Rather Be Healthy

Yale study links common chemicals to osteoarthritis

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disorder. Unlike the autoimmune form of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis is due to wear and tear on a joint and, the NIH says, is just a “normal result of aging.”

But could something else cause osteoarthritis? After all, not everyone suffers from osteoarthritis symptoms as they age. Now, for the first time, there’s evidence that exposure to chemical toxins could, in fact, trigger the disease.

A new study just published in Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to look at the associations between perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), and osteoarthritis. This is a potentially huge discovery because these chemicals, (when referred to together, known as PFCs) are widespread in the environment and known to contaminate humans and wildlife. PFCs are used in more than 200 industrial processes and consumer products including grease-proof paper food containers, stain and water-resistant fabrics and personal care products.

“We found that PFOA and PFOS exposures are associated with higher prevalence of osteoarthritis, particularly in women, a group that is disproportionately impacted by this chronic disease,” Sarah Uhl, who authored the study along with Yale Professor Michelle L. Bell and Tamarra James-Todd, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a press statement.

The researchers investigated data from six years of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2003-2008), which allowed them to account for factors such as age, income, and race/ethnicity. When they looked at men and women separately, they found clear, strong associations between the chemical exposure and osteoarthritis for women, but not men. What’s more, more exposure meant a higher risk for osteoarthritis. Women in the highest 25 percentile of exposure to PFOAs had about twice the odds of having osteoarthritis compared to those in the lowest 25 percentile of exposure.

Uhl and her team noted that more studies are needed to establish the possible biological mechanisms that could cause PFCs to trigger osteoarthritis. They also stated that differences in associations between men and women, if confirmed, need further investigation. “Better understanding the health effects of these chemicals and identifying any susceptible subpopulations could help to inform public health policies aimed at reducing exposures or associated health impacts,” the scientists concluded.

This is not the first time PFCs have raised concerns about how these chemicals may damage health. As Natural News previously reported, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) study, published in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction, found that women with higher blood levels of PFCs were likely to have problems with infertility.

Sources:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/ysof-ysl021413.php
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001460/
http://www.naturalnews.com/025544_infertility_chemicals_PFOA.html

About the author:
Sherry Baker is a widely published writer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Health, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Yoga Journal, Optometry, Atlanta, Arthritis Today, Natural Healing Newsletter, OMNI, UCLA’s “Healthy Years” newsletter, Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s “Focus on Health Aging” newsletter, the Cleveland Clinic’s “Men’s Health Advisor” newsletter and many others.

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

U.S. farmers may stop planting GMOs after horrific crop yields

Some farmers across the United States may stop planting genetically modified crops after poor yields are increasing costs beyond what they can absorb.

According to Farmers Weekly, those farmers are considering returning to conventional seed after increased pest resistance and crop failures have meant smaller GM crop yields over non-GM counterparts.

Farmers in the U.S. pay about $100 more per acre for GM seed. Many have begun questioning “whether they will continue to see benefits from using GMs,” the farmer’s publication reported.

“It’s all about cost benefit analysis,” economist Dan Basse, president of AgResource, an American agricultural research firm, said.

“Farmers are paying extra for the technology but have seen yields which are no better than 10 years ago,” he told the Weekly. “They’re starting to wonder why they’re spending extra money on the technology.”

A problem that is becoming more widespread

The publication said one of the biggest problems U.S. farmers have experienced with GM seed is resistance. When GM seeds were first introduced, biotech engineers said it would be 40 years before resistance would develop; but pests such as corn rootworm have instead developed a resistance to GM crops in as few as 14 years.

“Some of these bugs will eat the plant and it will make them sick, but not kill them. It starts off in pockets of the country but then becomes more widespread,” Basse said.

“We’re looking at going back to cultivation to control it. I now use insecticides again,” he said.

If farmers don’t move back towards non-GMOs, the availability of seed will become an issue, he said, noting that some 87 percent of U.S. farmers currently plant genetically modified seed.

Countries around the world that do not use GM seed are outperforming U.S. farmers. The largest crop yields last year were in Asia, and China in particular, where farmers don’t plant GM seed.

For years, there has been concern that GM seeds would develop resistance to pesticides and weed killers, though some of the largest biotech firms that push such seeds – like Monsanto – have consistently denied or downplayed such concerns.

Scott McAllister, a third-generation farmer in Iowa, told The Huffington Post in October he was leery of Monsanto’s claims when a seed peddler came to see him last fall.

“Down the road, are we going to experience resistance in weeds with the continued use of Roundup?” McAllister said he recalls asking the salesman.

“Oh no, that’ll never happen,” he was told.

Sure it won’t…

Monsanto’s combination of GM seed and Roundup herbicide was supposed to help crops thrive, not weeds and bugs. But 15 years later, when most corn, soybeans and cotton cultivated in the U.S. comes from Roundup Ready seed, an increasing number of these crops are falling prey to “superweeds” that have become resistant to the GM seeds and herbicide that was supposed to kill them forever.

From HuffPo:

Repeated application of the herbicide has literally weeded out the weak weeds and given the rare resistant weeds the opportunity to take over. The situation, according to a report published…in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe, has driven growers to use larger quantities of Roundup, more often and in conjunction with a broader arsenal of other weed-killing chemicals.

“It’s been a slowly unfolding train wreck,” Charles Benbrook, author of the study and professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University, said.

“Before biotech came on the market, we had one airplane in the county to do all the aerial spraying,” McAllister told the online newspaper. “Now they bring in seven or eight. We’ve got the same acreage of crops. They’re just spraying more.”

Sources:

http://www.fwi.co.uk

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/027827_GM_seeds_food_supply.html

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

The “military industrial complex” has become the military industrial government… It doesn’t stop with the military; other industries seem to have taken over our healthcare, banking, food and agriculture at the federal level as well.

To say that your civil liberties are in jeopardy would be a gross understatement, and while spy drones and the reintroduction of yet another cyber security bill1 may seem off topic for a health website, remember that your right to learn about, apply, and buy alternative health strategies and products may not be as inalienable as you might think anymore.

The US government is hard at work suppressing and limiting your rights to choose your own health care and your right to take control of your own health in a wide variety of ways.

Health freedom and civil liberties are under attack from every conceivable angle, which is why you simply cannot afford to stay idle any longer.

Any attack on your civil liberties will eventually affect your right to choose what foods you want to buy, the supplements you want to take, and the healing modalities you want to pursue to stay healthy.

From Drone Warfare Abroad to Drone Surveillance Across the US

Federal agencies are stepping up efforts to “ensure safety” by way of massive military and National Security Agency (NSA) spending. A bill passed last year, which allocates more than $63 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would unleash some 30,000 unmanned spy drones in civilian airspace across the United States.2

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU):

“Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”

As reported by the Digital Journal:3

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group, has brought a lawsuit against the federal government requesting the FAA release records on agencies, almost 300 of them, carrying authorization for domestic drone operations.

Jennifer Lynch, an attorney with EFF told Talking Points Memo the new drone bill increases the importance of the lawsuit. ‘I think the fact that Congress is pressuring the FAA to expand its UAS program through the FAA Reauthorization Act only reinforces the need for these records,’ she noted.

It’s important that we learn more about how the federal government and state and local law enforcement agencies are already using UASs before we expand their use further. The privacy concerns posed by the use of drones for domestic surveillance are too great to excuse the FAA’s lack of transparency on this issue.”

In an ironic turn, President Obama, who entered the presidency denouncing predecessor George W. Bush’s expansive use of executive power in his “war on terrorism” and lack of transparency is now being attacked in some quarters for using similar tactics — including secret justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments. As revealed in the fall of 2011:4

“American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”

A War Against Unidentified Foes has No End…

Since then, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists5 — a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.” While conventional wars are winding down, the US government clearly intends to keep adding names to these clandestine “kill lists,” creating a sort of bizarre secret warfare in which no one really knows who the target is or, after the fact, why the targeted individual was chosen for assassination in the first place. As stated by the Washington Post:6

“…Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war.”

Not only that, but as OpEdNews recently pointed out:7

“For the first time in history a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out military missions — killing people — in countries where the U.S. is not officially at war.”

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the UN’s investigation into the legality of the US drone program,8 launched late last month. Many are now wondering when the first drone attack will occur on US soil. Time will tell.

In the meantime, drones are under Moore’s Law and their ability continues to rapidly improve at the same time that their costs are decreasing. Inventors are coming up with all sorts of uses for drones, such as delivering anything from documents to burritos to your GPS location. Yep, you read that right. One of the competitors in the AngelHack finals was Burrito Bomber, by Darwin Aerospace. It’s a drone that finds you based on your smart phone location, and drops a parachute-endowed tube containing a hot and fresh burrito into your lap… It didn’t win, and is not going to be commercialized any time soon, but it just goes to show there’s no shortage of brains churning out ideas.

Power Grabs by the FTC are Underhanded Threats to Your Health

But let’s move on to health related issues. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have both taken serious steps to restrict or eliminate your access to certain foods and supplements. For example, the FTC recently decided to “make up its own law and squash free speech,” the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) reports.9

“Last year, an administrative law judge (ALJ) for the Federal Trade Commission upheld [POM Wonderful’s] right to make what the FDA would call structure/function claims in ads. Structure/function claims include statements such as ‘calcium helps build bones.’ They don’t directly talk about curing a disease. At the same time, the ALJ found that some of the company’s claims went too far (specifically where they claimed the juice could help heart disease, prostate cancer, and erectile dysfunction).

Because the ALJ’s decision was a partial victory for both POM Wonderful and the FTC, both sides appealed, which necessitated a ruling from the FTC as a whole.

Last Wednesday, the Commission took a much more unreasonable line. It found that thirty-four of POM’s forty-three claims were implied disease claims — fifteen more than the ALJ had found. The full Commission further ruled that a double-blind random-controlled trial (RCT) is required for any ‘efficacy’ claim and two double blind RCTs for any claim that might seem to be related to a disease. The $35 million on peer-reviewed scientific research previously spent by POM was brushed aside because the studies were not RCTs, which are commonly used for drug testing.

This is a major one-two punch. The FTC is being draconian about what it considers an implied disease claim. One commissioner noted in remarks accompanying the decision: ‘It is difficult to imagine any structure/function claims that POM could associate with its products in the marketplace without such claims being interpreted, under the FTC precedent set in this case, as disease-related claims.'”

With its ruling, the FTC grossly blurs the line between the FTC and the FDA. First of all, the FTC is charged with regulating advertising only. Its job is to make sure ads aren’t deceptive or misleading, and you certainly do not need pharmaceutical RCT trials to determine that. Double-blind RCT’s required for making disease claims is actually an FDA labeling standard for drugs — not food. It’s not for the FTC to demand a product provide such evidence. Such studies are extraordinarily expensive, and are typically only done if the substance in question is or can be patented. Natural substances, such as pomegranate juice, cannot be patented (unless it’s genetically engineered).

“Now the FTC is unnecessarily and arbitrarily deciding to use an FDA drug standard for disease claims in advertising. Some industry observers even wonder whether the FDA has asked the FTC to do this because the FDA would not be able to go this far on its own. There is absolutely no statute justifying this. It is making up law without congressional approval,” the ANH writes.

Personally, I believe we’re inching ever closer to a point where you will be completely barred from getting any information about the healing potential of regular foods. I believe that’s their end game, because foods and nutritional supplements are the only competition to the pharmaceutical monopoly. As the ANH so succinctly points out:

“Who benefits from such a change in policy? Just follow the money. If the FTC prevails in requiring double-blind RCTs, only pharmaceutical companies will be able to make health claims on their patented and FDA-approved products.”

FDA’s Sordid History of Overreach and Abuse of Power

Meanwhile, the FDA has been, and still is, engaged in its own shenanigans. The agency, which has been sorely compromised by the revolving door it keeps with both the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, has a sordid history of attacking natural products and procedures that threaten to interfere with big business, including pharmaceuticals, agriculture and more, while allowing obviously harmful products to remain on the market. Here are but a few examples:
•In December 2011, the FDA reneged on its plan to withdrawal approval of penicillin and tetracycline antibiotics intended for use in food-producing animal feed – a measure it had been planning since 1977.
•In September 2011, the FDA issued a proposed draft policy on dietary supplements10 that could effectively kill your right to purchase nearly all of your favorite natural vitamins and supplements; the proposed policy treats vitamins and other supplements as if they are drugs but many manufacturers will not be able to afford the FDA drug trial process. This could either force supplement companies out of business or make supplements so expensive you won’t be able to afford them.
•The FDA has been fighting a war against raw milk, which is really an unconstitutional assault on one of your most basic rights, i.e. your right to choose what you want to eat and drink; they have stated that Americans have “no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food.”
•The FDA has long been the world’s number one supporter of mercury fillings (amalgams), despite the evidence showing the health hazards of mercury; after making repeated promises to make an announcement about dental amalgam by the end of 2011, they let the deadline pass by unmet.
•The FDA sent a warning letter to Diamond Food for making truthful, scientifically backed health claims about the health benefits of omega-3 fats in walnuts. Because the research cited health claims that omega-3 fats in walnuts may prevent or protect against disease, the FDA said walnuts would be considered “new drugs” and as such would require a new drug application to become FDA-approved.

Why the War on Raw Milk?

It’s important to realize that the “Food Safety Modernization Act” enacted in 2011 gives the FDA almost unlimited authority to decide if food is harmful, even without credible evidence. Raw foods of all kinds have become targets of FDA overreach and abuse of power, but raw milk is perhaps the agency’s most prominent foe. About 30 US states allow raw milk to be sold, but sales are limited to customers within the states’ borders, as the FDA has a ban on the interstate sale of raw milk for human consumption. The ban began in 1987, but the FDA didn’t really begin enforcing it seriously until 2006 — when the government began sting operations and armed raids of dairy farmers and their willing customers.

Why does the FDA allow damaging junk food filled with toxic chemicals, but prevents people from making an educated, informed food choice in purchasing raw grass-fed milk?

As reported by Food Safety News last December,11 Organic Pastures, the largest raw dairy farm in the US, has filed a lawsuit against the FDA for failing to address a “citizen petition” filed by the dairy back in December 2008, requesting the agency to change its interstate ban on raw milk sales. According to law, the FDA is required to respond to such requests within 180 days. After four years of stonewalling, Organic Pastures is suing for a response. According to Food Safety News:12

“If the agency doesn’t give him what he’s looking for when it responds to his request, he wants to press for a full-on jury trial. ‘I want to bring in the experts to talk about this,’ he said, referring to pasteurized milk as ‘the most allergenic food in America.’ In contrast, he said, raw milk has important nutrients in it such as enzymes that kids need to be able to digest milk.”

Take Action!

Food, drug, and constitutional law attorney Jonathan Emord has called the FTC’s decision against POM Wonderful “arbitrary and capricious,” stating that:

“The breadth of [the FTC’s new two-RCT] requirement is truly astonishing… the health marketplace will be dumbed down considerably to the detriment of health conscious consumers… In the end, that will mean a loss in public health as there will now be a multi-million dollar entry fee imposed on any who would wish to convey a health benefit to consumers in the market.”

Indeed, Americans spend more on health care per capita than any other nation on Earth, yet we rank among the worst in terms of health among industrialized nations. There can be no doubt that lack of truthful information about health and nutrition is to blame for this, and the suppression of information is engineered by industries that have no other concern than to make money. And to make money, they need you to be ill informed and chronically sick… As long as people are not permitted to learn about the relationship between food and health, we cannot expect American disease statistics to improve.

I am however heartened by the introduction of a new bill called the Free Speech about Science Act13 (FSAS), which would allow natural product companies to cite peer-reviewed science in their advertising. I urge you to take action to support this bill:

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

Five states have introduced seven different “Ag-Gag bills” to silence people who try to expose CAFO practices. State-based Action Alerts!

Remember our exposé on the factory farms, and the legislation designed to keep the public in the dark about them? They’re back! It’s not just that these bills trample the First Amendment. It’s that these bills are designed to keep the filthy, profoundly unsanitary conditions at factory farms—CAFOs, or Confined Animal Feeding Operations—from being exposed to the public. CAFOs are the antithesis of safe and nutritious food. If governments, both federal and state, were truly serious about food safety, they would address the miserable CAFO conditions.

CAFOs are responsible for foodborne illnesses such as salmonella and listeria; are notorious for their use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic uses, and for exacerbating the “superbug” problem in which organisms become increasingly resistant to antibiotics; and ruin rural economies. In addition, there is the inhumane treatment of the animals themselves.

Ag-Gag laws prevent consumers from being informed, and therefore consumers ability to fully choose what they eat.

The current spate of bills are not novel: ten states introduced similar legislation in 2011–12, and bills were passed in Iowa, Missouri, and Utah. The rest were defeated by grassroots activists like you. These bills are introduced by legislators who have strong industry financial backing. Industry has the tenacity—and the deep pockets—necessary to keep trying to push these bills through again and again, year after year, if they don’t pass the first time.

Last year’s bill in Iowa is a good case in point: it’s a study in rampant conflicts of interest. Monsanto pushed Iowa’s anti-trespassing/Ag-Gag bill because the company has more facilities in Iowa than any other state in the country, and because “crop operations” are also covered by the bills—so Monsanto seed houses, pesticide manufacturing plants, and research facilities in Iowa will be “protected” from hidden cameras or whistleblowers infiltrating their plants.

It’s really all about the economics of CAFOs:

•There are approximately 15,000 CAFOs in the US, which raise 50% of all animals used for our food.
•The largest food processors hold the greatest share of the market, so they wield more power, both economic and political.
•CAFOs receive a wide array of subsidies, both direct and indirect, such as crop subsidies on the corn and soybean used to feed CAFO animals. This in turn means more money in the pockets of feed producers like Monsanto.
•Because CAFOs are not held accountable for the environmental and health damage they do, they don’t have to worry about those costs, putting more into their pocket. Those costs are absorbed by the public at large.
•There are also the economies of scale: once a farm is automated for a large number of animals, doubling that number does not mean a doubling of costs. Organic costs more to produce—as much as 20% more—than CAFOs and factory farms because they require more labor (no use of dangerous of chemicals), more costly fertilizer, higher labor costs for crop rotation, more money spent on organic certification, slower growing time, greater post-harvest handling costs to avoid cross-contamination, and more spacious (and thus more expensive) living conditions for livestock. And of course they don’t receive the aforementioned subsidies.

Sponsors of the 2012 Iowa bill, Senators Joe Seng (D) and Annette Sweeney (R), received contributions from special interests including the Iowa Corn Growers Association (who contributed 8% of Seng’s campaign funding and gave a similar amount to Sweeney), the Iowa Farm Bureau Association, Monsanto, and the Iowa Agribusiness Association. Of course we have no idea what lobbying, if any, went on behind closed doors, but the money trail—and the support for legislation that directly benefits these special interests—speak for themselves.

These Ag-Gag laws are inspired by a model bill called the “Animal and Ecological Animal Terrorism Act” from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC has both powerful corporate members and legislators, making the conflict of interest pretty seamless. ALEC’s corporate members are a Who’s Who of the Big Food supply chain, from farmers to retailers: Monsanto, Kraft, Walmart, Walgreens, etc.

The intent of the ALEC-modeled bills is to introduce them in many states, sometimes word-for-word. It becomes a systematized process. As the New York Times reported last year, an ALEC membership brochure “boasted that ALEC lawmakers typically introduced more than 1,000 bills based on model legislation each year and passed about 17 percent of them.” When ALEC runs with a bill, it has the support necessary to go much further by being introduced in many states simultaneously. It’s a sneaky way of legitimizing an idea that benefits only powerful and wealthy companies, not the general public.

Numerous state legislators are members of ALEC; last year, of the sixty legislators who voted in favor of Ag-Gag bills, 23% of them were members of ALEC, as are sponsors of three of the new Ag-Gag bills: Arizona state senator Jeremy Hutchinson and Wyoming state representative Sue Wallis. In 2010 Wallis was the subject of a conflict-of-interest complaint for trying to block legislation that would send stray horses to slaughter when at the same time she was planning to build a horse slaughter plant of her own. Both Wallis and her cosponsor on the Wyoming bill, Ogden Driskill, are both members of Wyoming Stock Growers Association. Driskill accepted contributions from livestock industry as well as Exxon Mobil.

Here’s a run-down of all seven state bills:

State

Bill Number

Description

Arkansas

SB 13

Makes an “improper animal investigation” by someone who is not a “certified law enforcement officer” a misdemeanor with a potential civil penalty of $5,000.

SB 14

Makes “interference with livestock or poultry” a misdemeanor. “Interference” is defined as creating a concealed image or sound recording or by applying for employment as part of an undercover investigation.

Indiana

SB 373

Makes it unlawful to record agricultural or industrial operations, whether by photograph, film, or video.

SB 391

Requires the Indiana Board of Animal Health to maintain a registry of persons convicted of recording such operations.

Nebraska

LB 204

If a person makes a “false statement” in an employment agreement with the intention of doing an animal facility “economic harm” or doing “serious bodily injury” to someone, criminal violations kick in. If the economic damages are more than $100,000, or there is serious bodily injury, felony charges can be brought. A more serious felony can be brought if economic damages exceed $1 million or if the violation involves the death of another individuals. The bill specifically says that it is not intended to prohibit otherwise lawful, peaceful picketing or to restrict other rights under the First Amendment. Employees who believe animals are neglected or mistreated must make their report within 24 hours of its discovery.

New Hampshire

HB 110

Requires that anyone who records cruelty to livestock must report it within 24 hours.

Wyoming

HB 0126

Makes “knowingly or intentionally” recording the image or sound from an agricultural operation without the consent of the owner or manager is a misdemeanor punishable for up to six months in jail and a $750 fine. Also requires reporting animal abuse within 48 hours, and anyone who makes a good faith effort is immune from civil liability for making a report.

Action Alert! CAFOs don’t need further protection, and individuals who bravely expose CAFO conditions should not be penalized. If you’re a resident in one of the five states where these new bills have been offered, please contact your legislators and tell them to honor free speech and oppose these bills. Please send your message today!

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

Will that avoid mass shootings like Sandy Hook—or just put people on the very drugs that can make them homicidal?

In the January 21 issue of Forbes magazine, Steve Forbes says that hundreds of thousands of people lead tortured, miserable lives and need supervised care. His solution is to repopulate public mental hospitals and wards instead of emptying them, as we have done.

The problem, of course, is that mainstream treatment usually means a battery of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs and these drugs can make people suicidal and homicidal—the very problem we as a society are trying to prevent.

It’s no secret that the medical psychiatric and the pharmaceutical industry are riddled with conflicts of interest—at the expense of the patients themselves. Nearly 70% of the taskforce members who have been busy creating the DSM-5 (the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, essentially the Bible of clinicians, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and policy-makers) reported financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies, up from 57% for the DSM-IV. In the DSM-5, the definition of depression has been expanded to include bereavement—a change that could give drug companies a potential $10 billion increase in antidepressant sales. SSRI antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are known to be addictive and hard to get off of, so using them to alleviate normal human suffering is not a good idea. They are also among the most frequently prescribed drugs for children with autism—even though there is no evidence that these drugs help in the least.

As we reported previously, SSRIs as treatment for depression can create either suicidal thoughts or outbursts of irrational violence against others; this side effect is seen both when taking the drug and when withdrawing from it. Granted, this is association and not necessarily causation—but it raises enough red flags that one must proceed cautiously:

•Steven Kazmierczak, who shot five people and wounded twenty-one others, was taking a cocktail of three different prescribed psychiatric drugs, including Prozac and Xanax.
•Jeff Weise, who shot and killed his grandparents before going to his school and killing seven students and a teacher, wounding seven others, then killing himself, was on Prozac.
•Jason Hoffman, who was taking the antidepressants Celexa and Effexor, opened fire on his classmates, wounding three students and two teachers.
•Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and a teacher and wounded twenty-six others before killing themselves. Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox.
•Kip Kinkel, who murdered his parents, then at school killed two and wounded twenty-five, had just gone off Prozac.
•Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, was “on medication.” ABC News said he had “mental illness” and a “personality disorder”—the very conditions that would lead one to be treated with psychiatric drugs.

Steve Forbes writes, “No one would assert that more proactive treatment of people with extremely serious mental ailments would prevent all mass killings. But the growth in the number of such massacres since the 1960s, when the deinstitutionalizing movement got under way, makes clear that these horrific occurrences could be sharply reduced.” We would point out that the first major mass shooting wasn’t until 1966, and the shooter, Charles Whitman, had never been institutionalized, much less deinstitutionalized. SSRIs were developed in the 1970s, and in the 1980s began replacing the older tricyclic antidepressants we told you about last week. The number of mass shootings started increasing dramatically as with the popularity of SSRI drugs increased. Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass shootings across the country; 25 of them have occurred since 2006, and seven of them took place in 2012.

We are not arguing that violent or seriously ill people should not be confined to mental hospitals—merely that to blame the whole problem on deinstitutionalization is to ignore the fact that the drugs that are supposed to be helping these young people may in fact be responsible for their violent outbreaks. Institutionalization will make it easier to force these drugs on people and giving them in hospitals doesn’t make them any safer.

SSRIs, tricyclics like amitriptyline, and other antidepressants are now firmly established as being linked to the danger of suicide: FDA has a black box warning for young people (though of course it should be for all people). FDA said they were looking into SSRIs and the risk of violence to others after we petitioned them for a black box warning about it, but the agency still hasn’t issued a final decision. Nor is it likely to, because admitting this would ravage sales and hurt the bottom lines of the drug companies.

Forbes has had a history of hostility toward natural therapies. The magazine often promotes a mainstream medical view and has been openly suspicious of supplements—likely because of their ties to drug companies.

However, there may be hope for Forbes yet. In the past two years the magazine has lauded, interviewed, and discussed in numerous articles fitness guru and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Chef and The 4-Hour Body, who recommends a number of supplements. This is likely the first time supplements have been treated with anything but contempt at Forbes. Perhaps they are finally becoming aware of all the exciting new science around supplements.

As any integrative physician can tell you, nutritional deficiencies and imbalances can cause depression. Dr. Jonathan Wright suggests an amino acid supplement program to boost levels of mood-regulating neurotransmitters in the brain without the side effects of prescription drugs. One can get a blood test that assesses fasting levels of essential amino acids; if levels are low, it is important to use blend of all eight essential amino acids.

However, it’s important to look for the cause of low amino acid levels. Quite often it’s because of low stomach acid (hypchlorhydria); if this is the case, patients can benefit from supplemental acid and other supplements.

Dr. Mark Hyman has stated that “Depression is not a Prozac deficiency,” noting that it is often caused by biological imbalances resulting from nutritional deficiencies and exposure to environmental pollutants—and not necessarily chemical imbalances. Besides taking supplements like St. John’s Wort, tryptophan (but not with St John’s Wort), SAMe, vitamin D, DHEA, B vitamins such as niacin, B-12 and folate, and adrenal gland boosters, other treatments for depression include a change in diet, getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, getting enough light, and finding a useful purpose for your life bigger than yourself.

Many people have found relief through homeopathy or acupuncture (often accompanied by a custom Chinese herbal formula). For more severe depression, one might consider hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). In Dr. Paul G. Harch’s study of veterans with depression after traumatic brain injury, 93% of them saw improvement after HBOT.

Anxiety is greatly relieved by L-theanine and especially by the more bioavailable forms of GABA (this is important because not all of them work). Even psychotic conditions can benefit from natural approaches but require supervision by a skilled integrative physician.

We must get away from mainstream medicine’s insistence on treating depression and other mental illnesses with drugs that have dangerous side effects for the patient and for society. Confinement in mental hospitals may hurt rather than help the problem without understanding this fundamental point.

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

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs: A New Cancer Risk in Your Home

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) mandates the phase-out of incandescent light bulbs, and favors energy-efficient compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs.

Sounds good—until you realize that CFL bulbs contain mercury, and mercury poses a significant cancer risk. A new study shows that CFL bulbs also emit high levels of ultraviolet radiation—specifically, UVC and UVA rays. In fact, the UV rays are so strong that they can actually burn skin and skin cells. Experts say the radiation could initiate cell death and cause skin cancer in its deadliest form—melanoma.

In every bulb the researchers tested, they found that the protective phosphor coating of the light bulb was cracked, allowing dangerous UV rays to escape. Healthy skin cells exposed to CFLs showed a decrease in their proliferation rate, an increase in the production of reactive oxygen species, and a decrease in ability to contract collagen.

On top of that, it’s a sad fact of life that light bulbs break. How do you clean up the mercury after a bulb breaks? The Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation measured the release of mercury vapor from broken bulbs. They recorded concentrations near the bulb of up to 800 mcg/m3, which is eight times the average eight-hour occupational exposure limit allowed by OSHA (100 mcg/m3).

Even more shocking, the recommended limit for children is a mere 0.2 mcg/m3. A child exposed to a broken CFL bulb will receive eight thousand times the recommended amount of mercury vapor!

A broken 13-watt CFL bulb will only have released 30% of its mercury a full four days after it is broken—the remainder is trapped in the bulb. So picking up shards with your bare hands or leaving them in poorly ventilated room while you ponder the best disposal method is a particularly bad idea.

Unfortunately, there is no good solution for cleaning up after a broken CFL bulb. Researchers at Brown are testing a cloth made with a nanomaterial (nanoselim) that can capture mercury emissions for proper disposal. But until this is commercially available, it is best to avoid CFLs altogether. And how will we dispose of the clean-up cloth?

General Electric claims that CFLs don’t produce a hazardous amount of UV radiation, and that UV is far less than the amount produced by natural daylight. The truth is that all compact fluorescent lights bulbs contain mercury vapor. Once that vapor is hit with an electric current, it emits a great number of UV rays. UV rays are theoretically absorbed by the layer of phosphor that coats the bulbs—but the signature twisted spiral shape makes these bulbs more prone to cracks in the phosphor, which dramatically increases UV/mercury exposure. Researchers found cracks in almost all bulbs purchased from retail stores, indicating that it is a standard design flaw of these bulbs.

CFL bulbs contains other cancer-causing chemicals as well. German scientists found that several different chemicals and toxins were released when CFLs are turned on, including naphthalene (which has been linked to cancer in animals) and styrene (which has been declared “a likely human carcinogen”). A sort of electrical smog develops around these lamps, which could be dangerous.

CFLs are supposedly better for the environment, but according to the Association of Lighting and Mercury Recyclers, 98% of CFLs end up in landfills—creating a mercury build-up that can escape into our soil and waterways.

We’re happy that the federal government is tackling environmental problems, but this “solution” is especially short-sighted—and not unlike the national smart meter push, is creating serious health risks in the long-term.

Worse, soon consumers won’t have the option to buy incandescent lights—they simply won’t be available. The government hasn’t placed an outright ban on incandescent light bulbs. Section 321 of EISA mandates higher efficiency standards for general service lamps. But these standards are high enough that most commonly used incandescent bulbs just won’t meet the new requirements. EISA will effectively eliminate 40-, 60-, 75-, and 100-watt incandescent bulbs. The new efficiency levels will be in full force by 2014.

Even the United Nations has acknowledged the problem of mercury in CFL bulbs, and has instated a ban on certain types of CFLs. We won’t know the full implications of that ban until the treaty is made publically available.

The good news is that CFLs are not the only energy-efficient bulbs out there. There are also light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are mercury-free—though LEDs emit blue light, which can be disruptive to sleep, as we noted in our 2012 article.

Action Alert! Please contact your legislators immediately and call for a repeal of the ban on incandescent lights. Tell them about the cancer risks and the lack of proper disposal methods. Please take action today!

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

A Turn in the Road

By Robert Ringer

I believe in free will and in man’s capacity to rise above adversity. I believe in accountability. I believe in the basic virtues upon which Western civilization has been built.

But I also believe that people sometimes take a wrong turn in the road — perhaps inadvertently or maybe as a result of an ill-advised impulse — then discover that they can’t find their way back. There can be many causes for making that wrong turn — teenage pregnancy, the loss of a loved one, disappointment over not landing an anticipated promotion, lack of social acceptance, or failure in an area such as sports, academics, or spirituality.

Whatever the cause may be, we know that some people give up on life and turn to alcohol and drugs, become bitter recluses, or even resort to suicide. Then there are others who, after experiencing everything from a poverty-stricken background to racism, to the loss of an entire family, to financial catastrophe; fight back and succeed against all odds.

What we don’t know is why one person is motivated to take the turn in a road that leads to a happy, fulfilling life, while another chooses a turn that leads to self-destruction and misery. Is it genetics over which we have no control? Is it inevitability dictated by a Conscious Universal Power Source or a random universe?

The truth of the matter is that we simply don’t know. Years ago at a seminar in Sydney, Australia, Jim Rohn, in talking about how easy it is to become irritated by individuals who are nasty to you, suggested that you have to learn to “meet people in the hurt.”

Everyone who has children can relate to this, because kids experience so much pain growing up. What they have to go through as adolescents and teenagers borders on cruel and unusual punishment.

The good news is that most of them survive and go on to lead normal, healthy lives. The bad news is that millions of them never find their way back to the main road and end up on drugs, alcohol, or both. They end up in abusive marriages. They end up homeless. And, yes, many end up dead at an early age.

Whenever I cross paths with a street beggar, I find myself wondering what happened in that person’s life that brought him to such a wretched state? What was the wrong turn he took, why did he take it, and when?

I began giving money to beggars at a relatively young age. I especially made it a point to give to them when I was struggling in my own life, because I would think to myself (and still do), “There but for the grace of God go I.“

People have often chastised me for giving money to “human blight“ who appear unwilling to try to help themselves. But I am motivated to do so by the lingering question: “What is it that happened in this person’s life that brought him to the point where he has lost the sinew to fight for his existence?“

It’s easy to say that a person should stand up and do whatever it takes to overcome his plight. But that begs the question, “Why?” Why doesn’t he do it? Is it a genetic problem? Is it willed by a Higher Being for reasons we do not understand? If he’s “lazy,“ why is he lazy?

I know that something, somewhere along the line, caused this pitiful soul to take a wrong turn in the road. And something genetic or environmental has kept him from rising up and fighting the good fight. Something has totally defeated him, something that will forever remain a mystery to the thousands of people who pass by him each day.

Whenever I come across someone in this situation it’s also a reminder to me of how minor my problems are compared to the problems of those who have permanently lost their way on this side of the secular or nonsecular divide.

What I have said in this article is not an appeal for you to follow my lead. What you do in your life, and with your life, is strictly your business. But what I hope you take away from this article is an increased capacity to keep your own problems in perspective. In addition, I hope it will make you think about how fortunate you are that you haven’t taken that wrong turn in the road — or, if you have, that you were able to find your way back.

Above all, I hope my words remind you just how important it is to make the effort to at least meet your friends and loved ones in the hurt, particularly your children. Love and understanding could very well be the difference between a child’s becoming an honor student and going on to a stellar career at Harvard … or evolving into an angry kid in a black trench coat whose life ends in tragedy.

[Ed. Note. Craig Ballantyne is the editor of Early to Rise and author of Financial Independence Monthly and Turbulence Training. He is also the co-creator of the Early to Rise $100,000 Transformation Contest that you are a part of today. Craig’s goal is to help one million people improve their lives by 2020, and he does this through his relevant and relatable content that he provides daily, weekly and monthly on his numerous sites. Subscribe to Early to Rise today so you don’t miss out on Craig’s motivational messages.]

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

Every day one or two health foods are flooded into the market claiming
superior health benefits. Almost every month, bookstores will stock up on
books that sell health and dieting programs.

On the TV, exercise programs and exercise machines are advertised to
keep healthy and fit. The fact is all of these works, the question is, is
it really needed?

The Exotic Sounding Foods:

You would have heard of the Acai berry, fig leaves, bitter melon, green
tea, and so many other exotic sounding foods.

Do they work? …

They do, but so does other foods.

When the excitement for these foods wanes, another food will crop up,
the benefits overstated, and orders will start coming in increasing the
demand, spiking prices for the products until a new one appears.

Is it worth it?

Well, that depends on how deep the wallet is.

The truth is that every natural food has its own benefit, that when
examined closely – will always reveal special properties that can be harnessed
by an advertiser.

So it’s therefore important to remember, that when it sounds too good
to be true, then it probably is.

The Fad Foods:

Everybody would LOVE to have a good figure, complete with washboard
six-pack abs – and why not!

When you feel great in your body and mind, you’ll naturally find it easier
to influence your immediate environment!

– Employment can be easier to find, your earning potential increases, your
body looks and feels so much healthier, younger, and energized.

What is wrong with fad foods is that it is not telling us the whole truth.

If Halle Berry for example gave birth last week and appeared on TV in better
shape then before the child birth, everybody would be fascinated with
how she did it!

The media knows this, so the question that would be asked, is which
diet helped keep her figure in top shape.

Whatever answer Halle Berry gives, would be sure to get the audience’s
attention – and therefore the telephones would start ringing for orders.

What’s NOT mentioned is that stars maintain a host of dieticians,
physicians and exercise guru’s working for the sole purpose of keeping
the image of the star and maintaining it.

The diet may be true but it is only a part of the whole regimen of things
observed to make the star look good on camera.

Look to eat a variety of food. All food is good provided the person eats variety
and strives for a balanced diet.

Exotic sounding and foreign delicacies are not required nor needed. Natural
grown food is great for the needs of people striving for health and vibrancy.

The key in maintaining natural health is balance, variety, and common sense.

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

What you are about to read is 100% true to the best of my knowledge, and it all started in September of 2012 when we were in the process of launching the Natural News Store and receiving organic certification from the USDA.

I knew we wanted to offer chlorella under our own brand name, but I had heard rumors of chlorella from some sources being contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides and even pharmaceutical residues. I began asking around and quickly discovered that no one had done laboratory tests on a broad selection of chlorella to determine contamination levels of chlorella from different countries and sources. This surprised me, and I decided to take on the task myself.

I proceeded to purchase chlorella from 17 different sources, some were chlorella supplements purchased at retail, and others were chlorella purchased directly from importers and suppliers. I took the chlorella from each source, placed it in a new Ziploc bag and affixed it with a label containing a letter and a number such as “N03” or “M01.” I did this myself, changing my latex gloves between samples, to make sure it was done right. Then I had all these samples sent to a reputable laboratory specializing in the detection of metals in food products.

The tests I ordered for each sample were:

• Aluminum (1.0 ppm detection limit)
• Arsenic (0.20 ppm detection limit)
• Cadmium (0.05 ppm detection limit)
• Lead (0.10 ppm detection limit)
• Mercury (0.05 ppm detection limit)

The 17 sources of chlorella boiled down to just 10 unique sources, as some of the different brands turned out to be from the same source. Those unique sources had the following countries of origin:

• 3 sources from China
• 3 sources from Taiwan
• 3 sources from Japan
• 1 source from Korea

(We did not test sources from India or any other country for this study. Nearly all the commercially-sold chlorella available today comes from China, Taiwan, Japan or Korea.)

In our research, we reached nine significant findings. Every person who consumes chlorella should be aware of these nine things:

Finding #1) There is no detectable mercury contamination in any chlorella
This is good news. Our tests found no detectable mercury in any of the chlorella samples, even the chlorella from China.

This result is actually a little surprising, given how strongly chlorella binds to mercury. You would think that chlorella grown outdoors, downwind from coal-fired power plants, would accumulate mercury, but our tests showed zero detectable mercury in ALL samples.

Finding #2) Chlorella from China was the most contaminated
We found that chlorella from China was consistently more contaminated with metals than any other source. The average metals contamination found in our lab tests across the three sources from China was:

• Aluminum: 29 ppm
• Arsenic: 0.89 ppm
• Cadmium: 0.17 ppm
• Lead: 0.27 ppm

Note that Arsenic, Cadmium and Lead are all under 1 ppm and therefore only “trace” levels. These do not concern me, as there is far more arsenic in apple juice, for example, and there’s probably more cadmium and lead in many types of seafood than in chlorella from China.

But the one number here that does concern me is the aluminum concentration. Given that aluminum intake is something most people seek to avoid, it seemed important to document the aluminum levels in various sources of chlorella.

Granted, there is aluminum in lots of other foods and supplements, but chlorella is specifically taken by people looking to remove metals from their bodies, not introduce yet more metals into their digestive tract. So this number of 29 ppm alarmed me, and I decided after seeing these results that I would never sell chlorella grown in China because I didn’t want my readers eating 29 ppm of aluminum.

This was a big decision because China-grown chlorella is by far the cheapest source on the market. Thus, it has the highest profit margins of all chlorella. And as I later discovered, it is precisely this China-grown chlorella that is being widely promoted by many health websites across the internet. It’s also used in many superfood formulations that have chlorella as one of their ingredients. More discussion on this later…

Finding #3) Even “Organic” chlorella from China was far more contaminated than non-organic chlorella from other countries
Here’s the real shocker in this: According to our lab tests, the highest concentration of aluminum was found in a certified organic chlorella grown in China.

That sample tested at 33 ppm Aluminum, the highest of all our tests. And remember, this chlorella is sold in the USA as USDA certified organic chlorella.

By comparison, the non-organic chlorella produced in Korea showed zero detectable Aluminum.

In essence, our lab tests revealed that when it comes to chlorella, certified organic doesn’t necessarily mean cleaner chlorella. In fact, the cleanest chlorella we found wasn’t certified organic at all.

You might wonder: How can this be? Doesn’t organic mean clean? No! Organic certification is the certification of a growing process, not an end result. You can follow organic practices, but if you’re growing chlorella right next to a chemical plant, for example, you’re going to get some cross-contamination in the soil, the air, or the water that’s used to grow chlorella. Your chlorella can still be 100% certified organic even though it’s far more contaminated with metals than non-organic chlorella.

This is an important distinction because most people equale organic with “clean.” But that’s a huge mistake, because with chlorella, the country of origin seems to be far more important than whether it’s organic or conventional.

Organic certification does not require testing for heavy metals, by the way. A product can be heavily contaminated with aluminum, lead and even mercury and still be certified “organic” by the USDA.

Here’s an infographic we created to help explain sources of possible contamination for chlorella (story continues below):

Finding #4) The cleanest chlorella from Taiwan is hardly sold by anyone in the USA because it’s too expensive
In terms of chlorella grown outdoors in large cultivation pools, Taiwan was by far the cleanest source.

There are three chlorella producers in Taiwan, each with varying degrees of quality and purity in their final product. The cleanest producer of chlorella in Taiwan is a certified organic producer whose final product is so expensive that, to my knowledge, almost nobody sells it in North America.

Except us. We are the first large retailer to carry this chlorella, which we call “Clean Chlorella SL” where “SL” stands for sunlight. This is the cleanest chlorella we could find that’s grown in pools where it receives natural sunlight. This sunlight helps boost production of chlorophyll and CGF (Chlorella Growth Factor), a unique complex of peptides and phytonutrients that’s unique to chlorella.

This chlorella will be available from the Natural News Store around March 1 (it is currently in production).

This Clean Chlorella SL tested at only 3.8 ppm of aluminum, nearly one-tenth the levels found in “certified organic” chlorella grown in China (and widely sold across the internet in the USA). Level of arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury in Clean Chlorella SL were undetectable in our lab tests.

In terms of a country of origin, Taiwan is arguably the best source for chlorella overall, and our lab tests showed that chlorella from all three sources in Taiwan is consistently cleaner than chlorella grown in China.

The highest aluminum contamination we found in a Taiwan-produced chlorella was just 11 ppm (one-third that of the highest contamination found in China), and the lowest was 3.8 ppm. Concentrations of other metals found in Taiwan-grown chlorella were negligible. In summary, Taiwan was overall the cleanest producer of chlorella, most likely due to the relatively clean environment in rural Taiwan, where the chlorella is produced.

Finding #5) Japan is not the cleanest source of chlorella
If you know much about Japanese culture, you might think chlorella grown in Japan would be the cleanest, most precisely-controlled chlorella on the planet. But it turns out this is simply not the case.

Our lab tests showed Japanese-grown chlorella to be more contaminated than chlorella grown in Taiwan, but less contaminated than chlorella grown in China.

Across the samples we tested, chlorella grown in Japan averaged 16 ppm of aluminum, about twice that of Taiwan chlorella but half that of China chlorella.

Here are the averages reported by our lab tests:

AVERAGE ALUMINUM CONTAMINATION OF CHLORELLA BY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

• China = 29 ppm
• Japan = 16 ppm
• Taiwan = 7.6 ppm
• Korea = 0 ppm*

* The Korean chlorella is grown indoors, which I will explain later. Comparing Korean chlorella to the others is a bit like apples and oranges.

BY COMPARISON: AVERAGE ALUMINUM CONTAMINATION OF EVERYDAY FOODS:
(Source: Dr. Jonathan Wright)

• Celery: 190 ppm
• Beans: 165 ppm
• Wheat and corn: 140 ppm
• Potatoes: 100 ppm
• Pineapple: 100 ppm

This is a very interesting comparison because it shows that even the most contaminated chlorella we found has only a fraction of the aluminum found in everyday foods.

However, before you conclude that this makes aluminum “safe,” consider this: One source of aluminum pollution of food crops is chemtrails, where aluminum and other elements are sprayed into the atmosphere, apparently in some sort of mad science atmospheric experiment.

So the 190 ppm of aluminum in celery is, in my view, suspiciously high and certainly not “normal.” The same is true with all the other crops that are contaminated with aluminum from chemtrails, coal-fired power plants and other sources.

(As a side note, this is why the future of clean food is food grown in greenhouses, where protections exist from airborne aluminum and other pollutants.)

Bottom line: Aluminum should be AVOIDED in your diet as much as possible. This metal has no beneficial role in human biology beyond trace amounts.

Radiation in Japan?
In our research, we also learned that the market for chlorella originating in Japan has collapsed following the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011. There is great distrust among consumers that chlorella originating in Japan might be contaminated with radiation.

We did not test chlorella for residual radiation, so we have nothing to report in this area. However, as someone who is scientifically trained, I very much doubt any significant level of radiation “resides” in chlorella from Japan. When it comes to chlorella, I’m more concerned about metals and synthetic chemicals than radiation.

Moreover, chlorella has traditionally been used throughout world history as a method to help remove radioactive isotopes from the body. This is likely because in laboratory tests, chlorella binds very quickly and strongly to many different metals and elements, including those isotopes typically released in a radiation accident or nuclear attack (such as Iodine-131 or Cesium-137).

According to an article written by Ethan Huff, “A 1989 study put forth by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences… found that chlorella greatly helped improve survival rates among mice irradiated with a lethal dose of radioactive gamma rays.”

The National Library of Medicine lists the following studies on chlorella and radiation:

The radioprotective effects of aqueous extract from chlorococcal freshwater algae (Chlorella kessleri) in mice and rats
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2688154

Evaluation of radioprotective action of a mutant (E-25) form of Chlorella vulgaris in mice
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8176669

Post-exposure radioprotection by Chlorella vulgaris (E-25) in mice
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8543329

Finding #6) Marketing claims of “purest” or “cleanest” had no correlation to reality
One very interesting finding from our research was that chlorella marketing claims of being “pure” or “clean” or “natural” had no correlation whatsoever with the metals contamination concentrations found in our laboratory tests.

What we did find is that even sellers of the most contaminated chlorella were happy to proclaim their chlorella was clean, pure, natural, etc., while implying it was the best chlorella on the planet.

In some cases, companies selling the cleanest sources of chlorella actually downplayed their claims, sounding very humble and not pushing any hype at all.

The conclusion from this? The marketing of chlorella is carried out with a lot of hype, and much of that hype simply isn’t backed up by what we saw in our laboratory tests.

Finding #7) Some companies “cut” their chlorella with cheap fillers
One of the more disturbing findings that came out of our research was the discovery that some fairly well-known nutritional supplement brands in the USA are actually “cutting” their chlorella with cheap fillers in order to make it appear their customers are getting a better value.

They will sell, for example, 500mg chlorella tablets, but the tablet turned out to be a combination of chlorella and cheap calcium filler!

This means you’re actually paying for (and swallowing) cheap “rock” fillers instead of getting 100% pure chlorella.

The most common filler is “calcium carbonate” — cheap calcium “rock” with a whitish color. When cut with chlorella, it causes the chlorella to have a splotchy appearance of a mixture of white and green. Here’s the visible proof:

Buyer beware! Some of the chlorella being sold out there is “cut” with fillers. This is easy to avoid by simply reading the ingredients list. Look for calcium carbonate. If it’s there, your chlorella has been “cut” and cheapened.

For the record, the Clean Chlorella we offer at the Natural News Store is 100% pure chlorella and not “cut” with anything.

Finding #8) There is no commercially-grown chlorella in North America
When it comes to chlorella, there is nothing grown commercially in North America. There are small operations in Hawaii, but not large enough to fill commercial demand.

Cyanotech, the well-known producer of spirulina on the Big Island, does not produce chlorella, either. If you want chlorella, you have to go outside North America.

The countries producing chlorella in large commercial quantities are Taiwan, Japan, China and, to a lesser extent, India, Indonesia and Europe. For many years, Japan was the leader in chlorella production, but Taiwan and China have since surpassed Japan.

Chlorella is often packaged in the USA, but it is not grown in the USA.

Finding #9) Chlorella capsules can cost 380% more than chlorella tablets
Here’s another shocker when it comes to chlorella: Chlorella packed in capsules (i.e. veggie caps or gelatin caps) can cost you 380% more, gram per gram, than chlorella in tablet form.

For example, one popular brand of chlorella sold at the discounted price of $10.98 on Amazon still costs 31 cents per gram of chlorella.

In contrast, the Clean Chlorella™ sold in the Natural News Store, which by the way is the cleanest chlorella in the world according to laboratory tests, costs just 8.2 cents per gram, or almost one-fourth the cost of the brand-name encapsulated chlorella sold on Amazon.com.

You know the old adage that, “You get what you pay for?” That’s not always true with chlorella. We found many examples where higher-priced, certified “organic” chlorella products were far MORE contaminated than lower-priced chlorella products.

When it comes to chlorella, price is not a reliable indicator of quality. In fact, we found no correlation whatsoever between price and quality at the retail level.

At the wholesale level, on the other hand, there was a strong correlation between price and quality. The cheaper the chlorella, the higher the levels of contamination with metals. But this cheap price at the wholesale level did NOT reliably translate into the retail prices being charged to consumers.

Why is that? Because consumers are unable to tell the difference between cheap, contaminated chlorella and high-priced, “clean” chlorella. Many retailers take advantage of that and buy the cheapest stuff they can find (usually from China), then mark it up as much as 700% and sell it as “premium” chlorella.

I’m not saying they all do this, but like in any industry, there’s a wide spectrum of ethics among the key players: Some are more focused on providing value to their customers; other are more focused on maximizing profits for themselves.

Are aluminum levels in lower-quality chlorella really a health concern?
By publishing the laboratory tests showing aluminum levels in low-grade chlorella, we do not in any way intend to imply that this level of aluminum is harmful to human health. Because chlorella is so incredibly powerful at binding with metals such as aluminum, it is believed that this aluminum passes right through the body, still bound to the chlorella (which can also bind itself to many other metals).

Furthermore, even the most polluted source of chlorella shown in our testing — a “certified organic” chlorella grown in China — only tested at 33 ppm of aluminum.

By contrast, a well-known wheat grass juicing detox / healing center in Florida actively doses its clients with a liquid containing over 1200 ppm of aluminum — all while calling it a “detox.” (Crazy but true.) For the record, mercury is also a powerful “detox” by the same logic, as it binds easily with other metals. That doesn’t mean we should all run around drinking mercury.

In truth, you are far more likely to consume metals like mercury, cadmium and lead in a seafood dinner than you are to get it from chlorella. This FDA chart, for example, shows the mercury contamination levels of commercial fish and shellfish. All these levels are higher than what we found in chlorella, across the board.

By and large, all the chlorella we tested seems well within the margins of dietary intake safety on all the metals we tested.

But there is an issue that concerns me which we have not yet tested: Pesticide and pharmaceutical runoff chemicals. It is reasonable to suspect that chlorella with the highest levels of aluminum may also correlate strongly with the highest levels of pesticides and pharmaceutical chemicals. Although these may only be present in trace quantities, they can still add to the synthetic chemical burden of the human body and liver.

More tests need to be conducted on the various sources of chlorella to determine levels of pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other synthetic chemicals they may contain. Until those tests are conducted and published, the best precaution you can take is to get your chlorella from verified clean sources.

Summary of these findings
• All commercially-grown chlorella is free of mercury, according to our lab tests.

• Chlorella grown in China is the most contaminated with aluminum and other metals.

• China-produced chlorella is the cheapest at the wholesale level.

• “Organic” chlorella from China is more contaminated than non-organic chlorella from Korea.

• Taiwan produces the cleanest outdoor (sunlight) chlorella using spring-fed water, but most chlorella purchased today that’s made in Taiwan is not from this certified organic producer.

• The certified organic chlorella from Taiwan is the most expensive in the world, at wholesale.

• “Certified organic” does not mean free from contamination.

• Japan is not the cleanest source of chlorella. Taiwan is actually cleaner, according to our lab tests.

• The aluminum contamination levels of chlorella is only a fraction of the aluminum contamination levels found in everyday foods like celery, corn and beans.

• Chlorella has been scientifically studied vs. radiation poisoning.

• Chlorella marketing claims have no correlation to the actual quality of the chlorella being sold.

• Some companies “cut” their chlorella with cheap calcium filler. This is visible on the tablets when inspected closely.

• There is no commercially-grown chlorella in North America.

• Chlorella in capsules can cost 380% more than chlorella in tablets.

Introducing Clean Chlorella
After months of research and preparation, the Natural News Store is introducing Clean Chlorella, the top two cleanest sources of chlorella produced on the planet. We call them:

• Clean Chlorella™ – virtually zero contaminants, grown indoors in laboratory conditions. (Available now.)

• Clean Chlorella™ SL – grown under sunlight in outdoor pools, certified Organic. (Available March 1 at the latest, possibly sooner depending on the production run.)

Here’s an explanation of what they are and where they come from:

Clean Chlorella™

• Country of origin = South Korea
• Not certified organic
• Tested ZERO detectable levels of all metals in our lab tests
• Grown indoors, under laboratory conditions
• Lacks sunlight as is present in chlorella grown in outdoor pools
• Surprisingly affordable and priced competitively
• Best use is for supporting the body’s elimination of undesirable contaminants*

Clean Chlorella™ SL (currently in production, available March 1 from the Natural News Store)

• Country of origin = Taiwan
• At wholesale, this is the most expensive chlorella in the world
• The cleanest producer of all 3 chlorella producers in Taiwan
• Certified organic by USDA as well as European agencies
• Meticulously tested in high-end, university-level laboratories in Taiwan
• Grown outdoors, so receives the strengthening effects of sunlight
• Best use is for supporting the body’s rejuvenation and strengthening processes*
• Arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury all tested non-detectable levels. Aluminum, the “safest” of the metals, tests at just 3.8 ppm, nearly 1/10th the level of aluminum found in certified organic chlorella from China.

Why I sourced the cleanest chlorella on the planet
On a personal note, I want you to know why I undertook this effort to not only test all the sources of chlorella, but also to import, package and retail only the cleanest chlorella I could find.

I’ve been taking and advocating chlorella for many years, and I feed it to the animals on the ranch where I live: donkeys, chickens, goats and even my dog Roxy. We all eat chlorella, and the donkeys go crazy over it. I’m the original author of the now-famous website www.ChlorellaFactor.com as well.

Given how much chlorella we all consume on a regular basis, I really felt a strong desire to test the sources of chlorella I was eating and find the cleanest sources possible. As the editor of Natural News and the decision maker on what products we carry in our store, I could have chosen any chlorella, including the cheaper (high-profit) chlorella grown in China. But for me, that just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t feel comfortable feeding China-grown chlorella to my animals, so how could I justify selling it to my readers? I couldn’t.

I can only offer to my readers the same high-quality chlorella that I eat for myself and share with the animals under my care on the ranch. I’ve been around long enough and have seen enough funny business in the world of nutrition to know that ethics matter. My personal code of ethics — which has only grown stronger and more resolute over the past few years — demands that I treat my own readers with the same nutritional consideration that I would grant to a close friend or a family member.

That’s why every single thing you find at the Natural News Store today is something that I personally consume or recommend to my closest friends, colleagues and family members. It’s also why our shopping cart doesn’t carry 1000 products. I’m very particular about what I will promote, and if it takes me an extra four months to do the lab tests and find the best sources before rolling something out, then so be it.

Support industry best practices by supporting Clean Chlorella™
When you purchase Clean Chlorella from the Natural News Store, you also support clean production practices in the industry. Our aim is to help drive the chlorella industry to be cleaner and more transparent in the composition of its final product.

My pledge to you, Natural News readers, is that I will always seek out the cleanest, safest and most pure sources of chlorella on the planet, and I will make those available to our readers even if it means less profit than retailing cheaper, lower-quality chlorella.

When you purchase Clean Chlorella from the Natural News Store, you not only help financially support our investigative journalism efforts, you also help support the chlorella industry’s most responsible and ethical producers of this amazing superfood.

We currently offer Clean Chlorella in a 10 oz bag,

Clean Chlorella in a 30 oz bag,

and Clean Chlorella in a 64 oz steel can for long-term nutritional preparedness.

Before March 1st, we will be offering Clean Chlorella SL (certified organic) in bags and cans as well. All these products are packaged in our USDA certified organic facility in central Texas.

Our chlorella ranges from 54% to 61% protein, making it an outstanding protein supplement as well as a powerful source of chlorophyll and CGF (Chlorella Growth Factor).

Thank you for your support, and we hope you gained valuable knowledge from our lab testing and research efforts on this subject.

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

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Threatens Your First Amendment Rights and Attempts to Censor Paleo Blogger

By Dr. Mercola

When it comes to nutrition, it is very important that you have the right to freedom of choice. Unfortunately, organizations such as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), formerly known as American Dietetic Association (ADA), are threatening your freedom of choice and information about your health and nutrition.

Why should you be concerned?

Your most fundamental tool for staying healthy is your ability to pursue different avenues and philosophies of care, and based on that information, decide which one is best for you.

If you hope to ever achieve optimal health and wellness, you have to address your nutrition — it’s the most fundamental factor. Anyone who disputes that doesn’t understand health.

The Alliance for Natural Health is on the frontline in the battle for your freedom of choice. In the interview above, Attorney Gretchen DuBeau discusses just how vital this issue is and how organizations like AND are trying to monopolize the health industry.

It’s one more example of money and power taking precedence over what’s in the best interest of the consumer.

Your health care options should not be limited or censored by government agencies — or worst yet, criminalized for being outside the box. Particularly because what’s INSIDE the box in our “healthcare” system is generally counter to good health!

Organizations like AND are trying to use the legislative system to create an unfair monopoly in the same way physicians have (via the AMA). Their goal is simple: eliminate the competition. Paleo Blogger Steve Cooksey found himself in exactly that position — targeted by the AND because he was considered to be “the competition.”

Paleo Blogger Attacked by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

When Steve Cooksey received a disturbing 19-page letter from the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition, complete with threats of arrest, he did what others are often afraid to do: he made it public. It seems his blog, which features nutrition principles based on the Paleo Diet, upset the dietetics board because it went firmly against their recommendations for diabetics. They accused him of providing “nutrition advice” or “nutrition counseling” without a license.

The Board ordered that Cooksey take down the nutritional advice or face prosecution… and outrageously prohibited him from even offering such advice for free to friends over the phone!

To fight back, on May 30, 2012, Cooksey filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition for violating his freedom of speech rights, assisted by the Institute for Justice.

On October 5, 2012, a federal court dismissed Cooksey’s lawsuit on the grounds he did not suffer an injury that gives him a basis to challenge the government’s actions. But he’s not backing down. He plans to appeal and will argue that the government cannot single people out, tell them their speech is illegal, and then plead in court that it has not chilled their speech. But there’s much more to this story than meets the eye. The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is a state chapter of the AND, and leaked internal documents show the affront against Steve Cooksey is only the beginning.

If it Were Up to the AND, Dear Abby Would be Thrown in Jail!

In April 2012, Forbes contributor Michael Ellsberg wrote an article1 detailing a leaked internal AND document that suggested the agency is moving full-steam ahead with a “strategy for gaining legal control over the term ‘nutritionist,’ as a path to limit competition for its members by silencing competing types of nutrition counseling.”

In December 2011, the AND, which is typically associated with the professional license “Registered Dietitian (RD),” applied for patents on a variety of nutrition-related professional titles, ranging from “certified nutrition coach” and “nutrition professional” to “registered nutrition educator” or “nutrition associate.” The leaked document is even more brazen, as the AND goes on at length to describe a “Mega Issue,” which is basically the need to protect the Registered Dietitian license, and increase licensure efforts and retaliations against non-licensed parties across the country.

The purpose of this is not to protect the public from receiving harmful nutrition advice, but instead to control the industry and monopolize profits. There is now an army of AND volunteers in every state who are actively trying to pass legislation at the state level — and they’ve been successfully doing so for the past decade. They operate quietly, under the radar, attacking people for “practicing without a license.” Dietitians are even promised prizes for turning people in. And this appears to be the web in which Steve Cooksey was trapped.

The AND wants you to be able to get your nutritional advice only from one of their conventionally trained Registered Dietitians, who has undergone nutritional brainwashing and sticks to the official party line. This would exclude and silence your chiropractor, naturopath, personal trainer, and any number of other individuals who may have valuable points to offer. The Institute of Justice regards this as blatant infringement on first amendment rights, and I agree. As the Institute for Justice states2:

” … the First Amendment does not allow the government to ban people from sharing ordinary advice about diet, or scrub the Internet — from blogs to Facebook to Twitter — of speech the government does not like. North Carolina can no more force Steve to become a licensed dietitian than it could require Dear Abby to become a licensed psychologist.”

AND Conferences Sing the Praises of Processed Foods and Feature Coca-Cola Exhibits

Many are unaware the AND is partnered with and sponsored by junk-food giants, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mars and Kellogg. Consequently, dietary advice from many RDs is likely to be heavily biased by information from food-industry bigwigs.

Case in point: the AND’s annual conference is often called “the world’s largest meeting of food and nutrition experts.” Interestingly, these conferences are absent of any true nutritional experts whose knowledge could make a positive impact on Americans’ health. But they do showcase numerous representatives from Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg, PepsiCo and other processed food and junk-food giants3. Aren’t these the companies that make precisely the foods we need to eat LESS of in order to stay healthy and fight obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer and countless other chronic diseases?

According to Really Eat Right, a campaign dedicated to ending the AND’s collusion with junk food and pharmaceutical industries4:
•AND claims sugar and artificial colors are safe for children
•AND is under investigation by congress
•AND receives about $1 million a year in payments from the pharmaceutical industry
•AND allows pharmaceutical companies to market their controversial products at AND events
•The credentialing arm of the AND (the Commission on Dietetic Registration) offers continuing professional courses sponsored by Coca-Cola

It’s obvious the real mission of the AND is to support the processed food and pharmaceutical industries, rather than improve public health. Unfortunately, many people will adopt their nutritional advice, and their health will suffer, as a result.

The FDA is Just as Corrupt as the AND — Probably Even More So!

An even more pernicious force than the AND is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is essentially an extension of the medical monopoly that strives to limit access to truthful information about nutrition and health. Their latest target has been the nutritional supplement industry. By making it virtually impossible for you to obtain good information about supplements, they increase the sale of drugs, and this makes the pharmaceutical industry oh, so happy.

I’ve received many warning letters from the FDA for saying things that are contrary to their recommendations. I’ve not been accused of saying things that are untrue, or in some way deceiving or harming people — I’ve been warned to stop saying things that are true but against the FDA’s regulations. The message is, you can only say something they approve of, and whether it’s truthful or not is beside the point.

In Europe, the censorship issue is even worse. Not only can supplement companies be pursued for making health claims, but now physicians are prohibited from giving advice about supplements. They are crippling our ability to help people achieve any level of health. Free speech is being stifled. We will never be able to access good information unless the law is changed.

The Free Speech About Science Act (H.R. 1364)

Fortunately, there is a bright spot on the horizon. Congressman Chaffetz and other representatives have introduced H.R. 1364, the Free Speech About Science Act (FSAS)5, a bill that would enable supplement companies to cite peer reviewed science. Currently, FDA regulations prohibit any reference to scientific studies by manufactures of a dietary supplement or by food producers, regarding its health benefits. Violations can result in FDA declaring common dietary supplements and food to be “unapproved drugs” — and this is censorship.

In the FDA’s view, even providing a link to a study on a website converts a healthy fruit or nut into an unapproved drug — a bizarre position that effectively censors scientific information and greatly restricts your access to valuable scientific research that would help you make informed choices about your health.

The Free Speech About Science Act provides a limited and carefully targeted change to FDA regulations so that legitimate, peer reviewed scientific studies can be referenced by manufacturers. The bill amends the appropriate sections of current law to allow the flow of legitimate scientific and educational information while still giving FDA and FTC the right to take action against misleading information and false or unsubstantiated claims.

You Can Help Fight for Your First Amendment Rights

There are steps you can take to protect free speech and your right to natural health information, including nutritional supplements.
1.Go to the Alliance for Natural Health and click on the “Campaigns” tab to find out what campaigns are currently active. Click on the “Take Action” tab to find out where the AND is active (at the state level) and where you can help. The action steps depend on the particular state. The site will help you contact the appropriate legislative representative so that you can urge them to not support certain bills.
2.Also visit Really Eat Right, which tracks the actions of the AND. The site exposes AND’s funding of pharmaceutical and junk food industries, as well as concerns about advice you may get from a registered dietitian.
3.Support H.R. 1364, the Free Speech About Science Act. You can do this by going to this page on the Alliance for Natural Health website, which includes a quick way to send your message to Congress.

Where Can You Find Truly Unbiased Nutrition Info?

Do you want nutrition advice that isn’t influenced by corporate agendas?

“Real” foods like grass-fed beef, raw butter, organic cage-free eggs, vegetables and the like are not the subject of commercial jingles or billboards, but they are the types of foods that will support optimal health. Many people are beginning to realize the bulk of the packaged, processed foods found in supermarkets are not real “food” at all, but conglomerations of excessively subsidized farm crops and chemicals manipulated to taste and look edible.

The easiest way to break free of this corporate-influenced dietary trap is by focusing on WHOLE, unadulterated foods, meaning foods that have not been processed or altered from their original state. You can find guidance about how to eat more healthfully in my free nutrition plan.

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