Rather Be Healthy

Ag-Gag Laws: What is Modern Agriculture Trying to Hide?

If you want to improve your nutrition and are itching to grow your own food, sprouts are an ideal choice.

Virtually all sprouted seeds and grains fall in the “superfood” category, and they’re really easy to grow, even if you don’t have a lot of space or an outdoor garden. But what about green grasses like wheatgrass?

Wheatgrass is grown from wheat seeds, and contains high amounts of chlorophyll. Most people juice it, but wheat grass is also available in supplement form.

My main objection to wheatgrass is that you and I are not designed to eat grass. I believe vegetable sprouts like sunflower- and pea sprouts are far more beneficial as a food if you want to improve your nutrition.

As reported in the featured article by the Chicago Tribune:1

“Its health benefits and curative powers were promoted in the 1940s by Ann Wigmore, a Lithuanian immigrant to Boston and holistic health practitioner.

Wigmore believed humans could benefit by following the practice of dogs and cats by eating grass and regurgitating to feel better.

She developed the wheatgrass diet, a program which, in addition to consuming wheat grass juice, avoids all meats, dairy products and cooked foods, and focuses on ‘live’ foods such as sprouts, raw produce, nuts and seeds.

The diet and its many touted health and curative claims — detoxification of the body, controlling diabetes, prevention of bacterial infections, the common cold and fever; and protection against ailments like skin problems, gout and even cancer — took off and continues to be alive and well today.”

Potential Benefits of Wheatgrass

As you can see, Wigmore’s inspiration for eating wheatgrass as not really based on its nutritional content but rather the idea that humans might benefit in the same manner as some animals which, upon eating grass, vomit and thereby feel better.

I think it’s an important point to remember that animals that normally eat grass are ruminant animals. Like most animals they cannot directly digest grass but rely on the bacteria in their stomach to properly metabolize the grass for fuel.

However, I have no doubt that many have benefited from using wheat grass, but that is in the context of using it like a drug as it was never meant to be eaten as a food by humans. The other potential problem is that some also suffer allergic reactions or side effects from using wheat grass, so if you choose to use wheat grass please exercise some caution.

That said, many alternative health practitioners believe in wheatgrass as a proverbial “cure-all.” The Hippocrates Health Institute,2 for example, has a long list of purported benefits of wheatgrass, including the following (for the full list, please see the HHI web site):
•Increases red blood-cell count; cleanses the blood, organs and gastrointestinal tract; simulates metabolism
•Stimulates your thyroid gland
•Reduces over-acidity in your blood and relieve peptic ulcers, ulcerative colitis, constipation, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal complaints
•Detoxifies your liver and blood and chemically neutralizes environmental pollutants
•Its high chlorophyll content may help oxygenate your blood. Keeping a tray of live wheatgrass near your bed may also enhance the oxygen in the air and generate healthful negative ions to help improve your sleep
•May help reduce damaging effects of radiation, courtesy of the enzyme SOD—an anti-inflammatory compound

Hippocrates Health Institute also points out a number of health benefits you can reap simply from topical exposure, such as rubbing some juice onto your skin or adding wheatgrass to your bath.

“[Wheatgrass] can double your red blood cell count just by soaking in it. Renowned nutritionist Dr. Bernard Jensen found that no other blood builders are superior to green juices and wheatgrass. In his book ‘Health Magic Through Chlorophyll’ he mentions several cases where he was able to double the red blood cell count in a matter of days merely by having patients soak in a chlorophyll-water bath. Blood building results occur even more rapidly when patients drink green juices and wheatgrass regularly.”

Others, like Mother Nature Network,3 point out that there are no medical studies to support Dr. Jensen’s findings. According to Dr. Chris Reynolds,4 who goes by the moniker “Dr. Wheatgrass,” the benefits of wheatgrass are primarily biological, not nutritional.

“Reynolds argues that there is plenty of evidence to support wheatgrass extract’s role in supporting biological functions, including one preliminary study in the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research,5 which suggests that fermented wheatgrass extract ‘exerts significant antitumor activity.’ The study concludes that the extract requires further evaluation as a candidate for clinical combination drug regimens,” Mother Nature Network writes.

The Benefits of Raw Juice

While I’m not convinced that wheatgrass is an ideal choice as a food, considering your body was not designed to eat grass, there’s no doubt that sprouts and green juice play a significant role in optimal nutrition. I may be wrong, but I personally believe that there are better alternatives to wheat grass. At the end of this article, I’ll review growing your own sprouts, but first, let’s look at juicing.

Virtually every health authority recommends that we get 6-8 servings of vegetables and fruits per day and very few of us actually get that. Juicing is an easy way to virtually guarantee that you will reach your daily target for vegetables. There are three main reasons why you will want to consider incorporating vegetable juicing into your optimal health program:
1.Juicing helps you absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. This is important because most of us have impaired digestion as a result of making less-than-optimal food choices over many years. This limits your body’s ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. Juicing will help to “pre-digest” them for you, so you will receive most of the nutrition, rather than having it go down the toilet.
2.Juicing allows you to consume a healthier amount of vegetables in an efficient manner. If you are a carb type, you should eat one pound of raw vegetables per 50 pounds of body weight per day. Some people may find eating that many vegetables difficult, but it can be easily accomplished with a quick glass of vegetable juice.
3.You can add a wider variety of vegetables in your diet. Many people eat the same vegetable salads every day. This violates the principle of regular food rotation and increases your chance of developing an allergy to a certain food. But with juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally enjoy eating whole.

Drinking your juice first thing in the morning can give you a natural energy boost without resorting to stimulants like coffee. Since the juice is already in an easily digestible form, it can help revitalize your energy levels within as little as 20 minutes. For more information about juicing, including detailed recommendations for the types of vegetables to use; different types of juicers, and other helpful tips, please see my three-part interview with Cherie Calbom, better known as The Juice Lady (Part 1, part 2, and part 3). Below, I give a quick overview of juicing, and how to find a juicer that doesn’t cost a fortune.

Sprouts—A DIY Superfood

Besides juicing, sprouts are an oft-ignored powerhouse of nutrition. They can contain up to 30 times the nutrition of organic vegetables grown in your own garden, and allow your body to extract more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fats from the foods you eat.

During sprouting, minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, bind to protein, making them more bioavailable. Furthermore, 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. While you can sprout a variety of different beans, nuts, seeds and grains, sprouts in general have the following beneficial attributes:
•Support for cell regeneration
•Powerful sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins and enzymes that protect against free radical damage
•Alkalinizing effect on your body, which is thought to protect against disease, including cancer (as many tumors are acidic)
•Abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

My two favorites are pea and sunflower sprouts. They provide some of the highest quality protein you can eat. Sprouted sunflower seeds also contain plenty of iron and chlorophyll, the latter of which will help detoxify your blood and liver. Of the seeds, sunflower seeds are among the best in terms of overall nutritional value, and sprouting them will augment their nutrient content by as much as 300 to 1,200 percent! Similarly, sprouting peas will improve the bioavailability of zinc and magnesium.

Planting and Harvesting Sprouts at Home

I used to grow sprouts in Ball jars over 10 years ago but stopped doing that. I am strongly convinced that actually growing them in soil is far easier and produces far more nutritious and abundant food. It is also less time consuming. With Ball jars you need to rinse them several times a day to prevent mold growth. Trays also take up less space. I am now consuming one whole tray you see below every 2-3 days and to produce that much food with Ball jars I would need dozens of jars. I simply don’t have the time or patience for that.

I am in the process of compiling more specific detailed videos for future articles but I thought I would whet your appetite and give you a preview with the photos below. For now you can get instructions on how to grow them by viewing a step-by-step guide at rawfoods-livingfoods.com.6

About to plant wheat grass and sunflower seeds – 2 days after soaking

Wheat grass and sunflower seeds – 3 ½ days post germination

Sunflower seeds and pea sprouts – 3 days until ready for harvest

Sunflower seed sprouts and wheat Grass – ready to harvest

I have been sprouting them now for a few months and they have radically improved the nutrition of my primary meal, which is a comprehensive salad at lunch. They are a perfect complement to the fermented vegetables. My current salad consists of about half a pound of sunflower sprouts, four ounces of fermented vegetables, half a large red pepper, several tablespoon of raw organic butter, some red onion, a whole avocado and about three ounces of salmon or chicken. It is my primary meal. In the late afternoon, I typically only have macadamia nuts and coconut candy in addition to drinking 16-32 ounces of green vegetable juice. I break it up occasionally by going to a restaurant with friends

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GE Foods Fueling Deadly Botulism in Cattle which in turn becomes your food…

Dr. Don Huber is an expert in an area of science that relates to the toxicity of genetically engineered (GE) foods.

(Alternative terms for GE foods include genetically modified (GM), or “GMO” for genetically modified organism.) His specific areas of training include soil-borne diseases, microbial ecology, and host-parasite relationships.

Dr. Huber also taught plant pathology, soil microbiology, and micro-ecological interactions as they relate to plant disease as a staff Professor at Purdue University for 35 years.

GE Crops are Breaking the Agricultural System…

Agriculture is a complete ‘system’ based on inter-related factors, and in order to maintain ecological balance and health, you must understand how that system works as a whole.

Any time you change one part of that system, you change the interaction of all the other components, because they work together. It is simply impossible to change just one minor aspect without altering the entire system…

Dr. Huber’s research, which spans over 55 years, has been devoted to looking at how the agricultural system can be managed for more effective crop production, better disease control, improved nutrition, and safety. The introduction of genetically engineered crops has dramatically affected and changed all agricultural components:
•The plants
•The physical environment
•The dynamics of the biological environment, and
•Pests and diseases (plant-, animal-, and human diseases)

In this interview, Dr. Huber reveals a number of shocking facts that need to become common knowledge in order to stop this catastrophic alteration and destruction of our environment, our food supply, and ultimately, our own biology. I urge you to listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript to understand fully appreciate the importance of this development.

Herbicides and Pesticides Immobilize Specific Nutrients

One of the major modifications done to genetically engineered food crops is the introduction of herbicide resistance. Monsanto is the leader in this field, with their patented Roundup Ready corn, cotton, soybean and sugar beets, which can survive otherwise lethal doses of glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup.

The working premise is that by making the plants resistant to the herbicide, farmers can increase yield by cutting down on weed growth. This premise has been found to be severely flawed however, as farmers around the world are now losing acreage to glyphosate-resistant super-weeds at an alarming rate. According to the British Institute of Science in Society, the US has fared the worst, now combating 13 different glyphosate-resistant weed species in 73 different locations.

But the introduction of glyphosate-resistance has also had a direct impact on soil microbes.

While the link between an herbicide (which is directed toward plants) and soil microbes may not be immediately apparent, this ripple effect occurs because, again, it’s an inter-related system. In a nutshell, herbicides are chelators that form a barrier around specific nutrients, preventing whatever life form is seeking to utilize that element from utilizing it properly. That applies both to plants and soil microbes—as well as animals and humans.

This may actually be one of the primary reasons why genetically engineered foods appear to be able to cause such profound health problems in those who consume them. Any organism that has the same physiological pathways for these nutrients will be impacted in the same manner.

Dr. Huber explains:

“You have to realize what an herbicide, or a pesticide, is. They are metal chelators. In other words, they immobilize specific nutrients… [I]t’s a compound that can grab onto another element and change either its solubility or its availability for the critical function it has physiologically. We have herbicides and pesticides that are quite specific just for a particular essential micronutrient like copper, zinc, iron, or manganese.

Glyphosate is very unique and was first patented as a chelator by Stauffer Chemical Co. in 1964, because it could bind with any positively charged ion. If you look at the essential minerals for plants, you see calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, and all of those other critical transition elements, as well as structural components for some of them… They all have an ion associated with them. It’s the micronutrient that is an ion—that is a transition element, or that element that is really critical for a particular enzyme function.

If you can chelate and, in that chelation process, essentially immobilize that essential nutrient, you have provided an opportunity to either kill a weed or damage and kill an organism—any organism… that have that particular requirement for that physiologic pathway with glyphosate or the shikimate pathway…

You have to realize that this mode of action immobilizes a critical essential nutrient. Those nutrients aren’t just required by the weed, but they’re required by microorganisms. They’re required by us for our own physiologic functions. So if it’s immobilized, it may be present if we do a regular test. But it’s not necessarily physiologically available in the same efficiency that it would have been if it wasn’t chelated with glyphosate…”

The Dangers of Glyphosate that Most People Have NO Idea Of

Glyphosate, even in plants genetically engineered to withstand it, affects about 25 different enzymes in the process of chelating, or immobilizing, critical micronutrients, because those ions (the micronutrients) are required in order to “drive” the physiological engines that make the plant or organism function properly.

“It is well documented that… having that foreign gene inserted reduces the capability of that plant to take up nutrients and to translocate nutrients,” Dr. Huber says. “Then, when you apply the chemical [glyphosate], you have a further compounding effect in reducing the efficiency of the plants at rates as low as 12 grams per acre.”

According to Dr. Huber, the nutritional efficiency of genetically engineered (GE) plants is profoundly compromised. Micronutrients such as iron, manganese and zinc can be reduced by as much as 80-90 percent in GE plants!

Many staunch defenders of genetically engineered foods are under the misconception that GE foods are “better” or have improved nutrition when the exact opposite is true. They also don’t understand that the glyphosate residue cannot be removed or washed off—it actually becomes part of the plant. It cannot be washed off because it’s systemic within the plant itself.

“It’s going to be in your root tips, your shoot tips, your legume nodules, and in the food that you eat,” Dr. Huber warns.

Furthermore, about 20 percent of the glyphosate migrates out of the plant’s roots and into the surrounding soil. Once in the soil, the glyphosate affects beneficial soil microorganisms in the same way that it affects weeds, because they have the same critical metabolic pathway. With each new Roundup Ready crop approved, the glyphosate residues in the soil increases, and the tolerance levels in the crop increases as well.

This is explosive information that should make warning bells go off in most people’s heads! Personally, I firmly believe we must all become activists to eliminate this threat to our food supply as soon as possible.

Food Quality is Related to Soil Quality

The quality of the food is almost always related to the quality of the soil. The most foundational and critical components of the soil are the microorganisms that thrive there—more so than the necessary nutrients, because it’s the microorganisms that allow the plants to utilize those nutrients.

According to Dr. Huber:

“The plant can only utilize certain [reduced] forms of all the nutrients… The way that it becomes reduced in the soil is through those beneficial microorganisms. We also have microorganisms for legumes like soybeans, alfalfa, peas, or any of the other legumes that can fix up to 75 percent of their actual nitrogen for protein in amino acid synthesis that actually comes from the air through the microorganisms in the soil.

Glyphosate is extremely toxic to all of those organisms.

What we see with our continued use and abuse of this powerful weed killer is that it is also totally eliminating many of those organisms from the soil. We no longer have the same balance that we used to have. Consequently, we see an increase of over 40 new plant diseases, and diseases we used to have under fairly effective control, which now all of a sudden is another serious problem.”

GE Foods Fueling Deadly Botulism in Cattle

The normal biological control organisms—the beneficial gut bacteria—in animals and humans are also very sensitive to residual glyphosate levels.

For example, toxic botulism is now becoming a more common cause of death in dairy cows whereas such deaths used to be extremely rare. The reason it didn’t occur before was because beneficial organisms served as natural controls to keep the Clostridium botulinum in check. Without them, the Clostridium botulinum is allowed to proliferate in the animal’s intestines and produce lethal amounts of toxins.

“Again, the agricultural system, as well as our own ecology, is really a balance,” Dr. Huber says. “It’s a system, not just a bunch of silver bullets that are stacked in a chamber of a revolver. It’s how that ecological system is modified and changed that brings us a new level of diseases and problems with sustainability of our agriculture, our own health, and well-being.”

MOST Major US Food Crops are Now Genetically Engineered!

Many still don’t realize just how much of our food supply has been genetically engineered (GE). As of this year, 93 percent of soybeans grown in the US are genetically engineered, as are:
•86 percent of all corn
•93 percent of canola
•93 percent of cottonseed oil

Between 2008 and 2009, a full 95 percent of all sugarbeets planted were also Roundup Ready.

This means that virtually every processed food you encounter at your local supermarket that does not bear the “100% USDA Organic” label is likely to contain at least one GE component! Earlier this year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) also deregulated genetically engineered alfalfa, which is a perennial crop commonly used in cattle feed.

According to Dr. Huber:

“Alfalfa is our fourth most important economic crop, by far the most nutritional feed for our herbivores. They, all of a sudden, can definitely be threatened—not only because of the direct effect of glyphosate on microorganisms, but also because it predisposes and can make that plant very susceptible to some common diseases…

We see this on corn… where we have the sister organism with the Goss’s wilt, a bacterial disease. In that situation, we find that when we put glyphosate on, it nullifies all the genetic resistance that, in the past, made that disease of almost no consequence…Now we find it from coast to coast, East to West, from Mexico to Canada. For four years now, we have a major epidemic in a major food production area in the Midwest, just from that disease.

That is a direct result of our genetic engineering process, which reduces the genetic resistance, and the application of the herbicide that it was designed to tolerate.”

Important Questions Still Unanswered…

According to Dr. Huber, there’s currently enough residual glyphosate in animal feed and food to make an otherwise benign organism lethal…

Unfortunately, research is still lacking to ascertain exactly how great the risk to human health is. It’s possible that those who do not consume an all-organic diet, which is the majority of Americans, to some extent or another, are destroying their gut flora with every bite of food they eat. According to Dr. Huber, the reduction in mineral content through chelation by glyphosate residues in GE plants would certainly make you far more susceptible to potentially dangerous pathogens.

Studies have already confirmed that glyphosate alters and destroys beneficial gut flora in animals, as evidenced by the increasing instances of lethal botulism in cattle.

I’ve written extensively about the importance of your gut flora on your health. You NEED beneficial bacteria in your gut, or health problems are virtually guaranteed. Optimizing your gut flora may be one of the single most important things you can do to maintain good physical and mental health, so the fact that GE foods may be adversely impacting your intestinal balance is of extreme importance and needs to be understood.

Another important question that does not at present have an answer is whether or not glyphosate accumulates in animal- and human tissues once consumed. We don’t even know if glyphosate is fat-soluble, which would definitely make it accumulate in fat tissues.

GE Foods Brings Brand New Threat

Earlier this year, Dr. Huber wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, informing him of the issues discussed above, as well as another groundbreaking new finding that could spell absolute disaster for our entire food supply. It’s a brand new micro-fungal organism associated with something called Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS) in soy. It’s also found in a large variety of livestock given GE feed who experience both spontaneous abortions and infertility.

Dr. Huber urged the USDA to investigate the matter and suspend approval of GE alfalfa until proper studies have been completed. His warnings have so far been largely ignored, and GE alfalfa was deregulated earlier this year…

“When you look at the tremendous increase in human diseases that can have a potential tie directly back to either the chemical or the engineering process, it’s critical for that research to be done as quickly as possible. We need resources to do it. The private funds, again, aren’t going to do everything because there’s just too much to be done.”

The organism was initially identified by veterinarians around 1998—about two years after the introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans, which is one of the staple feeds. The vets were puzzled by sudden high reproductive failure in animals. While sporadic at first, the phenomenon has continued to increase in severity.

“We [recently] received a call from a county extension educator, indicating that he has a dairy that has a 70 percent abortion rate. You put that on top of 10 to 15 percent of infertility to start with, and you’re not going to have a dairy very long. In fact, a lot of our veterinarians are now becoming very concerned about the prospects for being able to have replacement animals,” Dr. Huber says.

The cause-effect relationship between high reproductive failure and this new microbial entity has been established, but the research has not yet been published. The reason for the delay is because they really do not know what the organism is…

“It’s not a fungus. It’s not bacteria. It’s not a mycoplasma or a virus – it’s about the same size of a small virus; you have to magnify it from 38 to 40,000 times. They have pictures of it… You can see the interactions with it. They can now culture it. It’s self-replicating and cultured. It doesn’t grow very well by itself.

Like most of our very fastidious organisms, it tends to die out after three or four sub-culturing, but grows very well with other organisms. If you have yeast, bacteria, or a fungus in the culture, this entity grows very well.

We’re waiting on getting enough material, pure material, for DNA analysis, but also looking at some other possibilities… Until you can put a name on it, all it does is create a great deal of speculations.”

What is known is that it’s an entirely new entity, previously unknown to science, and it’s definitely found in genetically engineered corn and soybeans. It’s also been established that it causes infertility and miscarriage in cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry.

“We can anticipate with that broad spectrum of animal species, which is extremely unusual, that it will also be with humans,” Dr. Huber says. “We’ve seen an increasing frequency of miscarriage and a dramatic increase in infertility in human populations in just the last eight to 10 years.”

Why is the USDA Ignoring Such Urgent Warnings?

Dr. Huber received a response from Dr. Parham, head of the USDA-APHIS, assuring him that “all of the decisions that the USDA makes are based on peer-reviewed science.” Dr. Huber responded with another letter, pointing out 130 published peer-reviewed articles documenting all of his concerns.

“I asked if they could provide me a peer-reviewed scientific study that would justify the regulation of those products,” he says. “I’m still waiting for that. I haven’t found anyone that can produce that type of document.

… I did receive a call from Risk Management about two weeks after writing the letter, asking if I could provide details, because there wasn’t anything in the letter. The letter was written to a politician. I didn’t want to disclose names of scientists or details because of the retaliatory effect that we see with anyone researching this area – they can be either fired from their job or their program shut down. That’s a real fact.”

The Red-Tape Nightmare of GE Safety Research

Crazy as it sounds, researchers cannot perform whatever safety studies on GE foods they see fit because the way the red tape has been put in place, they could easily be found guilty of breaking the law by performing research on a patented product.

“If you read the technology agreement that the farmer has to sign, he can’t even do research on his own farm to compare whether this crop or this product is better than another one without violating the terms of that technology agreement,” Dr. Huber explains. “It’s essentially a closed system to guarantee success.”

… A group of us that are working together on the new entity causing reproductive failure… have obtained private funding, and have taken it to experts in the areas of specific diseases and tried to encourage them to work on it. In the past year, they have been prohibited from working on it by their universities or department heads…

That’s one of the reasons why we needed that contact with the USDA officials, in hopes that we could share the problems that concern them, that they would recognize the serious nature of this, and that we could obtain their support and use their resources for funding of individuals and specialists, so that we could overcome that barrier that seems to be there for anyone working on genetically engineered crops that might indicate that they’re not quite everything they were cut out to be.

It’s almost as though you have to belong to that religion, if you’re going to do any research or publish your research.”

Obviously, such as setup will produce highly biased and prejudiced results, and can easily obfuscate the truth…

GE Food and Premature Aging

Another astonishing effect of this brand new mystery organism associated with GE crops is profound premature aging. Research done in Iowa three years ago showed that prime beef from a two-year old cow had to be downgraded to that from a 10-year old cow!

So what effect will eating this GE-fed beef have on you? No one knows. But I would bet it won’t make you any healthier… And if animals are any indication, it could spell disaster for your overall health and fertility.

“When the veterinarians wanted to find the source for this [brand new] entity, they went to the feed. The first place where they found high concentrations was in the soybean mill. Since then we’ve found it in the corn. We find it in silage. Primarily in high concentrations only where we have a genetically engineered crop that has glyphosate applied to it. Those are the crops that we also see high Goss’s wilt, high SDS. They are all correlated together in that relationship.

The other place you see it, though, is where they have used the manure that has a high glyphosate residue level in it. The manure also has very high concentrations, if the chickens or the animals that have been fed these feeds with high concentrations. When that manure is applied to pastures and cattle graze on it, we also see high infertility rates there.

It occurs in the placenta, in the fetus, in the sperm and inseminators.

Stating that it takes twice as much semen now to get a conception and as many as four to eight inseminations rather than the typical 1.2 to 1.5 for a dairy because of that reduced fertility… I was on a plane with a bull breeder who commented that 40 percent of his bulls had to be pulled out of service, because they can’t get conception anymore.”

But that’s not all. Glyphosate can also disrupt a number of other biological systems aside from your reproductive system.

” … When you have a very potent chelator, it disrupts all kinds of systems, not just the EPSPs system that we find in certain microorganisms and plants, but also all of the other systems involved in liver function, blood function, and hormonal function. They all go right back to that basic nutrient process that keeps all systems functional,” Dr. Huber explains.

Glyphosate is actually a very potent endocrine disruptor that can affect your:
•Endocrine system
•Thyroid function
•Pituitary function

Important Summary

As Dr. Huber said

“When future historians come to write about our era they are not going to write about the tons of chemicals we did or didn’t apply. When it comes to glyphosate they are going to write about our willingness to sacrifice our children and to jeopardize our very existence by risking the sustainability of our agriculture; all based upon failed promises and flawed science.

The only benefit is that it affects the bottom-line of a few companies. There’s no nutritional value.”

What You Can Do To Get Involved

There’s no doubt in my mind that genetically engineered foods are one of the absolute gravest dangers we fact today as a species. I urge you to educate yourself on this issue and become an active participant in getting GE foods OUT of our food supply.

If you don’t already have a copy of the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, please print one out and refer to it often. It can help you identify and avoid foods with GMOs. You can also download the free iPhone application that is available in the iTunes store. You can find it by searching for ShopNoGMO in the applications.

Also don’t let Secretary Vilsack ignore this new problem of a micro-fungal pathogen that may be responsible for killing plants, animals and possibly humans!

To quote Dr. Huber’s letter to Secretary Vilsack:

“Based on a review of the data, [this dangerous new pathogen] is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science! … I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high-risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.”

Do your part to protect your health and the health of your family by avoiding processed foods loaded with GM components and eating whole, live foods that contain the nutrients your body needs to thrive.

Always buy USDA Organic products when possible, or buy your fresh produce and meat from local farmers, and especially avoid food products containing anything related to corn or soy that are not organic, as any foods containing these two non-organic ingredients now are virtually guaranteed to be genetically engineered.

If you live in California, volunteer to gather petition signatures to help support the California GMO Labeling Ballot Initiative. If you live outside of California, please donate to help support this Initiative.

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

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

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

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

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

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

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

The more we learn about genetically engineered (GE) foods, the clearer the dangers become. I’ve warned you of the potential dangers of GE foods for many years now, as I was convinced that the artificial combining of plants with genes from wildly different kingdoms is bound to cause problems.

As the years roll on, such suspicions are becoming increasingly validated. In recent weeks, we’ve not only learned that GE corn is in no way comparable to natural corn in terms of nutrition, we’re also discovering the ramifications of dousing our crops with large amounts of glyphosate — the active ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup.

GE crops are far more contaminated with glyphosate than conventional crops, courtesy of the fact that they’re engineered to withstand extremely high levels of Roundup without perishing along with the weed.

A new peer-reviewed report authored by Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant, and a long time contributor to the Mercola.com Vital Votes Forum and Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has fortunately received quite a bit of mainstream media attention.

Their findings, along with the development of another breed of “gene silencing” crops, makes the need for labeling all the more urgent, and the advice to buy certified organic all the more valid.

How Glyphosate Worsens Modern Diseases

While Monsanto insists that Roundup is safe and “minimally toxic” to humans, Samsel and Seneff’s research tells a different story altogether. Their report, published in the journal Entropy,1 argues that glyphosate residues, found in most commonly consumed foods in the Western diet courtesy of GE sugar, corn, soy and wheat, “enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease.” According to the authors:

“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body.”

The main finding of the report is that glyphosate inhibits cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, a large and diverse group of enzymes that catalyze the oxidation of organic substances. This, the authors state, is “an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals.”

One of the functions of CYP enzymes is to detoxify xenobiotics—chemical compounds found in a living organism that are not normally produced or consumed by the organism in question. By limiting the ability of these enzymes to detoxify foreign chemical compounds, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of those chemicals and environmental toxins you may be exposed to.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff has been conducting research at MIT for over three decades. She also has an undergraduate degree in biology from MIT and a minor in food and nutrition, and I have previously interviewed her about her groundbreaking insights into the critical importance of sulfur in human health. Not surprisingly, this latest research also touches on sulfur, and how it is affected by glyphosate from food.

“Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport,” the authors write.

“Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet, which include gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

We explain the documented effects of glyphosate and its ability to induce disease, and we show that glyphosate is the ‘textbook example’ of exogenous semiotic entropy: the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins.”

The Link Between Your Gut and the Toxicity of Glyphosate

The impact of gut bacteria on your health is becoming increasingly more well-understood and widely known. And here, we see how your gut bacteria once again play a crucial role in explaining why and how glyphosate causes health problems in both animals and humans. The authors explain:

“Glyphosate’s claimed mechanism of action in plants is the disruption of the shikimate pathway, which is involved with the synthesis of the essential aromatic amino acids, phenylalanine, tyrosine, and tryptophan. The currently accepted dogma is that glyphosate is not harmful to humans or to any mammals because the shikimate pathway is absent in all animals.

However, this pathway is present in gut bacteria, which play an important and heretofore largely overlooked role in human physiology through an integrated biosemiotic relationship with the human host. In addition to aiding digestion, the gut microbiota synthesize vitamins, detoxify xenobiotics, and participitate in immune system homeostasis and gastrointestinal tract permeability. Furthermore, dietary factors modulate the microbial composition of the gut.”

As noted in the report, incidences of inflammatory bowel diseases and food allergies have substantially increased over the past decade. According to a recent CDC survey, one in 20 children now suffer from food allergies2 — a 50 percent increase from the late 1990’s. Incidence of eczema and other skin allergies have risen by 69 percent and now affect one in eight kids. Seneff and Samsel argue it is reasonable to suspect that glyphosate’s impact on gut bacteria may be contributing to these diseases and conditions. They point out that:

“…Our systematic search of the literature has led us to the realization that many of the health problems that appear to be associated with a Western diet could be explained by biological disruptions that have already been attributed to glyphosate.

These include digestive issues, obesity, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, depression, Parkinson’s disease, liver diseases, and cancer, among others. While many other environmental toxins obviously also contribute to these diseases and conditions, we believe that glyphosate may be the most significant environmental toxin, mainly because it is pervasive and it is often handled carelessly due to its perceived nontoxicity.

…[T]he recent alarming increase in all of these health issues can be traced back to a combination of gut dysbiosis, impaired sulfate transport, and suppression of the activity of the various members of the cytochrome P450 (CYP) family of enzymes.”

Former Navy Scientist Exposes Health Hazards of Glyphosate

Former US Navy staff scientist Dr. Nancy Swanson has a Ph.D. in physics, holds five US patents and has authored more than 30 scientific papers and two books on women in science. Ten years ago, she became seriously ill, and in her journey to regain her health she turned to organic foods. Not surprisingly (for those in the know) her symptoms dramatically improved. This prompted her to start investigating genetically engineered foods.

She has meticulously collected statistics on glyphosate usage and various diseases and conditions, including autism. A more perfect match-up between the rise in glyphosate usage and incidence of autism is hard to imagine… To access her published articles and reports, please visit Sustainable Pulse,3 a European website dedicated to exposing the hazards of genetically engineered foods.

According to Dr. Swanson:4

“Prevalence and incidence data show correlations between diseases of the organs and the increase in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the food supply, along with the increase in glyphosate-based herbicide applications. More and more studies have revealed carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting effects of Roundup at lower doses than those authorized for residues found in Genetically Modified Organisms.”

“The endocrine disrupting properties of glyphosate can lead to reproductive problems: infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, and sexual development. Fetuses, infants and children are especially susceptible because they are continually experiencing growth and hormonal changes. For optimal growth and development, it is crucial that their hormonal system is functioning properly.

The endocrine disrupting properties also lead to neurological disorders (learning disabilities (LD), attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), autism, dementia, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). Those most susceptible are children and the elderly.”

Warning! EPA Raises Limits for Allowable Glyphosate Residues

Amazingly, just as more independent reports are emerging confirming the health hazards of glyphosate and GMOs, the Environmental Protection Agency5 (EPA) is proposing to RAISE the allowed residue limits of glyphosate in food and feed crops! As reported by GM Watch 6:

“The allowed level in teff animal feed will be 100 parts per million (ppm); and in oilseed crops, 40 ppm. Allowed levels in some fruits and vegetables eaten by humans will also rise.”

Root and tuber vegetables, with the exception of sugar, will get one of the largest boosts, with allowable residue limits being raised from 0.2 ppm to 6.0 ppm. The new level for sweet potatoes will be 3 ppm.

“As a comparison, malformations in frog and chicken embryos were documented7 by Prof Andres Carrasco’s team at 2.03 ppm glyphosate, when injected into the embryos,” GM Watch writes.

Yet despite all the evidence, the EPA rule states:

“EPA concludes that there is a reasonable certainty that no harm will result to the general population or to infants and children from aggregate exposure to glyphosate residues.”
Monsanto has in fact petitioned and received approvals for increases in residue levels for several crops. Why? Because the weeds are getting increasingly resistant, requiring farmers to increase the amount of Roundup they have to spray just to keep up with the superweeds created by the excessive use of the chemical in the first place…
The Rise of Superweeds

A recent article in Nature Magazine8 addressed some of the environmental and societal concerns associated with genetically engineered crops. One of them is the rise in crop-destroying superweeds, as weeds develop resistance to glyphosate. This was yet another possibility that was initially pooh-pooh’d by Monsanto. However, truth has a way of eventually becoming self evident, and now glyphosate resistance is becoming so obvious the facts are hardly disguisable. According to the article:

“As late as 2004, the company was publicizing a multi-year study suggesting that rotating crops and chemicals does not help to avert resistance. When applied at Monsanto’s recommended doses, glyphosate killed weeds effectively, and ‘we know that dead weeds will not become resistant,’ said Rick Cole, now Monsanto’s technical lead of weed management, in a trade-journal advertisement at the time.

The study,9 published in 2007, was criticized by scientists for using plots so small that the chances of resistance developing were very low, no matter what the practice.

Glyphosate-resistant weeds have now been found in 18 countries worldwide, with significant impacts in Brazil, Australia, Argentina and Paraguay… And Monsanto has changed its stance on glyphosate use, now recommending that farmers use a mix of chemical products and ploughing. But the company stops short of acknowledging a role in creating the problem…

Source: Ian Heap, International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds www.weedscience.org/graphs/soagraph.aspx (2013)

To offer farmers new weed-control strategies, Monsanto and other biotechnology companies, such as Dow AgroSciences, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, are developing new herbicide-resistant crops that work with different chemicals, which they expect to commercialize within a few years.”

What the author fails to mention is that some of these new herbicide-resistant crops are being designed to withstand chemicals that could be even more destructive, both environmentally and with regards to human health—especially in light of Seneff and Samsel’s new research.

For example, Dow AgroSciences has developed a new generation of genetically modified (GM) crops — soybeans, corn and cotton — designed to resist a major ingredient in Agent Orange, the herbicide called 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D).

The use of 2,4-D is not new; it’s actually one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. What is new is that farmers will now “carpet bomb” staple food crops like soy and corn with this chemical at a previously unprecedented scale—just the way glyphosate has been indiscriminately applied as a result of Roundup Ready crops. In fact, if 2,4-D resistant crops receive approval and eventually come to replace Monsanto’s failing Roundup-resistant crops as Dow intends, it is likely that billions of pounds will be needed, on top of the already insane levels of Roundup being used (1.6 billion lbs were used in 2007 in the US alone).

Gene Transfer Hazards, and the Latest ‘Gene Silencing’ Crops

Nature Magazine also discusses the spread of transgenes to wild crops. Mexico in particular has reported the spread of GE corn despite the fact that GE crops are not approved for commercial planting in Mexico. It is believed that the transgenes originated in corn imported from the US, and that local farmers may have planted some of the corn originally purchased for consumption, not realizing they were genetically engineered.

Cross-breeding between native and GE varieties may have allowed for the continued spread of transgenic DNA. Sadly, once present, it’s virtually impossible to get rid of these transgenes, which means that native species may eventually be eliminated entirely—a fate that cuts deep into the heart of the Mexican people, where corn is considered sacred.

Latest Breed of GE Crops Can Silence Your Genes… What Then?

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has developed a type of genetically engineered (GE) wheat that may silence human genes, which could have truly disastrous health consequences.

Last year, University of Canterbury Professor Jack Heinemann released results from genetic research he conducted on the wheat, which unequivocally showed that molecules created in the wheat, intended to silence wheat genes to change its carbohydrate content, can match human genes and potentially silence them. Heinemann’s research revealed over 770 pages of potential matches between two genes in the GE wheat and the human genome. Over a dozen matches were “extensive and identical and sufficient to cause silencing in experimental systems,” he said.

Experts warned that eating this GE wheat could lead to significant changes in the way glucose and carbohydrates are stored in the human body, which could be potentially deadly for children and lead to serious illness in adults. Yet despite the seriousness of these findings, regulators are ignoring and dismissing such warnings. According to the Institute of Science in Society,10 the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has approved at least five such GE food products already.

Rather than using in vitro DNA modification (which is how Roundup Ready and Bt crops are created), this new breed of genetically engineered crops use a wholly different approach. In vitro DNA modification results in the creation of a new protein, but this new breed is designed to change their RNA content, thereby regulating gene expression within the plant. RNA is one of three major macromolecules, like DNA. Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is responsible for regulating more than one-third of human genes. By engineering the plant to produce dsRNA, the plant can be “instructed” to silence specific genes—within itself, and potentially within your body…

A Global Experiment Based on Faulty Assumptions is Bound to Take its Toll…

It is assumed that both DNA and RNA are broken down in your gut when you consume them in GE food, which is why they both have GRAS status (Generally Regarded as Safe). However, experiments dating back to the early 1990’s have contradicted this assumption.11 According to Dr. Mae Wan-Ho12 (for references, see the original article):

“There have been many publications documenting the ability of DNA to survive digestion in the gut and to pass into the bloodstream whenever investigations were carried out with sufficiently sensitive detection methods. DsRNA in particular, is much more stable than single stranded RNA. DsRNA produced in genetically modified plants survive intact after passing through the gut of insects and worms feeding on the plants.

Also, oral exposure of insect pests to dsRNA was effective in inducing RNA interference. Worms can even absorb dsRNA suspended in liquid through their skin, and when taken in, the dsRNA can circulate throughout the body and alter gene expression in the animal. In some cases the dsRNA taken up is further multiplied or induces a secondary reaction resulting in more and different secondary dsRNA with unpredictable targets. Thus, not only are dsRNA mechanisms universal to all plants and animals, there is already experimental evidence that they can act across kingdoms.”

Dr. Mae Wan-Ho also points out research from China, which has demonstrated that dsRNAs can survive digestion and be taken up via the gastrointestinal tract, and that microRNA (miRNA) from food can circulate in the human blood stream and have the potential to turn off human genes.

“The data also indicated that some dsRNAs from plants are found more frequently than predicted from their level of expression in plants; in other words, there may be a selective retention or uptake of some miRNA molecules,” she writes.

Most Consumers Still Unaware of GMO Risks

The biotech industry, led by Monsanto, is increasing their propaganda efforts to reshape their public image, and sway your opinion against the need to label genetically engineered foods. As The Atlantic recently reported.13

“Given its opposition to the labeling of GM foods… it seems clear that Monsanto wants you to close your eyes, open your mouth, and swallow.”

Indeed, many consumers are still in the dark about the very real risks that GE crops pose, both to the environment and human health. This is precisely what the biotech industry wants, even as increasing research demonstrates the many dangers associated with GE foods. For example, one recent study found that rats fed a type of genetically engineered corn that is prevalent in the US food supply for two years developed massive mammary tumors, kidney and liver damage, and other serious health problems. This was at dietary amounts of about 10 percent. Does 10 percent or more of your diet consist of genetically engineered ingredients? If processed foods form the basis of your diet, then you’re likely consuming FAR MORE genetically modified organisms (GMOs) than that…

Unfortunately, you can’t know for sure how many items in your fridge and pantry might contain GMOs since the US does not require genetically engineered foods to be labeled. With the emergence of “gene silencing” crops and the latest findings from Seneff and Samsel, the need for labeling couldn’t possibly be greater.

Keep Fighting for Labeling of Genetically Engineered Foods

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

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

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

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

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

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

half a mango a day saw their high blood sugar fall like a house of cards in a hurricane after just 12 weeks!

Scientists have stumbled upon something sharp and metallic that you can use daily to get your stubborn high blood sugar under control.

And here’s the best part — it’s not an insulin needle. It’s a fork!

A researcher from Oklahoma State University has found that if you use that fork to lift some mouth-watering mango into your mouth every day, you may be well on your way to putting your blood sugar woes behind you for good!

Sounds good? Here’s what you need to know.

According to the research, which was just presented at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, obese adults who ate just half a mango a day saw their high blood sugar fall like a house of cards in a hurricane after just 12 weeks!

That’s right, friend! Just three months of mango was all it took for research subjects to start getting their high blood sugar — a problem that had been plaguing them for years — under control.

And guess what else? These research subjects didn’t lose weight, spend hours at the gym, or change their body composition one bit — they just ate one serving of delicious mango every single day.

What’s the secret behind this blood sugar-busting fruit? Mangos are high in fiber, which can limit your body’s absorption of sugar. Plus, they’re jam-packed with plant polyphenols, which may prevent the development of fat cells — and keep the fat cells you have smaller.

(Long time e-Tips readers probably won’t be too surprised by these findings since all the way back in 2010 we revealed that polyphenol-rich seaweed also had the power to reduce both blood sugars and weight. If you missed that important story, click here to catch up.)

We’ve been singing the praises of mangos for so long, that we’re thinking of starting a band — Mango & the Marvelettes. OK, we’re still working on that. But if you’ve been reading for a while, you know that mangos may also be a powerful tool for helping to prevent cancer.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure our Creator didn’t want us to spend our golden years as pin cushions. If you’re tired of those constant finger pricks and insulin injections it takes to get your blood sugar under control, speak to your doctor about giving 12 weeks of mangos a try.

You just might see your high blood sugar drop like a stone, one delicious bite at a time. And if you’re looking for other safe, natural ways to support healthy blood sugar.
If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

Rarely known outside traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), lei gong teng or “thunder god vine” is stunning Western researchers with its ability to stop cancer in its tracks – in as little as forty days. Used for its health enhancing qualities for more than 2,000 years in China, the West is beginning to recognize the astounding benefits of the vine for treating cancer, giving new hope to those who suffer from the most deadly forms of the disease.

Thunder god vine compound swiftly conquers cancer
Lei gong teng (Tripterygium wilfordii) is native to China, Japan and Korea where it has long been valued for its distinct anti-inflammatory, immunosuppressive and anti-cancer properties. Supplying ample amounts of the active compound triptolide, the herb demonstrates substantial success in eradicating cancerous tumors.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center discovered that mice treated with triptolide for 40 days showed no further incidence of tumors, even after ceasing treatment. Ashok Saluja, vice chairman of research and the study’s leader, told Bloomberg, “You could see every day you looked at those mice, the tumor was decreasing and decreasing, and then just gone.”

Scientists at John Hopkins School of Medicine also found extracts of lei gong teng to be effective in eliminating cancerous tumors. Jun O. Liu, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences at Johns Hopkins, notes:

“… triptolide has been shown to block the growth of all 60 U.S. National Cancer Institute cell lines at very low doses, and even causes some of those cell lines to die.”

Apparently, the compound impedes the manufacture of new RNA, thereby curbing cancerous proliferation in mice. These findings are laying the foundation for human clinical trials in the near future.

Triptolide has been shown to inhibit colorectal, pancreatic and ovarian cancers, among others. Rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune disorders like multiple sclerosis and lupus respond to lei gong teng as well.

Since the herb can cause serious side effects, including loss of bone density, headache and infertility, it is important to consult a qualified TCM practitioner before use.

The dark side of scientific research
Even though emerging research regarding the thunder god vine is encouraging, financial gain is still the underlying motivating factor. Anthony Gucciardi of Natural Society aptly observes:

“While it is great news that this study is bringing the beneficial effects of inexpensive and near-free plant compounds to light, the bad news is that the individuals responsible for the research are actually looking to create a pharmaceutical drug from the essential component triptolide. A drug that will seek FDA approval and ultimately be patented, nutritionally ruined, and sold for exorbitant amounts of cash. Instead, just get your hands on some thunder god vine for yourself.”

Sources for this article include:

http://naturalsociety.com

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303153118.htm

http://www.bloomberg.com

http://www.naturalstandard.com

http://www.plosone.org

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22902510

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22464014

http://www.livingwellmagazine.net

About the author:
Carolanne enthusiastically believes if we want to see change in the world, we need to be the change. As a nutritionist, natural foods chef and wellness coach, Carolanne has encouraged others to embrace a healthy lifestyle of organic living, gratefulness and joyful orientation for over 13 years. Through her website www.Thrive-Living.net she looks forward to connecting with other like-minded people who share a similar vision.

Follow on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/Thrive_Living

At Facebook, follow here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thrive-Living/499578863433146

For Pinterest fans, connect here: www.pinterest.com/thriveliving/natural-news/

Read her other articles on Natural News here:

http://www.naturalnews.com/Author1183.html

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

In a new low for even the mainstream media, the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers in Australia are pushing a campaign of outright medical child abuse they call “NO JAB NO PLAY.” The campaign demands that unvaccinated children be barred from all social contact with other children and condemned to the life of a social outcast where parents are presumably supposed to raise them in cages in dark basements. The paper has launched its horrific, anti-human-rights campaign, “NO JAB NO PLAY” that demands children who are not vaccinated with state-mandated chemicals (which include mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum and other toxins) be denied interaction with other children.

I’m not making this up. The paper, which seems to be run by a band of human rights haters and child abuse proponents, all but admits wanting to turn children into anti-social monsters and psychological criminals — just one of the side effects of forcing children to be raised without healthy social interaction with other children. This is the first time in history that an Australian newspaper has directly called for the medical abuse of children — and seem to be happy about doing so! Is their editor the ghost of Jimmy Saville from the UK?

It’s a new low for even the Telegraph. Click here to see the campaign push by the newspaper.

See the image of the paper’s “No Jab No Play” campaign on the right. This is the actual image taken from the paper’s editorial page where they are pushing this idea of socially condemning all children whose parents do not submit to state-sponsored medical terrorism.

Telegraph caught with huge conflict of interest, taking money from vaccine manufacturers
Oh, and by the way: The Telegraph takes money from vaccine manufacturers while pushing their editorial agenda. Yet it never discloses this in its medical child abuse campaign for mandatory vaccinations. What we have here is a clear conflict of interest with the paper now being caught with its hand in the cookie jar of Big Pharma cash flow.

Here’s one full-page ad the paper ran for Pfizer, a globally-known vaccine manufacturer. There are hundreds more examples of ads from vaccine companies who are financially supporting The Telegraph and essentially paying the salaries of its staff.

Are the Telegraph’s editors vaccine-damaged or just scientifically illiterate?
To justify this medical child abuse against children, the Telegraph engages in an astonishing display of junk science logic that demonstrates the complete illiteracy of the paper’s editors. It says, “Most parents are rightfully fed up with those who put other people’s children at risk.”

So let’s examine that with actual scientific reasoning, shall we? (Something with which the Telegraph is entirely unfamiliar.)

This statement asserts that there are two groups of children: 1) Children who are vaccinated and therefore “protected” from infectious disease, and 2) Children who are unvaccinated and therefore “carriers” of infectious disease and a threat to others.

It further asserts that children from group 2 (“carriers”) can somehow infect children from group 1 (“vaccinated”).

But hold on a second. Wasn’t group 1 (“vaccinated”) supposed to be immune to the disease precisely because they were already vaccinated?

If vaccinations work, then a vaccinated child should be able to strut through even the most snot-nosed, coughing, sneezing, sick group of other children and have no concern whatsoever for catching any disease, right? The vaccine offers them 100% protection, doesn’t it? So why would vaccinated children need to fear unvaccinated carriers?

Here is where the entire myth of vaccination falls completely apart — and where the editors of the Telegraph show just why they are so easily discredited on issues requiring actual scientific reasoning. Vaccines do NOT offer 100% protection. In fact, if you look hard at the numbers for things like flu vaccines, it turns out that vaccines offer, at best, about a 1% protection effect. Flu shots, in other words, are worthless on about 99% of the children who receive them.

Even worse, flu shots always contain neurologically-damaging chemicals, so they risk harm to children’s brains. The flu shot manufacturers could, if they chose, produce “clean” flu shots without methylmercury (a potent brain poison), formaldehyde, aluminum or other adjuvant chemicals, but they choose not to. Thus, every flu shot administered to your child is like playing Russian Roulette with your child’s brain. Sometimes the result is disastrous and the child goes into a seizure. When they emerge from the seizure hours later, they are suddenly autistic, now a victim of permanent brain damage caused by vaccines.

The Telegraph doesn’t seem to mind this idea, however. After all, the paper wants unvaccinated children to be medically abused and live like anti-social monsters, growing up in total isolation and suffering immense developmental harm as a result. It’s no surprise the paper’s editors also don’t mind the fact that what they are pushing causes provable brain damage to children, turning healthy young boys and girls into screaming, moaning, lobotomized human beings who will require a lifetime of social support to keep alive and functioning in society. That’s a good thing, according to the Telegraph. The more lobotomies, the better! After all, somebody’s gotta be left behind with a low enough IQ to subscribe to the paper.

Now, to understand this even further, the real truth about all this is that vaccines weaken the immune system against future infections, and it’s all the non-vaccinated children who are statistically far more naturally immune from infection. Take a sample of 100 sick children anywhere in Australia, and you’ll find that the ones who have the most severe symptoms are the ones who were vaccinated. Every measles outbreak happens among children who were vaccinated against the measles. Flu outbreaks are carried and spread primarily by children who receive flu shots! This is the “inconvenient truth” the vaccine-pushing medical establishment doesn’t want you to know.

In truth, it’s the vaccinated children who are the risky “carriers” of disease, threatening the non-vaccinated children!

Vaccinations are now a weapon against children
But the real upshot of all this is that the Telegraph is now the first newspaper in the world to recommend that vaccines be used as an anti-human-rights weapon against children. By saying no to vaccines as an informed, scientifically literate parent, you might soon be condemning your child to the life of a social outcast… a psychologically-imbalanced misfit. This is medical child abuse at its worst, and it’s openly endorsed by the Australian media.

This no doubt pleases the Telegraph in the same way that destroying the planet Alderaan might please the Grand Moff Tarkin from the Star Wars universe. What’s a few billion lives lost compared to the raw power of total control over the lives of other humans, after all? Medical choice is a terrible, terrible thing, and parents must be denied any choice whatsoever… at gunpoint, if necessary, for their own good!

This is the logic of The Telegraph, a disgusting, anti-human rights, anti-children rag of vaccine quackery and cognitively impaired writers who most likely are vaccine damaged themselves. Perhaps that’s their wish: to pay forward the “gift” of vaccine lobotomization to the next generation of children so that yet more Australians can grow up with sufficient brain damage to actually work for the Telegraph.

I’m just curious what’s next for the Telegraph. Is this “NO JAB NO PLAY” campaign doesn’t fly, will they up their game and recommend that all unvaccinated children be sexually molested, too? What are the limits to the degree of child abuse the Telegraph thinks is justifiable to make sure little children are penetrated with deadly chemical injections? “Sick” doesn’t even begin to describe what’s going on at the Telegraph.

These people are bordering on criminally insane, and if any state-sponsored action is to be taken in all this, I would recommend a police investigation of the Telegraph editors to make sure they aren’t abusing their own children in some sick way in their own homes. They obviously think there’s nothing wrong with abusing children in order to accomplish their goals. Might they also be abusing their own?

Source:
NO JAB, NO PLAY campaign of medical child abuse, advocated by The Telegraph.

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Kraft’s famous juice drink, Capri Sun, is marketed to kids in squeezable, on-the-go pouches, equipped with a fun punch-in straw. Parents are often misled by marketing that praises the drink’s healthy fruit juices. According to new findings from microbiologist Kathleen Dannelly from the Indiana State University, Capri Sun drinks may harbor more than just fake juices. Her findings suggest that the Tropical Punch, Roarin’ Waters, and Fruit Punch varieties, are harboring at least five unidentified fungus strains.

The investigation all started when a concerned parent contacted a news station. The news station handed the suspicious Capri Sun samples to microbiologist Kathleen Dannelly. With the help of biology student Leah Horn, Dannelly spent a year pouring Capri Sun juice through a vacuum filter. They collected microbes from the samples and eventually confirmed that a fungal mat does exist in the drink pouches. More testing is being done to identify the mysterious strains.

Since Capri Sun has no preservatives in its juice pouches, even the tiniest pin prick in the pouch can let in enough oxygen to allow for mold to grow.

Kraft’s Capri Sun product has received similar complaints in the past. In June 2010, a parent discovered a “foul smelling” object in her child’s Capri Sun Apple Splash drink. In May 2011 a Texas resident claimed he found a worm in his Capri Sun. In 2012, a woman found a black particle covered in a disgusting fungal-like substance.

Kraft points out that by not adding preservatives to their drink pouches, the Capri Sun can fall susceptible to incidences similar to how bread mold occurs.

In an official statement released by Kraft foods: “If mold does occur, we completely agree that it can be unsightly and gross, but it is not harmful and is more of a quality issue rather than a safety issue.”

Capri Sun full of processed high fructose corn syrup
Capri Sun drinks may be a fungal nesting ground, but they are also loaded with high fructose corn syrup.

On their website, Kraft addresses consumer’s concerns over the use of high fructose corn syrup in Capri Sun. Kraft assures consumers that high fructose corn syrup is regarded as generally safe by the FDA.

The FDA has a long history of disregarding safety and complying to industry and market demands. The FDA are guilty of approving processed sugars and sugar substitutes that tear away at the very health of children and adults. One of the Capri Sun’s products, Roarin Waters, also contains the synthetic sweetener Splenda. These chemical sweeteners exist merely to enable corporate profit growth, but these increasing profits have large and far reaching negative effects on children’s health.

Stevia, the true, safe sweetener
Using natural sweeteners, like the organic stevia leaf, would provide parents a truly safer route. The leaf of the unadulterated stevia plant is a healthy alternative sweetener that contains no calories, does not raise blood sugar levels, and doesn’t rot teeth. Consuming stevia instead of processed sugars will starve away diseases like obesity and diabetes while still giving food and drinks a sweet flavor.

The juice in Capri Sun is dead juice

According to Kraft’s website, much testing has been done to ensure optimal shelf life for its Capri Sun products. Their drinks are heated to such high temperatures, that they exceed pasteurization heating levels. Heating the juice essentially kills the enzymes in the fruit juice, rendering it practically useless to the body. So if parents are giving their kid Capri Sun as a healthy alternative “juice” drink, they may want to reconsider and start juicing real, living fruits and vegetables instead. The enzymes in fresh juice help break down the vitamins into a digestible, usable form for the body. High heating kills all the good inside. Fresh juicing invites real nutrition into a child’s life. Fresh juicing also helps people think outside marketing ploys of pasteurized juice drinks that are full of artificial and processed sugars, dead juices, and fungal strains.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.newsnet5.com

http://now.msn.com

http://www.kraftbrands.com

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As you may have noticed, there’s been a huge surge of awareness in the last couple years at the importance of consuming enough probiotics (friendly bacteria) in your diet, whether those probiotics come from fermented (cultured) foods like yogurt, kefir, kombucha, kimchi, and other fermented veggies, or whether they come from supplements too.

We’ve already talked extensively in this newsletter about how probiotics have dramatic beneficial benefits to your health, most importantly, your digestive system and your immune system. Balancing your gut flora and crowding out the “bad bugs” with more of the good bugs (aka, probiotics) is vastly important to over 150 different health conditions in your body, going above and beyond just your digestive system and immune system.

However, one of my friends recently asked me this:

“Mike, I just realized that I’m taking a probiotics supplement daily, and also drinking kefir, eating fermented veggies (kimchi or kraut), and also drinking a greens drink that also contains probiotics. I feel GREAT, but how do I know if I’m getting TOO MUCH probiotics?”

This is a great question! Here’s my take on this, compiling information that I’ve researched and also other experts on the topic…

First of all, there’s actually pretty much zero studies on whether you can take “too much” probiotics, because the average person doesn’t get nearly enough in today’s modern world with an overly processed and sterilized food supply, so “too much” is almost never a problem.

The fact is, nobody really knows if “too much” even exists when it comes to probiotics. And I’ve seen some authors and others question that maybe we shouldn’t take “too much” since we don’t know what too much is.

However, I disagree with them, and here’s where you have to use some standard logic about science, so here’s my conclusion…

Throughout all of human history (up until the last 60-100 years or so), humans always ate VERY LARGE amounts of live bacteria in pretty much everything we ate. I’d estimate that our ancestors consumed at least 10x the amount of live bacteria than even avid probiotics consumers do today.

We just simply didn’t have a “sterilized” food supply in the past that’s been canned, processed, pasteurized, packaged, and with added chemicals like we do in today’s industrialized food supply.

Quite simply, everything our ancestors ate contained a LOT of bacteria, and this wasn’t just the purposely fermented foods that are rich in probiotics.

Our ancestors also ate a certain amount of dirt on a lot of our foods throughout human history simply because good methods of thoroughly cleaning foods (other than rinsing with water) weren’t always available like today. Even just getting a tiny amount of fresh dirt on your root vegetables that you pulled out of the ground can give you billions of live bacteria. This was beneficial to our ancestors.

And since refrigeration was pretty much impossible throughout most of human history in parts of the world, fermented foods have a LONG history as a method of preservation, which means humans ate large amounts of fermented foods (WAY more than most modern humans), especially in certain times of year when fresh foods weren’t available. Fermented dairy and fermented veggies have a long history of being staples in so many parts of the world throughout history. In fact, you can read my article on kefir vs yogurt here and how natives of the Caucasus mountains in eastern Europe routinely live to over 100 years old drinking fermented dairy regularly throughout their lives.

So, the way I see it is even for those of us that might end up getting 100 Billion probiotics or more per day from a combination of a glass of kefir, a bottle of kombucha tea, a greens drink, or a probiotic supplement all combined together, I’d be willing to bet that ancient humans probably got well over 1 Trillion probiotics per day in everything that they ate, since the food supply back then wasn’t sterilized like it is today.

In that case, even the most prudent probiotic eaters who take supplements and also eat fermented foods probably still don’t come close to the amount of probiotics eaten by our ancestors.

We live in a germophobic culture these days where we’re taught from childhood to fear bacteria, despite the fact that 99% of bacteria is beneficial for our health… and yet there’s 100 Trillion estimated microbes in our guts (10x the number of cells in our body) that are linked to almost every aspect of our health.

That’s why I personally will NEVER take antibiotics unless I were to end up having some sort of life threatening infection in the future from an accident of some sort. Antibiotics can permanently disrupt the balance of your gut flora, and permanent disruption to your gut flora balance doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. You can even read this article which shows that antibiotics use can increase your belly fat, among other problems.

And remember one of the most important things about your gut bacteria…

It’s those friendly gut bacteria (probiotics) that help to crowd out pathogenic strains that could get you sick. This is one way that probiotics help keep you from getting sick.

The other way is simply that good gut bacteria also form a barrier in your intestinal lining to prevent pathogens from escaping into your bloodstream. It’s when pathogens escape into your bloodstream that you’re more likely to get sick. This is why some people are more likely to get food poisoning than others despite eating the same food as others that might have contained some pathogens. This is also why some people never get sick at all from exposure to harmful germs whereas others get sick from every little thing that they’re exposed too.

The people that have good gut flora balance (from eating large amount of probiotics) have that “microbial barrier” in their gut that doesn’t allow pathogens to get from your digestive system into your bloodstream.

There’s a great new documentary that I watched recently called Microwarriors: The Power of Probiotics that I think is a great thing to watch for every family. I think seeing things in a movie format is a lot more powerful for some people than just reading articles and will make some people take probiotics more seriously.

So to summarize about whether consuming “too much” probiotics is possible… I think we’ve established that our ancestors consumed a MUCH higher quantity of probiotics naturally than even the most avid fermented foods consumers eating a modern diet and/or supplementing with probiotics ever could.

Make sure to read this article below… I show you my exact daily plan I’ve come up with in order to get a huge variety of probiotics from different sources… remember that VARIETY of strains is just as important, if not more important, than just sheer quantity of probiotics.

Daily example plan to PROTECT your gut from pathogens, get perfect digestion, and more.

Also, keep in mind that although I eat a good daily ration of fermented foods in the form of grass-fed kefir, fermented veggies such as kimchi or kraut, as well as yogurt a couple times a week and kombucha on occasion too, I also personally “top off” my probiotics intake with what I feel is the most powerful probiotics supplement I’ve found to date here.

I strongly feel that it’s my close attention to probiotic intake (as well as close attention to levels of vitamin D) that create the immune system such that I never get sick, and never have digestion issues either. Even this past winter, I can remember quite a few flights where sick people right behind me were coughing and sneezing all over the back of my head, and I never got sick from it. I also visited several friends on trips that had sick kids or the whole family was sick, and almost everybody got sick except for me.

Coincidence? Maybe. But I think it’s those little “microwarriors” in my gut protecting me!

Make sure to start focusing DAILY on your probiotic intake of both fermented foods and probiotic supplements, and it’s quite possible that you find that you stop ever getting sick, and that any digestion issues you have start to go away fully.

Here’s to letting those little “microwarriors” protect your health!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

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The “Antioxidant Superstar” Chinese People Eat Daily
Steve Farrar has a Masters Degree in Horticulture from the Washington State University and has worked and studied mushrooms professionally for the last 30 years.

The first 20 years he spent growing them and working primarily with gourmet chefs, but in the past decade, he’s started applying his expertise of mushrooms to health purposes.

According to Farrar, Americans consume about 900 million pounds of mushrooms a year, but 95 percent of that just one species: the common button mushroom and its relatives, the Crimini and the Portabello mushrooms.

In more recent years, mushrooms have received a lot of attention, both in gourmet cooking and in the pharmaceutical industry.

As you will soon learn, mushrooms are a largely untapped resource that can help increase your health and well-being.

The Unique Nutritional Properties of Mushrooms

“Mushrooms are defined as a fungus that forms a fleshy above-ground reproductive structure called the’ mushroom fruit body,'” he explains.

Mushrooms should not be confused with mold and fungi however, which do not form fleshy fruit bodies. To learn more about the details of how mushrooms grow and propagate, please listen to the interview or read through the transcript. The common button mushroom, while not as ‘interesting’ as its more exotic cousins, is an excellent low-calorie food, especially for diabetics. It contains a number of valuable nutrients, including:
•Protein
•Enzymes
•B vitamins (especially niacin)
•Vitamin D2

However, Farrar’s focus has been on growing various gourmet mushroom species, particularly the wood decaying mushroom species, which differ greatly from your average button mushroom in terms of biology, nutrition and medicinal value, as well as in the production and methodology of growing them.

“By virtue of them being primary decomposers, they have some unique nutritional and also health benefits to them,” Farrar explains. “I tended to focus on species like Maitake, Shiitake, Enokitake, oyster mushrooms, brown beech mushrooms; mushrooms that people over the last 20 years were not really that familiar with.”

The wood decaying mushrooms, which are preferred in Asia and parts of Europe, are quite different in terms of flavors and textures. They also tend to have valuable medicinal properties that differ from the button mushroom. And we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding the value and importance of mushrooms as we’ve only classified about 10 percent of all available species.

“I’m continually humbled by my ignorance of what’s going on in this incredible complex world of fungi,” Farrar says. “It’s just mind boggling. Even with the well-studied species, nearly every week they’re finding a new bioactive component… Maybe it’s a polysaccharide, maybe it’s an enzyme, a protein, an antioxidant. They are continually finding new things that have profound effects when we consume them as a food or as a dietary supplement.”

Mushrooms are “Superfoods”

According to Farrar, the effect mushrooms can have on human health is multifaceted, but they’re most well-known for their immune-boosting properties. Long chain polysaccharides, particularly alpha- and beta glucan molecules, are primarily responsible for the mushrooms’ beneficial effect on your immune system.

“They’re host mediated responses, meaning that they are not going in like a pharmaceutical medicine and [like] a sledgehammer forcing your body in a particular way. They interact through your immune system itself by stimulating it and making it ready and efficient,” he explains.

Mushrooms are excellent sources of antioxidants in general as they contain polyphenols and selenium, which are common in the plant world. But they also contain antioxidants that are unique to mushrooms. One such antioxidant is ergothioneine, which scientists are now beginning to recognize as a ‘master antioxidant.’ Interestingly, it’s an amino acid that contains sulfur, and if you listened to my interview with Dr. Seneff on the highly underestimated importance of sulfur, you may recognize why this particular antioxidant may be of particular importance for human health, as many are severely deficient in sulfur.

“[I]t’s one of the only antioxidants identified so far that our cells [use as] a transport system to actively take ergothioneine across the cell membrane into the cell, to the points of oxidative stress,” Farrar explains. “It’s a very significant antioxidant. It’s probably eventually going to be called a vitamin… they barely even found ways to quantify it effectively. Mushrooms are an excellent source of this antioxidant. We can only get it from our diet. It’s only produced by fungi and certainly soil inhabiting bacteria.”

A 2009 study in the journal Nature discusses the importance of ergothioneine, describing it as “an unusual sulfur-containing derivative of the amino acid, histidine,” which appears to have a very specific role in protecting your DNA from oxidative damage. So, if Farrar’s assertions that your body needs ergothioneine, which is fairly exclusive to mushrooms, to effectively transport ergothioneine into your cells, it’s easy to see how mushrooms may be an important part of an optimal diet. If you don’t like to eat them whole, you can also find them in supplement form, either as an extract or whole food supplement, which I’ll discuss more in a moment.

The Immune Enhancing Effects of Mushrooms

According to Farrar, many of the immune benefits obtained from mushrooms are due to the glyconutrients (complex sugars) contained in the fruit body and the mycelia.

“The vital information that can be contained in these sugars is astounding,” he says. “…The way they communicate is… through receptor sites on your cells. It’s described as a lock and a key. There are receptor sites depending on the physical structure of the polysaccharides, the side branches, and the substitutions on it, [and] they will lock on to certain components of your immune system and activate it much like they would be activated by coming into contact with the bacteria.

It’s very profound effects, and we don’t fully understand them… But it’s really these long chained polysaccharides (that are immense complex structures), a lot of times bound with proteins or amino acids or different side chains, that have the effect on your immune system.”

From a practical standpoint, what this means is that you can effectively elicit a very broad-based immune response by consuming a variety of different mushrooms of different species. Most likely, this is exactly what our ancestors used to do, and by eating a diverse variety of foods within each food group, you’re giving your body everything it needs, thereby optimizing your genetic expression.

How Mushrooms Helped Win a Kentucky Derby

Now, some may argue that you typically would not consume the mycelia of the mushroom—which is the thread-like vegetative part of the mushroom that branches through the soil—because if you were to pick it in the wild, you’d typically snap off the top (the fruit body and stem), leaving the rest in the ground. However, Farrar points out that there’s compelling evidence indicating that the mycelia have very valuable health properties.

Studies involving thoroughbred race horses, for example, offer a glimpse into what benefits mushroom products that include the mycelia might harbor. Farrar tells the story of how, in 2007, they convinced an East Coast trainer to put all the horses in his stable on a mushroom blend product developed by Farrar and his team.

“It contained a lot of the Cordyceps species, which is widely recognized as a performance mushroom, enhancing energy production. It had a number of other species and it helped with muscle recovery after strenuous exercise.

Basically, the 2007 Kentucky Derby winner ‘Street Sense’ was a horse that was on our product. The owner and trainer attributed a lot of the success to that. Interestingly enough, part of that was the performance energy component… another part of it was basically a behavioral aspect. It was totally unexpected on our part. The trainer said that [when the horse was] given this blend of mushroom… it was [like] a different horse… racehorses tend to be very fidgety and very high strung and they can be distracted. It’s very difficult to focus their attention. They said once they started along this regimen of a daily dose of this mycelial blend of mushrooms, its trainability and focus [improved]; it was a different animal.

So instead of a lethargic sort of calming effect, it was more like an alert focus… That combined with the performance aspects, the muscle recovery, and the energy generation, was enough to make a difference they thought. Since then they have been spokesman for our products.”

Others have found the same effects giving Farrar’s product to their pets. Owners of elderly dogs in particular have reported that their dogs start acting like puppies again when taking it.

Usage and Dosage Recommendations

When it comes to mushroom supplements, there are two primary types:
•Mushroom concentrates or extracts—Most of these are so-called hot water extracts, where either the mushroom mycelia or fruit body is boiled for extended periods of time to extract the long chain polysaccharides. Farrar explains:

“What you get basically is a concentrated form of these beta glucans. But the enzymes, the proteins, the amino acids, the dietary fiber, mostly the antioxidants, are either denatured, destroyed, or simply discarded.

While you do get a very concentrated amount of these – generally, they also try to purify it to get them down to a minimum of variation [so] they can standardize it… Not to say that those aren’t valuable products. In extreme cases of advanced cancer, tumors, all sorts of things, that is a very appropriate thing… Particularly as a complimentary therapy.”
•Whole food/Raw mushrooms—Consuming the mushrooms raw or using a whole food mushroom (powdered pill) product is generally a better alternative if you’re reasonably healthy and looking to maintain optimal health, as they help maintain ideal function of your various systems as opposed to imparting a direct effect. Most of the knowledge about mushrooms come from ancient Chinese medicine where mushrooms are regarded as tonics. Tonics are considered to have non-specific beneficial effects across several systems of your body that do not decline over time.

If you choose to eat your mushrooms raw, make sure they are organically grown, as their flesh easily absorb air and soil contaminants. Likewise, you’ll want to make sure any product you buy is certified organic for the same reason.

Furthermore, Farrar points out that whole mushrooms also provide healthful dietary fiber that act as “prebiotic platforms for the growth of probiotic organisms in your gut,” which is very important for digestive health. This is yet another reason to opt for a whole food mushroom product.

There are no toxicities or resistance build-up associated with mushrooms, Farrar says. Your body will simply use what it needs and expel the rest. One of the most famous medicinal mushrooms is Reishi, revered as “the mushroom of immortality” by the Chinese, who typically take it every day.

“If you take a massive dose of these mycelial products, you’re not going to overdose on them… You can’t overdose,” he says. “Typically when people start on these products, for the first seven to 10 days we recommend a double dose of it to load your system, and thereafter a moderate dose of one to a couple of grams a day. It’s all that’s needed.

When you’re talking about the isolates of mushrooms, the active ingredients, you’re talking about milligram dosages. If you’re talking about the raw whole food, anywhere from one gram up to 30 grams for very severe cases of cancer cases. People are taking relatively massive doses of it and have had phenomenal effects.”

Typically, one to two grams is enough for a tonic effect, taken on a daily basis. Farrar recommends taking the product on an empty (or nearly empty) stomach, but it can be taken with moderate amounts of food or liquids.

How to Identify a High Quality Product

In the interview, Farrar describes the techniques used within his industry to produce different kinds of mushroom products, so for more information, please listen to the interview in its entirety or read through the transcript.

One way involves a fermentation process, which can be used for both the fruit body and the mycelia. The cells walls are different in the mycelia compared to the fruit body; they’re more easily digested, making it easier to reap the benefits from the bioactive compounds therein. The technique involves the use of oats, which may raise concerns about gluten content. However, Farrar allays such fears stating that gliadin cannot be detected in the final fermented product. So in its finished form, it’s a gluten-free product.

In a nutshell, when evaluating mushroom supplements, the points of differentiation between products can be broken down to:
•Isolates versus whole foods
•Solid state fermentation versus submerged technology
•The type of substrate (grain) used for the fermentation
•Percentage of fruit body to mycelium
•Conventionally grown versus organic

Solid state fermentation is superior to submerged technology when growing the mycelia. Particularly if you’re looking for a complex matrix of nutrition and bioactive compounds.

So-called ‘submerged fermentation’ is typically used by companies focused on extracting particular isolates, and this accounts for up to 70 percent of the products on the market. It’s a more ‘drug-based’ approach that can be beneficial for certain health ailments. However, for a more comprehensively beneficial effect, you’ll want to look for a product using ‘solid state fermentation,’ which is based on the whole food approach where the final product contains more or most of the original compounds and co-factors.

Within the whole food approach, manufacturers may use a variety of different substrate grains for the fermentation process, such as oats, rye, rice, millet, or milo. Farrar tends to favor those using oats, as they tend to have better nutrition than those using rice.

As for the ratio of fruit body to mycelium, Farrar recommends opting for products that contain more of the mycelium. “There is more research directly with the mycelial stage of the mushroom, by far, than the fruit body stage,” he explains. He also discusses several other reasons for opting for mycelium, such as:
•The mycelia stage of the mushroom is easier to standardize and keep contained
•Mushrooms grown to the fruit body stage for harvesting opens it up to environmental factors that can be more difficult to control, so there’s more variation in the quality
•Mushroom fruit bodies attract airborne contaminants, both biological and industrial, so there’s greater risk for contamination

Last but certainly not least, you have the option of simply eating the mushrooms raw, or very lightly cooked. Excellent choices include maitake, shiitake, and king trumpet.

“They are so versatile. You can eat them in anything,” Farrar says. “In the United States, our annual per capita consumption of mushrooms is about four pounds a year. In parts of China and Japan, it’s 20, 25, 30 pounds! Even Canada has twice the consumption of mushrooms that we have. Mushrooms should be a bigger part of our diet.”

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Mushrooms contain some of the most potent natural medicines on the planet. Of the 140,000 species of mushroom-forming fungi, science is familiar with only 10 percent, according to world-renown mycologist Paul Stamets, who has written six books on the topic.

About 100 species of mushrooms are being studied for their health-promoting benefits. Of those hundred, about a half dozen really stand out for their ability to deliver a tremendous boost to your immune system.

It’s important to eat only organically grown mushrooms because they absorb and concentrate whatever they grow in — good OR bad. This is what gives mushrooms their potency. Mushrooms are known to concentrate heavy metals, as well as air and water pollutants, so healthy growing conditions is a critical factor.

While it may sound strange, we’re actually more closely related to fungi than we are to any other kingdom, as we share the same pathogens, meaning bacteria and viruses.

As a defense against bacterial invasion, fungi have developed strong antibiotics, which also happen to be effective for us humans. Penicillin, streptomycin, and tetracycline all come from fungal extracts.

The Many Health Benefits of Mushrooms

The FASEB Journal recently published nine studies on mushrooms that were also presented at Experimental Biology 2013, which detailed a wide variety of health benefits,1 including:
•Weight management: One study2, 3 found that substituting red meat with white button mushrooms can help enhance weight loss. Obese participants with a mean age of just over 48 years ate approximately one cup of mushrooms per day in place of meat. The control group ate a standard diet without mushrooms.

At the end of the 12-month trial, the intervention group had lost an average of 3.6 percent of their starting weight, or about seven pounds. They also showed improvements in body composition, such as reduced waist circumference, and ability to maintain their weight loss, compared to the control group.
•Improved nutrition: One dietary analysis4 found that mushroom consumption was associated with better diet quality and improved nutrition.
•Increasing vitamin D levels through your diet: Consuming dried white button mushroom extract was found to be as effective as taking supplemental vitamin D2 or D3 for increasing vitamin D levels (25-hydroxyvitamin D).5
•Improved immune system function: Long chain polysaccharides, particularly alpha and beta glucan molecules, are primarily responsible for the mushrooms’ beneficial effect on your immune system. In one study, adding one or two servings of dried shiitake mushrooms was found to have a beneficial, modulating effect on immune system function.6 Another study done on mice found that white button mushrooms enhanced the adaptive immunity response to salmonella.7

Parasitic Fungi Showing Promise for Immune Disorders and Cancer

Cordyceps, also called caterpillar fungus or Tochukasu, is a favorite of athletes because it increases ATP production, strength and endurance, and has anti-aging effects.8

This parasitic mushroom is unique because, in the wild, it grows out of an insect host instead of a plant host. It has long been used within both traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicine.

It has hypoglycemic and possible antidepressant effects, protects your liver and kidneys, increases blood flow, helps normalize your cholesterol levels, and has been used to treat Hepatitis B.

Cordyceps has antitumor properties as well. Scientists at The University of Nottingham have been studying cordycepin, one of the active medicinal compounds found in these fungi,9 and the one identified as a potential cancer drug. More recent studies suggest it also has potent anti-inflammatory characteristics that may be helpful for those suffering from:
•Asthma
•Rheumatoid arthritis
•Renal failure
•Stroke damage

A question that was begging for an answer was how cordycepin could produce so many different beneficial effects at the cellular level. Researcher Dr. Cornelia de Moor told Medical News Today:10

“We have shown that cordycepin reduces the expression of inflammatory genes in airway smooth muscle cells by acting on the final step in the synthesis of their messenger RNAs (mRNAs) which carry the chemical blueprint for the synthesis of proteins.

This process is called polyadenylation. Commonly used anti-inflammatory drugs either work much earlier in the activation of inflammatory genes, such as prednisone, or work on one of the final products of the inflammatory reaction (e.g. ibuprofen).

These findings indicate that cordycepin acts by a completely different mechanism than currently used anti-inflammatory drugs, making it a potential drug for patients in which these drugs don’t work well.

However, it is a surprise that cordycepin does not affect the synthesis of mRNAs from other genes, because nearly all mRNAs require polyadenylation.”

According to Dr. de Moor’s research, the mechanism responsible for cordycepin’s many varied effects may stem from its ability to alter the synthesis of many classes of rapidly induced genes that help counteract inflammatory genes, thereby slowing down otherwise rapid cellular responses to tissue damage. It may also help prevent over-activation of inflammatory responses.

“However, it also indicates that cordycepin could have adverse effects on normal wound healing and on the natural defenses against infectious diseases,” the featured article states.11

“Dr. de Moor said: ‘We are hoping to further investigate which genes are more dependent on polyadenylation than others and why this is the case, as well as test the effect of cordycepin on animal models of disease. Clinical testing of cordycepin is not in our immediate plans, as we think we first have to understand this drug in more detail before we can risk treating patients with it.'”

Foragers, Beware of Toxic Mushrooms

An November 2012 article in The Atlantic12 highlighted recent cases of lethal food poisonings related to eating wild mushrooms, and the need for caution when foraging food:

“Of the over 10,000 species of mushrooms, only about 50 to 100 are toxic. About 6,000 Americans each year end up eating them. Over half of those cases involve unsupervised small children. So if you’re considering treating that special person in your life to a wild mushroom-based dish, take the following into consideration: Over 90 percent of deaths, including these most recent ones, are caused by amatoxins.”

As mentioned in the article, the North American Mycological Association13 offers critical information on a number of toxic mushrooms and the symptoms they cause, including those for amanitin (amatoxins), which is one of the most serious:
•Stage 1: A latency period of 6 to 24 hours after ingestion, in which the toxins are actively destroying the victim’s kidneys and liver, but the victim experiences no discomfort.
•Stage 2: A period of about 24 hours characterized by violent vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and severe abdominal cramps.
•Stage 3: A period of 24 hours during which the victim appears to recover (if hospitalized, the patient is sometimes released)
•Stage 4: Relapse, during which kidney and liver failure often occurs, leading to death. Patients may also “bleed out” and die due to the destruction of clotting factors in the blood. There may be more than one relapse.

Warning: If you have any reason to suspect that someone has ingested an amanitin-containing mushroom, DON’T WAIT for symptoms to appear! There is no antidote for amanitin poisoning, and the best hope is to rush the person to the hospital where the toxins can be removed before being fully absorbed into the body.

It’s also important to eat ONLY organically grown mushrooms because they absorb and concentrate whatever they grow in — good OR bad. This is what gives mushrooms their potency, for better or worse. Mushrooms are known to concentrate heavy metals, as well as air and water pollutants. One way to know what you’re getting is to grow your own. You can find a variety of DIY garden kits available online,14 which will eliminate any questions about what kind of mushroom you’re picking.

Improving Your Nutrition with Mushrooms

Two years ago, I interviewed Steve Farrar, who worked and studied mushrooms professionally for the last 30 years. The first 20 years he spent growing them and working primarily with gourmet chefs, but in the past decade, he’s started applying his expertise of mushrooms to health purposes. According to Farrar, Americans consume about 900 million pounds of mushrooms a year, but 95 percent of that is just one species: the common button mushroom and its relatives, the Crimini and the Portabello mushrooms.

Granted, the button mushroom is an excellent low-calorie food, especially for diabetics. It contains a number of valuable nutrients, including protein, enzymes, B vitamins (especially niacin), and vitamin D2. However, there are many other types of mushrooms worthy of consideration if you want to improve your diet. I’ll review a few of my favorites below. Farrar’s focus has been on growing various gourmet mushroom species, particularly the wood decaying mushroom species, which differ greatly from your average button mushroom in terms of biology, nutrition and medicinal value.

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Mushrooms are excellent sources of antioxidants in general as they contain polyphenols and selenium, which are common in the plant world. But they also contain antioxidants that are unique to mushrooms. One such antioxidant is ergothioneine, which scientists are now beginning to recognize as a ‘master antioxidant.’ Interestingly, it’s an amino acid that contains sulfur, and if you listened to my interview with Dr. Seneff on the highly underestimated importance of sulfur, you may recognize why this particular antioxidant may be of particular importance for human health, as many are severely deficient in sulfur.

A previous study in the journal Nature15 discusses the importance of ergothioneine, which is fairly exclusive to mushrooms, describing it as “an unusual sulfur-containing derivative of the amino acid, histidine,” which appears to have a very specific role in protecting your DNA from oxidative damage. With that in mind, it becomes easy to see how mushrooms may be an important part of an optimal diet. If you don’t like to eat them whole, you can also find them in supplement form, either as an extract or whole food supplement.

Examples of Mushrooms to Add to Your Diet

A few of my favorite health-enhancing mushroom species include:
•Shiitake (Lentinula edodes): Shiitake is a popular culinary mushroom used in dishes around the world. It contains a number of health-stimulating agents, including lentinan, the polysaccharide for which it was named. Lentinan has been isolated and used to treat stomach and other cancers due to its antitumor properties, but has also been found to protect your liver,16 relieve other stomach ailments (hyperacidity, gallstones, ulcers), anemia, ascites, and pleural effusion.

One of the more remarkable scientific studies demonstrating shiitake’s antitumor effect was a Japanese animal study,17 where mice suffering from sarcoma were given shiitake extract. Six of 10 mice had complete tumor regression, and with slightly higher concentrations, all ten mice showed complete tumor regression.

Shiitake mushrooms also demonstrate antiviral (including HIV, hepatitis, and the “common cold”), antibacterial, and antifungal effects; blood sugar stabilization; reduced platelet aggregation; and reduced atherosclerosis.18 Shiitake also contains eritadenine, which has strong cholesterol-lowering properties.19
•Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum): Reishi is known as Lingzhi in China, or “spirit plant.” It’s also been called “Mushroom of Immortality” — a nickname that kind of says it all. Reishi has been used medicinally in Asia for thousands of years. One of its more useful compounds is ganoderic acid (a triterpenoid), which is being used to treat lung cancer,20 leukemia and other cancers. The list of Reishi’s health benefits21 includes the following
◦Antibacterial, antiviral (Herpes, Epstein-Barr), antifungal (including Candida) properties
◦Anti-inflammatory, useful for reducing symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis
◦Immune system up-regulation
◦Normalization of blood cholesterol levels and blood pressure
◦Reduction of prostate-related urinary symptoms in men
•Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor): Turkey Tail is also known as Coriolis, or “cloud mushroom.” Two polysaccharide complexes in Turkey Tail are getting a great deal of scientific attention, PSK (or “Kreskin”) and PSP, making it the most extensively researched of all medicinal mushrooms with large scale clinical trials.

A seven-year, $2 million NIH-funded clinical study in 2011 found that Turkey Tail mycelium improves immune function when dosed daily to women with stage I–III breast cancer. Immune response was dose-dependent, with no adverse effects. PSP has been shown to significantly enhance immune status in 70 to 97 percent of cancer patients.22 Turkey tail is also being used to treat many different infections, including aspergillus niger, Candida albicans, E. coli, HIV, Herpes, and streptococcus pneumonia, and is hepatoprotective. It may also be useful for chronic fatigue.
•Himematsutake (Agaricus blazei): Himematsutake, also called Royal Sun Agaricus, is a relative of the common button mushroom. Himematsutake was not cultivated in the East until fairly recently but is now a very popular natural medicine, used by almost a half million Japanese.

Himematsutake mushroom is attracting many scientists worldwide due to its remarkable anticancer properties23 related to six special polysaccharides. Like many other medicinal mushrooms, this fungus can also protect you from the damaging effects of radiation and chemotherapy. But its benefits don’t stop there — Himematsutake may also help decrease insulin resistance in diabetics, normalize your cholesterol, improve your hair and skin, and even treat polio.

Usage and Dosage Recommendations for Mushroom Supplements

When it comes to mushroom supplements, there are two primary types:
•Mushroom concentrates or extracts — Most of these are so-called hot water extracts, where either the mushroom mycelia — the fruit body — is boiled for extended periods of time to extract the long chain polysaccharides. The end product is a concentrated form of glyconutrients (complex sugars) thought to be responsible for many of the health benefits of the mushroom.
•Whole food/raw mushrooms — Consuming the mushrooms raw or using a whole food mushroom (powdered pill) product is generally a better alternative if you’re reasonably healthy and looking to maintain optimal health, as they help maintain ideal function of your various systems as opposed to imparting a direct effect. Most of the knowledge about mushrooms come from ancient Chinese medicine where mushrooms are regarded as tonics. Tonics are considered to have non-specific beneficial effects across several systems of your body that do not decline over time.

As mentioned earlier, if you choose to eat your mushrooms raw, make sure they are organically grown, as their flesh easily absorbs air and soil contaminants. Likewise, you’ll want to make sure any product you buy is certified organic for the same reason. In addition to valuable nutrients, whole mushrooms also provide healthful dietary fiber that acts as prebiotic platforms for the growth of probiotic organisms in your gut, which is very important for digestive health. This is yet another reason to opt for a whole food mushroom product.

Adding Mushrooms Is a Simple Way to Boost Your Health Through Your Diet

With all the evidence supporting mushrooms as little powerhouses of potent nutrition, I highly recommend adding some to your diet. They’re an excellent addition to any salad and go great with all kinds of meat and fish. “Let food be thy medicine” is good advice indeed, and with mushrooms that is especially true, as they contain some of the most powerful natural medicines on the planet.

Just make sure they’re organically grown in order to avoid harmful contaminants that mushrooms absorb and concentrate from soil, air and water. Also, avoid picking mushrooms in the wild unless you are absolutely sure you know what you’re picking. There are a number of toxic mushrooms, and it’s easy to get them confused unless you have a lot of experience and know what to look for. Growing your own is an excellent option and a far safer alternative to picking wild mushrooms.

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