when it’s administered

The June 2010 report narrowed the errors down to:

• drug overdose
• prescribing the wrong drug
• taking the wrong drug, or
• accidents involving medications during surgery or medical procedures

Older adults are at a higher risk of medication errors and have a greater propensity for experiencing harmful and fatal errors. The most common types of medication errors in older adults are omission and improper dose.

Nearly Half a Billion Preventable Adverse Drug Reactions

An estimated 450,000 preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S. every year.

A study published in the Journal of Gerontology in 2006 showed that adverse drug reactions are very common in frail elderly persons after a hospital stay, and polypharmacy and warfarin use consistently increase the risk.

The costs of adverse drug reactions to society are more than $136 billion annually – greater than the total cost of cardiovascular or diabetic care.

Adverse drug reactions cause injuries or death in 1 of 5 hospital patients.

The reason there are so many adverse drug events in the U.S. is because so many drugs are used and prescribed – and many patients receive multiple prescriptions at varying strengths, some of which may counteract each other or cause more severe reactions when combined.

In 2009 there were nearly 3.68 billion prescriptions filled in the U.S. That averages to almost 12 prescriptions for every person in the U.S. Other interesting drug statistics are:

• Specialists give more than 2 prescriptions per visit
• Just over 89 percent of Medicare patients take prescription medicine daily
• 46 percent take 5 or more prescriptions chronically
• Nearly 54 percent take meds prescribed by more than one doctor

One thing that the drug companies don’t tell you, and that your physician may not realize, is that premarketing drug safety profiles may be very narrow: most new drugs have 3,000 or less short-term patient exposures.

Another fact the drug companies don’t advertise is that some drugs have rare toxicity possibilities, meaning very bad side effects could occur in as few as 1 in 20,000 patients. To detect such rare toxicity, more than 60,000 patients must be exposed AFTER the drug is marketed.

49^th in Life Expectancy, First in Health Care Costs

The latest study published in Health Affairs revealed that the United States now ranks 49^th in the world for both male and female life expectancy, down from 24^th in 1999.

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.

The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world.

U.S. infants also are in the basement when it comes to mortality rates;  according to 2009 data compiled by the World Bank, the U.S. is 41 places behind other countries in infant mortality.

Is American Medicine Working?

There’s no doubt that government health care officials are worried about this country’s reputation for safety in the hospital setting.

If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have set up the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, a task force charged with developing plans and strategies for making American health care safer.

The problem is that, as it always with government, things move very slowly when change is needed, so the nation has yet to have a nation adverse event reporting system for hospital medical errors.

We also don’t have any federal standards regarding state systems.

The question is whether living the status quo is going to make us any healthier or not, and if it doesn’t, what are we going to do to make a better life for ourselves?

What about Preventive Care?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the American health care system is skewed toward treating illnesses and diseases, not preventing them.

In 2003, my Death by Medicine report showed that judging by health care spending alone, the U.S. should be the healthiest country in the world with the best medicine available. But it wasn’t.

And today, it still isn’t.

One reason for that is because an obscure federal panel that most people never hear about not only defines what preventive medicine is, but decides what services your health care dollars will pay for.

Historically that panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has been accused of being ultra-conservative in the way of preventive care. But when it does approve it, the definition of preventive care means some kind of diagnostic test for a possible existing illness, not a strategy for staying well.

For example, if you take a look at the task force’s website, you’ll see lists of “preventive” medicine topics the group is considering that include such things as aspirin use and various types of disease screenings – with only one mention of vitamin supplements as a possible upcoming preventive strategy.

If you click on the task force’s A to Z topic guide of existing “preventive” health care, you’ll see that almost every single one is some type of disease screening or counseling for a condition you already have.

And that’s what’s wrong with U.S. health care, whether it was seven years ago or today – we are all too eager to embrace screenings for diseases or illnesses we may or may not have, and counseling and/or medical treatment in the form of pills and chemicals and surgeries for it, after we find out what disease it is we have.

According to the Kaiser Foundation and the CDC, the main drivers of health care costs in the U.S. are technology and prescription drugs; chronic disease; aging of the population; and administrative costs.

I agree that these are huge contributors to what is killing us as a nation financially and as a people. But I DON’T agree with the context in which they’re presented.

If you’ve followed all the information I’ve given you here, and even skimmed the 2003 Death by Medicine article, then I think you’ll see why I think the major contributors have a slightly different paradigm – and that the only way we are get healthier as a nation, and drive medical costs down too, is to change that paradigm.

That’s because the foundational causes of what’s driving health care costs in America are:

1. The emphasis on sickness and treatment, rather than health, fitness, and prevention which is primarily fostered by ultra-sophisticated marketing strategies employed by the drug cartel.
2. Fraud – by both consumers and providers, including the drug industry.
3. Unnecessary procedures, medications, hospitalizations and screenings
4. Medical mistakes, hospital-acquired infections, and surgical and device errors

If we were only to address these issues, beginning with changing the emphasis of our well-being to health and fitness, and then following the healthy lifestyle that paradigm suggests, I promise that the issue of sickness in America and what it’s costing us – as well as the death-by-medicine events will begin to fade away very quickly.

It’s time to quit bombarding your body with medical interventions and to reward yourself with the fit and healthy body that come from living fit and lean.

And until then – until our health care system as a whole – changes the emphasis of what we’re doing to health and healthful living, exercise, proper nutrition and diet, and vitamin supplementation, we’re not going to see anything in our health care system change, even if we wait another seven years to see how it’s going.

References:

Hanlon JT, Pieper CF, Hajjar ER, Sloane RJ, Lindblad CI, Ruby CM,Schmader KE. Incidence and Predictors of All and Preventable Adverse Drug Reactions in Frail Elderly Persons after Hospital Stay. Journals of Gerontology A Biol Sci Med Sci. 2006 May;61(5):511-5

Buerhaus PI, Needleman J. Policy implications of research on nurse staffing and quality of patient care. Policy Politics Nurs Practice 2000; 1(1):5-15.

The Department of Health and Human Services and The Department of Justice – Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2009

Adverse Events in Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Beneficiaries

Imagine a plant that can nourish your body by providing most of the protein you need to live, help prevent the annoying sniffling and sneezing of allergies, reinforce your immune system, help you control high blood pressure and cholesterol and protect you from cancer.

Does such a “super food” exist?

Yes. It’s called spirulina.

Unlike plants you may grow in your garden, this “miracle” plant is a form of blue-green algae that springs from warm, fresh water bodies.

Spirulina vs Chlorella – Similarities and Differences

Chlorella is another form of algae that is sometimes confused with spirulina. The fundamental difference between spirulina and chlorella is that spirulina is millions of years older and does not possess the hard cell wall that makes chlorella closer to being a plant than algae.

Chlorella is an excellent way to detoxify your body from mercury, which most of you are contaminated with if you’ve ever had dental fillings, received a vaccine, used certain types of cookware or eaten fish.  Spirulina simply is unable to remove heavy metals like chlorella as it lacks a cell membrane.

Chlorella has also has proved to be of benefit to those who suffer from degenerative disease.

This report, however, will focus on the specific benefits that can be attributed to spirulina in particular.

Spirulina History – Could This Super Food End World Hunger?

Spirulina is a simple, one-celled organism that got its name from the Latin word for ‘helix’ or ‘spiral’ because of its spring-like physical characteristic. Its scientific name is Arthrospira platensis, and it belongs to the cyanobacteria family.

The use of spirulina as a food source dates all the way back to 9^th century Chad and it is believed spirulina was used by the Aztecs in 16^th century Mexico. Historical records report the harvesting and selling of cakes made from spirulina harvested from Lake Texcoco.

It was rediscovered in the 1950’s in the same place where it has said to have its origins by a European scientific mission. The spirulina was being harvested and sold in dried flat cakes called, “dihé” at the local markets where natives would use it as a staple for many of their meals.

Spirulina didn’t come into commercial production until the 1970’s when a French company began the first large-scale spirulina production plant. Within a few years, America and Japan began producing their own spirulina.

Today, these nutrient-rich algae are being used around the world to treat illness and are being seriously discussed as a sustainable source of food with the potential to  end world hunger. Unlike most plants, which need to be cultivated and nurtured, spirulina is a survivor, able to withstand extreme temperature variations and neglect and still thrive.

According to studies, spirulina is being successfully used  to treat a wide variety of ailments, including those who’ve been poisoned by arsenic-contaminated water.

How Spirulina Saved Millions from Arsenic Poisoning

Most of us take clean, healthy drinking water for granted. Unfortunately, in some countries like Bangladesh, it is a luxury. As I stated in this previous article, much of the Bangladesh water supply is loaded with arsenic and up until the mid-1990s, little could be done to treat dying arsenic poisoning patients.

Bangladeshi researchers conducted a three-month-hospital-based study where spirulina was given to 33 patients while 17 received placebo doses. 82 percent of those taking spirulina showed tremendous improvement.

An Immune-System Power-Boost – Spirulina’s Impact on Candida and AIDS

According to a study done by the Department of Aquataculture in Taiwan, spirulina shows significant immune-boosting properties. Researchers exposed white shrimp to seawater containing a hot-water extract of spirulina before transferring them to seawater with a pH level of 6.8. The control group was not exposed to spirulina.

The shrimp exposed to the spirulina seawater showed a faster and more promising recovery rate to the high levels of pH than those not given the dose of spirulina first.

Now, let’s take a look at what this immune-system boosting power can mean for you:

Candida

If you have an autoimmune disease such as Crohn’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lupus or fibromyalgia, chronic candida yeast can both cause and worsen your symptoms. Spirulina has been shown to encourage and support the growth of healthy bacterial flora in your gut, which can help keep candida overgrowth under control.

HIV and AIDS

Drugs such as AZT used to treat HIV and AIDS patients can actually cause the symptoms they are supposed to cure. However, spirulina has been shown to inactive the human immunodeficiency virus associated with HIV and AIDS.  

Nothing to Sneeze At

If you suffer from seasonal or perennial allergies, you’re not alone. Millions of people are allergic to pollen, ragweed, dust, mold, pet dander and a myriad other environmental contaminants, ensuring the makers of Kleenex will always stay in business.

Unfortunately, many people who have allergic rhinitis treat it with prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs that often do more harm than good. Antihistamines are designed to suppress your immune system, which leads to decreased resistance to disease and dependence on the drug.

Certain asthma drugs have been linked to serious side effects as well.

This is where natural methods such as the use of spirulina come in.

According to  one study, patients treated with spirulina reported relief of symptoms commonly associated with allergic rhinitis, such as nasal discharge and congestion, sneezing and itching when given spirulina. 

Balances Blood Pressure

High blood pressure (hypertension) is a serious health concern that affects millions of Americans today. If you have high blood pressure, you are at increased risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke.

The good news is, following a healthy nutritional plan, getting adequate exercise and applying stress modification techniques such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) can help normalize blood pressure and get you back on track to optimal health.

According to a study done by the Department of Biochemistry in Mexico, 4.5 grams of spirulina given each day, was shown to regulate blood pressure among both women and men between the ages of 18-65 years with no other dietary changes made during the 6 weeks the experiment was run.

For more information about high blood pressure and how to normalize it without resorting to potentially dangerous drugs, please see this link.

Help to Normalize Cholesterol Naturally

Are you on a cholesterol medication?

Tens of millions of people take cholesterol-lowering medications every day and, according to “experts”, millions more should be taking them, including children! If you are skeptical about this recommendation please see this page, which contains a list of articles addressing the dangers of statin drugs.

Statin drugs are responsible for a host of unwanted and dangerous side effects including:

• Sexual dysfunction
• Anemia
• Immune depression
• Acidosis
• Pancreas or liver dysfunction (including a potential increase in liver enzymes)
• Cataracts
• Increased cancer risk

Cholesterol-lowering medications have also been linked to severe muscle problems such as polyneuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet) and rhabdomyolysis (a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition). There is even evidence to suggest that taking statins can increase your risk of developing Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Thankfully, there are natural ways to lower your cholesterol. Avoiding fructose and grains, and getting appropriate exercise top the list (for more information, please see this previous article), but spirulina may also help.

According to a study done on elderly male and female patients ages 60-87, those given 8 grams of spirulina per day for 16 consecutive weeks showed lower cholesterol levels than those who were given a placebo. 

Lowers Stroke Risk

Those with sickle-cell anemia or congenital heart defects are at greater risk for a condition called brain ischemia or cerebral ischemia. Brain ischemia refers to a lack of blood flow to your brain, which causes oxygen deprivation and can lead to a stroke. Just ten seconds of interrupted blood flow to your brain can cause unconsciousness and lead to serious health consequences.

In a study done by Dr. Andhra Pradesh of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology in India, it was found that a dosage of 180mg of spirulina had a protective effect on the brain and nervous system of rats exposed to high amounts of free radicals, compared to rats not given the spirulina before the experiment. This lab test shows the promising effect of spirulina on stroke prevention.

Helps Reduce Cancer Risk

Cancer is the leading killer of adult Americans under 70 and in the case of this frightening disease, prevention is worth much more than a pound of cure. It could literally save your life.

My first recommendation in cutting your cancer risk is to eliminate sugar/fructose, grains, and processed foods from your diet. Additives such as fructose feed cancer cells and help them to thrive. I also recommend healthy sun exposure, which will boost your levels of natural vitamin D and help cut your cancer risk by half!

But spirulina may have potential benefits here as well. According to a study done in China, selenium-infused spirulina inhibited the growth of MCF-7 breast cancer cells.

Healthy for Vegetarians – More Protein than Red Meat

When you think of protein, you probably imagine sitting down to a meal of organic eggs or grass-fed beef or maybe even drinking a whey protein shake.

If you’re a vegetarian, you may turn to plant-protein sources such as nuts, beans, lentils and soy products. Unfortunately, soy is not the health food it claims to be.

None of the above-mentioned sources of protein compare to the protein punch delivered by spirulina. Spirulina is 65-71 percent complete protein compared to beef, which is only 22 percent, and lentils, which is only 26 percent.

In addition to being protein-rich, spirulina is an excellent source of vital amino acids and minerals easily assimilated by your body. You would need to consume only two tablespoons of spirulina as a protein substitute for a meal.

Optimal Spirulina – Types and Dosing

There are many types of spirulina out there so it is important to do your homework before making a purchase. Since spirulina grown in an uncontrolled environment has the potential to become contaminated with heavy metals and other toxins, it is important to choose organic spirulina from a reputable source.

Spirulina comes in capsules, tablets, powders and flakes. Dosing depends on what you plan to use spirulina for and to whom it is given. Here are some typical recommendations:

Child’s maintenance dose: 5 grams per day

Child’s disease-fighting dose: 10 grams per day

Adult’s maintenance dose: 10 grams per day

Adult’s disease-fighting dose: 20 grams per day

Athlete’s dose: 60 grams per day

Remember to increase your intake of spring or filtered water when taking spirulina to help it absorb into your system.

An Important Note on Dosing

In addition to being your powerhouse of essential vitamins and minerals, spirulina is a potent detoxifier. For that reason, it is best to start with a small dose and work your way up.

For example, if you are an adult who wishes to take the typical maintenance dose of 10 grams per day, you would benefit from beginning with one quarter or half this dose to start. Once you see how your body responds, you can then gradually increase your intake to the full recommended dose.

Potential Adverse Reactions

Spirulina is a safe source of protein, nutrients, vitamins and minerals that has been used for centuries. Though there are no known side effects associated with spirulina, your body may react to it based on your current state of health. Let’s take a look at some of those reactions, what they mean, and what you can do to alleviate them.

The most prominent reactions you may experience are:

• Slight Fever – The high protein content in spirulina increases metabolism, which may elevate body temperature.)
• Dark Green Waste Matter – Spirulina can remove accumulated waste product in your colon, which may cause darker stool. Also, spirulina is high in chlorophyll. This will also turn waste matter green.
• Excessive Passing of Gas – This may indicate that your digestive system is not functioning properly or you have an extreme build-up of gas.
• Feelings of Excitement – Your body is converting protein into heat energy, which may cause temporary feelings of restlessness.
• Breakouts and Itchy Skin – This is caused by colon cleansing process and is only temporary.
• Sleepiness – This is caused by the detoxification process and may indicate your body is exhausted and needs better rest.

Remember, your body may go through an adjustment period with spirulina and your best bet to reduce reaction is to dose gradually to see how your body will react. Increase your water intake, reduce your stress levels, eat according to your nutritional type and get plenty of rest.

Important Contraindications for Spirulina

Even though spirulina is entirely natural and generally considered a healthful food, there are some contraindications you need to be aware of.

You should not take spirulina if you have a severe seafood or iodine allergy.

And, if you are pregnant or nursing or have hyperthyroidism, consult your healthcare provider before taking spirulina.

Conclusion

As you can see, spirulina can serve as a potent ‘super food.’ Just remember to do your research and arm yourself with knowledge. It is the best way to take control of your health!

The past decade has brought an explosion of research revealing the many beneficial roles vitamin D plays in keeping you healthy.

But there’s a new kid on the block that could end up being “the next vitamin D,” and we are finding that some of vitamin D’s benefits are greatly enhanced when combined with this other vitamin.

That “new kid” is vitamin K.

Much new research is now focusing on the synergy between vitamin K (specifically, vitamin K2) and vitamin D3, particularly in terms of bone strength and cardiovascular health.

Before discussing the influence of each of these vitamins, let’s review a bit about vitamins D and K and what their roles are.

Vitamin D: A Brief Review

Vitamin D is a key player in your overall health. The name is misleading — it isn’t actually a vitamin at all but a potent neuroregulatory steroidal hormone that influences nearly 3,000 of your 25,000 genes.

It literally turns on and off genes that can exacerbate — or prevent — many diseases. Vitamin D has been shown to influence dozens of conditions, including:

One of the key factors explaining today’s high rates of chronic disease, besides poor diet and sedentary lifestyle, is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. It is estimated that 85 percent of Americans have insufficient levels of vitamin D.

Sadly, when the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) released their updated recommendations for vitamin D (and calcium) on November 30, 2010, it caused shockwaves of disappointment through the natural health community.

According to the IOM, the new recommended daily allowance (RDA) for pregnant women and adults up to 70 years of age is the same as that for infants and children – a measly 600 IU’s. This despite the overwhelming evidence showing that vitamin D is extremely important for a wide variety of health conditions besides bone health, and that most people need about ten times this amount or more.

For more information about the IOM’s new vitamin D recommendations, please see this recent article in which Dr. Cannell, founder of the Vitamin D Council, and Carole Baggerly, founder of GrassrootsHealth, share their concerns.

The best ways to increase your vitamin D levels, in my order of preference, are:

1. Exposing your skin natural sunlight. Vitamin D from sunlight acts as a pro-hormone, rapidly converting in your skin into 25-hydroxyvitamin D, or vitamin D3.
2. Using a safe home tanning bed like the Sun Splash to achieve similar results as that from natural sunlight exposure.
3. Taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement whenever natural sun exposure is not an option.

For more about vitamin D and how to get the appropriate test of your blood levels, please listen to my free one hour lecture about vitamin D, and refer to my vitamin D resource page.

Vitamin K Basics

Vitamin K may very well end up being as important for you as vitamin D, as research continues to illuminate the growing list of its benefits for your health. Vitamin K is probably where vitamin D was ten years ago, with respect to its appreciation as a vital nutrient that has far more advantages than originally thought.

And, according to Dr. Cees Vermeer, one of the world’s top researchers into vitamin K, nearly everyone is deficient in it — just like most people are deficient in vitamin D.

Most of you get enough K from your diets to maintain adequate blood clotting, but NOT enough to offer protection against the following health problems — and the list continues to grow:

• Arterial calcification, cardiovascular disease and varicose veins

• Osteoporosis

• Prostate cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer and leukemia

• Brain health problems, including dementia (the specifics of which are under study)

• Tooth decay

• Infectious diseases such as pneumonia

Vitamin K exists in two basic forms, K1 and K2:

1. Vitamin K1: Found in green vegetables, K1 goes directly to your liver and helps you maintain a healthy blood clotting system. (This is the kind of K that infants need to help prevent a serious bleeding disorder.)
2. Vitamin K2: Bacteria produce this type of vitamin K. It is present in high quantities in your gut, but unfortunately is not absorbed from there and passes out in your stool. K2 goes straight to vessel walls, bones, and tissues other than your liver.

Making a long story even longer, there are several different forms of vitamin K2: MK4, MK7, MK8, and MK9. The form of vitamin K that has the most significance for our purposes here is MK7, a newer and longer acting form with more practical applications.

Most vitamin K2 supplements are in the form MK7.

MK7 is extracted from the Japanese fermented soy product called natto. You could actually get loads of MK7 from consuming natto as it is relatively inexpensive, and is available in most Asian food markets. Few people, however, tolerate its smell and slimy texture, so most people who find natto unpalatable prefer to take a supplement. You can also get MK7 by eating fermented cheeses.

For a comprehensive exploration of all the research and functions of vitamin K, refer to this article on the Weston Price website.

Now, how do vitamin D and vitamin K play together?

Vitamins D and K: “The Gatekeeper and the Traffic Cop”

One of the undisputed benefits vitamin D provides for you is improve bone development by helping you ABSORB calcium. This is not news — we have known about vitamin D and the absorption of calcium for many decades.

But there is new evidence that it is the vitamin K (specifically, vitamin K2) that directs the calcium to your skeleton, while preventing it from being deposited where you don’t want it — i.e., your organs, joint spaces, and arteries. A large part of arterial plaque consists of calcium deposits (atherosclerosis), hence the term “hardening of the arteries.”

Vitamin K2 activates a protein hormone called osteocalcin, produced by osteoblasts, which is needed to bind calcium into the matrix of your bone. Osteocalcin also appears to help prevent calcium from depositing into your arteries.

You can think of vitamin D as the gatekeeper, controlling who gets in, and vitamin K as the traffic cop, directing the traffic to where it needs to go.

Lots of traffic — but no traffic cop — means clogging, crowding and chaos everywhere!

In other words, without the help of vitamin K2, the calcium that your vitamin D so effectively lets in might be working AGAINST you — by building up your coronary arteries rather than your bones.

There is even evidence that the safety of vitamin D is dependent on vitamin K, and that vitamin D toxicity (although very rare with the D3 form) is actually caused by vitamin K2 deficiency.

Vitamin K, Vitamin D, and Cardiovascular Disease

When your body’s soft tissues are damaged, they respond with an inflammatory process that can result in the deposition of calcium into the damaged tissue. When this occurs in your blood vessels, you have the underlying mechanism of coronary artery disease — the buildup of plaque — that can lead you down the path to a heart attack.

Vitamin K and vitamin D work together to increase Matrix GLA Protein (or MGP), the protein responsible for protecting your blood vessels from calcification. In healthy arteries, MGP congregates around the elastic fibers of your tunica media (arterial lining), guarding them against calcium crystal formation.

MGP is so important that it can be used as a laboratory measure of your vascular and cardiac status.

According to Professor Cees Vermeer:

“The only mechanism for arteries to protect themselves from calcification is via the vitamin K-dependent protein MGP. MPG is the most powerful inhibitor of soft tissue calcification presently known, but non‐supplemented healthy adults are insufficient in vitamin K to a level that 30 per cent of their MGP is synthesized in an inactive form.

So, protection against cardiovascular calcification is only 70 per cent in the young, healthy population, and this figure decreases at increasing age.”

As you would predict, scientific studies confirm that increased dietary intake of vitamin K2 does indeed reduce your risk for coronary heart disease:

• In 2004, the Rotterdam study was the first study demonstrating the life-extending effects of vitamin K2. People who had the highest intake of vitamin K2 had 50 percent lower risk of death from coronary heart disease and calcification than people with the lowest intake of vitamin K2.

• In a subsequent study called the Prospect study, 16,000 people were followed for 10 years. Researchers found that each additional 10 mcg of vitamin K2 in the diet resulted in 9 percent fewer cardiac events.

• Animal studies show that vitamin K2 not only prevents hardening of the arteries but can actually reverse calcification of highly calcified arteries, by activating MGP.

• People with severe calcifications have high percentages of inactive osteocalcin, which indicates a general deficiency of vitamin K2.

Let’s take a look at how calcium supplements play into all of this.

Does Your Calcium Supplement Actually Increase Your Risk of Heart Attack?

If you take calcium and vitamin D but are deficient in vitamin K, you could be worse off than if you were not taking those supplements at all, as demonstrated by a recent meta-analysis linking calcium supplements to heart attacks.

This study did indeed find that people taking calcium supplements were more prone to heart attacks. However, that doesn’t mean that it was the calcium supplements themselves that caused the heart attacks.

Please remember that calcium is only ONE of the players in your bone and heart health.

This meta-analysis looked at studies involving people taking calcium in isolation, without complementary nutrients like magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K, which help keep your body in balance. In the absence of those other important cofactors, calcium CAN have adverse effects, such as building up in the coronary arteries and causing heart attacks, which is really what this analysis detected.

And the FORM of calcium you take matters greatly, which I will address in a moment.

You simply can’t take isolated supplements “willy-nilly” and expect to optimize very complicated physiological processes.

Vitamin D itself has been found to protect your heart. A study in the Netherlands provides compelling evidence that a high vitamin D status is associated with improved survival in heart failure patients.

If you are going to take calcium, you need to balance it out with vitamin D and vitamin K, at the very least. It is also important that you get adequate magnesium, silica, omega-3 fatty acids, and weight-bearing exercise, which are all important to the health of your bones.

Which leads us to the next important topic: osteoporosis.

Dense Bones are NOT Necessarily Strong Bones

One of the great health concerns for menopausal women is osteoporosis.

The classic way osteopenia (decreased bone density) and osteoporosis are diagnosed is by an x-ray called a DEXA scan, which specifically measures bone density, or the degree of mineralization of your bones.

But bone strength is MORE than bone density — which is why drugs such as biphosphinates have failed so miserably.

Your bones are made up of minerals in a collagen matrix. The minerals give your bones rigidity and density, but the collagen gives your bones flexibility. Without good flexibility, they become brittle and break easily.

So, density does NOT equal strength!

Drugs like Fosamax build up a lot of minerals and make the bone LOOK very dense, but in reality, they are extremely brittle and prone to fracture, which is why there have been so many cases of hip fracture among people taking these damaging drugs.

Biphosphinates are poisons that destroy your osteoclasts, which interferes with your normal bone-remodeling process.

You are much better off building your bones using exercise and nutritional therapies, hormones like progesterone and vitamins D and K.

The Calcium Myth: Revising Our Theory of Bone Mineralization

Countries with the highest calcium consumption have the highest rates of osteoporosis — namely, the U.S., Canada and Scandinavian countries. This is commonly known as the “calcium paradox.”

This is because nutritional guidelines have been based on an incorrect theory of bone mineralization.

When you take the wrong form of calcium, or when your body’s ability to direct calcium to the right places becomes impaired (as when you are deficient in vitamin K), calcium is deposited where it shouldn’t be — like sand in gears.

David Wolfe, raw food “guru” and nutritionist, has extensively studied and written about calcium physiology. In an interview, Wolfe discusses the myth about calcium’s role in bone health:

“Calcium does not build bones, and that is one of the biggest misconceptions ever, and it actually goes to the real core of our problems with science. That is, the human body is a complex biological machine and an unbelievable mystery.

There is strong evidence that if you eat calcium—let’s say it’s calcium from coral calcium, for example, oyster shell calcium—it is almost impossible to get that into your bones to increase bone density. The amount of increased bone density, at best, is 1 or 2 percent. That is not good enough.”

He goes on to explain that many calcium supplements (such as coral calcium, oyster shell calcium, calcium citrate, and calcium carbonate) are not well handled by your body. These forms of calcium can’t be broken down and form miniature “rocks” that get deposited in your soft tissues — kind of like hard water calcium deposits in your showerhead that eventually impede the flow.

According to Wolfe and others, these silty calcium deposits are major contributors and even causative factors in many conditions, including:

• Aging

• Coronary artery disease and atherosclerosis

• Dental plaque and gum disease

• Hypothyroidism

• Obesity and diabetes

• Alzheimer’s disease

• Breast cancer and cysts (fibrocystic breasts)

• Gallstones, colon cancer and Crohn’s disease

• Kidney stones

• Ovarian cysts

• Cataracts, glaucoma, and macular degeneration

• Bone spurs, stiff joints, osteoarthritis, tendonitis and bone cancer

• Cellulite and scar tissue

How Vitamin K Prevents You from Turning into a Walking “Coral Reef”

Complicating the problem of calcium deposits are nanobacteria that actually use this bad calcium to their advantage, forming hard shells of calcium phosphate that serve as defensive armor against your body’s immune system, like a clamshell shields a clam.

When the shells harden, toxins such as mercury, pesticides, and plastics are trapped in there, which is why it is so hard for you to get those toxins out of your body. This encapsulated space also forms an excellent hiding area for opportunistic viruses, bacteria and fungi.

Overconsumption of calcium creates other mineral deficiencies and imbalances, and Western civilization vastly overconsumes calcium.

According to Rudolf Steiner, creator of biodynamic farming:

“Most calcium is gravitational and channels or conducts forces which accelerate gravity. The more calcium supplements one takes, the quicker one is dragged back into the Earth for recycling.”

You don’t want to turn into a human coral reef — or be “recycled into the Earth” before your time!

By getting adequate vitamins D and K, your body will work synergistically to escort calcium to where it’s needed, while preventing it from accumulating where it shouldn’t.

So, What REALLY Increases Bone Strength?

As it turns out, you need a combination of plant-derived minerals for strong bones.

Your bones are actually composed of at least a dozen minerals. If you just focus on calcium, you will likely weaken your bones and increase your risk of osteoporosis as Dr. Robert Thompson explains in his book, The Calcium Lie.

It’s more likely your body can use calcium correctly if it’s plant-derived calcium. Good sources include raw milk from pasture-raised cows (who eat the plants), leafy green vegetables, the pith of citrus fruits, carob, and wheatgrass, to name a few.

But you also need sources of silica and magnesium, which some researchers say is actually enzymatically “transmuted” by your body into the kind of calcium your bones can use. This theory was first put forth by French scientist Louis Kevran, a Nobel Prize nominee who spent years studying how silica and calcium are related.

Good sources of silica are cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, and a number of herbs including horsetail, nettles, oat straw, and alfalfa.

The absolute best source of magnesium is raw organic cacao. Yes, healthy high quality chocolate is extremely rich in magnesium!

A great source of trace minerals, which are important for many of your body’s functions, is Himalayan Crystal Salt, which contains all 84 elements found in your body.

The bottom line?

The absolute best way to achieve healthy bones is a diet rich in fresh, raw whole foods that maximizes natural minerals so that your body has the raw materials it needs to do what it was designed to do.

Of course, the same can be said for your heart — or any other part of your body.

To Wrap it Up …

In order to achieve the best possible health, you have to devise a plan of attack from multiple angles. These suggestions will synergistically help keep your heart, blood vessels, organs and bones healthy.

1. Optimize your vitamin D either from natural sunlight exposure or an oral supplement, as described above. Check your blood levels regularly.
2. Optimize your vitamin K through a combination of dietary sources (leafy green vegetables, fermented foods like natto, raw milk cheeses, etc.) and a K2 supplement, if needed. Although the exact dosing (for oral supplementation) is yet to be determined, Dr. Vermeer recommends up to 185 mcg daily for adults. You must use caution on the higher doses if you take anticoagulants, but if you are generally healthy and not on these types of medications, I suggest 150-300 mcg daily.
3. Make sure you do weight-bearing exercise, which has profound benefits to both your skeletal and cardiovascular systems. My favorite is the Peak Fitness system but it is also very important to do strength training exercises to produce the dynamic electric forces in your bones which will stimulate the osteoblasts in your bone to produce new bone..
4. Consume a wide variety of fresh, local organic whole foods, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, organic meats and eggs, and raw organic unpasteurized dairy. The more of your diet you consume RAW, the better nourished you will be. Minimize sugar and refined grains.
5. Consider a high-quality animal source of omega-3 fatty acid supplement—my favorite is krill oil.
6. Make sure you are getting enough restorative sleep each night.
7. Handle the stress in our life since it has a significant impact on your physical and mental well-being. My favorite de-stressing tool is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).

By Dr. Mercola

Before I begin this article I want to state very clearly that hormones are not my primary specialty. I have used them clinically but I found the science quite controversial, so this is a summary as I best understand it.

If you are a clinician with considerable experience in this area I invite you to present your views to update the information on DHEA.

DHEA is a hormone produced by your adrenal glands and in your brain, which was first discovered by scientists in the 1930’s. 

Your body’s natural production of DHEA varies widely with age, with very low levels produced before puberty, peak production in your late 20’s or early 30’s, followed by a steady decline in production with advancing age.

This age-related pattern of production has lead many to believe that DHEA production may actually be linked to the aging process itself. DHEA supplementation (if you’re deficient) may help turn back the clock, as it were, as it can help:

• Lower fat storage through improved thyroid response
• Stimulate bone deposition
• Increase muscle tone
• Improve mood (including fighting depression)
• Fight cancer

Sub-optimal levels of DHEA have also been associated with many age-related degenerative conditions, including:

• Chronic inflammation
• Immune dysfunction
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Increased risk for certain cancers
• Low libido
• Cognitive decline
• Osteoporosis
• Some complications of type II diabetes.[i]

Can supplementing DHEA really help you with these conditions?

What We Know About DHEA

DHEA, or more precisely DHEA sulfate (your body naturally converts DHEA-S to the DHEA that it uses) is the most abundant precursor hormone in the human body, meaning that it is the largest raw material your body uses to produce other vital hormones, including testosterone in men and estrogen in women.

One thing we know for certain about human adrenals – besides making DHEA — they also manufacture cortisol, which is in direct competition with DHEA for production.  In other words, when cortisol production is high, especially for prolonged periods of time, your adrenals can actually wear out, and DHEA production will necessarily suffer.

So a natural question follows: what is cortisol and what causes an increase in its production?

The Stress Connection

Cortisol is the hormone your body produces in response to stress, real or imagined, which is why it’s commonly referred to as “the stress hormone”. 

Adrenal exhaustion from coping with chronic stress means your adrenal glands are overworked from manufacturing cortisol, and they simply can’t produce enough DHEA to support a healthy hormonal balance.

The result? 

You feel exhausted, often depressed, and your muscle tone decreases while body fat increases (cortisol tells your body to store fat).  

Symptoms of chronically elevated cortisol levels include:

• Increased abdominal fat
• Suppressed immune response
• Accelerated aging
• Inflammation
• Stomach ulcers
• Mild memory loss (words, names and numbers)
• Suppressed thyroid function

You hear all the time about how bad stress is for your body. Well now you’re looking at the actual hormone responsible for much of the damage.  Clearly it pays healthy dividends to reduce stress in your life, not only to reduce cortisol production, but also to ensure that your body has adequate adrenal strength to keep your DHEA levels optimal.

When DHEA Supplementation Makes Sense

First, let me start by saying that bioidentical DHEA should ideally ONLY be supplemented under the guidance of a holistic doctor who can test your body’s DHEA levels to ensure you need supplementation. I prefer to test levels using a 24-hour urine test.

Hormonal testing is a controversial area as you can also do blood and saliva test. I tend to follow Dr. Jonathon Wright’s recommendation, as he’s really the person who introduced bioidentical hormone therapy into the United Sates. You can review his book Stay Young and Sexy for further details.

Properly testing your levels is very important, because people who have normal hormone levels in their bodies who supplement DHEA are likely to experience side effects, such as:

• Acne
• Tumor formation
• Hair loss
• Heart rhythm problems
• Insomnia

If you’ve been living long stretches of your life on a poor diet, not getting adequate sleep, and overwhelmed by the daily grind – chances are you’re a good candidate for DHEA supplementation.  

However, please understand that only a test will tell you for certain what your body’s DHEA levels are, but if you’re feeling tired and overwhelmed, have low libido, and find your mood suffering or even experience depression regularly, there is a strong chance that your body is not producing enough DHEA.

Maintaining optimal DHEA levels may also be useful for:

• Athletes looking to improve performance
• Improving recovery time from stress and physical training
• Weight loss
• Muscle gain
• Increasing sex drive
• Increasing sense of well being
• Improving sleep
• Improving mood

Too Much DHEA is NOT a Good Thing

The conventional thinking is that if a little is good, then a lot must be better.  Not so with DHEA.

Like most good things in life, too much DHEA can lead to problems. 

Supplementing hormones over a long period of time can trick your body into suspending its own DHEA production, and possibly even shut down your adrenal glands, which can lead to disastrous health consequences. 

Many doctors strongly advise taking “hormone holidays”, meaning practice a supplementation schedule that features a few weeks on DHEA followed by a few weeks off.

Also, DHEA supplements come in doses ranging from 5 mg to 200 mg.  The scientific jury is still out on the subject, but it appears normal daily DHEA production for an average person in their 20’s is between 10-25 mg. 

Supplementing beyond the normal peak production range of DHEA might be advisable for short periods of time to restore the effects of a badly depleted adrenal system, but maintaining mega doses of DHEA for any sustained period of time will probably lead to unwanted side effects.

Remember your body’s hormone balance is a delicate mechanism that should only be supplemented after consulting a holistic doctor and testing your body’s natural DHEA level to determine the appropriate level of supplementation you might need.   I would advise against supplementing with this hormone without some professional guidance.

Another important co-factor when considering DHEA supplementation is that your body naturally produces DHEA in the morning and then either uses the hormone or excretes it by the end of the day.  So if supplementation is undertaken, it appears that an early morning dose of DHEA is the way to go.

Why You Should AVOID All Oral Hormone Preparations

There are many ways to “naturally” address bioidentical hormone replacement but one of the most common mistakes is to use oral hormones.

But if you swallow steroid hormones you seriously distort their natural metabolism.  Swallowed hormones encounter potent stomach acids, and the hormones that survive this assault then move to your liver where they will be further broken down. Your liver screens all molecules that enter your blood stream, passing some onward, modifying or detoxifying others, and rejecting a few. 

This routing of orally swallowed hormones is in sharp contrast to the way nature intended them to be distributed to your tissues. 

If you swallow hormones, only 10-15 percent will eventually reach the target tissues and you will need to take an oral dose that is 500 percent higher than you need. 

Many different metabolites are created in your liver when you swallow a DHEA supplement and any of these can produce unwanted side effects.

So if you or anyone you know currently use an oral DHEA supplement or any other oral hormone, I encourage you to strongly consider phasing them out and instead using a DHEA cream preparation that you administer trans mucosally.

Best Way to Use DHEA Cream

The key mistake that many well-intentioned and knowledgeable doctors — including myself – have made is to advise using DHEA cream on your skin. While this certainly provides better results than swallowing the hormones, the method of delivery can still be improved.

The primary problem with topical skin application of the cream is that it’s very difficult to determine the dose. Hormones also accumulate in fat tissue, so you may end up with far more than you need.

There is a relatively minor tweak you can make using the cream that avoids nearly all of the side effects of applying the cream on your skin. 

If you apply the cream to your mucous epithelial membranes that line your vagina, you are able to obtain a virtually ideal administration system. Not only is absorption through these membranes more complete than through your skin, but hormones absorbed through your vaginal membranes also eliminate the production of unwanted metabolites of DHEA.

Men also require hormones and I myself take DHEA.  Obviously men don’t have a vagina to administer the cream, but we do have a rectum that has a similar mucosal epithelial surface.  So for men, the ideal delivery system for DHEA is in cream form, through the rectum.

Final Thoughts on DHEA

Is DHEA the “fountain of youth” it was touted to be in the 1990’s? 

Perhaps it is, but with an asterisk.

Your body is designed to maintain a delicate hormonal balance that usually self-regulates naturally according to your age and the stresses you face in life.  The fact is, most people do just fine with DHEA production in the prime of their life. 

Progressively increasing number of people today complain of a lack of energy, unexplained weight gain, poor mood, depression and insomnia.  Some of the contributing factors can be a poor diet, lack of exercise, stress that goes unchecked and adrenal glands functioning sub-optimally.

Prolonged adrenal imbalance can actually be the cause of many of the symptoms associated with a lack of optimal health — weight gain, depression and a lack of energy that you just can’t seem to shake no matter what other healthy changes you make to your lifestyle.  And if you’re not getting enough quality sleep (another symptom of DHEA imbalance) all of the other healthy changes you make to your lifestyle will not produce dividends you can feel.

So if you are under constant stress, or constantly feel tired, weak, depressed or have a low sex drive, please find yourself a holistic doctor and have him/her perform a 24-hour urine test to determine your DHEA levels. 

Too many people suffer unnecessarily from high stress and low DHEA production, so make sure you are not one of these people.

By Dr. Mercola

Entire books are written about the subject of digestion. The current science of how your body breaks down and specifically utilizes nutrients is still in its infancy. 

This article is meant as an overview, talking about the physical process at work in the act of digestion, and some possible causes of why your digestive system may become unbalanced, and what to do if it does become unbalanced. 

Unless you are dependent on a tube for nutrition, the reason you have survived to this point in your life is because your body is able to extract what it needs from the food you eat by properly digesting it.

So the short definition of digestion — you put food or liquid into your mouth, swallow it, and then your body breaks these molecules down into a size it can absorb.  What your body doesn’t use is excreted as waste.

Fairly basic, right?

Is Digestion Really That Simple?

Digestion is actually a complex combination of biological interactions and chemical reactions taking place at every stop along the extensive digestive tract, which is generally split into two halves — the upper gastrointestinal tract (mouth, esophagus, stomach, duodenum) and the lower gastrointestinal track (small intestine, large intestine). 

Your gastrointestinal tract is also home to the largest part of your body’s immune system, protecting you against foreign invaders by producing acids and housing colonies of beneficial bacteria that act as a defensive army fighting to protect you from pathogens that find their way inside your body. 

So what exactly makes up the digestive system and how does it work?

Everything Starts With What You Put in Your Mouth

Once you select something to eat, your mouth goes to work, using your tongue and teeth to turn large pieces into smaller pieces (mastication) and using enzymes from the salivary glands to begin chemically breaking down food molecules into a size your body can absorb.

This is why nutrition experts are always advising you to eat slowly, and chew your food thoroughly (at least 20 chews per bite).  Because your digestion actually begins in your mouth!  If you often find your stomach feels like a big knot after you’ve eaten, you’re probably swallowing your food whole. 

There’s a reason baby food is mashed into mush.  They have no teeth to break the food down themselves into smaller molecules.

And yes, taking your time when eating and chewing your food properly has a number of beneficial side effects.

For example, chewing your food twice as long as you normally would will instantly help you control your portion sizes, which naturally decreases calorie consumption.

Another benefit of chewing longer is that your food is digested better. The majority of your digestive enzymes are actually in your mouth, not in your stomach. Therefore, chewing your food longer allows the food to be broken down better.

You’re also likely to find that you actually enjoy the taste of the food more if you eat slower.

In my opinion, it’s also a good idea to swallow foods that are neither too hot nor too cold.  Foods and liquids are best taken into your body at the temperature of your body, so it’s beneficial to let warm foods cool in your mouth and let cold foods warm in your mouth – as an aid to digestion.

The exception to this would be water — which is most highly structured and beneficial when cold — and seems to be far better at quenching your thirst when cold.

Also, the first major problem with digestion starts with what you choose to put in your mouth!  

In our modern world, inexpensive processed foods, often loaded with sweeteners, artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial preservatives, cheaply processed unhealthy fats and artificial colors are designed to be appealing to all of your senses, including your tastebuds. 

And the advertising never betrays that this food can literally kill you! 

Processed foods can lead to a whole host of health troubles, and many people today are getting a majority of their calories from these highly processed, low nutritional value foods.

If you are one of these people getting a majority of your calories from fast and processed foods you can face three major problems you may not be aware of: 

• Processed foods may be broken down by your body into one or more toxic molecules (ie. Aspartame, Splenda ). 
• Processed foods may produce undesirable biological effects (ie. trans fats, high fructose corn syrup).
• Your body may treat processed foods as a foreign invader.

When your body consumes processed foods you may be triggering the release of powerful antibodies meant to fight off foreign invaders, which can  actually cause collateral damage to your body’s cells.  In fact, eating a diet rich in processed foods and junk foods can cause an ongoing mistaken internal attack on very necessary components of your digestive system.

Everyone is affected differently by this constant internal antibody attack, otherwise we’d all have autoimmune diseases.  But it is known that macrophages, one of the more powerful tools your immune system uses to fight foreign invaders can also do indiscriminate damage to your body’s tissues.

What Goes on Inside Your Stomach

Back to the digestive process. Once food makes it past your mouth and is swallowed down past your esophagus, the acid wash inside the stomach begins, and not surprisingly, another host of problems can start to occur.

The environment inside your stomach is highly acidic (pH 4) and this acid acts as the next defense mechanism against harmful pathogens that might have slipped past your first line of defense.  A protective mucous lining protects your stomach from all this acid. 

When I talk about acids in your stomach I am referring to hydrochloric acid and pepsin.  When you are young your body usually will produce enough acid to properly digest your food, but as you age, reduced stomach acid comes along with the territory.  Many people begin experiencing stomach acid problems in their 30’s and 40’s when stomach acid starts to drop off from youthful levels.

Compromised stomach acidity is a common hindrance to optimum digestion, and can frequently be aided by supplementing with hydrochloric acid ( Betaine HCL) or digestive enzymes.  But HCL or enzyme supplementation requires following some basic rules of chemistry.

Your entire digestive tract ranges from strongly acidic (pH4 in your stomach) to slightly acidic (5.7-6.7 pH in your small intestine, and pH7 in your colon).  If HCL or enzymes are used as an aid to digestion, it is imperative to not add any unnecessary alkaline disturbances to the acidic environment. 

This includes water and especially alkaline water. 

So as you age, it is common to experience heartburn, indigestion and GERD-type diseases, and contrary to what you may think, these diseases are almost typically caused by a reduction in stomach acid, not the overproduction of stomach acid. 

This is news to many, because the drug companies spend loads of marketing money to convince you that heartburn and acid reflux are caused by too much stomach acid.

Digestive aids, natural or man-made chemicals that affect digestion, generally fall into two categories: 

• Help produce more stomach acid, more enzymes and more beneficial bacteria
• Help produce less stomach acid

Digestive aids like hydrochloric acid (HCL) , enzymes and probiotics can actually be powerful tools to maintain a more acidic and beneficial environment in your stomach and intestines that will help your digestive system work optimally.

Dangers of Anti-Ulcer Drugs

The other so-called digestive aids, including the class of drugs called proton pump inhibitors, and H2 blockers (Pepsid AC, Prilosec, Zantac, etc) will actually take you in the opposite direction of optimal health because they shut down acid production, making your problem worse. 

So if drug industry into has fooled you thinking drugs like Pepsid AC and Zantac are addressing the problems in your stomach, or even if you’re taking the common calcium tablets to reduce stomach acid, you’re doing your body three huge disservices:

• You are reducing stomach acid even further, the opposite direction that your body actually needs to move.
• You are worsening your already malfunctioning digestive system.
• You are compromising your absorption of the vitamin B-12

Also, the FDA recommends taking these stomach acid reducing drugs for only THREE 14-day periods each year!  Taking these drugs longer than that is dangerous, because long-term effects are not well understood and longer-term use is not recommended.  So these acid reducing drugs aren’t even meant to be a real solution for your chronic poor digestion in the first place!

On top of all this, short-term use of acid reducing drugs like Prilosec have a long list of possible side effects, including:

So clearly it’s in your best interest to address the cause of digestive imbalances by properly increasing the acid in your stomach, not decreasing it.

For more in-depth information, I highly recommend reading Dr. Jonathan Wright’s excellent book Your Stomach: What is Really Making You Miserable and What to Do About It. 

Make Sure Your Vitamin B12 Levels are Good

B-12 is a vitamin that can only be digested by your body through high stomach acid content, because it takes a lot of acid to break down this essential B vitamin.  If you are shutting down your stomach acid production, your body is not going to get the B-12 it needs from the food you eat. 

And oral B-12 supplementation will not address this issue as they will not break down in your stomach if acid production is low. 

In fact, if you are one of the people taking these proton pump inhibitors or H2 blockers, the primary way your body can effectively absorb the B-12 that it needs is through inter-muscular injections. 

So why is getting B-12 so important?

Here are some common symptoms of B-12 deficiency:

Clearly, keeping your body’s natural B-12 absorption mechanism functioning well is vitally critical for optimal health.  Without proper B-12 absorption, a whole host of seemingly inexplicable health problems can result, which a conventionally trained doctor will have trouble linking to low levels of B-12.

The Importance of Good Bacteria

Now, moving a little bit further down your digestive tract to the small intestine, there are about 100 trillion microorganisms living in your gut.  That’s 10 times more than the total number of cells in your body (about 10 trillion).  These tiny creatures make up between 3-5 pounds of your body weight!

Your body receives help breaking down foods into their component parts from the organisms that live in your gut (intestinal flora).  These bacteria, yeasts and fungi can produce beneficial waste products as they feast on your digesting food, such as B and K vitamins that your body needs. They also function to break down some foods that your body cannot absorb by itself (they change carbs into simple sugars and proteins into the component amino acids). 

But when you eat too many grains, sugars and processed foods, these foods serve as fertilizer for the bad bacteria and yeast and will cause them to rapidly multiply. 

One of the best things you can do for your health, including your digestive health, is eliminate sugars and processed foods as much as possible!

In fact, millions of people currently suffer from yeast overgrowth and a host of maladies related to the rapid spread of the bad bacteria in your intestines.  And most conventional doctors will not be able to identify the cause of your symptoms if you suffer from bad bacteria or yeast overgrowth.

Estimates are that as many as 80 million people, mostly women, are currently suffering from harmful yeast overgrowth. 

Symptoms of this yeast overgrowth include:

As you can see the list is long and varied, and the symptoms mimic those caused by many other diseases.  If you think you may be suffering from yeast overgrowth, see my free report here.

So the key to good intestinal health, especially in your small intestine, is keeping an optimum balance of the helpful and harmful microorganisms.  This is why probiotics (for life) supplements are so important, because they increase the ratio of “good” bacteria in your gut, and why antibiotics (against life) can interfere with the delicate balance in your gut.

In fact, contrary to what you might have heard about probiotics not surviving in the highly acidic wash of your stomach, the helpful bacteria like acidophilus thrive in an acidic environment and not only survive the stomach environment, but acidophilus will actually also create lactic acid to maintain a more acidic condition in your small intestine.

Some examples of health problems that you may face if your gut microorganisms stay out of balance for long periods of time include:

This is why it pays dividends to eat plenty of fermented foods like:

If you are unable to find good fermented foods, or are not able to eat them often in your diet, then supplementing with a high quality probiotic product will also serve the function of multiplying the “good” bacteria found in your digestive tract. 

When searching for probiotic supplements, be sure to buy the highest quality you can find, because when it comes to feeding your beneficial bacteria, not all products are created equally.

The Truth about Soy

Another food I want to talk about in relation to good digestion is soy.  More specifically, I advise you to avoid all unfermented soy products.

Soy is widely touted today as a health food, mostly through slick food company advertising and marketing.  The soy industry’s propaganda likes to point to the high levels of health in Japan, where soy is claimed to be a main component of the diet.  But the truth is a little more complicated.

The types of soy popular in Japan are mostly variations of fermented soy, including tempeh, soy sauce, miso and natto are better but still have isoflavones which can act as powerful goitrogenic or thyroid harming influences. So if you have issues with your thyroid you should not consume large quantities of these.

Non-fermented soy products, including tofu, soy milk, soy oil, soy protein powder and soybeans present a more complicated picture, and in my opinion non-fermented soy is definitely not a health food and should be avoided.

Unfermented soy contains natural toxins known as “anti-nutrients”.  Soy also contains other anti-nutritional factors such as saponins, soyatoxin, protease inhibitors, and oxalates.

Some of these factors interfere with the enzymes you need to digest protein.

While a small amount of anti-nutrients would not likely cause a problem, the amount of soy that many Americans are now eating is extremely high.

Soy is also one of the most widespread GMO foods in America, with over 91 percent of all soy grown with GMO seeds.  I consider eating GMO soy to be like taking part in a giant laboratory experiment, and I recommend you avoid unfermented soy for the anti-nutrient reasons and the GMO reasons if you want to be optimally healthy.

Chewing Gum Fools Your Digestive System

Your body was designed to activate digestive process through chewing.  This is a good thing as your body needs the enzymes and acid to digest your food. However chewing without eating food can be counterproductive.

When you chew gum, you send your body physical signals that food is about to enter your body.  The enzymes and acids that are activated when you chew gum can cause bloating and overproduction of stomach acid.  Besides this, chewing gum can cause jaw muscle imbalance (if you chew on one side more than the other) and even TMJ in your jaw, which can be a painful chronic condition.

The bottom line is you shouldn’t chew gum or if you do use gum, use if very rarely or right before a meal where the acid and enzyme stimulation may actually be beneficial …

Gallbladder Problems

Your gallbladder stores bile produced by your liver, and releases it into the digestive tract as needed.  Sometimes, the gallbladder becomes diseased and must be removed. 

Rather than lose the mechanism that regulates bile secretion into your digestive tract, it is far better to address a malfunctioning gallbladder by looking at dietary imbalances.  Addressing digestive issues at the source of the problem, the food you eat, is always a more direct way to intervene in disruptions in your body’s digestive mechanisms.

However, if the condition is advance gallbladder removal occasionally becomes necessary.  When this happens, or if you have previously had your gallbladder removed, you can expect fats in particular may have trouble breaking down in your digestive tract, and diarrhea may also become a problem.  With the mechanism for bile regulation removed, your GI tract may receive either too much bile, or too little. So, adjust your diet before it’s necessary to remove your body’s bile regulator. 

But if you do lose your gallbladder, you can combat poor digestion with either with HCL and enzyme.

The best enzyme to supplement is would be an enzyme that breaks down far or a lipase.  This is because you will not be producing much bile which typically aids in fat digestion.  

One key thing to keep in mind with gallbladder problems, and even after gallbladder removal, is that your body still needs to take in “good” fats.  So getting a good source of omega three fat (like krill oil) is still essential to good health, even though your body may have some trouble processing all fats if you have gallbladder problems. 

Some Final Thoughts

Hopefully this trip through your digestive system has helped you to a better understand of why it is vitally important to provide your body with the good fuel and good digestive aids it needs, and why providing too much of the wrong kinds of foods or the wrong kinds of digestive aids can lead to problems.

You should also understand why a diet too rich in simple sugars can lead to a whole host of negative consequences from unhealthy yeast overgrowth (which can lead to leaky gut syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, poor absorption of nutrients, excess gas, weight gain and craving carbs). 

Also, a diet rich in food-like substances containing man-made chemicals may also be the cause of other digestive maladies, such as:

• acid reflux
• indigestion
• heartburn
• abdominal pain
• vomiting
• diarrhea

Remember, your digestive system is an extremely complex dynamic system that protects you through a strong defense mechanism against harmful invaders from the external environment.

Some proactive steps you can take to aid in your digestion and help the beneficial microorganisms to flourish and keep digestive disorders away include:

Every day you are presented with a vast array of food choices, and our modern world has found some truly innovative ways to present food to you that appeals to all your senses (smells great, looks great, tastes great).  However, relying on your senses alone to choose the nutrients your body needs can lead you down a slow path of self-destruction, chronic diseases and shortened lifespan for not just yourself but for future generations as well. 

Nowadays, it truly does take an act of will to train your body to recognize whole natural foods as delicious and nutritious, when the alternative is food-like substances that have been processed, designed, crafted and marketed to appeal to all of your senses and to your intellect.

By Dr. Mercola

In the early 1990′s, soy and soy products exploded onto the supermarket scene with promises of bountiful health benefits. This “new miracle food,” soy, was supposed to lower cholesterol, take the heat out of hot flashes, protect against breast and prostate cancer and offer a filling alternative to earth-loving vegetarians.

The problem with these claims?

Most of them are false.

Sadly, most of what you have been led to believe by the media about soy is simply untrue. The sudden upsurge in the recommendation of soy as a health food has been nothing more than a clever marketing gimmick to further reduce the cost and nutritional content of your food.

Sadly, most of what you have been led to believe by the media about soy is simply untrue. The sudden upsurge in the recommendation of soy as a health food has been nothing more than a clever marketing gimmick to further reduce the cost and nutritional content of your food.

For you vegetarians out there staring at the screen in open-mouthed shock, fear not. There are plenty of other healthy vegetarian alternatives, which I will discuss later in this article.

What was once considered a minor industrial crop back in 1913 now covers over 72 million acres of farmland. But first, let’s examine the dangers and side effects of soy protein isolate and GMO foods.

Soy Protein Isolate — What is It, and How is it Getting in My Food?

The Soyfoods Association of America has a soy protein “fact sheet” defining soy protein isolate as the following:

“Soy protein isolate is a dry powder food ingredient that has been separated or isolated from the other components of the soybean, making it 90 to 95 percent protein and nearly carbohydrate and fat-free.”

Soy protein isolate can be found in protein bars, meal replacement shakes, bottled fruit drinks, soups and sauces, meat analogs, baked goods, breakfast cereals and some dietary supplements.

Bodybuilders beware: because many weight gainer powders, bars and shakes contain this dangerous ingredient and it can cause troubling side effects such as diminished libido and erectile dysfunction — and this is just the start. You’ll find out more about these
disturbing health effects later on in this article.

Even if you are not a vegetarian and do not use soymilk or tofu, it is important to become a label reader.

There are so many different names for soy additives, you could be bringing home a genetically modified soy-based product without even realizing it.

Here are just a few names soy tends to hide under:

• Mono-diglyceride

• Soya, Soja or Yuba
• TSF (textured soy flour) or TSP (textured soy protein)
• TVP (textured vegetable protein)
• Lecithin
• MSG (monosodium glutamate)

   

Not all textured vegetable protein is made from soy, but a great deal of it is. Lecithin can be made from soy, eggs, sunflower or corn. Be sure to contact the manufacturer to find out which is in your product if the label doesn’t reveal this information.

GMO — Making Soy Even Worse

One of the worst problems with soy comes from the fact that 90 to 95 percent of soybeans grown in the US are genetically modified (GM), and these are used to create soy protein isolate.

Why the genetic tinkering?

Genetically modified soybeans are designed to be “Roundup ready.” That’s right, they are chemically engineered to withstand heavy doses of pesticides without killing the plant!

What does this mean for your health and the health of your unborn or yet-to-be-conceived children? Read on.

GM Soy Can Lead to Hormonal Disruption and Miscarriages

The active ingredient in Roundup herbicide is called glyphosate, which is responsible for the disruption of the delicate hormonal balance of the female reproductive cycle.

“It’s an endocrine buster,” says UK pathologist Stanley Ewen, “that interferes with aromatase, which produces estrogen.”

What’s more, glyphosate is toxic to the placenta, which is responsible for delivering vital nutrients from mother to child, and eliminating waste products. Once the placenta has been damaged or destroyed, the result can be miscarriage. In those children born to mothers who have been exposed to even a small amount of glyphosate, serious birth defects can result.

In an excellent summary of glyphosate-related effects by the Pesticide Action Network, Dr. Andreas Carrasco of the Embryology Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine in Buenos Aires, simply and expertly explains the serious risks for unborn children exposed to Roundup-laden GMO soy products.

Amphibian embryos were exposed to a tiny concentration of glyphosate (diluted 5000 fold) and showed the following effects:

“Effects included reduced head size, genetic alterations in the central nervous system, increased death of cells that help form the skull, deformed cartilage, eye defects, and undeveloped kidneys. Carrasco also stated that the glyphosate was not breaking down in the cells, but was accumulating.

The findings lend weight to claims that abnormally high levels of cancer, birth defects, neonatal mortality, lupus, kidney disease, and skin and respiratory problems in populations near Argentina’s soybean fields may be linked to the aerial spraying of Roundup.”

The long-term effects of the human consumption of genetically modified soy and soy-based products are staggering.

In April 2010, researchers at Russia’s Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Association for Gene Security found that after feeding hamsters GM soy for two years over three generations, by the third generation, most lost the ability to have babies!

Now, let’s take a close look at some of the health risks to YOU as a result eating genetically modified soy.

Infertility in Women

Do you want to start a family?

Have you had any trouble conceiving, perhaps due to irregular menstrual cycles or endometriosis?

Have you ever experienced a miscarriage?

If so, what you’re about to read will shock you.

A Brazilian study published in 2009 looked at the impact of soy on the reproductive system of female rats. Female rats fed GM soy for 15 months showed significant changes in their uterus and reproductive cycles, compared to rats fed organic soy or no soy.

Extrapolating the findings to people, women who eat genetically modified soy products, such as the soy protein isolate in processed vegetarian fare, may be more likely to experience severe hormonal disruptions, including an overabundance of estrogen, a hair-growth stimulating hormone, and damage to the pituitary gland.

According to Dr. Stanley Ewen, the female rats fed GM soy probably had an increase in progesterone, which could cause an increase in the number of eggs released during each ovulation cycle.

You might think this would lead to an increase in fertility. However, as discussed in an article by Jeffrey Smith, women who consume genetically modified soy products are at increased risk for developing retrograde menstruation (the menstrual cycle backs up into the body instead of outward), causing endometriosis, which can lead to infertility.

The consumption of soy protein isolate and other soy-based products can also lead to abnormally heavy or longer menstrual periods. This is called menorrhagia and, ironically, some commercials have been popping up with a new pill that supposedly offers the “cure” for this “mystery syndrome.”

When in reality the real cure for some women is as simple as removing soy and soy-based products from the diet.

The negative effects of soy are not restricted to women, however.

Loss of Libido & Erectile Dysfunction in Men

Guys, do you enjoy protein bars or use a weight gainer shake? If so, be sure to read the label to see if the products you use contain any soy ingredients.

Did you know that celibate monks living in monasteries and leading a vegetarian lifestyle find soy foods quite helpful for dampening libido?

Another drawback: Soy has also been linked to erectile dysfunction. The two natural drugs found in soy, genistein and daidzein, mimic estrogen so well that they have been known to cause a variety of alarming side effects in men:

• Breast enlargement (gynecomastia)
• Decreased facial and body hair growth
• Decreased libido
• Mood swings and frequent crying jags
• Erectile dysfunction
• Lowered sperm count

For example, one recent study documented a case of gynecomastia in a 60-year-old man as a result of his soy consumption. Another study showed that juvenile rats exposed to daidzein showed impaired erectile function at maturity.

Men, if you’ve experienced one or any of these symptoms, soy could be the culprit. Remove it from your diet, but be sure to consult a trusted physician if your symptoms do not improve or get worse as this could be a sign of another serious condition.

The Healthy Aspects of Soy: Fermented vs. Unfermented

In order to back up the claim that soy is a health food, privately funded “researchers” have been quick to point out that Asians, who consume a diet high in soy, have less risk of breast, uterine and prostate cancer. Unfortunately, they leave out two very important
points:

• Asians, especially the Japanese, while having a decreased risk of the above-mentioned cancers, have a much higher risk of developing cancer of the esophagus, thyroid, stomach, pancreas and liver!

• Asians also consume a diet rich in fermented soy, which is the only type of soy to offer health benefits.

   

The reason Asians have an increased risk for some cancers is the same reason they do not develop others: unfermented soy. The soy marketing and promotion gurus left out this critical piece of information. Would you rather have one cancer over another? Isn’t
that like asking whether or not you’d like to be whacked in the head with a two-by-four vs. a wooden stick?

You might be asking yourself what the big difference is between consuming a fermented soy product such as, say, tempeh, vs. tofu or a veggie burger. I’m here to tell you, the difference is night and day.

Unfermented AND fermented soy contains hormonal mimics in the form of isoflavones which can not only disrupt delicate hormone systems in your body but also act as goitrogens, substances that suppress your thyroid function. When the thyroid is suppressed, a host of health problems result, namely:

• Anxiety and mood swings

• Insomnia
• Difficulty losing weight
• Difficulty conceiving children
• Digestive problems
• Food allergies

   

And so much more.

No wonder soy can lead to thyroid, esophagus and stomach cancer!

Unfermented soy is also chock full of phytic acid, an “antinutrient” responsible for leeching vital nutrients from your body. Phytic acid also blocks the uptake of essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc especially.

Now, fermented soy products do provide health benefits.

As I mentioned in my previous article, some great examples of healthful fermented soyproducts are as follows:

• Tempeh, a fermented soybean cake with a firm texture and nutty, mushroom-like flavor.

• Miso, a fermented soybean paste with a salty, buttery texture (commonly used in miso soup).

• Natto, fermented soybeans with a sticky texture and strong, cheese-like flavor.

• Soy sauce, which is traditionally made by fermenting soybeans, salt and enzymes; be wary because many varieties on the market today are made artificially using a chemical process.

For those of you who enjoy tofu, I’m sorry to say it didn’t make this list because tofu is an unfermented soy product.

So, What Are The Health Benefits of Fermented Soy Products?

The claim that soy products can prevent osteoporosis, decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease and dementia and protect you from cancer of the prostate, lung and liver is actually true, but ONLY if the soy is fermented.

How?

The process of fermenting soy destroys the above-mentioned dangerous substances, thereby making it fit for consumption.

Also, fermented soy products such as those listed above are a rich source of vitamin K2, a vitamin that works in harmony with vitamin D to keep you healthy. Vitamin K regulates your body’s blood clotting ability and prevents cancer, osteoporosis and heart disease. And vitamin D is essential to the function of every system in your body.

Warning to Vegetarians about the Risk of Mineral Deficiency

Since phytic acid or phytates sap the nutrients from your body, if you’re eating a vegetarian diet that has replaced meat with mostly unfermented soy such as veggie burgers containing GMO soy protein isolate, you are at risk for severe mineral deficiency.

In addition to this nutrient loss, processed veggie burgers and the like are packed with harmful artificial flavorings, particularly MSG and textured vegetable protein products to give them their strong “meat” flavor.

What’s even worse is the process soy has to go through to become soy protein isolate. Acid washing in aluminum tanks, which is designed to remove some of the antinutrients (but the results often vary widely), leeches aluminum into the final product. Aluminum can have adverse effects on brain development and cause symptoms such as:

• Antisocial behavior

• Learning disabilities
• Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia

   

As I mentioned in a previous article about soy, this makes processed vegetarian fare more palatable, but far from nutritious.

Vegetarians have plenty of options for well-rounded, nutritious meals without needing to eat soy or soy-based products.

• Beans are an inexpensive, protein-rich food that can be eaten alone, added to salads or served as a side dish. Be sure to purchase organic dried beans and cook them at home to avoid the adverse health effects of eating canned food. Ideally is it also best to soak them for at least 12 hours before cooking them.

• Nuts are also an excellent source of protein. For optimal health benefits, reach for organic nuts such as almonds or walnuts, instead of overly processed mixed nuts.

• Quinoa is a gluten free grain that can be enjoyed as a cereal, side dish or added to homemade vegetable stews as a thickener.

• Flaxseed, which is rich in essential omega 3 fats like ALA, is an excellent source of protein. Add it to salads or sprinkle it over yogurt to infuse your meal with vital nutrients. However, it is important to grind flax seeds just prior to eating them because100 percent of commercially ground flaxseeds are rancid. Hemp seeds are also an excellent source of protein.

Hope for the Lactose Intolerant

If you suffer from lactose intolerance and have been replacing milk with soy, you have three more healthful options: Rice milk, almond milk, and now hemp milk. All are nutritious alternatives to soy, and almond milk has a richer, heartier flavor that will compliment any bowl of porridge or organic rice bran.

Hemp milk is a very creamy, high protein alternative to soymilk, and it’s easy to blend your own by whizzing up hemp seeds and water in a high-speed blender. Also, if you’ve been using soy cheese as a replacement for milk-based cheese, switch to easily digestible rice cheese.

Babies — Birth Control in a Bottle

As stated in a number of previous articles, soy formula is one of the most dangerous foods you can feed your baby!

“In 1998, investigators reported that the daily exposure of infants to isoflavones in soy infant formula is 6 to11 times higher on a body-weight basis than the dose that has hormonal effects in adults consuming soy foods. Circulating concentrations of isoflavones in infants fed soy-based formula were 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than plasma estradiol concentrations in infants on cow’s milk formula.”

What does this mean?

Feeding your infant soy-based formula can cause a host of health problems including:

• Behavioral problems

• Food allergies and digestive distress
• Early puberty and fertility problems (including the inability to menstruate)
• Asthma
• Precocious puberty for girls and gynecomastia (man boobs) for boys
• Thyroid disease

• Cancer

As I concluded in my article on infant formula, babies who are fed exclusively from the breast from birth to six months enjoy health benefits such as:

• Lower risk of respiratory tract and middle ear infections

• Lower risk of eczema
• Lower risk of obesity
• Added protection against heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and allergies
• Improved brain function and immune system function

   

Soy formula is also laden with toxic chemicals such as aluminum and manganese, which can cause both physical and mental health problems, learning disabilities, brain damage and behavioral problems. If, for some reason, you are unable to breastfeed or have adopted a baby, look into these recipes for homemade infant formula.

School Lunch — Children’s Nutrition Left Behind

In order to comply with new US Government standards, soy products are now being used to replace whole, nutritious foods in school lunches. Due to the decreased fat content of soy, it is touted as a healthful alternative to the meat and dairy of yesterday’s hot meal.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Soy added to your child’s hot lunch depletes the necessary nutrients needed for healthy growth and has been linked to learning disabilities. I encourage you to watch this sobering video to learn more about the dangers in your child’s school lunch. Do your children a favor and send them to school with a healthy, home-packed meal.

Senior Citizens — Aging Less Gracefully

According to a study done by Dr. Lon White of the Hawaii Center for Health Research, senior citizens who consumed a lot of tofu in mid-life were more likely to experience accelerated brain aging and a more pronounced loss of cognitive function.

“What’s more,” said Dr White, “those who ate a lot of tofu, by the time they were 75 or 80, looked five years older.”

If you’re heading toward your golden years and are looking to avoid soy protein, become a label reader. Meal replacement drinks like Ensure are filled with soy protein and are best avoided. If you’re looking for a wholesome, nutrient-filled vegetarian meal
replacement drink, try my 100% Pure Pea Protein supplement. As you can see, unfermented soy is anything but a health food.

Do your own research, try eliminating it from your family’s diet and judge the results for yourself. Remember, an educated consumer is an armed consumer. Big companies can only produce and sell these harmful products as long as you’re buying them.

Vote with your wallet by spending your money on healthier alternatives!

Bioidentical hormone therapy has become widely adopted as a useful method of normalizing hormone levels. While it is far safer than synthetic or animal based hormones like Premarin, there are clearly some dangers associated with its use and the purpose of this article is to highlight some of the major ones.

This article is in no way meant to be a comprehensive review of the topic but merely to point out some of the major concerns and approaches as I see them from having practiced medicine for nearly three decades.

If you have any interest I would strongly recommend purchasing Dr. Wright’s new book Stay Young and Sexy. It is under $10 and simply the best book I have reviewed on the topic. If the book were $100 it would be worth the price. This book is a classic and should be in everyone’s natural medicine library.

Natural Progesterone

I will focus much of this article on natural progesterone cream as it is one of the most popular and useful ones for women.Typically, women find rapid improvement in two of the most common premenopausal challenges which are PMS and painful cramps.  It can be also extraordinarily useful to prevent miscarriages but dosing would be continuous after conception.

Dr. John Lee was my original mentor in this area but he passed away a number of years ago and had did fully appreciate the challenges that are associated with using the creams on your skin.

Dr. Jonathon Wright, along with Dr. Lee, are considered the pioneers in introducing bioidentical hormone therapy in the United States. Dr. Wright is still alive and I believe has successfully resolved the challenge associated with using the creams. Before I discuss that though let’s first do a brief review of why progesterone is important.

Natural progesterone is the identical hormone that is produced by a woman’s ovary. It is made from naturally occurring plant steroids found in the wild yam. It is NOT the synthetic version that is commonly purchased as tablets with a prescription such as Provera.

Synthetic progesterones, like Provera or medroxyprogesterone, can produce severe side effects including increased risk of cancer, abnormal menstrual flow, fluid retention, nausea, depression and can even increase risk of heart disease and stroke.

Side effects are extremely rare with natural progesterone. The only one of concern is that it can potentially alter the timing of your menstrual cycle.

Reasons Why Natural Progesterone Made by Your Body Is Good

Progesterone is a steroid hormone made by a woman’s ovaries when she ovulates and in smaller amounts by the adrenal gland. A menstruating woman will typically produce about 20 to 30 mg of progesterone a day during the luteal or last phase of her menstrual cycle.

While menopause doesn’t typically occur until age 50 or later, many women can start going out of balance in their 30s or even earlier. This decline in progesterone is not trivial for as women age into their fourth, fifth, and sixth decade, their progesterone levels continue to fall.  By the time they reach perimenopause as much as 75% or more of their youthful progesterone secretion may already be missing.

Natural progesterone is very useful to balance excess estrogen which can be a major risk for breast cancer. Natural progesterone is also different from estrogen in that your body can use it as a precursor or starting material to make other hormones such as adrenal hormones. It can even convert it into estrogen or testosterone if your body needs it.

Natural progesterone is made from a substance called diosgenin which is commonly extracted from wild yams or soybeans.  Even though it may be extracted from soy it is a highly purified hormone and there are absolutely no remnants of soy substances that would lead to any problem.

Estrogen Dominance

Many if not most women in our culture are estrogen dominant, so using the progesterone goes a long way towards balancing hormones which usually:

• Decreases a woman’s risk for breast cancer,
• Improves her PMS and breast tenderness and

The table below lists the properties of estrogen relative to progesterone. Some of the reasons that estrogen is frequently in excess in many women are:

• Overproduction of estrogen. Ovarian cysts or tumors can lead to excess estrogen production. Stress also increases production, but probably the most common cause is obesity. All body fat has an enzyme which converts adrenal steroids to estrogen, so the more fat you have, the more estrogen is present.
• Inability to breakdown estrogen. Excess estrogen is generally removed by the liver. Diseases of the liver like cirrhosis or decreased enzyme activity can lead to increased estrogen levels. Vitamin B6 and magnesium are necessary for the liver to neutralize estrogen. Increased sugar intake will also excrete magnesium and interfere with its ability to breakdown estrogen.
• Exposure to pesticides in foods. Most of us eat foods that have pesticides on them. These and many other unnatural chemicals share a common structure with estrogen and serve as “false” estrogens which further stimulates the body’s estrogen receptors.
• Estrogen supplementation. Clearly any additional estrogen given by prescription will increase the level unless it is properly balanced with natural progesterone.
• Decreased production of progesterone. Progesterone is necessary to counterbalance estrogen. If women do not ovulate during their cycle they will not produce any progesterone that cycle. This happens commonly and worsens the already disturbed progesterone/estrogen balance. Decreased progesterone levels are one of the most common reasons for miscarriages.

To minimize your risk of cancer it is very important to understand that you should never take any supplemental estrogen without taking natural progesterone. Note that I use the term “natural’ progesterone, or the real hormone. Taking synthetic versions like Provera will actually increase your risk of cancers and heart disease.

There are many ways to “naturally” address bioidentical hormone replacement but one of the most common mistakes is to use oral hormones.

If nature had intended to locate your ovaries in your stomach or somewhere else in your GI tract it might make sense for women to swallow progesterone. If your ovaries were in your GI tract, your body would certainly have been equipped with a way to process them safely and efficiently so that everything worked in perfect synchrony.

Of course your ovaries are not in your GI tract but in your pelvis outside your GI tract and connected to your uterus and vagina through your fallopian tubes. Your ovaries have direct access to your blood stream through a pelvic plexus of veins, which delivers their hormone secretions to your heart which in turn pumps them, unchanged to hormone sensitive cells throughout your entire body.

If you swallow steroid hormones you will seriously distort their natural metabolism  When you swallow them they will encounter potent stomach acids. The hormones that survive this assault then go to your liver where they will be further broken down. Your liver screens all molecules that enter your blood stream, passing some onward, modifying or detoxifying others, and rejecting a few. 

This routing of orally swallowed hormones is in sharp contrast to the way nature intended them to be distributed to your tissues.  If you swallow hormones only 10-15% will eventually reach the target tissues and you will need to take an oral dose that is 500% higher than you need. Over 30 different metabolites are created in your liver when you swallow the progesterone and any of these can then have unwanted side effects.

So if you or anyone you know currently use oral hormones like progesterone or DHEA or any hormone, I encourage you to strongly consider phasing them out. 

Like most good things in life if you use too much of the hormone cream, complications can develop and disrupt your hormone balance.

The Key to Safely and Effectively Using Progesterone Cream

If you want to copy nature and reproduce a hormonal environment that most closely resembles a normal premenopausal woman the first logical step would be to get the hormones directly into your blood stream, just the way your ovary does.

Hormones carefully measured and formulated in an appropriate cream or gel need only be rubbed once or twice a day into your mucous (epithelial) membranes. Since there are no destructive detours through your GI tract when administered this way, your tissues are exposed to the appropriate concentrations of the hormone without the side effects of 30 different liver metabolites.

I first started using these creams in the early 1990s be became gradually disenchanted with them after I noticed that they typically worked wonderfully initially but then invariably stopped working. This is now known as “dermal fatigue”. 

What happens, not only for progesterone cream, but for ANY hormone preparation you use by applying as a cream to your skin is that within a few weeks to a few months you will saturate the fat tissue with the hormones and they will actually stop working or can even make your symptoms worse.

The problem relates to the fact that progesterone is highly fat soluble and once applied to your skin will store itself in your fat tissue. When one initially uses the cream, there aren’t any problems as the fat stores are very low. But as time goes on, the cream accumulates and contributes to disruptions in your adrenal hormones such as DHEA, cortisol, and testosterone. I have learned that although progesterone cream is an enormously useful tool, it needs to be used very cautiously.

I found that many of the women who were on the cream have terribly elevated levels of this hormone. Progesterone is normally a cyclical hormone and the body really needs to see a change in the concentration to affect a proper physiological response. If the level is constantly above the concentration that it recognizes as “off” or low, this is not possible.

Fortunately, this is repairable. But it may involve going off the cream for as long as two years to wash the progesterone out of your system.

Best Way to Use Progesterone Cream

The key mistake that many well intentioned knowledgeable doctors, including myself made is to advise to use the cream on your skin. While this certainly provides better results than swallowing the hormones, it can still be improved.

There is a relatively minor tweak you can make with the creams which avoids nearly all of the side effects of applying the cream on your skin.

If you apply the cream to your mucous epithelial membranes that line your uterus and vagina you obtain a virtually ideal administration system. Not only is absorption through these membranes more complete than through your skin, but hormones absorbed through your vaginal membranes enter the very same pelvic plexus of veins that your ovaries normally empty into.

From here the hormones are carried to your heart and lungs and distributed to your tissues just as if your ovary had actually produced them.

Men also require hormones and I myself take DHEA. Obviously men don’t have a vagina to use but we do have a rectum that has a similar mucosal epithelial surface and can be used to administer the hormones in a near ideal fashion without any of the complications previously described.

Timing and Dose of Progesterone Cream

For most premenopausal women the usual dose is 15-24 mg/day for 14 days before expected menses, stopping the day or so before menses.  So you would use the cream for twelve days and then stop. Typically this would mean you would start on day 12 of your cycle and stop on day 26.

The abrupt lowering of your progesterone level is the primary stimulus for your period to start.  Hopefully when it starts any PMS and painful periods will be dramatically reduced.

When a women is in menopause she may only need 15 mg but taken for the first 25 days of the month, then take 5 or 6 days off and restart on the first of the month.

For most women a single daily application will work. However, because the half-life is relatively short, some women find that they get a more satisfactory response by splitting the daily dose in two, half in the morning and half in the evening. If you are only taking the hormones in the morning and begin to feel symptoms later in the day, splitting the dose in two should solve this problem.

Testing of Your Natural Hormones

This is somewhat of a controversial area but basically involves three different types.

• Blood
• Saliva
• Urine

I have never been a fan of blood testing as many of the hormones are secreted in a pulsatile fashion and it is difficult to get an accurate idea of the levels in this way.

Saliva testing is easier than urine but is not as accurate.

My current belief is that a 24 hour urine test is the preferred method and the one I use for myself and family. This is the one that Dr. Wright advocates in his own clinic. Dr. Wright has trained many hundreds of physicians in this system and if you are seeking further guidance in this area it would be wise to seek one of them to help you in this area.

By Dr. Mercola

Scientists long ago discovered that a class of naturally occurring pigments called carotenoids held powerful antioxidant properties that are crucial for your health. But only recently has one particular carotenoid jumped to the forefront  in terms of its status as a “supernutrient,” becoming the focus of a large and growing number of peer-reviewed scientific publications.

This carotenoid is called astaxanthin.

Astaxanthin is produced  by the microalgae Haematoccous pluvialis when its water supply dries up, forcing it to protect itself from ultraviolet radiation.

Astaxanthin is leaps and bounds more powerful than beta-carotene, alpha-tocopherol, lycopene and lutein; other members of its chemical family. Astaxanthin exhibits VERY STRONG free radical scavenging activity, and protects your cells, organs and body tissues from oxidative damage.

What makes astaxanthin so different from other nutritional elements? And what can it do for your health?

The answers to these questions will form the basis of the remainder of this article, and I think you’ll be quite impressed.

Astaxanthin is in a League of its Own

There are many properties that make this carotenoid special. Here are the main differences:

• Astaxanthin is by far the most powerful carotenoid antioxidant when it comes to free radical scavenging: it is 65 times more powerful than vitamin C, 54 times more powerful than beta-carotene, and 14 times more powerful than vitamin E.

• Astaxanthin is far more effective than other carotenoids at “singlet oxygen quenching,” which is a particular type of oxidation. The damaging effects of sunlight and various organic materials are caused by this less-stable form of oxygen. Astaxanthin is 550 times more powerful than vitamin E and 11 times more powerful than beta-carotene at neutralizing this singlet oxygen.

• Astaxanthin crosses the blood-brain barrier AND the blood-retinal barrier (beta carotene and lycopene do not), which has huge implications for the health of your eyes.

• It is soluble in lipids, so it incorporates into cell membranes.

• It is a potent UVB absorber.

• It reduces DNA damage.

• It is a very powerful natural anti-inflammatory.

• No adverse reactions have been found for people taking astaxanthin.

• It is virtually impossible to obtain the recommended daily amount of astaxanthin from diet alone because there are only two prime sources: microalgae and sea creatures that consume the algae (such as salmon, shellfish, and krill).

Carotenoids 101

Carotenoids are the compounds in your foods that give you that vibrant cornucopia of color — from green grasses to red beets, to the spectacular yellows and oranges of your bell peppers — as well as all of the beautiful flowers in your garden.

Almost all living things obtain their colors from natural pigments.

Beyond their visual splendor, these pigments have deeper value in that they carry out a variety of important biological functions. They are critical to the photosynthetic process and protect the plant or organism from damage by light and oxygen. Many animals incorporate carotenoids into their diets, which provide them with antioxidants and a source of vitamin A activity.

By consuming a plant or organism that contains these pigments, you gain a similar protective benefit.

There are more than 600 naturally occurring carotenoids, but most people are familiar with only a few.

Carotenoids are classified into two groups:

1. Carotenes, which contain no oxygen atoms: lycopene (the red in tomatoes) and beta-carotene (the orange in carrots) are examples.

1. Xanthophylls, which contain oxygen atoms: lutein (the green in leafy greens like spinach and kale), canthaxanthin (the gold in chanterelle mushrooms), zeaxanthin, and astaxanthin are examples.

Zeaxanthin is the most common carotenoid found in nature (peppers, maize, kiwi, grapes, oranges and squash).

At this moment, about ten different carotenoids are likely circulating in your blood. None of the carotenes tested to date are able to cross your blood-brain barrier — but astaxanthin does.

All Carotenoids are Not Created Equal

Some carotenoids (including beta-carotene, lycopene, and zeaxanthin) act not only as antioxidants, but also as pro-oxidants when present in your tissues in sufficient concentrations — which is not a good thing.

Astaxanthin is unique in that it cannot function as a pro-oxidant, making it highly beneficial.

Zeaxanthin is already abundant in your diet, provided you eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Your best source of lutein is from the yolks of eggs – but make sure they are organic eggs laid by free-range pastured hens.

Astaxanthin is different in that you are probably not consuming much of it, and certainly not enough to take advantage of all its benefits.

Astaxanthin is the most commonly occurring red carotenoid in marine and aquatic animals, especially salmon, giving it its characteristic pink color. Salmon and other sea creatures, like other animals, cannot synthesize astaxanthin themselves and must obtain it from their diets, which include zooplankton and krill. These smaller organisms feed on the microalgae, which are the original producers of the pigment.

Laboratory-made astaxanthin is now commonly used worldwide to supplement fish feeds in order to obtain the desired pinkish to orange-red color. However, wild salmon are 400 percent higher in astaxanthin than farmed salmon, and 100 percent of theirs is natural astaxanthin, rather than synthetic.

Astaxanthin’s Long List of Health Benefits is Growing by the Day

There may be no other single natural substance that performs so many beneficial biochemical functions as this little-known carotenoid. Its scope is truly amazing.

Here are just some of the ways astaxanthin can positively impact your health, according to the latest research:

• Boosting immune function

• Improving cardiovascular health by reducing C-Reactive Proteins (CRP), reducing triglycerides, and increasing beneficial HDL

• GREATLY protecting your eyes from cataracts, macular degeneration, and blindness (which I will discuss at length below)

• Protecting your brain from dementia and Alzheimer’s

• Reducing your risk for many types of cancer (including cancers of the breast, colon, bladder and mouth) by stimulating apoptosis (cancer cell death) and inhibiting lipid peroxidation

• Improving recovery from spinal cord and other central nervous system injuries

• Reducing inflammation from all causes, including arthritis and asthma

• Improving endurance, workout performance and recovery

• Helping to stabilize blood sugar, thereby protecting your kidneys

• Relieving indigestion and reflux

• Improving fertility by increasing sperm strength and sperm count

• Actually helping to prevent sunburn, and protecting you from the damaging effects of radiation (i.e., flying in airplanes, x-rays, CT scans, etc.)

• Reducing oxidative damage to your DNA

• Reducing symptoms from pancreatitis, multiple sclerosis, carpal tunnel syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease, and neurodegenerative diseases

• I personally use it to help protect me from radiation damage when I am flying during the day.  The radiation is reduced by 99 percent when flying at night so this is not an issue for night flights. However, it does have to be taken for three weeks to build up levels to provide this level of protection.

This impressive list continues to grow as more studies are being published all the time about this incredible nutrient.

Carotenoids and Your Eyes

When you were a child, odds are you were told, “Eat carrots — they’ll give you good eyesight!”

There is some truth to that old adage, as carrots contain carotenoids — many of which are important for your eyes. Vitamin A, or retinal, is vital to your retina — without it, you would simply go blind. But vitamin A is readily available from your diet.

Of all the carotenoids, only zeaxanthin and lutein are found in your retina, which has the highest concentration of fatty acids of any tissue in your body. This is because your retina is a highly light and oxygen rich environment, and it needs a large force of free radical scavengers to prevent oxidative damage there.

It is theorized that your body concentrates zeaxanthin and lutein in your retina to perform this duty. The concentration of these two pigments in the macula of your retina are what give it its characteristic yellow color. (The macula is actually called the “macula lutea” which literally means “yellow spot.”)

Zeaxanthin and lutein both cross the blood-brain-retina barriers, as astaxanthin does.

It is interesting that your eye preferentially concentrates zeaxanthin over lutein in the central macular retinal area (called the fovea), where the greatest amount of light impinges — and zeaxanthin is a more effective singlet oxygen scavenger than lutein. Your body seems to naturally “know” this and accumulates it where it’s most needed!

Leading Causes of Blindness: Macular Degeneration and Cataracts

Science is now revealing that astaxanthin may be the ULTIMATE carotenoid for eye health and prevention of blindness.

Blindness is an enormous problem worldwide. These statistics might disturb you:

• Age related macular degeneration (ARMD) is the leading cause of blindness for people over the age of 50.

• Sixty million people suffer from ARMD worldwide, and 10 million are blind.

• Severe, irreversible vision loss affects 30 percent of people over the age of 55.

• Cataracts are another major cause of blindness, affecting more than 20 million people in the U.S. alone. Cataracts are caused by lipid peroxidation of the epithelial layer of the lens. Although they can have other causes, most are related to aging.

• Cataracts result in 3 million cataract surgeries every year.

Clinical studies tell us that photic injury from the cumulative effect of repeated “photic insults” and the resulting gradual loss of photoreceptor cells is a major cause of ARMD. Therefore, anything you can do to cut your losses from these photic insults will reduce your risk for developing macular degeneration as you age.

Protecting Your Retina with Astaxanthin

Vitamin C can help protect you from retinal injury from excessive light energy, and indeed, high levels of vitamin C are found in human retinal tissues. But this common nutrient cannot do the job alone.

Epidemiological studies have shown that diets high in carotenoids (especially lutein and zeaxanthin) are associated with a reduced risk of cataracts and ARMD. It has also been shown experimentally that regular consumption of lutein supplements can increase your macular pigment density, which may potentially reduce your risk for later development of ARMD.

Scientists have studied lutein, zeaxanthin, canthaxanthin, and astaxanthin for their respective abilities to protect the retina. But none function to the degree that astaxanthin does, in terms of potency as a free radical scavenger and/or permeability across your blood-brain-retina barrier.

In studies, canthaxanthin was actually found to be potentially damaging to the eye as it caused eye inclusions, which can lead to retinopathy. So this carotenoid was ruled out as a supplement.

Dr. Mark Tso of the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University (considered by most professionals to be the most prestigious ophthalmology training center in the world) has clearly demonstrated that astaxanthin is the clear winner when it comes to protecting your eyes. He discovered that astaxanthin easily crosses into the tissues of the eye and exerts its effects safely and with more potency than any of the other carotenoids, without adverse reactions.

Specifically, Tso determined astaxanthin could ameliorate or prevent light induced damage, photoreceptor cell damage, ganglion cell damage, and damage to the neurons of the inner retinal layers.

He concluded that astaxanthin supplementation could be effective in preventing or treating a whole host of eye diseases, including:

• Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD)

• Diabetic neuropathy

• Cystoid macular edema

• Central retinal arterial and venous occlusion

• Glaucoma

• Inflammatory eye diseases (i.e., retinitis, iritis, keratitis, scleritis, etc.)

Other researchers (Shimidzu et al, Bagchi, Martin et al, and Beutner) have since confirmed Dr. Tso’s finding that astaxanthin is the most powerful antioxidant ever discovered for eye health, giving your eyes an additional layer of long-term protection.

Prevention of Cancer and Support for Your Immune System

Besides being a huge discovery in the prevention of eye disease, astaxanthin is showing great promise in cancer prevention, at least in animal studies. Because astaxanthin is not commonly found in human serum, information on its epidemiology in human health is lacking.

Several studies have shown the effectiveness of astaxanthin as a cancer preventative in rats and mice:

• In 2002, Kurihara et al studied the protective effect of astaxanthin against cancer in mice. He found astaxanthin “improved antitumor responses by inhibiting the lipid peroxidation induced by stress.”

• Tanaka et al (1994) showed that astaxanthin protected mice from urinary bladder cancer.

• A second study by Tanaka (1995) showed that astaxanthin prevented oral carcinogenesis in rats, and that the inhibitory effect on cancer was more pronounced than that of beta-carotene, which they had previously tested.

• A third study by the same research group (1995) found a significant decrease in the incidence of colon cancer in animals fed astaxanthin.

As a side note, it is interesting that the principal dietary source of astaxanthin is salmon, which is a central to the diet of Eskimos and other coastal tribes of North America. These groups have demonstrated an unusually low prevalence of cancer, which has traditionally been attributed to the high levels of certain fatty acids in salmon.

But it is certainly worth exploring the possibility that the astaxanthin in their fish diets may have played a cancer-protective role as well.  

Astaxanthin was studied intensively by Harumi Jyonouchi of the University of Minnesota to determine if it has benefit to immune function. They found that astaxanthin enhanced antibody production and T-cell and T-helper-cell activity, and partly restored diminished humoral immune responses in old mice.

Astaxanthin also reduced inflammatory symptoms in mice that had H. pylori infections.

For an extensive literature review, and much more about astaxanthin’s biological effects and mechanisms of action, you can read “Astaxanthin and Cancer Chemoprevention” by John E. Dore, Ph.D. of Cyanotech Corporation.

Boosting Your Endurance and Fat Loss

Astaxanthin may even improve your muscle endurance and enhance your ability to metabolize fat!

Is there anything this nutrient DOESN’T do?

Mice given astaxanthin were found to have accelerated body fat reduction (i.e., “fat burning”) when combined with exercise, as compared to exercise alone in a 2007 study by Aoi et al. Aoi reports the carotenoid seems to exert this effect by protecting the function of a lipid transport enzyme on the membrane of mitochondria that “fuels” energy production.

The end result?

Buff mice. Not that the world needs more physically fit rodents, but what works on mice often works on YOU.

Protection from Sunburn and Other Damaging Radiation

The ability of Haematoccous pluvialis to protect itself from the effects of intense ultraviolet radiation can actually help you avoid sunburn. This is a result of the “singlet oxygen quenching” I discussed earlier.

Current research is showing that, if you take 2 mg of astaxanthin daily for a month, it will be very difficult for you to get sunburned.

 The same powerful antioxidant properties that protect the algae from the sun’s rays will protect your skin as well. It takes a few weeks for the pigment to build up in your tissues, so you can’t just swallow a few pills just prior to your sun exposure and expect miracles.

Similarly, if you find yourself needing an x-ray or a CT scan, you can gain some measure of protection from this radiation exposure by taking 2-4 mg astaxanthin for several weeks prior to the scan.

If you are planning to fly on an airplane, you are also exposed to massive amounts of ionizing radiation, especially if you fly during the day. In this case, it would be wise to take a similar a dose of astaxanthin for the few weeks preceding your trip.

Final Suggestions

You may recognize the name astaxanthin because I have mentioned it in reference to krill oil, which has been my favorite source of animal based omega-3 fatty acids for many years now. One of the reasons for that is, krill oil naturally contains astaxanthin. And our krill oil has the highest concentration of astaxanthin of any krill oil supplement on the market today.

Because of the profound benefits this powerful antioxidant offers, I am excited to announce that we are in the process of developing several astaxanthin products that will be available in the near future.

If you are going to give astaxanthin a try, I recommend starting with 2 mg per day. If you are on a krill oil supplement, take that into consideration; different krill products have different concentrations of astaxanthin, so check your label.

Eating a variety of fresh organic foods — and incorporating supernutrients like astaxanthin — is the best approach to health, along with good sleep, exercise, and earthing. You may want to consider incorporating more raw foods into your diet, and listening to this interview with raw food expert David Wolfe is an excellent starting point.

In September, the FDA cited an Ohio dairy farm for violating USDA and FDA rules about humane treatment of calves bred as veal, and for the unlawful use of antibiotics on some of the animals.

According to a report in Food Safety News, Raber View Holstein Farm, based outside Millersburg, Ohio, sold at least one veal calf treated with illegal antibiotics that are not approved for human consumption.

The farm “went way over the limit for using the antibiotics Sulfamethoxazole and Trimethoprim in treating an ill animal, probably for a urinary tract infection,” Food Safety News said. “The presence of the drug means the meat is adulterated under federal law.”

The FDA also cited the farm for holding the animals “under conditions that are so inadequate that medicated animals bearing potentially harmful drug residues are likely to enter the food supply.”

Unfortunately, improper handling of veal calves doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. In another case in August, the Seattle Business Journal reported that Washington state-based food distributer, Costco, was “apologizing” for the mistreatment of the veal calves raised on one of its suppliers’ farms.

The mea culpa came only after a shocking undercover video of the farm’s veal-raising practices was made public. The film, of Buckeye Veal Farm in Apple Creek, was aired by a Columbus, Ohio TV station, and it was so graphic that the station’s website still carries a warning that it “may be disturbing to some viewers.”

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

The most disturbing thing about the NBC4i video I used as a source above is that, despite its warning to viewers, it is highly edited — it’s nothing compared to the raw footage posted on YouTube by Mercy for Animals, which is so horrific that you have to affirm that you’re 18 before YouTube will let you watch it.

Narrated by TV personality and animal activist Bob Barker, the unedited version shows in sickening detail the merciless way that veal calves are readied for the trip to your plate.

While Costco immediately condemned the calf abuse at Buckeye Veal, saying they “had no clue” the calves were treated like this, it’s hard to believe that somebody in the business of selling veal doesn’t know how it comes to be veal.

As I’ll explain later, there’s a very specific process that calves have to go through for their meat to turn out like it does.And that method is NOT compatible with the free-range, grass-eating, hormone- and drug-free beef that I recommend, if you choose to eat meat.

Veal’s Tenderness and Color Come at a Price

You might be thinking cost, as in dollars and cents, when I mention the price of veal — and yes, it’s expensive compared to more common cuts of beef like burger or even steak. But the real price of veal is what it costs the calf that brings it to you.

I am amazed at how few people realize that veal is a direct product of the dairy industry. But the fact is, in order to give milk, cows must continue breeding. And once the calves are born, they are monetary burdens to a dairy’s bottom line.

While females can be “recycled” into milk producers themselves, the males are costly overhead. One way of turning that overhead into profits is to get the males to market as soon as possible. Veal is the meat that comes from a young calf, usually 16 to 18 weeks old when it’s slaughtered.

Bob veal is the meat from a younger calf, newborn to 3 weeks old, weighing no more than 150 pounds. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), about 15 percent of the veal industry comprises bob veal.

It sounds simple. A calf is born, it goes to market, and you take it home and savor one of the most tender, tasty cuts of meat in the industry. But there’s something sinister going on between the time that calf is born and when it lands on your plate — and it’s something the meat industry would rather you didn’t know.

Confined, Chained, Drugged and ‘Special-Fed’

A veal calf’s life begins by being ripped from its mother at birth, or at the most, within three days after birth and moved into living conditions that defy description.

The majority are confined in individual, tiny crates or stalls — typically 26 to 30 inches wide by 66 inches long — with their heads poking out through metal bars or wooden slats. Chains on their necks keep them from moving much more than enough to eat or lie down in a stiff, unnatural position.

And that’s the way they live the rest of their tragic, short lives.

That’s right. That tender, white-pink delicacy that you pay an arm and a leg for comes from a calf that was forced to stand still in one position in a stall no bigger than itself for its entire life.

Why?

Because if the calf moves around or roams freely, it just might build up some muscle, which is not good for tender meat.

But that’s not all — for veal to get its creamy, velvety look and taste, the calf must be deprived of fiber, such as grasses and grains that could give it muscle, and kept borderline anemic with a special milk- or soy-based formula. The USDA says this diet is “fortified” with 40 “essential” nutrients, including amino acids, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins.

But the point is, aside from a formula that is nowhere near what the calf would be getting from its mother, all of the nutrients are synthetic — manufactured in a factory and loaded in the fake milk, along with soy that more than likely is genetically modified, and grown in a field sprayed with pesticides.

It’s illegal to give these calves hormones, but antibiotics are often a necessity.

Because of the unnatural — and unhealthy — conditions they live in, veal calves can become sick with stomach ulcers, respiratory infections, pneumonia, and diarrhea.

So the farmer gives the calves antibiotics so they can get well enough to go to slaughter. That is, if they can stand or walk long enough to be put out of their misery, because sometimes they get so weak they can’t move when it’s finally time to leave their crates.

And that’s where the abuse really begins.

If you can stomach watching another undercover video, this time of Bushway Packing in Vermont, you will see what happens to calves that can’t walk. In a sick twist of irony, veal farm regulations say a calf that can’t stand on its own can’t be put down and used for food. So, the farmer will do whatever is necessary to get the calf standing just long enough to slaughter it.

The grisly footage shows workers kicking, dragging and repeatedly stunning veal calves with electric prods. What you don’t see, according to the Burlington Free Press, is a calf being skinned alive.

Abuse like this is not supposed to happen, and Bushway, which was cited three previously for its horrific practices, was shut down when this video surfaced. But the kicker is Bushway Packing was a certified organic farm!

A Breeding Ground for Contamination and Possible Human Illness

When you hear “organic,” you tend to think that the food in question must be superior to anything that’s not labeled organic. But the only USDA definition of organic in the veal industry is that the animals are raised without hormones or antibiotics. It does NOT mean they don’t get artificial formulas or don’t live in conditions that can cause harm to the animals as well as humans.

According to the USDA, E. coli and salmonella are both food-borne illnesses associated with veal. The E. coli can colonize in the intestines of animals, which could contaminate muscle meat at slaughter. Both E. coli and salmonella can be killed by thorough cooking, but it’s still a health risk since so many people prefer their meat on the rare side.

In fact, the risk is so great that in February of this year, 4.9 million pounds of veal and beef in California were recalled because E. coli was found in “unsanitary operating conditions” at the plant, Huntington Meat Packaging.

Instance after Instance of Illegal Levels of Antibiotics

In non-organic farms, if the animals get sick, certain antibiotics are allowed, but they must be cleared from the animal’s system before the calf can be sold. As a watchdog measure and to trace illnesses if they do happen, veal packers are required to take samples of each calf’s meat, and submit the samples to regulators for testing.

But even that doesn’t keep unsafe veal from going to market, as illustrated in August at the Corscadden Family Farm in New York. The farm received an FDA warning letter for having unsafe levels of tetracycline and penicillin in its veal, just like three Pennsylvania veal farms got on August 30.

The Pennsylvania veal meat tested for high levels of neomycin (an antibiotic to treat intestinal tract bacteria), penicillin, and flunixin, a nonsteroid, anti-inflammatory drug usually given to horses to alleviate pain.

 

Banned in the United Kingdom, ‘Transitioning’ in the U.S.

The list of contaminated veal products that are being released regularly in the U.S. market goes on and on, and I think you get the idea that it’s not isolated to Costco’s Ohio supplier. The good news is that America’s hunger for veal has dropped dramatically, from an all-time high in 1944 of an average 8.6 pounds per person per year to a little over 1 pound in 1988, to less than half a pound in 2004.

The bad news is that, unlike the United Kingdom and the entire European Union, the US has yet to totally outlaw the indoor, cramped crates that the majority of veal calves in this country live in.

Just reading the USDA’s website, you would think that everything’s rosy when it comes to those crates and how veal calves are treated in the US. Defending the living conditions by saying the stalls “provide a safe environment where the calves can stand, stretch, groom themselves and lay down in a natural position,” the USDA is talking right out of the side of its mouth — you would never guess that this is the same agency that’s systematically going farm to farm, shutting down unsafe veal operations.

And the FDA?

I’m not going to beleaguer the issue by pointing out that this agency is only doing what it does in all facets of its responsibilities — with too few resources, not enough manpower and no laws to back it up even it could stop the evils of veal.

So what’s happening is that U.S. officials are just leaving it up to the states and the industry itself to change for the better.

The American Veal Association says it’s made a commitment to “transition” toward more humane treatment of veal calves and have banned, on their own, the confined crates — but their implementation goal for that is seven years away.

That’s why it’s good to hear that some farms and suppliers, including Costco, have decided to do away with the crates on their own. Five states — California, Michigan, Maine, Arizona, and Colorado — also have jumped the Veal Association’s deadline, and banned them on their own, along with two of the nation’s largest veal producers, Strauss Veal and Marcho Farms.

Is There Such a Thing as Humanely-Raised Veal Calves?

While some people believe there is no such thing as humanely-raised veal, it appears that humane veal farming methods are beginning to see the light.

For example, Wisconsin-based Strauss Veal told the San Francisco Chronicle online (SFgate.com) in 2009 that it changed its operations to selling only free-range veal, never tethered or confined, that’s fed only its mother’s milk and pasture grass. The farm also doesn’t use antibiotics, animal by-products or other artificial means of readying the calves for market.

It’s a good sign, too, that other farmers are slowly following suit, like this group from New England, who told NPR that they were opening their pastures to calves to frolic in the fields and nurse from their mothers until they go to market as veal.

The surprise is that this new way of doing things has opened up a new bottom line for at least one of these farmers, who said that her calves are now so healthy that she can sell them to high-end restaurants for $500 apiece — quite a bit more than the $100 she got from the confined feeding operations.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, then, that the president of the American Veal Association, Steve Kraut, was none too happy about this “new” type of veal:

“If these folks were going to raise this product, market it under the name of veal, and then denigrate the long-standing veal industry in this country, I guess it would have been nice to have heard from one of them first,” Kraut told NPR.

Did he say denigrate?

How could free-ranging, mother-fed, drug-free, grass-eating calves denigrate what this industry has done so far, and is still doing to the meat it calls veal — unless what Kraut is trying to say is that, if the calves are not crated, confined, drugged and borderline anemic, then they’re not veal?

In that case, I’m standing by the advice that I give with all my food plans, and that is that the best way to take control of your health is to learn everything you can about the food products you’re consuming, and follow a food plan that is healthful, tasty, and appropriate for your nutritional type. To help you with the latter, I now offer the entire nutritional typing test for free, online.

Avoid processed foods, chemical additives, sugars, and animal proteins that are bred in factory farms under the horrific conditions that traditional veal is.

From pasture farmed organic eggs and butter to mercury-free fish, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables, to raw milk and grass-fed beef, to all-natural supplements such as krill oil, you can choose foods that taste good and are good for you, simply because they are come to you the way nature intended — natural, and drug- and pesticide-free.

Conventional veal is raised in one of the most inhumane, unthinkable conditions of any food industry, and there’s simply no good reason to consume such conventionally-raised veal that I can think of.

References:

 
Le Neindre P. Evaluating housing systems for veal calves. J Anim Sci 1993;71:1345-1354.

 
Stevenson P. The need to prohibit the veal crate system. Compassion in World Farming report, November 1999.

 
Veissier I, Chazal P, Pradel P et al. Providing social contacts and objects for nibbling moderates reactivity and oral behaviors in veal calves. J Anim Sci 1997;75:356-365.

 
Cummins KA, Brunner CJ. Effect of calf housing on plasma aschorbate and endocrine and immune function. J Dairy Sci 1991;74(5):1582-1588.

 
U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. 2006. Veal from farm to table.

 
Flower FC and Weary DM. 2003. The effects of early separation on the dairy cow and calf. Animal Welfare 12(3):339-48.

On August 19, Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller issued a call for whistleblowers to step forward and help the state and federal government crack down on health care and pharmaceutical industries that defraud the government of billions of dollars.

Announcing that the Indiana Medicaid program would recover $9.52 million from a record $2.3 billion federal lawsuit won against Pfizer, Zoeller said that fraud on Medicare and Medicaid each year is estimated to be a multi-billion-dollar problem.

He isn’t wrong: According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalists, the vast corruption that pharmaceutical companies are guilty of is fraught with fraud, cover-ups of fatal side effects, and huge kickbacks paid to doctors.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real truth is that it is much, much worse.

Sources:

Office of the Indiana Attorney General August 19, 2010

Bureau of Investigative Journalism  August 11, 2010

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Fraud. Kickbacks. Price-setting, bribery and illegal sales activities, including a felony count of assisting the Arab League in acquiring documents on Israeli business activities. Add in all the doctored and back-dated documents, federal and civil lawsuits, and billions of dollars in government sanctions, fines, and penalties – not to mention the deaths – and you’d think it was the script for a thriller global action movie.

But no, it’s just Big Pharma at its deceitful best, dancing all the way to the bank while continuing to defraud the world of billions of dollars, and endangering the lives of regular people like you and me.

When I set out to investigate some of the criminal activities that the 12 largest pharmaceutical companies had been convicted of lately, I had a general idea of the hornet’s nest I would be stepping into.

But the amount of gross misconduct, fraud and deceit I found was so insidious, so massive, and so overwhelming that I decided to narrow my original 12 picks down to just five for the purposes of this article.

Because of the uniqueness of one particular company’s offense – a felony guilty plea to conspiring with the Arab League – I added a sixth.

‘Get Out of Jail Free’

I’m sure that each and every one of the drug companies who have had to pay fines for their criminal activities would argue that they’ve hardly been given a “get out of jail free” pass. But when you look at what they took, compared to what they’ve had to pay back, I think you’ll agree their punishment amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist.

The six companies I’m highlighting, in descending order of their annual revenues, are:

1.    Johnson & Johnson

2.    Pfizer

3.    Roche

4.    GlaxoSmithKline

5.    Novartis

6.    Baxter International

Size-wise, Baxter is actually way down the list at No. 17. But I felt this company’s offenses were so egregious that I just couldn’t ignore them. You may remember that last year at the height of the so-called flu pandemic, Baxter “mistakenly” mixed the lethal, live, biological weapon/virus, H5N1, with seasonal flu, then sent it to labs around Europe.

The potential disaster could have meant worldwide devastation, had it not been for the fact that the Czech Republic tested the vaccine before distributing it – and found it was a deadly cocktail.

Would it surprise you, then, that Baxter is the company that, in 1993, pled guilty to the felony count of violating U.S. laws prohibiting cooperation with the Arab boycott against Israel?

At the time, the Veterans Administration was so angered by this offense that they cited it as one reason why they wanted to suspend Baxter from all VA contracts for three years. The kicker was that the catalyst to the suspension was the VA’s contention that Baxter had “knowingly misled and provided false information to VA purchasing agents, in an attempt to get them to purchase Baxter products.”

In the end, Baxter agreed to pay more than $6.5 million in civil and criminal penalties to settle the Arab “mistake.”

Mistakes, Mistakes, Mistakes

You’ll find that “mistakes” happen often with Baxter.

From dozens of recalls of products that caused deaths and injuries, to at least 11 different guilty pleas to fraud and illegal sales activity, to more than 200 lawsuits – many of them stemming from selling AIDS-tainted blood to hemophiliacs – to more than $1.3 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties, Baxter over the years has racked up a record that makes Bonnie and Clyde look like angels.

While I don’t have space to name all the Baxter products that allegedly have caused deaths and/or injuries, a more recent product is its blood thinner Heparin, the subject of a lawsuit filed by actor Dennis Quaid and his wife, who say their twins were injured by it.

Another Baxter product that caused deaths through the years was its tainted dialysis filters, which led to the company settling lawsuits of patients who died as a result of the tainted filters.

It’s no wonder why, in 1999, Baxter was named by AllBusiness.com as one of the “Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s!”

Baxter earned its No. 87 spot on AllBusiness’ Top 100 Corporate Criminals list thanks to its guilty plea to dealing with the Arab League. But that place pales in comparison to (Hoffman La) Roche, which was crowned Corporate Criminal No. 1 for its $500 million criminal fine for leading a worldwide conspiracy to raise and fix prices and allocate market shares for certain vitamins sold in the United States and elsewhere.

The conspiracy lasted nine years, federal officials said – but it was the kind of “mistake” that was oft-repeated by a slew of drug companies during that decade.

Bribery, Fraud, Illegal Activities – They Just Keep Repeating

In all, 19 drug companies made AllBusiness.com’s Top 100 Corporate Criminals List for the 1990s.

Their fines totaled nearly $850 million – and that was just the settlements, not the actual losses the government alleged, for crimes such as defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and even the FDA, as well as 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!

What is sad and shocking is that this was just the tip of the iceberg, AllBusiness.com said in its report.

“For every company convicted of health care fraud, there are numerous others who get away with ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, or face only mild slap-on-the-wrist fines and civil penalties when caught,”

I have to admit this literally makes me sick. If this is true – and I don’t doubt it one iota – can you imagine what the tally might be for the latest decade, which has seen record fines like the one that Pfizer was hit with last year?

Too Big to Fail?

You may recall that I wrote about this – in the largest health care fraud settlement in history, Pfizer was ordered to pay $2.3 billion to resolve criminal and civil allegations that the company illegally promoted uses of four of its drugs, including the painkiller Bextra. The other drugs were the antipsychotic Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and the anti-epileptic Lyrica.

Only a few years earlier, Pfizer had paid $430 million for illegally promoting uses of its seizure drug, Neurontin.

Yet, these are just a few examples of all the “mistakes” Pfizer has made through the years, making it very clear why AllBusiness.com named this company No. 17 in the Top Corporate Criminals for the 1990s.

Technically speaking, companies found guilty of fraud like this are banned from dealing with Medicare and Medicaid again. But, as I’ve already reported, do you think that happened with Pfizer?

Nope.

Instead, in a slap-on-the-wrist move that resembled the too-big-to-fail bank bailouts, federal prosecutors allowed Pfizer to avoid being sentenced for massive fraud and deception by letting them form a sham company to take the fall.

So, in the end, Pfizer’s “imaginary friend” Pharmacia & Upjohn shouldered the conviction, even though it had never sold any drugs. As CNN found, “the subsidiary is nothing more than a shell company whose only function is to plead guilty.”

And Pfizer got off scot-free, except for that little $2.3 billion fine that amounted to just three months’ profits.

And Then There’s Merck

Merck is another branch of Big Pharma with a long list of deaths to its credit. It was five years before Merck made its $30 billion recall of Vioxx that I warned my readers that this pain killer might be a real killer for some people.

As people began to die from heart attacks, strokes, and blood clotting disorders, I didn’t like being right. But I hated that after it was over, and the drug had been pulled, that Merck appeared to pick up the pieces painlessly – pun intended – by getting a new drug fast-tracked and on the market, lickety-split.

That drug is Gardasil, a vaccine that so far has been linked to thousands of adverse events and at least 49 unexplained deaths. It’s a situation that the FDA and CDC have been denying repeatedly, keeping their heads buried in the sand even as the adverse reports mount.

Merck has had other problems through the years, with more than $5.5 billion in judgments and fines levied against it. But like Pfizer, apparently somebody thinks this company is also “too big to fail.”

Johnson & Johnson: Just Another Drug Gang Member

As I mentioned earlier, this company made the 1990s Corporate Criminal list for deliberately destroying documents related to a criminal investigation case on one its products.

You probably don’t need to be reminded of all the recalls Johnson & Johnson has had over the years with its pain products, specifically Motrin, Tylenol and Fentanyl (pain killer patches). The fact that Johnson & Johnson has paid out over $1 billion in the last few years in fines and judgments probably comes as no surprise either.

But did you know that just recently (in May) the company pleaded guilty to illegally promoting its epilepsy drug Topamax for psychiatric purposes, and in so doing, settled a civil lawsuit in the case for $75 million?

You probably didn’t realize, either, that in January the US Dept. of Justice accused Johnson & Johnson of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare Inc to buy and recommend Johnson & Johnson drugs.

This latest scheme is the subject of a federal lawsuit that has 18 states suing not just Omnicare, but 14 other major drug companies, alleging that they ran this scheme together.

The lawsuit’s been filed under the federal False Claims Act and, yes, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, and GlaxoSmithKline are all in there with Omnicare. Watch for news of this lawsuit in the upcoming months – but in the meantime, think about this: in the wake of all this hassle, Omnicare’s CEO Joel Gemunder has quit, but not without remuneration.

His parting pay is a record $130 million!

But again, this is just the tip of an iceberg.

GlaxoSmithKline: 1,500 Deaths Alleged

At more than $5 billion in fines and judgments, GlaxoSmithKline is treading the same muddy waters as Merck, especially since its HPV vaccine counterpart, Cervarix, has its own share of adverse reactions and alleged deaths being reported around the world.

GSK’s most recent “mistakes” stem from its diabetes drug, Avandia, which the FDA on September 23 decided to “regulate” – a little – but not withdraw, leaving Avandia as a “mistake” that is still ongoing.

What we do know so far is that GSK spent 11 years trying to cover up trial data that showed that Avandia was a risky drug for the heart.

In my research for this article, I also discovered that Avandia topped the list of drugs linked to fatal adverse events in 2009, according to an analysis of U.S. Food and Drug Administration records. With a staggering 1,354 deaths reported to the FDA in 2009 alone, it’s hard to believe that this drug is still even in discussion!

But, like the others I investigated, GSK also has made hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for fraud cases and pricing disputes, as well as judgments won by the federal government in Medicare and Medicaid fraud suits.

Roche: No. 1 in AllBusiness.com’s Corporate Criminal Book

Roche’s offenses have been ongoing over the years in its companies and affiliates around the world. Most recently, in March, Roche suspended a clinical trial for a rheumatoid arthritis and lupus drug after serious infections, some of them fatal, were reported with it.

Officials reported that the trial was stopped because “opportunistic” infections like those found in the trials are not normal in healthy individuals. Sadly, that information was too late for 15 Japanese patients, who died after taking one of Roche’s approved arthritis medicines, Actemra.

But that’s not the end of deaths related to Roche products: Another Roche drug, Posicor, was withdrawn in 1998 after reports of at least 140 deaths linked to harmful interactions of Posicor with other drugs.

It’s no wonder that Roche has had to pay out nearly $2 billion in judgments and fines over the years, with thousands of individuals suing them. But before I move on, let me remind you that Roche also manufactures the CDC’s and FDA’s favorite flu stand-by, Tamiflu.

And in case you’ve forgotten, Tamiflu was blamed for the deaths of 18 Japanese children in 2007, and the subject of a warning by the Japanese Ministry of Health not to give this drug to children ages 10 to 19.

With a record like this, you would think that Roche and the rest of the drug king pins known as Big Pharma would have just a little shame over what they’ve done over the years. But, since the offenses just keep coming, and since states like Indiana have to keep on begging for whistleblowers to step forward, it’s apparent that Pharma’s sense of shame is nonexistent.

It seems fitting then, to end with this New York Times headline from 1999, when Roche was the subject of the price-fixing scandal that earned its No. 1 Corporate Criminal spot on AllBusiness.com’s list:

“Roche Officers Say Scandal Is a Surprise.” Yes, they proclaimed innocence, even while the federal government was busy yanking their hands right out of the cookie jar.

Scam-Buster Efforts by States and the Feds Continue

Fortunately, states’ attorneys general like Zoeller are gaining ground in gathering support for routing out the criminal acts that Big Pharma continues to perpetuate.

More and more, organizations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the False Claims Act Legal Center, and Politicol News are starting to investigate and publicize the illegal – and criminal – actions that these companies have been getting away with for years.

Thanks to the federal False Claims Act, state and federal investigators have a gun that they can use to hunt down and prosecute these heinous crimes with. If you visit the False Claims Act Legal Center website, you’ll get a hint of just how much this type of corporate has been going on.

But again, it’s just a hint, just the tip of an iceberg. What it does prove is that Big Pharma can’t be trusted – and they have the criminal history to prove it.

What’s most shocking, though, is that even when they get caught with deaths on their hands, along with the money in the cookie jar of price-fixing, fraud and deceit, is that like Pfizer, their punishments appear to be just little slaps on the wrist.

Apparently, they are too big to nail; too big to fail. So, like Baxter, instead of shutting down, they cough up a pittance in comparison to what they took, and continue onward with their government contracts for vaccines and other drugs.

It’s encouraging that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in July announced the formation of the Healthcare Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team, which together with the Department of Justice, US Attorneys’ Offices and other federal agencies will target healthcare and drug fraud.

But, as Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said, it’s going to take more than that. So, whistleblowers, come out and help in this crusade. It’s time to hold Big Pharma’s career criminals accountable.

Chart Showing 6 Drug Companies’ “Mistakes”

The chart below shows the type of criminal activity, lawsuits and fines or judgments I was able to find for each of the drug companies featured in this article. Keep in mind that these are conservative numbers – many records are not available without a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Also, many are not readily available online unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, and what year.

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Pfizer Officials Sued by Investors

By Dr. Mercola

You’ve no doubt noticed that for about the last 60 years the majority of health care officials and the media have been telling you saturated fats are bad for your health and lead to a host of negative consequences, like elevated cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Meanwhile during this same 60 years the American levels of heart disease, obesity, elevated serum cholesterol and Alzheimer’s have skyrocketed compared to our ancestors, and even compared to modern-day primitive societies using saturated fat as a dietary staple.

Did you know that multiple studies on Pacific Island populations who get 30-60% of their total caloric intact from fully saturated coconut oil have all shown nearly non-existent rates of cardiovascular disease?[1]

Clearly, a lot of confusion and contradictory evidence exists on the subject of saturated fats, even among health care professionals. 

But I’m going to tell you something that public health officials and the media aren’t telling you.

The fact is, all saturated fats are not created equal. 

The operative word here is “created”, because some saturated fats occur naturally, while other fats are artificially manipulated into a saturated state through the man-made process called hydrogenation.

Hydrogenation manipulates vegetable and seed oils by adding hydrogen atoms while heating the oil, producing a rancid, thickened oil that really only benefits processed food shelf life and corporate profits. 

The medical and scientific communities are now fairly united in the opinion that hydrogenated vegetable and seed oils should be avoided. 

These manipulated saturated fats are also called trans fats, and no doubt you’ve heard about them lately.  Some cities and states have now outlawed their use.  There is no controversy anymore regarding the health dangers of these artificially saturated fats.

And guess what? 

These are the same damaged trans fats that have been touted as “healthy” and “heart-friendly” for the last 60 years by the vegetable and seed oil interests!

But the truth finally came out.  Trans fat was rebuked, debunked, and revealed as the true enemy to good health that it has always been, regardless of what the seed- and vegetable oil shills told the American public for the last half century. 

Unfortunately, this rightful vilification of hydrogenated saturated fats has created a lot of confusion regarding naturally occurring saturated fats, including coconut oil. 

If one form of saturated fat is bad for you, the argument goes, then all saturated fat must be bad. 

Right?

Nothing could be further from the truth! 

The Truth About Coconut Oil

The truth about coconut oil is obvious to anyone who has studied the health of those who live in traditional tropical cultures, where coconut has been a nutritious diet staple for thousands of years.

Back in the 1930′s, a dentist named Dr. Weston Price traveled throughout the South Pacific, examining traditional diets and their effect on dental and overall health. He found that those eating diets high in coconut products were healthy and trim, despite the high fat concentration in their diet, and that heart disease was virtually non-existent.

Similarly, in 1981, researchers studied populations of two Polynesian atolls. Coconut was the chief source of caloric energy in both groups. The results, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,[2] demonstrated that both populations exhibited positive vascular health.

In fact, no evidence exists that the naturally occurring high saturated fat intake had any kind of harmful effect in these populations!

That’s not what you expected, is it?  Based on 60 years of negative public policy towards naturally occurring saturated fats, you would expect these cultures to be rife with clogged arteries, obesity and heart disease.

It may be surprising for you to realize that the naturally occurring saturated fat in coconut oil actually has some amazing health benefits, such as:

• Promoting your heart health[3]
• Promoting weight loss, when needed[4]
• Supporting your immune system health[5]
• Supporting a healthy metabolism[6]
• Providing you with an immediate energy source[7]
• Keeping your skin healthy and youthful looking

• Supporting the proper functioning of your thyroid gland[8]

 But how is this possible? 

Does coconut oil have some secret ingredients not found in other saturated fats? 

The answer is a resounding “yes”.

Coconut Oil’s Secret Ingredient

50 percent of the fat content in coconut oil is a fat rarely found in nature called lauric acid.  If you’re a frequent reader of my newsletter you already know that I consider lauric acid a “miracle” ingredient because of its unique health promoting properties.

Your body converts lauric acid into monolaurin, which has anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-protozoa properties.[9] 

Monolaurin is a monoglyceride which can actually destroy lipid coated viruses such as:

• HIV, herpes
• Measles
• Influenza virus
• Various pathogenic bacteria
• Protozoa such as giardia lamblia.

Lauric acid is a powerful virus and gram-negative bacteria destroyer, and coconut oil contains the most lauric acid of any substance on earth!

Capric acid, another coconut fatty acid present in smaller amounts, has also been added to the list of coconut’s antimicrobial components.

This is one of the key reasons you should consider consuming coconut oil, because there aren’t many sources of monolaurin in our diet.  But the health benefits of coconut oil don’t stop there.

The Benefits of Medium-Chain Fatty Acids

Coconut oil is about 2/3 medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs), also called medium-chain triglycerides or MCTs.  These types of fatty acids produce a whole host of health benefits.

Coconut oil is nature’s richest source of these healthy MCFAs. 

By contrast, most common vegetable or seed oils are comprised of long chain fatty acids (LCFAs), also known as long-chain triglycerides or LCTs.

Let me tell you why these long-chain fatty acids are not as healthy for you as the MCFAs found in coconut oil[10]:

• LCFAs are difficult for your body to break down — they require special enzymes for digestion.
• LCFAs put more strain on your pancreas, liver and your entire digestive system.
• LCFAs are predominantly stored in your body as fat.

• LCFAs can be deposited within your arteries in lipid forms such as cholesterol.

In contrast to LFCAs, the MCFAs found in coconut oil have many health benefits, including the following beneficial qualities:

• MCFAs are smaller. They permeate cell membranes easily, and do not require special enzymes to be utilized effectively by your body.
• MCFAs are easily digested, thus putting less strain on your digestive system.
• MCFAs are sent directly to your liver, where they are immediately converted into energy rather than being stored as fat.

• MCFAs actually help stimulate your body’s metabolism, leading to weight loss.

Coconut Oil Helps Fight Diabetes

Your body sends medium-chain fatty acids directly to your liver to use as energy.  This makes coconut oil a powerful source of instant energy to your body, a function usually served in the diet by simple carbohydrates. 

But although coconut oil and simple carbohydrates share the ability to deliver quick energy to your body, they differ in one crucial respect.

Coconut oil does not produce an insulin spike in your bloodstream.  You read that correctly, Coconut oil acts on your body like a carbohydrate, without any of the debilitating insulin-related effects associated with long-term high carbohydrate consumption!

Diabetics and those with pre-diabetes conditions (an exploding health epidemic in America), should immediately realize the benefit of a fast acting energy source that doesn’t produce an insulin spike in your body.  In fact, coconut oil added to the diets of diabetics and pre-diabetics has actually been shown to help stabilize weight gain, which can dramatically decrease your likelihood of getting adult onset type-2 Diabetes.[11]

Cococut Oil, the Friend to Athletes and Dieters

If you live in the United States, you have an almost 70 percent chance of being overweight.

And, by now, I’m sure you’re well aware that obesity affects your quality of life and is linked to many health concerns.

One of the best benefits of coconut oil lies in its ability to help stimulate your metabolism.

Back in the 1940s, farmers found out about this effect by accident when they tried using inexpensive coconut oil to fatten their livestock.

It didn’t work!

Instead, coconut oil made the animals lean, active and hungry.

However, many animal and human research studies have demonstrated that replacing LCFAs with MCFAs results in both decreased body weight and reduced fat deposition.

In fact, the ability of MCFAs to be easily digested, to help stimulate the metabolism and be turned into energy has entered the sports arena. Several studies have now shown that MCFAs can enhance physical or athletic performance.[12]

Additionally, research has demonstrated that, due to its metabolic effect, coconut oil increases the activity of the thyroid.  And you’ve probably heard that a sluggish thyroid is one reason why some people are unable to lose weight, no matter what they do.

Besides weight loss, there are other advantages to boosting your metabolic rate. Your healing process accelerates. Cell regeneration increases to replace old cells, and your immune system functions better overall.

Coconut Oil on Your Skin

Besides the mounting medical and scientific evidence that coconut oil has powerful positive health benefits when eaten, it has also been used for decades by professional massage therapists to knead away tight stressed muscles.

However, you don’t have to be a professional massage therapist to gain the skin and tissue support benefits of coconut oil. Just use coconut oil as you would any lotion.

Coconut oil is actually ideal for skin care. It helps protect your skin from the aging effects of free radicals, and can help improve the appearance of skin with its anti-aging benefits.

In fact, physiologist and biochemist Ray Peat, Ph.D. considers coconut oil an antioxidant[13], due to its stability and resistance to oxidation and free radical formation.  Plus, he believes it reduces our need for the antioxidant protection of vitamin E.

Like Dr. Peat, many experts believe coconut oil may help restore more youthful-looking skin. When coconut oil is absorbed into your skin and connective tissues, it helps to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by helping to keep your connective tissues strong and supple, and aids in exfoliating the outer layer of dead skin cells, making your skin smoother.

Coconut Oil and Your Heart

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S.  And heart disease is often a silent killer. The first sign of cardiovascular disease is commonly a heart attack, and sadly, over one third of heart attacks are fatal.

And despite the propaganda, the truth is this: it is UNSATURATED fats that are primarily involved in heart disease, not the naturally occurring saturated fats, as you have been led to believe.[14]

Plus, the polyunsaturated fats in vegetable and seed oils encourage the formation of blood clots by increasing platelet stickiness.  Coconut oil helps to promote normal platelet function.

Coconut Oil in Your Kitchen

I only use two oils in my food preparation.

The first, extra-virgin olive oil, is a better monounsaturated fat that works great as a salad dressing.

However, it should not be used for cooking. Due to its chemical structure, heat makes it susceptible to oxidative damage.

And polyunsaturated fats, which include common vegetable oils such as corn, soy, safflower, sunflower and canola, are absolutely the worst oils to use in cooking. These omega-6 oils are highly susceptible to heat damage because of their double bonds.

I strongly urge you to throw out those omega-6 vegetable oils in your cabinets.

Why?

Reason # 1: Most people believe that frying creates trans fat. That is not the major problem, in my opinion. Although some are created, they are relatively minor. There are FAR more toxic chemicals produced by frying omega-6 oils than trans fat.

 Frying destroys the antioxidants in oil and as a result oxidizes the oil. This causes cross-linking, cyclization, double-bond shifts, fragmentation and polymerization of oils that cause far more damage than trans fat.

 Reason # 2:  Most of the vegetable oils are GMO. This would include over 90 percent of the soy, corn and canola oils.

 Reason # 3: Vegetable oils contribute to the overabundance of damaged omega-6 fats in your diet, which creates an imbalance in  the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. As you know from my extensive writing on this subject, I believe that excessive consumption of damaged omega-6 fats contributes to many health concerns.

They are all highly processed and consumed in amounts that are about 100 times more than our ancestors did a century ago. This causes them to distort the sensitive omega-6/omega-3 ratio which controls many delicate biochemical pathways which results in accelerating many chronic degenerative diseases.

There is only one oil that is stable enough to resist heat-induced damage, while it also helps you promote heart health and even supports weight loss and thyroid function — coconut oil.

So, whenever you need an oil to cook with, use coconut oil instead of butter, olive oil, vegetable oil, margarine, or any other type of oil called for in recipes.  Even though I don’t fully recommend frying foods, if you must fry, by all means use coconut oil — it’s your smartest choice.

Coconut Oil Safety

The medium-chain fats in coconut oil are considered so nutritious that they are used in baby formulas, in hospitals to feed the critically ill, those on tube feeding, and those with digestive problems.  Coconut oil has even been used successfully by doctors in treating aluminum poisoning.[15]

Coconut oil is exceptionally helpful for pregnant women, nursing moms, the elderly, those concerned about digestive health, athletes (even weekend warriors), and those of you who just want to enhance your overall health.

References:

___________________

By Jeffrey M. Smith

You may have heard that genetically modified (GM) foods are safe, properly tested, and necessary to feed a hungry world. UNTRUE! Genetically modified organisms (GMOs), introduced into our food supply in the mid-1990s, are one of history’s most dangerous and radical changes in our diet. These largely unregulated ingredients are in about 70% of the foods in the US, but are well worth efforts to avoid them.

Fortunately, the Institute for Responsible Technology has launched The Campaign for Healthier Eating in America, designed to eliminate GMOs from the nation’s food supply. The strategy is to achieve a “tipping point,” in which a sufficient number of shoppers in the US avoid GM ingredients, making their use a marketing liability for food companies.

Informed European Shoppers Say No to GMOs

Europe reached the tipping point in April 1999 and within a single week, virtually all major manufacturers publicly committed to stop using GM ingredients in their European brands. The European rejection of GMOs was spawned by widespread coverage of the health risks, a topic that the US media has consistently avoided.

Americans therefore know so little about this subject, only 1 in 4 are aware that they have ever eaten a GM food in their lives. Thus, the same companies that carefully avoid GM ingredients for concerned Europeans are happy to sell GMOs to unknowing consumers in the US.

The Campaign to Move the Market

The fact that GMOs flourish in the US because of ignorance leaves the biotech industry extremely vulnerable. If some campaign or event were to push this issue above the national radar screen, consumer reaction could force a Euro-style retreat from GMOs. How many of us would have to reject brands that contain GMOs to reach this tipping point? Even 5 percent of shoppers, or 15 million Americans, would likely be more than enough. When marketing executives at top companies see the drop in market share and the emergence of a trend, kicking out GMOs will be a natural reaction. After all, the brands don’t gain anything from using them. Their foods aren’t fresher, tastier, or healthier. The two major traits in GM crops are herbicide tolerance, which allows farmers to spray herbicide on the crops without killing them, and pesticide production, in which the crops produce an insect-killing toxin in every cell.

So how do we inspire enough consumers to avoid GM brands? Do the math. Already, 29 percent of Americans are strongly opposed to GM foods and believe they are unsafe.[1] That represents about 87 million people. But even among the 28 million Americans who regularly buy organic (and therefore non-GMO) food,[2] many do not conscientiously avoid GM ingredients in their non-organic purchases; they usually don’t know how. By educating health-conscious shoppers about GM food dangers and providing clear choices, brands without GM ingredients will have the clear advantage. As millions begin to make brand choices based on GMO content, it is just a matter of time before the food industry responds.

To speed this transition, the Campaign targets demographic groups that will readily make changes to their diets and are large enough to inspire a national non-GMO tidal wave: Health-Conscious Consumers, Parents and Schools, Faith-Based Groups, Healthcare Professionals and their Patients, and chefs. It is possible to end GMOs without ever having to convince resistant people. We have more than enough wanting to know the truth, and willing to change the brands for their families. In fact, most Americans (53%) say they would avoid GMOs if they were labeled.

While the Obama Administration has not fulfilled their campaign pledge to label GMOs, the Campaign is helping consumers make better choices with their Non-GMO Shopping Guide (co-published with the Center for Food Safety). See www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.

rbGH Rejected!

The tipping point strategy is already being demonstrated in the US with GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH). A coalition of organizations informed consumers about the health risks of rbGH, and its link to cancer. As a result, most of America’s dairies and suppliers like Wal- Mart, Starbucks, Kroger, Yoplait, and Dannon, chose to produce and distribute milk products without this dangerous hormone.

Get onboard

Go to www.ResponsibleTechnology.org, become a member of the Campaign, and explore the compelling educational materials and strategies that can help you easily get the word out to your friends and community. Let’s accelerate the end of the genetic engineering of our food supply for ourselves, and for future generations.

To learn more about the health dangers of GMOs, and what you can do to help end the genetic engineering of our food supply, visit www.ResponsibleTechnology.org.

To learn how to choose healthier non-GMO brands, visit www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.

International bestselling author and filmmaker Jeffrey Smith is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods. His first book, Seeds of Deception, is the world’s bestselling and #1 rated book on the topic. His second, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, provides overwhelming evidence that GMOs are unsafe and should never have been introduced. Mr. Smith is the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, whose Campaign for Healthier Eating in America is designed to create the tipping point of consumer rejection of GMOs, forcing them out of our food supply.

Take Action Now by visiting http://ga3.org/campaign/alfalfaEIS2 and tell the USDA to Protect Organic Farmers, and All Farmers Who Wish to Choose, to Grow Non-GE Crops.

The biotech industry is fond of bragging about their genetically modified (GM) crops that “resist pests.” This conjures up images of insects staying away from GM fields. But resisting pests is a euphemism for contains its own pesticide. When bugs take a bite of the GM plant, the toxin from the plant splits open their stomach and kills them.

The idea that we consume that same toxic pesticide in every bite is hardly appetizing. But the biotech companies insist that the pesticide, called Bt-toxin, has a history of safe use. Organic farmers, for example, have used solutions containing the natural form of Bt-toxin—produced from Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria—as a method of natural insect control. Genetic engineers simply remove the gene that produces the Bt in bacteria and insert it into the DNA of corn and cotton plants. Moreover, they claim that Bt-toxin is quickly destroyed in our stomach; and even if it survived, it won’t cause reactions in humans or mammals. Studies show otherwise.

Bt spray is dangerous, the GM version is worse

Mice fed natural Bt-toxin showed significant immune responses and caused them to become sensitive to other formerly harmless compounds. This suggests that Bt-toxin might make a person allergic to a wide range of substances.^1,2,3

Farm workers and others have also had reactions to natural Bt-toxin,⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸ and authorities acknowledge that “People with compromised immune systems or preexisting allergies may be particularly susceptible to the effects of Bt.”⁹ In fact, when natural Bt was sprayed over areas around Vancouver and Washington State to fight gypsy moths, about 500 people reported reactions—mostly allergy or flu-like symptoms. Six people had to go to the emergency room.^10,11 Now, thousands of agricultural workers in India exposed to GM Bt cotton varieties are reporting those exact symptoms; they don’t react to natural cotton.¹²

The Bt-toxin produced in the GM plants is probably more dangerous than in its natural spray form. In the plants, the toxin is about 3,000-5,000 times more concentrated than the spray, it doesn’t wash off the plants like the spray does,¹³¹⁴ and it is designed to be more toxic than the natural version.¹⁵ In fact, the GM toxin has properties of known allergens and fails all three GM allergy tests recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others.¹⁶

GM pollen may cause allergies

Bt-toxin is produced in GM corn and can be eaten intact. It is also in pollen, which can be inhaled. In 2003, during the time when an adjacent Bt cornfield was pollinating, virtually an entire Filipino village of about 100 people was stricken by a disease. The symptoms included headaches, dizziness, extreme stomach pain, vomiting, chest pains, fever, and allergies, as well as respiratory, intestinal, and skin reactions. The symptoms appeared first in those living closest to the field, and then progressed to others by proximity. When the same corn was planted in four other villages the following year, the symptoms returned in all four areas—only during the time of pollination.

The potential dangers of breathing GM pollen had been identified in a letter to the FDA in 1998 by a UK government committee. They had even warned that genes from inhaled pollen might transfer into the DNA of bacteria in the respiratory system.¹⁷ Although no studies were done to verify this risk, years later UK scientists confirmed that after consuming GM soybeans, the foreign inserted genes transferred from the soy into the DNA of human gut bacteria. If Bt genes from GM corn chips, for example, also transfer, it might convert our intestinal flora into living pesticide factories—continually producing Bt-toxin inside of us.

Lab animals react to GM crops

Studies confirm that several GM crops engineered to produce built-in pesticides provoke immune responses in animals. A Monsanto rat study on Bt corn showed a significant increase in blood cells related to the immune system.¹⁸ Pesticide producing GM peas¹⁹ and potatoes²⁰ (not Bt) also provoked immune responses in rodents.

Allergic reactions are a defensive, often harmful immune system response to an external irritant. The body interprets something as foreign, different, and offensive, and reacts accordingly. All GM foods, by definition, have something foreign and different. According to GM food safety expert Arpad Pusztai, “A consistent feature of all the studies done, published or unpublished, . . . indicates major problems with changes in the immune status of animals fed on various GM crops/foods.”²¹

In addition to immune responses, several studies and reports suggest that GM foods are toxic.

To learn more about the health dangers of GMOs, and what you can do to help end the genetic engineering of our food supply, visit www.ResponsibleTechnology.org.

To learn how to choose healthier non-GMO brands, visit www.NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.

International bestselling author and filmmaker Jeffrey Smith is the leading spokesperson on the health dangers of genetically modified (GM) foods. His first book, Seeds of Deception, is the world’s bestselling and #1 rated book on the topic. His second, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, provides overwhelming evidence that GMOs are unsafe and should never have been introduced. Mr. Smith is the executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, whose Campaign for Healthier Eating in America is designed to create the tipping point of consumer rejection of GMOs, forcing them out of our food supply.
Take Action Now by visiting http://truefoodnow.org/ and join the free network to receive updates on GM policy, as well as education to keep you on top of what is happening to your food supply.

1. Vazquez et al, “Intragastric and intraperitoneal administration of Cry1Ac protoxin from Bacillus thuringiensis induces systemic and mucosal antibody responses in mice,” Life Sciences, 64, no. 21 (1999): 1897–1912; Vazquez et al, “Characterization of the mucosal and systemic immune response induced by Cry1Ac protein from Bacillus thuringiensis HD 73 in mice,” Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research 33 (2000): 147–155.
2.   Vazquez et al, “Bacillus thuringiensis Cry1Ac protoxin is a potent systemic and mucosal adjuvant,” Scandanavian Journal of Immunology 49 (1999): 578–584. See also Vazquez-Padron et al., 147 (2000b).
3.   EPA Scientific Advisory Panel, “Bt Plant-Pesticides Risk and Benefits Assessments,” March 12, 2001: 76. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/scipoly/sap/2000/october/octoberfinal.pdf
4.   M.A. Noble, P.D. Riben, and G. J. Cook, “Microbiological and epidemiological surveillance program to monitor the health effects of Foray 48B BTK spray” (Vancouver, B.C.: Ministry of Forests, Province of British Columbi, Sep. 30, 1992).
5.   A. Edamura, MD, “Affidavit of the Federal Court of Canada, Trial Division. Dale Edwards and Citizens Against Aerial Spraying vs. Her Majesty the Queen, Represented by the Minister of Agriculture,” (May 6, 1993); as reported in Carrie Swadener, “Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.),” Journal of Pesticide Reform, 14, no, 3 (Fall 1994).
6.   J. R. Samples, and H. Buettner, “Ocular infection caused by a biological insecticide,” J. Infectious Dis. 148, no. 3 (1983): 614; as reported in Carrie Swadener, “Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.)”, Journal of Pesticide Reform 14, no. 3 (Fall 1994)
7.   M. Green, et al., “Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985-86,” Amer. J. Public Health, 80, no. 7 (1990): 848–852.
8.   A. Edamura, MD, “Affidavit of the Federal Court of Canada, Trial Division. Dale Edwards and Citizens Against Aerial Spraying vs. Her Majesty the Queen, Represented by the Minister of Agriculture,” (May 6, 1993); as reported in Carrie Swadener, “Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.),” Journal of Pesticide Reform, 14, no, 3 (Fall 1994).
9.   Carrie Swadener, “Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.),” Journal of Pesticide Reform 14, no. 3 (Fall 1994). See also, Health effects of B.t.: Report of surveillance in Oregon, 1985-87. Precautions to minimize your exposure (Salem, OR: Oregon Departmentof Human Resources, Health Division, April 18, 1991); and Material Safety Data Sheet for Foray 48B Flowable Concentrate (Danbury, CT: Novo Nordisk, February, 1991).
10.   Washington State Department of Health, “Report of health surveillance activities: Asian gypsy moth control program,” (Olympia, WA: Washington State Dept. of Health, 1993).
11.   M. Green, et al., “Public health implications of the microbial pesticide Bacillus thuringiensis: An epidemiological study, Oregon, 1985-86,” Amer. J. Public Health 80, no. 7(1990): 848–852.
12.   Ashish Gupta et. al., “Impact of Bt Cotton on Farmers’ Health (in Barwani and Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh),” Investigation Report, Oct–Dec 2005.
13.   C. M. Ignoffo, and C. Garcial, “UV-photoinactivation of cells and spores of Bacillus thuringiensis and effects of peroxidase on inactivation,” Environmental Entomology 7 (1978): 270–272.
14.   BT: An Alternative to Chemical Pesticides, Environmental Protection Division, Ministry of Environment, Government of British Columbia, Canada, http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/epdpa/ipmp/fact_sheets/BTfacts.htm
15.   See for example, A. Dutton, H. Klein, J. Romeis, and F. Bigler, “Uptake of Bt-toxin by herbivores feeding on transgenic maize and consequences for the predator Chrysoperia carnea,” Ecological Entomology 27 (2002): 441–7; and J. Romeis, A. Dutton, and F. Bigler, “Bacillus thuringiensis toxin (Cry1Ab) has no direct effect on larvae of the green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae),” Journal of Insect Physiology 50, no. 2–3 (2004): 175–183.
16.   FAO-WHO, “Evaluation of Allergenicity of Genetically Modified Foods. Report of a Joint FAO/WHO Expert Consultation on Allergenicity of Foods Derived from Biotechnology,” Jan. 22–25, 2001; http://www.fao.org/es/ESN/food/pdf/allergygm.pdf
17.   N. Tomlinson of UK MAFF’s Joint Food Safety and Standards Group 4, December 1998 letter to the U.S. FDA, commenting on its draft document, “Guidance for Industry: Use of Antibiotic Resistance Marker Genes in Transgenic Plants,” http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/acnfp1998.pdf; (see pages 64–68).
18.   John M. Burns, “13-Week Dietary Subchronic Comparison Study with MON 863 Corn in Rats Preceded by a 1-Week Baseline Food Consumption Determination with PMI Certified Rodent Diet #5002,” December 17, 2002 http://www.monsanto.com/monsanto/content/sci_tech/prod_safety/fullratstudy.pdf, see also Stéphane Foucart, “Controversy Surrounds a GMO,” Le Monde, 14 December 2004; and Jeffrey M. Smith, “Genetically Modified Corn Study Reveals Health Damage and Cover-up,” Spilling the Beans, June 2005, http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/Newsletter/June05GMCornHealthDangerExposed/index.cfm
19.   V. E. Prescott, et al, Transgenic Expression of Bean r-Amylase Inhibitor in Peas Results in Altered Structure and Immunogenicity, J. Agric. Food Chem. 2005, 53
20.   A. Pusztai, et al, “Genetically Modified Foods: Potential Human Health Effects,” in: Food Safety: Contaminants and Toxins (ed. JPF D’Mello) (Wallingford Oxon, UK: CAB International), 347–372, also additional communication with Arpad Pusztai.
21.   October 24, 2005 correspondence between Arpad Pusztai and Brian John

Dr. Gabor Forgacs is one of the leading experts in the world in the area of what is now called “organ printing,” where aggregates of cells for a particular organ are delivered with an ordinary (but modified) inkjet printer onto biological scaffolding gels (the “paper”).

Dr. Forgacs is a biophysicist with degrees in biology as well as advanced physics and is currently heading up a biophysics lab called Forgacslab at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research focuses on the physical mechanisms in cellular and developmental biology.

He wrote a book with Stuart A. Newman entitled The Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo in 2005, which is the first of its kind to bridge the gap between developmental biology and physics.

Dr. Mercola’s Comments

The number of people in need of organ transplants continues to rise faster than the number of available donors, and as a result, 19 people die every day due to the shortage.

As of February 10, 2010, there were over 105,600 people waiting for an organ donation in the United States. However, from January to November 2009, just over 26,000 organ transplants took place.

So it would be nothing short of miraculous if we could one day replace virtually every organ or tissue in patients’ bodies with young pristine organs, as they age or become diseased or injured.

Recently, steps toward achieving this goal have advanced greatly, thanks in part to the amazing work pioneered by Dr. Gabor Forgacs.

“Beam Me a New Lung, Scottie”

Printing tissues and organs may seem like science fiction, but it really isn’t anymore.

Ordinary inkjet printers are now being modified to deposit biological material, including human cells, in a controlled and efficient manner.

Dr. Forgacs hopes to be able to use his organ printer to eventually build full-sized, fully functional organs that can be surgically implanted in your body. These organs might not look anything like the ones you have now, but they will perform the same functions.

Of course, fully functional laboratory-grown hearts and livers are a future possibility, but that level of complexity is out of reach, for now.

Forgacs’ current focus is on tubular constructs that can be used to replace blood vessels. The rational for this is, every organ and tissue must have vascularization to survive, so this is a crucial step before more complex tissues can be created.

The tubular constructs can also be used for hemodialysis and peripheral bypass surgery, and will eventually be used in coronary bypass surgery once standards of safety are met.

Building a Better Blood Vessel

A blood vessel may not seem like a highly complex organ, but it actually involves growing three different types of cells in a multi-phased process:

1. A biopsy is taken from the patient. Ordinary skin cells are used to provide the basis for the fibroblastic layer (the outer layer of the vessel). Other cells that must be obtained are endothelial cells from the innermost part of the patient’s blood vessel, and smooth muscle cells, which provide elasticity.
2. The various cells are then grown in Petri dishes, and they create their own extracellular matrix. This matrix is an important component of every organ, making up the frame of the organ to which the other cells attach.
3. The sheet of cells is then wrapped around a Teflon tube. The cells don’t attach to the tube, but knit together around it, after which they can slide the Teflon tube out, leaving a tubular vessel.

Alternately, some companies choose to use the patient’s cells along with an artificial scaffold material, providing a synthetic extracellular matrix, instead of waiting for the cells to make their own matrix. However, this procedure has yielded less than spectacular results, apart from a few successes.

Printing Out New Nerves

One of the applications of blood vessel-type structures is nerve grafts, which Dr. Forgac’s lab is working on.

When you have a serious enough accident to sever a major nerve — in a limb for example — a laboratory-grown tube of cells can act as a bridge between the distal and proximal ends of the damaged nerve.

The human body can spontaneously regenerate gaps of 1 to 3 centimeters without any intervention, given time. However, beyond 3 centimeters, the two ends of the nerve cannot “find each other” to reconnect. A nerve bridge can help with this, and the tissues used to create the nerve bridge can be “printed” on an organ printer.

The printing process is very versatile.

Dr. Forgac has this technology up and running now, and it is just a matter of time before his team will be building sheaths of cardiac or brain tissue that can be used as patches for victims of heart attack and stroke.

Tissuing in a New Age

Eventually, as scientists master the engineering of human tissues, they will be able to build an entire kidney, or a new pancreas with islets of Langerhans-type cells that will be able to make insulin for type 1 diabetics — making insulin pumps a thing of the past.

One huge advantage of building organs in the lab from your own cells is the lack of tissue rejection. Currently, patients who receive organ transplants are usually tethered to a lifetime of strong anti-rejection medications that have damaging side effects of their own.

But the science isn’t quite there yet.

Tissue engineering is so complex that companies are focusing on one type of tissue at a time so that they can get to the point of offering a saleable product that can sustain them financially. There are about 22 tissues and organ structures in the pipelines to date. Fortunately, there is a good deal of funding available right now for this kind of research.

Two of the most impressive recent success stories are the construction and implanting of a new trachea in one patient, and a new bladder in another.

In 2009, a team of Spanish and British researchers built a tracheal segment for a young woman who had problems breathing. The tracheal segment they built was truly a marvel of bioengineering.

They began with the trachea of a cadaver, “shaking off” the cells from the extracellular matrix. Then they used the bare matrix as a frame and populated it with stem cells from the patient so that there would be no tissue rejection. It was a real breakthrough in the sense that biological material was used from two sources and put together to make a final product.

When they inserted this new tracheal segment into the woman’s respiratory tract, it was a huge success, and she is breathing normally to this day.

Anthony Atala, one of the world’s leading tissue engineers, successfully built and implanted a bladder into a woman whose bladder was unable to function properly. This is the most complex organ that has been “grown” in a lab and transferred into a patient, to date.

Atala’s company, Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, is also in the process of engineering a human ear.

Your Body as Bioreactor

A bioreactor is a gizmo into which you put your engineered tissue to mature, to grow into whatever form you are targeting. The bioreactor has to mimic the physiological conditions of the human body.

Machines have been developed as bioreactors. But the best bioreactor is the human body itself!

The Belgian group who built the tracheal segment did just this. They built the trachea in the lab and implanted it into the patient’s hand so that it could vascularize in the patient’s own blood supply, using her body as the bioreactor. Then once vascularized, the tracheal segment was moved into its final place — into the damaged trachea itself.

This was a monumental bioengineering feat!

Organ Replacement Has Its Limits — The Ultimate Goal is Organ Regeneration

According to the anti-aging experts, it is unlikely we are going to be able to significantly slow down the aging process (barring some unforeseen breakthroughs). So, scientists are aiming their research toward enhancing the body’s ability for tissue and organ regeneration.

According to Dr. Forgacs, tissue engineering is really turning more toward “regenerative engineering” or “regenerative medicine,” since it is unlikely they will ever be able to grow complex organs, like a heart, in the lab and just put it into you.

They are trying to understand and capitalize on your body’s own regenerative abilities.

Your body already has an amazing ability to regenerate. The following are just a few examples:

• Skin wounds and broken bones generally heal well spontaneously.
• Some organs show regenerative ability, such as your liver, which can regenerate itself even if more than 75 to 90 percent of it is removed.
• One man has been able to regenerate his severed fingertip. Surgeons applied a special extracellular matrix powder — a mixture of protein and connective tissue used to repair tendons—which signaled his body to start the process of tissue regrowth. In just four weeks, the man’s fingertip grew back completely.

Right now, scientists can implant special smart biomaterials, like this matrix, to encourage your body’s tissues rebuild themselves, but this only works for small areas — typically 1 centimeter or less. Technological advances will make it possible to not only replace entire organs, but to repair much larger areas.

And these advances are being made at increasingly impressive rates — revealing possibilities that would have been unimaginable 20 years ago.

It’s very possible that 10 years from now, you will have the option of receiving a laboratory grown kidney that is capable of filtering waste from your body, completely free of the risk for rejection.

It seems that you and your children will be receiving an extension on the limited “organ warranties” you were born with, thanks to the pioneering work of bioengineers like Gabor Forgacs.

By Dr. Mercola

You simply cannot achieve health without a well-functioning immune system.

Your immune defenses are key in protecting you from all disease, including cancer, toxic poisons, infections, inflammation, and even aging.

Your immune system actually begins in your gut — long before your blood or bone marrow become involved. In fact, 80 percent of your immune system lies in your gastrointestinal tract, which houses 100 trillion bacteria—about two to three pounds worth of bacteria!

So the expression, “He’s got a lot of guts” has some literal truth to it.

The army of bacteria that occupy the nooks and crannies of your intestine are the “DEFCON 1” of your defense system. There is even evidence that your appendix serves as a virtual military barracks for these critical defenses.

You should have about 85 percent “good” bacteria and 15 percent “bad”, but unfortunately, most people are upside down with that ratio. For this reason, I always recommend a diet rich in cultured or fermented foods, as well as a good quality probiotic supplement to restore your ratio to a healthful balance.

Probiotics have been shown to:

• Modulate your immune response and reduce inflammation
• Digest and absorb certain carbohydrates
• Produce vitamins, absorb minerals, and eliminate toxins
• Prevent allergic reactions
• Keep bad bacteria in check

Another major task of  probiotics is to  help restore your immune system after it has been damaged by antibiotics.

Antibiotics: A Prescription for Trouble

Under the right circumstances, antibiotics are very effective and necessary. That said, I believe they are vastly overused.

About 95 percent of the time, antibiotic prescriptions are totally unnecessary, and can be harmful.

According to Doug Kaufmann, author of The Fungus Link:

“Simply put, antibiotics are poisons that are used to kill … I contend that poisons that kill small organisms in small doses—organism-specific varieties notwithstanding — can also kill big organisms, when they are taken in big doses. You, my friend, are a big organism.

Every time you swallow antibiotics, you kill the beneficial bacteria in your intestines, upsetting the delicate balance of your intestinal terrain. This can lead to a syndrome called “Leaky Gut Syndrome” whereby your intestinal wall is damaged, interfering with how your body absorbs nutrients and filters out waste and toxins.

Leaky Gut Syndrome can lead to a whole host of illnesses.

However, taking the antibiotics your physician prescribes is not the ONLY way you are getting them. Antibiotics may be the mystery ingredient in your Chicken Kiev.

From the Pig-Pen to Your Table

As much as 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U. S. are fed to chickens, cattle and hogs — not to treat disease but to make them grow faster. This increases profit margins for livestock producers, but it puts YOUR health at risk.

Animals are fed low doses of antibiotics, killing off some of the animals’ bacteria. Meanwhile, the stronger, more resistant bacteria survive, multiply, and pass on their strength and resistance to future generations.

A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of antibiotics used in this country are given to animals for growth promotion and other non-medical uses. This negligent practice is largely responsible for the potent strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria we are seeing today.

According to a 2009 University of Iowa study, 70 percent of hogs and 64 percent of workers in industrial animal confinements tested positive for the antibiotic resistant strain of MRSA. The study pointed out that, once MRSA is introduced, it could spread broadly to other swine and their caretakers, as well as to their families and friends.

Not only are antibiotics embedded in your meats, but they have made their way into your produce as well.

Antibiotics are being transferred, via the manure used as fertilizer, into your corn, lettuce, potatoes, and other crops.

Eating organically may not entirely alleviate this problem, since organic crops, which cannot be fertilized with synthetic fertilizers, are the ones most often fertilized with manure.

As it stands, manure that contains antibiotics is still allowed under the organic label. So it all depends on where the organic farmer gets his manure from. Some organic crop farmers may be getting their manure from organic cattle farms, but there’s no guarantee that’s taking place.

The only way to find out is to ask the farmer first-hand. Taking all of these factors into consideration, is it any wonder that the ratio of good-bacteria-to-bad is upside down in most people in our society?

Government Agencies Finally Taking a Stand — Sort of …

The rise of antibiotic-resistance in livestock is so alarming that government officials have finally admitted you can become infected when you eat or simply handle infected meat. In a remarkable move by the current administration, the FDA is proposing to phase out antibiotics used to promote animals’ growth.

They also warn that the microbes can contaminate kitchen counters, utensils and other food.

Even the USDA, which usually defends agribusiness interests, proclaimed at a congressional hearing that there is indeed a link between antibiotic use in animals and drug resistance in humans.

But the FDA hasn’t gone far enough.

The FDA has “recommended” that producers limit use of these drugs to medically necessary instances, under the guidance of a veterinarian, but they haven’t issued stricter regulations.

Do you really want to rely on “the honor system” with regard to how industry grows your food?

Do you really think industrial lobbyists are going to take the high road here?

Unlikely!

We need to implement measures to ensure antibiotics are used responsibly — and that needs to go beyond mere suggestion. An overhaul of regulation is in order.

This sort of revamping is not unprecedented — Denmark did it in1998.  

The Danish Experiment: A Success Story about Antibiotic-Free Farming

Denmark took the bull by the horns in a bold maneuver that 17,000 Danish farmers proudly call the “Danish Experiment.”

In 1998, after European studies showed a link between antibiotic-fed livestock and antibiotic-resistant infections in humans, Denmark launched a ban on the use of routine antibiotics in farming. Antibiotics were reserved for animals that were actually sick.

Since the ban, the Danish pork industry has grown by 43 percent, making them one of the top pork exporters in the world.

The rest of Europe followed suit in 2006.

But, not so with the American Pork Industry, which was spooked by the potential increased cost of raising a pig. They calculated that it would cost $5 more for every 100 pounds of pork brought to market without the use of antibiotics, and this $5 was not worth it to Big Porky.

No, $5 was too much to invest for improved public health, safer foods, and fewer drug resistant infections in people.

And it isn’t just the American Pork Industry that lists your health last on its list of priorities.

FDA Picks on Cherries While Drug Manufacturers Get Away With Murder

Since 2009, there have been FOUR bills introduced that would end or severely limit your access to food supplements!

So, at the same time as Big Pharma is resisting the movement to rid the livestock industry of the inappropriate use of antibiotic drugs, some members of Congress are trying to restrict your access to the things that will actually protect your health—vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other natural agents.

This is complete nonsense since food supplements used appropriately are not causing deaths, whereas more than 100,000 people are killed every year by pharmaceutical drugs taken as prescribed.

In fact, pharmaceutical drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (April 15, 1998). NSAIDS alone cause more than 16,000 deaths each year, yet the FDA continues to protect NSAID manufacturers and even allows ads on television offering free samples for the taking.

Instead of the FDA hauling NSAID-makers out to the woodshed, they are spending their time threatening cherry growers for mentioning peer-reviewed studies about how cherries are far better than NSAIDS in controlling pain and inflammation.

How many people do you know who’ve been harmed or killed by cherries?

This issue is nicely summarized by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation:

“The survival of the pharmaceutical industry is dependent on the elimination by any means of effective natural health therapies. These natural and non-patentable therapies have become the treatment of choice for millions of people, despite the combined economic, political and media opposition of the world’s largest investment industry.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

What You Can Do

Of the four pieces of legislation mentioned above, only the “Food Safety Bill” remains an immediate threat.

The other three bills were defeated BY YOU!

Here are two specific actions you can take to light a fire under government officials on these issues:

1. Food Democracy Now! has created a petition against the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production. If you care about this issue, I suggest you use this petition to make your voice heard. In the same way numerous prior bills have been shot out of the water as a direct result of public outcry, your action can put the kibosh on this one as well.

Tell the FDA and the White House to stand up for human health by changing their policies about the reckless use of antibiotics in animal feed.

2. The Alliance for Natural Health USA has put together a letter addressed to Congress in an effort to educate them that “supplements should not be regulated like drugs, and that the regulations already in place are completely sufficient.” All that is required of you is to fill out your contact information and click “send.”

For the purpose of supporting your own health, you might want to consider adding a high quality probiotic to your dietary regimen. There are a number of good ones on the market. I suggest you ask your local health food store for a recommendation. I also offer an excellent probiotic on my site, in addition to information about what to look for in all probiotic supplements.

Test post on 27thAug2010 in EMF -2

Test post on 27thAug2010 in EMF

Test post on 27thAug2010 in Articles-2

By Dr. Mercola

We are at a critical time in the fight against mercury fillings.

Thanks to your efforts at making your voice heard, on July 15, 2010, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chose a mercury-free dentist by the name of Michael Fleming to be on the Dental Products Panel, which will be the group to reassess the safety of mercury fillings for high-risk groups by way of a hearing this December.

Dr. Fleming has an interesting and varied professional background, with a long track record of listening to consumers.

As we move toward the December hearing, we need your continuing letters and phone calls to the FDA. Although the panel selection process is complete, they need to continue hearing your voice. We must show them there is a large body of consumers out there who are keeping an eye on them — like hawks.

According to the FDA’s website, this panel’s purpose is defined as follows:

“The Dental Products Panel reviews and evaluates data concerning the safety and effectiveness of marketed and investigational products for use in dentistry, endodontics or bone physiology relative to the oral and maxillofacial area and makes appropriate recommendations to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs.”

This hearing will hopefully bring us one step closer to the banning of amalgam fillings for children and pregnant women, and eventually for the rest of us.

Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are most at risk for mercury-related neurological damage, and that is why it’s especially dangerous for pregnant women to get amalgam fillings.

FDA Stacks the Deck in its Favor by Appointing Pro-Industry “Experts”

The appointment of Dr. Michael Fleming is a big deal because the FDA has a history of stacking the deck of its panels so that the pro-industry position is upheld.

Indeed, before consumers spoke up, Center for Devices Director Jeffrey Shuren had already been doing just that, even having the gall to appoint an American Dental Association (ADA) leader named Dr. Amid Ismail, who has repeatedly testified in favor of amalgam in both federal and local government hearings.

Ismail is such an extremist that he has actually stated that the choice of filling material rests with the dentist, not the consumer whose mouth it is going into. So now a leading opponent of mercury-free dentistry in previous hearings has become the judge, thanks to FDA’s Shuren.

The FDA also has a history of ignoring its panelists’ advice if it doesn’t uphold the pro-industry position, even to the point of disagreeing with their own FDA scientific experts. This is precisely what happened in 2009 with their disappointing “final rule.”

For policy change to occur, it is crucial that this panel NOT be exclusively represented by dental school deans and others with ties to the pro-mercury American Dental Association.

If the FDA is to have any credibility at all, it needs all sides fairly represented and heard, with equal time for hearing both sides of the issue.

This is a critical time for you to make your wishes known. Between now and December, the more pressure they receive from YOU, the less likely they’ll be stacking the decks in their favor. Later in this article, I will give you some specific questions to pose in your communication with the FDA.

Facts About Mercury That May Shock You

Mercury pollution is growing across the globe.

In the words of Charlie Brown, President of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, “Amalgam is a “primitive, polluting, 19th century product that began when physicians were sawing off legs. Medicine has since moved forward.”

Consider these disturbing facts:

• Amalgam is the MOST EXPENSIVE dental material when you count environmental costs and clean-up costs.
• Amalgam is the number one cause of mercury exposure for consumers, according to the Canadian government and other sources.
• Mercury from dental offices is the largest source of mercury in wastewater. According to an article by Michael Bender (co-founder of the Mercury Policy Project), at least 40 percent of mercury flowing into municipal water treatment plants begins in dentist offices. And those plants are not set up to remove it, so it ends up in your fish.
• Americans and Europeans have more mercury in their mouths than exists in all products combined—more than 1,000 tons.
• Amalgams of the dead post a risk to the living. Emissions from the combustion of mercury fillings during cremation are a significant contaminator of air, waterways, soil, wildlife and food. Seven to nine metric tons of mercury per year escapes into the atmosphere during cremations, and it is estimated that, left unchecked, crematoria will be the largest single cause of mercury pollution by 2020.

There are numerous zoning battles in the U. S. to keep crematoria away from schools, including one in South Carolina. In Sweden, it is mandatory that teeth be extracted prior to cremation.

• Some dentists, who have easy access to mercury-containing dental materials, sell mercury at a premium to third world countries, which then use it in mining and industrial operations, contributing to the mercury pollution problem.
• Since the FDA does not regulate dentists, dentists remain free to offer you any kind of filing they want. According to a survey, 52 percent of all dentists nationwide report they are no longer placing amalgams in their patients’ mouths.

However, specialists are far more likely to still be using mercury fillings — four out of five still place amalgams.

The FDA is Far Behind the Rest of the World on Amalgams

President Obama has made it clear that he is very concerned about mercury pollution worldwide, and early in his term, he reversed the Bush position that opposed legally binding measures to control mercury.

In February of 2009, Obama endorsed negotiations for a new global treaty to on mercury pollution. The most important issue today in the amalgam battle centers on this upcoming world mercury treaty.

The United Nations has convened a series of conferences to put together the environmental treaty on mercury, a treaty that represents a chance for the world to rid itself of amalgam, and rid dentistry of mercury. The first session was in June of 2010, and there will be five more over the next three years. (View the first session report here.) The next treaty session is in Tokyo, Japan, January 24-28, 2011.

The end-goal is the signing of a legally binding mercury treaty in 2013.

The treaty’s central question: What are we going to do about the ever-growing problem of worldwide mercury contamination?

According to Charlie Brown, who gave the opening statement at the treaty’s first meeting, the FDA is far behind the rest of the world in stepping up to the plate to reduce mercury. The FDA has been standing in the way of banning these dangerous dental materials for 34 years — since 1976.

For a country that is supposed to be so scientifically advanced, the U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world, and even behind some third world countries:

• Canada advised dentists to stop placing amalgam in children and pregnant women in 1996—fifteen years ago!
• Denmark, Norway and Sweden have essentially banned amalgams.
• There are 5,636 hospitals in developing countries that are committed to or already mercury-free. The majority of these are in the Philippines, India, and Argentina.

Pro-Mercury Forces Banking on Exemption for Amalgam

The goal of the mercury treaty is, ideally, ending all man-made mercury. As with any treaty, the key is what goes into the fine print.

The pro-mercury forces, led by the World Dental Federation and the American Dental Association, are asking for an exemption so they may keep selling amalgam indefinitely. The FDA has now expanded its agenda from being chief protector of amalgam in the United States, to attempting to block world action against amalgam.

So they sent a representative to the July 2010 UN conference in Stockholm to lobby AGAINST a phase-out of mercury fillings.

Additionally, the World Dental Federation is trying to make amalgams the world’s “filling of choice,” which would lead to millions of children worldwide being exposed to mercury’s toxic effects, many in developing countries where their immune systems are already weakened due to suboptimal living conditions and cavities are commonplace.

To counter these pro-mercury forces, the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry fought back hard and secured a seat at the Stockholm negotiating session, and Charlie Brown gave the opening statement, which you can view in the video above.

Why is the FDA the World’s Pariah on the Mercury Issue?

Why is the FDA so obstinate on amalgam, when it won’t even allow farmers to rub mercury-containing lotions on the legs of horses? It certainly isn’t representing public interest when, 7 to 1, the public wants a ban on mercury fillings.

1. First, the FDA is not so much a regulator of big business as its protector.
2. Second, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has an egregious conflict of interest on amalgam, yet participated in the rule making. Hamburg entered the FDA through the revolving door after making millions as the director of Henry Schein Inc., the largest seller of amalgam.

The FDA endorses a two-tiered system of dentistry: America’s elite no longer receives amalgam, but the rest of us are at risk simply by being in a dental office. Dental employees are at even greater risk due to their daily mercury exposure.

The FDA is so much in the pocket of corporate America that it not only allows mercury-based dental filling to be implanted in children and pregnant women, but it covers up the very fact that these fillings contain mercury.

And the FDA’s rule ignores the fact that Americans are getting mercury from so many other sources (vaccines, fish and seafood, household products, paints, pesticides, etc.) that many teenagers and adults are saturated with these neurotoxins.

The Issue of Informed Consent

One of Dr. Fleming’s greatest concerns in the overall amalgam issue involves the lack of informed consent obtained from patients prior to installing mercury fillings in their mouths.

One Dental Products Panel member remarked:

“I think the major thread, or the take-home message that I have, is that the Federal Government and the agencies need to force dentists to provide informed consent to the patient, and making sure that the patient is going to be well-informed, and making their appropriate decision toward the use of this material.

Having said that, I don’t know what would be the mechanism, whether ADA has to step forward, or the federal agencies. I leave it as a question open at this point. But something has to be done.”

Not only is informed consent not given, but the industry has gone so far as to disguise the name of mercury fillings in a way that misguides you into thinking they are something else.

The very name “silver fillings” would seem to imply they are made of silver, whereas they are more than 50 percent mercury. When confronted about this, the industry’s response is a lame one… the term “silver” is meant to denote the color, not the constitution.

In reality, only one in four people is aware that silver amalgams contain mercury, and the dental industry is capitalizing on that ignorance. Even when the manufacturer places warnings on the label of the amalgam material, a dentist is under no obligation to relay that information to you. More than 90 percent of you believe dentists should be required to inform you about mercury fillings versus non-toxic alternatives.

Is there any way this evil behemoth can be defeated?

Our Secret Weapon: Using the FDA and EPA Turf Wars to our Advantage

You may not be aware of the administrative turf war inside the U.S. government.

This Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeks aggressive action against amalgam as well as other mercury products. The FDA takes the opposite tack on amalgam, wanting its use in perpetuity.

So far, the FDA has had the upper hand.

The FDA admits it has NO expertise or jurisdiction over the environmental impact of mercury.

But the FDA is so intent on protecting amalgam sellers that it is elbowing out the EPA and demanding its way. The FDA is a know-nothing on environmental issues, and admits it. Never having gotten involved in environmental regulatory issues before, the FDA is being a dog-in-a-manger in order to protect the amalgam profiteers.

Once Sweden and Norway realized the environmental impact of amalgam, they banned the product entirely.

To protect corporate interests, FDA is doing everything in its power to prevent the environmental experts from revealing to the public the extensive environmental costs inflicted by amalgam.

So, the key to winning a ban on amalgams is to make it an integral part of the argument for reducing environmental mercury.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: Demand that the FDA Join the World in Protecting Pregnant Women and Children From Mercury Exposure

The stakes could not be higher right now for mercury policy.

Consumer advocates need YOUR help now, more than ever. The more pressure the FDA gets from ordinary citizens like you, the less it will be able to wiggle out of its responsibilities for protecting the public. But we all have to raucously demand it if we hope to overcome the tremendous pressure from the other side.

Consumers for Dental Choice

One of the greatest advocates for change has been Consumers for Dental Choice, tireless consumer advocates for victims of mercury poisoning and key players in educating the public.

Charlie Brown is national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice, and in June he was elected President of the new World Alliance for Mercury Free Dentistry.

Charlie’s work focuses on petitioning federal and state agencies to do their duties under the law. He spearheads the national campaign to expose the deceptive practices of the American Dental Association. Without his extensive help, this article would not have been possible, for which I am very grateful.

You can take the following actions if you wish to actively promote policy change:

1. Contact Jeffrey Shuren, Director of the FDA’s Center for Devices. Voice your concern that their Dental Products Panel be fair and balanced, as opposed to overrepresented by individuals with industry ties. Demand that the individual presenters (who are named as experts by the FDA), both those who are pro-amalgam and those who are anti-amalgam, have equal time to speak.

Dr. Jeffrey Shuren

301-796-5900

Jeff.Shuren@fda.hhs.gov

Ask him the following questions:

• Why won’t FDA require labels to inform consumers that amalgam is 50 percent mercury?
• Why won’t FDA at least ban amalgam for children and pregnant women, who are at greatest risk?
• Why is Dr. Ismail on the dental products panel when he has repeatedly advocated that amalgam is safe, even testifying in favor of amalgam on behalf of the ADA?

If at all possible, attend the FDA hearing in December:

December 14 and 15, 2010, 8am -6pm

Holiday Inn-Gaithersburg, Main Ballroom,

2 Montgomery Village Ave, Gaithersburg, MD 20879

The FDA will not be expecting a forceful turnout, especially from ordinary citizens, so we can surprise them with a show of force and dogged determination.

Even if you cannot attend the hearing, make sure to submit your comments to the panel for the record. You can submit your comments in two ways:

1. Submit them online at this site.
2. Submit them by mail to:

Division of Documents Management, Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061

Rockville, MD 20852.

Label all comments “Dental Amalgam — Docket Number FDA-2010-N-0268” so that it gets into the right file.

Comments can involve telling the FDA about your injuries, your children’s exposure to mercury, how your mercury fillings were implanted without your informed consent, how deceptive the FDA’s dental amalgam website is, how mercury hurts our environment, or any other concerns relating to mercury fillings.

• If you live in southern California, Consumers for Dental Choice has a special request.

They are organizing a grassroots project to educate communities about the hazards of dental mercury. If you would like to get involved, write Charlie at info@toxicteeth.org, put “Californian” in the subject line, and list which county you live in and your contact information.

It is time for the FDA to get out of the way of progress and support Obama’s plan to decrease worldwide mercury contamination, rather than standing in its way. Please join Charlie and me in keeping the pressure on them — let’s not allow them to manipulate their way into placing dental industry profiteering before of your children’s health.

By Dr. Mercola

“Not a piecrust fit to eat but stands by virtue of my lord the egg, and should all the hens in the world commit suicide tomorrow, every chef in France worthy of his name would fall on his spit, for fish is but a course in a dinner, whereas the egg is the cement that holds all the castle of cookery together.”

~Stacpoole, French Chef

Quoted in “America’s Debt to the Hen” by Harry R. Lewis

National Geographic Magazine, April 1927

When you are strolling down the poultry aisle, did you ever wonder about the history of the bird that is shrink-wrapped into that tidy little package?

Have you ever wondered about the role chickens have played in the lives and culture of humans worldwide?

Chances are you have not been preoccupied with these questions.

But the answers expose a dark blanket that has been pulled over the eyes of society, hiding the truth about what an amazing creature the chicken is and it’s special gift to humankind: the egg.

Eggs are even more revered by the French than by Americans, as Chef Stacpoole so passionately extols in the above quote. After all, how could you make classic French dishes like crepes, soufflés, quiches, or a sauce Béarnaise without a pantry full of farm-fresh eggs?

And where would your Coq Au Vin be without a fresh hen for the pot?

The story of the common chicken is one that begs to be told, especially in this age when people generally underappreciate where their food comes from, much less its history. I think we should occasionally stop to revisit tales that are all but forgotten, renewing our appreciation for the things that helped us get to where we are.

This is my reasoning for writing this article, which I’m sure you will find rather different from my usual musings.

Americans have been the unfortunate victims of manipulation by government and industry on so many issues, and when it comes to poultry, we’ve been convinced that chickens are dirty and stupid and natural vectors of disease.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Which Came First? British Scientists Now Say it was the Chicken!

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The age-old riddle that has stumped us for generations has finally been laid to rest.

In February of 2010, British scientists reported that a protein found only in a chicken’s ovaries is necessary for the formation of the egg. According to scientists, the egg can only exist if it has been created inside a chicken. This protein is fundamental in the development of the shell.

Of course, you may be wondering, if the chicken came first, then where it come from?

Leaving that mind-bender for another day, let’s explore where your poultry comes from.

Poultry Products Run “Afowl”

Although chickens and eggs from the best sources offer exceptional nutrition, many obtained from your grocer range from nutritionally bankrupt to downright dangerous.

In 2007, it was found that 83 percent of fresh, whole broiler chickens bought nationwide contained campylobacter or salmonella, the leading causes of food borne disease. Prior studies have shown that organic chickens are far less contaminated with these antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In fact, conventional chicken products were found to be up to 460 times more likely to contain antibiotic-resistant strains than antibiotic-free chicken products.

But the question remains, can you really trust advertisements that claim chicken to be antibiotic-free?

Tyson Foods was ordered by a federal judge to withdraw its “raised without antibiotics” ads when it was discovered they were injecting eggs with antibiotics and using antibiotics in their feed.

There are similar problems with commercial eggs.

Eggs from large flocks (30,000 birds or more) and eggs from caged hens have many times more salmonella bacteria than eggs from smaller flocks, organically fed and free-ranging flocks.

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.

Move Over Chickens — Here Comes the Automobile

Prior to the 1920s, poultry was raised for fun in the United States, mostly as a hobby, but not so much as a food source — the fact that you could eat them was incidental.

By the 1940s, the chicken population in every American city was roughly half that of the human population. Most people obtained their eggs from their own back yard, or from a neighbor or a farmers market down the street.

What happened to the backyard poultry farmers?

They bought cars and built garages.

Backyard “poultrymen,” as the April 1927 National Geographic article1 calls them, gradually disappeared after World War I. Chicken coops were replaced by automobile garages as post-war mechanization took over, and chickens began to be regarded more as livestock. Henneries became commercialized operations capitalizing on poultry’s economic value as a human food.

Chickens saved the day for thousands of farmers in the Midwest who suffered crop failures, labor shortages, and price drops, and who were unable to make a living. Chickens were, and still are, very efficiently “manufactured” from raw material — a four-pound hen consuming 75 to 80 pounds of feed will produce 25 to 30 pounds of eggs!

In 1927, most flocks consisted of 50-300 birds. But flocks didn’t stay that small and cozy for long.

Industrialization Creates the Poultry Factory

Profits grew as the nutritional value of eggs was recognized — they were cheap, easy to digest, and had high quality proteins and fats.

In henneries, incubators replaced brooding hens so the hens could quickly get back to business laying eggs.

Colony brooders, heated by coal or kerosene, held between 300 and 1,000 chicks under each stove — and between 10,000 and 15,000 chicks could be raised in one brooding cycle.

This mass production gave rise to the shipping of baby chicks by the thousands, all across the country, in cotton-lined wooden boxes with holes punched in the top for ventilation. The bottoms of the boxes were lined with excelsior to “give chicks a toehold” and prevent them from sliding about during their journey.

Artificial lights extended their laying cycle.

After World War II, automation of farms became commonplace. Conveyers, cartons, refrigeration trucks, etc, meant more eggs could be produced and delivered to the masses.

As a result of predators and climatic variation, chicken mortality rates were a dismal 40 percent annually. Hens were moved indoors, which improved the health of the birds and decreased losses due to predators.

Mortality rates decreased to 18 percent per year.

But problems developed with sanitation, waste control, and pecking/aggression. Parasites became a problem with the birds in close quarters, so medications were developed to combat these.

In the 1940s, Ohio State University developed “the Cage System” where a raised floor meant the hens weren’t in contact with their waste. Feeding was more reliable because timid hens got as much to eat as more aggressive hens, since they were separated.

Health was better, and mortality dipped to 5 percent.

Fans were added to cool hens off in the summer, and body heat from hens huddled together in winter kept them warm. Growing automation allowed production of larger and larger numbers of eggs. Automatic egg washing, sonic probes to detect cracks, and sensors to candle, weigh, and grade eggs by the masses replaced completing these tasks by hand.

Now the U. S. is producing 76 billion eggs per year, which is only 10 percent of the world’s supply. China is the largest producer, yielding 390 billion eggs per year, which is half of the world’s eggs.

Now, hens are often crammed into tiny quarters with less space to stand upon than the computer screen you are looking at. Disease is rampant, and the birds ARE filthy — not because of their nature, but because we have removed them from their natural habitat and compromised their innate resistance to disease.

Their lives are cut short by our greed and shortsightedness.

Hens who could live to be 20 years old are crippled and sent to slaughter as soon as they exceed their laying prime. And today’s eggs are a pale substitute for the little nutritional dynamos of yesteryear.

Chickens Were Actually Used As Currency

In the words of Janet Fischer, one of my valued readers who has been involved with poultry for 45 years and is well versed about property rights regarding chickens:

“It is too bad that playing politics with food has resulted in chickens being demonized and the public dumbed-down to benefit big business. It might surprise most people that unalienable rights to keep chickens, even in the city, are still on the books, yet revisionism in our public schools has removed almost all this knowledge, along with notions of economic independence, tools for critical thinking, and knowledge about civics or free country.”

She points out that there are laws still on the books valuing chickens as vital agricultural commodities, which can be traded or sold. In fact, chickens and eggs were used as currency during the Great Depression!

Did you know the federal penalty for theft or destruction of one chicken is $5,000? The federal government affords you the same protections for chickens as for other personal property, like your house or car.

Yet sadly, most American children think chicken comes from the grocery store.

The skill of chicken raising has been removed from public knowledge, and chickens are now portrayed as stupid, filthy animals riddled with disease that should be hidden in dark warehouses, out of public sight.

Gone is the knowledge that chickens will thrive and be clean and healthy if provided basic access to the ground for bathing and scratching, access to clean water, and a safe roost to fly up to at night.

Backyard chickens and their eggs will not suffer the same cross-contamination found in large commercial plants, and if managed properly, these birds will not get sick from stress.

A Bit of Chicken Lore

The hen has been a companion of man for many centuries.

Wild chickens originated in India and East Asia (China, Thailand, and Vietnam) and appear to have been domesticated around 7000 B.C., simultaneously in China and India.

Chickens spread to West Asia around 2500 B.C., and on to Africa and Egypt thereafter.

Chickens reached North and South America in the 1500s along with Spanish explorers and were reportedly part of the Mayflower cargo.

Ancient peoples regarded fowl as sacred^[i].

In 300 B.C., a verse went that four lessons could be learned from the cock^[ii]:

1. Fighting well
2. Getting up early
3. Eating with your family
4. Protecting your spouse when she gets into trouble

The Greeks and Romans often sacrificed chickens in religious rituals. In many cultures, fowl were believed to hold mystical qualities.

For example, it was believed that you could get rid of your bad habits by drinking a solution made from dried cockscomb. And you could enhance your virility by applying a mixture of cock’s blood and honey.

Cockfighting has, unfortunately, been a major part of the chicken’s history, including being a popular pastime in England during the reign of Henry III.

The first poultry shows were held in the U.S. (Boston) and England in 1949, which sparked an interest in creating new and interesting breeds of fowl.

“His Majesty of the Barnyard”

The affection we humans feel for chickens is obvious in the caption chosen by M. A. Jull, Ph.D. for his April 1927 National Geographic Magazine article “The Races of Domestic Fowl.2” The opening photo is captioned, “His Majesty of the Barnyard.”

And majestic they are!

There are now hundreds of different breeds of chickens. The different breeds are classified by size, origin, primary use (eggs, meat, or exhibition), skin color, earlobe color, egg color, plumage, personality traits, and even crowing patterns.

Some of the most notable and unusual breeds include the following — although there are many, many more:

• Onagadori (“Honorable Fowl”): Originating in Japan, this breed is known for its incredible tail plumage, sometimes reaching twenty to thirty feet long! This is the patriarch of Japanese poultrydom. Kept in special cages in which the feathers of their tails are rolled up in a bundle and suspended on the walls for protection, the Onagadori’s tail feathers grow rapidly and never molt.
• Sultan: This fancy feathered breed from southeastern Europe sports a full crest, muff and beard, and feathered shanks.
• Bantam: One of the oldest breeds, bantams are the miniatures of the chicken world. They are very quick and spunky.
• Silkies: Silkies are one variety of bantam that look like they have hair instead of feathers.
• Frizzles: A frizzle is a mutant chicken whose feathers curve outward, instead of lying flat against the chicken’s body, giving rise to a “fluffy,” mussed up look suggestive of a bad hair day.
• Long-Crowers: These unusual roosters can continue to crow for as long as 20 seconds. If you live in the city and are considering a small flock of fowl for your back yard, this might not be the best way to impress your neighbors. To hear a few of these cocky callers, turn up your volume and click here (WARNING: May cause odd looks from nearby pets and officemates.)

Chickens are actually part of the pheasant family, which is divided into four subfamilies based on how the tail feathers molt. In chickens, the tail molt is centripetal (from the outside to the center), so they were placed in the subfamily Phasianinae and genus Gallus, meaning “comb.”

The color of a hen’s feathers and earlobes determines the color of her eggs. Brown eggs are nutritionally the same as white, and taste identical.

Insights from a “Chicken Whisperer”

In an effort to learn more about raising chickens from a “backyard” chicken farmer, I interviewed Maureen Woodcock who, along with her husband Bill, raises a small flock of 8 to 20 hens in northwest Washington State.

Bill is known to his friends as “the Chicken Whisperer.”

Maureen and Bill built a small henhouse that is connected to a fenced chicken run that merges with a stream in the woods where the chickens roam freely. The birds are free to forage by day, scratching in the dirt and eating grasses and bugs, and even drinking from the stream. And then they retreat to the coop for the night.

The coop has a gravity watering system, so the birds have access to fresh water at all times.

For heat, only one 100-watt light bulb is required 99 percent of the time, even in the winter. In addition to providing a little warmth, the light from the bulb gives the birds a bit of extra winter daylight to keep them laying eggs 365 days a year. They average one egg per chicken per day, every day, at least while a chicken is in its laying prime.

Their free-ranging diet is supplemented with kitchen scraps and a little natural grain feed.

Maureen said they’ve never had any problems with parasites or other diseases. The birds’ feet get cleaned by scratching in the soil and running around in the forest. Their diet is so varied that their immune systems are in tiptop shape, so they simply never get sick.

The remarkable thing is, as soon as they acquired the chickens, other wild birds began moving in. Maureen cheerfully says, “Birds attract birds.” Before long, they had drawn a wild peacock, several ducks, and a blue heron — a natural aviary!

So, how about raising your own?

A Few Thoughts about Raising Your Own Chickens

If you are fed up with the quality or availability of eggs in your area, you may want to consider a backyard barnyard. Beyond the obvious advantage of a continual supply of wonderfully fresh eggs, there are other advantages:

• Chemical-free bug and weed control
• Manufacturing of the world’s best fertilizer
• Living sustainably
• Improved compost from chicken poo and egg shells
• Saving a chicken from a factory-farmed life
• Fun and friendly, low-maintenance pets with lots of personality

If you are interested in the possibility of raising a few chickens yourself, a good place to begin is by asking yourself a few questions:

1. Can I dedicate some time each day? According to My Pet Chicken, 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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.
5. 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.

For information on how to be a backyard chicken farmer, here are a few helpful sites:

• My Pet Chicken: This is the site of Derek Sasaki, whom I thank for providing the chicken pictures above.
• Back Yard Chickens
• Backyard Poultry Magazine: This publication has received high praise from several backyard chicken farmers.
• FeatherSite — The Poultry Page
• How to Keep Chickens
• The Country Chicken

References:

• [i] Lewis H.R. “America’s Debt to the Hen,” National Geographic Magazine, April 1927.
• [ii] Jull M.A. “The Races of Domestic Fowl,” National Geographic Magazine, April 1927.

Test article 1

By Dr. Mercola

Salt is essential for life — you cannot live without it.

Salt has been important to humanity for life on this planet. Even the word “salary” comes from sal because Romans were paid in salt. African and European explorers traded an ounce of salt for an ounce of gold — salt was literally worth its weight in gold.

Unrefined natural salt is important to many biological processes, including:

• Being a major component of your blood plasma, lymphatic fluid, extracellular fluid, and even amniotic fluid
• Carrying nutrients into and out of your cells
• Helping the lining of your blood vessels to regulate blood pressure
• Helping you regulate propagation of nerve impulses
• Helping your brain send communication signals to your muscles, so that you can move on demand (sodium-potassium ion exchange)

Having outlined the importance of salt it is important to realize that too much sodium can hurt you, but the same can be said of most things — even oxygen and water.

Indeed, there is far too much sodium in processed foods. But you shouldn’t be eating those foods anyway — high sodium is but one of MANY ingredients in processed foods that will ruin your immune system and cut your precious life short.

One of the latest harmful ingredients is methanol. This toxic alcohol poison is typically in nearly all fresh vegetables and fruits but is bound to pectin so it does not typically cause problems. But once they are canned in glass or aluminum the methanol dissociates from the pectin and can elevate to very high levels and contribute to diseases like MS.

But getting back to salt, the general question remains — is it harmful?

Salts of the Earth

As it turns out, salt is a very general term that can mean many things. All salts are NOT equal in terms of origin, chemistry, crystal structure, biological effects — or even flavor!

Chemically speaking, a salt is simply any ionic compound arising from the joining of a positively charged ion and a negatively charged ion, so that the product is electrically neutral.

When people talk about salt, they are usually referring to refined table salt, or sodium chloride. But in fact, most minerals are salts, including magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt) and ammonium nitrate (used in fertilizer).

But with typically edible salts, most people do not realize there are enormous differences between common, refined table salt and natural, unrefined salt.

One is health damaging, and the other is healing.

ALERT — Natural Salt is 85 Percent Sodium Chloride and Processed Salt is 98 Percent

Ordinary table salt undergoes a great deal of processing between the factory and your grocer. It is approximately 97.5 percent sodium chloride and 2.5 percent chemicals such as iodine and moisture absorbents, dried at over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. This high heat alters the natural chemical structure of the salt.

By contrast, unrefined salt is 84 percent sodium chloride and 16  percent other naturally occurring minerals, including many trace minerals like silicon, phosphorous and vanadium.

If you want your body to function properly, you need a balanced salt, complete with all-natural elements and free of pollutants. I will speak more about my favorite natural salt a bit later.

The important point is, today’s ordinary table salt has nothing in common with natural sea salt.

The Adulteration of Table Salt

What remains after ordinary table salt is “chemically cleaned” is sodium chloride, an unnatural chemical form of salt that your body recognizes as something completely foreign. Therefore, when you add more salt to your already salty Spaghettios, your body receives more salt than it can dispose of.

Typical processed salt has independent crystals that are totally isolated from each other. In order for your body to try to metabolize processed salt , it must sacrifice tremendous amounts of energy.

Inorganic sodium chloride in the form of processed salt can keep you from an ideal fluid balance and can overburden your elimination system.

When your body tries to isolate the excess salt, water molecules must surround the sodium chloride to break them up into sodium and chloride ions before your body can neutralize them. To accomplish this, water is taken from your cells.

This results in a less-than-ideal fluid balance within your cells.

Every gram of excess sodium chloride your body has to neutralize uses up 23 grams of cellular water. Hence, eating too much common processed salt will cause fluid to accumulate in your tissues, which contributes to:

• Unsightly cellulite
• Rheumatism, arthritis and gout
• Kidney and gall bladder stones

Processed salt will also oftentimes contain potentially dangerous preservatives.

Calcium carbonate, magnesium carbonate, and aluminum hydroxide are often added to improve salt’s “pourability.” Aluminum is a light alloy that deposits into your brain — a potential cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

Current Sodium Recommendations

The American Heart Association has suggested limiting your sodium consumption to fewer than 1,500 mg per day to decrease your risk for high blood pressure, stroke and weight gain.

The CDC reports less than ten percent of adults are meeting this limit, and some studies have suggested many Americans are consuming more than 7,000 mg of salt per day, which is the equivalent of approximately 3 teaspoons of table salt.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition considers a product high in sodium if it contains more than 500 milligrams per 100 gram serving. Similarly, it considers a product low in sodium if it contains less than 120 milligrams per 100 grams.

The foods highest in sodium tend to be processed meats, which often contain a whopping 800 mg per 100 gram serving!

It probably makes sense to limit your intake of refined processed salts to these levels. However, if you are healthy your body should be able to easily tolerate much higher levels of unprocessed salts.

The only exception would be for those who have heart failure and are very sensitive to fluid overload. Those with congestive heart failure (CHF) will typically be on a number of different drugs to improve cardiac function.

So those with established CHF should maintain strict sodium restrictions but should also look into the many effective natural options out there like ubiquinol which has been shown to be highly effective in improving those with lowered cardiac ejection fractions.

Why are Processed Foods so Loaded With Sodium?

At one time, salting was one of the few ways people could preserve foods. Salt kills bacteria that can cause food to spoil.

But today, between chemical preservatives and refrigeration, salt is added for other reasons — and it’s added to processed foods in HUGE amounts. The reason for this has more to do with the fact that salt is an inexpensive way to improve the taste of overcooked, bland, nutrient-butchered carnage in a can that some people call food.

Salt is used in high amounts in lunchmeats and cheeses to extend shelf life. Sodium also helps bind ingredients together and acts as a stabilizer.

Besides sodium chloride, sodium is also a component of other ingredients you will find on your labels, further driving up your sodium level:

• Monosodium glutamate (MSG)
• Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
• Sodium benzoate
• Sodium nitrate
• Sodium saccharin

Hypertension Is Driven More by Excess SUGAR than Excess Salt

While I certainly agree you should not consume large quantities of refined processed salt, just switching to low-sodium foods — especially those in a box or a can — is not going to get you very far toward your health goals.

There are other factors that control fluid and electrolyte balance, blood pressure, kidney disease, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

For example, one of the greatest revelations of late is the link between fructose consumption and hypertension. Uric acid is a byproduct of fructose metabolism, and increased uric acid levels drive up your blood pressure. The amount of salt people in this country are consuming pales in comparison to the amount of fructose they are eating on a daily basis, yet the AMA issues no warnings about this.

I believe that sugar/fructose consumption is the major driving force behind our ever-increasingly elevated blood pressures.

Can Your Sodium be Too LOW?

Yes it can!

You may not be aware of this, but you have an increased risk for health problems if your sodium is too low (hyponatremia). For example:

• A 2009 study of large-bone fractures in the elderly found the incidence of hyponatremia in patients with fractures was MORE THAN DOUBLE that of non-fracture patients. They postulated the reason for the sodium deficiency might have been the use of selective serotonin receptor inhibitors (SSRIs), a type of antidepressant drugs.
• A 1995 study by the AMA published in the journal Hypertension found low urinary sodium associated with an increased risk of heart attack.

Changes in mood and appetite are among the first noticeable manifestations of sodium deficiency, since salt is a natural antidepressant.

And the preponderance of evidence proves that sodium intake does NOT affect blood pressure unless you are especially sodium-sensitive.

Salt as Nature Intended It: Himalayan Crystal Salt

The more you can move toward a diet of whole foods in their natural state, the healthier you’ll be — whether it’s veggies, meat, dairy products, or salt. If you are a protein type, you will need more salt than your fellow carbohydrate types.

Given that salt is absolutely essential to good health, I highly recommend switching to my favorite unrefined salt, an all-natural source from the Himalayas.

This salt is very special — it is completely pure, having spent more than 250 million years maturing under extreme tectonic pressure, far away from exposure to impurities, so it isn’t polluted with the heavy metals and industrial toxins of today. And it’s minimally processed — hand-mined and hand-washed.

Himalayan salt contains 84 trace minerals from our prehistoric seas, and its crystalline structure actually stores vibrational energy, which is restorative to your body.

The crystal salt from the Himalayas does not burden your body as refined salts do.

It is very difficult for your body to absorb too much crystal salt since there are effective feedback loops that regulate this process. Natural crystal salt always promotes a healthful balance and does not contribute to high blood pressure like refined table salt.

And it’s the most delicious salt you’ll ever find!

Not only is Himalayan salt nutritionally beneficial and delicious, but it also has several great healing applications when used topically:

• Bath Soak: As a “brine bath,” it is stimulating and even moisturizing to your skin, as well as detoxifying. Use a 1 percent concentration, which is equal to your natural body fluids (add about 2.6 pounds of salt to an average tub of water). Soak for 15 to 20 minutes, and do not shower off—just blot with a towel.
• Salt Sole: Sole simply means a supersaturated saltwater solution (about 8 percent salt), and with this you can treat a number of skin conditions, including itching and rashes.
• Sinus Flush: Mix with pure water in a neti pot a 1 percent solution (normal saline) with warm water for a beneficial sinus or allergy treatment; use 1 gram per 100ml (one-fifth teaspoon in 3.34 ounces lukewarm water).
• Eye rinse: The same 1 percent solution rejuvenates tired or irritated eyes.
• Throat gargle: To treat a cold or sore throat, gargle with a 1 percent saltwater solution (but don’t swallow).

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