Rather Be Healthy

Gleevec, a drug used to treat leukemia, costs $70,000 a year in the US but only $2,500 in India.

This costly gap exists thanks to US patents that prevent competitors from making and selling lower cost versions. Such patents do not exist to the same extent in India, and, in fact, just this month India’s highest court again rejected an application to patent the cancer drug – a move that likely would have sent prices soaring.

Indian Government Takes Multiple Steps to Prevent Cancer Drug Patents

Along with rejecting patent applications, the Indian government has also granted (or has plans to grant) compulsory licenses for at least five drugs targeting leukemia, breast, kidney and liver cancers.

The licenses allow local drug companies to produce generic versions of the medications despite patents held by their original makers – and without the need for their permission.

Indonesia, China and the Philippines have adopted similar measures that allow them to circumvent patents and give their populations access to lower priced drugs.

Such moves are likely to increase as cancer rates continue to rise and, with it, the demand for what are deemed conventionally as the “best” treatments. It’s a firestorm in the making, as government enforced protected patents enable drug companies to charge exorbitant prices for their drugs – a measure they claim is necessary to fund the research and development needed to produce “life-saving” medications.

But with more countries circumventing patents — and the plain fact that, as The Atlantic reported, “U.S. patients will not indefinitely pay a 20-fold increase on the price of medicines that Indian consumers pay” – the flawed system is likely to be the source of increasing tensions and, ultimately, is likely to crumble. The Atlantic continued:1

“The fight over cancer drugs in India exposes a fundamental tension in the way we fund pharmaceutical R&D. Patents allow pharmaceutical firms to charge high prices for drugs for a limited period of time to recoup their investment in R&D.

This results in more of the drugs that we need, but makes them less accessible to those who need them. The tension becomes greater in the global context because the income disparities between developed and developing country patients are so vast.”

Patented Cancer Drugs: What are We Really Fighting Over?

Pharmaceutical companies spend nearly TWICE as much on marketing in the US as they do on R&D! This finding was published in the journal PloS Medicine five years ago in 2008.2 So the tune they keep singing – that they need drug patents and outrageous price tags on their drugs to keep making new medications – is growing quite tired.

Drug companies use patents because it allows them to make more money. On average, Americans pay TWICE the price for the identical drugs compared to other countries. But the fight over patentability and drug prices is really only distracting from the much bigger issue at hand, which is the value of the drugs themselves… or rather, the lack thereof.

If you were living in 1900, you very likely would have relied upon the “cutting-edge” treatments of the time, which had reassuring names like Hollister’s Golden Nugget Tablets and Dr. Sawen’s Magic Nerving Pills, and touted promises of curing all that ails you.

Yet, according to a new study that chemically analyzed dozens of patent medicines from the late 1800s and early 1900s, the treatments contained not only beneficial ingredients like calcium and zinc but also toxins like lead, mercury and arsenic.3 The study’s lead researcher told Smithsonian Magazine in an interview:4

“Back in the day, this was a very trial-and-error kind of field… The stuff that we think of as dangerous now, though it was dangerous, was as cutting-edge as they had at the time.”

Today, we look back and scoff at the therapies that our not-so-distant ancestors embraced, because we now know that the ingredients many contained were toxic and could, quite literally, kill you.

100 Years From Now, Will Many Common Prescription Drugs be Seen as Equally Barbaric?

If only we had a window into the future, you would likely see what is already glaring right before your eyes: that many of the “cutting-edge” treatments of the 21st century are no better than the Hollister’s Golden Nuggets of yesteryears. Mercury and other toxic metals like aluminum are still being used in various vaccinations, for instance. We even allow mercury to be implanted directly into our mouths via “silver” fillings!

Other medications may not contain buzz-worthy poisons like mercury or lead, yet they pose equally deadly consequences via other mechanisms. Take Gleevec, the cancer drug that’s at the root of the patent controversy, with patients vying to get their hands on this “life-saving” drug. Unfortunately, though it may help treat leukemia, it also kills heart muscle cells, which may cause fatal congestive heart failure.

So how can we laugh at people 100 years ago for taking deadly medications… when today’s medications – and the entire modern medical system — are still a leading cause of death? This is perhaps no more apparent than with drugs used to treat cancer…

Many Cancer Patients Die From Chemo

The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) study found that more than four in 10 patients who received chemotherapy toward the end of life experienced potentially fatal effects. And after reviewing data from over 600 cancer patients who died within 30 days of receiving treatment, it was found that chemotherapy hastened or caused death in 27 percent of those cases.

Chemotherapy drugs are, by their very nature, extremely toxic and typically do not work with your body to modulate and normalize its response to allow the cancer to resolve normally. Despite its reputation as the gold-standard in cancer treatment, chemotherapy has an average 5-year survival success rate of just over 2 percent for all cancers, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Oncology.5 Meanwhile, a typical, and potentially deadly, side effect of chemo is the destruction of the rapidly multiplying and dividing cells found in your:
•Bone marrow, which produces blood
•Digestive system
•Reproductive system
•Hair follicles

Chemo actually supports the more chemo resistant and malignant cell subpopulations within tumors (e.g. cancer stem cells), both killing the more benign cells and/or senescent cells within the tumor that keep it slow-growing, or even harmless. As a result, this unleashes a more aggressive, treatment-resistant type of cancer to wreak havoc on the body.

Another one of the biggest drawbacks to chemotherapy is the fact that it destroys healthy cells throughout your body right along with cancer cells, a “side effect” that often leads to accelerated death, not healing. Effectiveness is a shot in the dark, in many cases, not entirely different from the “miracle cures” popular at the turn of the 20th century.

Prevention is a Far Better Route Than Treatment

The bottom line here is that there’s a lot you can do to lower your chances of getting cancer — you and your family CAN take control of your health. Don’t wait for diagnosis and place your very life on the hopes of affording outrageously expensive chemotherapy drugs… take the reins and be a proactive participant in your own health care, before you end up in need for disease management. I believe you can virtually eliminate your risk of cancer and other chronic diseases, and radically improve your chances of recovering from cancer if you currently have it, by following these relatively simple risk-reduction strategies.
1.Reduce or eliminate your processed food, sugar/fructose and grain carbohydrate intake. This applies to whole unprocessed organic grains as well, as they tend to rapidly break down and drive your insulin and leptin levels up, which is the last thing you need to have happening if you are seeking to resolve or prevent cancer.
2.Normalize your vitamin D levels by getting appropriate sun exposure, and consider careful supplementation when this is not possible. However, if you’re taking oral vitamin D, you also need to make sure you’re taking vitamin K2 as well, as K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate soft tissue calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. To learn more, please see my previous article: What You Need to Know About Vitamin K2, D and Calcium. If you take oral vitamin D and have cancer, it would be very prudent to monitor your vitamin D blood levels regularly.
3.Consider reducing your protein levels to one gram per kilogram of lean body weight. It would be unusual for most adults to need more than 100 grams of protein and most likely close to half that.
4.Control your fasting insulin and leptin levels. This is the end result you’ll get when you remove sugars and grains from your diet and start to exercise regularly. Your levels can be easily monitored with the use of simple and relatively inexpensive blood tests.
5.Normalize your ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats by taking a high-quality krill oil and reducing your intake of most processed vegetable oils.
6.Get regular exercise. One of the primary reasons exercise works is that it drives your insulin levels down. Controlling insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.

The trick about exercise, though, is understanding how to use it as a precise tool. This ensures you are getting enough to achieve the benefit, not too much to cause injury, and the right variety to balance your entire physical structure and maintain strength and flexibility, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels. If you have limited time Peak Fitness exercises are your best bet but ideally you should have a good strength training program as well.
7.Get regular, good sleep.
8.Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.
9.Limit your exposure and provide protection for yourself from radiation produced by cell phones, towers, base stations, and WiFi stations.
10.Avoid frying or charbroiling your food. Boil, poach or steam your foods instead.
11.Have a tool to permanently reprogram the neurological short-circuiting that can activate cancer genes. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed. My particular favorite tool for resolving emotional challenges, as you may know, is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
12.Eat at least one-third of your food raw.
13. Consider adding cancer-fighting whole foods, herbs, spices and supplements to your diet, such as broccoli, curcumin and resveratrol. To learn more about how these anti-angiogenetic foods, and many others, work to fight cancer, please see my previous article: Dramatically Effective New Natural Way to Starve Cancer and Obesity

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Catechins in green tea could help protect you against glaucoma and other eye diseases. New research finds that the ingredients travel from your digestive system into the tissues of your eyes.

Scientists analyzed eye tissue from rats that drank green tea. They found that eye tissues such as the lens and retina had absorbed green tea catechins.

According to NutraIngredients:

“The [study’s] authors said that oxidative stress causes biological disturbances such as DNA damage and activation of proteolytic enzymes that can lead to tissue cell damage or dysfunction and eventually many ophthalmic diseases.”

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Antioxidants are known to have a wide variety of health benefits, and now researchers have linked them to eye health as well, by evaluating the antioxidant content distributed in the eyes following the consumption of green tea.

They found that the catechins found in green tea were absorbed into various parts of the eyes anywhere from 30 minutes to 12 hours after rats were given the tea.

Catechins, a class of polyphenolic antioxidants, have been reported to have various physiological and pharmacological properties, and can be divided into several sub types, including:
• Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG)
• Epigallocatechin (EGC)
• Epicatechin gallate (ECG)
• Epicatechin (EC)
• Gallocatechin gallate (GCG)

In this study, they were able to discern the types and amounts of green tea catechins absorbed by the various parts of the eyes.

The retina absorbed the highest levels of gallocatechin, while the aqueous humor (the fluid in the chambers of your eye) soaked up the highest amounts of epigallocatechin (EGCG).

The Many Health Benefits of Green Tea Antioxidants

There are certain compounds and nutrients that seem to have near limitless health potential, and catechins are part of that pack. Fortunately, green tea is an excellent source of these antioxidants, making them easily available to anyone with the good sense to pay attention.

Aside from potentially saving your eyesight, green tea catechins have also been found to:
•Protect your heart and cardiovascular system
•Hinder progression of cancer
•Ease inflammation and pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA)
•Reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s and autoimmune diseases such as Sjogren’s Syndrome
• Promote healthy gums
•Improve digestion

Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), specifically, is one of the most powerful antioxidants known, and the health benefits of EGCG include the prevention of:
• High blood lipid
• Arteriosclerosis
• Cerebral thrombus
• Heart attack and stroke

Several studies have also found that EGCG can improve exercise performance, increase fat oxidation, and may help prevent obesity, as it’s known to have a regulatory effect on fat metabolism.

Selecting a High Quality Green Tea

The polyphenols in green tea may constitute up to 30 percent of the dry leaf weight, so, when you drink a cup of green tea, you’re drinking a fairly potent solution of healthy tea polyphenols. Green tea is the least processed kind of tea, so it also contains the highest amounts of EGCG of all tea varieties.

Other than water, I believe high-quality green tea is one of the most beneficial beverages you can consume.

But there are quality differences here as well.

Many green teas have been oxidized, and this process may take away many of its valuable properties. The easiest sign to look for when evaluating a green tea’s quality is its color: if your green tea is brown rather than green, it’s likely been oxidized.

My personal favorite is matcha green tea because it contains the entire ground tea leaf, and can contain over 100 times the EGCG provided from regular brewed green tea.

If you’re not familiar with tea you may have never heard of matcha tea. Rather than being steeped and strained like typical tea, matcha tea is made of tea leaves ground into a powder, and you mix the powder right into water.

The matcha tea is a vibrant bright green, and is far less processed and of much higher quality than most other green teas, so you also avoid the risk of ingesting high levels of fluoride, lead, and aluminum, which can be found in inferior teas of all kinds, including green teas.

What’s a Healthy Amount of Tea Each Day?

There’s no clear-cut evidence of exactly how much is best, but it’s a general misconception that it would take pot upon pot of green tea to add up to any significant benefits. In reality, much of the research on green tea has been based on about three cups daily.

One cup of green tea will provide you with 20-35 mg of EGCG, so three in a day will supply you with about 60-105 mg. (The actual amount will depend on the quality of your tea.)

Since green tea is the number one source of EGCG, my advice is to simply add a few cups of green tea to your day if you enjoy it. As always, listen to your body. If green tea doesn’t appeal to you, then it’s probably not the best thing for you.

Another tea that is shock-full of beneficial antioxidants is the Indian tulsi tea, which is another delicious, healthy option.

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Plastic and Cancerous Compounds in Tea Bags—A Surprising Source of Potential Toxins

By Dr. Mercola

I’ve long advocated drinking tea in lieu of coffee, but the downside of modern food technology is again rearing its ugly head and causing brand new health concerns over this otherwise healthful brew.

A recent article in The Atlantic1 raises questions about the safety of plastic tea bags, some of which have fancy pyramid shapes, designed to allow the tea leaves to unfurl during infusion.

Chances are you’ve never even given the tea bag a second thought. But indeed, some of the newer tea bags are made with a variety of plastics; some are nylon, some are made of viscose rayon, and others are made of thermoplastic, PVC or polypropylene.

Anyone aware of the dangers of plastic chemicals leaching out of plastic containers and bottles is likely to be concerned about drinking tea steeped through heated plastic.

The other bad news is that paper tea bags may be just as bad, or worse, than the plastic ones because many of them are treated with epichlorohydrin, a compound mainly used in the production of epoxy resins.

Considered a potential carcinogen by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health2 (NIOSH), epichlorohydrin is also used as a pesticide. Besides making its way into tea bags, it can also be found in coffee filters, water filters, and sausage casings.

When epichlorohydrin comes in contact with water, it hydrolyzes to 3-MCPD, which has been shown to cause cancer in animals. It’s also been implicated in infertility (it has a spermatoxic effect in male rats3) and suppressed immune function4.

This chemical is already a well-known “process contaminant” associated with modern food production. According to the American Oil Chemicals Society5 (AOCS), 3-MCPD can also be found in variable levels in refined vegetable oils, which is yet another reason to avoid such cooking oils and replace them with organic coconut oil.

Do Plastic Tea Bags Pose a Health Concern?

As you probably know, chemicals in plastic containers and bottles have been found to leach into food and drink, thereby posing a number of health hazards. Examples include bisphenol-A (BPA), bisphenol-S (BPS), and phthalates, all of which mimic hormones and act as potent endocrine disruptors.

Unfortunately, according to the featured article, neither the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice nor the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have any information on the toxicity of plastic tea bags or the levels of plastic chemicals that might migrate into the tea when steeped in hot water. Hard to believe, but true, the US federal agencies are not supervising this potential toxic exposure.

According to the featured article:

“Could plastic tea bags also be bad for our health? They are most commonly made from food grade nylon or polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which are two of the safest plastics on the scale of harmful leaching potential.

Both have very high melting points, which offer some assurance to consumers, as one would think the melting point of plastic is the temperature at which one would need to worry about accidentally eating it.

There is another temperature point for plastics, though, that we may need to worry about, called the ‘glass transition’ temperature (Tg) . That is the temperature at which the molecule in certain materials such as polymers begin to break down. As a rule, the Tg of a material is always lower than the melting point.“

Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). In the case of PET the glass transition point (Tg) is about 169 degrees, and the breakdown point of nylon is even lower than PET.

“If the question is, ‘As the polymer goes through that transition state, is it easier for something to leach out?’ ‘the answer is yes,’ said Dr. Ray Fernando, professor and director of polymers and coatings at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo,” The Atlantic states.

So while these plastics are generally considered among the safest in terms of leaching potential, the molecules in these plastic tea bags may still in fact break down and leach out when steeped in boiling water—which is the recommended way to brew a good cup of tea, especially when you’re using higher quality whole tea leaves, which these newer tea bags are designed for…

Paper Tea Bags May Be Just as Bad, or Worse…

The now defunct Dexter Corporation was the initial owner on the patent6 of a method for treating both tea bags and coffee filters with latex (plastic), to aid in preventing tears that allow the tea leaves/coffee grounds to leak. This invention “saturates and completely impregnates” the entire web material. Therein lies one of the problems with paper tea bags as they are frequently treated with epichlorophydrin, which hydrolyzes to the carcinogen 3-MCPD when contact with water occurs.

Dow Chemical Co is one of the largest producers of epichlorophydrin. According to safety literature7 from Dow, it’s is a very dangerous chemical that requires using extra precautions when handling. Granted, that doesn’t automatically render it dangerous in the final product, but it can still be a cause for concern, particularly as it can turn into a carcinogen when water is added. There are many unanswered questions with respect to the potential hazards of using this chemical in products specifically designed to be used with boiling water…

A good way to protect yourself and your family in this area is to purchase your tea from manufacturers who can certify that their tea bags do not contain this compound. Organic India, for example, has sent me a confirmation that the paper used for their tea bags does not contain epichlorohydrin. In a 2009 article, Kristie Leong, MD also claims to have done her own inquiries and that Bigelow Tea Company does not use the chemical in their bags8. Many plastic tea bags are advertised as “silky” or “mesh bags,” or they’ll have fancy shapes or oversized bags. I’d suggest avoiding those as well if you want to be on the safe side.

Your best option would be to opt for loose tea. This does take longer, but it can be well worth the wait. One of my favorite teas is Royal Matcha Green Tea, which has one of the highest levels of the potent antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). Unlike other teas which you steep and strain, matcha tea is a powder made from ground green tea leaves. You add the powder right into the water. You are consuming the whole leaf, which makes matcha one of the healthiest green teas available. Another excellent option is loose Tulsi tea leaves. This well-known Ayurvedic herb is also full of antioxidants that fight free radicals in your body and prevent oxidation damage.

How to Brew the Perfect Cup of Tea

There is an art to brewing tea using loose tea leaves, but once you find your “sweet spot” you may never go back to bagged tea again. Here are a few simple guidelines for making the “perfect” cup of tea:
1.Bring water to a boil in a tea kettle (avoid using a non-stick pot, as they too can release harmful chemicals when heated)
2.Preheat your tea pot or cup to prevent the water from cooling too quickly when transferred. Simply add a small amount of boiling water to the pot or tea cup that you’re going to steep the tea in. Ceramic and porcelain retain heat well. Then cover the pot or cup with a lid. Add a tea cozy if you have one, or drape with a towel. Let stand until warm, then pour out the water
3.Put the tea into an infuser, strainer, or add loose into the tea pot. Steeping without an infuser or strainer will produce a more flavorful tea. Start with one heaped teaspoon per cup of tea, or follow the instructions on the tea package. The robustness of the flavor can be tweaked by using more or less tea
4.Add boiling water. Use the correct amount for the amount of tea you added (i.e. for four teaspoons of tea, add four cups of water). The ideal water temperature varies based on the type of tea being steeped:
a.White or green teas (full leaf): Well below boiling (170-185 F or 76-85 C). Once the water has been brought to a boil, remove from heat and let the water cool for about 30 seconds for white tea and 60 seconds for green tea before pouring it over the leaves
b.Oolongs (full leaf): 185-210 F or 85-98 C
c.Black teas (full leaf) and Pu-erhs: Full rolling boil (212 F or 100 C)
5.Cover the pot with a cozy and let steep. Follow steeping instructions on the package. If there are none, here are some general steeping guidelines. Taste frequently as you want it to be flavorful but not bitter:
a.Oolong teas: 4-7 minutes
b.Black teas: 3-5 minutes
c.Green teas: 2-3 minutes
6.Once desired flavor has been achieved you need to remove the strainer or infuser. If using loose leaves, pour the tea through a strainer into your cup and any leftover into another vessel (cover with a cozy to retain heat)

After Water, Tea is One of Your Healthiest Beverage Choices

While some tea bags—whether plastic or paper processed with epichlorophydrin—may pose a potential hazard, please don’t let that deter you from drinking tea altogether. Although I still believe pure water should make up the majority of your daily fluid intake, high-quality tea has numerous health benefits to offer. Among them is growing evidence that the polyphenols in tea, which include EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate) and many others, can be protective against cancer. For example, the polyphenols in green tea appear to be even more effective at fighting the progression of cancer than the antioxidants found in red wine and grapes. Beyond this, the beneficial properties in tea have been known to:
• Neutralize the effects to your body of harmful fats and oils
• Inhibit bacteria and viruses
• Improve digestion
• Protect against oxidation in your brain and liver
• Help promote healthy gums

Drinking tea has also been linked to:

Improved mental alertness and slowing of brain-cell degeneration

Reduced blood pressure

Protection again type 2 diabetes

Lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels

Lower risk of breast, colon, lung, ovarian and prostate cancers

Reduced risk of heart attack and stroke

Of course, there are some general ground rules to follow when selecting tea of any kind, and those are that it should preferably be:
• Organic (otherwise tea may be heavily sprayed with pesticides)
• Grown in a pristine environment (tea is known to accumulate fluoride, heavy metals and other toxins from soil and water, so a clean growing environment is essential to producing a pure, high-quality tea)

So keep these tips in mind, and go ahead and enjoy a cup or two of your favorite variety. I personally prefer Matcha tea, a vibrant bright green tea made of tea leaves ground into a powder, and Tulsi tea, which is a powerful adaptogenic herb that provides important therapeutic benefits.

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

How to beat depression without prescription drugs

If you suffer from frequent bouts of anxiety or depression, but are leery about the safety and effectiveness of taking antidepressant drugs — and rightfully so, because these chemical “panaceas” do not even work (http://www.naturalnews.com) — then the following information is for you. Contrary to popular opinion, most cases of what is commonly diagnosed as depression are fully treatable through simply dietary and lifestyle changes, none of which involve medicating yourself with mind-altering pharmaceuticals.

In his book The Depression Cure, clinical psychologist Dr. Steve Ilardi, Ph.D., outlines six specific ways to treat depression naturally without the use of chemical drugs. Each of these six approaches aims to address the root causes of most cases of depression, these being lack of fulfilling relationships, nutrient deficiency, and inadequate exercise. By implementing what he calls the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change approach, or TLC, Dr. Ilardi says virtually all of his depression patients experienced dramatic improvements, including those that had previously tried drugs and other conventional approaches.

“TLC addresses the modern depression epidemic at is source: the fact that human beings were never designed for the poorly nourished, sedentary, indoor, sleep-deprived, socially isolated, frenzied pace of twenty-first-century life,” explains Dr. Ilardi in the introduction to his book. “The program provides a long-overdue, common-sense remedy for a contemporary American lifestyle that’s drifted dangerously off course” (http://thedepressioncurebook.com/excerpt.html).

Eliminate your doldrum through diet, exercise, and relationships
Drawing from many of the concepts delineated in Dr. Ilardi’s book, this article will highlight some practical steps you can begin taking today to overcome your depression and take back your life. With the exception of certain extreme and somewhat rare forms of depression that involve severe chemical imbalances, most people who suffer from depression symptoms, whether they be regular feelings of sadness and despair or the occasional “off” days, can benefit from following these simple steps.

1) Eat more foods high in omega-3 fatty acids. Mainstream medicine typically overlooks or ignores the role that food and nutrition play in mental health. But many conventional doctors are beginning to wake up to the fact that omega-3 fatty acids, for instance, which are found in fatty fish, hemp seeds and oil, chia seeds, walnuts, grass-fed meats and butter, and pastured eggs, play a significant role in modulating brain chemistry. Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), two of the primary omega-3s in fish oil, just so happen to be major structural components of the brain.

As explained in a 2005 study published in the journal Drugs, DHA is a critical component of neuronal membranes in the brain, which means this particular omega-3 directly affects the way brain neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin are produced and used. EPA is similar in that, together with DHA, it regulates biochemical changes in the brain. And low levels of these and other omega-3s, it turns out, are directly associated with depression, schizophrenia, and various other mental illnesses (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15907142).

2) Get more exercise and stop eating junk food. It may seem cliche, but simply moving your body more can help trigger the production of “happy” chemicals in the brain, and thus improve your mood in a noticeable way. The goal here is to get that blood flowing at least once a day, whether it be through taking a walk, jogging in place, stretching, going to the gym, or even just cleaning out your closet or garage — whatever it takes to keep your body in motion rather than in a prolonged sedentary position will help cleanse those negative thoughts that drag you down and lift your spirits (http://www.health.harvard.edu).

To go along with this, make sure you are eating clean, organically-grown foods that are free of pesticides, artificial chemicals, genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), refined sugars, and processed flours, as these additives tend to throw off brain chemistry. It is also beneficial to cut out excess coffee and alcohol consumption, as these foods can lead to drastic highs and lows that may exacerbate depression symptoms.

3) Spend more time with loved ones, develop new friendships. Many people in modern society limp along through life isolated from one another, which can consciously and subconsciously lead to feelings of loneliness and sadness. Whether you realize it or not, you need meaningful human connections and an outlet to both give and receive love. Developing real friendships, for instance, can make all the difference in alleviating feelings of despair and hopelessness.

Though this might be easier said than done, forcing yourself to engage socially with other people, even when you feel like retreating into hibernation and solitude, will provide opportunities for you to open up about your own life and become involved in the lives of others. Engaging socially in this way will help shift some of the focus away from yourself and your own problems, and allow for the cultivation of mutually-beneficial relationships in which depression will have a much harder time flourishing.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.thedailymind.com

http://www.naturalnews.com/020611_depression_nutrition.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk

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Top 10 most unhealthy, cancer-causing foods – never eat these again!

The statement “everything causes cancer” has become a popular hyperbole, and one that some people use as rhetorical fodder to excuse their own dietary and lifestyle failures, particularly as they pertain to cancer risk. But the truth of the matter is that many common food items have, indeed, been scientifically shown to increase cancer risk, and some of them substantially. Here are 10 of the most unhealthy, cancer-causing foods that you should never eat again:

1) Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). It goes without saying that GMOs have no legitimate place in any cancer-free diet, especially now that both GMOs and the chemicals used to grow them have been shown to cause rapid tumor growth. But GMOs are everywhere, including in most food derivatives made from conventional corn, soybeans, and canola. However, you can avoid them by sticking with certified organic, certified non-GMO verified, and locally-grown foods that are produced naturally without biotechnology (http://www.naturalnews.com).

2) Processed meats. Most processed meat products, including lunch meats, bacon, sausage, and hot dogs, contain chemical preservatives that make them appear fresh and appealing, but that can also cause cancer. Both sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate have been linked to significantly increasing the risk of colon and other forms of cancer, so be sure to choose only uncured meat products made without nitrates, and preferably from grass-fed sources (http://www.organicconsumers.org/foodsafety/processedmeat050305.cfm).

3) Microwave popcorn. They might be convenient, but those bags of microwave popcorn are lined with chemicals that are linked to causing not only infertility but also liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes the perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in microwave popcorn bag linings as “likely” carcinogenic, and several independent studies have linked the chemical to causing tumors. Similarly, the diacetyl chemical used in the popcorn itself is linked to causing both lung damage and cancer (http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400701/Microwave-Popcorn-Threat.html).

4) Soda pop. Like processed meats, soda pop has been shown to cause cancer as well. Loaded with sugar, food chemicals, and colorings, soda pop acidifies the body and literally feeds cancer cells. Common soda pop chemicals like caramel color and its derivative 4-methylimidazole (4-MI) have also specifically been linked to causing cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/031383_caramel_coloring_cola.html).

5) ‘Diet’ foods, beverages. Even worse than conventional sugar-sweetened soda pop, though, is “diet” soda pop and various other diet beverages and foods. A recent scientific review issued by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) of more than 20 separate research studies found that aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners, causes a range of illnesses including birth defects and cancer. Sucralose (Splenda), saccharin and various other artificial sweeteners have also been linked to causing cancer (http://www.dailymail.co.uk).

6) Refined ‘white’ flours. Refined flour is a common ingredient in processed foods, but its excess carbohydrate content is a serious cause for concern. A study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Mile Markers, and Prevention found that regular consumption of refined carbohydrates was linked to a 220 percent increase in breast cancer among women. High-glycemic foods in general have also been shown to rapidly raise blood sugar levels in the body, which directly feeds cancer cell growth and spread (http://www.naturalnews.com/001812_cancer_prevention.html).

7) Refined sugars. The same goes for refined sugars, which tend to rapidly spike insulin levels and feed the growth of cancer cells. Fructose-rich sweeteners like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) are particularly offensive, as cancer cells have been shown to quickly and easily metabolize them in order to proliferate. And since cookies, cakes, pies, sodas, juices, sauces, cereals, and many other popular, mostly processed, food items are loaded with HFCS and other refined sugars, this helps explain why cancer rates are on the rise these days (http://www.naturalnews.com/038071_cancer_sugar_sweets.html).

8) Conventional apples, grapes, and other ‘dirty’ fruits. Many people think they are eating healthy when they buy apples, grapes, or strawberries from the store. But unless these fruits are organic or verified to be pesticide-free, they could be a major cancer risk. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that up to 98 percent of all conventional produce, and particularly the type found on its “dirty” fruits list, is contaminated with cancer-causing pesticides (http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/list/).

9) Farmed salmon. Farmed salmon is another high-risk cancer food, according to Dr. David Carpenter, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany. According to his assessment, farmed salmon not only lacks vitamin D, but it is often contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), flame retardants, pesticides, and antibiotics (http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/pressrelease.html).

10) Hydrogenated oils. They are commonly used to preserve processed foods and keep them shelf-stable. But hydrogenated oils alter the structure and flexibility of cell membranes throughout the body, which can lead to a host of debilitating diseases such as cancer. Some manufacturers are phasing out the use of hydrogenated oils and replacing them with palm oil and other safer alternatives, but trans fats are still widely used in processed foods (http://www.naturalnews.com/010095_hydrogenated_oils_unhealthy.html).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.care2.com

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

Zoe Harcombe
The Intermittent Fasting Study..

The Michael Mosley August 2012 Horizon programme started a significant interest in intermittent fasting. As my special report (free) explains here, the programme looked at a number of different restricted eating options (eating less all the time, fasting for 4 days, alternate day fasting). The option that Mosley found the most tolerable was eating ‘normally’ for 5 days and eating one quarter of ‘normal’ calorie intake for 2 days. Thus the 5:2 concept was launched on the British population and a number of copy cat books appeared even before Mosley’s own 5:2 book was published, as “The Fast Diet” in January 2013.

Another 5:2 diet was being researched before the Horizon programme. Michelle Harvie was the lead author on a paper published in the International Journal of Obesity in May 2011. The full article is available here .

The Intermittent Fasting Study

The study involved 107 women who were randomly assigned to either a Continuous Energy Restriction (CER) diet or an Intermittent Energy Restriction (IER) diet. To quote from the article: “The CER group were prescribed a daily 25% restriction based on a Mediterranean type diet (30% fat, 15% monounsaturated, 7% saturated fat, 7% polyunsaturated fatty acids, 45% low glycaemic load carbohydrate, and 25% protein). The IER group were asked to undertake a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) (75% restriction) on 2 consecutive days and to consume estimated requirements for weight maintenance for the remaining 5 days according to the nutrient composition above.”

The Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) part of the intermittent group’s diet provided approximately 500 calories per day. It was low carb as well as low calorie – delivered in the form of 2 pints of semi-skimmed milk, approximately 300g of vegetables, 1 portion of fruit, a salty low calorie drink (why?!) and a multivitamin and mineral supplement.

Participants in both groups were advised to maintain their current activity levels throughout the trial, and did not receive specific exercise counselling. Energy prescriptions were reviewed throughout the trial to account for changes in weight and exercise levels to maintain a 25% restriction below estimated requirements for weight maintenance.

If we assume that an average woman in each group needed 2,000 calories a day and assume for simplicity that this did not change during the trial, then the average woman in the CER group would need 14,000 calories per week and would receive 10,500 – a sustained reduction of 25% per day. The average woman in the IER group would need 14,000 calories per week and would receive 11,000 – a reduction of 1,500 calories on 2 days. Thus the weekly calorie intake and deficit would be essentially the same. (Notwithstanding everything I write about the type of calories being far more important than the number).

Results

107 women started the 6 month study. 18 women withdrew from the study before completing the 6 months: 11 from the intermittent group and 7 from the continual restriction group. Did the starve-for-2-days group find the diet more unbearable therefore?

Here is the passage reporting the results verbatim from the study:

“Weight loss was comparable between the groups. LOCF [Last Observation Carried Forward] analysis at 6 months showed weight reduced from mean (95% CI) 81.5 (77.5 to 85.4) kg to 75 (71.2 to 78.8) kg in the IER group compared to a reduction from 84.4 (79.7 to 89.1) kg to 78.7 (74.2 to 83.2) kg in the CER group. The percentage of women in the IER and CER groups losing 5–10% body weight were 30 and 33% respectively, and losing 10% or more body weight were 34 and 22% respectively (χ2=1.89, P=0.39). Both groups experienced comparable reductions in body fat, FFM [Fat Free Mass], hip, bust and thigh circumference and composition of weight loss. Percentage of weight lost which was fat in the IER and CER groups was 79 (±24) and 79 (±26) % respectively (P=0.99).”

Removing the statistical details for ease of observation, the above passage tells us:

– “Weight loss was comparable between the groups.”

– “Both groups experienced comparable reductions in body fat…”

– At 6 months, the IER (intermittent) group had reduced on average from 81.5kg to 75kg. The CER (continuous) group had reduced on average from 84.4 to 78.7kg. Both groups lost approximately 6kg on average, equating to approximately a 7-8% reduction from starting weight.

– That’s 1 kg a month. That’s 2lb a month. Hardly justifying the Daily Mail headlines “The diet revolution that’s swept Britain.” If I starved for 2 days a week and never ate more than normal on the other 5 days, or cut back 25% every single day for 6 months, I would want significantly more than a 0.5lb a week weight loss. The record weight loss for The Harcombe Diet (Phase 1) is 17lb in 5 days. I would be astonished if someone didn’t lose more in 5 days of Phase 1 than in 2-3 months of the average on this diet and with far fewer rules and restrictions.

As Dr. Margaret McCartney noted in this clip from Radio 4′s Inside Health (listen from approximately 20 minutes into the programme) – the clinical trial “didn’t show any difference.” Quite so.

Despite the poor results in this clinical trial, the diet has been published in a book called “The 2 day diet”. It was serialised in the Daily Mail from the 11th February 2013 onwards for a week. These articles are not available on line (to make you buy the paper and/or the book). Another serialisation started in the Daily Mail on Saturday 20th April – again – the details of the diet are not available on line.

The authors

The book authors are Michelle Harvie – a dietician and Tony Howell – Professor of Oncology. Together they run Manchester University’s Genesis Breast Cancer Prevention Centre.

The Claims

The front cover of the book has the words “clinically proven.” The Daily Mail February serialisation majored on the claim “clinically proven to reduce weight.” The “clinically proven” refers to the article in the International Journal of Obesity. Despite the fact that weight loss overall was low and there was no difference between the intermittent diet and the continuous calorie deficit diet, because this was done as a study the authors are able to make the “clinically proven” claim.

“Clinically proven to lose you an average of a couple of pounds a month over 6 months” would be more accurate. “Clinically proven to do no better than normal dieting” would have been another option.

Stopping at 6 months is also interesting as all evidence from Keys (1945) to Franz (2007) to Weight Watchers (2010) shows regain starting at approximately 6 months after starting a calorie deficit diet. The 5:2 diet has not been clinically proven to achieve sustained weight loss.

Breast Cancer

The Daily Mail got into misleading territory in the February serialisation. Here is a direct quotation from the article on 11th February 2013: “In a study of 34,000 women, Dr Harvie and Professor Howell were the first to discover that being overweight significantly increases your risk of breast cancer and that losing just 5 per cent of your body weight and keeping it off is enough to reduce your risk of breast cancer by a staggering 40 per cent.”

First, were Harvie and Howell really the first to discover that being overweight significantly increases the risk of breast cancer? Really? Here’s a study I found in a quick search dating back to 1993. Did Harvie and Howell produce a study before this?

Secondly, if the observation is that a 5% sustained weight loss reduces the risk (remember, this will be relative risk, not absolute) of breast cancer, then any diet that achieves weight loss could claim to reduce the risk of breast cancer. Here’s my suggested headline: “The Atkins diet reduces the risk of breast cancer.”

The Mail (Feb) continued “Their diet, which is clinically proven to be more effective than conventional dieting.” This is simply not true. The 2011 journal article stated quite clearly ” Weight loss was comparable between the groups.”

The Diet

The Mosley 5:2 diet advises that the days should not be consecutive. The Harvie/Howell diet says that the 2 days should be consecutive. The Harvie/Howell diet claims that there is no calorie target on the 2 days – just foods that you can’t eat. You’re joking of course! There is a directive for fat to be eaten, carbs to be eaten and protein to be eaten – with portion sizes spelled out and these portion tables by macro nutrient are dictated for the ‘non-diet’ days as well as the ‘diet-days.’

The concept sounds simple enough” Spend two consecutive days each week enjoying protein (fish, meat, eggs) and vegetables but no carbs (potatoes, bread, pasta) and then stick to a ‘healthy Mediterranean-style diet’ for the other five days.”

This is the reality:

These are the numbers and sizes of the protein, fat and carb portions that you are allowed on DIET DAYS:

PROTEIN: Women 4-12 portions of protein; men 4-14 portions.

1 portion =

30g/1oz oily fish; skinless chicken; lean beef, pork, lamb or offal.

1 rasher lean bacon; 1 egg

60g/2oz of white fish or tofu. (ZH – this was 60g tofu on 11 Feb and 50g on 13 Feb).

45g/1.5oz of seafood/tuna in brine.

2 tbsp baked beans; 1.5 tbsp cooked lentils/chickpeas/beans

FAT: women up to 5 portions of fat; men up to 6 portions.

1 portion = 1 tsp marg (avoid buttery types!), 2 tsp olive oil, 1 dessertspoon nuts, 1 heaped tsp peanut butter; 10 olives; 1 tbsp low-fat mayo; 1/2 an avocado.

DAIRY: Men & women 3 portions.

1 portion = 1/3 pint milk/soya milk; 3 tbsp diet yoghurt; 2 tbsp normal yoghurt; 30g/1oz reduced fat cheese.

FRUIT – Men & women 1 portion.

1 portion = 80g/2.5oz portion of low carb fruit (apricots, berries, rhubarb etc)

VEG/SALAD: 5 portions daily on 22 April. 4 portions daily on 11 Feb, 5 portions daily on 12 Feb!

1 portion = 80g/2.5oz of low carb veg (green beans, asparagus, broccoli, cabbage etc).

TREATS – sugar free gum?! up to 10 sugar free mints!

DRINKS – 1 litres a day of water, tea, coffee, low-cal drinks.

This confirms that a dietician and a professor don’t know one macronutrient from another. Protein is in everything except sucrose (table sugar) and oils. All the foods listed under protein are combinations of fat and protein (fish, meat, eggs). Some of the ‘proteins’ contain carbs as well as protein and fat (lentils, beans).

Under fats, margarine and olive oil are fats. Nuts and avocado contain carbs, fat and protein in good measure. And what on earth are a dietician and a doctor doing advising hydrogenated (or interesterified), bleached, deodorised, emulsified, coloured and fortified margarine in preference to natural, nutritious butter? And what on earth are a dietician and a doctor doing advising low calorie, sweetened, drinks as part of a healthy diet. Have they not googled “the dangers of aspartame”?

NON-DIET days (Puh-lease!)

“You are basically eating a healthy Mediterranean diet with lots of fresh fish, meat, salad, vegetables and whole grains” say the authors. Please see this blog for the never ending nonsense about the Mediterranean Diet.

These are your food allowances on non-diet days. How the heck is this not a diet?!

Men (max servings)

Weight

Carb servings

Protein

Fats

11 stone

9

6-12

5

12 stone

9

7-14

5

13 stone

11

8-15

5

14 stone

12

9-16

6

15 stone +

12

10-17

6

Women (max servings)

Weight

Carb servings

Protein

Fats

9 stone

6

4-8

3

10 stone

6

5-8

4

11 stone

7

6-9

4

12 stone

7

7-10

5

13 stone

8

8-11

5

14 stone +

9

9-12

5

Serving sizes of protein and fat are as for the diet days.

The carb servings for the non-diet (ha ha) days are as follows. You are advised to “always choose wholegrain.”

1 portion = 3 tbsp whole wheat cereal; 1 weetabix; 1 heaped tbsp oats; 1 slice wholemeal bread; 1/2 roll; 2 rye crispbreads; 1 oatcake; 2 heaped tbsp cooked pasta; 1 lasagne sheet; 1 small potato; 2 tbsp sweet corn kernels.

The small print

“Do not do this diet as a child, teenager, pregnant, breastfeeding, suffering from an eating disorder. The high protein may post problems for those with kidney disease or at risk from kidney disease. Diabetics – seek advice.”

The final word

The Friday 15th April Daily Mail article described the diet as “It’s gloriously simple”!

Hello?!

I love maths, but I would lose the will to live even trying to work out one so-called non diet day of the triple simultaneous equation that would be my carb/fat/protein number and size of portions – even allowing for the fact that the diet doesn’t know fats from proteins or carbs.

This is a 7 day diet, delivering barely a quarter of the calorie intake needed on 2 days of the week. That’s 30% of your life starving and 100% of your life on a diet – counting portions and measuring out 80g of vegetables.

Don’t do it!

This is obsessive and miserable and it’s proven to lose an average of 0.5lb a week – if you stick to the diet for 6 months. Then we don’t know if you will regain. I can confidently forecast that you will need to stay on this kind of restrained eating for life or you will regain – you will have trained your body to maintain on a lower calorie intake.

Or you could just eat real food (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruits in season and whole grains in moderation); three times a day and get on with your life. But then that would be The Harcombe Diet!

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

Trained as a chemist, specializing in environmental chemistry, Dr. Paul Connett is known throughout the world as a leader in the movement against water fluoridation because of his knowledge base. He is truly dedicated to the cause of ending water fluoridation, and heads up an organization called the Fluoride Action Network or www.fluoridealert.org that contains a wealth of information. In addition, his book, The Case Against Fluoride, is scheduled for release in late September, but is available for pre-order. In this timely and important book, Connett and his two co-authors, Beck and Micklem, take a new look at the science behind water fluoridation and argue that just because the medical establishment endorses a public health measure, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. In the case of water fluoridation, the chemicals used to fluoridate the water that more than 180 million people drink each day are not pharmaceutical grade, but rather hazardous waste products of the phosphate fertilizer industry; it is illegal to dump these into rivers and lakes or release the parent gases into the atmosphere. In addition, water fluoridation is a prime example of one of the worst medical practices possible—forced medication with no control over the dose or who gets it. Perhaps most shocking of all, it is not subject to any federal regulation. At once painstakingly-documented and also highly-readable, The Case Against Fluoride brings new research to light, including links between fluoride and harm to your brain, bones, and kidneys, and shows that while there is possible value in topical applications like brushing your teeth with fluoride toothpaste, the evidence that swallowing fluoride reduces tooth decay is surprisingly weak. In this interview, Dr. Connett shares important information about fluoride and water fluoridation that you may have not been aware of before, and offers practical advice for what you can do to help get fluoride removed from the water supply of the United States and in other fluoridating countries. Dr. Mercola’s Comments: Amazingly, the United States is only one of eight countries in the entire developed world that fluoridates more than 50 percent of its water supply. (The other seven are: Australia, Colombia, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.) In Europe, Ireland is the only country that fluoridates more than 50 percent of its drinking water, and England fluoridates 10 percent. Most of mainland Europe is not fluoridated, and yet, according to World Health Organization data, their teeth are just as good, if not better than Americans’. One of the central challenges in this debate is that the United States claim to have one of the most advanced scientific countries in the world, yet we’re still engaging in a practice that is questionable at best, and extremely harmful at worst. This interview is part of an ongoing effort to help provide you with the tools to take action in three primary areas, and help you understand that indeed you CAN make a real difference in this area . Canada also fluoridates about 40 percent of its drinking water, and there, the efforts to eliminate fluoride seem quite optimistic. The fluoridation there is concentrated in Alberta and Ontario, so if Ontario stops water fluoridation, the entire country of Canada could conceivably get rid of it in short order. In the US, the current focus is on two specific communities: San Diego, California, and Austin, Texas. These areas already have leadership backing this cause, along with favorable media support. There may be other communities that we’re not aware of, and if you’re interested in starting a movement in your local community, please let us know you’re interested by adding your remarks in the Vital Votes section below. If you’re not already registered, you can do so here. It only takes a moment. We can then help you to get the process rolling. Is Water Fluoridation Really in the Best Interest of Public Health? As you may know, the theory behind the introduction of fluoride in your water supply initially seems beneficial – to reduce the incidence of dental caries in children. However, the health dangers of fluoride are so numerous; they far outweigh any potential benefit to your teeth. “First of all, water fluoridation is very bad medicine,” Dr. Connett says, “because once you put it in the water, you can’t control the dose. You can’t control who gets it. There is no oversight. You’re allowing a community to do to everyone what a doctor can do to no one, i.e. force a patient to take a particular medication.” Secondly, it’s both unnecessary and avoidable. Today, even promoters of fluoridation concede that the major benefits are topical; fluoride works from the outside of the tooth, not from inside of your body, so why swallow it? Why put it in the drinking water when you could just brush your teeth with fluoridated toothpaste if you choose – in addition to drinking it! Please note that I do NOT believe you should use fluoride in your toothpaste but I am just emphasizing the point that it might work topically but does not work at all when you swallow it. There are far better options for decreasing tooth decay than using a topical poison. Third, water fluoridation is ineffective. There is practically no difference in tooth decay between fluoridated and non-fluoridated countries, and no difference between states that have a high- or low percentage of their water fluoridated. Meanwhile, fluoride can cause significant harm. “We know that 32 percent of American children have been overexposed to fluoride,” Connett says, “because you have this telltale sign of dental fluorosis, which in its mildest form is little white specs. But when it gets more serious, it affects more of the surface of your teeth and it becomes colored; yellow, brown and orange mottling of the teeth.” Promoters of fluoridation scoff at these signs, saying that they’re “just cosmetic.” But, since we already know that water fluoridation does NOT effectively reduce dental caries, this is an unnecessary cosmetic defect, and, worse yet, it is a worrisome indication that your body has been overexposed to fluoride. If it’s having a detrimental, visual effect on the surface of your teeth, you can be virtually guaranteed that it’s also damaging something else inside your body, such as your bones. “The teeth are the window to the bones,” Connett says. “If you’ve seen the damage to the teeth, what damage can you not see?” Bone is in fact living tissue that is constantly being replaced through cellular turnover. Bone building is a finely balanced, complicated process. Fluoride has been known to disrupt this process ever since the 1930s. We have huge concerns about the potential of fluoride to damage the bone and cause symptoms like arthritis and making them more brittle and more prone to fracture. Water Fluoridation is an Assault on Your Freedom of Choice! “We now have 23 studies from four different countries; Mexico, Iran, India and China, which indicate that moderate exposure to fluoride is lowering IQ in children,” Connett says. “The lowest level at which they estimate this is happening is 1.9 parts per million of fluoride. If you’ve got an effect at 1.9 parts per million with a few hundred children in the study, then there is not enough margin of safety to protect every child that’s being exposed to fluoride.” You need a much larger margin of safety to protect children living in fluoridated communities. Meanwhile, the US has not yet studied the impact of fluoride on IQ. “The countries which are fluoridated are doing practically no health studies,” Connett points out. “They are far more concerned about protecting this policy for some reason than protecting health.” In 2003, the National Research Council appointed one of the most balanced and objective panels of experts that have ever objectively investigated fluoride. They spent about three years studying it and determined that the current “safe” drinking water standard of 4 ppm (parts per million) set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for fluoride is too high and it should be lowered. But in the four years since, the EPA has not completed a new health risk assessment and thus we still live with this outdated and unsafe standard, even though the NRC study was specifically requested by the EPA. When evaluating the issue of water fluoridation it is also important to understand that fluoride is a drug. You can’t get fluoride without a prescription! Yet it’s being added to your water supply on a mandatory basis at various levels that may or may not be safe for various individuals, especially children, the sick, and the elderly. Water fluoridation is a major assault on your freedom of choice – to be drugged or not. Sodium fluoride, which is a far simpler toxin than the fluoride compounds used for most water fluoridation, has also been used for rat and cockroach poisons, so there is no question that it is highly toxic. Have a Glass of Water, then Call Poison Control!? “The sad irony here is that the FDA, which does not regulate fluoride in drinking water, does regulate toothpaste,” Connett says, “and on the back of a tube of fluoridated toothpaste… it must state that “if your child swallows more than the recommended amount, contact a poison control center.” The amount that they’re talking about, the recommended amount, which is a pea-sized amount, is equivalent to one glass of water. The FDA is not putting a label on the tap saying don’t drink more than one glass of water. If you do, contact a poison center. So you got this tweedledum and tweedledee… There is no question that fluoride — not an excessive amount — can cause serious harm. There have been examples of children who swallowed the gel that is used for topical treatment and they died as a consequence. So fluoride is extremely toxic.” According to Dr. Connett, you also increase your child’s risk for dental fluorosis if he brushes his teeth with fluoridated toothpaste twice a day compared to just once. “We’re not talking about killing people outright with drinking water,” Connett says. “What we’re concerned about is the chronic exposure… It’s poisonous.” Fluoride Breaks Down Your Bones and Damage Your Thyroid Approximately fifty percent of the fluoride that you ingest each day ends up accumulating in your bones over a lifetime. So you’re steadily increasing the fluoride levels in your bones over time. Dr. Connett recounts the evidence gleaned from India and China, where some areas have high natural fluoride levels. There, the initial symptoms of fluoride poisoning are arthritis-like symptoms such as joint pains. Despite these findings, no study has ever been conducted in the US to investigate whether there’s an association between people living in fluoridated areas and increasing arthritis rates. Fluoride also lowers thyroid function. It was used in medicine during the 1930s through 1950s in Europe to treat patients with overactive thyroid glands. This is a very real and significant concern, especially today as millions of people suffer with low thyroid function. Women seem to be particularly sensitive to this. I’ve seen tens of thousands of patients, and low thyroid function is a very common problem. If you exhibit symptoms of low thyroid function you’ll want to get a TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) test. If it’s above 1.5 then you probably need to address your thyroid, at which point it becomes mandatory to avoid fluoride from all sources. Common symptoms of decreased thyroid function include: •Low body temperature •Lack of energy •Dry skin •Tendency toward constipation •Not sweating well Your drinking water and fluoridated toothpaste are the two most obvious sources, but you may also be exposed to fluoride from certain drugs, if they are metabolized to free fluoride in the body. This may occur with some antidepressants and some antibiotics, especially the fluoroquinolones. Another source is pesticides, so it also becomes more important to eat organic. Where Does the Fluoride Come From? It’s important to make a distinction between the natural fluorides found in the environment versus the toxic chemicals used for fluoridating your water. Ninety percent of the chemicals used in fluoridation in the United States do not occur naturally. “It’s a substance called hexafluorosilicic acid or its sodium salt: silicon fluorides,” Connett explains. “These silicon fluorides are captured pollutants from the phosphate fertilizer industry. When you’re making phosphate fertilizers… the process generates two very toxic gasses; hydrogen fluoride and silicon tetrafluoride. For about a hundred years, these decimated the local area — the vegetation; crippled cattle and so on. Eventually, they were required to capture these toxic gasses, using a spray of water. That spray of water produces silicon fluorides. That scrubbing liquor cannot be dumped into the sea by international law. It can’t be dumped locally because it’s too concentrated. But if someone buys it, it’s no longer a hazardous waste, it’s a product. … Who buys it? The public water utilities buy this stuff and put it in our drinking water. It’s absolutely absurd.” Dr. William Hirzy from the EPA has pointed out that if it goes into the air, it’s a pollutant. If it goes into the local water, it’s pollution. But if the public water utilities buy it and pour it in our drinking water, it’s no longer a pollutant. All of a sudden like magic it’s a beneficial public health measure. “So not only are we doing something quite unique, using the public water supply to deliver medicine… we’re using the public water supply to get rid of hazardous waste from the phosphate industry,” Connett says. It makes a lot of money for them [this way, because otherwise it would cost] a lot of money to get rid of it as hazardous waste.” Making matters worse, if that’s even possible, is that in recent times the US has started purchasing these industrial fluoride products from China, as phosphate-producing industry in Florida has been reduced. However, some communities in the US have stopped using China-made fluoride because it was producing a white sludge that jammed up the delivery system. “The Center for Disease Control engineer said, “We don’t know what this sludge is but we know it’s safe,” Connett says. “But if you don’t know what it is, how can you say it’s safe?” Since I’ve taken a personal interest in this, my team will try to obtain some of this fluoride from China and have it analyzed by a third-party, independent laboratory to see what’s really in it… Once I have those results, I will share them with you in this newsletter. The REAL Cause of Tooth Decay As far as tooth decay is concerned, this is not caused by lack of fluoride. Tooth decay is caused by acids in your mouth, typically created from sugar being metabolized by bacteria (Streptococcus mutans), and as you may already know, the number one source of calories in the United States is high fructose corn syrup. The acid produced then attacks your enamel. Eventually the bacteria can get into the dentine, at which point tooth decay sets in. You typically don’t find dental caries in more primitive societies that do not consume these vast amounts of sugar. “We need education, not fluoridation,” Connett agrees. “That education would have a double dividend. By avoiding high fructose sugar, we’ll not only score a huge benefit with dental decay but also with obesity and health.” A Special Note about Using Tap Water when Making Infant Formula Most of the people who are educated about fluoride will avoid drinking municipal tap water that is fluoridated, and will use a reverse osmosis system in your home to rid your water of fluoride. However, there are many who simply don’t have the resources or the know-how to protect themselves and their young children. In November of 2006, the American Dental Association (ADA) sent out an email to alert its members of their recommendation to parents to not use fluoridated tap water to make infant formula. A few days later, the CDC followed suit. But neither of them openly informed the public! So there are millions of parents out there using tap water to make up formula, oblivious of the fact that the agencies that promote fluoridation in this country have issued a specific warning against using fluoridated water for this purpose. Not only that, but by fluoridating the municipal water supply, you doom many low income families to fail to protect their young children from this dangerous drug, even if they have this information. Help End Water Fluoridation in Canada and the United States The Fluoride Action Network is an absolutely phenomenal resource for further education, and they’re doing much to pressure the US government for change. Their statement calling for an end to fluoridation worldwide now been signed by over 2,800 professionals. We encourage all medical and science professionals to sign this statement. In addition, I highly recommend getting a copy of Dr. Connett’s new book, The Case Against Fluoride. It is scheduled for release in late September, but is available for pre-order. Last but not least, stay tuned, as we will be working together to devise a complete game plan to tackle this issue head on. Once we reach the tipping point, which may be as little as five percent of the population, we will be able to reverse the policies of water fluoridation. Our strategy will begin with addressing Canada, because 60 percent of Canada is already un-fluoridated. If we can get the rest of Canada to stop fluoridating their water, we believe the U.S. will be forced to follow. If you live in Ontario, Canada, please join the ongoing effort by contacting Diane Sprules at [email protected]. The point-of-contact for Toronto is Aliss Terpstra. You may email her at [email protected]. We’re also going to address the two US communities: Austin, Texas and San Diego, California. If you live in Austin, Texas, you can join the effort by contacting Rae Nadler-Olenick at either: [email protected] or [email protected], or by regular mail or telephone: POB 7486 Austin, Texas 78713 Phone: (512) 371-3786 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (512) 371-3786 end_of_the_skype_highlighting If you’re in San Diego, California, contact Patty Ducey-Brooks, publisher of the Presidio Sentinel at [email protected] . You can always visit www.FluorideAlert.org for the most recent updates and progress. In addition, we’re willing to support any credible activist for this cause, who is scientifically based and grounded, regardless of where you live in the US. We can provide resources to help support you in your effort to eliminate fluoride from your local community – and it really needs to be a community battle. We’re not going to be able to pass a federal law against fluoridation. There is not going to be a Presidential mandate or even a State-wide elimination. This change will occur one community at a time. “It’s politics that is interfering with science in this issue,”Connett says . “It’s a matter of political will, and you cannot change political will if you don’t get the people. We must involve the people.” So please, get informed; stay involved. Related Links: One of the Biggest Health Frauds EVER Perpetrated on the American People… Fluoride Damages Your Brain! The Fluoride Controversy The Fluoride Debate: A response to the American Dental Association’s booklet, “Fluoridation Facts” Fluoride Action Network (Excellent Resource, Very Up-to-Date) Scientific Literature on Fluoride Fluoride: Protected Pollutant or Panacea? (Elkie Babiuk’s site) New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation Fluoride Controversy, the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients More Scientific Facts on Fluoride Fluoride Research Journal America Overdosed on Fluoride – Lynn Landes (Includes e-mail correspondence inwhich an ADA spokesperson refutes news reports that non-fluoridated bottled water causes cavities, and what you can do to ban fluoride and educate others.) The Toxic Effects of Fluoride (Be aware that they are selling a fluoride removal system.) Fluoridation Debate (Environmental Health Perspectives, Volume 105, Number 11, November 1997) Fluoridation: The Overdosing of America – Fact or Fiction? (Slides by Gerald H. Smith, D.D.S.) Darryl W. Roundy, D.C. – Fluoride Research Fluoridation Fluoride Toxic Chemicals In Your Water Does water fluoridation have negative side effects? If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among American women between the age of 40-55, and the high prevalence has spawned a very lucrative industry; from mammography and other dangerous or invasive testing methods, to “preventive” double mastectomies and cancer drugs. Much effort is placed on trying to detect cancer at an earlier stage. Unfortunately, the conventional recommendation to get regular mammograms has shown to be more harmful than helpful, as research shows 10 times as many women are harmed in some way compared to those whose lives are spared by annual mammograms. Is there a better way to prevent becoming a statistic? Yes, there is, says Dr. Christiane Northrup, a practicing physician and ob-gyn specialist who has dedicated a good portion of her life to helping women take control of their health. Dr. Northrup is also a New York Times best-seller author, and is a prominent speaker on natural health issues, especially those related to women, for whom breast health is a major issue. Having grown up in a health-conscious family where her father was a holistic dentist and her paternal aunt and uncle were conventional medical doctors, she got a chance to see the difference between the two philosophies first-hand. Her father instilled in her the idea that “It’s not about living forever; it’s about living well while you’re here,” and in order to do that, your focus needs to be on living a healthy lifestyle, opposed to searching for and spending your life trying to treat diseases as they crop up. Dr. Northrup on Disease Screening as Health Care Conventional medicine, with its focus on diagnosis and treatment of disease, has the side effect of turning everything into a “condition” that needs treatment. According to Dr. Northrup: “[I]n my ob-gyn residency, I saw a couple of things. One, a woman’s body was treated as a disease waiting to happen. Pregnancy was a disease. A normal labor and birth was considered a retrospective diagnosis… Breasts are treated as two pre-malignant lesions sitting on your chest. The whole discussion of women’s health is, ‘What can go wrong?’ …[W]e think that women’s health is disease screening. We think that women’s health is pap smears [and] mammograms… [But] that’s not feeding cells the nutrients, the thoughts, the emotions that they need in order to continue to reproduce themselves in a healthy way. The body replaces itself totally every seven years. It will replace itself in a healthy way, depending upon what you’re feeding it on all levels.” Mammography Can Turn Healthy Women into Cancer Patients I’ve taken a strong, and in some cases controversial position on mammography, and I’m particularly leery of the newer 3D tomosynthesis mammography, which is touted as being so much better but in reality may simply compound the same problems associated with regular mammography, as it increases the amount of harmful (and cancer-causing) ionizing radiation you’re exposed to. Dr. Northrup agrees, calling 3D tomosynthesis “a better mouse trap.” “I keep going back to the work of Gilbert Welch from Dartmouth. I believe it is the most important paper to come out about breast cancer almost in my entire career,” she says. “Gil wrote a book called ‘Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why.’ That was in 2004. Now he comes out with a paper that has everyone riled up. It’s called ‘The Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast Cancer incidents’1 [published in the prestigious medical journal New England Journal of Medicine]. He says: ‘With the assumption of a constant underlying disease burden, only eight of the 122 additional early-stage cancers diagnosed were expected to progress to advanced disease. After excluding the transient excess incidence associated with hormone-replacement therapy and adjusting for trends in the incidence of breast cancer among women younger than 40, we estimated that breast cancer was overdiagnosed (i.e., tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms) in 1.3 million U.S. women in the past 30 years. We estimated that in 2008, breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31 percent of all breast cancers diagnosed.’” So in 30-year’s time, an estimated 1.3 million women were diagnosed with what amounts to “ductal carcinoma in situ,” also known as stage zero cancer—or cancer you may die with but not from. It’s essentially harmless… “[Gilbert Welch] pointed to a study [from] way back, of women who died in car accidents in their 40s. They sectioned their breast tissues and found that 40 percent of them – this is normal healthy women dying in car accidents – had evidence of ductal carcinoma in situ that was never going to go anywhere. This is the big dilemma,” Dr. Northrup says. Many Cancers Heal on Their Own… Another important study was published in November 2008 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.2 This study followed more than 200,000 Norwegian women between the ages of 50 and 64 over two consecutive six-year periods. Half received regular periodic breast exams or regular mammograms, while the others had no regular breast cancer screenings. The study reported that those women receiving regular screenings had 22 percent more incidence of breast cancer. The researchers, as well as another team of doctors who did not take part in the study but who analyzed the data, concluded that the women who didn’t have regular breast cancer screenings probably had the same number of occurrences of breast cancer, but that their bodies had somehow corrected the abnormalities on their own. “Of course, this makes complete sense, because your immune system is set up to recognize and destroy cancers in the right environment,” Dr. Northrup says. “The right environment, of course, is enough sleep, a low-glycemic diet, enough vitamin D, and also regular handling of resentments, anger, grief, and loss. I think what I want women to know is that your breasts are not two potentially pre-malignant lesions sitting on your chest. The problem with our paradigm – whether it’s tomosynthesis or mammograms – is that it will find things that were never going to go anywhere. And then you’re out there wearing a pink ribbon and running for the cure, thinking that you were going to die of breast cancer when you never will, and never would.” What are Your Breasts Telling You? Dr. Northrup is a firm believer in the innate wisdom of the body, and you can apply a certain measure of symbolism to various body parts. Your breasts, for example, were designed to feed and nurture your children, as well as for pleasure. According to Dr. Northrup, women who tend to be most at risk for breast cancer are those who have difficulty nurturing themselves and receiving pleasure… “The first thing you need to understand is you have to learn how to receive – how to receive rest, how to receive pleasure – and that’s going to be the primary intervention that I would do. This is the biggest stumbling block for women: we’re so afraid of appearing selfish. Here’s what we do to get the nutrients of pleasure and receiving that we all need for optimal brain health – the beta-endorphin or the feel-good chemicals in the brain: We import it through alcohol and sugar, when we can import it directly through self-love, meditation, exercise, and good sex, which you can do with yourself,” she says. Bernie Siegel, a pediatric surgeon from Yale, was co-president of the American Holistic Medical Association with Dr. Northrup in the early ‘90s. “Bernie used to say, ‘I have come to see that the fundamental problem most patients face is the inability to love themselves,’”she says. “I remember thinking, ‘God, Bernie, that seems pretty simple to me.’ And you know what? He’s right. The older you get, the more you realize this.” So how do you love yourself when you feel unlovable? Dr. Northrup suggests a paradoxical strategy she picked up from Gay Hendricks, who is a pioneer in relationship transformation and body-mind therapies. Simply meditate on, or use the mantra: “I don’t feel lovable, so I’m going to love myself for that.” Another powerful strategy that we use in my practice is a form of energy psychology known as the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), which also uses the affirmation to love and accept yourself unconditionally. This really is a powerful healing affirmation that can have a profound influence. I’ve worked with tens of thousands of patients, and it can seem like nothing short of magic when unconditional love and self acceptance is integrated into a person’s neurology. In many cases, it can resolve physical symptoms quite rapidly. According to Dr. Northrup, part of this healing is due to the increase in nitric oxide, which is found at high levels in your nasal pharynx. This is one of the reasons why you should breathe through your nose (opposed to mouth-breathing). “Think about what happens when you do that. You get an increase in nitric oxide in every blood vessel in the body. And remember: a capillary is a micron away from every cell in the body. Nitric oxide is produced by the endothelial lining of every blood vessel in the body. It’s increased in all situations of health: self-love, aerobic exercise, antioxidant, vitamins, eating your vegetables. Nitric oxide is the molecule of life force. It also balances all the neurotransmitters instantaneously – serotonin, dopamine, beta endorphin, and all those things for which one in 10 Americans is on an antidepressant.” Dr. Northrup’s Top 10 Health Tips for Women In this interview, Dr. Northrup shares her top 10 tips for women’s health: 1.Get enough sleep: Proper sleep is essential for optimal health, and it helps metabolize stress hormones better than any other known entity. 2.Meditate for at least 3-12 minutes each day, to calm and soothe your mind. 3.Begin your day with a positive affirmation. 4.Exercise regularly. Ideally, aim for a comprehensive program that includes high intensity exercises and strength training along with core-building exercises and stretching. 5.Breathe properly. When you breathe in and out fully through your nose, you activate your parasympathetic rest-and-restore nervous system, which expands the lower lobes of your lungs, and therefore engages the vagus nerves. “Relax the back of your throat. So many women have thyroid problems – it’s from chronic tension here; because you’re pretty sure your feminine voice isn’t going to be heard. It hasn’t been heard for 5,000 years. You’re not alone. But it’s being heard now,” she says. 6.Practice self love and unconditional acceptance. Dr. Northrup suggests looking at yourself in the mirror at least once a day, and saying: “I love you. I really love you.” “After 21 days, something will happen to you. You’ll see a part of you that looks back at you, and you begin to believe it. “I love you. I really love you.” 7.Optimize your vitamin D levels. Get your vitamin D level checked. Ideally, you’ll want your levels within the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml. According to Dr. Northrup: “Sunlight is not the enemy. It’s lack of antioxidants in your diet that is the enemy. Natural light is a lovely source of vitamin D; you can’t overdose. But many people – to get their levels of vitamin D into optimal – are going to need 5,000 to 10, 000 international units per day. So, vitamin D is important. You can get your level drawn through MyMedLab.com without a doctor’s prescription.” Just remember that if you take high doses of oral vitamin D, you also need to boost your intake of vitamin K2. For more information on this, please see my previous article, What You Need to Know About Vitamin K2, D and Calcium. 8.Cultivate an active social life; enjoy some face-to-face time with likeminded people. 9.Epsom salt baths (20 minutes, three times per week) are a simple, inexpensive way to get magnesium into your body. 10.Keep a gratitude journal. Each night, before you go to bed, write down five things that you are grateful for, or five things that brought you pleasure. “Remember: every emotion is associated with a biochemical reality in your body. So, you want to bring in the emotions of generosity, pleasure, receiving, and open-heartedness. The same things that create heart health create breast health.” How to Perform Breast Self-Examinations Naturally, I couldn’t discuss women’s breast health with Dr. Northrup without getting her take on breast self-examinations. Surprisingly, research has shown that self-examinations may be overrated, much like mammograms, in terms of saving women’s lives. “There was a huge study done in China that showed that teaching women how to examine their breasts did not decrease their mortality at all,” she says. “In fact, all it did was increase the number of biopsies for benign disease. So, there’s no data that breast self-exam helps with anything.” That said, she still encourages and recommends a monthly or weekly “self-love breast massage,” but not to specifically look for anything, or with the expectation of finding something wrong. Instead, she suggests just gently and lovingly massaging your breasts and up under your armpit, where the lymph nodes are located, while taking your Epsom salt bath. The best time to do it is just after your period, when you have the least amount of hormonal stimulation. “Massage this with love. You’re not looking for anything,” she says. “The average woman will find something. We know that breast self-exam, or just a woman finding something because she knows her breasts, is just as good as all of these other screenings for finding the fast-growing tumors. See, the problem with screening is it finds the slow-growing ones that may regress or wouldn’t go anywhere anyway. So, for a part of your health, you want to start a practice of bringing your breast home to your chest. Get to know them in health lovingly. Don’t use your fingertips, by the way. Use your palm. Otherwise, you’re going to feel every little gland and freak out. And then if you do find that you have what’s called a fibrocystic disease where your breasts get tender, start eating some kelp tablets, because the iodine really helps that in a huge way.” Taking Control of Your Health is the Best Prevention The advice offered in this article is that of Dr. Northrup. There are many additional strategies to help prevent cancer, and breast cancer in particular. For a list of my top tips, please see this previous article. One of the most important lifestyle changes you can make is to adopt a low-glycemic diet and avoid sugar in all its forms, especially fructose. Excess sugar increases insulin which, along with high blood sugar, changes the way estrogen is metabolized in your body. Elevated estrogen levels is a risk factor for breast cancer, so you’ll want to avoid estrogen dominance. If you are experiencing excessive menopausal symptoms, you may want to consider bioidentical hormone replacement therapy instead, which uses hormones that are molecularly identical to the ones your body produces and do not wreak havoc on your system. This is a much safer alternative. I agree with Dr. Northrup that health is ultimately about living well while you’re alive, and placing too much effort on detecting cancer can turn you into a patient when you’re not actually ill… Cancer screening is not prevention, and while early detection of cancer is desirable, the conventional recommendation to get regular mammograms has shown to be more harmful than helpful. Remember, 10 times as many women are harmed in some way compared to those whose lives are spared by annual mammograms. So educate yourself about your options, and embrace your body, your life, and your health; focusing on living healthy, opposed to searching for that elusive “something” that might one day kill you. If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Cancer is the disease Americans fear most,1 and understandably so since it’s responsible for nearly one out of every four deaths in the US.2 Adding to its stigma, cancer diagnosis and treatment are the moneymakers in this industry – and also the focus of most government-funded cancer campaigns.

Comparatively little is done in the way of prevention education, leaving many feeling powerless against this potentially deadly disease – as though all you can do is cross your fingers and hope you don’t become one of the quickly growing cancer statistics. What a relief it should be to learn that prevention strategies not only exist, but also are remarkably effective at lowering your risk of most types of cancer.

Cancer Prevention: 10 Top Tips

“More than half of all cancer deaths could be prevented by making healthy choices like not smoking, staying at a healthy weight, eating right, keeping active, and getting recommended screening tests.”3

This quote is taken directly from the American Cancer Society, and it should be eye-opening and empowering if you’re not yet aware that cancer prevention starts, first and foremost, with you and, as the featured article explains, your home.4

1. Optimize Your Vitamin D

If you want to slash your risk of cancer, it’s essential that you spend adequate time in the sun or a safe tanning bed, or if that’s not possible supplement with proper amounts of vitamin D3. It’s been definitively proven using data from more than 100 countries that the higher the solar UVB, the lower the incidence of 15 different types of cancer, including:5

Bladder

Breast

Cervical

Colon

Endometrial

Esophageal

Gastric

Lung

Ovarian

Pancreatic

Rectal

Renal

Vulvar

Hodgkin’s lymphoma

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma

The most important factor is your vitamin D serum level. In order to help prevent a wide variety of diseases and health ailments, including cancer, your vitamin D level needs to be between 50 and 70 ng/ml year-round. Vitamin D from sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is the BEST way to optimize your vitamin D levels.

Just be cautious about the length of your exposure. You only need enough exposure to have your skin turn the lightest shade of pink. Once you reach this point your body will not make any additional vitamin D due to its self-regulating mechanism. Any additional exposure will only cause harm and damage to your skin.

If you’re taking oral vitamin D, you also need to make sure you’re taking vitamin K2 as well, as K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. To learn more, please see my previous article: What You Need to Know About Vitamin K2, D and Calcium. If you take oral vitamin D and have cancer, it would be very prudent to monitor your vitamin D blood levels regularly.

2. Avoid Eating Excess Protein

Most of us eat far too much protein. Consider reducing your protein levels to one gram per kilogram of lean body weight unless you are in competitive athletics or are pregnant. It would be unusual for most adults to need more than 100 grams of protein and most likely need close to half that amount. This may come as a surprise, as we’ve been told for decades how important protein is for your health, but the truth is that excessive protein intake can have a great impact on cancer growth.

The mTOR pathway is short for mammalian target of rapamycin. This pathway is ancient but relatively recently appreciated and has only been known for less than 20 years. Odds are very high your doctor was never taught this in medical school and isn’t even aware of it. Many new cancer drugs are actually being targeted to use this pathway. Drugs using this pathway have also been given to animals to radically extend their lifespan. But you don’t have to use drugs to get this pathway to work for you.

You can “biohack” your body by restricting your protein intake and replacing the decreased protein with healthy fats; this will provide virtually identical benefits as these dangerous and expensive drugs. According to a recent interview I conducted with Dr. Ron Rosedale, when you consume protein in levels higher than one gram of protein per kilogram of LEAN body mass you can activate the mTOR pathway, which will radically increase your risk of cancer. It is very easy to consume excess protein and my guess is that most people reading this are. I know I was, and as a result of this new insight I have reduced my protein intake by about half.

To determine your lean body mass find out your percentage of body fat and subtract it from 100. So if you have 20% body fat you would have 80% lean body mass. Multiply that by your current weight to get your lean body mass. For most people, reducing your protein levels to one gram per kilogram of lean body weight means restricting protein intake from 35 to 75 grams. Pregnant women and those working out extensively need about 25% more protein, though. Further, when you reduce protein you need to replace it with other calories, specifically high-quality fats such as avocados, butter, coconut oil, olives, olive oil, nuts and eggs.

3. Eat Living Foods with Amazing Health Benefits

Sprouts are a “super” food that many overlook. In addition to their nutritional profile, sprouts are also easy to grow on your own. I started sprouting seeds in ball jars 10 to 15 years ago. A Care2 article published last year6 listed 10 reasons for eating sprouts, including the following. You can see my recent article that extols their benefits. I should be providing a more comprehensive report in the near future.
•Sprouts can contain up to 100 times more enzymes than raw fruits and vegetables, allowing your body to extract more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fats from the foods you eat
•Both the quality of the protein and the fiber content of beans, nuts, seeds and grains improves when sprouted
•The content of vitamins and essential fatty acids also increase dramatically during the sprouting process. For example, depending on the sprout, the nutrient content can increase as much as 30 times the original value within just a few days of sprouting. Sunflower seed and pea sprouts tend to top the list of all the seeds that you can sprout and are typically each about 30 times more nutritious than organic vegetables you can even harvest in your backyard garden
•During sprouting, minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, bind to protein, making them more bioavailable
•Sprouts are the ultimate locally grown food, and can easily be grown in your own kitchen, so you know exactly what you’re eating. And since they’re very inexpensive, cost is no excuse for avoiding them

4. Simplify Your Cleaning Supplies

My top list of cancer prevention strategies has always included reducing your exposure to environmental toxins like household chemical cleaners. While it is very difficult to prove that a person’s exposure to household cleaners over the course of 10, 20 or 30 years is what caused their cancer diagnosis, it is well known that commonly used household chemicals do, in fact, cause cancer, along with other serious health effects like reproductive and developmental problems in developing children.

Research has found, for instance, that breast cancer risk is twice as high among women who report the most use of cleaning products and air fresheners, compared to those who rarely use such products.7 Mold and mildew cleaners and air fresheners have shown the greatest correlation with breast cancer. Some of the chemicals of greatest concern that you’ll want to avoid include:

Synthetic musks

Phthalates

1,4-diclorobenzene

Terpenes

Benzene

Styrene

Phenol

Nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs)

Formaldehyde

Petroleum solvents

Butyl cellosolve

Triclosan (antibacterial)

Fortunately, it’s simple to replace toxic commercial cleansers with safer options. One of the best non-toxic disinfectants is plain soap and water. You can use this for washing your hands, your body and for other household cleaning. Another all-purpose cleaner that works great for kitchen counters, cutting boards and bathrooms is 3% hydrogen peroxide and vinegar. You can also keep your home very fresh and clean by making your own natural cleaning products using items you probably already have around your home. Some more tips for making simple and effective all-natural cleansers:
•Use baking soda mixed with apple cider vinegar to clean drains and bathtubs, or sprinkle baking soda along with a few drops of lavender oil or tea tree oil (which have antibacterial qualities) as a simple scrub for your bathroom or kitchen.
•Vinegar can be used to clean almost anything in your home. Try it mixed with liquid castile soap, essential oils and water to clean floors, windows, bathrooms and kitchens. It can even be used as a natural fabric softener.
•Hydrogen peroxide is safer to use than chlorine bleach for disinfecting and whitening.
•Vodka is a disinfectant that can remove red wine stains, kill wasps and bees and refresh upholstery (put it into a mister and simply spray on the fabric).

For a great video on how to use these ingredients and other tips for cleaning your home without hazardous chemicals, please review the article How to Keep Your Home Clean Naturally. The free eBook Toxic Free8 also has 70 recipes for a toxic-free home that are worth checking out.

5. Use Greener Beauty Products

When cleaning up your lifestyle you may be tempted to start with your diet (which is a good place to start), but your personal care products are also important to address. Putting chemicals on your skin is actually far worse than ingesting them, because when you eat something everything must go to your liver before entering your blood stream, providing your body an opportunity to detoxify substances that could be harmful. When you put chemicals on your skin however, they’re absorbed straight into your bloodstream without filtering of any kind, so the toxic chemicals from toiletries and beauty products are largely going into your blood, lymphatic system and then directly into your internal organs.

There are literally thousands of chemicals used in personal care products, and only a tiny fraction of them have ever been tested for safety. According to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, nearly 900 of the chemicals used in cosmetics are known to be toxic. It’s impossible to list them all, but some of the most common culprits to avoid include:

Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)

Musks

Mercury

Paraben

1,4-Dioxane

Lead

Phthalates, including dibutyl phthalate (DBP), dimethyl phthalate (DMP), and diethyl phthalate (DEP)

Mineral Oil, Paraffin, and Petrolatum

Nano particles

Antibacterials

Hydroquinone

Formaldehyde

When it comes to personal care products, I like to use this rule — if you wouldn’t eat it, don’t put it on your body. Ideally, you’ll want to look for the USDA’s verified Organic seal. I also highly recommend using the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database,9 where you can look up a wide variety of products and brands to find out what they’re really made of, and whether or not they’re safe. You can also make your own personal care products, using simple all-natural ingredients that many of you may already have in your home Our Nourishing Roots has a recipe for a watermelon face mask that you can try,10 and here are a few of my recommendations:
•All-natural moisturizers — Pure emu oil is a great alternative to facial- and body moisturizers and lotions, as is pure coconut oil. It’s a fantastic moisturizer and a potent source of the beneficial fat lauric acid.
•All-natural acne fighter — Rubbing just a drop of oregano oil on a breakout can speed up the healing and prevent unsightly scarring (remember to wash your hands thoroughly afterward).
•All-natural deodorant – Plain soap and water works fine. If you still need further help then try a pinch of baking soda mixed into water as an effective all-day deodorant.

6. Ditch Your Non-Stick Cookware

About 70 percent of the cookware sold in the US contains a non-stick coating that contains PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and other perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), which are used to make grease-resistant food packaging and stain-resistant clothing as well. Even though there are many names, if the item in question is “non-stick” or “stain/grease resistant,” it will generally have some type of fluoride-impregnated coating that is best avoided.

It’s well documented that when non-stick pans are heated the coating begins breaking down, releasing toxins into the air in your kitchen. When the pan reaches 680 degrees F (which takes about three to five minutes of heating), at least six toxic gases are released. At 1,000 degrees F, the coatings on your cookware break down into a chemical warfare agent known as PFIB. Research has revealed that these toxins can accumulate in your blood at an alarming rate and may lead to chronic disease like cancer over time. You can keep your exposure as low as possible by avoiding (or getting rid of) products that contain PFCs. This includes:

Non-stick cookware (choose either ceramic or glass instead)

Microwave popcorn

Packaging for greasy foods (including paper and cardboard packaging)

Stain-proof clothing

Flame retardants and products that contain them

Stain-resistant carpeting, and fabric stain protectors

7. Drink Clear Pure Water

If you receive municipal water that is treated with chlorine or chloramines, toxic disinfection byproducts (DBPs) form when these disinfectants react with natural organic matter like decaying vegetation in the source water. DBPs are over 10,000 times more toxic than chlorine, and out of all the other toxins and contaminants present in your water, such as fluoride and miscellaneous pharmaceutical drugs, DBPs are likely the absolute worst of the bunch.

Already, it’s known that trihalomethanes (THMs), one of the most common DBPs, are Cancer Group B carcinogens, meaning they’ve been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals. They’ve also been linked to reproductive problems in both animals and humans, such as spontaneous abortion, stillbirths, and congenital malformations, even at lower levels. A whole-house filtration system is your best choice to remove chlorine, chloramine, ammonia, DBPs and other contaminants from all of your water sources (bath, shower and tap). If you don’t have the resources for a whole-house filtration system at this time, there are a couple of other tricks you can try. At FindaSpring.com you can identify local springs where you can get pure, chloramine-free drinking water for a minimal cost. You can also try:11
•Adding fruit, such as slices of peeled orange, to a 1-gallon water pitcher, which will help neutralize chloramine in about 30 minutes
•Dissolving a 1,000-mg vitamin C tablet into your bath water, which will neutralize the chloramine in an average-size bathtub

8. Choose Organic and Locally Grown Food

Many pesticides and herbicides are potentially carcinogenic, and you may be exposed to them when you eat conventionally grown produce and animal products. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60 percent of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides, and 30 percent of insecticides to be carcinogenic, and most are also damaging to your nervous system as well. Some of the pesticides/herbicides classified as probable or possible human carcinogens by the EPA include:

Chlordane

Heptachlor

Tetrachlorvinphos

Carbaryl

Propoxur

Lindane

Dichlorvos

Phosmet

Permethrin

The answer, of course, is to opt for organically grown produce and organically raised, pastured animal products, which are raised without chemicals and other potentially cancer-causing products, like rBGH (a genetically engineered growth hormone commonly found in milk).

It’s well known that conventionally grown fruits and vegetables are often tainted with unacceptable levels of pesticide residues, but you’re also exposed when you eat animal products. Animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) eat feed full of pesticides, and these toxins accumulate in their flesh and fat over the course of their lifetimes. When you eat factory-farmed meat, you then ingest these accumulated pesticides.

As for fresh produce, certain fruits and vegetables tend to be far more contaminated than others, simply because they’re more susceptible to various infestations and therefore sprayed more heavily. Some foods are also more “absorbent,” with thin, tender skins. Such foods would be high on your list for buying organic. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) produces an annual shopper’s guide to pesticides in produce12 that you can download. It lists the produce with the highest and lowest levels of pesticide residue, which can help save you money if you can’t afford to buy everything organic.

Choosing organically raised animal products is potentially even more important, however, as animal products tend to bioaccumulate toxins from their pesticide-laced feed, concentrating them to far higher concentrations than are typically present in vegetables.

Fermented foods can be helpful here as well, as some of the beneficial bacteria produced in fermented foods have been found to help detoxify organophosphorus insecticide. A 2009 study13 showed that during the fermentation of kimchi, the insecticide degraded rapidly until day 3, and had degraded completely by day 9. Four lactic acid bacteria were identified as being responsible for the effect, so regularly consuming fermented foods (or alternatively a high-quality probiotic) may help you buffer some of the damage that pesticide exposures can cause.

9. Skip the Canned Foods

Avoiding canned foods is perhaps your best way to avoid bisphenol-A (BPA) – an endocrine-disrupting chemical linked to cancer and reproductive and fetal development problems, among other health issues.

Though BPA is a widely used component of plastic containers, it’s also found in food packaging and the inner lining of cans. Research from the Harvard School of Public Health14 revealed that canned foods and beverages can increase your BPA levels by a staggering 1,000 percent in a mere five days! The lead researcher noted that given this finding, canned goods may be an even greater contribution to your BPA levels than plastics. Here are 10 tips to help reduce your exposure to BPA around the house:

Only use glass baby bottles and dishes for your baby

Use glass, ceramic, or stainless steel travel coffee mugs rather than plastic or Styrofoam coffee cups

Get rid of your plastic dishes and cups, and replace them with glass varieties

Avoid using plastic wrap (and never microwave anything covered in it)

Give your baby natural fabric toys instead of plastic ones

If you opt to use plastic kitchenware, at least get rid of the older, scratched-up varieties, avoid putting them in the dishwasher, and don’t wash them with harsh detergents, as these things can cause more chemicals to leach into your food

Store your food and beverages in glass containers

Avoid using bottled water; filter your own using a reverse osmosis filter instead

IF you choose to use a microwave, don’t microwave food in a plastic container

Before allowing a dental sealant to be applied to your, or your children’s, teeth, ask your dentist to verify that it does not contain BPA

10. Ditch Your Microwave

If you microwave your food in plastic containers, it can hasten the rate at which potentially cancer-causing chemicals can leach into your food. Additionally, microwaving creates new compounds that are not found in humans or in nature, called radiolytic compounds. We don’t yet know what these compounds are doing to your body.

In addition to the violent frictional heat effects, called thermic effects, there are also athermic effects, which are poorly understood because they are not as easily measured. It is these athermic effects that are suspected to be responsible for much of the deformation and degradation of cells and molecules.15 As an example, microwaves are used in the field of gene-altering technology to weaken cell membranes. Scientists use microwaves to actually break cells apart. Impaired cells then become easy prey for viruses, fungi and other microorganisms. You really CAN survive sans microwave—people are living quite happily without one, believe it or not. You just have to make a few small lifestyle adjustments, such as:
•Plan ahead. Take your dinner out of the freezer that morning or the night before so you don’t end up having to scramble to defrost a 5-pound chunk of beef two hours before dinnertime.
•Make soups and stews in bulk, and then freeze them in gallon-sized freezer bags or other containers. An hour before meal time, just take one out and defrost it in a sink of water until it’s thawed enough to slip into a pot, then reheat it on the stove.
•A toaster oven makes a GREAT faux-microwave for heating up leftovers! Keep it at a low temperature — like 200-250 degrees F — and gently warm a plate of food over the course of 20-30 minutes. Another great alternative is a convection oven.
•Prepare your meals in advance so that you always have a good meal available on those days when you’re too busy or too tired to cook.
•Try eating more organic raw foods. This is one of the best ways to improve your health over the long run.

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Nearly 100 trillion bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms compose your body’s microflora, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that these tiny organisms play a major role in your health. Gut microbes are particularly prominent in the news lately, and one of the most talked-about studies suggests bacteria in your gut may play a role in your risk of heart disease through a surprising mechanism: the breakdown of a widely consumed compound in protein known as L-carnitine. As a result, the media has mounted a virtual campaign warning that red meat eaters may be at higher risk of heart disease. But does the research really back up that claim? Some nutritional experts disagree, pointing out the many weaknesses in the study, and why giving up meat to prevent heart disease may be premature, if not downright wrong. This 6 person study may be one of the worst and most publicized since last year’s media attack stating eggs were as bad for you as smoking. Microflora Composition–A New Explanation for the Link Between Red Meat and Heart Disease? It’s widely stated that eating red meat causes heart disease, an association that is often blamed (incorrectly) on its impact on cholesterol levels. Yet, research has repeatedly shown that the dietary cholesterol-heart disease connection is incorrect. So while the featured study may offer intriguing clues to the importance of gut bacteria, and how gut bacteria is influenced by your diet, it’s doubtful that this latest hypothesis linking heart disease to red meat consumption via another pathway is entirely correct. For example, a 2010 study from Harvard found no evidence that eating red meats leads to heart disease.1 That said, the featured study published in Nature Medicine2 claims to shed some light on why some people who eat red meat develop heart disease while others do not – and the reason may come down to differences in gut bacteria. The study,3 by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic, found that human gut bacteria can metabolize L-carnitine, a substance found in red meat, energy drinks and dietary supplements, and in so doing produce a byproduct called trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). TMAO is thought to encourage fatty plaque deposits to form within arteries (atherosclerosis), and therefore, the more TMAO you have in your blood the greater your risk of heart disease might be. Interestingly, people with diets high in L-carnitine, i.e. meat eaters, had a gut microbe composition that was more prone to forming TMAO, while vegetarians and vegans did not. Even after consuming large amounts of L-carnitine in a steak or supplement, the vegetarians and vegans in the study did not produce significant amounts of TMAO. This, the authors believe, means that eating red meat alters your gut flora in a way that predisposes your body toward TMAO production, and subsequently, heart disease. This was confirmed by giving the omnivores a course of antibiotics, after which they did not produce TMAO. Stanley Hazen, MD, PhD, the study’s lead author, said in a statement:4 “The bacteria living in our digestive tracts are dictated by our long-term dietary patterns… A diet high in carnitine actually shifts our gut microbe composition to those that like carnitine, making meat eaters even more susceptible to forming TMAO and its artery-clogging effects.” Is Red Meat Being Inaccurately Singled Out as a Heart Disease Promoter? The latest study is not the first to link gut bacteria to heart disease. In 2011, the same researchers, Hazen and colleagues, used data from nearly 2,000 people and showed that when the bacteria in your gut break down lecithin, a type of fat found in meat, eggs, dairy and other animal foods along with baked goods and dietary supplements, and its metabolite choline, it also leads to the creation of TMAO and, subsequently, increases your risk of heart disease.5 In response to this and the current study, many have wondered whether red meat and other animal foods, along with supplements containing L-carnitine, lecithin or choline should be avoided. Chris Masterjohn PhD, who is currently researching fat-soluble supplements at the University of Illinois, rebutted the 2011 findings stating:6 “…previous studies have shown that supplements with salts of free choline do in fact generate TMAO, but uncontaminated phosphatidylcholine, the main form of choline found in food, does not. Moreover, choline-rich foods like liver and eggs did not produce more TMAO than a control breakfast, but seafood, which is generally contaminated with some trimethylamine or TMAO, did.” Masterjohn also disagrees with the group’s latest findings, in which the researchers claim that carnitine in red meat contributes to heart disease via the same pathway, i.e. the creation of TMAO. According to Masterjohn, incomplete reporting of data in the paper combined with “wild runaway inferences” by the press has generated a grossly misleading picture of red meat’s impact on heart disease, while simultaneously ignoring the food group that actually generates the most TMAO. He points out that red meat is only one of many foods that increases TMAO when eaten, and cites data from a 1999 study that evaluated TMAO excretion following consumption of 46 different foods, which shows that red meat generated no more TMAO than fruits and vegetables. In fact, some veggies, such as peas, cauliflower and carrots generated more TMAO than beef did! Still, none of the foods generated TMAO at levels that were statistically different from the control. (Similarly, there was no statistically significant difference between different kinds of meats, compared to the control.) Previous Research Shows Seafood Produces More TMAO than Any Other Food, Including Beef The 1999 study did show however, one food group that stood out as a major source of TMAO, and that was seafood. Virtually all fish and invertebrates, with few exceptions (including trout and cockles) produced statistically significant more TMAO than the “light breakfast” control alone. And, according to Masterjohn’s own statistical test, all invertebrates except clams and cockles, and all fish except tuna, trout, plaice, and roe produced significantly more TMAO than beef. He writes: “The single ‘representative female omnivore’ from the [2013] Nature Medicine7 paper excreted similar amounts of TMAO in her urine as the six subjects from the 1999 study after consuming red meat, suggesting that, had they measured the response to seafood, the authors of the Nature Medicine paper would also have found much greater excretion of TMAO after consumption of seafood than after consumption of red meat The difference between seafoods and red meat in the 1999 paper is like the difference between night and day. To take the most extreme example, halibut generated over 107 times as much TMAO as red meat. It seems obvious from this study that if any foods should be singled out for the production of TMAO, it should be seafoods. Yet the Nature Medicine paper makes no mention of fish and the New York Times8 article only mentions fish to point out that it has less carnitine than red meat (and thus, by inference, will generate less TMAO, though that is clearly not the case, presumably because seafood tends to be contaminated with trimethylamine or TMAO itself…) If we are to single out red meat as a source of TMAO, we should be able to identify other foods with which it should be replaced that generate less TMAO. Yet this 1999 study, which had a small sample size but tested an expansive number of foods, found that there basically are no other foods that generate meaningfully less TMAO than red meat.” Axing Beef to Prevent Heart Disease Looks Like Another Red Herring… Chris Kresser L.Ac has also weighed in on this issue,9 comparing the hypothesis that red meat causes heart disease via TMAO to the patently false notion that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat cause heart disease by raising serum cholesterol. Kresser lists three reasons for not taking the featured study at face value: 1.Inconsistent epidemiological evidence 2.“Healthy user” bias, and 3.Inconclusive and insufficient evidence on the role of TMAO in heart disease “…even if Paleo meat eaters have higher TMAO levels than vegans and vegetarians, we still don’t have evidence proving a causal relationship between TMAO and cardiovascular disease,” he writes. “Once again, the supposed link between cholesterol and saturated fat and heart disease should serve as a reminder not to jump to hasty conclusions that unnecessarily deprive people of nutrient-dense, healthy foods. It is virtually impossible to control for all of the possible confounding factors.” Should You Avoid L-Carnitine and Choline-Rich Foods and Supplements? Masterjohn offers an in-depth critique of the featured study’s data in his recent Weston A Price article,10 so for more information I recommend reading it in its entirety. For example, he points out that the study does not include any data for eating steak alone (the steak was consumed with a carnitine supplement); the data also does not indicate if TMAO differences are due to a single outlier or a fundamental gender difference, or if the antibiotic treatment is a confounding factor as none of the vegans were given antibiotics. According to Masterjohn: “There is no data in this paper showing that TMAO increases in response to steak alone in anyone.” At this time, more investigation is still needed to support the assumption that red meat and other animal foods, along with supplements containing L-carnitine, lecithin or choline should be avoided. What’s more, these substances occur naturally in a wide range of foods, making it nearly impossible, and likely inadvisable, to avoid them entirely. In terms of L-carnitine, an omnivorous diet provides 20 to 200 mg/day, compared to a strict vegetarian diet, which would add about 1 mg/day.11 But even non-dairy infant formulas are sometimes fortified with L-carnitine, and the substance is also found in seafood, chicken breast, avocado and cheese (although in far lower amounts than are found in red meats, especially beef). It’s also important to realize that both L-carnitine and choline are essential nutrients your body needs. Choline, for instance, is linked to beneficial epigenetic changes in fetuses that likely last into adulthood, while L-carnitine has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes. Masterjohn also points out that while there were significant differences in the intestinal bacterial strains between omnivores and vegans, which might account for why TMAO levels were 45 percent higher in the meat eaters, intestinal flora may not be the sole answer. He writes: “While it is possible that intestinal flora accounts for the difference, it is disappointing that the authors did not consider other possibilities, such as differences in the activity of the enzyme that converts trimethylamine to TMAO. For example, vitamin B2 is the main cofactor for the enzyme, and vegans are three times as likely to be deficient in vitamin B2 as vegetarians and omnivores. …While antibiotics wipe out TMAO levels in humans and mice, showing that intestinal bacteria are necessary for its formation, the authors provide no clear evidence that the specific differences in intestinal bacteria between vegetarians and vegans on the one hand and meat-eaters on the other cause the observed difference in TMAO levels. It is unclear whether the 45 percent higher TMAO levels in meat-eaters represents something that we should regard as ‘unhealthy.’ As I pointed out above, for all we know it could be due to riboflavin (vitamin B2) deficiency among the vegans.” The Link Between Whole Grains and Gut Bacteria that Drive TMAO Production Jeff Leach with the Human Food Project has also weighed in on the featured study. His article is well worth reading in its entirety as well. He expounds on many of the same issues as Masterjohn and Kresser, but also focuses much of his discussion on the role of gut bacteria in the conversion of carnitine to TMAO. He writes, in part:12 “If we assume for the moment that TMAO can accelerate atherosclerosis, then the observation that enriched levels of Prevotella are associated with higher levels in of TMAO become more interesting – especially as enrichment of this group of bacteria seems to occur in vegans and vegetarians as well as omnivores. So what causes enrichment of Prevotella? In a paper published in 2010, Italian researchers found that rural African kids in Burkina Faso had super high levels of Prevotella, while a similar aged group of kids in suburban Italy had none.The striking dietary difference between the kids in Burkina Faso and the Italian kids was whole grain consumption… whole grains made up >50% of the daily calories in this [African] village… In contrast, the Italian kids got ~25% of their daily calories from highly processed bread, biscuits, pasta, and rice… All in all, a much more diverse diet, though apparently devoid of whole grains but high in processed foods. As mentioned, the Italian kids had no traceable amounts of Prevotella in their stool samples… In the Burkina Faso paper, the researchers attributed the high levels of Prevotella to grain-based carbohydrates… it doesn’t appear that dietary fiber in general is driving enrichment of Prevotella… So, it appears somehow specific to the starch in grains or the dietary fiber in grains.” The Bottom Line… According to Masterjohn, to interpret the featured study “as an indictment of red meat makes no sense.” “Even if physiological levels of TMAO contribute to heart disease in humans (which is a big ‘if’ at this point) and even if red meat were to raise TMAO substantially more than most other foods (which appears to be false), it wouldn’t in any way whatsoever follow that eating red meat causes heart disease. The biological effects of a food cannot possibly be reduced to one of the biological effects of one of the food’s components. Believing such a thing would require believing not only that the particular component has no other relevant biological effects, but that there are no relevant biological effects of any of the other tens of thousands of components of that food …If the carnitine in red meat were promoting atherosclerosis through its conversion to TMAO, however, then red meat should be no more dangerous than potatoes and carrots and the real killer should be seafood. How likely is this to be true?” Indeed… Countless studies have shown the health benefits associated with a seafood-rich diet, including its value for prevention of heart disease. Personally, I believe the best option is not to avoid these potentially beneficial substances in your diet but to optimize your gut bacteria so it favors health-promoting, rather than disease-causing, processes. Testing Your Breath May Reveal Gut Bacteria Linked to Obesity Another area where gut bacteria are making headlines is related to your weight. One study last month revealed that as much as 20 percent of the substantial weight loss achieved from gastric bypass, a popular weight loss surgery, is actually due to shifts in the balance of bacteria in your digestive tract.13 Separate research has also revealed that a breath test of the gases given off by your gut bacteria may help predict your likelihood of becoming obese. The study found that people with high levels of hydrogen and methane in their breath are more likely to have a higher body-mass index (BMI) and proportion of body fat.14 This, the researchers believe, may be because the related gut bacteria influence your body’s ability to extract calories from food, leading to weight gain. Previous research has also shown that lean people tend to have higher amounts of various healthy bacteria compared to obese people. For example, one 2011 study found that daily intake of a specific form of lactic acid bacteria could help prevent obesity and reduce low-level inflammation.15 Taken together, the research adds to the growing knowledge that nurturing the growth of beneficial bacteria in your gut is likely to have significant benefits to your health and may be essential for: •Protection against over-growth of other microorganisms that could cause disease •Digestion of food and absorption of nutrients and certain carbohydrates •Producing vitamins, absorbing minerals and eliminating toxins •Preventing allergies •Maintaining natural defenses Numerous studies have also shown that your gut flora plays a role in: •Mood, psychological health, and behavior •Celiac disease •Diabetes •Weight gain and obesity •Metabolic syndrome Your Gut Flora is Constantly Under Attack Your gut bacteria are vulnerable to your diet and lifestyle. If you eat a lot of sugar, refined grains, GMOs and processed foods, for instance, your gut bacteria are going to be compromised because processed foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast. Your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to: •Antibiotics •Chlorinated water •Antibacterial soap •Agricultural chemicals •Pollution Because of this, you need to avoid processed, refined foods in your diet (this is essential for heart disease prevention, too) and regularly reseed your gut with good bacteria by taking a high-quality probiotic supplement or eating non-pasteurized, traditionally fermented foods such as: •Fermented vegetables •Lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner) •Fermented milk, such as kefir •Natto (fermented soy) One of the reasons why fermented foods are so beneficial is because they contain lactic acid bacteria as well as a wide variety of other beneficial bacteria. Also, if fermented with a probiotics starter culture, the amount of healthy bacteria in a serving of fermented vegetables can far exceed the amount you’ll find in commercial probiotics supplements, making it a very cost effective alternative. Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re consuming. Nurturing Your Gut Flora is One of the Foundations of Optimal Health Mounting research indicates the bacterial colonies residing in your gut may play key roles in the development of cancer, asthma, allergies, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and even brain-, behavioral- and emotional problems like ADHD, autism and depression. The heart disease connection is also now emerging, as discussed, although I’d hesitate to draw any conclusions from it as of yet. Overall, I believe it would be unwise to try to eliminate foods just because they’re known to raise TMAO, as they’re all healthy and appear to include everything from meats to vegetables and seafood It’s far more likely that maintaining a healthy gut flora is paramount to prevent heart disease, and if you’re going to eliminate a food to protect your beneficial gut bacteria, it would be processed foods, not fresh whole foods of any kind. Another confounding factor not addressed is the fact that meat from confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) are a source of hidden antibiotics, which wreak havoc on your gut bacteria. So that too may have played a role. This is reason alone to make sure you only buy organically raised grass-fed meats, as they’re not allowed to use antibiotics as growth promoters. Previous research has shown that around age 60, there is a significant drop in the number of bacteria in your gut. According to Dr. Sandra McFarlane from the microbiology and gut biology group at the University of Dundee, people over 60 typically have about 1,000-fold less “friendly” bacteria in their guts compared to younger adults, and increased levels of disease-causing microbes.16 What this means is that it’s incredibly important to actively nurture your gut flora health, especially as you get older. Eating fermented foods should be your primary strategy, but if you don’t enjoy the taste of fermented foods, taking a probiotic supplement is definitely advised. However, before you give up on fermented foods, it is best to start with small amounts like half a teaspoon and use them as a condiment integrated with your food, similar to a salad dressing. If you still don’t want to eat them then it is important to note that while I do not generally advocate taking a lot of supplements, a high-quality probiotic is an exception. I recommend looking for a probiotic supplement that fulfills the following criteria, to ensure quality and efficacy: •The bacteria strains in the product must be able to survive your stomach acid and bile, so that they reach your intestines alive in adequate numbers •The bacteria strains must have health-promoting features •The probiotic activity must be guaranteed throughout the entire production process, storage period and shelf life of the product Through my years of clinical practice, I’ve found that no single probiotic supplement works for everyone. However, more people seem to respond favorably to Lactobacillus sporogenes than any other probiotic, so when in doubt, that’s a great place to start. If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.