Rather Be Healthy

From smart phones to computers to iPads, our beloved electronic devices are crippling our posture and contributing to weight gain, back pain, and joint problems like carpal tunnel syndrome.

Fortunately, there are a few strategies and exercises – such as changing your position often and “reorganizing” your torso – that can address a lot of these potential problems and help keep you more fit and properly aligned.

As miserable as back pain is, that may be the least of your worries if you spend a significant portion of your time on your duff. Sitting may actually cut years off your life. Lack of exercise is sitting’s evil accomplice. The more you sit, the less your body wants to move.

According to a study in the British Medical Journal,1 reducing the average time you spend sitting to less than three hours per day could increase your life expectancy by two years, which is a significant decrease from the 4.5 to 5 hours per day the average American now spends on a chair or sofa.

An analysis of 18 studies showed that people who sat for the longest periods of time were twice as likely to have diabetes or heart disease, compared to those who sat the least.2 Sitting has actually joined smoking and obesity as an important risk factor for chronic disease.

The Price You Pay for a Sedentary Lifestyle

A number of studies have investigated the health ramifications of a sedentary lifestyle. The research linking too much sitting with increased risks of disease and premature death is quite noteworthy:
1.Men who were sedentary for more than 23 hours a week had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from heart disease than those who were sedentary less than 11 hours a week, according to a 2010 study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.3
2.A study of more than 17,000 Canadians found that the mortality risk from all causes was 1.54 times higher among people who spent most of their day sitting, compared to those who sat infrequently.4
3.According to an Australian study, sitting time is a predictor of weight gain among women, even after controlling for calories consumed and leisurely physical activity, such as exercise.5
4.People who use a computer for at least 11 hours per week or watch TV for more than 21 hours per week are more likely to be obese than those who use a computer or watch TV for more than 5 hours per week.6
5.Your risk of metabolic syndrome rises in a dose-dependent manner depending on your “screen time” (the amount of time you spend watching TV or using a computer). Physical activity has only a minimal impact on the relationship between screen time and metabolic syndrome.7

Going to the Gym May NOT Be Enough

Interestingly, research has also suggested a regular fitness regimen might be insufficient to counteract the effects of excessively sedentary habits during the remaining hours of the day, due to the adverse metabolic impact of sitting. Especially if the fitness regimen is focused around equipment that puts you back in a seated position like a recumbent bike or rowing machine. A 2009 study8 highlighted much of the contemporary evidence linking sitting with biomarkers of poor metabolic health, showing how total sitting time correlates with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other prevalent chronic health problems.

According to the authors:

“Even if people meet the current recommendation of 30 minutes of physical activity on most days each week, there may be significant adverse metabolic and health effects from prolonged sitting – the activity that dominates most people’s remaining ‘non-exercise’ waking hours.”

In other words, even if you’re fairly physically active, riding your bike to work or hitting the gym four or five days a week, you may still succumb to the effects of too much sitting if the majority of your day is spent behind a desk or on the couch. Researchers have dubbed this phenomenon the “active couch potato effect.”

According to a New York Times article,9 after just an hour of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat in your body declines by as much as 90 percent. Extended sitting slows your body’s metabolism of glucose and decreases your HDL, which is the type of lipid you want MORE of, instead of less. This explains why those who sit habitually for extended periods of time have higher risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems.

The Key To Sitting Successfully: Stand Up

The basic remedy is to get up and do a few simple exercises – but you have to do this frequently if you spend a lot of your life in a chair. Most back, neck, and other muscle pains are related to imbalanced absorption of force throughout your body, created by working in unnatural positions for extended periods. When you teach your body to establish and repeat correct positioning, the pain often goes away. You must correct your foot, pelvis, torso, shoulder and neck positions as these are all required for good posture and balance. When these core areas are positioned improperly, you will likely develop pain first in those areas, with other areas soon to follow. As the center of your body changes its structure to adapt to the demands you ask it to do most frequently, the extremities will follow..

For example, a great deal of carpal tunnel issues do not result solely from improper wrist position, but from forward rotation of the shoulder. The forward rotation of the shoulder is directly connected to the position of your lower back, and pelvis. As the shoulder changes position all of the muscles and nerves below the shoulder are adversely affected. The result is symptoms within the wrist that cannot be fixed at the wrist.

A basic remedy is to simply get up! But additionally, there are certain exercises you can perform to further reduce the adverse impact of sitting.

In the interview above, Kelly Starrett, popular mobility expert and physical therapist with Crossfit, shares some excellent tips for maintaining good posture while working for extended periods in a chair.10 The key is to change positions often – at least every 20 to 30 minutes – and maintain proper torso alignment, regardless of what position you’re in. Starrett recommends standing up often and doing some specific realignment exercises, which are actually quick and easy.

Sitting, especially while doing computer work or texting, tends to result in leaning forward with your head, neck, shoulders and upper back. The key is to teach your body to support itself in a more neutral position, without overcorrecting.

Realigning Your Body in Five Easy Steps

Starrett recommends a five-step series of body “reorganizations” or realignments, done in the following sequence:
1.Stand up with your with feet pointing straight forward or slightly inward.
2.In the interview Kelly recommends that we realign the pelvis by simply squeezing your butt tightly, we would like to add that this will be more effective for the majority of people if also told to internally rotate their feet 10-15 degrees (big toes slightly towards each other), roll feet to the outside of the arch and then try to pull the back of the legs together without the heels moving. This will allow the thigh and butt muscles to work together; the squeeze alone is otherwise less effective.
3.Create some tension in your core by slightly tightening your abdominals (this is not an extreme tightening – just to 20 percent of your max)
4.Correct your shoulder position by externally rotating (think of unscrewing) your shoulders and arms (rolling your shoulders back), which brings your shoulder blades closer together, your chest up and forward, and your thumbs pointing away from your body
5.While keeping your shoulders externally rotated, turn your hands back to neutral, so that your thumbs are now facing forward

These basic alignments can be applied no matter what position you’re in – whether you’re standing, sitting, kneeling, or anything in between. In the video, Starrett demonstrates exactly how to perform these simple corrections, making it much easier to visualize. If you practice these exercises regularly, you’ll be preventing many of the problems that commonly arise.

In case you’re wondering if you can just substitute a balance ball for your chair, there is little evidence for any benefit. Studies show minimal, if any, postural improvement, and one study even showed “spinal shrinkage” from using these balls as a chair.11 The apparatus you sit on is far less important than the positions in which you teach your body to sit.

However, the ergonomic revolution has led to the birth of some interesting desks and workstations that offer the option of standing up to work. Some workstations even have a treadmill underneath for walking. Sales of the “TredDesk” have reportedly grown tenfold since its introduction in 2008. There are a number of companies putting a lot of money into research and development in this area, and I suspect to see many more of these designs coming down the pike.

Foundation Training Exercises:

Foundation Training is another way to compensate for long hours spend sitting. Foundation training exercises are powerful simple structural movements that help strengthen and realign your body posture. This program was developed by Chiropractor Eric Goodman as a way to address his personal chronic back pain, and have been a great answer to the increasing physical challenges of modern society. As a starting point, Dr. Goodman suggests making the following adjustments to your body when sitting. These recommendations are not meant to replace the way you sit constantly, but to give you useful alternative positions to use. It is recommended that you try them often, as your body is likely in need:
1.Backrests tend to promote excessive rounding of the spine and push us into what’s called an anterior head carriage. Sit upright on the front edge of a chair and practice the next 2 tips. At least 2/3 of your thigh should be off of the chair, and your knees should be no more than 6 inches apart while practicing.
2.When sitting, try to keep your chin behind your chest bone. When your chin is too far forward, you will inadvertently teach your hip flexors to remain abnormally short and you set yourself up for increased compression and degeneration.
3.An easy way to learn to lengthen your hip flexors without hyperextending your spine is to slowly increase the distance between your rib cage and pelvis while keeping your chin pulled in and down towards your throat. This is demonstrated in the last 5 minutes of the TED Talk listed above.

For more information on Foundation Training, please refer to my earlier article and interview with Dr. Goodman, as well as watching the videos below in which Dr. Goodman demonstrates two of his favorite exercises:..

Yet another type of exercise called Egoscue can also be helpful in mitigating the damage from excess sitting

Take Breaks from Sitting to Ground Yourself to the Earth

Another downside to sitting is the lack of contact with the Earth, since most of us are sitting indoors. Have you noticed how much better you feel when you walk barefoot on the Earth, whether it’s dirt or sand or grass?

Science has finally solved this mystery!

For most of our evolutionary history, humans have had continuous contact with the Earth, but this is certainly not the case today. We are separated from it by a barrier of asphalt, wood, rugs, plastics, and especially shoes. Living in direct contact with the Earth grounds your body, producing beneficial electrophysiological changes that help protect you from potentially disruptive electromagnetic fields. Some of the EMFs closest to our bodies are those generated by the electronic devices that have practically become a modern appendage – like smart phones and iPads.

Your immune system functions optimally when your body has an adequate supply of electrons, which are easily and naturally obtained by barefoot/bare skin contact with the Earth. Research indicates Earth’s electrons are the ultimate antioxidants, acting aspowerful anti-inflammatories.

Chronic inflammation leads to a multitude of health problems. Therefore, reducing inflammation will help mitigate the negative effects of excessive sitting. Earthing (grounding) decreases the effect of the potentially disruptive electromagnetic fields that are emitted by those electronic devices we’ve come to depend on.

Bottom line: the more you can walk or stand barefoot upon the Earth, the healthier you will be. Whenever possible, take a moment to venture outside and plant your feet in the wet grass!

We are designed to move well, sit well and play well within our environment. It is up to us to teach our body to do these things as it is designed to. We can only deprive our body of what it requires for so long before it begins to rebel against us physically.

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According to Dr. Gary Null of the Progressive Radio Network (http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com), “Black cumin oil is probably the single most important oil you can put in your system. Every time you take black cumin you are stimulating your immune system to fight on your behalf and increase natural killer cells.” Null was referring to its ability to improve the immune system, treat cancer and HIV successfully. No truer words were ever spoken. Black cumin is also known as Nigella sativa, black seeds and kalonji and has been healing maladies of the body for more than 2,000 years.

Although black cumin has been used for centuries, only during the last 40 years has the true potential of this remedy been realized. Originally, black cumin was used mainly for migraines, asthma and allergies. It has now been shown to be successful in stimulating the immune system, treating HIV and healing cancer tumors. These are three of the most worrisome problems people are faced with today, except for heart disease which black cumin has been shown to treat also.

Black cumin is a viable option for immunity and auto-immune diseases
When you look at the broad term “immunity,” auto-immune diseases should also be included. These little black seeds have shown to improve the immune system by 72 percent in as few as four weeks. Two studies were done in 1987 at the I.I.M.E.R. in Panama City, Florida to verify the immune building effects of black cumin. The volunteer groups were given one gram of black cumin twice a day or a placebo. After four weeks, the end results showed a 72 percent increase in T-cell ratios and cell functional activity in most participants.

Black cumin is now a viable option to treat and/or heal people afflicted with auto-immune diseases which are a leading cause of death and disability for many. In 2010, there were approximately 23.5 million Americans afflicted with auto-immune diseases which include more than 80 serious diseases. Some of the types are rare and some quite common like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Celiac disease and Crohn’s disease.

Still, black cumin heals more than just auto-immune diseases such as cancer, diabetes, baldness, asthma and migraines. It eliminates parasites and even helps with menstrual blood flow.

Black cumin annihilates pancreatic cancer tumors
Dr. Hwyda Arafat at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson conducted several studies using Nigella sativa (black cumin) to treat pancreatic cancer. The results were astounding with an 80 percent cancer tumor cell death. Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in America with an overall 4.6 percent survival rate over a five-year period. Dr. Arafat went on to say, “Nigella sativa helps treat a broad array of diseases, including some immune and inflammatory disorders. Previous studies also have shown anticancer activity in prostate and colon cancers, as well as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.”

How to take black cumin and dosage requirements
It is imperative to purchase organic, cold pressed oil that is free of additives. To improve your immune system, take one teaspoon daily mixed with raw honey or fresh juice one hour before breakfast. For cancer, take three teaspoons daily in divided doses combined with a healthy cancer diet and exercise program. Both immune problems and cancer are treated with the addition of fresh garlic. Black cumin should be taken daily as a preventative measure for all diseases.

Sources for this article include:

http://hijamaclinic.net/black_seed.php

http://www.kcc.tju.edu/news/2008-05-23_Arafat.html

http://www.habshifa.com.au

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.academia.edu

About the author:
Samantha Davis is an author, freelance writer and avid supporter of natural healing. She has written 10 books on various subjects and is a specialist on the subject of Nigella Sativa, black cumin and black seeds. Check out her website Nigella Sativa.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038644_black_cumin_oil_immune_system_NK_cells.html#ixzz2HkavIkvl

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Flu epidemic strikes millions of Americans already vaccinated against the flu

The USA is in an official flu pandemic panic right now, with Boston declaring a public health emergency and hospitals setting up flu treatment tents as if cities were war zones. The CDC says it’s the worst flu pandemic in a decade, and it’s of course urging everybody to get injected with flu vaccines.

But here’s the dirty little secret the vaccine industry doesn’t want you to know: Most people getting the flu right now are the same people who were vaccinated with the flu shot.

The CDC refuses to release any statistics on this, of course, because then the total hoax of the flu shot would be exposed. But I’ve been making phone calls to a large network of friends and professional contacts, and they’re all telling me the same thing: Of the people they know who are getting sick, about two-thirds routinely get flu shots!

Check with your own friends, family members or co-workers on this point. Ask the ones who got sick: Did you get a flu shot? See if the answers you get are about the same as mine: Two-thirds.

If this holds true across a larger data set, it means that flu shots actually make you MORE susceptible to the flu. That’s because far less than two-thirds of the U.S. population takes flu shots. So if two-thirds of those getting the flu this year are the same people who got flu shots, mathematically it can only mean that flu shots INCREASE vulnerability to the flu.

In this way, people who get flu shots are acting irresponsibly because they increase their risk of spreading the flu to others. Instead of taking care of their health with nutrients like vitamin D, they act with neglect and seek out a flu shot that poses a very real increased risk to public health and safety.

What’s in flu shots? Aluminum, mercury, MSG and formaldehyde
The CDC openly admits that vaccines contain a toxic cocktail and metals and synthetic chemicals that we all know cause neurological damage. Those include aluminum and mercury.

These metals and chemicals also suppress the immune system, and that’s the primary purpose of vaccines: To actually cause an epidemic so that more people rush out to buy more vaccines. The whole point is to sell more vaccines, not to improve public health. And the fastest way to sell more vaccines is to make sure the vaccines themselves contain chemicals and metals that make people more vulnerable to infection.

What, you don’t believe me? You think Big Pharma is a collection of compassionate, loving angels who care about the people more than they care about profits? Wake up and smell the chemicals. Vaccine manufacturers are, on the record, criminal organizations that are repeatedly found guilty of felony crimes — everything from price fixing to the bribery of doctors and the commission of marketing fraud.

Drug companies have zero ethics. They kill children to test their vaccines. They conduct medical experiments on prisoners and mental patients. Do you honestly think they wouldn’t use vaccines as a way to make people sick and create an infectious disease scare that sells more vaccines?

Real solutions to the flu
If you really want to stay healthy this flu season, the answer is pretty simple. It all starts with the top three nutrients for flu prevention:

1) Vitamin D
2) More vitamin D
3) And yet more vitamin D

If you’re not taking at least 5,000 IUs of vitamin D each day during the winter flu season, you’re probably vitamin D deficient and that’s making you a sitting duck for influenza.

In addition to vitamin D, there are all sorts of other herbal remedies, trace minerals (like zinc), and superfood nutrients that can help protect you.

And, of course, don’t suppress your immune system with flu shots, chemotherapy or prescription medications. All those things make you more vulnerable to infection and makes you a repeat customer for the “sick care” cartels that profit from human suffering.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038648_flu_pandemic_vaccines_shots.html#ixzz2HkXghL1e

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

Humans have the largest brain and number of neurons among primates, which is a bit of an anomaly, because we do not have the largest body. Ordinarily, the mammalian brain grows in proportion to total body size, but human brains have outgrown those of other, far larger, mammals. It is, in fact, about three times larger than would be expected, given your body size.1

It is your large brain size that has allowed human beings to excel and prosper evolutionarily speaking, and researchers have been trying to uncover how this extra growth happened.

One of the newer theories suggests that exercise, which lead to more athletic bodies capable of great physical endurance, played a key role in not only the survival of the species, but also in influencing superior intelligence.

Did Exercise Help Shape the Human Brain?

It’s long been known that early humans’ hunting and gathering lifestyle required significant aerobic fitness. Your early ancestors were also able to access new food resources, such as animal protein, because they were able to stay aerobically fit.

However, researchers are now suggesting that the increases in aerobic capacity and physical activity that occurred during human evolution may have directly influenced the human brain, which may, in turn, explain changes in our brain size and cognitive function.2

The researchers examined data that found animals bred to be proficient endurance runners developed higher levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons. BDNF also triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health.

“We think that what happened,” David A. Raichlen, a University of Arizona anthropologist involved with the new report, told the New York Times,3 “in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors… is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.

Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.”

Exercise is Essential for Maintaining Brain Health and May Enhance Your Memory

It’s not only your early ancestors who stood to benefit from regular physical activity, of course. Growing evidence indicates that exercise triggers genes and growth factors that recycle and rejuvenate your brain and muscle tissues. These growth factors include BDNF, as just mentioned, and muscle regulatory factors, or MRFs. These growth factors signal brain stem cells and muscle satellite cells to convert into new neurons and new muscle cells, respectively. Interestingly enough, BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation.

The neuromotor is the most critical element in your muscle. Without the neuromotor, your muscle is like an engine without ignition. Neuro-motor degradation is part of the process that explains age-related muscle atrophy.

So BDNF is actively involved in both your muscles and your brain, and this cross-connection, if you will, appears to be a major part of the explanation for why a physical workout can have such a beneficial impact on your brain tissue. It, quite literally, helps prevent, and even reverse, brain atrophy as much as it prevents and reverses age-related muscle decay.

So just as exercise may have been pivotal in helping to shape the modern human brain, it is also an essential element of maintaining brain health today.

For instance, exercising for four weeks enhanced memory in previously sedentary young adults.4 The effect was particularly pronounced among those who exercised on the actual test day as well. Among older adults, aged 50 to 85, exercising even briefly (for just six minutes on a stationary bike) also lead to improvements in memory – and this benefit occurred among those who were mentally healthy as well as those who had memory deficits.5 In the latter case, the benefit was thought to be largely due to the brain chemical norepinephrine, which has a significant impact on memory and was found in higher levels after exercise.

Slow Alzheimer’s and Boost Brain Structure with an Active Lifestyle

Additional research has also found that maintaining an active lifestyle, which includes not only exercise but also active “hobbies” like gardening, yard work, dancing and recreational sports, helps preserve gray matter in older adults’ brains, a finding that may have implications for warding off Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Study author Cyrus Raji, M.D., Ph.D. told Medical News Today:6

“Gray matter includes neurons that function in cognition and higher order cognitive processes. The areas of the brain that benefited from an active lifestyle are the ones that consume the most energy and are very sensitive to damage.”

Exercise also provides protective effects to your brain by reducing the pathological properties of damaged proteins residing within your brain and which appears to slow the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In animal studies, significantly fewer damaging plaques and fewer bits of beta-amyloid peptides, associated with Alzheimer’s, were found in mice that exercised.7

Less Sitting, Plus a Varied Exercise Program, is Best

The more active you stay, the better your brain (and overall health) is likely to be. This includes not only specifically engaging in exercise and other physically demanding activities but also making an effort to sit less.

To get all the benefits exercise has to offer, you’ll want to strive for a varied and well-rounded fitness program that incorporates a variety of exercises. As a general rule, as soon as an exercise becomes easy to complete, you need to increase the intensity and/or try another exercise to keep challenging your body. I recommend incorporating the following types of exercise into your program:
1.High-Intensity Interval (Anaerobic) Training: This is when you alternate short bursts of high-intensity exercise with gentle recovery periods. In the video below, you can see a demonstration of this in action using Peak Fitness.

2.Strength Training: Rounding out your exercise program with a 1-set strength training routine will ensure that you’re really optimizing the possible health benefits of a regular exercise program. You can also “up” the intensity by slowing it down. For more information about using super slow weight training as a form of high-intensity interval exercise, please see my interview with Dr. Doug McGuff below.

3.Core Exercises: Your body has 29 core muscles located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.

You need enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. The weight should be heavy enough that this can be done in fewer than 12 repetitions, yet light enough to do a minimum of four repetitions. It is also important NOT to exercise the same muscle groups every day. They need at least two days of rest to recover, repair and rebuild. Exercise programs like Pilates and yoga are also great for strengthening your core muscles, as are specific exercises you can learn from a personal trainer.
4.Stretching: My favorite type of stretching is active isolated stretches developed by Aaron Mattes. With Active Isolated Stretching, you hold each stretch for only two seconds, which works with your body’s natural physiological makeup to improve circulation and increase the elasticity of muscle joints. This technique also allows your body to repair itself and prepare for daily activity. You can also use devices like the Power Plate to help you stretch.
5.Foundation Exercises: One of the things I do to compensate for the time I spend sitting each day is to regularly do Foundation exercises developed by a brilliant chiropractor, Eric Goodman. These exercises are used by many professional and elite athletes, but more importantly can easily address the root cause of most low back pain, which is related to weakness and imbalance among your posterior chain of muscles. It is easily argued that these imbalances are primarily related to sitting.

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CoQ10 helps heal neurodegenerative disease: Study

Most of us know the value of CoQ10 for heart health. Now a recent case report has demonstrated that CoQ10 may be of value for reversing even extreme neurodegenerative diseases. This case report involved a 75-year-old with what is considered one of the most irreversible progressive neurodegenerative diseases known: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Lou Gehrig was a New Yankee star who was forced to retire at age 35 due to his ALS. His farewell speech in completely-filled Yankee stadium in 1939 is one of sport’s most touching moments. Of course soon after that memorable farewell speech, Lou died.

Though ALS occurs rarely, the life expectancy for those afflicted with ALS is two to five years for most.

Why this case study is important

ALS affects the skeletal muscular nerve impulses that control contraction and function. It may start with chronic twitching, cramping, and muscular weakness. Then it spreads to total muscular atrophy including the inability to eat, swallow, or breathe, and slurred speech.

A Japanese medical scientist, unnamed in the reports, allowed colleagues to do a clinical evaluation of CoQ10 for ALS on him. The 75-year-old scientist had been diagnosed with onset ALS in the year 2000. By 2005, it had progressed to the point of interfering with his most common mundane activities.

Excerpt from the Vitasearch.com report: “(He) … was treated with a highly bioavailable form of coenzyme Q10 (solubilized ubiquinol, Tishcon Corp., NY), starting at 200 mg, twice daily for 4 weeks (at which point he already experienced improvements), followed by 500 mg, twice daily, and then back down to 200 mg twice daily…”

His improvements were significant with most of his voluntary motor activity returning along with restoring his grip. The rate of muscular weakening was lowered as well. The unnamed scientist patient was still surviving and managing when the CoQ10 study was reported in The Open Nutraceuticals Journal of September 2012.

That’s pretty impressive for a progressive neurological disease diagnosed when he was 70 and treated with CoQ10 when he was 75. He passed the 80-year mark in 2012. If CoQ10 treatment can do this for ALS, what might it do for other neurological diseases such as MS (multiple sclerosis), Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s diseases?

Other CoQ10 neurodegenerative studies

Studies performed on mice and dogs proved that CoQ10 protected and reversed chemically induced brain and nervous system damage by restoring brain and nerve cell metabolism.

It would be a little more humane to experiment using a harmless supplement on humans already afflicted with a neurological disorder than inducing those disorders on helpless animals, but that’s science for you. The complete report with medical details can be linked from source (2) below.

The potent antioxidant capabilities of CoQ10 are worthy of application for both heart and brain/nerve health. Just make sure it’s in a very bioavailable form.

Taken as directed it will help protect against neurological disorders. And CoQ10 can be taken safely with larger doses for therapeutic interventions on existing neurological maladies.

Sources for this article include:

(1) http://www.vitasearch.com/get-clp-summary/40512

(2) http://benthamscience.com/open/tonutraj/articles/V005/187TONUTRAJ.pdf

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALS

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038643_CoQ10_neurodegenerative_disease_prevention.html#ixzz2HewQHVP6

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

Autism extremely rare among unvaccinated children

An ongoing study out of Germany comparing disease rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated children points to a pretty clear disparity between the two groups as far as illness rates are concerned. As reported by the group Health Freedom Alliance, children who have been vaccinated according to official government schedules are up to five times more likely to contract a preventable disease than children who developed their own immune systems naturally without vaccines.

Released as its own preliminary study back in September 2011, the survey includes data on 8,000 unvaccinated children whose overall disease rates were compared to disease rates among the general population, the vast majority of which has been vaccinated. And in every single disease category, unvaccinated children fared far better than vaccinated children in terms of both disease prevalence and severity. In other words, the evidence suggests that vaccines are neither effective nor safe.

“No study of health outcomes of vaccinated people versus unvaccinated has ever been conducted in the U.S. by CDC or any other agency in the 50 years or more of an accelerating schedule of vaccinations (now over 50 doses of 14 vaccines given before kindergarten, 26 doses in the first year),” wrote Louis Rain back in 2011 for Health Freedom Alliance about the survey.

As disclosed at VaccineInjury.info, vaccinated children are nearly twice as likely as unvaccinated children to develop neurodermatitis, for instance, a skin disorder marked by chronic itching and scratching. Similarly, vaccinated children are about two-and-a-half times as likely, based on current data, to develop a pattern of migraine headaches compared to unvaccinated children.

The numbers are even more divergent for asthma and chronic bronchitis, where vaccinated children are about eight times more likely than unvaccinated children to develop such respiratory problems. Vaccinated children are also far more likely to develop hyperactivity, hayfever, and thyroid disease, with their likelihood three times, four times, and a shocking 17 times higher, respectively, compared to unvaccinated children.

You can view the complete data, as it currently exists, here:
http://journal.livingfood.us

Autism extremely rare among unvaccinated children

Where the gloves really come off on the issue, however, is with autism, the long-held point of contention in the vaccine safety debate. According to the data, only four of the 8,000 unvaccinated children that were included in the 2011 release of the study responded as having severe autism, which is a mere half of one percent of the overall population. Meanwhile the autism rate among the general population, as tabulated in the German KiGGS study used for comparison, is about 1.1 percent.

This means that vaccinated children are about 2.5 times more likely to develop severe autism compared to unvaccinated children, a shocking find when considering the medical establishment vehemently denies any link whatsoever between vaccines and autism. And as it turns out, the four unvaccinated children who reported severe autism all tested high for heavy metals, including mercury, which further indicts vaccines and their disease-causing adjuvants.

Though this correlation does not necessarily conclude causation, the overall disparity of disease rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children at the very least points to a very strong connection that cannot be denied or dismissed. Even after accounting for bias, as the survey’s authors have tried to do over the years, the data continues to show much higher disease rates among vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children.

In a similar but unrelated study conducted back in the 1990s, researchers found that the death rate among vaccinated children for infection with diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough (pertussis) is also twice as high, on average, compared to unvaccinated children.

Sources for this article include:

http://journal.livingfood.us

http://mnhopkins.blogspot.se

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038647_vaccinated_children_disease_risk_unvaccinated.html#ixzz2HergoIkB

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

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Can Vitamin D Relieve Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms?

By Michael A. Smith, MD

When the immune system attacks the insulating sheath covering your brain cells, the result is a loss of normal electrical conductivity and a myriad of symptoms – ranging from loss of vision, muscle weakness, problems walking and loss of sensation. This is multiple sclerosis.

It is estimated to affect 2.1 million people worldwide.1 However, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not require U.S. physicians to report new cases, and because symptoms can be completely invisible, the prevalence of MS in the U.S. can only be estimated.

The prognosis for many is not good. Although a few patients (for reasons not fully understood) fare better than the average, most will progressively get worse and become debilitated and experience a significant decrease in their quality of life.

If this is you or a family member or a friend, start taking vitamin D immediately. Why? Because new research shows that taking the “sunshine” vitamin can result in fewer MS symptoms.

This is good news considering that current treatment options for MS are mostly ineffective and risky to take.

Experiencing Fewer MS Symptoms with Vitamin D
Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco reported a reduction in brain lesions and disease activity in multiple sclerosis patients who had higher levels of vitamin D.2

This conclusion came after a 5-year study, involving 469 men and women with MS. All participants underwent yearly blood testing for vitamin D and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate disease progression.

The researchers determined that with each 10 ng/ml increase in serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, there was a corresponding 15% reduction in the risk of new brain lesions characteristic of MS.

They also noted a 32% lower risk of areas of active disease as indicated by “white spots” or areas of inflammation visible on MRI images.

To put this into perspective, a 10-point increase in your vitamin D level can often be achieved by adding only 1 gram of it to your diet.3

Considering that the average cost-per-pill is around 8 cents, for a mere fraction of the cost of current treatments, people with MS could experience significant improvements in their quality of life.

Optimal Vitamin D Dosing & Blood Levels for Fighting MS
So what is the optimal vitamin D dose? Well, that depends on your blood level — and how much is in your blood is really the question we should be asking.

According to the Office of Dietary Supplements, a department of the National Institutes of Health, the optimal vitamin D blood level is between 20 and 50 ng/ml.4

This is optimal, by the way, if preventing bone disease is your only goal. But to reap the full benefits of vitamin D, including helping with MS symptoms and preventing new brain lesions, you’ll probably need to fall between 50 and 70 ng/ml, considerably higher than the NIH recommendations.

So we suggest obtaining a vitamin D blood level first and then taking a dose that will help you optimize your blood level, 10 points at a time.

Sun exposure helps to optimize blood levels as well. However, our ability to convert precursors into vitamin D under the influence of UVB light from the sun becomes less efficient with age5.

In addition, this process is influenced by multiple other factors, including season, latitude, time of the day, and sunscreen use5.

For these reasons, and given the many benefits attributed to vitamin D, it’s probably best to supplement with it daily. Are you?

References:
1.Ther Adv Neurol Disord. 2011 Mar;4(2):99-109.
2.Ann Neurol. 2012 Aug;72(2):234-40.
3.http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/589256_8
4.http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/
5.Am J Clin Nutr. 2004 Dec;80(6 Suppl):1678S-88S.

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Prominent rifle manufacturer killed in mysterious car crash days after posting psych drug link to school shooters

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038616_John_Noveske_mysterious_death_car_crash.html#ixzz2HZHrFUZ2

What you are about to read is astonishing. I’m not even sure what’s the right conclusion to draw from it. But here’s what we know so far:

John Noveske is one of the most celebrated battle rifle manufacturers in America. His rifles, found at www.NoveskeRifleworks.com are widely recognized as some of the finest pieces of American-made hardware ever created. (I own one of his rifles, and it’s a masterpiece of a machine that just keeps on running.) Sadly, John Noveske was killed in a mysterious car crash just a few days ago, on January 4, 2013.

According to the Outdoor Wire, his car “traveled across the oncoming lane onto the dirt highway shoulder until it struck two large boulders. The vehicle rolled and Mr. Noveske was ejected.”

But barely a week before this incident, John Noveske posted a lengthy, detailed post on Facebook that listed all the school shootings tied to psychiatric drugs. At the end of the post, he asked, “What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on?”

That was the last post he ever made. (Full text below.)

Mysterious death during gun control debate raises questions
John Noveske wasn’t the first prominent gun rights supporter to be killed in the last few days. Keith Ratliff, the creator of a super-popular YouTube channel featuring videos of exotic weapons, was also recently found dead.

The Daily Mail reports that Ratliff was “discovered on a rural road in Carnesville, Georgia. Ratliff had a single gunshot wound the head and police are treating his death as a homicide.”

Someone murdered Ratliff, in other words, and it had to be someone with the ability to get close enough to Ratliff to take him out without warning.

Beyond these two shootings, the widely-discredited CNN journalist Piers Morgan, wanted for questioning in Britain’s Daily Mirror phone hacking scandal, invited guests onto his show who threatened Alex Jones’ children and laughed about the idea of Piers Morgan shooting Alex Jones with an AR-15.

That astonishing video interview is available at:
www.infowars.com/veiled-threat-piers-morgan-guest-says-shoot-alex-jon…

Steve Quayle, creator of SteveQuayle.com, says “the red list is on!” This refers to the so-called “red list” — a secret kill list of Americans authorized by Obama and designed to be invoked immediately before an attempted radical leftist takeover of the nation. In support of this theory, Obama himself actually signed into law the NDAA which authorizes secret assassinations of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

Instead of the red list being “conspiracy theory,” it appears to be a key component of Obama’s domestic policy.

Beyond coincidence: Pieces of the puzzle rapidly coming together
Sure, a car crash involving John Noveske could be a coincidence. It could also be a coincidence that no video footage has been released from Sandy Hook showing Adam Lanza carrying any rifle whatsoever.

It might also be a coincidence that Dianne Feinstein just happened to have her detailed gun confiscation bill ready to release immediately following the Sandy Hook shooting.

It might also be a total coincidence that according to Google.com, the United Way Sandy Hook donation support page was created on December 11, 2012 — a full three days before the shooting took place.

It could also be a total coincidence that NBC News reported Adam Lanza’s AR-15 rifle was left in his car and was never used in the shooting at all.

I suppose it could be a coincidence that Bank of America slammed home an economic embargo against an online gun parts retailer in the days following the Sandy Hook shooting.

And it could be coincidence that Facebook suspended or shut down the accounts of hundreds of prominent people who advocated the Second Amendment, including our account here at Natural News.

And finally, it could be a total coincidence that police radio recordings seem to indicate there were multiple shooters involved in Sandy Hook.

But what are the odds of ALL of these coincidences existing simultaneously? Those odds are virtually zero.

Something’s fishy with all this. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that an order has come down from the very top to destroy, silence, threaten or execute true American patriots. Steve Quayle has long predicted this would be the very first step before foreign troops are unleashed on American soil to take over the country and deliver it, just as Obama has always planned, into the hands of the globalist crime syndicate.

It all sounds outrageous, I admit, and I’m not even sure what to believe myself. But it’s becoming more difficult by the day to deny actual events happening right before our eyes. Believe what you will, but don’t be surprised if people like Steve Quayle and Alex Jones were right all along. If we see any more mysterious deaths of prominent gun advocates, it going to raise huge red flags across the patriot community.

Read John Noveske’s last Facebook post
This is the last post John Noveske made on his Facebook page before he was killed:

Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and 1 teacher, and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. 10 dead, 12 wounded.

Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

Chris Fetters, age 13, killed his favorite aunt while taking Prozac.

Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

Mathew Miller, age 13, hung himself in his bedroom closet after taking Zoloft for 6 days.

Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire killing 2 classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed stand off at his school.

Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded..

A young man in Huntsville, Alabama (Ritalin) went psychotic chopping up his parents with an ax and also killing one sibling and almost murdering another.

Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding 10 others.

TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his class mates.

Rod Mathews, age 14, (Ritalin) beat a classmate to death with a bat.

James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls, and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

Jarred Viktor, age 15, (Paxil), after five days on Paxil he stabbed his grandmother 61 times.

Chris Shanahan, age 15 (Paxil) in Rigby, ID who out of the blue killed a woman.

Jeff Franklin (Prozac and Ritalin), Huntsville, AL, killed his parents as they came home from work using a sledge hammer, hatchet, butcher knife and mechanic’s file, then attacked his younger brothers and sister.

Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported to have been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

Kevin Rider, age 14, was withdrawing from Prozac when he died from a gunshot wound to his head. Initially it was ruled a suicide, but two years later, the investigation into his death was opened as a possible homicide. The prime suspect, also age 14, had been taking Zoloft and other SSRI antidepressants.

Alex Kim, age 13, hung himself shortly after his Lexapro prescription had been doubled.

Diane Routhier was prescribed Welbutrin for gallstone problems. Six days later, after suffering many adverse effects of the drug, she shot herself.

Billy Willkomm, an accomplished wrestler and a University of Florida student, was prescribed Prozac at the age of 17. His family found him dead of suicide – hanging from a tall ladder at the family’s Gulf Shore Boulevard home in July 2002.

Kara Jaye Anne Fuller-Otter, age 12, was on Paxil when she hung herself from a hook in her closet. Kara’s parents said “…. the damn doctor wouldn’t take her off it and I asked him to when we went in on the second visit. I told him I thought she was having some sort of reaction to Paxil…”)

Gareth Christian, Vancouver, age 18, was on Paxil when he committed suicide in 2002,
(Gareth’s father could not accept his son’s death and killed himself.)

Julie Woodward, age 17, was on Zoloft when she hung herself in her family’s detached garage.

Matthew Miller was 13 when he saw a psychiatrist because he was having difficulty at school. The psychiatrist gave him samples of Zoloft. Seven days later his mother found him dead, hanging by a belt from a laundry hook in his closet.

Kurt Danysh, age 18, and on Prozac, killed his father with a shotgun. He is now behind prison bars, and writes letters, trying to warn the world that SSRI drugs can kill.

Woody ____, age 37, committed suicide while in his 5th week of taking Zoloft. Shortly before his death his physician suggested doubling the dose of the drug. He had seen his physician only for insomnia. He had never been depressed, nor did he have any history of any mental illness symptoms.

A boy from Houston, age 10, shot and killed his father after his Prozac dosage was increased.

Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for the conditions.”

Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed 9 students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.
Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his
New York high school.

Missing from list… 3 of 4 known to have taken these same meds….

What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21…… killed 6 people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az

What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24….. killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado

What drugs was Jacob Tyler Roberts on, age 22, killed 2 injured 1, Clackamas Or

What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct
Roberts is the only one that I haven’t heard about being on drugs of some kind.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038616_John_Noveske_mysterious_death_car_crash.html#ixzz2HZHegZxb

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How to Protect Yourself and Your Children from the Health Hazards Associated with Medical and Agricultural Antibiotics

The issue of antibiotic overuse, both in medicine and food production, and the subsequent threats to human health, has been featured in a number of recent news articles.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), antibiotic resistance is a major threat to public health, worldwide, and the primary cause for this man-made epidemic is the widespread misuse of antibiotics.

For example, data from the ECDC1 shows a significant rise of resistance to multiple antibiotics in Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli in just the last four years alone, affecting more than one-third of the EU. According to a recent report by Medical News Today:2

“In several of the member states, between 25 and over 60 percent of K pneumoniae from bloodstream infections show combined resistance to multiple antibiotics…

The ECDC data shows that consumption of carbapenems, a major class of last-line antibiotics, went up significantly in EU/EEA countries between 2007 and 2010. The report suggests this is most likely due to increasing multidrug resistance in Gram-negative infections, such as pneumonia or bloodstream infections, which are often treated with carbapenems.”

In an effort to raise awareness, the UK has issued an informational leaflet3 on the judicious use of antibiotics, urging patients to not ask their doctors for an antibiotic to treat symptoms of cold and flu, as antibiotics do not work on infections caused by viruses — they only work on bacterial infections.

Antibiotics During Pregnancy Linked to Asthma in Kids

Antibiotic-resistant disease is not the only danger associated with the misuse of these drugs. Excessive exposure to antibiotics also takes a heavy toll on your gastrointestinal health, which can predispose you to virtually any disease. Abnormal gut flora may actually be a major contributing factor to the rise in a wide variety of childhood diseases and ailments.

For example, recent research4 from Denmark shows that children whose mothers took antibiotics during their pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma, compared to those whose mother did not take antibiotics. Taking other risk factors into account, the researchers estimated that children exposed to antibiotics were 17 percent more likely to be hospitalized for asthma before the age of five.

Children who were already predisposed to asthma (due to their mother having the condition) were twice as likely to develop asthma if their mother used antibiotics during the third trimester, compared to those whose mother did not use antibiotics.

While the study cannot tell us whether the asthma was the result of the antibiotic or the infection itself, the increased asthma risk found does support the theory that probiotics — beneficial bacteria residing in your gut, which are decimated by antibiotics — play a role in the development of asthma. Co-author Dr. Hans Bisgaard told Reuters Health:5

“We speculate that mothers’ use of antibiotics changes the balance of natural bacteria, which is transmitted to the newborn, and that such unbalanced bacteria in early life impact on the immune maturation in the newborn.”

Indeed, one of the most important prerequisites for your newborn is establishing a healthy gastrointestinal tract. Regardless of age, your gut is your first line of defense in terms of immunity.

The baby gets his or her first “inoculation” of gut flora from the mother’s birth canal during childbirth, which is why a mother’s use of antibiotics during pregnancy can predispose the child to asthma and a variety of other ailments, as the antibiotic severely disrupts the natural microflora — in the mother’s bowels and vagina.

It’s important to understand that if mother’s flora is abnormal, her baby’s flora will also be abnormal, as whatever organisms live in her vagina end up coating her baby’s body and lining his or her intestinal tract.

Antibiotic Use May Predispose Your Baby to GAPS

The introduction of unfriendly flora can predispose your baby to GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and also Gut and Physiology Syndrome). GAPS can have very damaging long-term effects on a child’s health, both neurologically and physiologically. Besides an increased risk of asthma and other allergies, it can also increase his or her risk of learning and/or behavioral disabilities, mood disorders, gastrointestinal problems, and autoimmune disorders.

GAPS may even have profound implications for the autism epidemic. Rates of childhood autism are staggering, now 50 times higher in some areas than three decades ago. Not surprisingly, there is a matching epidemic of GAPS.

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride is a neurologist and neurosurgeon who has devoted years of her career to studying this phenomenon, and how to treat and prevent it. She’s convinced that abnormal gut flora is at the heart of the problem, and that the solution to stem the rise in autistic spectrum disabilities lies in “healing and sealing” the child’s gut. As a result of her groundbreaking research, she has developed a very effective nutritional protocol for doing just that. To learn more, please review my previous article How a Physician Cured Her Son’s Autism.

The Importance of Probiotic Foods

The widespread deterioration of people’s gut health can be traced back to the change in our modern diet. Historically, people have regularly consumed a wide variety of fermented foods, which are naturally high in the beneficial bacteria necessary for optimal gut health. Fermented foods are therefore a mainstay of the GAPS diet. Ideally, you’ll want to include a variety of cultured foods and beverages in your diet, as each food will inoculate your gut with a variety of different microorganisms. Fermented foods you can easily make at home include:
•Fermented vegetables
•Chutneys
•Condiments, such as salsa and mayonnaise
•Cultured dairy, such as yoghurt, kefir, and sour cream
•Fish, such as mackerel and Swedish gravlax

The beneficial bacteria in these foods are also potent detoxifiers, capable of drawing out a wide range of toxins and heavy metals. According to Dr. McBride, the GAPS Nutritional Protocol restores the detoxification system in about 90 percent of people, and the fermented/cultured foods are instrumental in this self-healing process. You don’t need to consume huge amounts either. Just a quarter to a half a cup of fermented vegetables or cultured food such as raw yoghurt, per day, is sufficient. Kombucha, a fermented drink, is another great addition to your diet.

The key is variety. The greater the variety of fermented and cultured foods you include in your diet, the better, as each food will inoculate your gut with a variety of different microorganisms. Also remember to always reseed your gut with probiotics whenever you’re using an antibiotic, either by consuming fermented foods, or taking a high quality probiotics supplement.

In the following interview, Caroline Barringer, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), and an expert in the preparation of the foods prescribed in Dr. Campbell-McBride’s GAPS nutritional program, discusses the process of fermenting your own vegetables.

It’s actually easier than you might think, and it can save you a lot of money. It’s unusual to find a probiotic supplement containing more than 10 billion colony-forming units. But when my team actually tested fermented vegetables produced by probiotic starter cultures, they had 10 trillion colony-forming units of bacteria. Literally, one serving of fermented vegetables was equal to an entire bottle of a high potency probiotic! So clearly, you’re far better off using fermented foods.

If you fear the culturing process might lead to some horrific pathogenic infection, please read Caroline’s article “Taking the Mystery out of Culturing Your Own Superfoods,”6 where she lays such fears to rest. Educating yourself about the process will help alleviate concerns about eating fermented foods, which are very much “alive.”

Download Interview Transcript

Are Antibiotics Really Necessary in Food Production?

As mentioned earlier, antibiotic overuse occurs not just in medicine, but also in food production. In fact, agricultural uses account for about 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the US,7 so it’s a MAJOR source of human antibiotic consumption. Animals are often fed antibiotics at low doses for disease prevention and growth promotion, and those antibiotics are transferred to you via meat, and even via the manure used as crop fertilizer.

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

Example of Typical CAFO Hen House

In a related news story, one farmer demonstrates that even large-scale animal farming can manage without routine administration of antibiotic drugs. Chicken farmer Scott Sechler, owner of Bell & Evans, tells the New York Times8 how an old-fashioned herbal remedy to keep his flocks healthy:

“Off and on over the last three years or so, his chickens have been eating a specially milled diet laced with oregano oil and a touch of cinnamon. Mr. Sechler swears by the concoction as a way to fight off bacterial diseases that plague meat and poultry producers without resorting to antibiotics, which some experts say can be detrimental to the humans who eat the meat.

Products at Bell & Evans, based in this town about 30 miles east of Harrisburg, have long been free of antibiotics, contributing to the company’s financial success as consumers have demanded purer foods. But Mr. Sechler said that nothing he had used as a substitute in the past worked as well as oregano oil. ‘I have worried a bit about how I’m going to sound talking about this,’ he said. ‘But I really do think we’re on to something here.'”

Interestingly, the oregano product Mr. Sechler uses has been tested against four drugs made by Bayer, comparing its ability to control diarrhea in piglets caused by E.coli. The oregano product, sold under the name By-O-Reg Plus, outperformed all four Bayer products.

“‘Strange but true!’ Dr. Lucio Nisoli, the Bayer product manager, wrote in his report on the trial. ‘Compared to the various anti-infectives, with Ropadiar I have obtained much more effective and quicker results. Furthermore, piglets treated with Ropadiar look much more healthy and were not so dehydrated and wasted,'” the New York Times writes.9

Many Natural Compounds have Antibiotic Activity, Without the Side Effects

You can help yourself and your community by using antibiotics only when absolutely necessary and by purchasing organic, antibiotic-free meats and other foods. Even though the problem of antibiotic-resistance needs to be stemmed through public policy on a nationwide level, the more people who get involved on a personal level to stop unnecessary antibiotic use the better…If you live in the United States and want to get involved on a national level, Food Democracy Now! has created a petition against the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production.10 If you care about this issue, I suggest you use this petition to make your voice heard.

Also, to bring us back to where we began, please make sure to avoid unnecessary use of antibiotics during pregnancy. Not every bacterial infection needs to be treated with a drug. First, as an all-around preventive measure, you’ll want to make sure your vitamin D level is optimized year-round, especially during pregnancy, along with vitamin K2. But there are also a number of natural compounds that act as broad-based antibiotics/anti-virals that you can try first, such as:
•Oreganol (oil of oregano)
•Garlic
•Echinacea
•Manuka honey (for topical application)

Hurry — Deadline to Join New Project to Learn About YOUR Gut Bacteria is Fast Approaching

Lastly, I’d like to remind you about what I believe is one of the most important natural health projects of this century — The American Gut Project,11 which I recently discussed in greater detail. The project, which is open to the public, will allow participants to learn more about their gut — which microbes inhabit your intestines, and how they might be affecting your health.

But hurry — the deadline to participate is February 2.

It’s an extremely ambitious project seeking to identify the parameters for the ideal gut bacteria, and how diet affects it. I am personally participating in this project, and I’m very excited to see what consuming several ounces of fermented vegetables nearly every day has done to my bowel flora. Jeff Leach, an anthropologist and now graduate student at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a co-founder of the Project recently told Prevention Magazine:12

“We hope to enter the national conversation about what you should eat. Our question is this: From the perspective of your gut microbiome, which may be linked to many acute and chronic diseases, what diet should you follow?”

To learn more, and for instructions on how to participate, please see the article: “American Gut” – One of the Most Important Health Projects of the 21st Century.

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