Rather Be Healthy

Dr. Christine Horner began her career as a board certified general- and plastic surgeon, performing breast reconstructive surgeries on women who’d had full mastectomies due to breast cancer.

In this interview, she shares her extensive knowledge about breast cancer—its causes and its cures, and the pros and cons of various screening methods.

Her interest in breast cancer began while she was still in college, when her mother developed the disease.

Thirteen years later, when her mother’s cancer returned, Dr. Horner became very active with the American Cancer Society.

For a time, she was a vice-president and the Kentucky state spokesperson for the American Cancer Society on breast cancer issues.

“We were trained to say that we don’t know what causes breast cancer and we have no known cures; the best things that women can do are breast exams and mammograms,” she says.

“… In my practice, I was watching women get younger and younger when I was doing breast reconstruction on them.

Finally, I was doing women in their 20s. I thought something is way wrong with this picture.” I thought why don’t we just look through the medical literature and see if there’s anything that research shows that women can do, that’s within our control that will lower our risks. I had no idea what I was going to find… But when I looked, I instantly found thousands of studies that show exactly why we have a cancer epidemic…”

What’s Causing the Cancer Epidemic?

What Dr. Horner discovered was that there are a number of habits we’ve stopped doing in our modern culture that are highly protective. We’ve dramatically altered our diets—shunning our native, whole-foods cuisine for highly processed fare—and engage in very little physical activity, for example.

“We’re telling women that all they can do is mammogram [screening], and it’s extremely disempowering,” Dr. Horner says. “You feel like you have no control over it. But if you look at epidemiological studies… we know that people that live in Asia have a very low incidence of breast cancer or prostate cancer… [W]e have the studies showing that if an Asian woman moves to the United States and adopts our American diet and lifestyle, within one generation her risk will match that of an American woman’s. It’s like “Hello? What are we doing or not doing that they’re doing or not doing that’s making such a big difference? ”

Dr. Horner was eventually introduced to the system of Ayurvedic medicine, and the more she learned about it, the more she felt there were answers therein that needed to be shared with people on a wider scale.

‘[T]here are so many really simple things people can do that can have a dramatic effect on their health,” she says. “Basically, the more you learn about natural medicine, the more you’ll realize that we’re just telling our patients lies– not on purpose, but from what we have been taught from the pharmaceutical companies and so forth.”

She pitched the idea to television stations in Cincinnati to let her talk about complementary and alternative medicine, and ended up being the first syndicated segment on the news related to complementary and alternative medicine, which ran from 1999 through 2002. At that point, she decided to quit her surgery practice to focus on teaching people how to become and stay healthy naturally, and wrote the book: Waking the Warrior Goddess: Dr. Christine Horner’s Program to Protect Against and Fight Breast Cancer, which contains all-natural approaches for protecting against and treating breast cancer. Dr. Horner’s book won the IPPY award in 2006 for “Best book in health medicine and nutrition.”

“[W]e have the answers to the breast cancer epidemic,” she says. “We truly do– and it’s very simple. If you have a terrible diet and lifestyle and you do just one thing, you cut your risk in half. You do more than one thing and they will multiply up together. They don’t add up together. They multiply up together, so it becomes extremely easy to dramatically lower your risk of breast cancer.”

It’s worth mentioning that the same strategies apply for other types of cancer as well. Prostate and colon cancer tumors, for example, are similar to breast cancer tumors, as certain hormones cause them all to grow. Hence, protective strategies that are effective against breast cancer also work on these other types of cancer. Cancer prevention strategies will also virtually eliminate most other chronic disorders.

The Problem with Conventional Cancer Screenings

While diagnostic screenings have their place, some cancer screens are just about worthless… The wisdom of using the PSA test, for example, which checks for prostate cancer, has recently been questioned. Ditto for mammograms.

“Looking at the diagnostic tests that are currently available, none of them are perfect,” Dr. Horner says. “Everything has its pros and cons… [M]ammography produces radiation, which has been shown to increase the risk of breast cancer. It’s like, “Why are you doing the test to look at a disease when it’s actually causing the disease, too?” … It does pick things up at earlier stages, but the problem is that it’s not very specific. So when it looks and it sees something… that looks suspicious, it is wrong 80 percent of the time. In the United States, there’s roughly a million breast biopsies done per year, and 800,000 of them are unnecessary.”

One of the best cancer screening methods is self-examination. But you need to make sure you’re doing it correctly. For more information about how to do a breast self exam, please see this previous article.

MRI’s, which do not use ionizing radiation, are not a practical tool as they are very expensive, and, like mammograms, MRI scans are not very specific. Ultrasound is another technique used in Western medicine. The traditional ultrasound can see whether a mass is cystic or solid. But while a solid mass is generally considered to be something that might be of concern, this is not 100 percent certain either, as cancer tumors can sometimes have cysts in them.

“Now there’s a relatively new ultrasound that uses a color mode,” Dr. Horner says. “It’s called elastography. But there aren’t very many centers in the United States that use it. I go to the Center of the Hoxsey Clinic, to Dr. Arturo Rodriguez at Tijuana. It has a color scale that measures the elasticity of the cell membranes. Cancer cells are very stiff, whereas normal cells have more fluidity to them. It’ll show up as red if it has a lot of stiffness to it, as a cancer cell, or blue if it has elasticity… It’s a very good tool.”

On Thermography

Another form of cancer screen, which is still considered controversial in conventional medicine, is thermography, which gives you an infrared image of your body. By looking at heat and blood vessel patterns you can determine whether there are areas of concern.

“[B]efore you even get a tumor formation, the very first thing that happens is new blood vessels start to grow into the area where the tumor may form. Those blood vessels grow abnormally. They grow an abnormal amount of patterns and they produce an abnormal amount of heat. That’s what thermography is checking for,” Dr. Horner explains.

As with most new technologies, thermography hit some snags in its earlier stages, and fell out of favor in the early 70s. However, the technology has gotten a lot more sophisticated over the years, and is now computerized; eliminating the need for highly trained technicians to evaluate the results.

“The problem we still have today with thermography is that we don’t have standardization,” Dr. Horner explains. “We don’t have a uniform way that people are tested and trained with uniform equipment, and so forth… But there’s definitely a movement… to do standardization, and to get that technology available for women, because this is a technology that has no health detriments associated with it. It does not use radiation or anything harmful to your body.”

Unfortunately, the advocates of mammography perceive thermography as a threat to their business model. So there’s tremendous pressure against it, including from the federal regulatory agencies.

“It’s unfortunate,” Dr. Horner says, “but our country is run by big business. It’s just is, so anytime we want to shift anything culturally like that, and we’re going against established business, we have trouble because it’s all about money.”

For example, many of the presidents of the American Cancer Society were members of the Radiological Association, which is the industry supporting the mammography component. The entire medical field is littered with massive conflicts of interest.

‘We can see that everywhere. You look in the FDA—there are people from Monsanto that work in the FDA. Unfortunately, people think, “the United States is not very corrupt.” But actually, it’s extremely corrupt,” she says.

Still, there are many good reasons for considering thermography. To ensure you’re getting the highest standard of care, Dr. Horner recommends using a practitioner certified by the International Academy of Clinical Thermography, an independent non-profit organization that provides objective, third-party certifications. Their website lists qualified thermography centers across the US, Canada, and some other countries, such as France, Trinidad, and Zambia.

Most Natural Prevention Strategies Can Reduce Your Cancer Risk by Half…

Through her research, Dr. Horner has gathered a large number of cancer-prevention strategies—about 50 in all! Even more astounding is the rate of effectiveness of many of these strategies.

“[I]f you look at the studies, virtually every single thing that has an influence [causes] almost a 50 percent reduction in cancer risk… and if you combine them, like I said, you’ll get these synergistic results where they’ll multiply up as far as their effect is concerned.

I’d say the most important thing is what you do or do not put in your mouth… because you can have huge influences by the foods you consume– the spices, the herbs, and so forth. And, the things that you avoid, that’s going to give you the biggest results. … Vitamin D cuts your risks in half. Turmeric and anti-inflammatories cut your risk in half. I could go through each thing—and I’m telling you the research shows that there’s about 40 to 50 percent reduction [in risk]—so… to say that one is necessarily better than anything else, that’s a really hard thing to claim.”

The Top Four Cancer-Promoting Foods

Dr. Horner brings up an excellent point, and that is that in order to be effective, you must first STOP doing that which is promoting cancer growth (or poor health in general), and then all the other preventive strategies have the chance to really have an impact. Addressing your diet should be at the top of your list, and rather than adding certain foods, you’ll want to eliminate the most dangerous culprits first.

Naturally, processed foods and soft drinks do not belong in a cancer-preventive diet…

Dr. Horner, believes red meat from animals reared in confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) is also a MAJOR contributor to cancer. These animals are given antibiotics, growth hormones and other veterinary drugs that get stored in their tissues. Additionally, cooking the meat over high heat creates heterocyclic amines, which further add to its carcinogenic effect.

While I do recommend eating meat, I agree that there is absolutely NO benefit to eating CAFO beef. The ONLY type of meat I recommend is organically-raised, grass-fed meats. It’s hard for a lot of people to grasp the difference between CAFO and organic meat, but truly, they are like two different species in terms of their nutritional content. One is health harming while the other is beneficial.

So when we’re talking about the detrimental impact of red meat on your health, especially in terms of feeding cancer, please understand that we’re talking specifically about CAFO beef, aka “factory farmed” meat. Next on the list of cancer-promoters is sugar (this includes ALL forms of sugar, including fructose and grains).

“To me, sugar has no redeeming value at all, because they found that the more we consume it, the more we’re fuelling every single chronic disease,” Dr. Horner says. “In fact, there was a study done about a year ago… and the conclusion was that sugar is a universal mechanism for chronic disease. It kicks up inflammation. It kicks up oxygen free radicals. Those are the two main processes we see that underlie any single chronic disorder, including cancers. It fuels the growth of breast cancers, because glucose is cancer’s favorite food. The more you consume, the faster it grows.”

Next is the type of fats that you consume. It’s important to remember that every cell membrane is made out of fat, as is your brain. According to Dr. Horner, bad-fats in the diet are a major contributor to ill health and cancer. On the list of fats to eliminate are:
•Animal fats from CAFO-raised animals
•Trans fats
•Partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated fats

Healthy fats of particular importance for cancer prevention are omega-3 and omega-9. According to Dr. Horner, omega-3 in particular serve to effectively slow down tumor growth in estrogen-sensitive cancers such as breast-, prostate- and colon cancers. Fourth on the list of cancer promoters is ANY item that contains xenoestrogens (chemicals that mimic estrogen). This can become a rather long list once you start including any food contaminated with such estrogen-mimicking chemicals, such as BPA, found in the linings of canned goods and in plastics. The list gets truly unwieldy when you include personal care products that contain such chemicals as well…

“There are case reports of five- and six-year-olds going through secondary sex characteristics because of the shampoo that they were using… There are all sorts of different sources where we’re exposed to these chemicals from our foods and from the products that we use.

What we’re seeing is younger and younger puberty. Around the world, the average age is about 16 years old. In the United States, it’s 10 years old now, and sometimes even younger. The problem is that with each menstrual period there is a surge of estradiol, which is the strongest, most abundant form of estrogen, and the one that’s most associated with breast cancer. If you start your period very young, you’ll have more periods in your lifetime than what a person would have, obviously, if they started at an older age.

In addition to that, when a girl goes through puberty, her breast cells become really sensitive to environmental toxins, radiation, and so forth. They’re considered immature. They haven’t differentiated– as a more scientific term for it– so there’s a longer period of time that they’re exposed to these toxins where they have a greater sensitivity.”

Dr. Horner reviews a number of other important factors that influence your cancer risk, so for more details, please listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript.

Eating for Cancer Prevention

According to Dr. Horner, the research clearly shows that the one food that is the most important for optimal health is plant foods.

“Plants are packed full of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that are crucial for our health. They also have hundreds of phytochemicals in them. These don’t have any nutritional or caloric value, but they are like natural medicines, and some of them behave exactly like chemotherapy,” she says.

“Every plant has some anti-cancer properties to them. There are some that are standouts. Cruciferous vegetables are something that I really recommend. They’re a family of vegetables that include broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and Brussels sprouts…

All of them have several different chemicals in common. They’ve got indole-3-carbinol, Calcium D-glucarate, and sulforaphane. They have big anti-cancer properties to them, and they inhibit the growth of breast, prostate, colon cancer and a variety of other ones. Of all the families of vegetables to consume, [cruciferous vegetables] are the ones to be aware of, so you can make sure you’re including that in your diet frequently.”

Naturally, you’ll want to make sure the vegetables are fresh, and ideally locally grown and organic. Besides cruciferous veggies, another standout plant for cancer-prevention is flax seed. The lignans in flax seed inhibit the growth of cancer in about a dozen different ways, including the exact same mechanism as the anti-cancer drug Tamoxifen and Arimidex, which shut down an enzyme in fat cells called aromatase that converts androgens into estrogens.

“I hear from patients, “Oh! My oncologist told me not to take flaxseeds, because they’re estrogenic,”” Dr. Horner says.”They don’t understand how plant estrogens or “phytoestrogens” work.

There are all sorts of different strengths to estrogens. Let’s say estradiol, which is the strongest, most abundant form– if it hooks on to the estrogen receptor, it may cause a thousand cell divisions. But if a plant estrogen hooks on, it may cause one. When you flood your system with these plant estrogens, I’d say it’s kind of like a game of musical chairs. There are only certain numbers of receptors, and whoever gets their first, gets it. They’re blocking the strong estrogens from getting on, so that’s why it has an inhibitory effect.”

Other Lifestyle Factors that Influence Your Cancer Risk

Other lifestyle factors that have been found to have an impact on chronic disease and cancer include:
•Vitamin D—There’s overwhelming evidence pointing to the fact that vitamin D deficiency plays a crucial role in cancer development. As mentioned earlier, you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure. And if you are being treated for cancer it is likely that higher blood levels—probably around 80-90 ng/ml—would be beneficial. The health benefits of optimizing your levels, either by safe sun exposure (ideally), a safe tanning bed, or oral supplementation as a last resort, simply cannot be overstated. In terms of protecting against cancer, vitamin D has been found to offer protection in a number of ways, including:

◦Regulating genetic expression
◦Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
◦Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
◦Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
◦Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous
To learn the details on how to use vitamin D therapeutically, please review my previous article, Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency.
•Getting proper sleep: both in terms of getting enough sleep, and sleeping between certain hours. According to Ayurvedic medicine, the ideal hours for sleep are between 10 pm and 6 am. Modern research has confirmed the value of this recommendation as certain hormonal fluctuations occur throughout the day and night, and if you engage in the appropriate activities during those times, you’re ‘riding the wave’ so to speak, and are able to get the optimal levels. Working against your biology by staying awake when you should ideally be sleeping or vice versa, interferes with these hormonal fluctuations. According to Dr. Horner:

“If we, for instance, go to bed by 10, we have higher levels of our sleep hormone melatonin; there’s a spike that occurs between midnight and 1am, which you don’t want to miss because the consequences are absolutely spectacular. Melatonin is not only our sleep hormone, but it also is a very powerful antioxidant. It decreases the amount of estrogen our body produces. It also boosts your immune system… And it interacts with the other hormones.

So, if you go to bed after 10… it significantly increases your risk of breast cancer.”

•Effectively addressing your stress: The research shows that if you experience a traumatic or highly stressful event, such as a death in the family, your risk of breast cancer is 12 times higher in the ensuing five years.
•Exercise—If you are like most people, when you think of reducing your risk of cancer, exercise doesn’t immediately come to mind. However, there is some fairly compelling evidence that exercise can slash your risk of cancer.

One of the primary ways exercise lowers your risk for cancer is by reducing elevated insulin levels, which creates a low sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells. Additionally, exercise improves the circulation of immune cells in your blood. Your immune system is your first line of defense against everything from minor illnesses like a cold right up to devastating, life-threatening diseases like cancer.

The trick about exercise, though, is understanding how to use it as a precise tool. This ensures you are getting enough to achieve the benefit, not too much to cause injury, and the right variety to balance your entire physical structure and maintain strength and flexibility, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels. This is why it is helpful to view exercise like a drug that needs to be carefully prescribed to achieve its maximum benefit. For detailed instructions, please see this previous article.

Additionally it is likely that integrating exercise with intermittent fasting will greatly catalyze the potential of exercise to reduce your risk of cancer and stimulate widespread healing and rejuvenation.

More Information

For more information, please see Dr. Horner’s book, Waking the Warrior Goddess: Dr. Christine Horner’s Program to Protect Against and Fight Breast Cancer. You can also learn more about Dr. Horner on her website, www.DrChristineHorner.com.

Ketogenic Diet in Combination with Calorie Restriction and Hyperbaric Treatment Offer New Hope in Quest for Non-Toxic Cancer Treatment

Cancer is now so common it affects about one of two of us and most will face it at some point in their lives, either personally or through a friend or relative. Compelling research indicates that the answer to our burgeoning cancer epidemic could be far closer than previously imagined, in the form of a ketogenic diet.

Personally, I believe this is an absolutely crucial facet of cancer prevention and treatment, for whatever type of cancer you’re trying to address, and hopefully, some day it will be adopted as a first line of treatment by mainstream medicine.

A ketogenic diet calls for eliminating all but non-starchy vegetable carbohydrates, and replacing them with high amounts of healthy fats and low to moderate amounts of high-quality protein.

The premise is that since cancer cells need glucose to thrive, and carbohydrates turn into glucose in your body, then lowering the glucose level in your blood through carb and protein restriction literally starves the cancer cells to death. Additionally, low protein intake tends to minimize the mTOR pathway that accelerates cell proliferation and lowers the amount of one particular amino acid, glutamine, which is also known to drive certain cancers.

This type of diet is what I recommend for everyone, whether you have cancer or not, because it will help you convert from carb burning mode to fat burning, which will help you optimize your weight and prevent virtually all chronic degenerative disease.

The Ketogenic Diet—An Excellent Approach to Cancer Prevention and Treatment

Dr. Dominic D’Agostino, PhD is an assistant professor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine.

He teaches courses in molecular pharmacology and physiology, and maintains involvement in several studies researching metabolic treatments for neurological disorders such as seizures, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and cancer—all of which are metabolically linked.

His entry in to this field began when, in 2007, the Office of Naval Research funded his study into seizures related to oxygen toxicity experienced by Navy SEAL divers using closed-circuit breathing apparatus. At this juncture, he came across the ketogenic diet, which has already been confirmed as an effective treatment for epilepsy and a variety of seizure disorders.

“I came across the work of Thomas Seyfried,” he says. “I found a large amount of evidence that suggested that cancer was metabolically unique. Genetically, it was very heterogeneous. There are a host of different genetic anomalies in the cancer cells, but one characteristic is that it had this ubiquitous metabolic phenotype, which was aerobic glycolysis.

Even in the presence of oxygen, it was shown that cancer cells continue to pump out lactate, suggesting that they’re fuelling their metabolism from excess glucose consumption.

From my perspective, the only reason cancer cells would be pumping out lactate and deriving energy from glucose at such a high rate would be because they are metabolically compromised with mitochondrial deficiency.”

A mounting body of evidence suggests cancer is responsive to therapeutic ketosis—a natural physiologic state induced during prolonged states of decreased glucose. Nutritional ketosis involves restricting carbohydrates in order to decrease the availability of glucose. Restricting carbs also increases production of ketone bodies from your liver. Nearly all of your normal cells have the flexibility to readily adapt to using ketone bodies for fuel in lieu of glucose, but cancer cells do not have this metabolic flexibility. Hence, they effectively starve to death while all your normal cells actually operate more efficiently than before.

Another Key Component for Cancer Prevention and Treatment: Calorie Restriction

When you restrict carbohydrates, you prevent spikes in blood sugar, insulin and IGF-1 from occurring. These spikes are actually very pro-inflammatory, and can activate oncogenes (genes that contribute to the conversion of a normal cell into a cancerous cell), and enhance both cancer cell proliferation and the metastatic process.

But here’s a key point: While carb restriction will reduce these spikes, it will not have a major impact on baseline levels of blood glucose, unless you also restrict your calorie and protein intake. So for cancer prevention and treatment, carb restriction must be combined with calorie restriction and moderate protein restriction in order to effectively “starve” cancer cells of their preferred fuel (glucose and glutamine).

“The ketogenic diet is, I think, a very good strategy to make calorie restriction tolerable,” Dr. D’Agostino says. “Because when your brain in particular is craving glucose, and, say, for example, you go on a calorie-restricted diet, but it’s a high-carbohydrate diet, you’re still getting fluctuations in blood glucose. Your brain goes through these intermittent periods of glucose deprivation and you get very hungry. It’s not a very comfortable feeling.

Nutritional ketosis, which occurs with carbohydrate restriction and is further enhanced with calorie restriction, forces the physiological shift from a glucose-based metabolism to a fatty acid and ketone metabolism. When your body is, shall we say, keto-adapted, your brain energy metabolism is more stable and your mood is more stable. It may take a few weeks to adapt physiologically to this. But nutritional ketosis can be maintained and sustained with carbohydrate restriction and is further enhanced with calorie restriction.

The total calories really need to be restricted, and also protein. Protein is gluconeogenic. There are gluconeogenic amino acids in protein. If protein is at, say, for example, two or three grams per kilogram per day that is probably going to feed in through the gluconeogenic pathway and contribute to glutaminolysis. It will be hard to deplete your glycogen stores, which is necessary to drive the ketogenesis in your liver.”

How Much Protein Is Advisable?

So to summarize, in order to maintain and sustain nutritional ketosis, you need to decrease both carbohydrates and protein. But how much protein is enough, or too much?

As Dr. D’Agostino mentions above, eating two to three grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight—which translates to 100-300 grams of protein per day for some people—is an enormous overload. Many bodybuilders will consume this much though, and many non-athletes as well. The bodybuilding industry has fostered the idea that you need tons of protein to build muscle, but as Dr. D’Agostino explains, if you restrict protein, and replace both the lost protein and carbs with healthful fats, the elevation in your blood ketones will have a protein-sparing, or anti-catabolic, effect.

“It will help you preserve lean body mass and a physical performance during a calorie deficit. This is why the ketogenic diet is an effective strategy for losing weight and retaining muscle, especially if it’s complemented with resistance exercise or some kind of physical activity,” he says.

Your end goal needs to be taken into consideration here though. A bodybuilder’s purpose for embarking on a ketogenic diet will be different from someone with cancer or a seizure disorder. In the latter case, you’d need to be far more strict with reducing protein in order to achieve and maintain ketosis.

Personally, I’m intrigued with the concept promoted by one of my mentors, Dr. Ron Rosedale, who advocates restricting protein to one gram per kilogram of lean body mass. Typically, for someone like myself, that amounts to about 50-70 grams of protein per day. The reason he promotes this so much is because of the stimulatory effect protein (branch-chained amino acids specifically) has on mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)—a pathway that seems to be largely responsible for the pathology seen in cancer growth.

When you reduce protein to just what your body needs, mTOR remains inhibited, which helps lessen your chances of cancer growth.

“I agree that mTOR is an important signal once you have cancer,” Dr. D’Agostino says. “The amino acid leucine is a powerful activator of the mTOR pathway, and stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis. Now, if a normal healthy person consumes boluses of leucine [a branch-chained amino acid], say five grams a couple of times a day, which a lot of bodybuilders and athletes do, can this enhance cancer growth?

This is an interesting question, and one that I’ve been researching. We’re about to set up a study where we give large doses of branch-chained amino acids in a metastatic model of cancer. My opinion is that branch-chained amino acids, which activate mTOR, in a normal healthy person are not counterproductive. They do not increase one’s susceptibility to cancer and may even prevent muscle wasting (e.g. cachexia) associated with cancer.”

The ‘Meat’ of the Ketogenic Diet—FATS

Most people who follow a ketogenic diet inadvertently restrict their calories without actually reaping the metabolic benefits of a calorie deficit, which include reductions in blood glucose, insulin, and triglycerides. The reason for this is that they don’t replace the carbs (and protein) they’ve eliminated with high enough amounts of healthy fats.

“Paradoxically, when you’re eating more fat, your blood fats will go down, due to a calorie deficit, and HDL [so-called ‘good’ cholesterol] goes up. Almost everyone that I see on these high-fat ketogenic diets has improved HDL levels,” Dr. D’Agostino says.

Now, when we say increase the fat, we’re not talking about the most common fat that people eat, which are primarily highly processed vegetable oils that are full of omega-6 fats, or trans fats found in French fries and doughnuts. We’re talking about high-quality fats like avocados, butter, coconut oil, macadamia nuts, and olives. These types of fats, which Dr. Rosedale believes are metabolically neutral because they don’t tend to trigger hormonal signaling events like leptin, insulin, and the mTOR pathway.

“I think a lot of the fats can be used in place of protein. And fats are very protein sparing, decreasing your need for protein,” Dr. D’Agostino says.

Bear in mind that while a traditional ketogenic diet calls for quite a bit of dairy products, dairy can actually be problematic and may prevent many of the health benefits that you can get from the ketogenic diet described by D’Agostino and Seyfried. Lactose is a sugar made from galactose and glucose that is found in milk, making up anywhere from two to eight percent of milk by weight. These extra sugars can be problematic when seeking to lose weight or treat cancer, even if from raw organic sources. Dairy fat is acceptable (e.g. sour cream, butter, etc.), but foods high in dairy protein or lactose should be minimized or avoided.

Why You’d Want to Become a Fat-Burner

Your body can burn two types of fuel: fat and carbs. In my estimation, I suspect about 99 percent of Americans are adapted to burning carbs as their primary fuel. It’s important to realize that when your body is adapted to burning carbs, you’re quite inflexible, metabolically speaking. Without fail, your body will be screaming for food about every two to three hours. These kinds of hunger pangs vanish once you become fat adapted, however. Then you can go all day and not be hungry, because you have far more fat in your body to burn than glucose.

So how do you achieve this metabolic switch-over?

In my experience, intermittent fasting, where you gradually restrict the window of time during which you eat food down to about six to eight hours, is one of the most effective ways to make this transition.

“I think from a practical standpoint, the important question is what’s a person going to follow? From my perspective, the biggest hurdle here is compliance; compliance to a dietary strategy that makes calorie restriction feasible and possible. And you know, carbohydrate restriction, high-fat diet, and intermittent fasting is one way to achieve that,” Dr. D’Agostino says.

“There are a lot of advantages to this pattern of intermittent fasting. I think that it is a good strategy to promote metabolic health and to maintain nutritional ketosis, if you can adapt to it. In some lifestyles, people cannot readily adapt to it. But I’ve found that most people can if they give it a try for at least several weeks. Most people are resistant. Even with people that are resistant- once they try it, they’re amazed at how much better they feel.”

It’s not an ideal course for everyone, however. As a general rule, intermittent fasting is contraindicated if you’re:
•An elite athlete
•Pregnant
•Suffer with adrenal stress
•Already at a low BMI (< 19) Hyperbaric Treatment Works Synergistically with Ketogenic Diet Against Cancer Dr. D’Agostino recently published a paper in the journal PLoS One, titled “The Ketogenic Diet and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Prolong Survival in Mice with Systemic Metastatic Cancer1.” Most people who die of cancer die from the metastatic process, rather than from the tumor itself. There’s really no treatment or cure for metastatic cancer. Dr. D’Agostino’s team has demonstrated that the ketogenic diet by itself can extend survival in animal models of metastatic cancer, but when it’s combined with hyperbaric oxygen therapy three times per week, there is an additive effect2. “You get a significant reduction in tumor growth, decrease in tumor size, and significant extension of life when the therapeutic ketosis achieved through the ketogenic diet is combined with hyperbaric oxygen,” he says. “Tumors thrive in a low-oxygen environment. As a tumor grows, it exceeds its ability to supply oxygen to the center of the tumor. That low level of oxygen, called hypoxia, further activates the oncogenes; cancer promoting genes. It activates things like HIF-1-alpha and VEGF. IGF-1 signaling goes up. Hyperbaric oxygen can reverse tumor hypoxia intermittently. In doing that, it can actually turn off the oncogenes. There are published reports on this. ... [T]he tumor thrives in a low-oxygen environment, and it’s adapted to that low-oxygen environment. When you saturate a tumor with oxygen, because the mitochondria are damaged, it overproduces oxygen free radicals in the form of superoxide anion. This oxygen-induced increase in free radicals can actually cause the tumor to kill itself.” How to Determine if You’re in Ketosis To help you determine if you’re in ketosis, you can purchase a blood ketone and glucose meter, both of which are available in most drug stores. Amazon.com also sells them. Dr. D’Agostino recommends the Precision Xtra by Abbott Labs. Their ketone test strips are called Precision Xtra. Glucose meter strips typically sell for about 50 cents per strip, while ketone strips can range from $3-6 each. “Another option is the CardioChek meter. This is an interesting meter, because it can measure glucose, ketones, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, and a number of things.” By testing your glucose and ketones, you can monitor your response to a nutritional intervention, and then adjust your calories and the macronutrient ratios to optimize your body to be in what Dr. D’Agostino calls the “metabolic zone.” The metabolic zone is defined as sustained hypoglycemia (55-75 mg/dl) with elevated blood ketones (>2 mM).

“If you can produce sustained hypoglycemia with carbohydrate and calorie restriction and simultaneously elevate blood ketones, it actually makes the hypoglycemia tolerable,” he explains. “The ketones replace the glucose as the primary energy fuel for your brain. It basically keeps your brain metabolism optimized and prevents fluctuations in your mood and your energy levels, if you can sustain therapeutic ketosis with a properly balanced ketogenic diet.”

As you implement the ketogenic diet, you can just check your glucose and ketones once a week if you find the cost of the strips to be prohibitively expensive for more frequent testing. Typically, if your blood glucose stays at 75 or below with carbohydrate restriction, there’s a good chance that you’ll be in nutritional ketosis, which is where you want to be.

If you’re in ketosis by evidence of ketones in your urine, you’re in a situation where you likely have depleted glycogen stores in your liver. This means you’re maintaining a low blood glucose, which is good. The driver for hepatic ketogenesis is low blood glucose and low glycogen levels in the liver, as this means your body is depleted of glycogen. Your body will not really make adequate ketones (>2 mM), and they won’t spill over in your urine, unless you’ve achieved that level of glycogen depletion. So remember, when your levels of blood ketones are 1-3 millimolar (mM) that’s a good biomarker of nutritional ketosis.

More Information

While Dr. D’Agostino does not treat patients, he has plenty of resources to offer for anyone interested in learning more. If you have cancer, you could bring these resources to your oncologist for discussion. For everyone else, a ketogenic diet is an excellent way to optimize your health and prevent chronic diseases of all kinds. Helpful books and websites where you can learn more include:
•KetogenicDietResource.com3. This site is maintained by a friend of Dr. D’Agostino. Here you can also find a ketogenic diet handbook for cancer patients called Fight Cancer with a Ketogenic Diet
•Dr. D’Agostino’s website KetoNutrition.org4 contains a wide variety of therapy resources for patients
•Miriam Kalamian, EdM, MS, CNS offers ketogenic diet consulting services for cancer patients. For information, see dietarytherapies.com5
•The book, Cancer as a Metabolic Disease: On the Origin, Management, and Prevention of Cancer, by Thomas Seyfried
•The book, The Cantin Ketogenic Diet: For Cancer, Type I Diabetes & Other Ailments, by Elaine Cantin, which specifically outlines a dairy-free ketogenic diet

Last but not least, ketoresearchchem.com6 is a resource for scientists interested in ketone research. Please note that the ketone supplements offered there are strictly for research only, and are NOT available for sale to cancer patients.

The Ketogenic Diet for Optimal Health and Disease Prevention

I firmly believe the ketogenic diet can be a tremendously beneficial strategy for optimizing your health and disease prevention and treatment plan, including cancer. It’s already a well-established first line of treatment against many seizure disorders. While most of your body’s cells have the metabolic flexibility to use either fat or sugar for fuel, cancer cells differ in that they cannot use fat (ketones) to survive—they need glucose, and a low-oxygen environment.

Back in the 1930’s, Dr. Otto Warburg actually received a Nobel Prize for his discovery that sugar is the primary fuel substrate for cancer cells. The “Warburg effect” in cancer cells is the basis of positron emission tomography (18-FDG PET), a medical imaging technique to visualize cancer. Oncologists have ignored this vital information for over 80 years and don’t use it therapeutically, which in my view is just reprehensible malpractice… So many people suffer needlessly because they don’t have access to this simple nutritional therapeutic strategy, which, in a nutshell, takes advantage of this intrinsic metabolic differential between healthy and cancerous cells.

Your body has a limited storage of sugar, stored in the form of glycogen, typically in your muscles and liver. These glycogen stores are depleted in about 12 hours or so, at which point your body has to switch to burning fat. This is part of what makes intermittent fasting so beneficial, because by not eating for 12-18 hours or longer each day, your body shifts into this fat-burning mode. While frequent hunger is a major issue for most people who are reliant on burning carbs for energy, fat-burners can go all day, or a number of days if necessary, without food, since most of us have plenty of fat to be used for fuel.

While most people can still eat some carbs, along with moderate amounts of high-quality protein, those with cancer need to be far more strict. Cancer patients also need to combine a ketogenic diet with calorie restriction to achieve glucose depletion that will effectively starve the cancer cells. Recent research also shows that adding hyperbaric oxygen treatment will dramatically reduce cancer growth and shrink tumors. All in all, I can find no drawbacks to eating this way, which is why I highly recommend it for everyone.

If you or someone you care about has cancer, hepatitis-C, psoriasis, or even HIV – or reason to be concerned about such diseases – you must take a look at an important new e-book that tells about a re-discovered 2800 year old natural remedy from a plant whose medical uses date back to the ancient Mesopotamians and Babylonians. A patented version of the remedy has been used with tremendous success for over 40 years and has passed FDA phase I trials – but you can make an equally effective home version for only pennies.

In addition to details about the main remedy, this book includes a wealth of other information about the very best foods, supplements and lifestyle choices to help anyone boost their immune system, ward off and beat cancer and other illnesses, regain lost health and add years of healthy life. Praised and featured on prominent alternative websites, sold in over 25 different countries, and even used as a source book by naturopathic practitioners, this e-book can be yours for only $15.95 and it has been updated and enlarged to over twice its original size for 2011!

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“I’ve read it and I really like it. Tony is a very good writer. He is clear, concise, and thorough. He chose the subject of one of the best cancer killers on our web site: Oleander. It’s cheap, powerful, works well with other immune system supporters, and has had a long (as he points out) history of healing cancers. He doesn’t stop there. He’s researched nutrition and cancer and has a lot to say on that. It is well worth the money, and unlike a web site, you can print it out and carry it with you everywhere you go.” – The International Wellness Directory

“The best source of information about oleander.” – Cancertutor.com (which has placed the protocol in the book in it’s highest rated Stage IV cancer treatments)

For a more reviews, click HERE.

Here, briefly, is the story of the miraculous remedy that is the main subject of the book:

In 1966 a Turkish doctor named H. Zima Ozel was searching for a cancer remedy when he discovered a group of rural Turkish villagers who were amazingly healthy and disease free, compared to other similar villagers. When he investigated further, he found that the healthy villagers were all taking a folk remedy that had been used in the mid-east for over 2000 years, based on a common plant referred to in the Bible as the “Desert Rose”, or more commonly to most of us, the oleander plant (which itself has a history of medicinal use dating back 3500 years to the ancient Babylonians and Mesopotamians) – a highly toxic plant when ingested raw, but the source of a wonderful remedy when properly prepared.

Soon, Doctor Ozel made his own cancer medicine based on the original folk remedy and for over 40 years now he has used an oleander extract later named and patented as Anvirzel™ to treat cancer, hepatitis-C, HIV-AIDS, psoriasis, and other degenerative diseases. Although Anvirzel™ passed FDA phase 1 trials and has been used successfully in hospitals and clinics outside the USA, it may be many years, if ever, before Anvirzel™ or any other oleander extract is an FDA approved drug. It takes years and costs 100’s of millions of dollars to get a drug fully approved – and there is little interest among major pharmaceutical companies in spending that kind of money on something they cannot fully patent or control – a common plant and a centuries old folk remedy.

Meanwhile, cancer, HIV, hepatitis-C and other diseases wait on no one, and most of the approved mainstream medicine treatments offer low success rates, treat only the symptoms instead of the underlying causes, are tremendously expensive, and often have horrible side-effects. With this valuable yet inexpensive e-book, anyone can make the remedy at home for pennies, using a proven recipe based on the folk remedy and patent – a recipe that has already been used successfully by thousands worldwide. OR, if you prefer, you can legally obtain the original patented version as well as a new herbal supplement based on the remedy which has been used with tremendous success against cancer, HIV-AIDS and other diseases. All this and more in Cancer’s Natural Enemy.

Updated and enlarged for 2011 – over twice the size of the original edition!

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Please Note: The e-book is sent to your designated email address. Please allow 24 hours for delivery.

Included in the e-book:

The recipe for easily making a homemade extract on your stovetop. Simple enough that anyone who can cook a pot of beans can do it, and every bit as potent as the commercial products – includes full instructions and tips on handling and preparation.

Information about how to obtain the patented oleander extract Anvirzel™, used successfully in hospitals and clinics outside the United States for over a decade.

Information about the only other commercial sources of oleander extract, a food supplement so potent that a major world government embraced it and it has enjoyed tremendous success nationwide for HIV and cancer sufferers.

Testimonials and case studies from around the world, including individuals who were diagnosed as stage IV and terminal.
USA FDA phase I clinical trial results and other results from leading US clinics.

Excerpts from the book “How to Live a Long and Healthy Life” that will help you build a strong immune system, ward off diseases. live healthier and live longer – including lists and descriptions of the very best foods, vitamins, supplements and health habits.

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Quite simply, this cancer remedy really works – and works incredibly well. Some studies have reported success rates for cancers of over 90%. When it is used as a preventative for those who have beaten cancer or another serious disease, or never had them, even more remarkable success has been reported – essentially 100%. Plus, thousands of people have now used this remedy for cancer and other conditions over the past several years and there has not been a single report of a serious adverse reaction or side effect.

The remedy can be used alone, with other immune-boosting and disease fighting supplements (recommended) and even with prescription medications, chemo and radiation for those who decide to use them. And if you do decide to use chemo or radiation, it is important to know that when you add oleander extract it either eliminates or greatly lessens virtually all of the side effects associated with such treatments, including hair loss!

If all of those qualities were not enough, the cancer remedy can be made into a skin cream and used to get rid of moles, warts, age spots and pre-cancerous lesions.

Since it is an e-book, there are no added charges for shipping and handling. For less than the price of an inexpensive meal, you can help yourself and your family and loved ones beat major disease and live longer, healthier lives. But do hurry, the price is subject to increase at any time.

One other very important thing about this e-book: while oleander extract is the primary subject, this e-book contains much more anti-cancer and health information than just oleander. As great as the oleander remedy is, every anti-cancer or anti-disease program should include multiple elements. Included in the e-book is a wealth of information about the best other disease fighting and immune boosting supplements, the best foods, lifestyle and exercise advice, and the things to avoid. The remedies in the book have been used successfully by thousands and tested in clinics and studies worldwide and several well known anti-cancer and health websites now recommend this valuable e-book.

There is also a chapter in the e-book titled “The Anti-Cancer and Disease Protocol”, which details an extremely effective program for anyone who wants to have the maximum chances of beating cancer and disease: Cleaning and detoxification; good diet, nutrition and lifestyle; building a strong immune system; utilizing multiple anti-cancer and immune boosting supplements; and a positive, stress-free mental approach all combined in an active fight to conquer cancer and disease and keep them at bay.

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If We’re So Smart, Why are We So Fat?
by Dr. Jonny Bowden – PhD, CNS, author: Unleash Your Thin

If we’re all so smart, then why are we so fat? Good question.

Maybe not every individual, but as a society, we are definitely fat, as 70% of the adult population is currently obese or overweight.

Let’s cut to the executive summary: it’s not because we don’t know what to do.

Take hormones, for example. You’ve probably heard a thousand times how important hormones are for weight loss.

You probably already know that insulin—aka “the fat storage hormone”—is produced by the body in response to elevations in blood sugar.

Elevations in blood sugar are produced whenever you scarf down carbohydrates—particularly the high-sugar, high-glycemic processed carbs we Americans love so much.

So the solution is easy, right? Cut out the carbs!

Not so Fast…

If it’s so easy, then why do so many of us have so much trouble doing that?

Why, in the face of the massive amount of information showing that high-glycemic (high-sugar) carbohydrates contribute to weight gain, heart disease and even cancer, do so many of us continue to binge on the very foods that make us sick, tired, depressed and fat?

Why do we continue to overindulge in pasta, cookies, chips, candies, ice cream, cereal and donuts, while ignoring what we know to be true about them?

Why do we continue to find these foods irresistible?

And why do we ignore what we already know about them, much as a cigarette smoker ignores the connection between tobacco and lung cancer?

It’s Because Your Brain has Been Hijacked…

The “pleasure centers” in our brains have literally been hijacked.

We’ve lost control of a primitive biological switch buried deep in our brain that controls what we pay attention to, how we act and most importantly, what we eat.

I call this the “impulse control switch” and for most of us, it’s gone completely haywire and we find ourselves eating precisely the things we know we shouldn’t.

At a recent workshop I conducted in Southern California, one woman described her struggles with junk food.

“I’d find myself obsessing about Haagen-Dazs,” she said. “I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t even want the ice cream. But I got excited about driving to the supermarket and buying it. The anticipation turned me on. The ice cream was almost an afterthought.”

This woman illustrates an important point: eating and the desire to eat are two different things and involve separate mechanisms in your brain.

How does this happen? Simple.

It’s all controlled by a brain chemical called dopamine. Dopamine controls pleasure and contributes to your brain’s “reward circuitry” for food or anything else desirable.

How Your Impulse Control Switch Gets Flipped in the Wrong Direction…

Dopamine’s role is to keep you totally focused on getting things that are critical for the survival of the species – like food, shelter or sex.

When we go after those things, we feel intense pleasure – something that is fueled entirely by dopamine.

The only problem is that we’ve discovered a few sneaky ways to trick our brains into releasing dopamine to get a fake chemical “high”… for example, with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

The “rush” you get from these things is also fueled entirely by dopamine. It’s the biological reason you get hooked.

And, as it turns out, the dopamine factories that ignite when you chug a beer or inject heroin are the exact same ones that fire up when you eat sugar or high-sugar foods!

In fact, some studies have shown that sugar is MORE addicting than cocaine —a startling fact that Dr. Oz recently discussed on his show.

And in today’s world with super-addicting food everywhere, our dopamine factories light up like Christmas trees, our brains get hijacked and we become utterly helpless to resist that mouth-watering bowl of buttery pasta that’s calling our name!

Have You Been Attacked by a Dopamine Bomb?

Addiction specialists refer to things that create these “dopamine bombs” as “super-stimuli”.

Think drugs, alcohol, skydiving, the internet, “adult” videos, and sugar. These are literally super-sized versions of everyday experiences. They flood your brain with feel-good dopamine.

Do them often enough and eventually you become desensitized to anything that doesn’t produce the same massive dopamine rush.

This re-programs your brain in a very bad way, leaving you wanting – in fact, needing – more and more of these dopamine-spiking substances to get the same effect.

Translation: your cravings for refined carbs, for sugar and all of the other things that make you sick and fat go through the roof and become almost impossible to resist!

And here’s the catch – for or nearly everyone, repeated exposure disables the behavior control switch that says “enough!”

That means that even if you don’t consider yourself an “addict” with an addictive personality, you can and will still suffer the consequences of being attacked by dopamine bombs, whether from drugs, alcohol and most importantly, food.

Can You Really Be Addicted to Food?

The same impulse control switch that drives some people to cocaine addiction also works to make you obsess over rewarding foods.

IMPORTANT: Don’t think for a second that this doesn’t apply to you because you are not an “addict”. This applies to every single one of you without you even knowing it!

And that’s why so many people can’t figure out why they can’t keep the weight off for good.

The more delicious and pleasurable a food, the more attention you give it. The more attention you give it, the more passionately you seek it out.

Unfortunately, these rewarding foods are exactly the ones that spike your blood sugar, cause your insulin to soar, and ultimately flip off your fat-burning hormonal switch.

That’s when you become sick and fat.

Dopamine fuels your drive to go out and get Haagen-Dazs or a Cinnabon and it’s responsible for making you feel like nothing else will satisfy you.

That’s one powerful brain chemical …

Pair that delicious, palatable food with a powerful emotional stimuli—say, that wonderful memory of eating your grandmother’s apple pie—and those powerful associations release so much dopamine that your reward circuits become hijacked.

Willpower doesn’t have a chance.

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “the Rogue Nutritionist”

PS – When I do my lectures on this “impulse control switch,” I get overwhelmed with additional questions about how exactly someone can take back control over their impulses … to avoid eating the foods they know they shouldn’t and to avoid the other behaviors that force them to become sick, fat, tired and depressed.

So, I put together an entertaining presentation that will show you exactly how to do it yourself, how to activate your impulse control switch and get you on a path to a slimmer waist, a better mood and more vibrant health.

Remember, most of us KNOW exactly what to do to lose fat; but unless and until you get control over your impulses, that knowledge will be useless.

So please enjoy this entertaining presentation in which I explain exactly how to get control of your impulses, protect yourself again these dopamine bombs and unleash the slim, sexy and healthy person that’s been hiding inside you all along.

——————————

Make sure to check out Jonny’s site… he’s one of the true nutrition experts out there that I trust these days, and he always puts out great information.

Good luck!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

I’ve mentioned this problem in past newsletters, so if you’re a long time reader, you might know a bit about this topic… but I want to explain how this works a bit more and how serious the problem is these days…

The problem I’m going to describe here can actually cause “feminization” issues in men (more chest fat, reduced testosterone, etc), but can also cause hormonal disorders in women too. And it also causes the other problem that everybody hates…more stubborn abdominal fat.

Let’s start with the enzyme I mentioned in the headline… it’s called aromatase enzyme in your body. Aromatase is the enzyme responsible for converting androgens to estrogens in your body. This is a normal process and increases with aging in your body.

Unfortunately, we are being exposed in this modern world to certain chemicals (such as pesticides, plastics, petro-chemicals, and other chemicals in our food and water) that over-stimulate the actions of aromatase, thereby causing hormone imbalances for both men and women. These aromatase-stimulating chemicals can cause excessively high estrogen levels in men (with accompanying issues of body fat, chest fat, and feminization), and other estrogen-dominance issues for women too.

The easy way to think about it is that we want to minimize our exposure to aromatase-promoting chemicals and maximize our intake of anti-aromatase compounds found in certain foods, herbs, spices, etc.

Expert scientist and author, Ori Hofmekler, in his book “Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat” states: “…it is critically important to eliminate aromatase-promoting substances from the diet including pesticides, herbicides, plastic derivatives (particularly from soft, cloudy or opaque plastic containers), and estrogenic dietary compounds such as those found in soy, clover, licorice, and hops (in beer)”

Sorry guys about the bad news about beer… but that explains the “beer bellies” you see from heavy beer drinkers. Just another reason to choose wine or another liquor if you choose to drink.

Mr. Hofmekler continues… “There is growing evidence that certain compounds in food, herbs, and oils can inhibit aromatase activity. Notable natural sources for anti-aromatase nutrients are garlic, onion, passion flower, chamomile, grass-fed dairy, turmeric, raw nuts and seeds, and omega-3 oils from fish, flaxseed, and hempseed”.

There you go… protect yourself from these harmful effects and reduce your stubborn fat by loading up daily on the anti-aromatase nutrients listed above!

For the men reading this, make sure to also read this page below for 6 more herbs/nutrients that can protect your manhood, and protect against feminization:

6 obscure herbs and nutrients that protect your manhood

Even for the ladies reading this, you might want to check that out for your husband or boyfriend!

PS — if you liked todays article, please fwd this email on to any of your friends, family, or co-workers that would enjoy it.

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

By Dr. Mercola

Is it a good idea to “starve” yourself just a little bit each day, or a couple of days a week? Mounting evidence indicates that yes, intermittent fasting (IF) could have a very beneficial impact on your health and longevity.

I believe it’s one of the most powerful interventions out there if you’re struggling with your weight and related health issues. One of the primary reasons for this is because it helps shift your body from burning sugar/carbs to burning fat as its primary fuel.

As discussed in the featured article,1 intermittent fasting is not about binge eating followed by starvation, or any other extreme form of dieting. Rather what we’re talking about here involves timing your meals to allow for regular periods of fasting.

I prefer daily intermittent fasting, but you could also fast a couple of days a week if you prefer, or every other day. There are many different variations.

To be effective, in the case of daily intermittent fasting, the length of your fast must be at least eight hours long. This means eating only between the hours of 11am until 7pm, as an example. Essentially, this equates to simply skipping breakfast, and making lunch your first meal of the day instead.

You can restrict it even further — down to six, four, or even two hours if you want, but you can still reap many of these rewards by limiting your eating to an eight-hour window each day.

This is because it takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores; after that you start to shift to burning fat. However, if you are replenishing your glycogen by eating every eight hours (or sooner), you make it far more difficult for your body to use your fat stores as fuel.

Intermittent Fasting — More a Lifestyle Than a Diet

I have been experimenting with different types of scheduled eating for the past two years and currently restrict my eating to a 6- to 7-hour window each day. While you’re not required to restrict the amount of food you eat when on this type of daily scheduled eating plan, I would caution against versions of intermittent fasting that gives you free reign to eat all the junk food you want when not fasting, as this seems awfully counterproductive.

Also, according to research published in 2010,2 intermittent fasting with compensatory overeating did not improve survival rates nor delay prostate tumor growth in mice. Essentially, by gorging on non-fasting days, the health benefits of fasting can easily be lost. If so, then what’s the point?

I view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, not a diet, and that includes making healthy food choices whenever you do eat. Also, proper nutrition becomes even more important when fasting, so you really want to address your food choices before you try fasting.

This includes minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthful fats, like coconut oil, olive oil, olives, butter, eggs, avocados, and nuts. It typically takes several weeks to shift to fat burning mode, but once you do, your cravings for unhealthy foods and carbs will automatically disappear. This is because you’re now actually able to burn your stored fat and don’t have to rely on new fast-burning carbs for fuel. Unfortunately, despite mounting evidence, many health practitioners are still reluctant to prescribe fasting to their patients. According to Brad Pilon, author of Eat Stop Eat:3

“Health care practitioners across the board are so afraid to recommend eating less because of the stigma involved in that recommendation, but we are more than happy to recommend that someone start going to the gym. If all I said was you need to get to the gym and start eating healthier, no one would have a problem with it. When the message is not only should you eat less, you could probably go without eating for 24 hours once or twice a week, suddenly it’s heresy.”

The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Aside from removing your cravings for sugar and snack foods and turning you into an efficient fat-burning machine, thereby making it far easier to maintain a healthy body weight, modern science has confirmed there are many other good reasons to fast intermittently. For example, research presented at the 2011 annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans4 showed that fasting triggered a 1,300 percent rise of human growth hormone (HGH) in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men.

HGH, human growth hormone, commonly referred to as “the fitness hormone,” plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that it helps build muscle while simultaneously promoting fat loss explains why HGH helps you lose weight without sacrificing muscle mass, and why even athletes can benefit from the practice (as long as they don’t overtrain and are careful about their nutrition). The only other thing that can compete in terms of dramatically boosting HGH levels is high-intensity interval training. Other health benefits of intermittent fasting include:

Normalizing your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health

Improving biomarkers of disease

Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as “the hunger hormone”

Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage

Lowering triglyceride levels

Preserving memory functioning and learning

Intermittent Fasting Is as Good or Better Than Continuous Calorie Restriction

According to Dr. Stephen Freedland, associate professor of urology and pathology at the Duke University Medical Center, “undernutrition without malnutrition” is the only experimental approach that consistently improves survival in animals with cancer, as well as extends lifespan overall by as much as 30 percent.5 Interestingly enough, intermittent fasting appears to provide nearly identical health benefits without being as difficult to implement and maintain. It’s easier for most people to simply restrict their eating to a narrow window of time each day, opposed to dramatically decreasing their overall daily calorie intake.

Mark Mattson, senior investigator for the National Institute on Aging, which is part of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), has researched the health benefits of intermittent fasting, as well as the benefits of calorie restriction. According to Mattson,6 there are several theories to explain why fasting works:

“The one that we’ve studied a lot, and designed experiments to test, is the hypothesis that during the fasting period, cells are under a mild stress, and they respond to the stress adaptively by enhancing their ability to cope with stress and, maybe, to resist disease… There is considerable similarity between how cells respond to the stress of exercise and how cells respond to intermittent fasting.”

In one of his studies,7 overweight adults with moderate asthma lost eight percent of their body weight by cutting their calorie intake by 80 percent on alternate days for eight weeks. Markers of oxidative stress and inflammation also decreased, and asthma-related symptoms improved, along with several quality-of-life indicators.

More recently, Mattson and colleagues compared the effectiveness of intermittent fasting against continuous calorie restriction for weight loss, insulin sensitivity and other metabolic disease risk markers. The study, published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2011,8 found that intermittent fasting was as effective as continuous calorie restriction for improving all of these issues, and slightly better for reducing insulin resistance. According to the authors:

“Both groups experienced comparable reductions in leptin, free androgen index, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, total and LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure and increases in sex hormone binding globulin, IGF binding proteins 1 and 2. Reductions in fasting insulin and insulin resistance were modest in both groups, but greater with IER [intermittent fasting] than with CER [continuous energy restriction].”

How Intermittent Fasting Benefits Your Brain

Your brain can also benefit from intermittent fasting. As reported in the featured article:

“Mattson has also researched the protective benefits of fasting to neurons. If you don’t eat for 10–16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy, and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the bloodstream. This has been shown to protect memory and learning functionality, says Mattson, as well as slow disease processes in the brain.”

Besides releasing ketones as a byproduct of burning fat, intermittent fasting also affects brain function by boosting production of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Mattson’s research suggests that fasting every other day (restricting your meal on fasting days to about 600 calories), tends to boost BDNF by anywhere from 50 to 400 percent,9 depending on the brain region. BDNF activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons, and triggers numerous other chemicals that promote neural health. This protein also protects your brain cells from changes associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

BDNF also expresses itself in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. (The neuromotor is the most critical element in your muscle. Without the neuromotor, your muscle is like an engine without ignition. Neuro-motor degradation is part of the process that explains age-related muscle atrophy.) So BDNF is actively involved in both your muscles and your brain, and this cross-connection, if you will, appears to be a major part of the explanation for why a physical workout can have such a beneficial impact on your brain tissue — and why the combination of intermittent fasting with high intensity exercise appears to be a particularly potent combination.

Give Intermittent Fasting a Try

If you’re ready to give intermittent fasting a try, consider skipping breakfast, make sure you stop eating and drinking anything but water three hours before you go to sleep, and restrict your eating to an 8-hour (or less) time frame every day. In the 6-8 hours that you do eat, have healthy protein, minimize your carbs like pasta, bread, and potatoes and exchange them for healthful fats like butter, eggs, avocado, coconut oil, olive oil and nuts — essentially the very fats the media and “experts” tell you to avoid.

This will help shift you from carb burning to fat burning mode. Once your body has made this shift, it is nothing short of magical as your cravings for sweets, and food in general, rapidly normalizes and your desire for sweets and junk food radically decreases if not disappears entirely.

Remember it takes a few weeks, and you have to do it gradually, but once you succeed and switch to fat burning mode, you’ll be easily able to fast for 18 hours and not feel hungry. The “hunger” most people feel is actually cravings for sugar, and these will disappear, as if by magic, once you successfully shift over to burning fat instead.

Another phenomenal side effect/benefit that occurs is that you will radically improve the beneficial bacteria in your gut. Supporting healthy gut bacteria, which actually outnumber your cells 10 to one, is one of the most important things you can do to improve your immune system so you won’t get sick, or get coughs, colds and flus. You will sleep better, have more energy, have increased mental clarity and concentrate better. Essentially every aspect of your health will improve as your gut flora becomes balanced.

Based on my own phenomenal experience with intermittent fasting, I believe it’s one of the most powerful ways to shift your body into fat burning mode and improve a wide variety of biomarkers for disease. The effects can be further magnified by exercising while in a fasted state. For more information on that, please see my previous article High-Intensity Interval Training and Intermittent Fasting – A Winning Combo.

Clearly, it’s another powerful tool in your box to help you and your family take control of your health, and an excellent way to take your fitness to the next level.

Is obesity a disease?

By Zoe Harcombe

Whenever I used to attend meetings of the Wales division of the National Obesity Forum, the chair, Dr Nadim Haboubi, invariably opened the day with the same rally cry: obesity should be classified as a disease. “It is a disease”, he stated categorically, and therefore should be called as such. I never usually gave it much thought – why debate semantics? Why not put all effort into solving the problem?

I dropped Nadim an email last week to let him know that the American Medical Association (AMA) had announced the classification of obesity as a disease. Then I started thinking about the whys, wherefores and consequences for the first time…

Definition of disease

The Merriam-Webster medical dictionary defines disease as “an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or plant body or one of its parts that interrupts or modifies the performance of the vital functions, is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms, and is a response to environmental factors (as malnutrition, industrial hazards, or climate), to specific infective agents (as worms, bacteria, or viruses), to inherent defects of the organism (as genetic anomalies), or to combinations of these factors.”

The original AMA ruling (Resolution 420 (A-13) can be seen here and it opens by noting that the American Medical Association’s Council on Science and Public Health Report 4, A-05, identified the following common criteria in defining a disease: 1) an impairment of the normal functioning of some aspect of the body; 2) characteristic signs or symptoms; and 3) harm or morbidity.

Having set out this definition, the AMA resolution needs to prove how it claims obesity meets these three criteria (I have put the verbatim quotations from the AMA resolution in italics and quotation marks, just to be clear):

1) Obesity as an impairment

The exact words used here are as follows:

“There is now an overabundance of clinical evidence to identify obesity as a multi-metabolic and hormonal disease state including impaired functioning of appetite dysregulation, abnormal energy balanced, endocrine dysfunction including elevated leptin levels and insulin resistance, infertility, dysregulated adipokine signaling, abnormal endothelial function and blood pressure elevation, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, dyslipidemia, and systemic and adipose tissue inflammation.”

2) Obesity as characteristic signs or symptoms

The exact words used here are as follows:

“Obesity has characteristic signs and symptoms including the increase in body fat and symptoms pertaining to the accumulation of body fat, such as joint pain, immobility, sleep apnea, and low self-esteem.”

3) Obesity as harm or morbidity

The exact words used here are as follows:

“The physical increase in fat mass associated with obesity is directly related to co-morbidities including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, some cancers, osteoporosis, polycystic ovary syndrome.”

Does obesity meet the AMA’s own definition of a disease?

All three of the component parts of the definition above can be challenged:

1) Obesity as an impairment

Obesity per se can be an impairment, but it is not in all cases, or even many cases? Super morbid obesity (defined as a BMI in excess of 50) can be an impairment to the point of immobility, but the medical classification of obesity starts at a BMI of 30 and I do not accept that this automatically makes someone impaired.

Most of the Lions (rugby) squad lining up on Saturday 22nd June, to edge past the Australians, are obese on a BMI scale. I dare you to call them impaired! Lisa Riley, in 2012′s Strictly Come Dancing showed herself to be one of the fittest, most agile, most captivating contestants – she also happened to be clinically obese. Impaired?! No way.

Looking at the AMA clause for obesity as an impairment, I suggest that they have made the usual error of association and not causation. Obese people might have endocrine dysfunction (hormone system not working optimally), they might have high blood pressure, they might have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease but a) many non obese people can have these impairments too and b) not all obese people will have these impairments. Therefore, this clause fails on both the logical tests of – is this a definite impairment of obesity and only obesity?

The infertility reference was interesting. Again – some obese people have difficulty conceiving, some normal weight people have difficulty conceiving, many underweight women will have difficulty conceiving. Infertility can be associated with obesity, or any other weight – it is not a defining characteristic.

2) Obesity as characteristic signs or symptoms

My first thought was to accept point (2), but further consideration shows this to be worthy of challenge also. On first sight, one might think obesity has characteristic signs and symptoms “including the increase in body fat…” It almost seems tautological to say we can define obesity by observing body fat. However, we’re back to the rugby squad again – technically obese – but ‘overweight’ because they have turned body fat to muscle, not because they exhibit visible body fat. There may be visible body fat on an obese person, but there does not have to be.

It is also unreasonable to assert that “joint pain, immobility, sleep apnea and low self-esteem” are characteristic signs or symptoms of obesity. I have joint pain and some immobility due to a hip injury and subsequent operation. I’m not obese. A friend of ours suffers from sleep apnea. His body description would be “beanpole.” Anorexics have chronically poor self-esteem – clearly not obese.

Again – the words used by the AMA are not experienced by all obese people or unique to obese people and therefore fail logical test.

3) Obesity as harm or morbidity

The AMA makes the most classic association/causation error on this point. The AMA states “The physical increase in fat mass associated with obesity is directly related to co-morbidities including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, some cancers, osteoporosis, polycystic ovary syndrome.”

Does obesity cause type 2 diabetes? cardiovascular disease? cancer? or do the same things that cause obesity cause those outcomes? Is obesity but another symptom of, for example, processed food consumption – along with type 2 diabetes and heart disease?

Poly cystic ovary syndrome is a complex hormonal condition and is associated with obesity (obese women are more prone to PCOS and PCOS sufferers are more likely to be obese). Is the same hormonal dysfunction responsible for the obesity and the PCOS? Can avoidance of processed food help with both PCOS and obesity? My answer to those two questions is yes. The AMA see PCOS as a harm resulting from obesity. I do not see obesity as a harm per se. I see obesity as a symptom – the body’s way of telling us that harm has already been done.

Other arguments in the AMA judgment

I highly recommend reading the first page and a half of the AMA judgment – down to the bit where they announce the resolution. After setting out their definition of disease and then presenting their case for why they think obesity meets this definition, they add some other supporting arguments. In doing so they appear to have anticipated a number of counter arguments that would likely be made and seem to be trying to address these up front. They all fail in my view:

– There’s a plug for bariatric surgery and a claim that while “bariatric surgery can dramatically reduce early mortality, progression of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease risk, stroke risk, incidence of cancer in women, and constitute effective treatment options for type 2 diabetes and hypertension” there are some “hormonal and metabolic abnormalities“, which are not reversible even after weight loss.

Surely this confirms that the weight (obesity) is not responsible for the “hormonal and metabolic abnormalities”, but that something else is – for example – processed food?

– The document notes that half the adult population may be obese by 2040. Quite the opposite of being used as an argument for defining obesity as a disease, this has been one of the major points of argument against by various opinion pieces written since the announcement. It has not been well received by the majority of medical professionals and/or obese people that, overnight, one third of Americans have been labeled “diseased”.

– The AMA resolution notes that the World Health Organization, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and the Internal Revenue Service recognize obesity as a disease. That’s not an argument to follow suit in itself.

– One of the worst additional arguments presented by the resolution is as follows: “Progress in the development of lifestyle modification therapy, pharmacotherapy, and bariatric surgery options has now enabled a more robust medical model for the management of obesity as a chronic disease…” i.e. now is a good time to call obesity a disease because we have ways of treating it!

a) we don’t have healthy ways of treating obesity – government options are bad dietary advice and/or surgery and b) this is one of the major arguments against the classification of obesity as a disease. It has been seen by many commentators and journalists as a cynical attempt to attract funding.

This is confirmed in the resolution statement itself:

“Therefore be it RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association recognize obesity as a disease state with multiple pathophysiological aspects requiring a range of interventions to advance obesity treatment and prevention.”

The resolution REQUIRES a range of interventions to advance obesity treatment and prevention. This was no semantic clarification of words. This has been a phenomenally lucrative move for providers of obesity treatment and prevention. I laughed out loud at the “Fiscal note” at the end of the resolution. Every change in policy is required to estimate a financial impact of the change. A policy change to make breast cancer medication available with no financial constraints could cost millions of dollars. The fiscal note of this change was declared as “Minimal-less than $1,000.” The direct costs maybe, but absolutely no way does this reflect the indirect costs that can now follow.

If obesity is seen as a lifestyle condition (the greedy/lazy attack) then there is little obligation on insurance companies/public health bodies to treat it. The minute obesity is defined as a disease, there is a moral obligation to treat disease. We have opened the doors to funding, more bariatric surgery, more Research & Development effort going in to developing drugs, more likelihood of drugs being approved (something may be viewed as better than nothing), more money for surgeons and drug companies – not less obesity.

No wonder The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) commended the American Medical Association (AMA): “The AMA’s announcement is a tremendous step forward in legitimizing the severity of the obesity epidemic in our nation,” said Dr. Gerald Fried, SAGES President. “AMA’s decision will increase coverage and patient access to necessary treatment options for the disease, including weight-loss surgery…”

Other views

Forbes had an interesting angle on profit – that this might harm the ‘food’ industry – if it can be claimed that they are now responsible for a disease. That’s just about the only positive angle I can think of with this resolution and I’ll wait to see if it actually happens.

One of my favourite opinion pieces came from obesity expert, Dr. David Katz – in the Huffington Post. Katz also raises the cost issues and makes some nice analogies with other scenarios (drowning) to stimulate thought. He concludes that obesity is not a disease and expresses concern that calling it a disease may do harm.

Now that I have had occasion to think about Dr Haboubi’s rally cry, I sincerely hope that the British Medical Association doesn’t follow America’s lead. I do not think that almost a third of British people have become diseased overnight. I think that obesity is a natural response to an unnatural diet.

25 Shocking Facts That Prove That The Entire U.S. Health Care Industry Has Become One Giant Money Making Scam

What is the appropriate word to use when you find out that the top executive at the third largest health insurance company in America raked in 68.7 million dollars in 2010? How is one supposed to respond when one learns that more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies make over a billion dollars in profits each year? Is it okay to get angry when you discover that over 90 percent of all hospital bills contain “gross overcharges”? Once upon a time, going into the medical profession was seen as a “noble” thing to do. But now the health care industry in the United States has become one giant money making scam and it is completely dominated by health insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, lawyers and corporate fatcats. In America today, just one trip to the hospital can cost you tens of thousands of dollars even if you do not stay for a single night. The sad thing is that the vast majority of the money that you pay out for medical care does not even go to your doctor. In fact, large numbers of doctors across the United States are going broke. Rather, it is the “system” that is soaking up almost all of the profits. We have a health care industry in the United States that is fundamentally broken and it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

But wasn’t that what Obamacare was supposed to do? No, in fact Obamacare was largely written by representatives from the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry. Once it was signed into law the stocks of most health insurance companies went way up.

The truth is that Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation in modern American history. It did nothing to fix our health care problems. Rather, it just made all of our health care problems much worse.

In case you haven’t noticed, health insurance companies all over the United States have announced that they are going to raise premiums significantly due to the new law. Of course they are just using it as an excuse. They have been sticking it to us good for the last several decades and they just grab hold of whatever excuse they can find to justify the latest rate hike.

If you are looking for a legal way to drain massive amounts of money out of average Americans just become a health care company executive. Health care has become perhaps the greatest money making scam in the United States. When Americans are sick and have to go to the hospital most of them aren’t really thinking about how much it will cost. At that point they are super vulnerable and ready to be exploited.

It is almost unbelievable how much money some of these companies make. Health insurance companies are more profitable when they provide less health care. Pharmaceutical companies aren’t in the business of saving lives. Rather, they are in the business of inflating the profit margins on their drugs as much as possible. Many hospitals have adopted a policy of charging “whatever they can get away with”, knowing that the vast majority of the public will never challenge the medical bills.

The system is broken.

Everyone knows it.

But it never gets fixed.

The following are 25 shocking facts that prove that the entire U.S. health care industry is one giant money making scam….

#1 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering $68.7 million during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he left the company and didn’t even work the whole year.

#2 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States combined to receive nearly $200 million in total compensation in 2009.

#3 One study found that approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.

#4 Over the last decade, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen from about 38 million to about 52 million.

#5 According to one survey, approximately 1 out of every 4 Californians under the age of 65 has absolutely no health insurance.

#6 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in more than 60 percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent of them involved individuals that actually did have health insurance.

#7 Profits at U.S. health insurance companies increased by 56 percent during 2009.

#8 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.

#9 Health insurance rate increases are getting out of control. According to the Los Angeles Times, Blue Shield of California plans to raise rates an average of 30% to 35%, and some individual policy holders could see their health insurance premiums rise by a whopping 59 percent this year alone.

#10 According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers in the U.S. increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.

#11 Why are c-sections on the rise? It is because a vaginal delivery costs approximately $5,992 on average, while a c-section costs approximately $8,558 on average.

#12 Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.

#13 Between 2000 and 2006, wages in the United States increased by 3.8%, but health care premiums increased by 87%.

#14 There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits in 2008.

#15 Each year, tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.

#16 Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report that was just released. According to the report, approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more prescription drugs on a regular basis.

#17 According to the CDC, approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.

#18 The Food and Drug Administration reported 1,742 prescription drug recalls in 2009, which was a gigantic increase from 426 drug recalls in 2008.

#19 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.

#20 According to one doctor interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen” will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.

#21 In America today, if you have an illness that requires intensive care for an extended period of time, it is ridiculously really easy to rack up medical bills that total over 1 million dollars.

#22 It is estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans by about 10 billion dollars every single year.

#23 One trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross overcharges“.

#24 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don’t know how the system works then you are out of luck.

#25 According to one recent report, Americans spend approximately twice as much as residents of other developed countries on health care.

Sadly, the pillaging of the American people only seems to be accelerating.

Whether it is as a result of Obamacare or not, health insurers have decided that this is the season to raise health insurance premiums. Just consider the following excerpt from a recent article on Fox News….

Here is the terse reason CareFirst/Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Washington gave its subscribers for raising a monthly premium from $333 to $512 on a middle aged man who is healthy, is not a smoker and is not obese: “Your new rate reflects the overall rise in health care costs and we regret having to pass these additional costs on to you.”

512 dollars a month for health insurance for a healthy non-smoker?

Are they serious?

Apparently they are.

Things have gotten so bad that an increasing number of Americans are going outside of the country for medical care.

According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping 875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.

Is there anyone out there that is not paid by the health care industry that is still willing to defend it?

Is there anyone out there that still believes that the health care industry is not just one giant money making scam?

We’ve been brainwashed into believing medical quackery and this article offers the logical proof. As you read the following 10 signs, think through your interactions with your medical provider. Do more than one apply?

1. He prescribes medication without testing you for anything.
Doctors are big on scientific evidence. They demand that millions of dollars be poured into research to prove that things work.

Yet, when you visit their office, they often don’t gather any verifiable evidence on what they are treating YOU for. Isn’t that interesting?

You spend a few minutes with a guy who prescribes powerful medication to mess with your neurotransmitters. No tests – not even a questionnaire. You bring your kid in to a pediatrician and leave a few minutes later with powerful brain stimulants for ADHD – and the doc never did one test!

Quacks don’t know of any tests for many of the conditions for which they regularly prescribe medication.

2. He tells you it’s all in your head.
Telling you that your real symptoms are all in your head (translation: he thinks you are crazy) means that the answers are NOT in his head. When quacks don’t have the answer, they don’t consider that there is anything for them to learn. They just blame you. Nice.

A legitimate practitioner will admit when he doesn’t know something and commit to finding solutions by expanding his knowledge, or working with other practitioners on your case who may shed fresh light on the subject.

3. He denies the role of lifestyle, nutrition and stress.
Eat the donuts, camp out on the couch, drink the booze…no problem. This has nothing to do with disease. Just take your pills.

Nowadays, some quacks are conceding that diet and lifestyle have something to do with the onset of disease, but they are STILL NOT TALKING TO YOU ABOUT IT. They never mention it. They don’t ask you how you eat, sleep or manage stress.

It’s because quacks don’t know much about these things. When practitioners do not know much about the cause of 90% of disease – I call that a scam.

4. He’ll put you on the medication roller coaster.
Some unfortunate folks, after dealing with a quack that doesn’t know what he is doing, end up on 10-20 pharmaceutical medications and have lost touch with what it is like to feel normal. They live in a world of symptoms and side effects and – for some reason – keep going back for more.

The quack responds by continuing to dish it out, but he has NO IDEA how these medications are interacting with each other, really. He is just guessing and writing more prescriptions.

5. His own health is a mess.
Walk your talk. Does your doc do it? Is he an example of true health? If not, then he may not even know what genuine health feels like. How is he going to get you there?

Doctors are among the most stressed out and suicidal populations on earth. Bless them, for they maintain crazy schedules and are truly under duress. Still, it is no excuse. We are all stressed. Docs are supposed to be examples, are they not?

6. His doesn’t involve you in your own treatment.
So, you heard that this or that lab test might be worth doing. You read an article or did some of your own research, huh? Is your doctor interested? Is he willing to consider that you may know something?

Quacks look down their nose at you, but real health practitioners will cooperate with you in your own treatment. They will investigate with you, consider your ideas, your feelings and work as a member of your team.

7. He believes you cannot heal, but treats you anyway.
You have a disease for which there is no cure. You will need to take these pills for the rest of your life. Please don’t believe that nutrition, vitamins, herbs, God or anyone can heal you. You are stuck. Take your medicine.

Meanwhile, thousands of your fellow human beings are healing from the very symptoms that trouble you. You are dealing with a quack who will medicate you into oblivion and witness your inevitable decline according to his expectations.

8. His communication skills are pathetic.
You have six months to live. Nothing more we can do. There’s the door.

Thanks for the compassion, doc.

9. He spends less than 10 minutes with you.
Recent research shows that new doctors are spending less time than ever with patients – an average of eight minutes per. This is NOT headed in the right direction folks! This is your health – the most precious gift you have. It needs time and attention and real expertise. Eight minutes is not enough.

New docs are quoted as saying, “We just don’t have time.”

Translation: “We don’t have time if we are going to make a lot of money.”

Money before patients = quackery.

10. He thinks he is God.
In spite of all the obvious signs of quackery, he still thinks he is all knowing. You still cannot connect with him as a person. He doesn’t see you as a person. He won’t take your ideas and suggestions, because you obviously don’t know anything. After all, he is omniscient.

Stop supporting your quack and find real help. Do it intelligently. Begin to seek integrative and alternative practitioners who, according to the 10 signs, qualify as real health practitioners.

About the author:
Watch the free video The AHA! Process: An End to Self-Sabotage and discover the lost keys to personal transformation and emotional well-being that have been suppressed by mainstream mental health for decades.

The information in this video has been called the missing link in mental health and personal development. In a world full of shallow, quick-fix techniques, second rate psychology and pharmaceutical takeovers, real solutions have become nearly impossible to find. This presentation will turn your world upside down.

Mike Bundrant is co-founder of the iNLP Center and host of Mental Health Exposed, a Natural News Radio program.

Follow Mike on Facebook for daily personal development tips.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040950_quackery_doctors_modern_medicine.html#ixzz2XQLr94UL

Chinese herbs and Traditional Chinese Medicine cure gout:

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) encompasses Chinese herbal remedies, acupuncture, and other lesser-known modalities to treat a wide variety of diseases including gout. Chinese medicine is thousands of years old, and well-respected worldwide as an alternative to conventional Western medicine. According to acupuncturist and TCM practitioner Simon Becker, a clinical study conducted by Zhang Ming and Tiao Rong [in China] comparing the efficacy of Western gout treatments with Chinese herbs for gout indicated the outcomes of “…both treatment groups receiving Chinese medicinals and the control group receiving standard Western medicines was essentially equal (94.2 percent vs. 94 percent) The only notable difference between the two groups was that the control group which received the Western medicine suffered from many side effects, whereas the treatment group did not”. According to Becker, Chinese herbs are free of dangerous side effects when used under proper supervision by a knowledgeable natural health care practitioner.

Ermiao wan
A study published in the 2004 Journal of Ethnopharmacology reports how the Chinese herb Ermiao wan reduces swelling and edema; and, is being used in China to treat gout patients and those with hyperuricemia, or elevated uric acid levels. This herb is available from Chinese herbalists and practitioners and should only be used under the supervision of a qualified Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Meadow saffron
Meadow saffron produces the alkaloids colchicine and colchicoside, both possessing analgesic and diuretic properties that relieve gout pain, inflammation and edema, or water retention around affected joints. Colchicine is also found conventional pharmaceutical drugs for gout treatment. Patients taking colchicine in any form must be carefully supervised by a knowledgeable health practitioner due to its level of toxicity.

Dandelion
Another herb used to relieve gout pain in both TCM and in Western herbal medicine is dandelion. Herbalists use dandelion for its diuretic and anti-inflammatory properties. Make into a tea or an herbal poultice for a topical application in gout. Dandelion also reduces swelling and edema around joints. It stimulates the excretion of uric acid, the cause of gouty arthritis.

Burdock root
Burdock root reduces inflammation and swelling in the tissues. It is indicated when there are swollen tissues around joints and as a natural diuretic that helps to reduce edema. Brew the root into a tea or use as a poultice for topical applications. The root is edible and can be cooked like carrots or parsnips, or eaten raw on salads. There have been reports of adverse reactions when used topically, reports Urban Herbs. It some cases it may cause a rash or contact dermatitis.

Blood-letting cupping
Although, not popular in the West, and one that went out of fashion over one hundred years ago, the use of blood-letting or cupping is once again in use in China to treat gout, reports the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2010. A study of 34 participants suffering from acute gout was completed using blood-letting cupping combined with Chinese herbs. The results indicated that 21 of the 34 cases improved under this treatment method, which is considered a satisfactory treatment for gouty arthritis. Consult a trained practitioner and do not self-treat with blood-letting cupping for gout.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20397456

http://www.nlm.nih.gov

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

http://bluepoppy.com

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874104001825

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000422.htm

http://pharmacology.georgetown.edu/urbanherbs/burdock.htm

About the author:
READ MORE OF JEAN (JB) BARDOT’S ARTICLES AT THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

The JB Bardot Archives: www.jbbardot.com
Natural News: http://www.naturalnews.com/Author1686.html

JB Bardot is an herbalist and a classical homeopath, and has a post graduate degree in holistic nutrition. Bardot cares for both people and animals, using alternative approaches to health care and lifestyle. She writes about wellness, green living, alternative medicine, holistic nutrition, homeopathy, herbs and naturopathic medicine. You can find her at The JB Bardot Archives at www.jbbardot.com and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001364941208&ref=tn_tnmn or on Twitter at jbbardot23 or https://twitter.com/jbbardot23

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040971_TCM_Chinese_herbs_gout.html#ixzz2XQJyj6NL