Rather Be Healthy

After more than a half century of counting calories, experts are advising dieters to ditch the numbers game and take a more holistic approach to losing weight.

Tom Vilsack, the U.S. secretary of agriculture, signaled a major change in mind-set last month while unveiling the country’s new dietary guidelines. “Not all calories are created equally,” he said.

A 1,200-calorie Twinkie diet isn’t going to do the body as much good as a 1,200-calorie diet of whole grains, even though both may achieve weight loss.

It sounds obvious.

But the country’s multibillion-dollar diet industry has mostly operated on a calories-in, calories-out philosophy. Now, nutritionists and dietitians, many of whom have always thought calorie counting was a flawed way of losing weight, are preaching a new course of action.

Increase quality of food

Even the grandaddy of diet institutions, Weight Watchers, has changed – restructuring its plan to encourage eating more good-for-you foods such as fruits and vegetables. It’s no longer about reducing quantity as much as it is about increasing quality.

“At the end of the day, we’re seeing that the calorie-in, calorie-out approach was the wrong message,” said Heather Schwartz, a dietitian with Stanford Hospital and Clinics. “Of course, if you significantly reduce calories, you will lose weight. But how long can you sustain that?”

The answer is not for very long, Schwartz said. Studies show that most people gain back weight within six to nine months of losing it, she said.

Since the 1950s, dieters have focused on counting calories, and when the obesity rate started climbing in the 1970s and ’80s, the emphasis became even stronger. In the past 20 years, a rash of fad diets have promoted everything from eliminating carbohydrates and fats to adopting packaged-food plans. But when you get right down to it, Schwartz said, those diets have focused on calories.

“They were quick fixes, not lifestyle changes,” she said. She added that despite the conventional wisdom that reducing calorie intake is the way to a trimmer waistline, a whole school of nutritionists and dietitians opposed that notion.

“We knew that a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie,” Schwartz said. “But how do you fight a mega industry saying otherwise?”

For years, some experts tried – attempting to convince people that if they substituted nutrient-rich calories (such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and nuts) for empty calories (like soda, processed foods and refined sugar), they would become healthier and ultimately slimmer.

Program restructured

The idea that eating nutrient-dense foods is more important than counting calories is catching on. Late last year, Weight Watchers changed its program after 14 years.

Once based primarily on calories, the organization has changed its “points” formula to better “factor in the nutrients that make up a calorie,” said Stephanie Rost, director of corporate development.

“We’re looking at how much energy your body uses to process the food,”
she said.
For example: Under the old plan, a croissant with butter would have contained the same amount of points as a poached egg with a 3-ounce slice of ham and a piece of whole wheat toast. Now the latter counts for fewer points because it’s a more balanced and filling option that’s packed with protein and fiber.

Unlike before, Weight Watchers gives fruits a free pass – they used to cost points – in hopes of encouraging participants to get more of them into their diets. “Losing weight isn’t the only ingredient to healthy living,” said Suzanne Rauzon, director of strategy for the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley. “You can lose weight from just eating one bag of Cheetos a day. But that’s not a very balanced way of eating. If you’re just focusing on the energy value of food, you’re missing out on eating a variety of things that are good for you.”

It’s not just the experts who agree. “We are much more informed about food today than we were 10 to 20 years ago,” said Bonnie Riggs, a restaurant industry analyst for market research firm NPD.

Less focus on restrictions

The company recently polled health- and weight-conscious consumers about their eating patterns at restaurants. Those surveyed ranked concerns over high-caloric foods only 8 on a scale of 14. The top preferences were for foods made with high-quality, fresh, nutritious and organic ingredients.

“For those looking for healthy options on the menu, it was not about calories,” Riggs said.

For the first time in a long time, diets are less about restrictions and more about nourishment, Schwartz said. “It’s a really empowering way to eat.”

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To date, there are actually a lot of healthy nut and fruit bars in the market that contain dried fruit as one of the primary components. A certain Dr. Michael Greger discussed in his article about the dense calories found in dried fruit. A lot of people are getting concerned that maybe eating nutrition bars frequently could make them fat. He wanted to know what dried fruit and nuts nutrition bar is best for those who do not want to gain weight.

It has been found that 5 to 10 percent of Americans who – on average – incorporate dried fruit (approximately at least a tablespoon each) every day are less obese, less overweight, and slimmer than others. They also were less obese in the abdominal area. Though they tend to eat more, they did not gain weight. Those who ate nut butters and nuts in general also had similar results. They had lower BMIs and less excess weight. Dr. Greger summarized the different findings in his four videos.

The study
In Dr. Greger’s study about figs, adding 14 figs to people’s daily diet did not actually lead to weight gain, contrary to what many people think. Figs are known to be satisfying and satiating. They are packed with fiber that helps people to eat less of other foods all throughout the day. There are also newer studies that Dr. Greger discovered as to how dried apples can also help people prevent weight gain, the same goes with prunes. Three quarters of a cup of dried apples added to the diet every day for an entire year is equal to about two hundred calories a day.

Dr. Greger asked what would happen if nutrition bars had nuts and dried fruit together. He also inquired what the effect would be when people added fruit and nut bars along with their regular diets for two months. Consequently, research was conducted to validate the theory. The research was done among 100 people who were having problems managing their weight, and they were separated into two randomized groups. One group stuck with their regular diet, while the other did the same but had an extra 340 calories from two extra fruit and nut bars each day.

Those who had extra fruit and nut bars daily for two months, as expected, did not gain weight. These bars were found to have additional sugar in them, which could have been a reason why the cholesterol levels of the participants did not really become better despite the nuts that they ingested. Nuts are actually known to help lower cholesterol. In the videos of Dr. Greger, he highlighted some brands that had no added sugar. However, he also pointed out that it is a lot cheaper to simply make one’s own trail mix and simply eat dried fruits and nuts on their own, without buying pre-made ones.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ehow.com/way_5375862_food-bars-make-gain-weight.html

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/do-fruit-nut-bars-cause-weight-gain/

http://www.bicycling.com

About the author:
Sandeep is an avid rock climber, Mountaineer, runner, and fitness coach. He shares his tips for staying in shape and eating healthy on betterhealthblog. betterhealthblog provide tips on Healthy Living, Beauty and Fashion, Home & Gardening, Weight Loss .

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

6 Ways to Shrink Your Belly (And 5 Don’t Include Exercise!)

If you’re looking to shrink and tone your belly, there’s a better way to do it than trying to do crunches. In fact, research has shown that doing abdominal exercises alone—even when performed five days a week for six weeks—has no effect at all on subcutaneous fat stores and abdominal circumferencei.

In an op-ed piece for Forbes Magazine, Jennifer Cohen suggests using strategies that burn up cortisol insteadii. Cortisol is a hormone in your body that depletes lean muscle and holds on to fat in the abdominal region.

One of the most important ways to help this process is to reduce stress in your life, because stress causes cortisol levels to spike. Cohen also delves into a number of other strategies that help reduce your cortisol levels, such as the following. To learn more, please see the featured Forbes article:

Getting enough sleep

Reducing or eliminating refined sugars from your diet

Slowing down your breathing

Doing short bursts of exercise (high-intensity interval training)

Supplementing with vitamin C

Eating fats―the good kinds such as the omega 3’s found in salmon, avocados and walnuts

The KEY Strategy for Reducing Belly Fat

Cohen certainly brings up some good points. Getting sufficient amounts of sleep, for example, not only helps normalize cortisol levels, it’s also important in order to optimize your circadian clock, which can have a profound impact on your metabolism and weight. As an example, a couple of years ago researchers at the University of Chicago found that dieters who slept for 8.5 hours lost 55 percent more body fat over the course of two weeks than dieters who only got 5.5 hours of sleep a night.iii

But the master key really lies with your diet, followed closely by the type of exercise you engage in.

About 80 percent of your ability to reduce excess body fat is determined by what you eat, with the other 20 percent related to exercise and other healthy lifestyle habits such as sleep and stress reduction. What this means is that if your diet is based on sugar/fructose and processed junk food, your chances of getting flat, ripped abs, even if you work out religiously, are quite slim…

You simply will not see defined abs unless you reduce your overall body fat, and a poor diet cause your body to hold on to excess fat, despite all your exercise efforts. Cohen mentions two of the most important dietary factors in her article, namely:
•Reducing or eliminating sugar from your diet. This includes ALL forms of sugar and fructose, whether refined or “all-natural” such as agave or honey, as well as all grains (including organic ones), as they quickly break down to sugar in your body
•Increasing healthful fats in your diet, such as healthy saturated fats and animal-based omega-3’s

One of the most pernicious dietary influences on your weight loss goals is fructose, which hides in so many processed foods and beverages, it can be near impossible to avoid unless you alter your shopping and cooking habits. By avoiding processed foods in general, and focusing instead on whole, preferably locally grown organic foods, cooked at home, you can circumvent one of the greatest dietary obstacles there is today.

For more details, I suggest you review my Optimized Nutrition Plan, which is a comprehensive and step-by-step guide to help you make health-promoting food- and lifestyle choices. This includes:

Limit your fructose to less than 25 grams per day, and, ideally to less than 15 grams per day, as you’re likely consuming ‘hidden’ fructose if you eat processed foods or sweetened beverages

Limit or eliminate all processed foods

Eliminate all gluten, and highly allergenic foods from your diet

Increase the amount of fresh vegetables in your diet, and consider juicing

Eat at least one-third of your food uncooked (raw), or as much as you can manage

Avoid artificial sweeteners of all kinds

The Primary, and the Most Surprising, Dietary Offenders

Fructose, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup hidden in processed foods and beverages is the primary contributing factor to widespread and seemingly out-of-control obesity. The top offenders in this category include:

Grain-based desserts (cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars)

Soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks

Breads

Juice drinks and fruit punches

Breakfast cereals

Fast food and pre-packaged dinners

Prepackaged, processed lunches

Coffee drinks

There are also a number of foods that are typically considered healthy that you might not suspect would contribute to your weight problem. But while considered “healthy” by the mainstream, these foods are actually loaded with sugar and/or fructose:

Yoghurt

Condiments, sauces, and salad dressings

High-fructose fruits: apples, pears, grapes, watermelon, persimmon, and mango

“Diet” foods and snacks

Dried fruits: raisins, figs, apricots

Infant formula

Enhanced waters (such as VitaminWater)

Jarred baby foods and teething biscuits

What’s the Best Fat-Busting Exercise?

Once you’ve addressed your diet, exercise can truly begin to work its magic on your physique, and help boost fat loss even further. The trick to achieve flat abs is to incorporate the correct types of exercises.

High-intensity interval exercises are at the core of my Peak Fitness routine. This short intense training protocol improves muscle energy utilization and expenditure due to its positive effects on increasing muscle mass and improving muscle fiber quality. Muscle tissue burns three to five times more energy than fat tissues, so as you gain muscle, your metabolic rate increases, which allows you to burn more calories, even when you’re sleeping. Further, several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session.

In fact, you can actually lose more weight by reducing the amount of time you spend on exercise, because when doing high-intensity interval training you only need 20 minutes, two to three times a week. Any more and you’ll overdo it! You can get the details on how to properly perform these exercises in the video below.

Next: Exercises that Target Your Abs

While ab workouts specifically may not help you reduce body fat, they still provide important benefits and should not be overlooked. Your abdominals are part of your body’s 29 core muscles, which are located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability.

When you build your ab muscles, it’s like developing an internal corset that holds your gut in. By doing so, you help stabilize your spine, vertebrae and discs, which in turn can significantly reduce back pain and make it easier for you to lift heavy items, twist and turn and perform the movements required for a full life. Having a strong abdominal wall is very important for optimal body movement and gets increasingly more important with advancing age.

A strong abdominal wall is also what will produce that six-pack look once you’ve lost sufficient amounts of subcutaneous fat. However, conventional crunches and sit-ups are not the most effective when it comes to creating flat, well-defined abs.

In order to effectively train your core muscles, you must incorporate a variety of stabilization, functional and traditional exercises. A study by Petrofsky (2007) actually put this to the test by researching how much muscle activity is generated by different abdominal exercises. The simple, traditional abdominal floor crunch was found to produce and recruit the least amount of muscle activity when subjects were attached to an electromyography (EMG) machine! That’s not to say that you should never perform a traditional abdominal crunch; but this particular exercise should be done as part of a varied core-strengthening routine.

This may include:
•Traditional exercises, such as a standard crunch with rotation or a standing rotation with a light hand weight.
•Functional exercises, including work on a stability ball.
•Stabilizing exercises, such as lying on the floor and pulling your belly back toward your spine and holding that position while breathing deeply
•Extension exercises, such as lying on your stomach with arms extended above your head. Then raising both arms and both legs, at the same time, off the floor. (Hold for a count of 5, or 5 breaths, and slowly return to the floor.)

Popular exercise programs that work your core muscles are widely available, and include virtually all the types of yoga and Pilates. But there’s yet another exercise you might not have thought of: push-ups! That’s right. Push-ups don’t just give you a stronger upper body, they also train your abdominals—as long as you’re doing them correctly. I recommend watching Darin Steen’s demonstration of the proper form below, but I’ve also included a summary of key points to remember:

•Keep your body stiff and straight as a plank
•Elbows at a 45-degree angle from your sides
•Breathe in on the way down
•Lower your body all the way down
•Breathe out on the way up

If you’re looking to get rock-hard abs, remember that proper dietary choices is your first step, but from there a comprehensive fitness program and targeted ab exercises will help you achieve your goal.

References:

——————————————————————————–
i Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research July 28, 2011

ii Forbes March 27, 2012
iii Annals of Internal Medicine October 5, 2010;153(7):435-41

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By Dr. Mercola

Urine can reveal important information about your body’s waste elimination process, providing clues about your overall health status.

Your kidneys serve to filter excess water and water-soluble wastes out of your blood, getting rid of toxins and things that would otherwise build up and cause you to become ill. Many things — from excess protein and sugar to bacteria and yeast — may make their way into your urine.

Instead of ignoring your urine and dashing back to whatever important activity having to pee interrupted, take this golden opportunity to become familiar with your “normal.”

If you notice changes in the way your urine looks or smells, the cause might be something as benign as what you had for dinner last night, such as beets or asparagus. Or, your astuteness may potentially alert you to a serious condition.

If you suspect you have a urinary tract problem, you should consult your physician. One of the first things he or she is likely to do is a urine test. Urine tests have been around for more than 6,000 years1 and are easy, noninvasive tools for quickly assessing your health status2.

Minding Your Pees and Cues

In your lifetime, your kidneys filter more than one million gallons of water, enough to fill a small lake. Amazingly, one kidney can handle the task perfectly well. In fact, if you lose a kidney, your remaining kidney can increase in size by 50 percent within two months, to take over the job of both.3

Urine is 95 percent water and five percent urea, uric acid, minerals, salts, enzymes, and various substances that would cause problems if allowed to accumulate in your body4. Normal urine is clear and has a straw yellow color, caused by a bile pigment called urobilin.

As with your stool, your urine changes color depending on what foods you eat, what medications and supplements you take, how much water you drink, how active you are, and the time of the day.

But some diseases can also change the color and other characteristics of your urine, so it’s important to be alert and informed. With so many variables, you can’t always be sure of what’s causing any particular urine characteristic, short of laboratory testing. However, urine’s character gives you some clues to potential problems that may be developing, giving you time to do something about it.

The following chart outlines some of the most common color variations for urine and their possible origins. The majority of the time, color changes resulting from foods, medications, supplements, or simply dehydration. But there are certain signs that warrant concern.

Color

Possible Cause

Necessary Action

Yellow/Gold

The most typical urine color, indicative of a healthy urinary tract; yellow will intensify depending on hydration; some B vitamins cause bright yellow urine

None

Red/Pink

Hematuria (fresh blood in the urine) related to urinary tract infection (UTI), kidney stone, or rarely cancer; consumption of red foods such as beets, blueberries, red food dyes, rhubarb; iron supplements; Pepto-Bismol, Maalox, and a variety of other drugs5; classic “port wine” color may indicate porphyria (genetic disorder)

***Consult your physician immediately if you suspect you have blood in your urine

White/Colorless

Excessive hydration is most likely. (See Cloudy)

Consult your physician only if chronic

Orange

Typically a sign of dehydration, showing up earlier than thirst; “holding your bladder” for too long; post-exercise; consuming orange foods (carrots, squash, or food dyes); the drug Pyridium (phenazopyridine); liver or pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Drink more water and don’t delay urination; consult physician if orange urine persists despite adequate hydration

Amber

More concentrated than orange so severe dehydration related to intense exercise or heat; excess caffeine or salt; hematuria; decreased urine production (oliguria or anuria); metabolic problem; pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Consult your physician if problem persists despite adequate hydration

Brown

Very dense urine concentration, extreme dehydration; consumption of fava beans; melanuria (too many particles in urine); UTI; kidney stone; kidney tumor or blood clot; Addison’s disease; glycosuria; renal artery stenosis; proteinuria; pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Consult your physician if problem persists despite adequate hydration, especially if accompanied by pale stools or yellow skin or eyes

Black

RARE: Alkaptonuria, a genetic disorder of phenylalanine and tyrosine metabolism marked by accumulation of homogentisic acid in the blood; poisoning

Consult your physician

Green

RARE: Unusual UTIs and certain foods (such as asparagus); excessive vitamins

Usually benign; consult your physician if it persists, especially if you have pain or burning (dysuria), and/or frequent urination (polyuria), which are symptoms of UTI

Blue

RARE: Artificial colors in foods or drugs; bilirubin; medications such as methylene blue; unusual UTIs

Usually benign; consult your physician if it persists, especially if you have pain or burning (dysuria), and/or frequent urination (polyuria), which are symptoms of UTI

Cloudy

Urinary tract infection, kidney problem, metabolic problem, or chyluria (lymph fluid in the urine), phosphaturia (phosphate crystals), pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Consult physician, especially if you have pain or burning (dysuria), and/or frequent urination (polyuria), which are symptoms of UTI

Sediment

Proteinuria (protein particles) or albuminuria; UTI; kidney stones; see Cloudy

Consult your physician

Foamy

Turbulent urine stream; proteinuria (most common causes are diabetes and hypertension)

Consult physician if not due to “turbulence”

Does Your Urine Smell Like Roses?

If you’re a woman from ancient Rome and your urine smells like roses, you’ve probably been drinking turpentine. This is a high price to pay to woo your suitor with pleasant-smelling pee, as turpentine may kill you! Short of drinking turpentine, there are many common substances that may alter the way your urine smells, which is why it’s helpful to know what’s normal. Urine reflects all of the inner workings of your body and contains a wide variety of compounds and metabolic by-products. Some dogs can actually “smell cancer” in human urine6.

Urine doesn’t typically have a strong smell, but if yours smells pungent (like ammonia), you could have an infection or urinary stones, or you may simply be dehydrated. Dehydration causes your urine to be more concentrated and may have a stronger smell than normal, as do high-protein foods like meat and eggs. Menopause, some sexually transmitted diseases, and certain metabolic disorders may also increase the ammonia smell7. Here are some of the more common reasons your urine’s odor may change:
•Medications or supplements
•Certain genetic conditions, such as Maple Syrup Urine Disease, which causes urine to smell sickeningly sweet8
•Certain foods — most notably asparagus. Asparagus is notorious for causing a foul, eggy or “cabbagy” stench that results from a sulfur compound called methyl mercaptan (also found in garlic and skunk secretions). Only 50 percent of people can smell asparagus pee because they have the required gene. Cutting off the tips of asparagus will reportedly prevent the pungent-smelling pee…but of course, this is the tastiest part!
•Urinary tract infections
•Uncontrolled diabetes is known to cause your urine to have a sweet or fruity or, less commonly, a yeasty smell. In the past, doctors diagnosed diabetes by pouring urine into sand to see if it was sweet enough to attract bugs. Other physicians just dipped a finger in and took a taste. Fortunately, today’s physicians have access to far more elegant diagnostic tools.

When You Feel the Urge to Go, GO

Urinary frequency is also important. Peeing six to eight times per day is “average.” You might go more or less often than that, depending on how much water you drink and how active you are. Increased frequency can be caused by an overactive bladder (involuntary contractions), caffeine, a urinary tract infection (UTI), interstitial cystitis, benign prostate enlargement, diabetes, or one of a handful of neurological diseases.9

It is important to pee when you feel the urge. Delaying urination can cause bladder overdistension — like overstretching a Slinky such that it can’t bounce back. You may habitually postpone urination if you find bathroom breaks inconvenient at work, or if you have Paruresis (also known as Shy Bladder Syndrome, Bashful Bladder, Tinkle Terror, or Pee Anxiety), the fear of urinating in the presence of others. Seven percent of the public suffers from this condition.10

How Much Water Should You Drink?

I don’t subscribe to the commonly quoted rule of drinking six to eight glasses of water every day. Your body is capable of telling you what it needs and when it needs it. Once your body has lost one to two percent of its total water, your thirst mechanism kicks in to let you know it’s time to drink — so thirst should be your guide. Or course, if you are outside on a hot, dry day or exercising vigorously, you’ll require more water than usual — but even then, drinking when you feel thirsty will allow you to remain hydrated.

As you age, your thirst mechanism tends to work less efficiently. Therefore, older adults will want to be sure to drink water regularly, in sufficient quantity to maintain pale yellow urine. As long as you aren’t taking riboflavin (vitamin B2, found in most multivitamins), which turns urine bright “fluorescent” yellow, then your urine should be quite pale. If you have kidney or bladder stones or a urinary tract infection, increase your water intake accordingly.

You and Your Urinary System

You should now have a pretty good idea of how important it is to familiarize yourself with what’s normal for your pee. Urine is a window into the inner workings of your body and can function as an “early warning system” for detecting health problems.

The most important factor in the overall health of your urinary tract is drinking plenty of pure, fresh water every day. Inadequate hydration is the number one risk factor for kidney stones, as well as being important for preventing UTIs. To avoid overly frequent bathroom breaks, stay hydrated but not overhydrated. Drink whenever you’re thirsty, but don’t feel you have to drink eight glasses of water per day, every day. If you’re getting up during the night to pee, stop drinking three to four hours before bedtime.

Limit your caffeine and alcohol intake, which can irritate the lining of your bladder. Make sure your diet has plenty of magnesium, and avoid sugar (including fructose and soda) and non-fermented soy products due to their oxalate content. Finally, don’t hold it. As soon as you feel the urge to go, go! Delaying urination is detrimental to the health of your bladder due to overdistension.

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Water Fluoridation = Mass Medication Without Prescription

We are beginning to win the battle. The tide seems to have turned as a major victory was achieved late last month when Portland voted against fluoride – thanks much in part to the national support they received.

Because of your support, I was able to help fund this effort and took a few lumps in the media as self-serving, as I sell a non-fluoride toothpaste. Desperate campaigns go to desperate measures, making personal attacks the norm.

It would have been a dangerous victory for the CDC had they won, Portland was a prime target as it is the largest unfluoridated city in the US.

Fluoride, of course, is a toxic substance that is biologically active in the human body. It accumulates in sensitive tissues over time, wreaking havoc with enzymes, and producing a number of serious adverse health effects —including neurological and endocrine dysfunction. Fluoride should never be ingested intentionally.

Yet despite the scientific evidence against the practice, the United States lags far behind other nations in acknowledging the mistake and ending this tragic “public health” measure. As usual, the big lie must continue to protect faith in long term public health policies and agencies.

As a result, individual communities around the US have taken up the fight to end water fluoridation in their own local areas. On many occasions, I’ve asked you to support such efforts and today, I’m very pleased to report that the latest fight has ended in victory. Your hard work to share this information or contribute to the campaign proved essential, and I am so proud and grateful to our motivated supporters.

Science and Integrity Wins in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon gets its water from the Bull Run watershed; a 102-square mile protected watershed that is so pristine and pure the city was even granted a waiver from having to build a water treatment plant.

On May 21, Portland residents voted on whether or not to fluoridate their unusually pristine water supply, with “No” getting 61 percent of the votes.

It’s been a rocky ride for Portlanders who even had to fight for the right to vote on the issue—for the fourth time!

Citizens had already voted ‘no’ on water fluoridation for Portland in 1956, 1962, and 1980. But after more than a year of secretive planning, fluoride lobbyists finally convinced the Portland city council to begin fluoridating Portland’s water supplies. The decision was set to take effect by March 2014.

Luckily, the citizens of Portland stood together by gathering enough signatures to force the decision to a vote yet again. As reported by Fluoridealert.org1:

“’We are proud of our Portland colleagues who used science and integrity to defeat fluoridation and the public relations blitzkrieg that backed it,’ says Paul Connett, PhD, FAN’s Executive Director.

… Fluoride chemicals are the only chemicals added to public water for the purpose of medication. Most western countries, including the vast majority of Europe, do not fluoridate their water.

‘Most of Portland’s media falsely reported that fluoridation promoters had science on their side and that opponents used emotion,’ says Connett. ‘Those opposed did their homework, relying on recent scientific findings from the National Research Council (NRC) and Harvard that raise serious questions about the safety of current fluoride exposures.’”

Six months ago, fluoridation was also rejected by voters in Wichita, Kansas by a 20 percent margin. In April, Israel announced it will end its mandatory fluoridation program, and Ireland has proposed legislation2 that would make water fluoridation a criminal offense! Canada has also seen a 25 percent drop in fluoridation programs over the past five years as a result of increasing public awareness about the associated dangers.

Coordinated Smear Campaign Lost Out to the Truth

Portland residents did face a very tough battle. The American Dental Association (ADA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the PEW Charitable Trusts spent significant time coordinating their lobbying efforts to the Portland City Council, which eventually led to the Council unanimously voting to force fluoridation chemicals on their citizens.

Fluoridation proponents also spent close to $1 million on their propaganda efforts leading up to the May 21 vote—four times the amount raised by the anti-fluoridation campaign—which they used to flood Portland with misleading ads and editorials touting fluoridation as “an urgently needed tool for solving the dental crisis in the city’s poor neighborhoods3.”

Portland was the largest non-fluoridated city in the US, making it a major target for pro-fluoridation advocates. Fortunately, they failed big time. Portland has now set the tone for other cities’ campaigns to rid themselves of this toxic and unnecessary chemical.

Proper diet, dental practices and access to mercury-free dental services are the solutions to the problem of dental cavities. Since we know that sugar causes cavities, perhaps if the ADA, CDC, PEW and others really wanted the fluoride to go to the right people, maybe they could lobby the junk food companies to add fluoride to their soda and candies, opposed to fluoridating drinking water. That would make more sense if you believe fluoride can solve the problem of tooth decay, wouldn’t it?

Water Fluoridation = Mass Medication Without Prescription

Fluoride is not a nutrient. And while there is prescription-grade fluoride, the fluoride put into drinking water is not a prescription drug but an industrial waste product. However, it is put into the water as a “drug” to help oral health, and it is done without the consent of those receiving it. Even if you accepted the premise that it works systemically, opposed to topically only, there is no justification to force it on people under the premise of slightly lowering tooth decay, as everyone has the option of using it topically as a toothpaste if they so choose…

The fluoride chemical typically added to water is hexafluorosilicic acid (HFSA), which is a byproduct of the fertilizer industry. It is a hazardous material they cannot easily dispose of. In fact, it’s illegal to dump it into rivers and lakes or release the parent gases into the atmosphere. And municipalities that decided to stop fluoridating their water had to keep going until all the chemicals were used up because they couldn’t afford the hazardous waste disposal fees!

Dr. William Hirzy from the EPA has pointed out that if it goes into the air, it’s a pollutant. If it goes into the local water, it’s pollution. But if the public water utilities buy it and purposely pour it in our drinking water, it’s no longer a pollutant. All of a sudden, by some magic sleight of hand, it’s a beneficial public health measure… But dilution is not the solution to pollution.

Fluoride Chemicals Also Pollute Drinking Water with Arsenic

A recent study also shows that 90 percent of toxic arsenic in our tap water comes from fluoridation chemicals. As reported by Living Green Magazine4:

“Industrial-grade fluoride chemicals added to US public water supplies contain arsenic that the EPA classifies as a human carcinogen. Switching to low-arsenic pharmaceutical-grade fluoride will save society $1 billion to $14 billion annually, according to research published in Environmental Science & Policy, led by former EPA senior scientists who are experts in chemical risk assessment, reports the Fluoride Action Network (FAN).

Although never studied for safety or efficacy, hydrofluorosilicic acid (HFSA) is added to public water supplies as a purported cavity preventive. The industry-funded group that regulates water additives, NSF International5, allows several toxins in HFSA, including arsenic.

We need to end this outdated practice. Adding hexafluorosilicic acid to drinking water to prevent tooth decay is based on politics, not science. Why should a water department be given the power to medicate anyone when they don’t take a health history, they don’t pass out a listing of side effects, monitor the dose or the effect? This is tantamount to gross negligence.

According to a 2006 report on water fluoridation produced by the US National Research Council, the benefits from fluoride are topical only, and cannot be achieved through ingestion. It also detailed positive associations between fluoride ingestion and bone fractures, cancer, reduced IQ and dementia.

I predict that water fluoridation will become known as one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated against the public in the 20th and 21st century. In the future, water fluoridation will be compared to tobacco science, DDT science, asbestos science, and thalidomide science—all grossly manipulated to hide an incredibly costly truth.

Why Water Fluoridation Is a Scam

Water fluoridation was invented by brilliant schemers who needed to get rid of toxic industrial waste that would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars for proper disposal. They duped politicians with fraudulent science and endorsements, which is not science, and sold them on a “public health” idea in which humans are utilized to filter this poison through their bodies, while 99 percent simply goes down the drain. Adding insult to injury, they now MAKE hundreds of millions of dollars selling this hazardous industrial waste, rather than having to pay for its disposal.

In his 2012 article “Poison is Treatment—Edward Bernays and the Campaign to Fluoridate America”6, James F. Tracy reveals the PR campaign that created this fake public health measure:

“The wide-scale U.S. acceptance of fluoride-related compounds in drinking water and a wide variety of consumer products over the past half century is a textbook case of social engineering orchestrated by Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the ‘father of public relations’ Edward L. Bernays,” he writes. “The episode is instructive, for it suggests the tremendous capacity of powerful interests to reshape the social environment, thereby prompting individuals to unwarily think and act in ways that are often harmful to themselves and their loved ones.”

I highly recommend taking the time to read Tracy’s informative expose on how good PR can trump science and keep you in the dark for decades, lest you dig a bit deeper. The oft-quoted phrase that water fluoridation is one of the greatest public healt achievements of the 20th century was also created by a Public Relations firm, not hard-core facts.

The Health Ramifications of Mass Medicating with Fluoride

Scientists from the EPA’s National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory have classified fluoride as a “chemical having substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity,” and 25 studies have now reported an association between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ in children—including a recent study out of Harvard, in which the authors noted:

“The results support the possibility of an adverse effect of high fluoride exposure on children’s neurodevelopment.“

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 41 percent of American adolescents now have dental fluorosis—unattractive discoloration and mottling of the teeth that indicate overexposure to fluoride. But that’s not all. Studies have shown fluoride toxicity can lead to the wide-ranging problems listed below.

Increases lead absorption

Disrupts collagen synthesis

Hyperactivity and/or lethargy

Crippling skeletal fluorosis and bone fractures

Genetic damage and cell death

Increased tumor and cancer growth

Disrupts immune system and inhibits antibody production

Chronic fatigue

Brain damage, and lowered IQ and dementia

Gastrointestinal problems and kidney issues

Arthritic symptoms

Severe eye problems, including blindness

Impaired thyroid function

Weakened bones, and fatal bone cancer (osteosarcoma)

Inactivates 62 enzymes

Muscle disorders

This is what the science is telling us about the ramifications of fluoride use. And yet, rather than taking the precautionary approach and stopping fluoridation until we know more, our policymakers continue to blindly forge ahead; refusing to give the scientific evidence the attention it deserves.

Congratulations on Keeping Portland’s Water Safe!

According to the EPA’s local’s president, Bill Hirzy, a chemist in the EPA’s Office of Toxic Substances, water fluoridation remains a government policy because of “institutional inertia [and] embarrassment among government agencies that have been promoting this stuff as safe.”

This is probably true, yet it’s shameful that the ADA, CDC and other agencies would spend so much money trying to coerce the continuation of this hazardous practice instead of just yielding to the wishes of communities.

Clean pure water is a prerequisite to optimal health. Industrial chemicals, drugs and other toxic additives really have no place in our water supplies. So I urge you to join the Fluoride Action Network’s efforts7 and your local anti-fluoridation movements in the US and Canada.

Please remember, people have been misled for generations – be patient with your friends and families who have been improperly educated about fluoridation chemicals. The tide is turning, we are making a difference when we bring organic consumers, environmentalists, and natural health advocates together.

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

If the words muscular fatigue, muscle pain or cracked skin mean something to you, then consider replacing those with “Epsom salt”. Modern medicine is now confirming what has been known as fact for centuries: That Epsom salt can relieve muscle aches while healing foot pains and cracked skin conditions. Some recent studies have even indicated that Epsom salt could alleviate signs of autism in children.

What is it?
Epsom salt gets its name from the place where it was discovered: Epsom in England. It is a mineral composed of magnesium and sulfate compounds, and magnesium is believed to play an important role in regulating the body’s functioning. Magnesium deficiency is now becoming common and the implications for health are far reaching. Magnesium sulfate is an essential building block of brain tissue and joint proteins, and it is also known as a strengthening agent of the walls of digestive tract. Since magnesium sulfate is readily absorbed through the skin, it makes complete sense to derive maximum benefit through the bath water.

Skin conditions such as dry and cracked skin, itchy skin or even eczema and psoriasis are said to be relieved through the regular use of Epsom salt. However, it never hurts to consult your doctor before you decide to take Epsom salt into your own hands.

The Epsom spa is here to stay
Put aside age defying creams and lotions for a second and consider this: Bathing in the mineral rich Epsom salt could well be the cosmetic treatment needed, with no side effects, to boot. Anti-aging products have received the ire and sarcasm of many because they have become distorted to mean “how to keep looking young and beautiful” when they should mean “how to feel young, healthy and therefore beautiful”. In truth, they actually relate to the phenomenon of aging in the body leading to degeneration of bodily systems such as joints, nerves and muscles. It makes perfect sense then for Epsom salt to be used to reinforce the feeling of health and youthfulness of the musculo-skeletal and nervous system.

However, for a routine detox, magnesium sulfate would be a good bet considering its qualities as a versatile de-pollutant. As it affects the wall of the digestive tract in a fortifying way, it helps the digestive system to release toxins and unwelcome bacteria. It also supports the growth of digestive enzymes produced by the pancreas and that is not all – it helps the body rid itself of heavy metals.

It is indeed true that an Epsom soak a day can keep the doctor away, provided of course that it is a high quality product bought from a trusted pharmacy or natural health store. That said, beware of cheap Epsom salt from the supermarket down the road, because ironically, it just maybe a storehouse of heavy metals.

Magnesium deficiency and depression
A deficiency in magnesium is known to cause neuropathologies, which is really a complex-sounding name for depression. Depression is a condition characterized by mood swings, low self esteem, a lack of interest in anything and inexplicable sadness. These symptoms can seriously affect the normal functioning of the person and could potentially be alleviated by regular doses of magnesium. The following conditions have shown significant improvement with the regular administration of magnesium as therapy: Traumatic brain injury, headache, suicidal ideation, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, postpartum depression, cocaine, alcohol and tobacco abuse, hypersensitivity to calcium, short-term memory loss and IQ loss, migraines and chronic fatigue. The miraculous effects of Epsom salt make it indispensable to home medicine as it has the potential to stave off many a health condition.

In this renaissance age of the natural healer, and with a little help from nature, we could all be happier, healthier and fit for life.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.heartandsoul.com/2009/09/the-truth-about-epsom-salt/

http://paulyhart.blogspot.co.nz

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/13-ways-to-use-epsom-salt.htm

About the author:
Nanditha Prasad Ram is a journalist and a practicing holistic therapist whose mission it is to inform, educate, empower and transform.
Her blog is available at http://www.bindumandalayoga.blogspot.in

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

Monsanto pushes bizarre conspiracy theory to deflect blame for GE wheat contamination of commercial crops

There is a grand conspiracy theory at work to destroy the value of U.S. wheat crops, Monsanto recently told mainstream media reporters in a telephone conference. The contaminated GE wheat recently discovered in Oregon didn’t get there by escaping Monsanto’s open-air GMO experiments, the company claims. Instead, they say it might have been put there by a conspiracy of crop criminals who somehow acquired GE wheat from Monsanto’s field trials way back in 2005, then somehow saved it in a way that kept it genetically viable for eight years, then supposedly drove around Oregon for the sole purpose of releasing the GMOs in some farmer’s field that they just hoped the USDA might be someday be testing for GMO contamination.

That’s the far-fetched conspiracy theory now being pushed by Monsanto to explain how commercial wheat crops in Oregon got contaminated with GMOs. It was put forth by Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley, a Monsanto executive, in a phone call with reporters.

“It seems likely to be a random, isolated occurrence more consistent with the accidental or purposeful mixing of a small amount of seed during the planting, harvesting or during the fallow cycle in an individual field,” Fraley said on the call, making him the first Monsanto executive to publicly admit he is a conspiracy theorist. He goes on to confirm that the company is investigating the possibility of “sabotage” to explain the wheat field contamination.

Did little green men spread Monsanto’s GMO seeds?
There’s only one problem with this bizarre conspiracy theory: No one knew in advance the USDA would be testing that farmer’s wheat field in Oregon. In fact, testing fields for GMO contamination is such a rare thing that the odds of a band of “conspiracy activists” correctly guessing which field was going to be tested by the USDA are at least 10,000 to 1.

To successful pull off this wild conspiracy theory being pushed by Monsanto, activists would have had to contaminate nearly ALL commercial wheat fields with genetically modified seed, and this would have involved a nationwide logistics effort of such magnitude that it would have been impossible to keep it secret. Is Monsanto really suggesting there exists a secret group of hundreds or thousands of activists driving around the country in unmarked vans, flinging Monsanto’s own wheat seeds into commercial wheat fields right at the beginning of planting season?

Or maybe it was pulled off by little green men from outer space, working in cahoots with Bigfoot, Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster, who all had a planning meeting in a secret underground base on the moon before deciding to focus all their efforts on embarrassing Monsanto by flinging GE wheat seeds everywhere. When they were finished, they then mutilated a few cattle and ran around conducting anal probes on some farmers just to have a little fun.

Yep, little green men did it. Because aliens hate Monsanto.

I mean, I know JFK wasn’t shot by a lone assassin. The Oklahoma City bombing was a federal operation (www.ANobleLie.com) and 9/11 was engineered and allowed to happen so that America could be stripped of its liberties and placed under a police state surveillance grid. But all those so-called “conspiracy theories” pale in comparison to the far-fetched loony bin theory of Monsanto which claims some underground group of activists has somehow been storing thousands of pounds of Monsanto’s GE wheat seeds since 1995 and has now suddenly started covertly dropping them into farm fields all across the nation. Does Monsanto not get it that anti-GMO activists do NOT want GMO seeds to grow? Planting those seeds in fields all across the country would be the very last thing they’d ever try to do, even if they did have the budgets to bank thousands of pounds of Monsanto seeds in large refrigerators for the last eight years.

The far more likely explanation in all this is that Monsanto’s open-field experiments went awry and GE wheat seeds escaped the fields in ways that Monsanto scientists didn’t anticipate (or didn’t want to anticipate).

Perhaps Monsanto would characterize that as a “conspiracy of Mother Nature.” Maybe insects are conspiring against Monsanto to spread the seeds. Maybe the wind, water and other forces of nature are “co-conspirators,” according to Monsanto.

The real conspiracy is that Monsanto is trying to dominate the global food supply
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s actually Monsanto that’s engaged in a massive conspiracy to try to dominate the global food supply by making sure its seeds genetically contaminate all commercial crop fields across America, allowing the company to sue farmers for the “theft” of intellectual property.

They’ve already done that to a multitude of farmers, by the way, so this isn’t some wild theory… it’s something that Monsanto has already been involved in.

Yep, there is a conspiracy afoot in all this, but it’s not the conspiracy Monsanto wants you to think it is. While the company claims “sabotage” in the Oregon GE wheat fields — possibly by little green men from outer space — the greater truth is that Monsanto is itself a corporation of global sabotage that destroys agriculture, contaminates the planet with genetic pollution, threatens farmers with lawsuits for planting common seeds, and then blames activists when its own dangerous experiments go haywire.

Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/monsanto-says-rogue-wheat-di…

http://nelsonfarm.net

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

Just 12 minutes of exercise a week is enough to stay fit

Staying in shape does not necessarily have to mean spending endless hours at the gym pumping iron and running on a treadmill, according to a new study out of Europe. Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that engaging in just four minutes of rigorous exercise three times a week is enough to raise oxygen intake levels and decrease blood pressure and glucose levels, two positive markers of physical fitness.

For 10 weeks, 26 inactive, overweight, but otherwise healthy men were instructed to follow one of two workout regimens. Half of the men were assigned to undertake the three, four-minute workout sessions per week protocol, while the other followed a three, 16-minute workout sessions per week protocol, which was broken down further into three, four-minute sessions per day, three times a week. At the end of 10 weeks, all of the men were evaluated for progress.

What was discovered was that oxygen intake among all the men was roughly equal, regardless of group assignment. This means that those doing four times as much exercise fared roughly the same in this department as those doing just 12 minutes of exercise a week. The shorter exercise group also saw noteworthy improvements in both cholesterol profile and body fat composition, though the benefits were even more pronounced in the group that did more exercise.

Overall, the men who engaged in the longer workout sessions fared better than the men who engaged in the shorter sessions. But both groups saw health improvements that experts say should change the way we look at physical fitness. What may have previously been considered a waste of time – who would have thought just four minutes of rigorous exercise would be beneficial? – may hold the key to improving public health on the larger scale.

“These data suggest that it may be possible to reduce cardiovascular mortality with substantially less exercise than is generally recommended, provided it is performed in a vigorous manner,” wrote the authors in their conclusion.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that exercise training with low-volume but high-intensity may be a time-efficient means to achieve health benefits,” they added. “The 1-AIT (aerobic interval training) type of exercise training may be readily implemented as part of activities of daily living and could easily be translated into programs designed to improve public health.”

Earlier study suggests longer duration, low-intensity workouts may be even more beneficial
On the flip side, earlier research out of the Netherlands found that long, low-intensity exercise routines may actually be more beneficial than short, high-intensity workouts. A study published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE back in February found that simply standing more often, or walking for long periods of time, can help improve insulin sensitivity and blood lipid levels more than engaging in one hour of intense exercise every day.

“According to the study, being active simply by standing or walking for long periods of time significantly improved insulin levels compared to both a strictly sedentary lifestyle, and one in which participants were largely sedentary except for an hour of exercise each day,” wrote ScienceDaily.com about this study.

“The study concludes that when energy expenditure is equivalent, longer durations of low-intensity exercise may offer more benefits than shorter periods of intense activity.”

Sources for this article include:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130213173127.htm

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

By Dr. Mercola

The United States now has 52 million children under the age of 12, and for American businesses, these kids represent one of the most powerful demographics to be captured.

Not only do children themselves spend a total of $40 billion a year on snacks, toys and electronics, using money given to them by their parents or family members, children also exert a powerful influence on their parents’ spending.

Children under 12 influence adult spending worth a staggering $700 billion a year, which equates to the combined economy of 115 of the world’s poorest countries.

The documentary Consuming Kids reveals the shrewd practices of the multi-billion dollar marketing machine that has one sole purpose: to turn your kids into loyal, lifelong consumers who will also influence how the entire family spends its money.

As summarized by Top Documentary Films1 :

“Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children’s advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world.

Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children’s marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids.”

The Rise of Full Immersion Stealth Marketing

Marketing to children has turned into a science in its own right. For example, the film reveals how “the nag factor” has been studied to the point that marketers can be advised on “what kind of tantrums work better.”

Yes, ads are actually designed to increase the number of times your child will keep asking you for the product—i.e. drive you completely batty and/or embarrass you in public until you give in just to make it stop.

With advances in technology, the avenues for marketing have grown exponentially over the past 30 years. It is no longer restricted to TV ads. Kids are now exposed to clever marketing via brand licensing, product placement, schools, stealth marketing, viral marketing, DVD’s, games, internet…

There are so many ways to reach children today that there’s a brand in front of your child’s face nearly every moment of every day.

As mentioned in the film, what we’re seeing is a rise of “360 degree immersive marketing,” designed to convince children that life is about buying and “getting.” It’s about turning children into loyal lifelong consumers.

Deregulation Unleashed an Unstoppable ‘Beast’ Set on Devouring Your Kids

In the late 1970’s, in the wake of rising concerns about sugary cereals and children’s inability to understand the intent of advertising, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) tried to ban all ads aimed at kids below the age of eight. After all, a young child cannot understand that an ad is not an impartial infomercial that tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… For this reason, advertising aimed at children is grossly underhanded, if not outright immoral.

Alas, Big Business stepped in and convinced Congress to block such attempts. Instead of banning advertising to children, Congress passed “The FTC Improvement Act,” which strips the FTC of the power and authority to regulate marketing to children. The final blow came in 1984, when the entire industry was deregulated.

Before deregulating children’s TV marketing, children’s spending had risen at a modest four percent per year. After deregulation, children’s spending skyrocketed to 35 percent per year, from $4.2 billion a year in 1984 to $40 billion a year today—an 852 percent increase in less than three decades.

According to a recent report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM)2, children age 2-11 now see an average of more than 10 television food ads per day. Nearly all (98 percent) of food advertisements viewed by children are for products that are high in fat, sugar or sodium. Most (79 percent) are low in fiber3. According to the IOM:

“The marketing of high-calorie, low-nutrient foods and beverages is linked to overweight and obesity. A 2006 IOM report provided evidence that television advertising influences the food and beverage preferences, requests, and short-term consumption of children.”

Indeed, even most toddlers recognize the sign of McDonald’s “golden arches” long before they are speaking in full sentences, and TV ads “teach” them from that early age that French fries, chicken fingers and soda is a healthy nutritious meal… While it’s easy to say it’s a parent’s job to teach their children the facts, this is certainly made difficult when each and every day you’re competing against dozens of powerfully conflicting messages from the best PR machine money can buy.

There’s no doubt that junk food advertising works, and works long-term.

Research4 shows when parents fed their preschool-aged children junk foods high in sugar, salt and unhealthy fats, it had a lasting impact on their taste preferences. All of the children tested showed preferences for junk foods, and all (even those who were just three years old!) were also able to recognize some soda, fast food and junk food brands. The researchers concluded what you probably already suspect: kids who were exposed to junk food, soda and fast food, via advertising and also because their parents fed them these foods, learned to recognize and prefer these foods over healthier choices.

This does have an impact on their health, as nutrients from quality foods are critical in helping your child reach his or her fullest potential. One study5 from British researchers revealed that kids who ate a predominantly processed food diet at age 3 had lower IQ scores at age 8.5. For each measured increase in processed foods, participants had a 1.67-point decrease in IQ. As you might suspect, the opposite also held true, with those eating healthier diets experiencing higher IQ levels. For each measured increase in dietary score, which meant the child was eating more fruits and vegetables for instance, there was a 1.2-point increase in IQ.

Coca-Cola’s Misguided Advice to Help You Tackle Obesity

A perfect example of what we’re talking about here is Coca-Cola’s new ad campaign, which focuses on the mistaken belief that beating obesity is a matter of counting calories. This theory has been found to be patently false. In short, you do not get fat because you eat too many calories and don’t exercise enough, even though that’s exactly what Coca-Cola will again instill into your children.

It’s important to understand that you get fat because you eat the wrong kind of calories. At the end of the day, your consumption of carbohydrates, whether in the form of grains and sugars (especially fructose), will determine whether or not you’re able to manage your weight and maintain optimal health. This is because these types of carbs (fructose and grains) affect the hormone insulin, which is a very potent fat regulator. Fats and proteins affect insulin to a far lesser degree. Kudos to The Atlantic6 for calling Coca-Cola on its misleading tactics in its article titled, Coke’s Unconscionable New Ad:

“Coca-Cola’s latest attempt to position itself against the rising tide of concern about the role of sodas in the obesity epidemic is unconscionable, because of this statement: ‘All calories count. No matter where they come from including Coca-Cola and everything else with calories.’

For Coca-Cola to suggest that all calories are equal flies in the face of reality as best as we can determine it… Coca-Cola wants us to ignore the considerable research confirming that sugary soda is a major contributor to obesity, and that it has no nutritional value… Coca-Cola could use its considerable advertising muscle to promote healthy exercise, yes, but when it does so as a ploy to confuse the public about the dangers of its products, that’s not a public service, that’s unethical.”

Remember, each can of Coke contains about 35 grams of sugar, which alone exceeds your daily recommended intake of fructose. Ideally, you’ll want to keep your fructose intake below 25 grams a day, or 15 grams if you are overweight, or have heart disease, diabetes, or any other disease stemming from insulin resistance.

I cannot think of any instance where you might need a soda in order to maintain correct “energy balance.” You can achieve optimal health without any added sugar or artificial sweeteners. In fact, if you want to understand energy balance, read up on how to become fat adapted rather than being a sugar burner. This requires cutting out virtually all added sugars.

Still, Coca-Cola’s vehement refusal to accept responsibility for leading you astray does not surprise me. Just take a look at the history of Coca-Cola’s advertising, and you’ll quickly realize that this leopard is not about to change its spots anytime soon. Two sites offering this history lesson include Arandilla’s “Coca-Cola Advertising Through the Years” blog7, and NPR’s blog page8, “Vigor, Brain Power and Other Health Claims From Coke’s Advertising Past.”

Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work

Dr. Robert Lustig, an expert on the metabolic fate of sugar, explains that fructose is “isocaloric but not isometabolic.” This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count. This is a crucial point that must be understood.

Fructose is in fact far worse than other carbs because the vast majority of it converts directly to FAT, both in your fatty tissues, and in your liver. And this is why counting calories does not work… As long as you keep eating fructose and grains, you’re programming your body to create and store fat.

Furthermore, research by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado and author of The Sugar Fix and The Fat Switch, demonstrates that large portions of food and too little exercise are NOT solely responsible for why you are gaining weight. Rather it’s fructose-containing sugars that cause obesity—not by calories, but by turning on your “fat switch,” a powerful biological adaptation that causes cells to accumulate fat in anticipation of scarcity (or hibernation). According to Dr. Johnson, based on his decades of research:

“Those of us who are obese eat more because of a faulty ‘switch’ and exercise less because of a low energy state. If you can learn how to control the specific ‘switch’ located in the powerhouse of each of your cells – the mitochondria – you hold the key to fighting obesity.”

There is actually some encouraging news in this mess. According to Beverage Digest, soda consumption in the US has been on a steady decline since 19989. A recent article in The Atlantic10 shows consumption of soda “in freefall,” with US consumption having declined by 40 percent since 2003. Unfortunately, many are simply switching to zero calorie or low-cal beverages, which Coca-Cola is now trying to boost, and quite frankly, if I had to choose between these two evils, I’d choose regular soda, as artificial sweeteners are likely even worse for your long-term health. In fact, artificial sweeteners have been shown to produce even MORE weight gain than regular sugar and even high fructose corn syrup!

Help Fight Back Against Predatory Marketing to Kids

Perhaps one of the most powerful scientific discoveries to emerge in the past several years is that the old adage “a calorie is a calorie” is patently false. Furthermore, the idea that in order to lose weight all you have to do is expend more calories than you consume is also false… The research clearly demonstrates that even if you control the number of calories you eat, if those calories come from fructose, you are at increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, or prediabetes, which includes insulin resistance, fatty liver, high blood pressure and high triglycerides.

In short, avoiding fructose in all its forms, along with other sugars, is imperative in order to avoid “flipping the fat switch” that will trigger your body to accumulate excess fat. So please, do yourself and your family a huge favor, and don’t allow yourself to get swept up in Coca-Cola’s multi-million dollar ad extravaganza. The entire campaign is based on flawed, inaccurate, misleading, and patently false conventions of thinking.

As for all the other marketing, which runs the gamut from toys to clothing brands, electronics, and even cars and financial services, the best defense is perhaps to be aware that it’s happening. To combat the influence of marketing of all kinds, I’d advise you to limit the amount of time your child spends watching TV and surfing the web. Children under the age of three should not be watching any TV at all, as this is a crucial time of rapid brain development in which your child’s brain is shaped in response to whatever they’re exposed to.

Unfortunately, marketing is everywhere, and you cannot insulate your child from all of it all of the time. However, in terms of mental and physical health, junk food ads are among the most harmful, and here you can lend your support for change.

The Prevention Institute’s “We’re Not Buying It” campaign11 is petitioning President Obama to put voluntary, science-based nutrition guidelines into place for companies that market foods to kids. You can sign this petition now, but I urge you to go a step further and stop supporting the companies that are marketing junk foods to your children today.

Ideally, you and your family will want to vote with your pocketbook and avoid as much processed food as possible and use unprocessed raw, organic and/or locally grown foods as much as possible.

If you and your kids are absolutely hooked on fast food and other processed foods, you’re going to need some help and most likely some support from friends and family. Besides surrounding yourself with supportive, like-minded people, you can also review my article “How to Wean Yourself Off Processed Foods in 7 Steps” or read the book I wrote on the subject, called Generation XL: Raising Healthy, Intelligent Kids in a High-Tech, Junk-Food World.

Finally, my free nutrition plan offers a step-by-step guide to feed your family right, and I encourage you to read through it now. You need to first educate yourself about proper nutrition and the dangers of junk food and processed foods in order to change the food culture of your entire family. To give your child the best start in life, and help instill healthy habits that will last a lifetime, you must lead by example. Children will simply not know which foods are healthy unless you, as a parent, teach it to them first.

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

For several years now, scientists have been struggling to determine why bee colonies across the world are disappearing—a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD).

As reported by Dan Rather, the US has recently experienced the highest loss of honeybee populations so far, with most of the nation’s beekeepers losing anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of their bee population.

Honeybees are perhaps one of the least recognized workers in the agricultural industry. They contribute $15 billion in annual agriculture revenue to the US economy alone, as a full one-third of the American food supply depends on them pollinating crops.

Just about every fruit and vegetable you can imagine is dependent on the pollinating services of bees. Apple orchards, for instance, require one colony of bees per acre in order to be adequately pollinated. So, unless the mysterious disappearance of bees is reversed, major food shortages could result.

California Almond Orchards Threatened by Bee Loss

As discussed in Dan Rather’s report, 80 percent of the world’s almonds come from California’s central valley, an 800,000 acre area of almond orchards that are 100 percent dependent on bees pollinating the trees. Surprisingly, almonds are the number one agricultural product in California.

Once a year, in late winter, 1.5 million bee hives from around the country are delivered to these orchards where the bees’ pollination efforts take place over the course of just a few days. It’s the largest mass-pollination effort in the world.

This year, however, the unthinkable happened. Many of the 6,000 orchard owners simply could not find enough bees to pollinate their almond trees, at any price… One of the beekeepers featured in Rather’s report is John Miller, President of the California state Beekepers Association. His family has tended bees since 1894.

Of the 11,000 hives brought to California by Miller, hundreds of hives turned out to be dead when opened up. According to Miller, “the past 30 years have been tumultuous with 40 percent of the national herd dying or dead.”

Another fourth generation beekeeper named Anderson lost 70 percent of his hives this year. Yet another outfit lost 100 percent of his bees…

Fortunately, unsurpassed efforts that included persuading beekeepers as far away as Florida to ship their bees cross country, delayed bloom, and unseasonably good weather thereafter allowed almond growers to dodge the bullet—this year—despite having fewer and weaker-than-ever hives…

This narrowly-achieved success may lead some to reach the mistaken conclusion that beekeepers’ concerns are overblown.

Don’t be fooled. One beekeeper goes so far as to say he believes the beekeeper industry is doomed and cannot survive for more than another two to three years unless drastic changes are implemented…

What’s Causing Bees to Die?

Proposed culprits of bee colony collapse disorder include:
•Pesticides and insecticides—Nicotinoids such as Imidacloprid and Clothianidin kills insects by attacking their nervous systems. These are known to get into pollen and nectar, and can damage beneficial insects such as bees.
•Malnutrition/Nutritional deficiencies—Many beekeepers place the hives near fields of identical crops, which may result in malnutrition as the bees are only getting one type of nectar. Essentially, this theory is identical to that of human nutrition; we need a wide variety of nutrients from different foods. If you keep eating the same limited range of foods, you can easily end up suffering from nutritional deficiencies. Poor nutrition suppresses immune function, making the bees far more susceptible to toxins from pesticides, viruses, fungi, or a combination of factors that ultimately kill them.
•Viruses and fungi—There’s even the possibility that some new form of “AIDS-like” viral infection is affecting the bees.
•Electromagnetic fields (EMFs)—Researchers have discovered that when a cellular phone is placed near a hive, the radiation generated by it (900-1,800 MHz) is enough to prevent bees from returning to them, according to a study conducted at Landau University several years ago.1

This result was duplicated in 2009 by Sainuddeen Pattazhy, a researcher and dean in the department of zoology at SN College, Punalur, Kerala. His experiments showed that microwaves from mobile phones appear to interfere with worker bees’ navigation skills. When cell phones were placed near beehives, the hives collapsed completely in five to 10 days. The worker bees simply failed to return home.

More recently, a study2 published in 2011 found that the presence of microwaves from cell phones have a dramatic effect on bees, causing them to become quite disturbed.
•Lack of natural foraging areas—Mass conversions of grasslands to corn and soy in the Midwest has dramatically reduced bees’ natural foraging areas

EPA Blamed for Failure to Protect Bees

A general consensus among beekeepers is that the bee die-offs are most definitely related to toxic chemicals. Increasingly, a systemic type of pesticide called neonicotinoids is being blamed for bee die-off’s. Neonicotinoids are now used on most of American crops, especially corn. This newer class of chemicals is applied to seeds before planting, allowing the pesticide to be taken up through the plant’s vascular system as it grows. As a result, the chemical is expressed in the pollen and nectar of the plant.

These insecticides are highly toxic to bees because they are systemic, water-soluble, and pervasive. They get into the soil and groundwater where they can accumulate and remain for many years and present long-term toxicity to the hive.

Neonicotinoids affect insects’ central nervous systems in ways that are cumulative and irreversible. Even minute amounts can have profound effects over time. One of the observed effects of these insecticides is weakening of the bee’s immune system. Forager bees bring pesticide-laden pollen back to the hive, where it’s consumed by all of the bees. Six months later, their immune systems fail, and they fall prey to secondary, seemingly “natural” bee infections, such as parasites, mites, viruses, fungi and bacteria.

The disappearance of bee colonies began accelerating in the United States shortly after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allowed these new insecticides on the market in the mid-2000s. Last month, beekeepers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the agency over its failure to protect bees from these toxic pesticides.

Meanwhile, France has banned Imidacloprid for use on corn and sunflowers after reporting large losses of bees after exposure to it. They also rejected Bayer´s application for Clothianidin, and other countries, such as Italy, have banned certain neonicotinoids as well.

The EPA3 acknowledges that “pesticide poisoning” may be one factor leading to colony collapse disorder, yet they have been slow to act to protect bees from this threat. The current lawsuit may help spur them toward more urgent action, which is desperately needed as the food supply hangs in the balance.

In March, according to Dan Rather’s report, the EPA sent Jim Jones, overseer of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, to talk to California almond growers and beekeepers. But although beekeepers said Jones got the message that bees are in serious trouble, they were dismayed by the fact that he seemed more interested in finding new places for bees to forage rather than addressing the issue of toxic pesticides…

As usual, at the core of the problem is big industry, which is blinded by greed and enabled by a corrupt governmental system that permits the profit-driven sacrifice of our environment. Unfortunately, this motivation reflects an extreme shortsightedness about the long-term survival of the human race, as well as of our planet. Clearly, if the goal of pesticides is to increase food yield to more easily feed 7 billion human beings, this goal falls flat on its face if it leads to the collapse of our food chain.

Do You Trust Monsanto to Solve the Bee Colony Collapse Problem?

Another forerunning theory of colony collapse disorder (CCD) is that it’s being caused by genetically engineered crops—either as a result of the crops themselves or the pesticides and herbicides applied on them, such as Roundup. In one German study,4 when bees were released in a genetically engineered rapeseed crop, then fed the pollen to younger bees, scientists discovered the bacteria in the guts of the young ones mirrored the same genetic traits as ones found in the GE crop, indicating that horizontal gene transfer had occurred.

Chemical companies like Monsanto are clearly seeking to take as much control of the food supply as possible by controlling virtually every aspect of crop production, so research implicating their business as the cause of bee die-offs would definitely cause harm to the company’s bottom line. Monsanto has received increasing amounts of bad publicity over their potential role in the devastating demise of bees around the globe.

To better field such lines of inquiry, the company appears to have taken measures to control the direction of the research into their products’ effect on bees by purchasing one of the leading bee research firms – one that, conveniently, lists its primary goal as studying colony collapse disorder. Monsanto bought the company, called Beeologics, in September 2011, just months before Poland announced it would ban growing of Monsanto’s genetically modified MON810 maize, noting, poignantly, that “pollen of this strain could have a harmful effect on bees.”5

Rodale Institute Tackles Bee Problem

I recently visited the Rodale Institute and got a tour of their brand new Honeybee Conservancy and research facility. As reported on their website:6

“The 2013 Conservancy has a new physical arrangement and a whole new set of beds that include nectar plants that bloom throughout the season and incorporate biodynamic principles… We’ll be looking at the impacts of compost, compost extracts and biodynamic preparations on the health and vitality of the plants.”

How You Can Help Protect the Bees

If you would like to learn more about the economic, political and ecological implications of the worldwide disappearance of the honeybee, check out the documentary film Vanishing of the Bees. If you’d like to get involved, here are four actions you can take to help preserve and protect our honeybees:
•Support organic farmers and shop at local farmer’s markets as often as possible. You can “vote with your fork” three times a day. (When you buy organic, you are making a statement by saying “no” to GMOs and toxic pesticides.)
•Cut the use of toxic chemicals in your house and on your lawn, and use only organic, all-natural forms of pest control.
•Better yet, get rid of your lawn altogether and plant a garden or other natural habitat. Lawns offer very little benefit for the environment. Both flower and vegetable gardens provide excellent natural honeybee habitats.
•Become an amateur beekeeper. Having a hive in your garden requires only about an hour of your time per week, benefits your local ecosystem, and you can enjoy your own honey! Worldofbeekeping.com,7 and beekeeping.org8 are but two websites that can help you get started.

If you are interested in more information about bee preservation, the following organizations are a good place to start.
•Pesticide Action Network Bee Campaign9
•The Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees10
•American Beekeeping Federation11
•Help the Honey Bees12

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