Rather Be Healthy

Why is Coca-Cola often more affordable than clean water? Why are candy bars and cigarettes often more readily available than fresh fruits and vegetables?

If you want to eat healthfully, you have to fight an uphill battle. Why are government subsidies pushing in the wrong direction?

Who would it hurt if we enacted policies that actually encouraged the foods that are healthiest for people and for our world? Who opposes the efforts to make it easier, rather than harder, for people to make healthy food choices?

Government Policy Consistently Favors Big Agribusiness

As I describe in my new book No Happy Cows, agrichemical companies, factory farms and junk food manufacturers are quite happy with things the way they are. Thanks to their lobbying clout, government policies consistently favor the financial interests of these special interests over public health, even though the result is trillions of dollars in additional health care expenses.

Here’s an example: In just the last two years, 24 states have considered legislation that would place a tax on soft drinks. These “soda taxes” would discourage consumption of drinks high in sugar, thus reducing obesity and health care costs. And they would also raise money that could be used to subsidize healthier foods. But in every single state, the legislation has been defeated. PepsiCo Inc., the Coca-Cola Company, and the American Beverage Association have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to determine the outcome.

“In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity,” a new Reuters report on the food lobby begins. “The side with the fattest wallets.”

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, perhaps the best-financed lobbying force for healthier food, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year — roughly what those opposing stricter guidelines on sugary sodas in the U.S. spent every 13 hours.

Spending $1 Trillion on the Wrong Things

Next week, the U.S. Senate will begin floor debate on the 2012 Farm Bill, which lays the groundwork for nearly $1 trillion in U.S. government spending over the next decade. Most of that spending goes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP — still sometimes referred to as food stamps), and to subsidies and incentives for farmers.

Efforts to restrict SNAP spending to healthier foods have been fought bitterly, and successfully, by the junk food lobbies.

Meanwhile, the current Senate proposal would give tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Agribusiness, but would give next to nothing to programs benefiting the environment, organic food, nutrition, or small farmers. The food blog Civil Eats calls the proposal an “all-you-can-eat-buffet for the subsidy lobby.”

In a national poll last year, 78 percent said making nutritious and healthy foods more affordable and accessible should be a top priority in the farm bill. But that’s not what’s on the table in this year’s “agri-business as usual” farm bill.

Kari Hamerschlag, Senior Food and Agriculture Analyst for the Environmental Working Group, explains that the current proposal would actually “slash programs for conservation, nutrition, rural development and beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.”

For example, funding for research in organic farming would be cut to almost nothing, while corn growers, who have received $73.8 billion in subsidies in the last 15 years, would get even more now. Subsidized GMO corn is used to produce cheap high-fructose corn syrup, a substance that even Vice President Joe Biden says is more likely to kill an American than terrorism.

This heavily subsidized genetically modified corn is also fed to livestock in factory farms and feedlots — at unfairly reduced prices.

“Factory farms pose a serious public health hazard, so why are they subsidized by public money?” asks Food Revolution Summit speaker Dr. Neal Barnard. “These facilities pump out high-fat, high-cholesterol meat products and often pollute waterways — yet they also receive generous subsidies under the Farm Bill. We want Congress to stop rewarding facilities that endanger public health.”

These subsidies aren’t just costing U.S. taxpayers and enriching big agribusiness. They are also having a devastating impact on the health of tens of millions of people.

With all that we now know about nutrition, what kind of sense do these government policies make?

Chart courtesy of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines say eating more healthful plant-based foods and less saturated fat and cholesterol helps prevent heart problems and other life-threatening medical conditions.

But 63 percent of the government’s agricultural subsidies for domestic food products in recent history have supported meat and dairy production — the very foods highest in saturated fat and cholesterol. Less than 1 percent of these subsidies have gone to fruits and vegetables.

Food Revolution, Anyone?

The good news is that people are waking up, and you can join in the movement! Increasing numbers of people across partisan lines are calling for government policy to stop supporting the loudest lobbyists, and to start supporting the health of the population. And with the Farm Bill coming up for vote soon, this is a great time to get involved.
1.Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your senators’ and/or representative’s office. Tell them the Farm Bill should invest in food that is healthy for people and the earth. Tell them that instead of cutting support for nutrition, conservation and anti-hunger programs, they should cut crop insurance programs that only benefit the largest and wealthiest agribusiness operations.

2.Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is one of many organizations doing brilliant work on this issue in the U.S. Find out more and sign up to take action here.

3.Educate yourself by reading books like No Happy Cows. You’ll learn how to protect yourself in an age of predatory marketing. And your body will thank you for the rest of your life.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including No Happy Cows: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Food Revolution and Diet For A New America. He and his son, Ocean Robbins, are co-hosts of the 32,000 member Food Revolution Network. He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit http://www.johnrobbins.info.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

My book “Dentistry and how it’s damaging your health” is available here for only $2.99

How far will companies go to ensure they continue making money on products that make you sick? Answer: No extreme is too extreme, including bold-faced lying, if it means keeping the bucks rolling in.

This article will cover an assortment of examples of how you’re being deceived by four of the largest industries the chemical, biotech, pharmaceutical, and processed food industry.

Lies, Damn Lies!

One of the biggest lies that toxic chemical companies have told so far includes the heart-wrenching stories of babies dying agonizing deaths in fires. Throwing integrity out the window, the company hired professional experts to lie as they were not under oath. The babies didn’t actually die―in fact, they never even existed.

The Chicago Tribune learned this recently when it wanted to know more about a 7-week-old baby who a burn doctor testified as having died in agony because she was on a pillow that lacked flame retardantsi. Lo and behold, the entire story was a fabrication, from beginning to end. It turns out other tiny patients the doctor had described in testimony supporting toxic flame retardant materials didn’t exist either.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

“… [Dr. David] Heimbach’s passionate testimony about the baby’s death made the long-term health concerns about flame retardants voiced by doctors, environmentalists and even firefighters sound abstract and petty. But there was a problem with his testimony: It wasn’t true.

Records show there was no dangerous pillow or candle fire. The baby he described didn’t exist. Neither did the 9-week-old patient who Heimbach told California legislators died in a candle fire in 2009. Nor did the 6-week-old patient who he told Alaska lawmakers was fatally burned in her crib in 2010.

Heimbach is not just a prominent burn doctor. He is a star witness for the manufacturers of flame retardants. His testimony, the Tribune found, is part of a decades-long campaign of deception that has loaded the furniture and electronics in American homes with pounds of toxic chemicals linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility.

The tactics started with Big Tobacco, which wanted to shift focus away from cigarettes as the cause of fire deaths, and continued as chemical companies worked to preserve a lucrative market for their products, according to a Tribune review of thousands of government, scientific and internal industry documents.

These powerful industries distorted science in ways that overstated the benefits of the chemicals, created a phony consumer watchdog group that stoked the public’s fear of fire and helped organize and steer an association of top fire officials that spent more than a decade campaigning for their cause…”

Unfortunately, these lies do not just result in profits for the chemical industry it may not otherwise have enjoyed. These lies directly impact and harm your health, and the health of your children—children who, contrary to the infants in Dr. Heimbach’s fantasy drama, are very much alive and dependent on adults to make appropriate decisions.

According to Patricia Callahan and Sam Roe, reporters with the Chicago Tribune, between 1970 and 2004, blood levels of certain flame retardant chemicals doubled in American adults every two to five years, and American infants are born with the highest levels of these chemicals in their systems of any other nation on the planet. Why? Because of lies that tug at heart strings rather than provide evidence of safety and effectiveness of the chemical in question.

Health Hazards of Flame Retardant Chemicals Abound…

Incredibly, certain common flame retardants, such as PBDEs, have been detected in the blood of up to 97 percent of U.S. residents, at levels that are 20 times higher than those of Europeans. Californians have some of the highest exposures due to the state’s strict flammability laws.

Research has shown that pregnant women with higher blood levels of PBDEs, a common class of flame retardants, have altered thyroid hormone levels — a fact that could have implications for fetal health.

PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are organobromine compounds now found in household items such as carpets, electronics and plastics, and these chemicals are known to accumulate in human fat cells. Although the mechanics of how PBDEs affect your thyroid are still unclear, it is believed that PBDE chemicals mimic your thyroid hormones.

Another study published two years ago found an inverse link between exposure to fire retardant chemicals and the time it takes for exposed women to become pregnantii. Higher exposures were associated with decreased fertility.

PBDEs are also showing up in breast milk, and in various foods, including wild fish, and in the sewage sludge being applied as fertilizer on food crops across the U.S. This is yet another tragic case where lack of foresight and safety testing has turned out to have very significant, “unanticipated” human and environmental health risks.

Do Flame Retardants Even Work?

Making matters worse, it appears the science does not even support the industry’s claims of effectiveness, so the health risks you’re exposing yourself and your children to are not even for a valid cause! According to the Chicago Tribune:

“People might be willing to accept the health risks if the flame retardants packed into sofas and easy chairs worked as promised. But they don’t. The chemical industry often points to a government study from the 1980s as proof that flame retardants save lives. But the study’s lead author, Vytenis Babrauskas, said in an interview that the industry has grossly distorted his findings and that the amount of retardants used in household furniture doesn’t work. “The fire just laughs at it,” he said. Other government scientists subsequently found that the flame retardants in household furniture don’t protect consumers from fire in any meaningful way.”

Biotech—An Industry Built on “Adjustable Truths”

Another flaming example of a corporate giant that gets caught lying again and again is Monsanto which, in 2009, was found guilty by France’s highest court of false advertising for claims that its toxic weed killer Roundup is biodegradable and leaves “the soil clean.”

The French court noted that Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, is dangerous for the environment and toxic for aquatic organisms. But that’s just one example of the lies Monsanto tells to keep on selling its products; this company has a long history of fraudulent statements about the safety of Roundup. They long used the slogans, “It’s Safer than Mowing,” “Biodegradable,” and “Environmentally Friendly” to describe Roundup — until the real effects of this toxic herbicide were revealed and they were forced to discontinue their deceptive advertising.

Monsanto—who is in the convicted liar’s club—has unfortunately managed to work its way into a large number of high-level federal regulatory positions in the U.S. government; many of which are positions meant to protect your food safety!

Furthermore, the entire biotech industry is built on half-truths and claims that are largely unsupported by independent scientific reviews. The following video discusses and dispels some of these falsehoods.

Big Pharma Still Leads the Pack of Convicted Liars

But the chemical and biotech industries certainly do not have a monopoly on using dirty tactics to maintain and increase market share and boost profits. This honor probably goes to the pharmaceutical industry, which, in terms of dollars and cents, is more powerful than 168 individual nations on this planet. Just consider the ramifications of these statistics for a moment… As of 2009, the global market for pharmaceuticalsiii was worth more than $837 billion, and is expected to reach $1.1 TRILLION in 2014.

If Big Pharma’s annual global market was compared to the GDP—the market value of all the output produced in a nation in one year—then Big Pharma would rank # 15 on a list of 183 nationsiv. That’s how BIG the pharmaceutical industry is!

Americans are disproportionally supporting this behemoth of an industry. Americans, including children, are the most drugged people in the entire world, with the average adult taking 11 prescription drugs—each of which comes with an average of 70 different potential side effects that are then typically addressed with yet more drugs…

Direct-to-consumer advertising has played a major role in turning the U.S. into a nation of over-medicated people with the most expensive health care in the world, while continuously dropping in life expectancy and other health indexes.

If you believe their advertisements, Big Pharma has a fix for just about any physiological condition you can think of. Most of these fixes come in the form of expensive prescriptions ordered by your doctor—that’s why the ads usually suggest that you ask your doctor if the product they’re promoting “would be right for you.”

It’s a subliminal message that makes you your own drug peddler, and it’s a profoundly successful strategy. In a recent AlterNet article, Jim Hightower discusses how direct-to-consumer advertising—which about 30 years ago wasn’t allowed in the U.S.—carries a major responsibility for having created a drugged-up Americav. He rightfully points out that since lifting the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising “America’s healthcare system has radically metamorphosed from a public service network (largely run by independent physicians and nonprofit hospitals) into a corporate profit machine.”

The situation has gotten so out of hand that a renowned former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Arnold Relman, is accusing drug makers of creating an epidemic that’s endangering public health, jacking up healthcare costs, and weakening the curative connection between health professionals and patients.

Healthcare has Been Reduced to a “Buyer Beware” For-Profit Industry

It’s a dishonorable way to generate sales of potentially deadly drugs, but it works: according to Hightower, for every $1,000 that a drug company spends on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising in the U.S. produces 24 new patients. It’s a bonanza that generates seven times more customers than if the companies didn’t advertise, and the results on public health are often devastating, further driving up the nation’s health care costs.

Take Vioxx, for example―Merck’s failed drug that caused 140,000 cardiac events, including more than 60,000 deaths, before it was pulled from the market. Merck admits that Vioxx was never intended for the general public. Yet Merck advertised it, and people saw the ads and started demanding it from their doctors, and Merck sold 20 million prescriptions. Many people died before Merck pulled both the ads and the drug. Vioxx became a blockbuster drug, primarily through the use of aggressive DTC advertising. And as a result, thousands of unsuspecting people died or suffered heart attacks that would never have used the drug had they not been lured in by the glossy adverts.

But Merck isn’t alone in this; direct-to-consumer marketing is a general practice by almost every drug company in America. The problem is that, like Vioxx, some of the drugs being advertised are not what they appear; meaning if you see it advertised, the old axiom, caveat emptor―let the buyer beware―is something to remember. This is to be expected when you consider the source, because pharmaceutical companies lead the pack when it comes to corporate crime.

The Real Thugs of the Drug World

The “war on drugs” has focused nearly exclusively on the illegal trafficking of drugs like cocaine, heroin and marijuana, while the most powerful drug dealers of all — the pharmaceutical companies — are allowed to grow their businesses with the U.S. government’s golden seal of approval. But make no mistake – the leading pharmaceutical companies are also among the largest corporate criminals in the world, and they are little more than white-collar drug dealers.

Although many fail to realize this, prescription drugs can be just as addictive as illegal drugs. In fact, in many cases there’s no difference between a street drug and a prescription drug. For example, hydrocodone, a prescription opiate, is synthetic heroin. It’s indistinguishable from any other heroin as far as your brain and body are concerned. So, if you’re hooked on hydrocodone, you are in fact a good-old-fashioned heroin addict.

But aside from the nature of their business, fraud, kickbacks, price-setting, bribery and illegal sales activities are all par for the course for big-name drug companies.

Two years ago, I set out to investigate some of the criminal activities that some of the largest pharmaceutical companies had been convicted of lately, and the amount of gross misconduct, fraud and deceit I found was so insidious, so massive, and so overwhelming that it shocked even me. In all, no less than 19 drug companies made AllBusiness.com’s Top 100 Corporate Criminals List for the 1990s! You can read the grim details in full here, but here’s a sampling of what the top drug companies are up to:
•Merck: With a long list of deaths to its credit and more than $5.5 billion in judgments and fines levied against it, it was five years before Merck made its $30-billion recall of the painkiller Vioxx that I warned my readers that it might be a real killer for some people.
After the drug was withdrawn, and 60,000 had already died, Merck picked up the pieces by getting a new drug fast-tracked and on the market. That drug is Gardasil, a vaccine that so far has been linked to thousands of adverse events, and at least 26 unexplained deaths in just ONE YEAR. It’s a situation that the FDA and CDC have repeatedly denied, keeping their heads buried in the sand as adverse reports mount.

Meanwhile, over 90 percent of women infected with HPV clear the infection naturally within two years, at which point cervical cells go back to normal. Even more importantly, PAP smears can identify cervical changes, thereby preventing cervical cancer deaths far more effectively than the HPV vaccine ever will, because there’s a sufficient amount of time to find and treat any cervical abnormalities if you’re getting regular PAP smears. Alas, as the HPV vaccine is gaining favor, health officials are beginning to argue against the routine use of PAP smears, despite the fact that no one has ever died from this test, while the HPV vaccine is now harming thousands each year.

•Baxter: Dozens of recalls of products that caused deaths and injuries, at least 11 different guilty pleas to fraud and illegal sales activity, more than 200 lawsuits – many of them stemming from selling AIDS-tainted blood to hemophiliacs – and more than $1.3 billion in criminal fines and civil penalties.
•Pfizer: 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 antipsychotic Geodon, the antibiotic Zyvox, and the anti-epileptic Lyrica.

FDA Approves HIV Prevention Drug

If I were to pick out the next blockbuster drug destined to wreak havoc on public health, the brand new drug for HIV prevention would probably be it, and this is primarily related to the fact that there is a strong likelihood that through lobbying and pressure, it will likely be recommended to everyone, just like vaccines, and enforced with similar rules so that the vast majority of the population will be on it.

A drug that’s already being used as a treatment for AIDS has now been approved by the FDA as a preventive pill for use with people who have no infection at all―a move that even AIDS activists say is the wrong thing to do. According to CNN, more than 40 health professionals, AIDS advocates and patients implored the FDA committee not to recommend the drug for the new indicationvi. But the committee ignored their pleas and did it anyway. (The FDA doesn’t have to follow the recommendations of its advisory committees, but it often does.)

The drug, Truvada, is manufactured by Gilead Sciences Inc. It’s not cheap―a month’s supply costs about $1,200. The committee’s approval gives Gilead a whole new, wide-open market for selling the drug.

While currently approved only as pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV-infected homosexual men and the uninfected partners to HIV-infected individuals, it’s fairly easy to see how this will in short order be relaxed to include literally everyone, regardless of age, sex or sexual preference (barring only those who have committed to complete abstinence, I would presume), just like Gardasil suddenly—against all reasonable logic—became a recommended prophylactic necessity for young boys…

In case you think you have heard of Gilead Sciences before, you have if you have been reading this newsletter for some time. Gilead Sciences is the company that Donald Rumsfeld was the former chairman of, and received $7.1 billion dollars for the sale of government-recommended Tamiflu for the non-existent Bird Flu that was projected to kill millions.

More Medical Corruption and Conflicts of Interest

Like a broken record, news of corruption and conflicts of interest between drug makers and medical groups that promote the drugs has erupted again, this time in an investigation led by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Senator Chuck Grassley.

The bi-partisan probe of drug marketing practices was triggered by the huge jump in deadly overdoses from painkillers known as opioids. According to 2008 statistics from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in 14,800 overdose deaths that year, surpassing overdose deaths caused by cocaine and heroin combined!

The Senate probe follows an investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post, which found that the American Pain Foundation received 90 percent of its funding from the drug and medical device industry in 2010, while simultaneously producing written guidance that downplayed side effects and risks and highlighted the benefits of the drugs.

According to a recent Reuter’s report, the senators have sent letters to three major drug makers (Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit, Endo Pharmaceuticals, and Purdue Pharma), demanding documents about their financial connections to seven medical groups that may have been promoting misleading information about the risks and benefits of opioid use while receiving financial support from the manufacturersvii.

According to Baucus:

“These painkillers have an important role in health care when prescribed and used properly, but pushing misinformation on consumers to boost profits is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.” .

Crime Pays Off Big When You’re a Corporation

In the medical world, there seems to be few crimes that don’t pay off—as long as you don’t get caught (and even then, all you’re bound to receive is a slap on the wrist as long as you’re large and important enough).

The U.S. government is constantly bilked of much needed funds through fraudulent means. In the past few years, the Department of Justice busted doctors, nurses, clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, and drug companies for charging the Medicare and Medicaid system billions of dollars for treatments, drugs, and medical devices that government investigators say either weren’t needed or were never provided at all.

MSNBC News recently reported that, in the largest bust to date, federal agents have charged 197 people in schemes that cheated the Medicare system out of a record $452 millionviii.

The sweep included major cities such as Miami, Tampa, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles and Baton Rouge. The government also suspended payments to 52 provider organizations as part of the bust. The types of medical care involved ran the gamut of health services. For example, in Baton Rouge seven people who ran two community health centers are accused of defrauding the government of $225 million in false claims. The health centers allegedly rounded up drug addicts, homeless people and the elderly, and used them to submit false claims for treatment.

Unless caught, cheaters can make vast sums of money, sometimes upwards of a billion dollars a year just through filing false or “upgraded” payment claims! These types of health care fraud cost US taxpayers an estimated $80-160 billion per year. The latest drug company to get caught is Abbott Laboratories, which pled guilty to promoting its drug Depakote to nursing homes and other healthcare providers for treatment of patients with dementia. Abbott agreed to pay the government $1.5 billion to resolve the criminal investigation.

Why is U.S. Congress More Concerned with Protecting Profits than Kids’ Health?

Another industry given free rein to wreak havoc on public health is the food industry. Processed foods, which contain few nutrients and plenty of disease-promoting sugar and poorly tested chemicals, are at the heart of the obesity epidemic. But if you thought the federal government was really going to do something about childhood obesity in America, all it takes to change your mind is to follow the corporate money trail to Congress…

In a new report by the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Groupix, researchers found that federal guidelines for marketing aimed at children were stopped in their tracks by money thrown at politicians charged with making the change happen. In a recent AlterNet article, Steven Rosenfeld reviewsx the lengths to which corporate America will go to protect their profits. Common tactics include:
•Campaign donations
•Attacking science
•Asserting constitutional rights, and
•Threatening federal agencies with smear campaigns

As a result of industry pressure, nearly 200 lawmakers buckled on the marketing guidelines and ignored the nationwide health epidemic affecting millions of children and teenagers, proving yet again that ingrained in Washington is the impetus to protect corporate profits, as opposed to standing up for the public interest.

Is There a Solution to these Travesties?

As discussed by former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who served three-and-a-half years in federal prison after pleading guilty to corrupting public officials, tax evasion and fraud, our current political system basically runs on bribes. So one necessary step to have any chance of quelling this out-of-control corruption, fraud, and criminal activity is to prohibit all members of Congress and their staff from ever becoming a lobbyist after their service on the Hill is over.

The good news is that increasing numbers of people are now waking up to these harsh realities, and you, being among those who are informed, can help share this knowledge with others. Remember that the definition of fascism is a government system that has complete power in regimenting all industry and forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism. What we have here is a hybrid—a sort of corporate fascism, where industry has powerful control over government, and forcefully suppresses anything that threatens their monopoly on profits.

But, this doesn’t mean that you have to buy into their agenda.

The goal is to ultimately have a critical mass of people refuse the unnecessarily dangerous and counterproductive solutions currently offered by all of these industries, and demand that our public servants serve the public rather than corporate interests. That will serve as the powerful stimulus to generate authentic change. More than 1.6 million people receive this newsletter, and together we can make a huge difference.

By Dr. Mercola
If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

My book “Dentistry and how it’s damaging your health” is available here for only $2.99

References:

——————————————————————————–
i Chicago Tribune May 6, 2012
ii Environmental Health Perspectives May 2010;118(5):699-704
iii IMSHealth.com April 20, 2010
iv Wikipedia.com List of countries by GDP (PPP)
v AlterNet.org May 8, 2012
vi CNN May 11, 2012
vii Reuters May 9, 2012
viii MSNBC News May 2, 2012
ix Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, May 21, 2012
x AlterNet.org May 11, 2012

It Can Destroy Your Immune System and is Like Eating an Insecticide

In early studies of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), it was shown to be most prevalent in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and those in northern Europe.

However, in more recent studies, Canada has suddenly shot to the top of the list as the country with the highest incidence.

In 1981, the incidence of IBD in Alberta, Canada was only 44 per 100,000; less than half that of Olmsted County in Minnesota.

By the year 2000, the incidence in Alberta had skyrocketed to 283 per 100,000; now 63 percent higher than that in Olmstead County in the US.

The question is, why?

Could Widespread Consumption of Splenda Explain Skyrocketing IBD Rates?

It’s worth noting here that IBD is different from another condition that sounds very similar, namely irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an autoimmune disease that can have very serious consequences, while IBS is a functional bowel disorder.

Many IBD patients wind up having extensive sections of their colon removed to address the problem when conventional therapies fail and this can result in devastating and life-threatening complications.

A paper published in the Canadian Journal of Gastroenterology theorizes that the increase in this troublesome disease may be related to the impairment of digestive proteases, caused by the inhibition of gut bacteria by dietary chemicals, such as saccharin and sucralose. Saccharin fails to provide an explanation for the rise of IBD, as Canada adopted stringent standards for the use of saccharin in 1977 — but this is not the case for sucralose (Splenda).

According to the authors:

“If not saccharin, then what caused the remarkable increase of IBD in Canada? … [S]ucralose may be the culprit … In 1991, Canada was the first country to approve the use of sucralose, and it was allowed to be used as a tabletop sweetener in breakfast cereals, beverages, desserts, toppings, fillings, chewing gum, breath mints, fruit spreads, salad dressings, confectionary, bakery products, processed fruits and vegetables, alcoholic beverages, puddings and table syrups.”

The theory that Splenda may be a culprit in the rise of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) appears to be a reasonable one, echoing the results from a 2008 study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, which discovered that Splenda:
•Increases the pH level in your intestines, and
•Reduces the amount of good bacteria in your intestines by 50 percent!

In the featured paper, the author states that sucralose has a potent inhibitory effect on your gut bacteria and inactivates digestive protease. It also alters gut barrier function. All in all, this may help explain the pronounced increase in IBD in Canada since its introduction into the food supply.

Believe me, if you keep destroying up to half of your gut flora by regularly consuming Splenda, then poor health is virtually guaranteed! Making matters worse, most people are already deficient in healthy bacteria due to excessive consumption of highly processed foods, which is why a high quality probiotic supplement is a good idea for most people. If you add sucralose to an already unbalanced intestinal tract, health problems are very likely to ensue…

The Signs and Symptoms of Sucralose Toxicity

I have done a fair level of literature review on this as I invested several years with four other professionals to write the definitive work on Splenda , which was published by Putnam in 2006.

It’s important to understand that despite its misleading slogan, Splenda (sucralose) is nothing like sugar. Rather it’s a chlorinated artificial sweetener in line with aspartame and saccharin, and with detrimental health effects to match. In fact, while sucralose starts out as a sugar molecule, by the time the manufacturing process is completed, it more closely resembles DDT than sugar.

It could easily be likened to eating an insecticide…

Unfortunately, many fail to connect the dots between their symptoms and their use of Splenda, or other artificial sweeteners. I recommend reading through the first-hand accounts of my readers, at least one of whom say that Splenda is “worse than chemical warfare” based on the adverse effects she suffered before she figured out the cause. Just as with aspartame, many Splenda users complain of general malaise or “feeling under the weather,” along with a variety of neurological changes, such as foggy-headedness, lack of concentration, and “bad mood.”

Commonly reported symptoms (usually experienced within 24 hours after consuming Splenda) include:

Eyes – bloodshot, itchy, swollen, or watery eyes and swelling of the eyelids

Joints – aches and pains

Nose – sneezing and runny or stuffy nose

Head – headaches, migraines, and swelling of the face, lips, throat, or tongue

Lungs – cough, tightness, shortness of breath, and wheezing

Skin – blistering, crusting, eruptions, hives, itchiness, redness, swelling, and oozing

Heart – fluttering or palpitations

Neurological – anxiety, depression, dizziness, and decreased ability to concentrate

Stomach – bloating, bloody diarrhea, diarrhea, gas, nausea, pain, and vomiting

If you experience any of these symptoms and have just consumed Splenda, or consume it on a regular basis, I strongly recommend carefully avoiding any further exposure for a few days to a few weeks to see if the symptoms disappear. If they do, you may just have solved your own “health mystery.” Likewise, if you have inflammatory bowel disease and consume any kind of Splenda product or other artificial sweetener, you’d be wise to avoid such items in order to improve your condition.

I believe it’s important to identify the culprit, as the long-term damage of Splenda consumption is largely unknown. Still, it would probably be a fair guess that long-term exposure is not going to be beneficial to your health—especially if you’re having symptoms of toxicity! It’s a sad reality that very few appropriate studies have been performed on Splenda. The vast majority of the studies that formed the basis for its approval in the US were done on animals, and they actually found plenty of problems even though they were ultimately dismissed, including:
•Brain lesions
•Decreased red blood cell count and anemia
•Enlarged and calcified kidneys
•Increased mortality
•Male infertility
•Spontaneous abortions in rabbits

Diet Soda May Also Raise Your Stroke Risk

Another recent study, featured by Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reported that diet soda consumption was linked to higher rates of strokes, heart attacks and other lethal vascular events. (The study did not specify any particular artificial sweetener involved, but diet sodas typically use either aspartame or sucralose, sometimes both, and both have similar health hazards.)

The researchers concluded that:

“This study suggests that diet soda is not an optimal substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages, and may be associated with a greater risk of stroke, myocardial infarction, or vascular death than regular soda.”

While more research will likely be needed to confirm this potential link, there’s plenty of evidence showing that artificial sweeteners such as sucralose and aspartame can be dangerous to your health.

Ready to Kick the Artificial Sweetener Habit?

If you’re using an artificial sweetener, it’s probably because you’re trying to avoid the calories while still craving that sweet taste. Sweet cravings are very common, and quite understandable when you realize that sugar is as addictive as some hard-core street drugs. Unfortunately, switching to artificial sweeteners will neither reduce these cravings nor increase your satiety. On the contrary, you’re likely making matters worse.

Your body tends to crave sugary foods when it’s lacking proper fuel. Sugar is very quick fuel and can give your body a boost when it’s running low. However, using artificial sweeteners will not trick your body into thinking it has had its fill; rather it wants more sweets because it didn’t get the energy boost that normally goes along with the sweet taste. In fact, this is part of why artificial sweeteners are associated with increased weight gain rather than weight loss. You’re simply confusing your body.

The most powerful solution to help curb your cravings is to eat a wholesome diet of real food, and by ‘real food’ I mean fresh, whole (preferably organic, as it’s more nutrient-dense) foods that have been minimally processed, if at all. Once your body has the fuel it needs to keep going, it doesn’t need to “remind” you, in the form of sugar cravings, that it needs an energy boost.

To learn what a “healthful diet” really is, I invite you to review my nutrition plan, which is divided into three steps: beginners, intermediary and advanced, so that you can progress at your own pace.

Earlier this summer, nutrition- and fitness expert Ori Hofmekler also shared a fascinating benefit of caffeine that can be helpful here. If you like coffee, drinking organic black coffee (without sugar or milk) can help eliminate sugar cravings because the caffeine is an opioid receptor antagonist. Sugar binds to the same opioid receptors as cocaine and other addictive substances, but when an opioid receptor antagonist already occupies that receptor, it prohibits you from becoming addicted to something else. Therefore, caffeine may attenuate the addictive impact of sugar. There are a few caveats to using this strategy however, including:
•Only drink organic coffee (as it’s one of the most pesticide-heavy crops there are)
•Drink it black, sans sugar/artificial sweeteners or milk
•Only drink coffee in the morning, prior to exercise
•Limit your consumption to one or two cups

Guidelines for Addressing Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

Since I began this discussion with Splenda’s potential impact on inflammatory bowel diseases, I want to address a few of the most important lifestyle factors involved. Now, those with IBD need to strictly limit or eliminate their sugar consumption, but I firmly believe that switching to an artificial sweetener is an unwise move for all the reasons discussed above. While sugar will promote inflammation by increasing your insulin levels, artificial sweeteners will destroy your gut flora and further damage your intestines, and more…

If you have IBD and battle sugar cravings, I urge you to carefully review my ‘quitting’ recommendations just covered, and address your diet to put an end to those cravings. The following strategies are also important if you’re struggling with IBD:
•Take a high quality animal-based omega-3 fat supplement. If you’re already taking a plant-based omega-3 such as flax, know that it will not work as your body needs the omega-3 fat DHA to have a serious impact on this disease, not the omega-3 ALA found in flax.
•Avoid all types of sugars, particularly fructose, as these will increase inflammation by increasing your insulin levels.
•Also avoid grains until your symptoms are under control. Many with inflammatory bowel disease have gluten sensitivities. Additionally, the grains tend to increase insulin levels, promoting inflammation.
•Optimize your vitamin D levels. Vitamin D appears to be nearly as effective as animal-based omega-3 fats.
•Get plenty of beneficial bacteria (probiotics) in your diet, as this will help to heal your intestinal tract. You can do this by regularly consuming traditionally fermented foods, or taking a high quality probiotic supplement.
By Dr. Mercola
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