Rather Be Healthy

Tens of Thousands of Studies Attest to Vitamin D’s Health Impact

A robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for good health and disease prevention.

Vitamin D affects your DNA through vitamin D receptors (VDRs), which bind to specific locations of the human genome. Scientists have identified nearly 3,000 genes that are influenced by vitamin D levels, and vitamin D receptors have been found throughout the human body.

Is it any wonder then that no matter what disease or condition is investigated, vitamin D appears to play a crucial role?

This is why I am so excited about the D*Action Project by GrassrootsHealth.1 It is showing how we can take action today on known science with a consensus of experts without waiting for institutional lethargy.

It has shown how by combining the science of measurement (of vitamin D levels) with the personal choice of taking action and, the value of education about individual measures that one can truly be in charge of their own health. In order to spread this health movement to more communities, the project needs your involvement, your health activism. This is an ongoing campaign during the month of February, and will become an annual event.

The D*Action Project

I believe this is a truly critical project that is already having an enormous impact not just on your own health and those participating, but the health of people everywhere through the growing community involvement as well as individual participation.

Since vitamin D affects virtually every aspect of your health, from bone health to heart health to the prevention of cancer and much more, determining the optimal serum levels for disease prevention for you could quite literally result in a health revolution. It requires two measurements:
1.Vitamin D serum levels, and
2.Health status

With these two measurements, you can effectively begin to measure vitamin D performance, and discover how vitamin D affects your health. For example, at which vitamin D level will you achieve maximum protection against pain? Colds and flu? Heart disease and cancer? Once this is established, taking a great degree of control of your health will be as simple as getting your vitamin D levels tested, and if you find you’re too low, you’ll have the tools to optimize your levels.

The key to turning our crippled health care system around is to shift from disease management into disease prevention and health optimization mode.

D*Action is an important step in a MAJOR health movement with the power to change our flawed medical paradigm, which right now is married to the pharmaceutical industry via the revolving doors between Big Pharma and our regulatory agencies. The individual is left powerless in this paradigm, because, aside from expensive pills (which kill over 106,000 people each year when taken as prescribed), it has little more to offer.

This health movement has already begun.

D*Action has multiple concurrent vitamin D programs going on. The D*Action International project is open to anyone, any age, anywhere in the world. The Protect our Children NOW! campaign is geared toward using the results of randomized trials to take action now to reduce preterm births and other complications of pregnancy.

This program is already coalescing into community political action groups, so that when the study in any community (a 24 month project) is completed, they can use the information obtained to push for public health recommendations that will benefit ALL pregnant women and their children. And, the Breast Cancer Prevention project, another subset, is open to women 60 and over with no current cancer or current treatment.

So, I encourage you to participate in the D*Action Project. Not only will you be able to take control of your own health by participating, you’ll also become part of one of the most profound public health projects of the 21st Century.

Why Measuring Vitamin D Performance Matters

Measuring vitamin D performance is about more than just getting your vitamin D levels tested every few months. It’s also about discovering the impact of vitamin D on your health at various serum levels, and setting goals for your health. How can D*Action help you get healthier?

Let’s consider an analogy: If you want to win a bike race, you record the start time, the end time, and measure the time it took you to get from point A to point B. You can also measure how many revolutions per minute you make with your pedals to determine the revolution rate required to achieve your timed result. Without these measurements, you won’t know what kind of effort it took to get you to the finish line, or how long it took you to get there.

Without these measurements, you’re not in charge because you don’t know what it takes to achieve the desired result. Now, let’s say you want to improve your race performance. If you already know how many revolutions per minute you needed to make it from start to finish line in a certain amount of time, you now know how much faster you have to pedal in order to beat your own time. There is a growing demand to be able to know how to improve and control your own health, and to do this, you need to know:
1.What factors can be measured
2.How to measure them
3.How to affect change or alter that which is being measured
4.How to get feedback on the changes, both at individual and group levels, and
5.The true cost, weighed against the benefit of the measurement

This knowledge, and the related tools, must be made available to everyone, as these pieces are required to be successfully in charge of health behavior. Now, let’s apply these five criteria to the vitamin D performance measurements, to get an idea of how it can benefit you:
1.The vitamin D serum level can be measured with reasonable accuracy, and the serum level is the measure associated with health effects. You can also measure the vitamin D status of many different health conditions at different points in time, to correlate vitamin D status with improved or worsened condition.
2.Vitamin D is measured using a blood test, which can be done via a dried blood sample or a blood serum sample. A structured health questionnaire is used to track changes in health status.
3.The actions that can be taken to affect change in vitamin D status would be a combination of UVB exposure (sun or safe tanning bed) and oral vitamin D3 supplementation.
4.After measuring both your vitamin D level and your level of health (such as improvement or decline of a health condition or disease), you’ll be able to get personalized feedback on how one affects or relates to the other. New software applications are in development now to allow participants quick access to their own health performance information and recommendations.

Many measures of health are most useful when both individual scores and group scores are kept–an individual has only one picture of health conditions and can’t necessarily answer questions about a condition not his/hers without a group picture. For example, the question “What’s my chance of getting (a particular disease) at this serum level?” can only be answered from group information.
5.The cost/benefit picture for vitamin D testing is extremely compelling. More than 75 percent of the world’s population is vitamin D deficient and most don’t know it! It is estimated that roughly 35 percent of health care costs could be reduced by having a serum level in the 40-60 ng/ml range.

The cost of healthcare per person in the US was $13,710 in 2011. If that was reduced by 35 percent, that would amount to $4,798-worth of savings. The cost of the vitamin D measurement and feedback systems per person is $130 per year, equating to a net 37-times’ return on investment.

Optimizing Vitamin D is One of Your Most Cost Effective Health Strategies

Many families have seen a rise in the proportion of their income spent on healthcare expenses. For many, the costs now exceed what they spend on food! Measuring your vitamin D performance and taking steps to optimize your level is one of the easiest and least expensive things you can do for your health, and could help you rein in out-of-control health care expenses.

GrassrootsHealth D*Action is an integrated set of performance and feedback systems to give you complete control of your individual vitamin D performance systems, which will help you gain a total picture of your health. There’s no doubt in my mind that the D*Action programs can be a major key to help turn the current health paradigm from ‘treatment’ to ‘prevention.’

It’s truly exciting to consider that, within our lifetime, we will be able to prevent the majority of breast cancer, for example.

The D*Action Breast Cancer Prevention project began last year, and is a major step in that direction. While it still needs four more years’ worth of data to be complete, the women enrolled in the project are already exhibiting fewer cases of breast cancer than would be expected within the general population. To learn more about this breast cancer prevention project, please see this previous article. (Women 60 and over with no current cancer or current treatment are eligible for the breast cancer prevention study. You can sign up here if you’re eligible.)

Join the D*Action Project!

I’m a firm believer that the D*Action project can help create a massive sea change in how we address common health problems. I hope you’ll become a part of it. To participate, simply purchase the D*Action Measurement Kit and follow the registration instructions included. As a participant, you agree to test your vitamin D levels twice a year during a five year program, and share your health status to demonstrate the public health impact of this nutrient. There is a $65 fee each 6 months for your sponsorship of the project, which includes a test kit to be used at home, and electronic reports on your ongoing progress. You will get a follow up email every six months reminding you “it’s time for your next test and health survey.”

Please note that 100 percent of the proceeds from the kits go to fund the research project. I do not charge a single dime as a distributor of the test kits. Please note, we cannot ship this test to the state of New York!

Tens of Thousands of Studies Attest to Vitamin D’s Health Impact

According to a January 17 press release by Orthomolecular Medicine,2 3,600 medical papers with vitamin D in the title or abstract were published in 2012 alone, bringing the grand total to 33,800. That’s a lot of studies on vitamin D. The Top 16 vitamin D papers of 2012 selected by a panel of vitamin D experts focused on vitamin D’s beneficial impact on:

Pregnancy outcomes (reduced risk of Cesarean section and pre-eclampsia)

Autism

Childhood language impairment

Cardiovascular disease

Type 1 diabetes

Type 2 diabetes

Bacterial and viral infections

Cancer

Falls and bone fractures

All-cause mortality

Our Healing Sun — Beyond Vitamin D

Interestingly, sun exposure in and of itself is starting to experience a revival, as researchers are taking another look at the health benefits of sunshine, over and beyond vitamin D. For example, according to one 2012 study3:

“The number of studies reporting on the association between sunlight exposure, vitamin D and cancer risk is steadily increasing. We reviewed all published case-control and cohort studies concerning colorectal, prostate, breast cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and both sunlight and vitamin D to update our previous review and to verify if the epidemiological evidence is in line with the hypothesis that the possible preventive effect of sunlight on cancer might be mediated not only by vitamin D but also by other pathways.

We found that almost all epidemiological studies suggest that chronic (not intermittent) sun exposure is associated with a reduced risk of colorectal, breast, prostate cancer and NHL. In colorectal and to a lesser degree in breast cancer vitamin D levels were found to be inversely associated with cancer risk. In prostate cancer and NHL, however, no associations were found…

[I]t is concluded that the evidence that sunlight is a protective factor for colorectal, prostate, breast cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is still accumulating. The same conclusion can be drawn concerning high vitamin D levels and the risk of colorectal cancer and possibly breast cancer. Particularly in prostate cancer and NHL other sunlight potentiated and vitamin D independent pathways, such as modulation of the immune system and the circadian rhythm, and the degradation of folic acid might play a role in reduced cancer risk as well.”

As discussed in a recent article by Sayer Ji4, five noteworthy properties of sunlight exposure, beyond vitamin D production, include the following. (There are many more, however. To learn more, see this previous article.)
1.Pain-killing (analgesic) properties
2.Increased subcutaneous fat metabolism
3.Regulation of human lifespan (solar cycles appear to be able to directly affect the human genome, thereby influencing lifespan)
4.Daytime sun exposure improves evening alertness
5.Conversion to metabolic energy (i.e. we may “ingest” energy directly from the sun, like plants do)

In the following TED Talk, dermatologist Richard Weller discusses recent research by his team, which shows that nitric oxide, a chemical transmitter stored in huge reserves in your skin, can be released by UV light, and confer great benefit for your cardiovascular system.

Revised and Updated Recommendations for Optimizing Your Vitamin D Levels

Research on vitamin D is moving swiftly, so you’d be well advised to stay on top of the latest developments as recommendations are refined and updated. I will review some of the most important recent developments here, so you may want to share this article with your friends and family. First, it’s important to remember that sun exposure is the best way to optimize your vitamin D levels as your body has built-in “fail-safe” mechanisms that prevent detrimental side effects from occurring.

Last year, I created a video to help you determine if you can get enough vitamin D from sun exposure in your area at different times of the year. Based on additional information received, I now believe that my previous position was too strict… The good news is, you can likely get vitamin D under far less ideal conditions than previously suggested.

The radiation from the sun that reaches the earth’s surface (and hence your body) is partially filtered out by the atmosphere. I had previously stated that UVB rays will only penetrate the atmosphere when the sun is above an angle of about 50° from the horizon, and that when the sun is lower than 50°, the ozone layer will absorb vitamin D-producing UVB-rays while allowing the longer, and more harmful, UVA-rays to get through, which would defeat the purpose of spending time in the sun.

This recommendation is likely too strict. According to experts in the field, you can likely get sufficient amounts of UVB radiation when the sun is as low as 30 degrees above the horizon, or whenever the temperature is warm enough to expose large amounts of skin.

I thank John Hochman, MSME, for bringing this to my attention. According to Dr. Ola Engelsen with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, the creator of a calculator5 that takes a number of factors into consideration give you an estimate of how many minutes of exposure you need to produce the equivalent of 1,000 IU’s of vitamin D, the sun must be more than 15 degrees above the horizon during cloudless conditions.

If You Take Vitamin D Supplements, Remember to Take Vitamin K2

Second, based on the latest investigations by Carole Baggerly, director of GrassrootsHealth, there is a chart showing the average adult dose required to reach healthy vitamin D levels based upon the measured starting point. Many experts agree about 35 IU’s of vitamin D per pound of body weight could be used as an estimate.

Here, it’s important to remember that if you’re taking high dose vitamin D supplements, you ALSO need to take vitamin K2. The biological role of vitamin K2 is to help move calcium into the proper areas in your body, such as your bones and teeth. It also helps remove calcium from areas where it shouldn’t be, such as in your arteries and soft tissues. Vitamin K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. The reason for this is because when you take vitamin D, your body creates more vitamin K2-dependent proteins that move calcium around in your body. Without vitamin K2, those proteins remain inactivated, so the benefits of those proteins remain unrealized.

So remember, if you take supplemental vitamin D, you’re creating an increased demand for K2. Together, these two nutrients help strengthen your bones and improve your heart health.

While the ideal or optimal ratios between vitamin D and vitamin K2 have yet to be elucidated, Dr. Kate Rheaume-Bleue, author of Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life, suggests that for every 1,000 IU’s of vitamin D you take, you may benefit from about 100 micrograms of K2, and perhaps as much as 150-200 micrograms (mcg).

Individual Variables that Affect Your Vitamin D Levels

Now, going back to optimizing your vitamin D through sun exposure, the production of previtamin D3 in your skin varies depending on several factors, such as:

Antioxidant levels and diet in general

Age

Skin color and/or current tan level

Use of sunscreen

Latitude and altitude (elevation)

Cloud cover and pollution

Ozone layer

Surface reflection

Season

Time of day

Weight

Keep in mind that while 35 IU’s of vitamin D3 per pound of body weight per day may put you closer to the ballpark of what most people likely need, it is impossible to make a blanket recommendation that will cover everyone’s needs due to the multi-variable factors listed above. The only way to determine your optimal dose is to get your blood tested. It’s the serum level that really matters, and ideally, you’ll want to maintain a vitamin D serum level of 50-70 ng/ml year-round.

Besides location, which has a major impact on how much vitamin D you can produce, your skin color is another really important factor. African Americans are actually at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency, because if you have dark skin, you may need as much as 10 times more sun exposure to produce the same amount of vitamin D as a person with pale skin!

Yes, You have to Show Some Skin…

Many people are under the mistaken idea that you can get enough vitamin D just from exposing your forearms and face for a few minutes a day. This claim is patently false, as clearly demonstrated in a recent study6. As reported by the Vitamin D Council7:

“[R]esearchers in South Korea… studied the effect of brief sun exposure on vitamin D levels in 20 young women for four weeks. The study was conducted between October and November at latitude 37 degrees north, about the latitude of Washington DC. Initial mean 25(OH)D levels were 11 ng/ml and no woman had levels greater than 20 ng/ml to begin the study. The women were told to get 20 minutes of midday sun exposure on their hands, forearms and face every weekday for four weeks. Facial sunblock and sunglasses were permitted.

Guess how much 25(OH)D levels increased after a month of daily sun exposure? Vitamin D levels did not increase at all; in fact, they were a little lower than when the study began!”

For most of us, exposing face and forearms is grossly inadequate to move vitamin levels into a healthy range. For optimal benefit, strive to have at least 40 percent of your skin uncovered.

If you have light-colored skin, you can use the color of your skin to tell you when you’ve had enough sun and it’s time to get in the shade (or cover up using a long-sleeved shirt, pants, and a hat). Stay out just long enough so that your skin turns the very lightest shade of pink. Continuing UV exposure beyond the minimal dose required to produce skin redness will not increase your vitamin D production any further. In Caucasian skin, this equilibrium will typically occur within 20 minutes or so of ultraviolet exposure during ideal conditions. It can take 3 to 6 times longer for darkly pigmented skin to reach the equilibrium concentration of skin vitamin D.

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Tesco Apologizes for Selling Burgers Containing Horsemeat

When you buy processed meat, whether from your local grocer or a restaurant, what are you really getting?

That’s a very valid question these days, as one meat-related scandal after another has been revealed. Most recently, at least 16 people in the US have been sickened from salmonella-tainted ground beef, and in the UK, many got sick to their stomach when it was discovered beef burgers contained horsemeat.

New DNA sequencing technology now allows regulatory agencies to inexpensively make this determination.

From the standpoints of health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability, there’s really only one type of meat I recommend: organically raised, grass-fed or pastured. This applies to all types of meat, from fowl to beef, and related animal products such as eggs and dairy.

Tesco Apologizes for Selling Burgers Containing Horsemeat

On January 17, BBC News1 reported that the supermarket chain Tesco had placed full-page ads in several national newspapers, apologizing for selling hamburgers found to contain nearly 30 percent horse meat. A majority of tested beef burgers also contained pig meat, as did over 30 other processed beef products, including cottage pie, beef curry pie, and lasagna.

“The supermarket giant said it and its supplier had let customers down and promised to find out ‘what happened,'” BBC writes. “So here’s our promise. We will find out exactly what happened and, when we do, we’ll come back and tell you. And we will work harder than ever with all our suppliers to make sure this never happens again.”

While horse meat does not pose a health risk per se, many are disgusted by the thought of eating horse, much like you’d shun cat or dog meat. The discrepancy was discovered by Irish food inspectors. Horse meat was also found in burgers sold by Iceland, Lidi, Aldi and Dunnes. The stores have reportedly removed all products from the meat supplier in question.

Burger King in the UK has also issued a statement saying it has replaced the meat supplier. According to Reuters:2

“‘This is a voluntary and precautionary measure,’ Burger King, famed for its flame-grilled burgers, said. ‘We are working diligently to identify suppliers that can produce 100 percent pure Irish and British beef products that meet our high-quality standards.'”

According to Reuters, the source of the contamination is thought to be “a beef based product bought from two third-party suppliers outside of Ireland.” This highlights one of the most basic problems with mass-produced meat products.

The final product is a jumble-toss of meat and scraps from multiple sources, making the risk of contamination of huge amounts of meat very high – whether the contamination is a type of meat that doesn’t belong, or contamination with a pathogen. It also makes tracing the contamination back to its source all the more difficult.

Overall, it’s important to realize that the more steps your food goes through before it reaches your plate, the greater your chances of contamination becomes. If you are able to get your food locally, directly from the field or after harvest, such as directly from a farmer or farmer’s market, you knock out numerous routes that could expose your food to contamination.

Several Sick After Eating Contaminated Ground Beef

Case in point… In the United States, federal health officials recently reported that at least 16 people in five states were sickened by ground beef contaminated with salmonella.3 About half of them required hospitalization, but none have died so far. Seven of those afflicted ate Kibbeh – a raw ground beef dish – at an unnamed Detroit restaurant.

Again, the contamination was scattered around a very large area: Michigan, Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention4 (CDC), the outbreak is linked to a recent recall of more than 1,000 pounds of ground beef from Gab Halal Foods and Jouni Meats, both based in Michigan.

Each year, an estimated one in six Americans become ill from consuming contaminated food. Sometimes this results in a 24-hour bout of diarrhea and vomiting that clears up on its own, but in other cases foodborne pathogens can lead to organ failure, paralysis, neurological impairment, blindness, stillbirths and even death.

While the majority of food contaminations are linked to imported foods, the mere fact that a food is manufactured on U.S. soil does not guarantee its safety. Most of the meat sold in U.S. grocery stores and restaurants comes from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which can house tens of thousands of animals (and in the case of chickens, 100,000) under one roof, in nightmarish, unsanitary, disease-ridden conditions. It’s under these conditions that foodborne pathogens flourish, and indeed studies have shown that the larger the farm, the greater the chances of contamination.

How CAFO Chicken Farms May Contaminate Other Foods

In one study, more than 23 percent of CAFOs with caged hens tested positive for Salmonella, while just over 4 percent of organic flocks tested positive. The highest prevalence of Salmonella occurred in the largest flocks (30,000 birds or more), which contained over four times the average level of salmonella found in smaller flocks. Organic flocks are typically much smaller than the massive commercial flocks where bacteria flourish, which is part of the reason why eggs (and other products, like meat) from truly organic, free-range sources are FAR less likely to contain dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella.

What many don’t realize is that not only are you at greater risk of getting sickened from CAFO chicken meat, contaminated chicken litter from these farms can also spread disease throughout the food chain…

Yes, even lettuce and other vegetables have occasionally been found to contain Salmonella, courtesy of contaminated fertilizer. Chicken litter and feathers are also commonly used in other livestock feed, further increasing chances of spreading contamination around from one mass-produced food source to another.5

If you buy your meat at your supermarket, even if it’s U.S. raised, you should know that you are directly supporting a food system that typically promotes widespread contamination. And you can bet that as long as there are people willing to buy cheap, contaminated meat, the industry will continue to produce it. Consumer Reports tests6 have indicated that 83 percent of fresh, whole broiler chickens bought at supermarkets nationwide harbor Campylobacter or Salmonella. This is clearly unacceptable, and if you start to demand more — meat that is raised in a healthy, humane way, free from toxins and disease — producers will have no choice but to listen.

Study Shows Roundup Creates Botulism Breeding Ground in Poultry

CAFO chickens can also be heavily exposed to glyphosate when fed genetically engineered feed, and according to recent research,7 glyphosate residues will preferentially kill beneficial species of microorganisms in the GI tract, leaving pathogenic species that can cause harm.

What does this mean for you and me?

The essential implication is that poultry fed GE corn or soy would fall victim to dysbiosis, meaning unhealthy changes in their gut flora that threaten the health of the birds, as well as anyone consuming them. The beneficial bacteria in the poultry gut, such as Enterococcus, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, are killed off, allowing the pathogenic or disease causing bacteria to flourish. Varieties such as Salmonella and Clostridium are very dangerous pathogens for humans. Clostridia bacteria are some of the deadliest, with strains including C. tetani (tetanus) and C. botulinum (botulism).

Chickens bred in CAFOs are already routinely fed antibiotics, arsenic, and even antidepressants, all of which have serious adverse health consequences. But this German study8 suggests CAFO chickens exposed to glyphosate may become breeding grounds for Botulism, Salmonella and other major pathogenic organisms.

According to a new report by the CDC9 detailing the most common sources of foodborne illness reported between 1998 and 2008, the majority – 19 percent – of food poisoning deaths were linked to contaminated poultry.10

The implications of this become even clearer when you consider the recently released findings of a decade-long feeding study that showed GE feed can cause significant changes in the digestive system, immune system, and major organs (including liver, kidneys, pancreas, genitals and others) of rats, mice, pigs and salmon. If it’s doing all of that to animals and fish, what’s it doing to you? Clearly, the conventional agribusiness food system has emerged as a major threat to your health.

Food Fraud at All Time High…

According to a recent report by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP), a whopping 800 new records of food fraud have been added to its ever expanding database.11 You can both search the USP database and report fraud directly, at www.foodfraud.org. It seems quite clear at this point that food fraud is on the rise, and while many have started reading food labels, those labels are increasingly found to be less than truthful.12 According to the USP’s press release:13

“The first iteration of the database compiled 1,300 records of food fraud published between 1980 and 2010. The update increases the total number of records by 60 percent – and consists mostly of newer information published in 2011 and 2012 in both scholarly journals and general media.

Initial analyses of the database by USP food scientists was published in the April 5, 2012, Journal of Food Science. This research revealed that milk, vegetable oils and spices were among the top categories where food fraud occurred as documented in published reports. Analyses of new information by USP scientists show similar trends for 2011 and 2012, and add seafood (fish, shrimp), clouding agents and lemon juice as categories vulnerable to food fraud.

Food fraud is a collective term that encompasses the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain. A more specific type of fraud, intentional or economically motivated adulteration of food ingredients, has been defined by USP as the fraudulent addition of nonauthentic substances or removal or replacement of authentic substances without the purchaser’s knowledge for economic gain to the seller.

‘While food fraud has been around for centuries, with a handful of notorious cases well documented, we suspect that what we know about the topic is just the tip of the iceberg,’ said Dr. Jeffrey Moore, senior scientific liaison for USP and the database’s creator and lead analyst.”

Are You Buying Unusable Scraps and Fillers, Thinking it’s ‘Good Food’?

Over the past year alone, I’ve discussed a number of food issues that have come to light that would turn the stomach of most people, including:
•Fast food burgers that do not decompose, even after being left out for a decade
•“Pink slime” (an unsavory combination of ground up beef scraps and connective tissues mixed with a solution of ammonia and water) being used in school lunches and processed meats across the US
•Reconstituted meat, and how the use of meat glue cheats you out of your hard-earned money at the grocery store and threatens your health, and most recently
•The truth of what’s really in the famous McRib pork sandwich – a questionable concoction of over 70 different ingredients, the “meat” portion of which is actually “restructured” meat that can include the innards and castoffs from the pig

Buying Local is One of the Best Ways to Avoid Food Contamination

All in all, modern food manufacturing is far from savory once you learn what goes on, and there’s room for fraud at every turn. Quite frankly, I’d be hard-pressed to call much of the processed fare available in stores today food. It’s so far from it, it’s no wonder we have such problems with obesity and poor health. What can you expect when you’re not actually consuming real nutrients?

The solution, of course, is to revert back to real, whole food.

If you value food safety, you’ll want to get your meat, chickens, eggs and dairy from smaller community farms with free-ranging animals, organically fed and locally marketed. This is the way food has been raised and distributed for centuries… And by supporting the small family farms in your area, particularly organic farms that respect the laws of nature and use the relationships between animals, plants, insects, soil, water and habitat to create synergistic, self-supporting, non-polluting, GMO-free ecosystems, you help everyone in your community to eventually have greater access to wholesome food. Because as demand for locally-grown food rises, farmers will heed the call…

If you opt for imported foods, or those from U.S. CAFOs, your food will go through upwards of nine steps before it reaches your dinner plate. Public health agencies like the FDA use the term “field-to-fork continuum” to describe the path any given food takes on the way to your plate, and during any of the following steps, contamination is possible:
•Open field production
•Harvesting
•Field packing
•Greenhouse production
•Packinghouse
•Repacking and other distribution operations
•Fresh-cut/value-added processing
•Food service and retail
•Consumer

If you are able to get your food directly from the farmer, you knock out five potential operations that could expose your food to contamination. The closer you are to the source of your food, the fewer hands it has to pass through and the less time it will sit in storage, the better, and likely safer, it will be for you and your family. Plus, when you know the person who grows your food, you can ask questions about its growing conditions — an impossibility when you buy food from CAFOs or other countries.

Helpful Resources

If eating locally is new to you, rest assured that you can find a source near you, regardless of whether you’re in a remote or rural area or a big city. Here’s a list of helpful resources:
•For a listing of national farmer’s markets, see this link.
•Another great web site is www.localharvest.org. There you can find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.
•Subscribe to a community supported agriculture program (CSA). Some are seasonal while others are year round programs. Once you subscribe, many will drop affordable, high quality locally-grown produce right at your door step. To find a CSA near you, go to the USDA’s website where you can search by city, state, or zip code.
•Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.
•Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.
•FoodRoutes. Their “Find Good Food” map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSA’s, and markets near you.
•For an even more comprehensive list of CSA’s and a host of other sustainable agriculture programs, check out this link to my Sustainable Agriculture page.

With food fraud and contamination of processed foods on the rise, the safest and healthiest food you can get your hands on are those grown right in your backyard – perhaps literally your own yard, or from a local farm. Remember, from the standpoints of health, animal welfare, and environmental sustainability, there’s really only one type of meat I recommend: organically raised, grass-fed or pastured. This includes all types of meat: chicken, turkey, pork and beef, and all related animal products, such as eggs and dairy.

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

Cheese—A Nutritional Powerhouse that Can Help Protect Your Heart, Brain and Bones

If you’re a cheese lover struggling to resist cheese because you’ve heard it’s not good for you, then brace yourself for some really good news. Cheese can be an excellent source of nutrition, a food you may want to include more of in your diet rather than less.

Cheese, especially that made from the milk of grass-pastured animals, is an excellent source of several important nutrients.

One of the most valuable nutrients in cheese is vitamin K2, which the latest scientific studies indicate is even more important to your heart, brain and bones than previously thought.

Cheese also provides a cornucopia of vitamins, minerals (including calcium), protein, and fat.

Even if you’re lactose intolerant, there are many cheeses you will likely tolerate just fine. Most of the lactose is removed during the cheesemaking process. Pairing cheese with other foods enhances your absorption of important nutrients.

This article aims to separate fact from myth and will provide guidance on how you can incorporate your favorite cheeses into your daily diet, with joy and gratitude instead of guilt.

Cheese Will Clog Up Your Arteries… and Other Food Fairytales

Although nobody knows for certain when or where cheesemaking first began, cheese has been a staple for thousands of years. Cheese dates back to the domestication of milk-producing animals, between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago.1 The history of cheese can be traced back to the Roman Empire, the Middle East, Tibet, Mongolia, the Ming Dynasty, and of course Europe.

In spite of its rich history and enthusiastic fan base, cheese is much maligned in America due to the saturated fat/cholesterol myth.

Does eating cheese lead to obesity and heart disease? Absolutely not! This unfortunate myth stems from an outdated and seriously flawed hypothesis, perpetuated by decades of wildly successful marketing.

Numerous recent studies have confirmed saturated fat is NOT associated with obesity or heart disease and is actually associated with improved heart health. Most Americans today are consuming inadequate saturated fat. In fact, the Greeks, French and Germans eat much more cheese than Americans but enjoy lower rates of hypertension and obesity.2

I believe one of the primary factors driving obesity is overconsumption of sugar, refined grain and processed food in the standard American diet, made worse by a sedentary lifestyle. Given these facts, many nutritional experts believe that most people need 50 to 70 percent healthful fats in their diet for optimal health, and I agree. Cheese is a delicious way to help you meet that requirement Cheese holds a wealth of good nutrition, including:
•High-quality protein and amino acids
•High-quality saturated fats and omega-3 fats
•Vitamins and minerals, including calcium, zinc, phosphorous, vitamins A, D, B2 (riboflavin) and B12
•Vitamin K2
•CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a powerful cancer-fighter and metabolism booster

Natural Cheese Versus Fake Cheese

There is a difference between natural cheese and processed “cheese foods.” Natural cheese is a simple fermented dairy product, made with nothing more than a few basic ingredients — milk, starter culture, salt and an enzyme called rennet. Salt is a crucial ingredient for flavor, ripening and preservation. You can tell a natural cheese by its label, which will state the name of the cheese variety, such as “cheddar cheese,” “blue cheese,” or “brie.” Real cheese requires refrigeration.

The starter culture and cheesemaking methods are what give each variety of cheese its particular taste, texture, shape and nutritional profile. The following factors differentiate between one variety of cheese and another:
•Specific starter culture, which is the bacteria or mold strains that ripen the cheese
•Type of milk used (cow, sheep, goat, etc.), and the conditions under which those animals were raised
•Methods of curdling, cutting, cooking and forming the curd
•Ripening conditions such as temperature, humidity, and aging time (curing)

Processed cheese or “cheese food” is a different story. These products are typically pasteurized and otherwise adulterated with a variety of additives that detract from their nutritional value. The label will always include the words “pasteurized process,” which should be your clue to walk on by. Velveeta3 is one example, with additives like sodium phosphate, sodium citronate and various coloring agents. Another clue is that most don’t require refrigeration. So, be it Velveeta, Cheese Whiz, squeeze cheese, spray cheese, or some other imposter — these are NOT real cheeses and should be banished from your shopping cart.

Raw Cheese from Pasture-Raised Animals is the Ultimate

Ideally, the cheese you consume should be made from the milk of grass-fed animals raised on pasture, rather than grain-fed or soy-fed animals confined to feedlot stalls. The biologically appropriate diet for cows is grass, but 90 percent of standard grocery store cheeses are made from the milk of CAFO cows. These cheeses are nutritionally inferior to those from grass-pastured animals.

The higher quality the milk, the higher the quality of the cheese… it’s just that simple.

Even cheesemakers will tell you that raw cheese has a richer and deeper flavor than cheese made from pasteurized milk because heat destroys the enzymes and good bacteria that add flavor to the cheese. They explain that raw cheese has flavors that derive from the pastureland that nourished the animals producing the milk, much like wine is said to draw its unique flavors from individual vineyards. Grass-fed dairy products not only taste better, they are also nutritionally superior:
•Cheese made from the milk of grass-fed cows has the ideal omega-6 to omega-3 fat ratio of 2:1. By contrast, the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of grain-fed milk is heavily weighted on the side of omega-6 fats (25:1), which are already excessive in the standard American diet. Grass-fed dairy combats inflammation in your body, whereas grain-fed dairy contributes to it.
•Grass-fed cheese contains about five times the CLA of grain-fed cheese.
•Because raw cheese is not pasteurized, natural enzymes in the milk are preserved, increasing its nutritional punch.
•Grass-fed cheese is considerably higher in calcium, magnesium, beta-carotene, and vitamins A, C, D and E.
•Organic grass-fed cheese is free of antibiotics and growth hormones.

The FDA Cracks Down on Raw Cheese

For years, federal regulators have been threatening to ban raw milk products, including raw cheese, due to what they claim are increased safety risks. Lately they’ve begun targeting artisan cheesemakers, as this is a fast growing industry in America.4

However, the FDA’s crackdown on raw cheese is based on a flawed argument.5 According to Grist, between 1973 and 1999 there’s not a single report of illness from either raw or pasteurized cheeses. However, since the year 2000, illnesses have begun to appear from raw and pasteurized cheese alike. Most outbreaks have been found to result from post-production contamination and laxity in quality control, not lack of pasteurization.

The truth is that raw cheese is not inherently dangerous, provided high standards are followed in the cheesemaking process. Hard cheeses like cheddar dry out as they age, making them relatively inhospitable to invading bacteria. The FDA’s attack on raw cheese is not based on facts, but simply is an extension of their long-standing hostility toward raw milk in general.

Salt Content Prompts Cries of “Cheesageddon”

Another recent concern is that cheese contains excessively high levels of salt. The Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) is a group interested in reducing the salt in processed foods and is urging the cheese industry to reduce the amount of salt in cheese.6 It is true that American food is the saltiest food in the world.

But how much is cheese responsible for the excess sodium in the American diet?

Cheese looks like a minor player when you consider the amount of salt in processed food and restaurant food, and how much more of those are consumed than cheese. Take a look at the table below, which compares salt levels in the saltiest cheeses and in the saltiest restaurant dishes, and you’ll see what I mean. Keep in mind that your sodium intake should be less than about 2,300 mg per day, which is approximately a teaspoon.

About 90 percent of the salt in the standard American diet comes from packaged foods and restaurant foods. Only about 11 percent is attributable to the salt you add during cooking and at the dinner table. Your sodium intake is even lower if you salt your food with natural sea salt instead of processed salt. It seems clear to me that, given all of the nutrition packed into a relatively small piece of cheese, the sodium is not much of an issue, particularly if you minimize processed or packaged foods and don’t eat out often.

Food (Cheeses Listed are the Saltiest Varieties)

Sodium (mg)

Roquefort cheese (100g)5

1,300

Edam cheese (100g)5

1,200

Feta cheese (100g)5

1,200

Chicken McNuggets (100g)7

1,600

Dunken Donuts Salt Bagel8

3,420

Ruby Tuesday Chicken Piccata

4,194

P.F. Chang’s Mu Shu Pork

5,820

Red Robin Buffalo Clucks and Fries

4,479

P.F. Chang’s Pork and Double Pan-Fried Noodles — awarded “Saltiest Food in America”

7,900

Vitamin K2, Vitamin D3, and Calcium — A Whole in One!

Download Interview Transcript

Cheese contains a synergistic blend of nutrients that make it a veritable nutritional powerhouse. When consumed together, vitamins K2 and D3 and calcium are especially powerful for protecting your bones, brain and heart. And cheese contains all three!

I recently interviewed Dr. Kate Rheamue-Bleue, a Naturopathic Physician and author of one of the most comprehensive books on vitamin K2.Vitamin K2 plays critical roles in protecting your heart, brain, and bones, as well as giving you some protection from cancer.9 Not only does K2 help channel calcium into the proper areas of your body (bones and teeth), it prevents it from being deposited in areas where it shouldn’t, such as your arteries and soft tissues.

So, taking calcium supplements when you don’t have adequate vitamin K2 is a setup for arterial calcification and cardiovascular problems.

Since cheeses are all produced by different strains of bacteria, they differ in their total vitamin K2 content, as well as their K2 subtypes. Cheeses contain primarily subtypes MK-4, MK-8 and MK-9, in varying proportions. MK-4 is the least biologically active form (but the most abundant form in cheese), so it takes more of it for your body to benefit. MK-7, MK-8 and MK-9 stay active in your body longer so your body can benefit from much lower levels.

According to a 2009 Dutch study,10 subtypes MK-7, MK-8 and MK-9 are associated with reduced vascular calcification even at small dietary intakes (as low as 1 to 2 mcg per day).

When it Comes to K2, How Do Your Favorite Cheeses Stack Up?

In my interview with Dr. Rheamue-Bleue, she identified the cheeses highest in K2 are Gouda and Brie, which contain about 75 mcg per ounce. Hard cheeses are about 30 percent higher in vitamin K2 than soft cheeses. In perusing the nutritional tables myself, I found it interesting that the cheeses highest in vitamin K2 also tend to be the highest in protein and calcium — so the most nutritious overall14. Just realize that the values listed for “vitamin K” in common nutritional tables are of limited value because they don’t specify what TYPE of vitamin K they’re measuring.

As it turns out, scientists have found high levels of MK-7 in one type of cheese: Edam.11 This is wonderful news for those of you who would much rather sit down to a slice of Edam than a bowl of natto! (Natto, a strongly fermented Japanese soybean product, has the highest MK-7 level of any food.)

Earlier I made my case for selecting raw cheeses from grass-pastured, grass-fed animals. However, cheese contains a bacterially derived form of K2, so it doesn’t matter if the cheese was made from grass-fed milk or not — the bacteria used to culture the cheese is the same. Grass-fed dairy is important for the other reasons I’ve already discussed — just not specifically for the K2.

To summarize then, if you’re going to select cheese with your primary goal being a good source of vitamin K2, the best ones are:
•Gouda
•Brie
•Edam
•Other cheeses with lesser, but significant, levels of K2: Cheddar, Colby, hard goat cheese, Swiss, and Gruyere.12

Smile and Say Cheese!

Cheese lovers rejoice! Don’t be afraid to add healthy high quality cheese to your diet. Cheese offers a synergistic blend of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids, including the magic trio of vitamin D3, vitamin K2 and calcium. This nutrient triad is vitally important for reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. And don’t be afraid of raw cheese (as long as it comes from a reputable cheesemaker), which beats ordinary cheese in both taste and nutrition.

Your best option is cheese made from the milk of pasture-raised cows, sheep and goats, as opposed to feedlot livestock fed grain and soy.

Although some cheeses are fairly high in salt, their sodium levels pale in comparison to those in common fast foods, processed foods and popular restaurant entrees that make up a large part of the standard American diet. My top picks are Gouda, Brie, and Edam cheese, but you can’t go wrong with high quality cheddar, Swiss, Colby, Gruyere, and goat cheese.

For an extensive website about cheeses, including a database that’s searchable by name, country of origin, type of milk, and even texture, you might enjoy Cheese.com.

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

New UN Treaty on Mercury Requires Countries to Phase Down Dental Amalgam

The momentum toward mercury-free dentistry is gaining speed and, it appears, may be set to become a reality in the 21st century.

The final mercury treaty session took place in Geneva, Switzerland in January 2013. There the mercury treaty was finalized, and included important provisions to reduce and eliminate mercury pollution, one of them being a requirement for countries to phase down the use of dental amalgam (mercury fillings).

As Michael T. Bender, director of the Mercury Policy Project, said:1

“This is the beginning of the end of dental amalgam globally.”

Mercury Treaty Requires Countries to Phase Down the Use of Dental Amalgam

The treaty, which has been under negotiation for four years and could be signed as early as October, will require countries to undertake at least two of the prescribed steps to “phase down amalgam use.” Among those measures listed are these:2
•Setting national objectives aimed at minimizing (amalgam) use;
•Promoting the use of cost-effective and clinically-effective mercury-free alternatives;
•Encouraging professional societies and dental schools to educate and train dental professionals in the use of mercury-free dental restoration; and
•Encouraging insurance policies and programs that favor the use of quality alternatives to amalgam.

Textbook Example of Citizen Power Challenging Corporate Power

Though we did not yet achieve the phase-out of amalgam, we made progress like never before. Two key goals were achieved that are the next best thing. First, amalgam is the one product with a road map, a step-by-step approach, to reducing its use; it is the only mercury-based product with a plan.

Second, amalgam was kept in the annex, which means that a petition can later be filed to end amalgam altogether. (Had amalgam instead been placed in the body of the treaty instead of the treaty’s annex, this could not happen.) And this is in the biggest forum of them all — the world stage.

The five treaty sessions — from June 2010 through January 2013 — spanned almost 1,000 days. We have witnessed a textbook case for success against the odds. A combination of vision, of hard work, of building a team from six continents, of grassroots support beneath, and of a consistent message paid off.

The success of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, created upon the recommendation of and led by Consumers for Dental Choice, shows that citizen action still can make progress over corporate power.

Countries Around the Globe Already Phasing Out Dental Mercury

The provisions are in line with growing attitudes around the world, where phase-outs of mercury in dentistry have already occurred or have been recommended. In October 2011, for instance, the U.S. State Department called for a “phase down” of mercury fillings, followed by an “eventual” phase out. The State Department’s submission to the Mercury International Negotiation Committee also called for:
•Educating patients and parents (about amalgam) in order to protect children and fetuses
•Training of dental professionals on the environmental impacts of mercury in dental amalgams

Amalgams have been banned in several countries, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and largely in Japan. And in a 2012 letter to European Union (EU) member state representatives and dental experts, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) also asked recipients to support a phase-out of the use of mercury in dentistry, both in the EU and around the world.

The EU has been aggressive in both their intent and actions aimed at reducing mercury usage, and even adopted a mercury strategy in 2005, which contains 20 measures to reduce mercury emissions, cut supply and demand and protect against exposure. The EEB letter came on the heels of a July 2012 European Commission report,3 which also recommended the phase-out of dental amalgam and mercury in button cell batteries.

European Commission Report: Health and Environmental Concerns Linked to Dental Amalgam

The European Commission report noted both human health and environmental concerns related to dental amalgam:

“…dental amalgam is a significant contributor to overall EU environmental emissions of mercury from human activities. Mercury emitted to the air can be partly deposited into other environmental compartments (soil, surface water, vegetation). Emissions to soil and groundwater are also significant, although their contribution to overall mercury releases to this environmental compartment is more difficult to quantify.

It is estimated that about half of the mercury released from current and historical dental amalgam use remains potentially bioavailable, with the potential to contaminate fish in particular, the other half being either sequestered for long-term (stored in hazardous waste landfills) or recycled for new purposes.

All individuals are exposed to mercury pollution to some degree; however, some groups are particularly exposed and/or vulnerable to the health effects of mercury pollution (principally in the form of methylmercury through diet), such as high-level fish consumers, women of childbearing age and children.

This presents a risk of negative impacts on health, in particular affecting the nervous system and diminishing intellectual capacity. There are also environmental risks, for example the disturbance of microbiological activity in soils and harm to wildlife populations. More than 70% of the European ecosystem area is estimated to be at risk today due to mercury, with critical loads for mercury exceeded in large parts of western, central and southern Europe.”

The environmental health effects of amalgam are well known and include brain damage and neurological problems, especially for children and the unborn babies of pregnant women. With dental mercury uncontrollably entering the environment from multiple pathways, phasing out amalgam and transitioning to non-mercury alternatives is the only way to reduce – and eventually eliminate – this significant source of mercury that threatens our environment and ultimately our health.

Charles Brown of Consumers for Dental Choice and the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry noted:4

“Countries that have phased out amalgam recognize that mercury-free dental fillings are readily available, affordable and effective.” In response to the mercury treaty provisions, he explained, “This pushes the reset button on dentistry. Now the rest of the world can benefit from the experience of those countries.”

Mercury Fillings: A Bit of Background on this Archaic Practice

Under a “drill-fill-and-bill” approach that puts profits above patients, amalgam remains popular with dentists who choose not to get training in modern alternatives. Such protection of the economic status quo makes a smooth transition to mercury-free dentistry all the more difficult. Dentists inexperienced with mercury-free alternatives claim they install amalgam fillings much faster than the primary alternative, composite fillings, but nations like Denmark, which has made the transition, discount the claim that amalgam is more efficient.

So the rationale is to give amalgams as a cost-savings for tight health care budgets. Low-income and middle-income people, people in third-world countries, and our soldiers – even the pregnant ones – get mercury fillings based on this bogus “efficiency” argument. The American Dental Association (ADA) has continued to defend their use, even though amalgam fillings contain more toxic mercury than any other product sold in the United States and safer alternatives, such as resin composite, are readily available.

In response to the mercury treaty phase-down requirements, they even spun a positive news release applauding the fact that people would still be able to get mercury fillings without restrictions.5

This isn’t at all surprising, as the ADA has historically covered up the fact that the term “silver filling” to describe amalgams is profoundly deceptive, as the composite material contains anywhere from 49 to 54 percent mercury, thus should be called mercury fillings not the euphemistic and deceptive term silver filling. At one time they even declared that removing mercury fillings is unethical and many dentists lost their licenses for removing them.

The ADA aided and abetted dental boards to yank licenses from dentists who truthfully told patients that amalgam is mainly mercury and who advised against its use. This was despite the known fact that dental amalgam emits mercury vapor after it is implanted in your mouth, and this mercury bioaccumulates and endangers your health – and the environment — in many ways.

Mercury Treaty Phase-Down May Signal the End of Dental Mercury Globally

The ADA and other pro-mercury groups will undoubtedly continue their crusade to keep dental amalgam – a primitive polluting product — in the forefront of 21st century dentistry. So even though the mercury treaty provisions are a major step forward in the phase-down and eventual phase-out of this toxic substance, support for Consumers for Dental Choice, which has worked to educate the government about dental mercury pollution and the many mercury-free alternatives to amalgam, is now more important than ever.

Consumers for Dental Choice leads the battle for mercury-free dentistry both in the United States and worldwide. Its financial needs are greater than ever, so we ask for your help! Please consider a donation to Consumers for Dental Choice, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to working for mercury-free dentistry for every child and every adult.

Donations can be made online here. Checks can be mailed to:

Consumers for Dental Choice
316 F St., N.E., Suite 210
Washington DC 20002

For additional timely updates and information, please join Consumers for Dental Choice on Facebook.

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

Viral Gene in Genetically Engineered Foods Could Promote Disease

I’ve previously warned of the potential dangers of genetically engineered (GE) foods for many years now, pointing out that such crops might have wholly unforeseen consequences.

In recent years, such suspicions have increasingly proven correct, and now researchers have released yet another bombshell.

Genetic manipulation of crops, and more recently food animals, is a dangerous game that has repeatedly revealed that assumptions about how genetic alterations work and the effects it has on animals and humans who consume such foods, are deeply flawed and incomplete.

At present, the only way to avoid GE foods is to ditch processed foods from your grocery list, and revert back to whole foods grown according to organic standards.

Regulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recently published a paper titled, “Possible Consequences of the overlap between the CaMV 35S promoter regions in the plant transformation vectors used in the viral gene VI in transgenic plants,”1 which has many questioning the safety of GE crops that have already been on the market for two decades.

One way to achieve a genetic modification in a plant is to piggyback a chosen gene on a plant virus, such as the Cauliflower Mosaic virus. Here, they discovered that the most commonly used genetic regulatory sequence (i.e. that which drives the gene expression within the plant), called CaMV 35S promoter, also encodes a gene fragment of the virus, in addition to the desired genetic trait being inserted.

The viral gene fragment in question is called Gene VI, and this encoding may have human health ramifications. According to EFSA,2 they’ve known all along that certain GE crops contained Gene VI, which belongs to the Cauliflower Mosaic virus.

This virus can infect a variety of different plants. It’s not a virus that can directly infect animals or humans. However, while the agency claims the virus poses no direct threat to animal or human health for this reason, others vehemently disagree.

According to an article in Independent Science News,3 written by plant pathology researchers Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson:4

“In general, viral genes expressed in plants raise both agronomic and human health concerns (reviewed in Latham and Wilson 2008.)5 This is because many viral genes function to disable their host in order to facilitate pathogen invasion. Often, this is achieved by incapacitating specific anti-pathogen defenses.

Incorporating such genes could clearly lead to undesirable and unexpected outcomes in agriculture. Furthermore, viruses that infect plants are often not that different from viruses that infect humans.

For example, sometimes the genes of human and plant viruses are interchangeable, while on other occasions inserting plant viral fragments as transgenes has caused the genetically altered plant to become susceptible to an animal virus…

Thus, in various ways, inserting viral genes accidentally into crop plants and the food supply confers a significant potential for harm.”

Hazard to Public Health has Not Been Ruled Out

GE crops affected include Roundup Ready soybeans, MON810 maize, and NK603 maize, the latter of which was recently linked to massive tumor growth and organ damage in rats in a French lifetime feeding study. All in all, 54 out of 84 approved GE crops contain the toxic gene.

According to the featured article, the EFSA researchers admit the Gene VI fragments “might result in unintended phenotypic changes,”6 as similar fragments of this gene have previously been demonstrated to have independent activity.

“In other words, the EFSA researchers were unable to rule out a hazard to public health or the environment,” Latham and Wilson write.7

“…In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial GMOs also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene (Podevin and du Jardin 2012).

This finding has serious ramifications for crop biotechnology and its regulation, but possibly even greater ones for consumers and farmers. This is because there are clear indications that this viral gene (called Gene VI) might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.”

Total Recall is ‘the Only Reasonable Course of Action’

Latham and Wilson go on to discuss how a regulatory agency could go about announcing such a monumental screw-up. After all, GE crops have been approved and deemed “safe” for some 20 years, and EFSA admits it has known about Gene VI for some time.

One option would be to recall all affected GE crops, which could effectively spell the end to crop biotechnology as a whole. We know this is not going to happen in the US as biotech, Monsanto specifically, has leveraged the revolving door between industry and the federal regulatory agencies that are responsible for this type of monitoring. The classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse and federal agencies are simply not going to act because of this.

Another possibility would be to do a retrospective risk assessment of the CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences, “and hope to give it a clean bill of health.” A third option would be to evaluate the seriousness of the hazard by monitoring reports of harm. Unfortunately, this option has been and still is impossible to pursue, as not a single country has carried out any type of GE monitoring. In the US, we still don’t even have GE labeling, so reporting adverse health effects is a logistical impossibility.

“Unsurprisingly, EFSA chose option two,” Latham and Wilson write. “However, their investigation resulted only in the vague and unreassuring conclusion that Gene VI ‘might result in unintended phenotypic changes’… This means literally, that changes of an unknown number, nature, or magnitude may (or may not) occur. It falls well short of the solid scientific reassurance of public safety needed to explain why EFSA has not ordered a recall.”

I recommend reading the featured article8 in its entirety, as the researchers go into some detail about the known functions of Gene VI, and why it might indeed have repercussions for human health. These concerns include but are not limited to:
•Gene VI is an inhibitor of RNA silencing, which leads to aberrant gene expression in GE plants, with unknown consequences
•As a unique transactivator of gene expression, Gene VI could presumably result in the production of a variety of random proteins within cells. Such proteins could include allergens and toxins, in addition to harmless proteins. The end result would differ for each crop species
•Gene VI has two mechanisms by which it interferes with plant anti-pathogen defenses — one of which was unknown to EFSA researchers at the time their findings went to press. According to Latham and Wilson, “the discovery of an entirely new function for gene VI while EFSA’s paper was in press, also makes clear that a full appraisal of all the likely effects of Gene VI is not currently achievable”
•Plants expressing Gene VI exhibit gene expression abnormalities, which indicate that the protein produced by Gene VI functions as a toxin. The known targets of Gene VI activity are also found in human cells, so there is potential for this plant toxin to also have toxic effects on humans

According to Latham and Wilson, the retroactive risk assessment performed by EFSA clearly shows CaMV 35S promoter-containing GE crops have the potential to harm human health. Therefore, the only course of action left is to order a total recall — option number one, as discussed above.

“This recall should also include GMOs containing the FMV promoter and its own overlapping Gene VI,” they write.

Never Assume Anything — Especially When Tinkering with Genes!

The authors of the featured story make a really important point in their article — one that you’d be well advised to remember when it comes to discussions about safety:

“No-one knows, for example, what quantity, location or timing of protein production would be of significance for risk assessment, and so answers necessary to perform science-based risk assessment are unlikely to emerge soon.”

If you don’t even know what might be of significance, then how can you possibly assess risks? And if you cannot assess risk, how can you proclaim something is safe? They continue:

“It is perhaps the most basic assumption in all of risk assessment that the developer of a new product provides regulators with accurate information about what is being assessed. Perhaps the next most basic assumption is that regulators independently verify this information. We now know, however, that for over 20 years neither of those simple expectations have been met.

Major public universities, biotech multinationals, and government regulators everywhere, seemingly did not appreciate the relatively simple possibility that the DNA constructs they were responsible for encoded a viral gene.

This lapse occurred despite the fact that Gene VI was not truly hidden; the relevant information on the existence of Gene VI has been freely available in the scientific literature since well before the first biotech approval… We ourselves have offered specific warnings that viral sequences could contain unsuspected genes…9 The inability of risk assessment processes to incorporate longstanding and repeated scientific findings is every bit as worrisome as the failure to intellectually anticipate the possibility of overlapping genes when manipulating viral sequences.

…Even now that EFSA’s own researchers have belatedly considered the risk issues, no one can say whether the public has been harmed, though harm appears a clear scientific possibility. Considered from the perspective of professional and scientific risk assessment, this situation represents a complete and catastrophic system failure.”

Monsanto Company Joins WBCS

Ironically, while their GE products are increasingly being revealed as far from suitable for human consumption, Monsanto joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).10, 11 According to their January 22, press release:

“Monsanto, a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that aim to improve farm productivity and food quality, joins WBCSD and is offering the WBCSD’s Business Ecosystems Training (BET) course globally for employees. The BET course will enhance employees’ awareness and understanding of the links between ecosystems and business.

‘…In joining the WBCSD, Monsanto is taking an important step along a continuum towards developing a more sustainable agriculture system – one that improves our daily lives, respects our global environment and recognizes the importance of the world’s small-holder farmers,’ said Peter Bakker, President, WBCSD. ‘We must find new ways to protect soils, enhance ecosystems and optimize land use in ways that are environmentally sound…'”

I can’t think of a company less suited for the job… As pointed out by Latham and Allison:

“A further key point relates to the biotech industry and their campaign to secure public approval and a permissive regulatory environment. This has led them to repeatedly claim, firstly, that GMO technology is precise and predictable; and secondly, that their own competence and self-interest would prevent them from ever bringing potentially harmful products to the market; and thirdly, to assert that only well studied and fully understood transgenes are commercialized.

It is hard to imagine a finding more damaging to these claims than the revelations surrounding Gene VI.

Biotechnology, it is often forgotten, is not just a technology. It is an experiment in the proposition that human institutions can perform adequate risk assessments on novel living organisms. Rather than treat that question as primarily a daunting scientific one, we should for now consider that the primary obstacle will be overcoming the much more mundane trap of human complacency and incompetence. We are not there yet, and therefore this incident will serve to reinforce the demands for GMO labeling in places where it is absent.”

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

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

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

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

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

Vermont has also created a Right to Know Campaign.

Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, these are people’s initiatives, and they need support of people like YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply because we didn’t have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food companies. Let’s not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any way you can, regardless of what state you live in.
•No matter where you live in the United States, please donate money to these labeling efforts through the Organic Consumers Fund.
•If you live in Washington State, please sign the I-522 petition. You can also volunteer to help gather signatures across the state.
•If you live in Vermont, please sign the VT Right to Know GMO’s petition.
•For timely updates on issues relating to these and other labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers Association on Facebook, or follow them on Twitter.
•Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to actively support the Washington and Vermont initiatives.

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

Although the majority of articles by Dr Mercola are very good I was a little concerned by this one so I consulted with the president of the biological dentist’s Dr Blanche Grube who in my opionion is one of the very best in the country. She explained a few things to me which are in the comments below.

“I think the article was a little bit misleading. The only time you can do minimally invasive dentistry is early in the game when the cavity is on the chewing posterior surface. If the cavity is between the teeth you must out of necessity cut through good tooth to get to the area of decay. He also missed the point that decay is a systemic disease and comes from the inside out not simply because there is too much acid on the surface of the tooth.”

By Dr. Mercola

It’s very difficult to achieve high-level physical health if your dental health isn’t effectively addressed. I’ve been involved with alternatives to regular dentistry for quite some time. I think many people fail to appreciate how important dentistry is to our total health.

Most tend to separate these two components, but both need to be considered as working in tandem.

Contrary to conventional dentistry, minimally invasive dentistry, like biological dentistry, is not about “drilling and filling;” creating an endless loop of revisits and retreating the same tooth again and again.

Instead, by using dietary prevention to create a healthy cavity-fighting bioflora in your mouth; dental prophylaxis such as brushing and irrigating with baking soda, and oil pulling; combined with minimally invasive restorations starting as early as possible, you can prevent about 80 percent of future dental problems.

Minimally Invasive Dentistry — A Valuable Aspect of Biological Dentistry

Dr. Tim Rainey is a true pioneer in biological dentistry, and is a big proponent of and leader in what’s termed “minimally invasive dentistry.”

“Basically, I knew that the way that we were preparing teeth back then was dead wrong; that you couldn’t go in and justify destroying massive amounts of tooth structure,” Dr. Rainey says. “…We need to be much more conservative.”

After dental school, the training and dogma of which he rebelled against, he began investigating alternatives to the standard “drill and fill” dogma. After reading a hallmark article by a Japanese researcher back in 1977, he began to put everything together:

How tooth decay actually occurs, what the tooth looks like on the inside, how the decay looks like, and finally, what could be done to minimize the damage being done to the tooth while trying to restore it.

“It took me about until 1983 to really understand what was really going on within the teeth. I’m talking several years there. I’m talking about dissecting hundreds, if not thousands, of teeth…

I realized two things. Number one, we did not even have a rudimentary understanding of the decay process in the teeth. Number two, everything that we’ve been taught about tooth structure and anatomy was just dead wrong.

By 1985, I had actually published the article on how to address 80 percent of all decay, which is in the chewing surface of the back teeth. That’s where most decay starts. We had a rather crude rudimentary way of going in and treating these teeth,” he says.

Minimally Invasive Restorations Can Last a Lifetime

The first patient he used his newly devised procedure on was the daughter of one of his class mates from dental school. The girl received these minimally invasive restorations in 1983 or ’84. Today, she is Dr. Rainey’s lead hygienist, and those restorations are still there, and those teeth have never decayed or broken down.

This is in stark contrast to what happens with most conventional fillings, especially if the dentist uses amalgam (about half of which is mercury, despite being deceptively referred to as “silver filling”). When you drill into the tooth with a high speed drill, and then stuff amalgam or other incompatible material in there, you can be almost certain that you will need additional work on that tooth down the road as the tooth begins to crack and the tooth structure fails.

“The average is somewhere around 14 to 15 years before the breakdown of the first restoration in the tooth and then somewhere around eight years for the second restoration,” Dr. Rainey says.

“Then you’re into the tooth has fractured, you start getting decay in between the teeth. That’s the root. That will destruct your teeth. Decay starts breaking down the teeth, and then you start getting into crowns and root canals. Here you have a whole series of manmade iatrogenic (dentistry-caused) ‘disasters,’ which fuels the future generations of dentists. It also fuels 80 percent of what all dental practice is about, that is repairing previous dentistry.”

By using early diagnosis and early intervention with minimally invasive dentistry, Dr. Rainey and other dentists trained in his techniques have eliminated 80 percent of future dentistry on the vast majority of their patients who are privileged to grow up in a practice such as theirs. As someone who has struggled with my own dental health, this sounds absolutely extraordinary. That equates to phenomenal savings in terms of money, pain, and emotional anguish, if you happen to be afraid of the dentist chair.

“Remember, there are several other people throughout the world who are now doing this. It has a very profound effect. We’re talking about something that the evidence of information has been out there approaching 30 years – three decades. Dental patients found out about it like they did in alternative medicine… They seek me out from all over. We have patients coming in from Canada. We haven’t even counted the number of states; I would say something around 30 states,” Dr. Rainey says.

“Of course, there are easier and simpler ways to do dentistry! You start these kids off very early. You eliminate the decay… and guess what? They don’t have much decay later on. We call it bulletproofing the teeth; where we go in, identify the defective pit, fissures, and grooves in the teeth, and clean those out.

There are several different types of materials that we can use. My preference is for glass ionomer cement… Not only do those chewing surfaces on those teeth never decay, but the interproximal areas are gaining some degree of protection because you’re removing the nidus of the infection, which is the bacteria within the teeth that are causing decay. You don’t have that bolus of xbowel bioactivity there to lead off into decay.”

Understanding Tooth Structure

The tooth is covered with a layer of lipoprotein, laden with calcium phosphate that comes and goes — eating and drinking, especially acidic foodstuffs and beverages, remove it, while saliva puts it back. Beneath that is an extremely hard and dense layer of enamel, which is about 0.2 millimeters, or 200-400 microns thick. Inside of that hard layer, the tooth structure becomes much softer. These parts all form the structural integrity of the tooth.

When you bite down on the tooth, the stress is transferred through the entire tooth down into the root, which deforms slightly. This is part of its natural stress-relieving mechanism. During the formation of the tooth can form little pits, fissures and grooves that may be hypocalcific — a defect that causes the enamel to be softer than normal and susceptible to decay.

“In the ideal world, you do not have decay start down in these pits and fissures, because you have a natural oil-based organic plug that seals that tooth,” Dr. Rainey explains. “However, in the real world what happens is as these teeth are finalizing development, you’ll get what we call ‘hypocalcified enamel.’ Now, if you put acid in that area, then you start getting a calcium deficit. That’s the beginning of decay in teeth.”

He identifies those areas, and using a miniature air abrasion tip that is very precise and focused, cleans out those pits, fissures and grooves. This removes the initial decay. Then he seals it with glass ionomer. The end result is that those teeth tend to not decay in the future.

Why Decay Occurs

Tooth decay is primarily driven by the symbiotic relationship between bacteria and acidity, which creates a pathogenic bioflora in your mouth. If you’re continually lowering the pH in your mouth, you start losing calcium, which is necessary for strong healthy teeth. Calcium deficiency leads to porosity in the teeth, which allows plaque that has turned pathogenic to attack the tooth more thoroughly. Once certain types of bacteria are able to penetrate the enamel, they put out enzymes that begin to break down the collagen of the inner structure of the tooth.

“That’s where you get cavitation, which is the loss of tooth structure to the point where you have a hole in that tooth,” Dr. Rainey explains.

One of the most important things Dr. Rainey instructs his patients to do is to use nothing but baking soda on their teeth at night.

“The pathogenic bacteria must have an acidic environment. Then you have the bacteria – the probiotic bacteria – that live in a neutral environment. You’re going to have X number of bacteria regardless of what you do. So, why not promote the non-pathogenic bacteria by neutralizing the acidity with baking soda at night, which has profound effects on the overall oral health of the individual?” Dr. Rainey says.

You can brush with it, use it as a mouth rinse, and even dissolve a little in the water you use in your WaterPik or HydroFloss.
•To brush: Wet your toothbrush and dip it into the baking soda. Brush as usual. Your teeth should feel smooth when finished
•To rinse: About a teaspoon in a small glass of water is sufficient. Just swish it around in your mouth and spit out
•To floss: Dissolve a small amount of baking soda in water and fill your irrigation instrument. Make sure not to let it dry inside your water pik as it will cause buildup and eventually render the tool useless. So, always keep water in your irrigation tool, and instead of storing it standing up, store it upside-down in a glass of baking soda and water, as the baking soda will prevent harmful bacteria from proliferating. Once a week, drain it all out and rinse it thoroughly with water

In the mornings, you could use toothpaste containing calcium and phosphate salts, or even hydroxyapatite, which can help remineralize your teeth.

“Since the Pro-Enamel [toothpaste], I’ve believed that almost all of the toothpastes out there now have calcium of some form in them. The magic is the calcium phosphate. You want those present, so they can precipitate back into the teeth as amorphous hydroxyapatite… You’re rebuilding an amorphous crystal of enamel, because of all the interactions of the enzymes, calcium, phosphate, and everything else that goes on within your mouth.

Where you really mess this up is by getting it too acidic. That’s where the baking soda comes in.

We use it in our cancer patients, where they have a real deficit of calcium and phosphate in their saliva – people who have problems. The brand name of it, as a prescription item, is called Caphoso®. You actually get it in a calcium solution, a phosphate salt solution. You mix those together, and then you rinse with them.” That;s the building block of enamel, and what it takes to remineralize enamel.

Promote Beneficial Oral Bacteria with Fermented Foods

To promote a beneficial oral bioflora he also recommends taking Evora tablets while you’re trying to change the bacterial balance in your mouth. Eating fermented foods, such as cultured yoghurt made from raw organic milk (AVOID store-bought yoghurts as they are worthless in terms of probiotics. Most are loaded with sugars and other detrimental ingredients, and all of them are pasteurized), or fermented vegetables, which you can easily and inexpensively make at home.

According to Dr. Rainey, any type of probiotics will naturally help get rid of harmful Strep mutans. This includes Lactobacillus and bacteria that are bioactive in high concentrations of lactic acid.

To Pull or Not to Pull…

Another interesting technique that can help improve your oral health is oil pulling. The technique is thousands of years old, and it’s an ancient Ayurvedic Indian tradition. To perform it, you vigorously swish an oil in your mouth, “pulling” it between your teeth for 20-30 minutes. You can use a number of oils for this, but sesame, sunflower or coconut oil are commonly used. Dr. Rainey is also working extensively with ozonated oils.

Oil pulling is thought to remove pathogenic bacteria, improve oral hygiene, and help detoxify your system. Dr. Rainey agrees the technique can be beneficial. A drawback is that it is time consuming. You need to go at it for quite some time in order to get results. It’s not like swishing with mouthwash for 30 seconds. Ideally, you’ll want to reach close to 30 minutes.

The Three Main Components of Minimally Invasive Dentistry

Contrary to conventional dentistry, minimally invasive dentistry, like biological dentistry, is not about “drilling and filling;” creating an endless loop of revisits and fixing old dental work until there’s nothing left to work with. It comprises three main components:
•Dietary prevention (creating a healthy bioflora in your mouth and body)
•Dental prophylaxis (baking soda; oil pulling)
•Minimally invasive restorations

As for dental prophylaxis, the simplest thing is just adding baking soda to your nightly oral hygiene. Ideally, add it to your dental irrigator, and brush with it. You can also use oil pulling in conjunction with this. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can combine the two, because it will provide a sort of organic matrix plug, which helps combat dental decay. And ultimately, you want to change the bioflora in your mouth, which is done through your diet. Fermented foods are key. A high-quality probiotic supplement may suffice if you really cannot stand fermented foods. I urge you to at least try some fermented veggies though, as they are, for most people, the most palatable. I think they’re delicious!

The next step, (where, ideally, you’d start your kids off) would be to see a dentist trained in minimally invasive dentistry. Kids treated with the NovaMin or baking soda air abrasion process to clean the pits and fissures and then seal them with glass ionomer, receive significant protection against future decay.

How to Find a Biological and Minimally Invasive Dentist

At present, there are a number of dentists trained in Dr. Rainey’s techniques. Several of them are in California and Florida. There’s also one in Beirut, Lebanon, and in New Zealand. To locate a qualified dentist, you can contact Dr. Rainey’s office at www.jtimrainey.com, or call 361-526-4695.

If there’s no minimally invasive dentistry practice in your area, or within reasonable travel distance, the following links can help you to find a mercury-free, biological dentist. These may not be trained in Dr. Rainey’s minimally invasive dentistry technique, but are trained to treat your oral and physical health as a cohesive whole. If you’re considering removing amalgam, you also need to make sure it’s done by biological dentist that’s been properly trained to do it safely, as removing amalgam can lead to severe and acute mercury poisoning:
•Consumers for Dental Choice
•International Academy of Biological Dentistry & Medicine (IABDM)
•Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions (DAMS). E-mail them at: [email protected] or call 651-644-4572 for an information packet
•Huggins Applied Healing. You’ll need to fill out a form and they will connect with you to find a suitable dentist in your area
•Holistic Dental Association
•International Association of Mercury Safe Dentists

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

A review of U.S. healthcare expenses by the Institutes of Medicine1 has revealed that 30 cents of every dollar spent on medical care is wasted, adding up to $750 billion annually.

The report identifies six major areas of waste: Unnecessary services; inefficient delivery of care; excess administrative costs; inflated prices; prevention failures; and fraud.

“Apart from the economic toll these deficiencies place, they also result in patients having to suffer needlessly. Some studies have indicated that in 2005, about 75,000 deaths could have been averted if each state had delivered healthcare at the quality and efficiency levels of the best performing state,” Medical News Today reports.2

According to The Washington Times:3

“‘Health care in America presents a fundamental paradox,’ says the report from an 18-member panel of prominent specialists, including doctors, business people and public officials. ‘The past 50 years have seen an explosion in biomedical knowledge, dramatic innovation in therapies and surgical procedures, and management of conditions that previously were fatal…

Yet, American health care is falling short on basic dimensions of quality, outcomes, costs and equity.’

…If banking worked like health care, ATM transactions would take days, the report says. If home building were like health care, carpenters, electricians and plumbers would work from different blueprints and hardly talk to each other.

If shopping were like health care, prices would not be posted and could vary widely within the same store, depending on who was paying. If airline travel were like health care, pilots would be free to design their own preflight safety checks – or not perform one at all.”

America’s Health Care System Must Transform

That the health care system in the United States is hopelessly inadequate and ineffective is obvious. Statistics place the US health care system among the top three leading causes of death in the US – an irony that never ceases to amaze me…

Furthermore, Americans spend more on health care than citizens of any other country, up to 1.5 times more per person, yet we rank 50th in life expectancy and 47th in infant mortality. These are absolutely dismal outcomes from the most expensive health care system in the world!

According to Medical News Today:4

“The Committee said that aiming for just incremental upgrades and alterations carried out by individual hospitals or health care providers will have little impact on improving the nation’s overall health care service…

The only way the USA’s healthcare system can really improve is to transform it into a learning system that continuously improves itself by ‘systematically capturing and broadly disseminating lessons from every care experience and new research discovery…’

The report urges insurance providers, professional societies, researchers, and health economists to work together to find ways of measuring quality performance and to design new payment models and incentives that reward quality rather than volume.”

That would be a good start. But we cannot ignore the all-pervasive influence of the pharmaceutical industry on our health care system. Conflicts of interest that affect not only the quality but also the cost of care are rampant throughout the entire system, starting with our medical education. Doctors today are trained to prescribe drugs and to treat symptoms, and are taught virtually nothing about nutrition and fitness, which are cornerstones for good health. Ultimately, if we want to improve the health care system, we must address the blind reliance on drugs as the number one strategy for disease prevention and treatment.

Medicare Bill “Upcoding” Costs Tax Payers $1.1 Billion Annually

In related news, an investigation conducted by the Center for Public Integrity found “upcoding” Medicare bills cost taxpayers about $1.1 billion annually.

“Between 2001 and 2010, doctors increasingly moved to higher-paying codes for billing Medicare for office visits while cutting back on lower-paying ones, according to a year-long examination of about 362 million claims. In 2001, the two highest codes were listed on about 25 percent of the doctor-visit claims; in 2010, they were on 40 percent. Similarly, hospitals sharply stepped up the use of the highest codes for emergency room visits while cutting back on the lowest codes,” The Washington Post reports.5

However, while Medicare fraud is becoming increasingly common, it’s worth noting that the pharmaceutical industry as a whole is the biggest defrauder of all.6 From over-pricing and false claims for medical services, to gross misconduct and mismanaged care of senior citizens in nursing homes, the pharmaceutical industry leads the pack in health care fraud and abuse. It’s been that way for decades. That’s why the U.S. government has repeatedly enacted new laws – in 1986, 1996, 2009, and 2010 – to crack down on offenders.

The 1986 legislation strengthened a Civil War-era fraud law, the False Claims Act, with incentives for private citizens to report fraud and abuse of government programs by corporate America.7 This law enabled “whistleblowers” to expose corporate criminals whose crimes had previously gone undetected. But it didn’t stop these crimes, so a decade later Congress created the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control (HCFAC) program, which provides for huge fines and prison sentences for health care fraud and abuse.

Enacted with the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and administered jointly by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Health and Human Services (HHS), this program has returned over $18 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund since 19978 – most of which came from pharmaceutical companies. It, too, helped root out previously undetected corporate criminals, as well as those committed by individuals, hospitals and other health service providers.

Still, the fraud went on. So, in 2009, Congress enacted yet another enforcement tool under the Affordable Care Act and the formation of the Health Care Fraud Prevent & Enforcement Team (HEAT). In 2010 alone, the DOJ and HHS reported they’d collected a total of $4 billion as a result of judgments and settlements involving Medicare.9

The bulk of these funds are from drug companies, making the pharmaceutical industry the new government fraud leader, surpassing the former top fraud perpetrator, the defense industry.10 That’s why HHS and the DOJ decided in 2010 to form yet another committee to address just drug company crimes: The Pharmaceutical Fraud Pilot Project (PFPP),11 with the goal of rooting out pharmaceutical, biologic, and medical device fraud.

It’s quite clear that the fraud and deceit against Medicare by Big Pharma is so great that no amount of anti-fraud agencies seem capable of stopping it. This is evidenced by the fact that many drug companies are repeat offenders. Fines for illegal activities appear to be viewed as the cost of doing business… Is it any wonder then that some of the drug companies repeatedly caught defrauding the Medicare system are also listed in AllBusiness.com’s Top Corporate Criminals of the 1990s?

Big Pharma’s Offshore Fraud Strategy

Over the past few years, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers, AstraZeneca, and Abbott Laboratories have all paid huge sums to settle civil and criminal allegations of illegal sales and marketing practices. Most recently, GlaxoSmithKline plead guilty in the largest health fraud settlement in US history. The company was fined $3 billion to resolve criminal and civil liability charges related to illegal drug marketing andwithholding information about health hazards associated with its diabetes drug Avandia.

Proving that illegal business practices are standard practice within the pharmaceutical industry, Forbes12 recently reported that many pharmaceutical companies are now being investigated for using bribes to boost sales outside the US as well. Referred to as “emerging markets,” these potential consumers are located in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it illegal to bribe foreign officials to win business, but nonetheless it happens – as evidenced by Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, which paid $60.2 million to the U.S. in August to settle charges that the company bribed an assortment of government health officials, including doctors, in China, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria, Croatia, Servia, and Kazakhstan.

According to Forbes:

“The company had something of a ‘frequent flyer’ program for bribery. ‘Pfizer subsidiaries in several countries had bribery so entwined in their sales culture that they offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be their best customers,’ said Kara Brockmeyer, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit.”

Have You Taken Control of Your Health?

As you can see, there’s no shortage of evidence that the US health care system is in need of urgent transformation. Hundreds of thousands are killed by medical care itself, while others are walking around with far less than stellar health due to conventional treatments. Rates of chronic diseases are through the roof, and we’re facing epidemics of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, depression and too many others to list. As a whole, Americans are not healthy – they’re tired, depressed, stressed out and often in pain.

As patients, many people have taken their health into their own hands by abandoning this fatally flawed medical model and embracing holistic modalities that can help heal on a body-wide level.

It’s important to remember that the more you take responsibility for your own health – in the form of nurturing your body to prevent disease – the less you need to rely on the “disease care” that passes for health care in the United States. If you carefully follow some basic health principles – simple things like exercising, eating whole foods, sleeping enough, getting sun exposure, and reducing stress in your life – you will drastically reduce your need for conventional medical care, which in and of itself will reduce your chances of suffering ill side effects.

I recently completed the first major revision of my Nutrition Plan, which can guide you, step by step, toward optimal health. It’s now significantly improved and contains a number of updated recommendations, such as the addition of fermented vegetables as a source of healthful probiotics; and using intermittent fasting and high intensity exercise to really optimize your health.

The Plan is divided into three stages: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. If you realize you’re already doing all the things included in the beginner’s phase, then it may be time to move on to the next phase.

I strongly recommend reviewing the revised Nutritional Plan whenever your schedule allows. It is a very detailed and comprehensive program – it’s basically an entire book, in multi-media format, as we’ve now added lots of informative videos to it as well. If you’re new to the site, I encourage you to go through it from the beginning as it is one of the most powerful tools to truly allow you and your family to take control of your health.

After you’ve reviewed the plan, feel free to add your feedback or comments about the plan in the Vital Votes section on the re-launch page.

Yes, You Can Influence Your Doctor as Well…

In the event you do need medical care, seek a health care practitioner who will help you move toward complete wellness by helping you discover and understand the hidden causes of your health challenges… and create a customized and comprehensive – i.e. holistic – treatment plan for you.

What’s more, you can have an impact on your doctor’s tendency to recommend natural alternatives, as when you inquire about them, some health care providers do in fact listen. Remember, when you do go to the doctor, know that it’s OK to ask questions and opt for less medical intervention while choosing a more natural way of healing your body.

If your physician is not open to such options, it may be time to find one who is, who can help coach you and your family to take control of your health.

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

No time to hit the gym? Rake the lawn instead, scientists say
by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Good news for busy people: you can get just as much health benefit from a series of disconnected bouts of exercise as short as a minute or two each as you can from a single 30-minute workout, according to a study conducted by researchers from Oregon State University and published in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

“Our results suggest that engaging in an active lifestyle approach, compared to a structured exercise approach, may be just as beneficial in improving various health outcomes,” lead author Paul Loprinzi said.

“We encourage people to seek out opportunities to be active when the choice is available. For example, rather than sitting while talking on the phone, use this opportunity to get in some activity by pacing around while talking.”

The study was conducted on a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 U.S. adults, all of whom were assigned to wear accelerometers so that their daily activity patterns could be quantitatively measured. The researchers found that participants could be divided into those who were active in short bouts throughout the day – sometimes for as little as a minute or two at a time – and those who were active only in larger bouts, such as for a half-hour or more at a time.

Participants in the “short bouts” group, on average, had lower blood pressure, cholesterol, waist circumference, and rates of metabolic syndrome (a cluster of symptoms associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes) than participants in the “long bouts” group.

There was no significant difference between the groups in body mass index, a ratio calculated based on height and weight. This may provide evidence that body size per se is not the most important measure in calculating overall health, researcher Brad Cardinal said.

“There are inherent limitations in BMI as a surrogate measure of fat and health in general,” he said. “People can still be ‘fit’ and ‘fat.'”

Short bouts lead to more activity overall
Notably, the researchers found that people who exercised in short bouts were significantly more likely to actually achieve the federal recommendation of 30 minutes of exercise per day than people who went only for “long bouts;” 43 percent of the short bout group met the goal, compared with fewer than 10 percent of the long bout group.

Rates of metabolic syndrome were equally low among all people who achieved the recommended 30 minutes, whether in long bouts or short.

“You hear that fewer than 10 percent of Americans exercise and it gives the perception that people are lazy,” Cardinal said. “Our research shows that more than 40 percent of adults achieved the exercise guidelines, by making movement a way of life.”

According to Cardinal, an “active lifestyle” model of exercise is simply more helpful than a workout-based model. It is not only easier to achieve, but easier to stick with as well.

“This is a more natural way to exercise, just to walk more and move around a bit more,” he said. “We are designed by nature as beings who are supposed to move.”

Sources:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130129100118.htm

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With huge fanfare and an overdose of propaganda, the U.S. government is announcing it’s going to reform school lunches and vending machines to eliminate junk beverages like sodas. “Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead,” reports the Washington Post.

Except, here’s the problem: We heard this same hoax six years ago when Bill Clinton was widely applauded for achieving the very same “reform” back then.

Forbes.com practically drooled over the “leadership” of Clinton when it announced, in 2006:

“Under the agreement, the companies have agreed to sell only water, unsweetened juice and low-fat milk to elementary and middle schools while high schools would be allowed diet drinks, unsweetened teas, flavored water, and low-calorie sports drinks.”

Er, hold on a sec. Why is the USDA saying it’s going to ban sugary sodas in 2013 when Forbes.com reported that Bill Clinton already solved the problem in 2006?

Because it’s all a hoax.

Four years after Bill Clinton’s supposed “victory” over soda manufacturers, sodas had vastly EXPANDED their reach in U.S. schools.

The US government is in bed with junk food manufacturers
The US government has no intention of hurting the profits of its most powerful supporters: food and drug corporations. Forcing school lunches to become healthier means reduced profits for the processed food giants that supply all the genetically modified, chemically-preserved, refined, processed, nutrient-deprived crap that our children are raised on.

The goal of the USDA — the same department that has completely sold out to Monsanto, for the record — is to make it appear like they are doing something to improve the health of children while, in actuality, doing nothing to restrict the profit growth of junk food companies.

Remember: We’ve seen this same hoax before, back in 2006 with Bill Clinton. That too was praised as something of a “treaty” with junk food companies and soda manufacturers. But as I said back then, it was all a publicity stunt designed to delay any legislation. And it worked! No laws were passed and the soda continues to be sold to children all across our nation’s schools.

Pushing aspartame
The other big reason this whole thing is a charade is because it doesn’t restrict diet sodas. So even if the corn syrup sodas are pulled out of schools, it puts the government in the position of promoting aspartame consumption by our children.

Aspartame is even worse for your health than corn syrup. Only in a completely insane government full of nutritionally-ignorant morons would aspartame be pushed on children. The substance should never have been approved for human consumption in the first place. When stored in hot conditions, it produces formaldehyde — a potent neurotoxin that harms the nervous system.

Pushing aspartame on children is sure to lower academic scores, create behavioral problems and promote chronic disease as those children age. But the US government incessantly protects aspartame, mercury-laden vaccines, GMOs and other mass-marketed poisons. The payoff is huge for Big Pharma which then rakes in trillions of dollars “treating” all the chronic disease caused by a lifetime of poison consumption.

That’s the racket being played out right now in America, and it’s all marketed under the label of “healthy children.”

Remember, above all, that the government always LIES to you. Telling the truth serves no purpose for it, and it has no morals or ethics to speak of. These lies are designed to create the impression that the government cares for you (Obamacare, remember?) while, in reality, it is looting your pockets, sickening your children, destroying your liberties and crushing dissent.

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Healthy Digestion – A true immune system builder

Posted by sethluker on March 14, 2011 21 Comments

Since battling a digestive disease for the last 6 years, healthy digestion has been a major focus in my journey towards optimal function. This is a subject that most folks fail to think about until a problem arises and then they just go the doctor and slap a band-aid on the gunshot wound and keep moving forward with eating the same detrimental regimen. So in this article, along with the help from an article by Dr David Foreman, I want to touch on a few points about healthy digestion and how it plays a major role in our entire existence.

Digestive Issues: Inside the numbers
1.More than 60 million Americans experience heartburn at least once a month, about 25 million are daily suffers
2.Chronic gastrointestinal disorders plague more than 95 million Americans
3.Two of the top five most widely prescribed prescription drugs in this country are for digestive disorders
4.Digestion-related problems cost Americans more than 100 billion dollars annually
5.Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths behind lung cancer.

I would hope that these numbers grab your attention, and that you can see why we should focus on our digestive process. Optimal nutrition begins and ends with healthy digestion. Instead of “death begins in the colon” we should say “life begins in the digestive tract.”

The 4 Functions of the Digestive System
1.Digestion: breaks down food into micro-particles
2.Absorption: Converts nutrients into absorbable forms
3.Elimination: Removes waste / toxins
4.Immunity: Protects from foreign microbes either in or on your foods

The Keys to Healthy Digestion

A healthy digestive system is built on 4 Pillars: Diet, Exercise, Spirituality, and Supplementation. We know that a diet high in fiber and water and low in bad fats and refined foods will lead to a healthier digestive system. We know that exercise will improve digestion (for multiple reasons). We know that spirituality (reduction of stressors, etc) will dramatically improve the digestive process. Supplements can and do play a critical role for all of us, whether or not we have a digestive disorder.

Risk Factors for Digestive Problems

Before we get into what supplements we need, let’s take a look at what factors can increase your risk of developing digestive problems.
1.Poor diet
2.Pregnancy
3.High Stress
4.Overweight
5.Dehydration
6.Habitual eating on the go
7.Dairy Consumption
8.Use of antibiotics
9.Use of OTC or prescription antacids
10.Health issues (diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular, arthritis, depression, eating disorders, etc.)

The bottom line is this, it is believed that more than 70% of your entire immune system is based in your gut. In other words, if your gut is healthy there is a good chance that you are healthy as well. So let’s fix our digestive system!! There are a few key areas to look at in the supplement section of your local vitamin store: probiotics, digestive enzymes, fiber, cleansing supplementation are some great areas to begin.

Probiotics

In short, probiotics are a friendly bacteria that are found in your digestive system. They serve two purposes: they complete the digestive process and help protect against pathogens (disease-causing bacteria, fungus, yeast, etc.) found in your food. Without enough of these beneficial bacteria, you will be unable fully digest your food particles into “micro” particles, or convert some of those nutrients in the absorbable or usable forms that the body needs. Probiotics are essential for the absorption of nutrients, and also help the body to synthesize Vitamin B and K, absorb minerals and digest proteins, fats, carbohydrates and fiber. Throw in the benefits to your immune system and we have a winner. Probiotics are depleted by stress, aging, high carbohydrate diets, antibiotic use and also by consuming non-purified water and non-organic foods. Lack of proper levels of probiotics can also lead to overgrowth of E.coli and H.pylori.

Digestive Enzymes

Digestive enzymes are used to help support the breakdown of your foods. I often estimate that 70+% of your body’s energy goes into digesting foods. Coming up short on enough digestive enzymes will lead to nutrient depletion, and having foods particles go through your system undigested. this can lead to problems such as toxin buildup, flatulence, odor issues, allergies, sensitivities and more. The primary digestive enzymes are: protease (for proteins), amylase (starches), lipase (fats), cellulase (plant cell membranes). There are also targeted enzymes available for specific needs, such as lactase for lactose intolerance.

Fiber

Fiber should never be overlooked. The average diet contains around 20 grams of fiber each day yet we should be consuming 35+ grams per day. Fiber can help you manage your weight, balance blood sugar, lower cholesterol, keep your digestive tract clean, decrease constipation and diarrhea, and improve immune function, reduce your risk of heart attack and much more than is listed here. Fiber can be described as a toothbrush of the colon. Regardless, fiber is another critical component in digestive system health. If you cant get enough fiber from your diet (fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, etc.) then you need to supplement. The most popular fiber sources are psyllium and flax seeds. You can also find chia seeds, inulin and glucomannan at your local vitamin store. All of these are great fiber sources but I prefer flax and chia seeds.

Cleansing

Cleansing is something that often gets overlooked with regard to digestive maintenance and care. Colon cleansing and liver cleansing will help keep your colon, liver, and gallbladder clean and functional. We need to cleanse all systems, but for those with digestive issues, periodic colon and liver cleansing is even more important. Cleansing will help eliminate the buildup of environmental toxins, metals, airborne chemicals, water and foods we consume. Cleansing will help improve energy, digestive function, immune function, nervous system function, hormonal balance, sleep, skin and a whole lot more!!!

Supplements

Finally, there are many other supplements that support healthy digestion. Many of these can be purchased separately (or in combination formula) to address your specific digestive issues. Here is a short list to get you started.
1.Ginger: indigestion
2.Slippery Elm: soothing
3.DGL: heartburn and acid reflux
4.Dandelion: constipation, indigestion
5.Mastic Gum: heartburn and acid reflux
6.Peppermint: indigestion, cramping, gas
7.Magnesium: safe and effective for constipation
8.Aloe: soothes inflammation and helps with constipation

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