CURE CANCER 80- Don

Modern life is making Americans constipated

2017-08-23T07:54:00.002-04:00

Modern life is making Americans constipated: Western diets and desk jobs are slowing down everyone's

bowel movements

At least 16% of Americans - including a third of people over 60 - experience chronic constipation
The number of people admitted to hospitals has more than doubled since 1997
It can have major complications including anal fissures and hemorrhoids when not treated
The huge uptick can be linked to the high-fat Western diet and lack of fiber
It can also be linked to Americans' sedentary lifestyles and lack of exercise

By Abigail Miller For Dailymail.com PUBLISHED: 16:47 EDT, 22 August 2017 |

The American lifestyle is making more people constipated than ever.

For many the condition is just an aggravation, but to others it's daily agony that in some cases can be dangerous and deadly.A recent survey conducted by the American
Gastroenterological Association shows that 16% of Americans - including one third of people over 60 - experience chronic constipation. Constipation is defined as an individual passing fewer than three stools a week and training to have bowel movement to a point as though there is a noticeable blockage. It can be considered chronic when individuals experience symptoms multiple times in a three month period. A recent survey shows that 16% of Americans and one third of people over 60 experience chronic constipation, and that it can be linked directly to the American lifestyle and Western diet (stock image)

THE WESTERN DIET EXPLAINED

The Western diet is loosely defined as one full of fatty and sugary foods, such as burgers, fries and soda.

People often eat foods that are high in

Saturated fats
Red meats
'Empty' carbohydrates
Junk Food

And low in

Fresh fruits and vegetables
Whole Grains
Seafood
Poultry

Health effects have been linked to things such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, colorectal cancer and dementia.

A study conducted at Harvard Medical School shows that the number of people being admitted to the hospital primarily for constipation has more than doubled since 1997. In the US there are more than 700,000 emergency department trips every year due to the condition.

Dr David Dunkin, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Mount Sinai in New York, told Daily Mail Online that when chronic, constipation can have major complications including swollen veins and torn skin.

Swollen veins can often result in hemorrhoids in older adults that can cause discomfort and bleeding.

And when untreated he explained it can also cause an accumulation of hardened stool in the intestines, or a rectal prolapse, meaning that a bit of the intestine protrudes from the anus.

When that happens it often requires surgery.

Dr Dunkin also said that occasionally the accumulation of hardened stool can cause encopresis, which means that impaction is so severe it causes an overflow of leaking fecal matter. This happens most often in constipated children.

'And occasionally children are so constipated that they aren't eating enough food and so they aren't growing as well. It's not that common but it does happen and can be serious,' he said.

The huge uptick in the United States has resulted in billions of dollars spent by individuals both out of pocket and in taxes on a problem that can often be fixed by simple lifestyle adjustments.The Western diet, which is full of processed high-fat foods, has contributed significantly to the epidemic.

'Most constipation is caused when people are eating a lot of processed foods and not enough fibers,' Dr Dunkin said.

'With kids you see that they are sometimes just picky eaters and need to be taught how to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their diet, but it happens in adults too.'

The average person eats significantly less fiber and drinks much less fluid than they should, and both things are essential for bowel movement.

UNEXPECTED REASONS WHY AN INDIVIDUAL MIGHT BE BLOATED

1. Texting and eating

Aerophagia - or swallowing air - is becoming more common and causing people to feel bloated.

As Dr Chuktan explains, more people are texting while they are eating than ever, and swallowing air is common when people aren't eating mindfully.

2. Depression

Low serotonin levels in the gut is linked to depression, which can cause constipation and bloating.

Additionally, it is a common side effect of many of the drugs used to treat the disease.

3. Dehydration

When people aren't drinking enough water, are taking antihistamines or are spending too much time in air conditioning, it can impact their digestion.

That happens because intestines use their lubrication, causing the digestion to slow down.

4. Appendectomies

People who have their appendix out as a kid are more prone to bloating later in life.

That's because the appendix provides beneficial gut bacteria.

Without that bacteria it's more difficult for people to digest their food, making them bloated.

5. Skipping meals

Guts become more inactive if there are long periods of nothing moving through the gut.

That's the same reason that bloating and constipation are common in individuals with eating disorders.

6. Hormone imbalances

Estrogen dominance in women can be linked to bloating.

One of the most common causes of estrogen dominance is artificial hormones, which can come from things like the birth control pill.

7. Taking pain medicine directly after exercising

Certain pain medications are very toxic to the GI tract and keep them from doing their job properly.

That is in part related to the fact that they decrease sensation in the body.

8. Sedentary workplaces

If people spend all day sitting at their desk they are more likely to be bloated.

That's because the lack of movement causes the GI tract to move more slowly.

9. Stress

When people are stressed blood flow is shunted away from the digestive tract and to other muscles in the body.

That can slow down gut movement and impact the pH, enzyme and acid secretion of the digestive tract.

Information from Well and Good

New York City dietitian and nutritionist Limor Baum told Daily Mail Online she sees people in her office frequently who are suffering from constipation and other related issues, such as bloating and diarrhea.

'American diets are often processed and low in fiber which is hurting people,' she explained.

'Even people who are eating a lot of fiber are eating this processed different kind of fiber that isn't the same as the natural stuff and can actually create more problems.'

She said that people are replacing things like legumes, beans, brown rice and strawberries that they should be eating with processed things that are labelled as healthy but have little nutritional value.

Even things like high fiber cereal can cause more problems, she explained.

Another dietitian and nutritionist Karen Ansel, author of Healing Superfoods for Anti-aging: Stay Younger, Live Longer explained how that works.

'Our diets filled with highly processed foods that are stripped of fiber that pull fluids into the gut to keep things moving smoothly,' she said.

'Eating too many processed foods in place of fiber-rich foods also has another downside. It reduces the growth of good gut bacteria that nourish the colon and promote healthy digestion, causing the gut to become sluggish.'

Speaking about fad diets that are meant to help people lose weight and improve health, Baum said that in the long run they do more harm than good.

'A lot of people do these low-carb high protein diets and are completely cutting out all those good fibrous carbs that help with gut health and digestion,' Baum said.

'Healthy carbohydrates are a really important part of someone's diet.'

Ansel also added that popular probiotics from foods such yogurt and kefir do encourage beneficial bacteria, but that it's not as necessary as people promoting these trendy products might have you believe.

Kefir is a fermented milk drink that is said to promote healthy digestion.

'Fiber-rich foods play a key role as well as they are the preferred food source of gut good bacteria,' she said.

'So while probiotics are the good bacteria that keep the colon happy, many kinds of fiber are like the fertilizer that helps them grow.

'By feeding these beneficial bacteria a steady supply of food you can help them thrive and keep things moving digestively as well.'

Even more than diet, people aren't drinking enough water and aren't moving around enough and it's causing them to be constipated.

That's because when people don't move around enough it causes their gastrointestinal tract to slow down as well.

'When you sit for 10 to 12 hours a day you can start to have serious issues with your digestive track, and that conglomerates with other issues like bloating and gas,' she said.

'I always tell my clients that just going on small walks can have a major impact on their bowel movements and can make them feel significantly less bloated.

'Yoga, also, is a great way to alleviate constipation and bloating. People don't always realize that because it's not high in cardio, but it makes a really positive impact.'

Dr Dunkin said that this happens to children too when they aren't active enough.

'In a lot of households families don't limit screen time and so kids and adults aren't getting the exercise required and become constipated,' he said.

'And that's linked to the obesity epidemic in America too. They are both related to the unhealthy diet and lack of exercise people are getting.'

Though an individual's diet and lifestyle are the most common causes of constipation, it can also be caused by other things including certain diseases and opioid use.

Using opioid pain killers can cause constipation because of the way they impact movement in the intestine that is critical to digestion. They also reduce digestive secretions and decrease the urge to use the bathroom.

Dark Chocolate Can Reduce Heart Attack Risks and Many Other Benefits

2017-08-16T07:18:00.001-04:00

Dark Chocolate Reduces Heart Attack Clotting Risk

Dark chocolate has been shown to be pretty good for you across multiple studies. Now a new study adds another neat effect ̶ a reduction in the type of clotting caused by emotional stress responsible for the Monday morning heart attack. This is the observation that men under stress tend to clot more which can lead to an obstructed artery in the heart.

Dark chocolate contains flavinoids, which are thought to be a type of super food compound. To date, the resume of dark chocolate in health studies is pretty wide and deep. For example, a trio of heart studies last year suggested that dark chocolate could help patients with blocked leg arteries walk and reduced the stiffness of the artery wall in patients with high blood pressure. Other studies have shown that dark chocolate is as good as cholesterol lowering statin drugs in reducing heart attack risk.

The new study looked at more than sixty men who were given either flavinoid rich dark chocolate or a special placebo chocolate with no flavinoid content. Two hours after they ate the chocolate, the men were given stressful tasks like public speaking and mental arithmetic while their blood clotting was measured. This type of emotionally induced blot clotting in men is thought to be at the “heart” of why men get big heart attacks in stressful situations like work. The results? The real chocolate group with flavinoids had a significant reduction in clotting tests with stress compared to the men that ate the placebo chocolate. This reduction was also directly related to flavinoid levels in the blood.

The upshot? Can eating dark chocolate prevent heart attacks just like the side effect laden statin drugs? Other studies have shown promise. This study just adds more scientific fuel to the fire that adding a square or two of dark chocolate to your baby aspirin or red wine may put a dent in your cardiac risk!

What Are the Health Benefits of Aronia (Chokeberries)?

2017-08-07T06:30:00.002-04:00

What Are the Health Benefits of Aronia (Chokeberries)?

Aug. 7, 2017

Story at-a-glance

Native to North America, aronia berries had a long history of helping to keep Native American tribes alive for centuries due to the berries’ abundance and powerful nutritional properties
Fiber is one of their greatest contributions to health because it helps slough old food particles from your colon as they move through, effectively serving as a cancer-protective agent
Aronia berries are rich in antioxidant polyphenols, a type of micronutrient that may help prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease and decrease inflammation linked to other serious diseases

Dr. Mercola

In today's growing consciousness of health and well-being, more people are paying attention to the foods they put in their bodies. As such, aronia berries, with the traditional moniker chokeberries, are emerging on the scene. It's not surprising, really, when you look at all the antioxidants and nutrition-rich compounds packed in each little bright blue berry, which looks like a cross between a small Concord grape and either a blueberry or cranberry, depending on the variety.

They grow in dense clusters and have a mouth-wateringly tart, as well as unique, flavor — hence the name chokeberry. The berries grow on small, deciduous shrubs in the colder regions of North America. They belong to the Rosaceae family and have the botanical name Aronia melanocarpa. Red chokeberries are Aronia arbutifolia. Nutrition and You calls them "tiny, wild, subarctic berries" and notes:

"(The) fruits (have) relatively thick, pigmented skin in pendulous clusters. Red berries are sweeter than black varieties, while the latter are slightly bitter in taste. However, black and blue color berries are rather rich sources [of the] anthocyanin class of pigment antioxidants."1

Fresh aronia berries can be used in many of the same ways other berries are, including in jam, yogurt, wine and numerous desserts. Dried aronia berries are sold in many health food stores as a healthy snack. You can add them to your DIY trail mix and other foods if you want to "up" your nutrient quotient. The dried berries can also be infused with boiling water and steeped to make an antioxidant-rich herbal tea.

When you eat these and other foods containing chokeberries, you arm yourself with many powerful vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, C and E, folate and such minerals as potassium, iron and manganese. Then there are the antioxidants and a host of phytonutrients packed in these little berries.

What's the Big Deal About Antioxidants?

As mentioned, chokeberries come with several types of powerful antioxidants; in fact, they have the highest antioxidant capacity among other berries and any other fruit.2 Part of the significance of antioxidants is their ability to protect your body's cells from the damaging effects of oxidation. Clinical studies indicate that eating berries, including aronia berries, on a regular basis helps fight neurological diseases, cancer, aging, inflammation, diabetes and bacterial infections.

One of the ways it accomplishes this is the antioxidant protection that can support overall health as they help eradicate free radicals in your bloodstream, organs and tissues that could otherwise cause healthy cells to mutate, Organic Facts explains.3 According to Aronia Berry News,4 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces) of aronia berries have an ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) value of just over 16,000. ORAC is a lab test5 that attempts to quantify the total antioxidant capacity in foods.

This is significant information for those who understand the toxins floating around in the air via pollution, in foods, gardens and foods sprayed with pesticides, chemically enhanced cleaning products, nonstick coating in cookware and many other ways disease-causing substances enter your body and increase your free-radical load. Heal With Food notes:

"Antioxidants are believed to protect against many degenerative diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, and to slow down aging in general. They are also a crucial component of anti-wrinkle diets as they can help protect your skin from the harmful effects of environmental pollutants, tobacco smoke, the sun's ultraviolet radiation and other factors that cause your body to produce free radicals."6

Black aronia berries, especially, contain some of the highest phenolic flavonoid phytochemicals, called anthocyanins, in nature. More specifically, 100 grams of fresh berries contain about 1,480 milligrams (mg) of anthocyanins. The amount of proanthocyanidins (the colorless variety of anthocyanin7) is more like 664 mg per 100 grams.

Scientists have spent a great deal of time scrutinizing the health impacts aronia berries may have due to their deep purple hue, which often offers a clue to a plant-based food's anthocyanin — and therefore antioxidant — content, known to have very impressive cancer-protective attributes. You see them in foods like cranberries, blueberries, grapes, red cabbage, plums, eggplants, blackberries, cherries, strawberries, purple asparagus and even radishes.8

More Ways Aronia Berries Can Change Your Health for the Better

According to Organic Facts,9 some of the more prominent and powerful elements in chokeberries include epicatechin, quercetin, caffeic acid, carotenes, malvidin, lutein and zeaxanthin. Nutrition and You tallies even more compounds to include such as cyanidin-3-galactoside, peonidin, delphinidin, petunidin, pelargonidin and caffeic acid.10 Aronia Berry News reports:

"Aronia berries are indeed some of nature's best health supplements and the health benefits of this 'superberry' seem endless — in addition to the above mentioned — inhibit the development of blood clots and the early process of atherosclerosis. Aronia berries can help improve your memory as well!"11

The same site lists a number of other ways eating aronia berries can improve your health. Each one of the significant health benefits below is directly related to one of the berry's many phytonutrients:

Anticancer, especially colon cancer	Helps prevent macular degeneration and cataracts due to zeaxanthin's photo-filtering effects on UV rays
Improves circulation / strengthens blood vessels	Supports urinary tract health and helps prevent urinary tract infections (UTIs)
Balances your blood pressure	Helps with digestion (gastroprotective)
Prevents and treats diabetes as the fiber increases insulin regulation	Improves the appearance of your skin and combats aging
Fights off viruses	Helps control your weight
Helps prevent constipation as well as diarrhea	Improves gut health by promoting good bacteria
Anti-inflammatory	Strengthens your heart due to high potassium content
Boosts your immune system and collagen production	Reduces oxidative stress in your brain / fights dementia

Cancer-Protective Aspects of Aronia Berries

In addition, Heal With Food calls aronia berries a "gut health-promoting superfood" because of all the fiber they contain. Just 3.5 ounces provides 16.9 grams of fiber! One way fiber differs from other macro-nutrients such as proteins, carbs and fats is that fiber is not digested, but instead stays somewhat intact and serves to "push through" foods in your colon that may be hanging around, slowing down progress and, potentially, causing cancer.

Aronia berries can legitimately call themselves cancer protective for this very reason, as fiber passes along other health benefits besides healthy bowel movements, including overall improved bowel health, optimized cholesterol, possible weight loss and reduced diabetes risk. Fox News noted that the many antibacterial, antiviral and antidiabetic agents in aronia berries serve to:

"Fight the formation of arterial plaque … and … protect the liver against a host of insults and toxins. In our ever-increasingly diabetic society, aronia's compounds help to lower blood sugar and improve the body's own natural production of insulin.

Several of the compounds in aronia are natural cancer fighters, and protect against the development of tumors of the bladder, breasts, colon, lungs, ovaries and skin. In addition, these compounds fight Crohn's disease, inhibit HIV, reduce uncomfortable symptoms of PMS and fight herpes. Preliminary studies have also shown that aronia may prove helpful in slowing the growth of glioblastoma — a form of fatal brain cancer."12

Studies on the Health-Protective Potency of Aronia Berries

Scientists from the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland investigated the potency of fruits with high amounts of anthocyanins, namely grapes, bilberries and black aronia berries, to test their chemopreventive activity against colon cancer. While all three extracts inhibited cancer cell growth, the chokeberry had the most potent effects.13

An arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), says chokeberries are rich in polyphenols, a type of micronutrient that may prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Further, "Pre-clinical and clinical evidence suggest that consuming aronia berries may mitigate inflammation associated with chronic disease."14 In animal studies, chemically induced esophageal cancer was decreased by between 30 percent and 60 percent, and the incidence of colon cancer by 80 percent, when exposed to anthocyanin extracts, and without impacting healthy cells.15 Med Daily notes:

"Their tumor suppression activity works at a different level of tumor activity; at initiation and promotion/progression stages of tumor development. They can be a practical research tool and hold a promising therapeutic resource since they contain the highest amount of anthocyanins among native North American berries."16

Additionally, aronia berries played a crucial role in the survival of Native American tribes such as the Potawatomi in the area between Milwaukee, Detroit and Northern Indiana, especially in fighting colds and weakened immune systems, due to the berries' high vitamin C content. But that's not all. The United Tribes Technical College investigated the importance of berries in traditional diets and reported:

"Study continues on the phytochemical properties of chokeberries, cranberries, juneberries, wild grapes, wild raspberries, etc., which could reduce the incidence of Type 2 diabetes and chronic diseases in tribal communities."17

For instance, scientists in Bulgaria found extracts of chokeberries to exert antiviral and antibacterial activity against type A influenza virus, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli (E. coli).

Words of Caution — and Encouragement — Regarding Chokeberries

Aronia berries contain oxalic acid, a naturally occurring substance often found in fruits and vegetables, which may crystalize and encourage the development of urinary tract oxalate stones. Anyone with a history of oxalate stones should limit their intake and always drink adequate amounts of water to avoid an uncomfortable onset. Oxalic acid may also interfere with the absorption of magnesium, calcium and other minerals.

But here's the good news: As a viable health food and fitness product, aronia berries are already surging into the marketplace, and some have received coveted USDA Organic certification, Fox News reports.

In addition, unlike strawberries (at the top of the Dirty Dozen list of most heavily sprayed produce) and many other fruits, aronia berries are naturally pest resistant, so they don't require a lot of chemicals so prevalent in farming today. Still, if you look for aronia berries at your local grocery or health food store, ideally look for the organic brands.

TILAPIA (Farm Raised) IS BAD BEWARE

2017-07-09T06:48:00.000-04:00

This is why you need to STOP eating Tilapia -- ASAP

Eating seafood is a great way to get vital nutrients and vitamins. Tilapia is the most popular farmed fish in America because of its affordability. But health experts are warning consumers to stay as far away as possible from Tilapia. Tilapia Contains Few Nutrients: Researchers from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine released a report on the omega-3 fatty acid content in popular fish. Tilapia scored far lower than most other fish on the list. Omega-3 fatty acids give fish most of their benefits, including Alzheimer’s risk reduction. Tilapia contains a TON of omega-6 fatty acids, which are terrible for you. The quantity of omega-6 in tilapia is higher than a hamburger or bacon.

Tilapia Could Cause Alzheimer’s: One of the omega-6 fatty acids in tilapia goes by the name of arachidonic acid – a compound which significantly increases the type of inflammatory damage that precedes Alzheimer’s. So while eating healthy fish like mackerel, halibut and sardines would reduce your risk of developing Alzheimer’s, this fish actually increases it.

Most Tilapia Is Farmed: Tilapia is the second most commonly farmed fish in the world. This is largely due to the fish’s hardiness; it can eat just about anything. Good for farmers, bad for consumers. It means they don’t have to spend lots of money on fish food as they would were they raising salmon.Farmers commonly feed the fish chicken and pig poop. The fish are also stuffed with antibiotics and genetically modified to grow faster.

Tilapia May Cause Cancer: Tilapia can carry up to 10 times the amount of carcinogens as other fish. This is because of the food the farmers feed the fish – poop, pesticides and industrial-grade chemicals. One toxic chemical researchers have found in the fish is dioxin, which is linked to the development and progression of cancer.

What’s more, your body doesn’t actually flush out dioxin for a whopping 7-11 years. Make sure the SHARE this your friends that MAY eat tilapia!

Major progress accomplished in past several years with STEM CELLS

2017-07-04T06:20:00.002-04:00

Canadian clinics begin offering stem-cell treatments experts call unproven, possibly unsafe

Clinics are treating arthritis, joint injuries, disc problems and even skin conditions with stem cells typically taken from patients’ fat tissue or bone marrow

Stem cell research Getty Images Tom Blackwell July 3, 2017

The pain, she recalls now, “took my breath away,” and played havoc with the avid hiker’s favourite pastime.

In desperation, Munsie turned to a Toronto-area clinic that provides a treatment many experts consider still experimental, unproven and of questionable safety.

The 63-year-old says the stem cells she received at Regenervate Medical Injection Therapy 18 months ago were transformational, all but eliminating the debilitating soreness and even allowing her to hike Argentina’s Patagonia mountains two months ago.

“For me it’s been a life saver,” Munsie says. “I’ve been able to do it all again … I don’t have any of that pain, at all.” The arthritis in Maureen Munsie’s ankles was so intense until barely a year ago, she literally had to crawl on hands and knees to get upstairs.

Maureen Munsie received a stem-cell treatment in Toronto that she says has cured her debilitating arthritis pain Don Thompson

Canadians drawn to the healing promise of stem cells have for years travelled outside the country to such places as Mexico, China or Arizona, taking part in a dubious form of medical tourism.

But Regenervate is one of a handful of clinics in Canada that have begun offering injections of stem cells, satisfying growing demand but raising questions about whether a medical idea with huge potential is ready for routine patient care.

Especially when those patients can pay thousands of dollars for the service.

Clinics in Ontario and Alberta are treating arthritis, joint injuries, disc problems and even skin conditions with stem cells typically taken from patients’ fat tissue or bone marrow.

The underlying idea is compelling: stem cells can “differentiate” or transform into many other types of cell, a unique quality that evidence suggests allows them to grow or “regenerate” tissue damaged by disease or injury.

Researchers – including hundreds in Canada alone — are examining stem-cell treatments for everything from ailing hearts to severed spinal cords.

With few exceptions, however, the concept is still being studied in the lab or in human trials; virtually none of the treatments have been definitively proven effective by science — or approved by regulators like Health Canada.

The fact that Canadian clinics are now offering stem-cell treatments commercially is concerning on a number of levels, not least because of safety issues, says Ubaka Ogbogu, a health law professor at the University of Alberta.

Three U.S. women were blinded after receiving stem-cell injections in their eyes, while other American patients have developed bony masses or tumours at injection sites, Ogbogu said.

“Stem cells have to be controlled to act exactly the way you want them to act, and that’s why the research takes time,” he said. “It is simply wrong for these clinics to take a proof of concept and run with it.” Ogbogu says Health Canada must crack down on the burgeoning industry but says the regulator has so far been conspicuous by its inaction. Other experts say the procedures provided here — typically for joint pain — are likely relatively safe, but still warn that care must be taken that the stem cells do not develop into the wrong type of tissue, or at the wrong place.

Alberta Health Services convened a workshop on the issue late last year, concluding there is an urgent need to develop a certification system for cell preparation and delivery to avoid “spontaneous transformation of (stem cells) into unwanted tissue.”

But one of the pioneers of the service in Canada says there’s no empirical evidence that such growths can develop, and suggests the treatment’s only real risk – as with an invasive procedure – is infection.

Meanwhile, patients at Regenervate have enjoyed impressive outcomes after paying fees from $750 to $3,900, says Dr. Douglas Stoddard, the clinic’s medical director. About 80 per cent report less pain, stiffness and weakness within a few months of getting their stem-cell injection, he said. “I believe medical progress is not just limited to the laboratory and randomized double-blind trials,” Stoddard said. “A lot of progress starts in the clinic, dealing with patients … You see something works, you see something has merit, and then it’s usually the scientists that seem to catch up later.”

The Orthopedic Sport Institute in Collingwood, Ont., the Central Alberta Pain and Rehabilitation Institute and Cleveland Clinic in Toronto all advertise similar stem-cell treatments for orthopedic problems.

Edmonton’s Regen Clinic says it plans to start doing so this fall.

Ottawa’s Innovo says it also treats a range of back conditions with injections between the vertebrae, and uses stem cells to alleviate nerve damage.

Orthopedic Sport says its doctor focuses on “FDA and Health Canada approved stem-cell injection therapy for patient care.”

In fact, no treatment of the sort the clinics here provide has ever been authorized. Health Canada says the vast majority of stem-cell therapies would constitute a drug and therefore need to be authorized after a clinical trial or new drug submission. A number of stem-cell trials are underway, but only one treatment — Prochymal — has been approved, said department spokesman Eric Morrissette. Designed to combat “graft-versus-host disease” — where bone marrow transplants for treating cancer essentially attack the patient’s body — it’s unlike any of the services the stem-cell providers here offer.

But as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration aggressively pursues the hundreds of clinics in America, Health Canada says only that it’s committed to addressing complaints it receives.

It “will take action based on the risk posed to the general public,” said Morrissette, who encouraged people to pass on to the department information about possible “non-compliant” products.

Stoddard said the injections his clinics provide are made up of “minimally manipulated” tissue from patients’ own bodies and any attempt to crack down would be “regulation for the sake of regulation.”

But academic experts remain skeptical about the effectiveness of the treatments.

Scientific evidence suggests the injections may help alleviate joint pain temporarily, but probably just because of anti-inflammatory secretions from the cells – not regeneration, said Dr. David Hart, an orthopedic surgery professor at the University of Calgary who headed the Alberta workshop. “There’s a need for understanding what’s going on here and there’s a need for regulation,” he said. Most of the clinics say they use a centrifuge to concentrate the stem cells after removing them from patients’ fat tissue or bone marrow. But it’s unclear if the clinics even know how many cells they are eventually injecting into patients, says Jeff Biernaskie, a stem-cell scientist at the University of Calgary.

Munsie, on the other hand, has no doubts about the value of her own treatment, even with a $3,000 price tag. The procedure — from extraction of fat tissue in her behind to the injection of cells into her ankles — took barely over an hour. Within three months, the retired massage therapist from north of Toronto says she could walk her dogs again. Last week, she was hiking near Banff.

“I’m a real believer in it, and the possibility of stem cells,” says Munsie. “I just think ‘Wow, if we can heal with our own body, it’s pretty amazing.’ ”

tblackwell@nationalpost.com

Can We Delay Dementia? Brain Scavenger Cells May Hold the Key

2017-06-19T11:58:00.002-04:00

Can We Delay Dementia? Brain Scavenger Cells May Hold the Key

The body’s clean up crew is made up of scavenger cells called phagocytes. Phagein means “to devour” and -cyte means “cell.” And phagocytes are indeed like billions of little vultures, scarfing down the carcasses of other dead, or dying, cells and consuming foreign materials that shouldn’t be there, like plaque, bacteria, and other infections. In our brain, these scavenger cells are called microglia, and a new study suggests that we may be able to delay dementia via these cells.

Microglial Cells Further Defined

Microglial cells are the primary way our immune system defends our brain and central nervous system. They scavenge by patrolling their specific zones in the brain and scanning for any potential threat. When an injury happens or an invader arrives, molecules are signaled that create an acute inflammatory response (the good inflammation), and like any good immune cells, our microglials jump into action and attempt to neutralize the problem. Since microglial cells are phagocytes, they also devour, or phagocytose, all cell, bacteria, and other debris. The inflammation that occurs during this process is good because it means those immune cells are on it and are trying to fix the problem.

In addition to their phagocytic properties, microglial cells can also release cytotoxins to destroy damaged or infected neurons, or brain cells. There is concern that this release of cytotoxins can lead to a mass-destruction type of effect, causing more long-term chronic inflammation, the bad inflammation, and a great deal of neural damage. With this chronic inflammation, there has been concern that microglials could actually exacerbate neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

Dementia Pathology

Dementia defines a variety of neurodegenerative diseases that affect the neurons in the brain, and these diseases typically develop slowly and progress over time. Under the umbrella of dementia, we have diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (the most common dementia), vascular dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTD), Huntington’s disease, and even traumatic encephalopathy, which is seen most commonly in pro athletes who played head-contact sports (football, boxing, wrestling, etc.).

We know dementia can be genetic, but studies have shown that there are many things that can damage or destroy our neurons in our brain that may lead to dementia or speed up its development. What can we do to delay dementia? Here are a small handful of studies showing things we can look to avoid to limit potential risk for dementia:

Studying Microglial Cells in the Brain: Can We Delay Dementia?

The new study investigated microglial cell function when gene expression is suppressed in mice. Researchers achieved this by altering the coding of the TREM2 gene. The TREM2 gene is expressed through proteins on the microglial cells and this alteration in the gene intentionally disrupted the gene’s ability to be expressed on the cell.

The result? The lack of the TREM2 gene expression kept the microglial cells from activating and moving to the locations where they were needed to clean up damaged or dead cells and other debris. This not only delayed the ability to resolve inflammation but also reduced blood flow and the metabolism of glucose, a process imperative for energy in the brain. Researchers concluded that activation of these brain phagocytes (the microglial cells) is critical to assuring proper brain functioning and that these findings could lead to new ways to boost the function of microglial cells and delay the onset of dementias, such as Alzheimer’s. More work will need to be done here.

The upshot? While other studies have also made a genetic connection to dementia, the idea that microglial cells are secreting signals that exacerbate inflammation and lead to dementia has also been a theory. However, this new study seems to show that the inability of the microglial cells to respond to the area of damage due to a genetic variant, not a direct effect of the cells themselves, could be the driving force behind the lingering inflammation, and, subsequently, the onset of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. This could be an important piece of the puzzle in the race to discover how we can delay dementia when we as a population are living longer and longer.

8 Benefits of Sardines

2017-06-07T17:59:00.000-04:00

8 Benefits of Sardines (& How to Make Them Taste Great)

Katie - Wellness Mama Leave a Comment Updated: June 7, 2017

Let me guess, you are one of two kinds of people when it comes to sardines:

You love them and eat them regularly
or you can’t stand them and don’t even know why you are reading a post about them

Statistically, it’s likely you are in the latter group, as 73% of people claim to dislike sardines. But give me 5 minutes and I might convince you to try them… and maybe even love them!

Here’s why:

Sardines are often called the healthiest fish and they are certainly one of the most budget friendly. In fact, I order sustainably caught canned sardines (from here) and we consume them regularly. Some experts call them a natural multivitamin and they are one of the few truly healthy canned portable foods.

But I get it…

They have a strong smell and a stronger taste. And they are weird and scary because they have bones and skin and you don’t want to try them. I get it, but here’s why you should anyway:

The Benefits of Sardines

Sardines are a tiny fish with a very big nutrient profile! In fact, very few other foods pack the same amount of nutrients per ounce. Liver comes pretty close, but it is often more dreaded than the humble sardine!

Real food is often more expensive than processed foods, but sardines are a notable exception! Canned sardines are one of the few super-healthy, budget-friendly portable “fast foods” out there. They also don’t carry the same mercury risk as bigger fish do.

Here are eight reasons you should learn to love them:

Source of Omega-3

Omega-3s benefit the body in many ways and are well-studied for their importance in the body. One can of sardines contains over half of the recommended daily dose of Omega-3. Sardines provide both EPA and DHA fats, which are beneficial for the brain, heart and to reduce inflammation.

Many people consume large amounts of high Omega-6 oils like vegetable oil and margarine. This may disturb the balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fats in the body and lead to a variety of problems. Experts claim that DHA and EPA are the most easily usable forms of Omega 3 for the body and consuming these from foods like sardines and other fatty fish can help correct this ratio.

Various studies show the importance of consuming enough Omega-3 to keep cholesterol levels in healthy ranges, for heart health, to support the brain and for optimal fertility and hormone balance.

Super Source of Selenium

Experts like Chris Kresser and Dr. Paul Jaminet explain the importance of selenium for thyroid and adrenal health. One theory is that too much iodine (found in processed foods) without enough selenium may be hard on the thyroid and adrenals. Selenium is also needed for glutathione production in the body.

Selenium and iodine are synergistic and occur together in most naturally occurring sources, including sardines. In fact, one can of sardines contains almost the entire RDA (recommended daily allowance) of selenium and a smaller amount of iodine. This may help the body obtain a proper balance of selenium and iodine.

Personally, I’ve found that since consuming rich food sources of selenium (like sardines and brazil nuts) and Omega-3s my thyroid symptoms are reduced.

Bioavailable Calcium & Phosphorus

Sardines (even canned ones) are great because they are one of the few animal foods that we still consume all of, including the bones and skin. While this makes some people squeamish, these “odd bits” of the fish have important vitamins and minerals, including a great dose of calcium from the bones. One can contains about 1/3 of the recommended daily amount of calcium in a highly absorbable form.

More and more people are having reactions to dairy, and consuming fish with bones is one of the ways to get enough calcium without consuming dairy. With recent studies finding some scary results of supplementing with calcium, sardines are a safe food-based way to get enough.

Phosphorus is an important mineral for bone and tooth health as well and difficult to find in food sources. Sardines are one of the best natural food sources, which is why they are often recommended for healthy skin, teeth and bones.

Vitamin D Boost

The vast majority of us are Vitamin D deficient. And this number is even more drastic if we consider the optimal levels of Vitamin D and not just the minimum! It is one of the reasons that experts are calling for a change to the recommendation to avoid the sun! Some have even gone so far as to claim that we have a sun deficiency and that widespread vitamin D deficiency is contributing to various cancers and health problems.

One can of sardines contains almost half of the daily recommended amount of Vitamin D.

High in Protein

Sardines are a great protein choice. One 3 ounce can provides 23 grams of protein and a big dose of vitamins. These tiny fish are considered a very “efficient food” since they contain a very high amount of vitamins, protein and Omega-3 for the amount of calories they contain.

Low in Mercury and Other Metals

Heavy metal contamination is an understandable concern with consuming fish. Especially in the wake of recent contamination, many people are concerned about eating fish. Thankfully, sardines are considered one of the safest fish to consume due to their small size.

Sardines eat plankton and are at the bottom of the ocean food chain. This means that they contain much less mercury and other heavy metals than larger fish such as tuna.

Sustainable

With the rise of farmed fish and overfishing, sustainability is also a problem. Thankfully, sardines are considered one of the most sustainable fish available. They are still abundant in the oceans and don’t show the same signs of deletion that many species are experiencing.

Personally, I make sure to stick to sustainably caught seafood (we get ours here) and canned sardines.

Budget Friendly

Real food costs more than the subsidized processed foods on grocery store shelves. Sardines are one of the few amazing nutrient-dense foods that won’t break the bank. I’ve been ordering sustainably caught wild sardines for under $2 a can (from here) and we use them all the time. They can substitute for canned tuna in almost every recipe. We make “tuna” salad with sardines for lunch at least once or twice a week. I also love them on top of a Caesar salad with homemade dressing.

How to Choose Good Sardines

If you’re convinced enough about the benefits to give them a try, make sure to find a high-quality source. If you’re new to the taste, I recommend starting with canned sardines in olive oil instead of water. The oil seems to help improve the taste for many people.

Most grocery stores carry canned sardines on the same aisle with tuna and other canned fish. I typically order them in bulk once a month from here since they are cheaper than the ones our local store carries and specify that they are from a sustainable source. Look for sardines in a BPA free can.

Ways to Eat Sardines (Without Gagging)

So, you have some sardines. You know they are healthy. Yet, that can stares back at you like a menacing foe! The most common way to consume them is on saltine crackers. If you avoid grains like I do, or just aren’t a fan of the refined flour, there are many other delicious ways to eat them. They are a little bit of an acquired taste, but you can learn to love them. Promise!

If you’re having a hard time learning to actually *like* them, try these ideas:

On healthier crackers with a little bit of cheese
Straight out of the can with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice
On a Caesar salad with homemade dressing
In place of tuna in “tuna salad” with homemade mayo (or this avocado oil mayo), mustard and pickles
With cottage cheese and hot sauce
Scrambled into eggs and topped with hollandaise sauce
Mashed into half of an avocado with a squeeze of fresh lemon
Mix canned sardines with some chopped red onions and olives
Fisherman’s eggs- bake sardines with onions, eggs and spices

Sardine Cautions

As one of the lowest contamination sources of seafood, sardines don’t carry the same risk many fish do. Recent recommendations even list them as a safe food for pregnant women when consumed 1-2 times per week. They are also high in purines, so those with gout or other disorders should check with a doctor before consuming sources of purines.

Bottom Line: Grab a Fork!

Congrats if you made it this far! Did I convince you to give sardines a try?

These nutrient-packed little fish are one of the most budget-friendly real foods. They taste delicious when prepared correctly and your body will love the nutrient boost. Take a deep breath and give them a try. You may even learn to love them!

Stem Cell Therapy Can Help Repair and Regenerate Your Body

2017-06-04T17:24:00.003-04:00

How Stem Cell Therapy Can Help Repair and Regenerate Your Body

June 04, 2017 • 111,137 views
Disponible en Español

Click HERE to watch the full interview!

Download Interview Transcript

Story at-a-glance

The primary purpose of stem cells is to maintain, heal and regenerate tissue wherever they are in your body. This is a continuous process that occurs throughout your life
Adult stem cells can be isolated and replicated from your own body fat, and then injected back into an area that needs healing or regeneration. Stem cells can be stored for future use in special stem cell storage banks
Clinical indications include but are not limited to joint and tissue injuries, herniated and bulging discs, diabetes, organ damage, autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases and traumatic brain injuries

By Dr. Mercola

Kristin Comella,1 named No. 1 on the Academy of Regenerative Practices list of Top 10 stem cell innovators, has been a stem cell researcher for nearly two decades. In this interview, she discusses the enormous regenerative potential of stem cell therapy.

Comella, who holds degrees in chemical and biomedical engineering, began working with stem cells in graduate school, using a technique called magnetic cell sorting, which involves tagging nanoparticle magnets onto cells and then separating the cells based on the proteins they express.

“What we’ve learned over the years is that stem cells express different proteins than other kinds of cells in your body,” she explains. “That began my career in the field of stem cells.”

Stem Cells for Tissue Regeneration

Over the years, she’s worked for several different companies. At a start-up in Maryland, she used stem cells from bone marrow (culture-expanded mesenchymal stem cells) for meniscus regeneration. By placing these cells directly into the knee joint, you can repair or even grow back a damaged meniscus.

For a time, she also headed up the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facility at Tulane University, which is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) facility located at the Tulane Center for Gene Therapy. There, her work revolved around using bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for spinal cord regeneration.

For the past 13 years, she’s worked for U.S. Stem Cell, a company founded in 1999. The company began bringing stem cells for cardiac care to the public. Muscle-derived stem cells can be used to repair heart damage associated with heart attacks. “Our company treated our first patient in 2001. Since that time, we’ve treated over 7,000 patients. We began looking at other indications about a decade ago. We also began looking at stem cells from a variety of different sources,” she says.

Stem Cells 101

The primary purpose of stem cells is to maintain, heal and regenerate tissues wherever they reside in your body. This is a continuous process that occurs inside your body throughout your life. If you didn’t have stem cells, your lifespan would be about an hour, because there would be nothing to replace exhausted cells or damaged tissue. In addition, any time your body is exposed to any sort of toxin, the inflammatory process causes stem cells to swarm the area to repair the damage.

“As an example, you might have gone to the gym this morning [and] … done some squats. As a result of that, you would get tiny tears inside the muscle. The stem cells that reside beneath the muscle would come out and repair all those tears.

The reason that, if you continuously go to the gym, you would start to build new muscle, is because those stem cells, hard at work underneath your muscle, are helping to repair and build that new muscle. This would apply to all of the tissues inside your body,” Comella explains.

Nourishing and Protecting Your Stem Cells Benefits Your Health

While it’s easy to think of stem cell therapy as a magic bullet, it would be wise to implement strategies that nourish and thereby help optimize the stem cells you already have in your body. As noted by Comella:

“You have to create an appropriate environment for these cells to function in. If you are putting garbage into your body and you’re constantly burdening your body with toxins, your stem cells are getting too distracted trying to fight off those toxins. By creating an appropriate environment, optimizing your diet and reducing exposure to toxins, that will allow the stem cells that we’re putting in to really home in and focus on the true issue that we’re trying to treat.

The other thing we’ve discovered over the years is that [stem cell therapy] is not the type of thing where you take one dose and you’re cured forever. Your tissues are constantly getting damaged … You’re going to have to repeat-dose and use those stem cells to your advantage.

When you think about a lizard that loses its tail, it takes two years to grow back the tail. Why would we put unrealistic expectations on the stem cells that we’re trying to apply to repair or replace damaged tissue? This is a very slow process. This is something that will occur over months and may require repeat dosing.”

Stem Cell Sources

Historically, stem cells were isolated from bone marrow, and have been used for bone marrow transplants for cancer patients since the 1930s. However, you can get stem cells from just about any tissue in your body, as every tissue contains stem cells.

Your bone marrow actually has very low amounts of mesenchymal stem cells, which are now believed to be the most important, from a therapeutic perspective. Mesenchymal stem cells help trigger an immunomodulatory response or a paracrine effect, which means they send signals out to the rest of your body, calling cells to the area to help promote healing.

“What we’ve discovered in more recent years is that a more plentiful source of stem cells is actually your fat tissue. [Body] fat can contain up to 500 times more cells than your bone marrow, as far as these mesenchymal type stem cells go.

One thing that’s also critically important when you’re talking about isolating the cells is the number of other cells that are going to be part of that population. When you’re isolating a bone marrow sample, this actually is very high in white blood cells, which are pro-inflammatory.”

White blood cells are part of your immune response. When an injury occurs, or a foreign body enters your system, white blood cells will attack. Unfortunately, white blood cells do not discriminate, and can create quite a bit of damage as they clean the area out.

The Benefits of Isolating Stem Cells From Fat

Stem cells, in particular your mesenchymal cells, quiet down the white blood cells and then start the regeneration phase, which leads to new tissue. Bone marrow tends to be very high in white blood cells and low in the mesenchymal cells. Isolating stem cells from fat tissue is preferred not only because it’s easier on the patient, but fat also contains a higher population of mesenchymal cells and fewer white blood cells.

“The benefit also of isolating [stem cells from] fat is that it’s a relatively simple procedure. There’s typically no shortage of fat tissue, especially in Americans,” Comella says. “[Also], as you age, your bone marrow declines with regards to the number of cells in it, whereas the fat tissue maintains a pretty high number of stem cells, even in older individuals.

We can successfully harvest fat off of just about anyone, regardless of their age or how thin they are. The procedure is done under local [anesthesia], meaning that the patient stays awake. They don’t have to go under general anesthesia. We can harvest as few as 15 cubic centimeters of fat, which is a very small amount of fat, and still get a very high number of stem cells.”

Cost-Benefit Analysis

A stem cell procedure can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on what you’re having done, and rarely if ever will insurance cover it. Still, when you compare it to the cost of long-term medications or the out-of-pocket cost of getting a knee replacement, stem cell therapy may still be a less expensive alternative. Also, a single extraction will typically yield enough stem cells for 20 to 25 future treatments, should you decide to store your stem cells for future need.

“I think it’s accessible for patients,” Comella says. “It’s an out-patient procedure. You plan to be in clinic for about two hours; no real limitations afterwards, just no submerging in water, no alcohol, no smoking for a week. But other than that, patients can resume their normal activities and go about their regular daily lives.”

Interestingly, Comella notes that patients who eat a very healthy diet, focusing on organic and grass fed foods, have body fat that is very hearty and almost sticky, yielding high amounts of very healthy stem cells.

“We can grow much better and faster stem cells from that fat than [the fat from] somebody who eats a grain-based diet or is exposed to a lot of toxins in their diet,” she says. “Their fat tends to be very fluffy, buttery yellow. The cells that come out of that are not necessarily as good a quality. It’s just been very interesting. And of note, patients that are cigarette smokers, their fat is actually gray-tinged in color. The stem cells do not grow well at all.”

Autologous Versus Non-Autologous Stem Cell Donation

What’s been described above is what’s called an autologous donation, meaning you’re getting the stem cells from yourself. A number of companies provide non-autologous donations using cells harvested from other people, typically women, like amniotic or embryonic mesenchymal cells. This is an important distinction.

“There are now just a couple of studies that have been published comparing an autologous source, meaning cells from you own body, to an allogeneic source, meaning cells from someone else.

So far, what has been discovered is that the autologous cells, meaning your own cells, will outperform somebody else’s cells inside your body. Now, this is not fully understood at this point. It may be that the environment that your cells function in, they’re used to that environment. They recognize it. It’s the same DNA and they can function well.

However, once you culture expand and get a pure population of these mesenchymal cells — not necessarily the sample that’s coming right off of the liposuction, but a sample that has been taken to the lab and grown — those cells will not elicit an immune response if you use them in someone else. You could scientifically and medically use those in an unmatched person. However, there are some regulatory aspects of that with regards to the FDA.”

In the U.S., there are a variety of new stem cell products available, referred to as amniotic, cord blood products or placenta products, which are prepared at a tissue bank. Such facilities must be registered with the FDA, and the products must undergo additional processing.

For example, they must be morselized, or snap frozen or blended in some way. Such processing typically breaks the membrane, releasing growth factors, and the resulting products are called acellular, meaning there are no living cells remaining in the sample.

Amnio Products Versus Embyonic Stem Cells

The amniotic products available in the U.S. are not so much stem cell products as they are growth factor products. According to Comella, they can be useful in creating an immunomodulatory response, which can help to promote healing, but that still differs from the living stem cell procedures that can be done by either isolating cells from your fat or bone marrow. As a general rule, you don’t achieve the clinical benefits when using an amniotic product, primarily because they don’t contain living stem cells.

“I want to contrast that to what are called embryonic stem cells,” Comella adds. “The products obtained from cord blood, from women who are having babies, are not embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are when you are first bringing the egg and sperm together. Three days after that, you can isolate what is called an inner cell mass. This inner cell mass can be used to then grow cells in culture, or that inner cell mass could eventually lead to the formation of a baby.

Those are embryonic stem cells, and those are pluripotential, meaning that they have the ability to form an entire being, versus adult stem cells or stem cells that are present in amniotic tissue, [which] are multipotential, which only have the ability to form subsets of tissue.

When you’re dealing with different diseases or damaged tissue or inflammation, mostly you want to repair tissue. If somebody has damage in their knee, they don’t necessarily need embryonic cells because they don’t need a baby in their knee. They need new cartilage in their knee.”

Can Stem Cell Therapy Cause Cancer?

A common question is whether stem cells can cause overgrowth, leading to cancer or tumor formation. As noted by Comella, this is a problem associated with embryonic stem cells, which tend to grow very rapidly and can form a teratoma because of the rapid cell growth. Adult stem cells — the cells obtained from your own body — have growth inhibitions and will not form teratomas.

“The theoretical concern that has been addressed in animal models or in petri dishes is that if you take cancer cells that are growing in a dish and apply stem cells, it may make those cancer cells grow more rapidly. But this does not translate in-vivo to humans.

If there was truly an issue with applying stem cells to a patient who has cancer, we would know about it by now, because we’ve been dosing cancer patients with stem cells since the ‘30s. The safety profile is strong and there are tens of thousands of patients documented with these treatments,” Comella says.

Platelet-Rich Plasma

Another useful therapy is platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Your peripheral blood contains platelets, which act as first responders when there’s an injury. They come in and start the clotting mechanism, thereby preventing you from bleeding to death. They also give marching orders to other cells. For example, platelets can command stem cells to multiply and grow, or to differentiate and form new tissue.

These platelets also have many different growth factors associated with them, which can help to promote healing and stop inflammation. PRP involves taking a blood sample and then spinning the blood in a centrifuge to isolate the platelets. The platelet-rich plasma is then injected back into the area that is inflamed.

“One of the most common uses of platelet-rich plasma or PRP is in a joint. Now, platelets are going to be most successful in something that is rich in stem cells … [such as] an acute or a very recent injury. If you just hurt your knee, the first thing you should do is get PRP, because it’s going to help promote healing, and those platelets will attach to the surface receptors of the stem cells that are already going to the area to promote healing. It would be like putting fertilizer on your seed, which are the stem cells.

If you have something more chronic, this tends to be a stem cell-poor environment. In other words, you have osteoarthritis or you’ve got knee pain that’s 5 years old and it’s been there for a long time; just putting PRP in it would be like putting fertilizer on dirt without planting a seed first.”

Clinical Indications for Stem Cell Therapy

The beauty of stem cell therapy is that it mimics a process that is ongoing in your body all the time. Your stem cells are continuously promoting healing, and they do not have to be manipulated in any way. The stem cells naturally know how to home in on areas of inflammation and how to repair damaged tissue.

“All we’re doing is harnessing the cells from one location where they’re sitting dormant and relocating them to exactly where we want them and we need them to work,” Comella says. “Basically, anything inside your body that is inflamed, that is damaged in some way, that is lacking blood supply, the [stem] cells can successfully treat.

That means orthopedics, knee injections, shoulder injections, osteoarthritis, acute injuries, anterior cruciate ligament tears … in your back — back pain associated with degenerative disc disease or damaged tendons or ligaments, herniated and bulging discs. You can also use it in systemic issues, everything from diabetes, to cardiac, to lungs — any tissue organ inside your body that’s been damaged.

Autoimmune diseases [can also be treated]. The stem cells are naturally immunosuppressant, meaning they can help quiet down an over reactive immune system and help the immune system function in a more normal way. Neurological diseases, traumatic brain injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s. All of these have to do with tissue that’s not functioning properly. The cells can be used to address that.”

It’s quite impressive, the list of different diseases that could benefit from this intervention. That said, I want to reemphasize that this is not a magic bullet. However, you can dramatically improve the benefits of this intervention by combining it with other healthy lifestyle factors that optimize mitochondrial function, such as eating a healthy whole food diet, exercising, sleeping well, avoiding toxins and detoxifying from toxic influences.

Stem Cells for Anti-Aging

Stem cells can also be used as part of an antiaging program. Comella has used stem cells on herself for several years, and report feeling better now than she did a decade ago.

“The ability to reduce inflammation inside your body is basically making yourself live longer. Inflammation is what kills us all. It’s what makes our telomeres shrink. It’s what causes us pain and discomfort. It’s what makes the tissues start to die. The ability to dose yourself with stem cells and bring down your inflammation, which is most likely caused by any sort of toxin that you’ve been exposed to — breathing air is exposure to toxins — this is going to lengthen your lifespan.

I typically will do a dose every six to 12 months, regardless of what’s going on. If I have anything that’s bothering me, if I tweak my knee at the gym, then I absolutely will come in and do an injection in my knee. I want to keep my tissue healthy for as long as possible.

I want to stay strong. I don’t want to wait until something is wrong with me. I think that this is the future of medicine. This is what we’re going to start to see. People will begin to get their regular doses of [their own] stem cells and it’ll just be common practice.”

Banking Your Stem Cells Is an Investment in Your Future Health

Keep in mind there’s a gradual and progressive decline in the quality and the number of stem cells as you age, so if you’re considering this approach, it would be to your advantage to extract and bank your stem cells as early on as possible. U.S. Stem Cell provides a stem cell bank service, so you can store them until a later date when you might need them.

“Your stem cells are never as young as they are right now. Every minute that you live, your telomeres are shrinking. The ability to lock in the youth of your cells today can be very beneficial for you going forward, and for your health going forward. God forbid something happens. What if you have a heart attack? You’re not going to get clearance to get a mini-lipo aspirate procedure.

If you have your cells waiting in the bank, ready for you, it becomes very easy to pull a dose and do an IV delivery of cells. It’s almost criminal that we’re not doing this for every single one of our cardiac patients. This should be standard practice. We should be having every single patient bank their stem cells at a young age and have them waiting, ready and available. The technology is there. We have it. I’m not sure why this technology is not being made available to everyone,” she says.

“I think stem cell therapy is very different than traditional medicine. Stem cell therapy may actually make it so that you don’t have to be dependent on pharmaceutical medications. You can actually repair the tissue and that’s it. This is a very different way of viewing medicine.”

More Information

If you’re interested in having this procedure done, contact the U.S. Stem Cell Clinic on USStemCellClinic.com. You could either have the procedure done at their facility, or if there’s a physician in your area providing the service, you can go there. U.S. Stem Cell can help you locate a qualified doctor.

Oftentimes, practitioners will specialize in specific procedures, such as spinal procedures, or knee procedures. There’s also a veterinary division, called Vet Biologics, which offers treatment to small pets like cats and dogs, as well as horses.

“One of the things that we’ve been treating recently is traumatic brain injuries,” Comella says. “We had a woman who fell two stories and hit her head. She spent months in a coma and was not able to talk or walk or do any activities. By the time she came to us, it was two years after her injury. The best hospitals in the world told her this was her life … ‘You’re never going to be able to talk or walk or take care of your young children again.’ That was just not good enough.

She came to us and we began applying stem cells in a way to allow the cells to cross the blood-brain barrier and to get to her brain. After her first treatment, when she walked into the clinic on her own and began telling me, in full sentences, about the day she had the head injury, tears came down my face. This is the kind of thing that traditional medicine would say is impossible.

We’ve had patients who were wheelchair-bound, whether it’s from multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s, up and out of their chair, literally jogging around cones. This is life-changing … Patients who were told they weren’t going to return to sports for years are back on the field and playing. There’s just many ways that you can heal your tissue to change the course of an injury or a disease.”

Dirty Electricity — Stealth Trigger of Disease Epidemics and Lowered Life Expectancy

2017-05-28T15:55:00.002-04:00

Dirty Electricity — Stealth Trigger of Disease Epidemics and Lowered Life Expectancy

May 28, 2017 • 128,778 views
Disponible en Español

Click HERE to watch the full interview! Download Interview Transcript

Story at-a-glance

-

Many diseases of civilization, especially cancer, are related to an artifact of electricity: electromagnetic interference (EMI) or “dirty electricity.” Historical data also suggests electrification has lowered life expectancy
EMI is biologically active and affects mitochondrial function, which we’ve now come to appreciate is at the heart of virtually all chronic disease
Cancers appear to be frequency-specific, meaning certain frequencies cause specific cancers. Male breast cancer is a sentinel for EMI exposure.
This Crunchy Coleslaw Recipe Makes a Perfect Side Dish for Your Next Gathering

By Dr. Mercola

Did you know that a significant percentage of the diseases we now face is related to an artifact of electricity? In this interview, Dr. Sam Milham, author of ”Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization,” explains the health hazards of dirty electricity or electromagnetic interference (EMI).

Milham is a physician and an epidemiologist, and has spent decades (he’s now 85 years old) doing pioneering research in this field. In his book, he details the extensive journey he took to uncover the link between dirty electricity and human disease. In a nutshell, dirty electricity, or more accurately stated, EMI, impacts your biology, specifically your mitochondrial function, which we’ve now come to appreciate is at the heart of virtually all chronic disease.

What Is Dirty Electricity?

Sunlight is a natural or native form of electromagnetic frequency (EMF). There are also four basic non-native or artificial EMF exposures: magnetic, artificial light, electrical and microwave (which includes not only your microwave oven but also cellphones, routers and portable phones).

Dirty electricity refers to the electrical component of this EMF spectrum. A more precise term is electromagnetic interference or EMI. “Dirty” is more of a descriptive layman’s term. But what exactly is EMI and how is it generated? Milham explains:

“The electric grid began with Edison in 1892 at the Pearl Street Generating Station. It turns out that from the very second he started generating electricity, he was making dirty electricity. The way I know that is because if you read his publications, he had a big problem with his original generators … They had brush arcing. The way they made electricity was by spinning magnets that had brushes to pick up their contact points.

All electric motors have brushes. Generators have them. They’re made out of graphite … Arcing and sparking makes dirty electricity, which are really high-frequency electric transients. They come and go. They’re spikey. They have very short latency times.

From the outset of the grid, we’ve been exposed to this. It’s not the 60-cycle stuff. We’re talking about frequencies up in the kilohertz and higher; thousands of cycles per second.”

EMI Microwaves Travel Far and Wide

There are also microwaves, and this is not just your microwave oven, but your portable phone, cellphone and cellphone towers.

“All transmitters, AM, frequency modulation (FM) and especially cell towers [produce microwaves]. Your cellphone works because there’s a transmitter out there that transmits to you. They all run on DC.

Every cell tower in the world has a huge inverter in it to make the DC to run the transmitter, and also to charge the backup batteries. They make dirty electricity by the ton. Lots of schools have cell towers on campus. What they’re doing is they’re bathing the kids [with EMI].

It gets back into the wires; the ground (lot)wires and power wires that service it. The grid becomes an antenna for all this dirty electricity. It extends miles downstream … [A Brazilian study] looked at deaths from cancer [and] distance of residence from the base of the cell tower.

They got effects out to 500 meters. That’s 1,500 feet. I’ll tell you, the cell tower can’t talk that far. It’s the dirty electricity — the EMI in the grid, in the wires running into your house, through the ground and through your power cords — that’s doing it.”

Dirty Electricity Is Biologically Active

A classic example of EMI is AM radio wave transmission interruption, as demonstrated in Milham’s video above. But why exactly should we be concerned about EMI in our homes?

“Over the 50 years I’ve been doing this, it’s become super clear that EMI or dirty electricity is very biologically active. I wrote the book to warn the population because nobody seemed to pay attention to it. This is the major cause of all the so-called diseases of civilization,”1 Milham says.

I myself am becoming quite passionate about this issue. I’ve known about dirty electricity or EMI for nearly two decades, but I never fully appreciated the impact it has until I read Milham’s book. Then, the connections suddenly became apparent to me.

For the last year, I’ve been diving deep into the scientific literature of mitochondrial function, and it appears this is how EMI affects your health. In other words, it likely increases mitochondrial free radical damage and contributes to mitochondrial dysfunction. Certainly, other variables contribute to disease as well, such as the processing of food, unbalanced nutrient ratios, pesticide contamination and so on. Still, the impact of EMI may be foolhardy to overlook.

All Solar Panels Generate Dirty Electricity

On a side note, many who use solar panels (photovoltaic panels) are completely unaware of the fact that they are a source of dirty electricity. I’ve had 15 kilowatt solar panels on my home for the last five years. Photovoltaic panels generate direct current (DC), which is essentially unusable in most homes.

In order to use the DC current the solar panels generate, you need to use an inverter that converts it to alternating current (AC). The problem is, the inverter used to generate AC is a phenomenal source of dirty electricity. I remediated mine and radically decreased the EMI generated when the inverters are on during the day.

Large, commercial solar arrays have a similar problem. They use inverters — sometimes thousands of them if they’re really big arrays — and they all generate EMI or dirty electricity.

“If your utility has an appreciable wind or solar component, it is, by definition, giving you dirty electricity,” Milham notes. “[W]hen I first discovered this business, I went online; I studied commercial sources of photovoltaic inverters … I found this statement … [which] said that all photovoltaic inverters create amplitude modulation (AM) radio interference. What does that tell you? It says it’s all dirty.”

This EMI connects or affects your biology when it’s on a circuit or in the earth. For example, if you have a solar panel in your house, not all circuits in your house will be hooked up to it. The only circuits affected by EMI will be the ones hooked up to the solar panel inverter. The EMI gets into the ground and can also affect your neighbors.

Chronic EMI Exposure Raises Your Cancer Risk

Once EMI is generated, how far away must you be from the wire in question in order to avoid biological interference? According to Milham, the distance can be quite significant. In many cases, entire areas of ground can be a source of EMI, raising the current in your body.

“About three years ago, [the late professor] Martin H. Graham … and Dave Stetzer, who pioneered and studied this field and trained me … sent me an off-the-shelf fluke multimeter, which measures volts, amps and ohms. He showed me how to use it to measure current in my body.

That’s been a mindblower … I put an electrocardiogram (EKG) patch on my chest for one lead … and the other [fluke multimeter lead] goes to an electrical outlet ground … It then measures the current in my body …

The meter comes with everything you need. All you’ve got to do is take a 12-gauge wire and put a three-prong plug on it, where you only contact the round plug. That’s attached to your black electrode. That’s for the ground. The red one goes to your EKG patch on your chest (or to your mouth).

I find that just walking on the pavement in an area, I could get very, very high, probably carcinogenic fields of current in my body. We’re talking millivolts [and] microamps …

The National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) studied this years ago. They concluded that 18 microamps is sufficient to put enough voltage in your body to give you cancer with chronic exposure. You want to keep [your body current] under 18 microamps. The higher it is, the worse it is …

I find 200 to 300 microamps in lots of places, just standing on the floor … One of my favorite places is a local farmers market here. Last year, I was horrified to find out that just walking or standing in that place, I was putting 200 microamps of current into my body2 …

I was sitting at a Hewlett-Packard laptop and was measuring myself. I just touched the case of the laptop and found it was putting 80 microamps into my body. I finally got rid of it by putting a USB to an outlet ground. That fixes it.”

Beware of Fluorescent and LED Lights

Milham also discovered that almost all non-incandescent lighting puts high current into your body, directly from the light. This includes fluorescents, compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) and light emitting diodes (LED) light bulbs. Dr. Alexander Wunsch, a world class expert on photobiology, details many of the health hazards associated with LED lights, but the dirty electricity component is yet another reason to avoid these types of light bulbs in your home and office space. As noted by Milham:

“This explains a lot. I started doing occupational mortality [investigations] 30 years ago … I was puzzled as to why the highest cancer rates [occur in] teachers, professors and office workers. Why is melanoma more common in people who work indoors than outdoors?

Why is it more common in teachers and professors than in lifeguards or farmers? Why do you get it on parts of your body that never see the sun? It’s due to [nonnative artificial] EMF, as I’ve been measuring in schools and colleges. There’s just no place to hide.”

In the 1950s, photobiologist John Ott studied children in a Florida school who had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He believed these kinds of behavioral problems were associated with the fluorescent lighting, and was able to improve the children’s condition by placing an EMF-blocking wire mesh screen in front of the lights that was then grounded. This and other findings are discussed in Ott’s book, “Health and Light: The Effects of Natural and Artificial Light on Man and Other Living Things.”

Male Breast Cancer — A Sentinel for EMI Exposure

Interestingly, Milham’s work suggests cancers are frequency-specific,3 meaning certain frequencies cause specific cancers. He also notes that male breast cancer is a sentinel for EMI exposure,4 just like mesothelioma is a sentinel for asbestos exposure. Unfortunately, few are willing to take the issue seriously.

“In the second edition of my book I comment (willfully) that there’s an epidemic of male breast cancer in Camp Lejeune in the Marine Corps. I wrote to them and said, ‘Look at these 15 studies that link EMF to [male breast cancer].’ They were saying it was due to the drinking water contamination. There’s no way. It’s due to EMF for sure. They just ignored me.”

Milham was also involved in an investigation5 at La Quinta Middle School in Palm Springs. Teachers were convinced an environmental problem was at fault for an epidemic of cancer among the staff. In all, 18 teachers at the school had developed cancer. Other schools in the system had at most two or three cases.

The superintendent of the school hired an expert from the local tumor registry (cancer institute), who informed the teachers that their cancers were due to sun exposure. Milham initially spent months trying to contact the school, to no avail. The superintendent told him they were satisfied with the answers they’d received.

Eventually, at the request of the teachers, he was allowed into the school for two nights to investigate, yet shortly thereafter, he was accused of criminal trespass by the school district. They simply did not want him to get involved. The state teacher’s association stonewalled him as well.

“I tried to do another school that had a cell tower on campus and an epidemic of mostly breast cancer in the staff. Once again, they hired a University of California professor to come to a school board meeting and try to shoot down my [research]. They wouldn’t cooperate, so what are you going to do? You can lead these people to water but you can’t make them drink.”

Historical Data Reveal Public Health Impact of Electrification

Clearly, there’s a strong negative incentive against this type of information. What intrigued me is that when Milham did his initial analysis and historical review,6 he found a strong correlation between electrification and mortality from cancer, including female breast cancer and childhood leukemia7 — and this data dates back to 1900!

By the turn of the century, most big cities in the world had electricity, while rural areas didn’t catch up until the mid-‘50s. So, for half a century there were two large United States populations covered by a good vital record system of deaths and births. One population group was exposed to electricity and the other wasn’t. When you compare these two groups, you discover some truly amazing differences in vital statistics.

“At the turn of the century, if you lived in New York City or most of the other cities in the country, your average life expectancy was low-50s. If you were Amish and didn’t use electricity or if you lived in rural Mississippi or rural New York State, your longevity was in the 70s.

Fast forward to the 1930s … the urban cancer [mortality] was 50 to 80 percent higher than the rural cancer mortality. That’s enough to blow your mind. It’s internally consistent.”

Today, the risks are greater than ever before, thanks to ground currents. The electric grid in the U.S. is called a grounded Wye grid, designed for protection against lighting. The neutral center taps of their transformers are connected to the earth by a wire. In the U.S. about 80 percent of the current delivered to loads like motors and lights returns to the substation via the earth.

Dairy farmers were among the first to sound the alarm that something was wrong. In the 1970s, they noticed cows were dying, weren’t producing milk and had trouble reproducing. “This big old BACI (before-after control-impact) is a wonderful canary in the coal mine for EMF,” Milham notes.

Stetzer, Graham and others did a study in which they identified the parts of the EMF spectrum that impact milk production in cows. Interestingly, their findings reveal milk production is affected by certain harmonics at multiples of 60 Hz. At these intervals, frequencies have a harmful effect on the cows. Chances are, the same applies to human beings.

Biological Mechanisms of EMI

As mentioned, dirty electricity or EMI are high-frequency electric transients and harmonics that come and go. These aberrant peaks in frequency are emitted quite a distance, typically greater than 10 feet. This means that if you’re within range, these frequencies can resonate with your body, causing some biological effect.

One suggested mechanism of harm is related to the production of a reactive nitrogen species (RNS) called perioxynitrate. Evidence also suggests it can affect mitochondrial function, which I believe is a major mechanism of harm. More generally speaking, EMI acts as a biological stressor. In one of Milham’s studies, he showed that by cleaning up the electrical environment, they were able to reduce the production of stress hormones.

He’s also shown that by filtering dirty electricity from a library, the levels of neurotransmitters in people spending time in the library were beneficially altered. Milham also cites a study by two German researchers, who were able to demonstrate that the installation of a cellphone tower in a previously pristine valley produced long-term changes in a wide variety of measurable hormones, including stress hormones.

More Information

If you’re intrigued by this information and want to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of ”Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization.” You can also find more information, including copies of Milham’s research papers and scientific reports on his website, SamMilham.com. I’ve also provided a number of those papers as supporting references throughout this article.

From my perspective, there’s no doubt dirty electricity is triggering and/or exacerbating chronic disease, and if you care about your health and longevity, I urge you to face this information head on, disturbing and discouraging as it may be. While it may be impossible to avoid all EMI exposure, there are ways to limit and minimize your exposure inside your home and, potentially, at work. Doing so may go a long way toward protecting your and your family’s health over the long term.

ALOE- Egyptians Called it The Plant of Immortality

2017-05-22T12:12:00.000-04:00

What Aloe Vera Does To Your Body: Why The Egyptians Called it The Plant of Immortality

by PAUL FASSA

There are 300 or more different species of Aloe. The most prominent variety, Aloe barbadensis, Miller commonly referred to as Aloe vera, is especially noted for its amazing healing abilities. Although Aloe vera resembles a cactus, it actually belongs to the family of liliaceous plants and is indigenous to subtropical regions and deserts.

The etymology of the word Aloe is Arabic; It’s derived from the Arabic word “Alloeh,” which means: “shining bitter substance.” While the word “vera” stems from Latin and means “true.” 6,000 year old stone carvings containing images of Aloe vera plants have been found in Egypt, where Aloe vera was known as the “plant of immortality”. In fact, it was commonly given to deceased pharaohs as a burial gift! 2000 years ago Greek scientists deemed Aloe vera the “universal panacea.” Historically, Aloe vera has been successfully used by traditional medicine practitioners in many disparate cultures including: Greece, Egypt, India, Mexico, Japan and China. According to legend, Egyptian queens Nefertiti and Cleopatra used it as part of their regular beauty regimes. Alexander the Great and Christopher Columbus used it to treat soldiers’ wounds.

The first reference to Aloe vera in English was a translation by John Goodyew in A.D. 1655 of Dioscorides’ Medical treatise De Materia Medica. Aloe vera was first used as a laxative in the United States in the 1880’s. In the mid-1930s, it was used successfully to reverse chronic and severe radiation dermatitis.

“The potency of Aloe vera is due to its rich variety of ingredients which are present in perfect balance and work together as a team. Although the solid portion of the plant forms only 1%-1.5%, the rest being water, this small amount of active ingredient can produce a substantial effect. The only way to account for this is to accept the philosophy of synergism within the plant. Synergism means that the effect of the whole is greater than the effects of the component parts, so although individual members of the team could only have an effect, together they can achieve a great deal more.” Aloe Vera – The Medicine Plant’, Dr Peter Atherton, p25

The Structure of the leaf is basically made up of:

• The Rind – is the tough outer layer and is where the synthesis and production of all the nutrients in Aloe Vera takes place
• The Sap – is bitter and contains anthraquinones (latex)
• The Mucilage layer – is rich in long chain sugars called polysaccharides
• The Inner Leaf Gel – is sterile and can be used immediately and contains the majority of nutrients in the Aloe Vera plant

DIY Aloe Vera Gel

Equipment

• Six Aloe leaves (depending on size) from a mature and healthy plant. Leaves that are anywhere from four (4) to six (6) inches in length make a generous 1/4-cup amount.
• A clean sharp knife
• A clean cutting board and work surface
• A clean Glass container (It’s best to store your gel in the fridge preferably in a dark or opaque glass container to protect it from light which can degrade it). Make sure the jar has a secure fitting lid to keep air out.
• Food processor or blender
• Paper towels
• Spoon and spatula
* Optional: rubber gloves to protect your hands from the serrated edges of the leaf.

Method

1. Begin by washing your hands. You don’t want to introduce any unwanted bacteria into your gel and contaminate it. Make sure your work surface, and utensils are clean when preparing your gel.

2. Choose leaves that are mature, thick, fleshy and a deep green in color. Look for leaves that are at least 4-6 inches in length. The oldest and largest outermost leaves near the bottom of the plant are ideal; they contain a thick, nutrient-rich gel layer. Did you know that cut Aloe leaves do not grow back? However, the cut leaves will eventually stimulate the emergence of new growth from the center of the plant.

3. Remove the leaves. Use a sharp knife to create a clean cut, without harming the plant of course. Cut close to the base of the leaf and slice away from the center of the plant. Or you can buy cut Aloe leaves at select stores or online.

4. Rinse the outer skin of the leaves and knife under running water. Now place the cut leaves in a bowl at a 45 degree angle for 15 minutes or so. This step enables the dark yellow, very bitter Aloe juice or latex to drain out, which is found in the cells located just under the surface of the leaf. The latex is a very powerful laxative, which can irritate the intestines. The laxative effect could cause potassium levels to become low.

5. Now carefully remove the serrated edges and skin. Mature Aloe Vera leaves are slightly curved. Place the concave side down on a cutting board. Next, slice around the perimeter. This will leave you with the top and bottom layer of skin, exposing the Aloe gel in between. The top layer of skin comes off next. Run the knife just under the surface and peel it away. Now you can flip the leaf over and do the same to the other side.

6. Remove the gel from each leaf and place it in a clean jar until you’re ready to process the batch in a blender or a food processor.

7. Transfer the gel into a food processor and process until it’s uniformly mixed. Next add a scant quarter teaspoon of vitamin C powder (100% Pure Powder; non-GMO, Pharmaceutical Grade (USP); GMP Quality Assured in the form of ascorbic acid to every cup of gel. It neutralizes oxygen on contact thus acting as a preservative. Or you can add 400 IU of vitamin E. In its natural form, vitamin E is designated d-, as in-d-alpha-tocopherol (recommended). You can also use grapefruit extract as a preservative. Add the gel and your choice of preservative in the food processor or blender and thoroughly mix or you can manually stir it into the processed gel with a spoon.

8. Store in the fridge in a glass container with a tight lid and label (include the date made). Fresh Aloe gel usually keeps for about a week in the fridge, but with a preservative it will last much longer, up to a month or so. Still it’s best to make small batches and replace as necessary to maintain the utmost potency and freshness. Use a clean spoon to scoop into your gel even if you are going to apply it topically as fingers can introduce unwanted bacteria into the gel.

How to Easily Filet an Aloe Leaf

DOSAGE

Dr. Andrew Weil recommends the following Aloe vera dosage guidelines: For internal use of aloe gel, 30 ml three times a day. Topically, apply the fresh gel as needed. Suggested Dosage from Lily of the Desert (internal): Take 2 ounces (4 Tbsp) per serving alone or mixed with a favorite juice 2x a day. For serious conditions take up to 8 ounces daily.

Of course, if you are planning on using Aloe vera internally as a tonic or a medicine, you will need quite a few Aloe plants or you can buy organic, mature, Aloe vera leaves here.

Some Proven Health Benefits of Aloe Vera

“Based on studies and clinical applications Aloe vera has been shown beyond a doubt to have immense potential therapeutically. Aloe vera is used medicinally both externally and internally.
Aloe vera is the single most healing of all the herbs. It’s anti-cancer, anti-parasitic, and it repairs DNA. It protects us from viruses and bacteria. Every time I take juice, I take aloe, and it makes a big difference.”

– Gary Nulls Ultimate Anti Aging Program by Gary Null, Ph.D.

Skin Cancer

Several new studies have found that Aloe Vera can prevent and even treat melanoma. Research from the University of Belgrade’s School of Medicine confirmed that the constituents in Aloe Vera stops proliferation (rapidly multiplication) of cells that morph into tumors via skin cancer. The researchers found that Aloe-emodin stopped cell proliferation. The researchers concluded that although isolated aloe compounds were protective, the whole herb extracts were superior. http://www.realnatural.org/aloe-vera-treats-and-prevents-skin-cancer/

Other studies have also demonstrated aloe’s ability to stop the progression of skin cancer when applied directly on the skin.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/research-finds-aloe-vera-may-prevent-and-treat-skin-cancer

Cancer
Aloe vera contains acemannan, a natural immune booster. Go to Google Scholar and peruse the links to studies about the anti-cancer effects of acemannan.

South Korea’s Gachon University of Medicine and Science found that Aloe-emodin stopped the growth of human cancerous liver cells and induced cell death among tumor cells.

In 2010, researchers from the China Medical University that Aloe constituents Emodin and Rhein also produced anticancer effects, which included stopping tumor progression and inducing cell death in cancer cells.

Halts Cancerous Growth
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/oral-administration-aloe-vera-and-honey-inhibits-cancer-rats

More Cancer and Aloe vera studies:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=aloe+vera+tumors

Improves Digestive System

Boosts Immune System
http://jonbarron.org/article/super-saccharides-aloe-vera-immune-system#.VPUD3-H2SUk

Inhibits breast Cancer cell lines
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/compound-aloe-inhibits-growth-breast-cancer-cell-lines

Improve symptoms in those with Alzheimer’s
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/aloe-vera-compound-found-treat-alzheimer%E2%80%99s-disease1

Aloe and Burns
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7561562

Heals Side Effects of Radiotherapy Treatments and MUCH more…
http://www.naturalnews.com/021858_aloe_vera_gel.html

Anti-inflammatory
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=aloe+vera+inflammation&hl=en&lr=

Reduces Arthritis Pain
http://www.aloeplant.info/arthritis-getting-you-down-can-aloe-really-help/

ALOE VERA – AMAZING LIVER HEALING

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,32&q=aloe+vera+crohn%27s,and+colitis
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/aloe-vera-gel-has-therapeutic-potential-treatment-inflammatory-bowel-diseases

Antidiabetic

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=aloe+vera+and+diabetes&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C32
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/article/aloe-sap-has-significant-antidiabetic-activity-both-humans-and-animals

SOURCES

https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/herbs-and-spices/health-benefits-of-aloe-vera.html
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/substance/aloe-vera
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23089351
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3611630/
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Aloe-Vera-Gel
http://www.aloeplant.info/harvest-fresh-aloe-gel/
http://www.realnatural.org/amazing-aloe-vera-benefits-proven-in-decade-of-research/
http://www.naturalnews.com/027142_aloe_vera_cancer.html#ixzz3TUne1jek

http://www.understanding-your-irritable-bowel-syndrome.com/AloeVera-structure-and-contents.html

http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2002/06/10/aloe-vera/

http://www.slightlysteady.com/how-to-harvest-aloe/

VISUALS

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XwTueIAv8Ik/UuBT7DFufAI/AAAAAAAAImg/LTr9rKLuitQ/s1600/Step3_thumb.jpg

http://www.top10homeremedies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/step2.jpg

http://www.top10homeremedies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Step9_28_29_thumb.jpg

https://img0.etsystatic.com/023/0/6552470/il_340x270.505283588_83fc.jpg

http://www.communitynewscommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/wash-your-hands-800×600.jpg

http://clueyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bigstock-Sliced-of-aloe-vera-leaf-17786612-728×483.jpg

https://mikeslagmolen.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/mayonnaise_jar_250_ml.jpg

Celery is a VERY Good Choice- Especially for Seniors

2017-05-21T08:06:00.000-04:00

10 Surprising Health Benefits of Celery

Celery, which has the scientific name Apium graveolens, is a vegetable in the plant family called Apiaceae. The benefits of celery begin with it being an excellent source of antioxidants and beneficial enzymes, in addition to vitamins and minerals such as vitamin K, vitamin C, potassium, folate and vitamin B6.

Administered as an anti-hypertensive agent in folk medicine for centuries, celery continues to prove that there are many cardiovascular benefits. In recent pharmacological studies, celery demonstrates both antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities that help improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as prevent heart disease.

Celery also provides dietary fiber – especially when you eat more than one cup at a time – that boosts digestion and weight loss. In addition, celery’s high percentage of water and electrolytes can prevent dehydration, and special compounds help celery to act as a diuretic and reduce bloating. As a supplier of antioxidant flavonoids and polyphenol phytonutrients, other significant benefits of celery include its ability to improve liver, skin, eye and cognitive health.

Benefits of Celery, Plus Nutrition Facts and Recipes

Most people choose to eat celery stalks, but the leaves and seeds of celery are also edible and beneficial. For example, celery leaves make a great addition to stir-fries and soups.

Celery seeds — which can be found either in whole seed form, extract form or ground-up — have impressive health benefits on their own, as they help to lower inflammation and to fight bacterial infections. In some parts of the world, celery is grown primarily for its beneficial seeds, which are actually a very small type of fruit. Celery seeds are commonly used as a spice when crushed and contain a special oily compound called apiol that is used as a flavoring agent and for its many medicinal uses.

Celery Nutrition Facts

One cup of chopped celery has: (1)

(percentages based on the RDA for adult women)

16 calories
0 fat
1 gram of protein
5 grams of fiber
5 milligrams vitamin K (37%)
36 milligrams folate (9%)
22 milligrams vitamin A (9%)
263 milligrams potassium (8%)
1 milligrams vitamin C (5%)
40 milligrams calcium (4%)
0.08 milligrams vitamin B6 (4%)

Top Health Benefits of Celery

1. Helps Lower High Cholesterol

Benefits of celery include its cholesterol-lowering power that make it useful for improving or maintaining heart health. Celery contains a unique compound called 3-n-butylphthalide (BuPh) that has previously been reported to have lipid-lowering action, but researchers believe celery has many other other beneficial compounds that are still emerging in research.

In a study conducted by the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Singapore, when rats were fed a high-fat diet for eight weeks, rats that had been given celery extract showed significantly lower levels of lipids in their blood compared to the control group of rats that didn’t receive celery extract. (2)

The group supplementing with celery extract experienced a beneficial reduction in serum total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglyceride (TG) concentrations.

2. Lowers Inflammation

Celery contains antioxidants and polysaccharides that are known to act as anti-inflammatories, especially flavonoid and polyphenol antioxidants. These support overall health, especially as someone ages, by fighting free-radical damage (or oxidative stress) that can lead to inflammation. Inflammation is often a contributing cause of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, arthritis and many more.

Researchers have identified over a dozen different types of antioxidants that are responsible for the benefits of celery — these include such phenolic acids as caffeic acid and ferulic acid, plus flavaols like quecetin. This makes celery useful for treating a wide range of conditions that are made worse by inflammation: joint pain (such as from arthritis), gout, kidney and liver infections, skin disorders, irritable bowel syndrome and urinary tract infections, just to name a few.

3. Helps Prevent or Treat High Blood Pressure

Celery seed extracts have anti-hypertensive properties that help reduce high blood pressure, one of the important risk factors for coronary heart disease that is the largest cause of mortality in industrial countries.

Benefits of celery seeds include potentially helping to control chronic elevated blood pressure levels. (3) The blood pressure-lowering benefits of celery come from its seeds, which contain hexanic, methanolic, and aqueous-ethanolic extracts that improve circulation, lower inflammation and help control blood pressure.

When rats were given celery seed extract over a seven-week period, they experienced significant improvements in blood pressure levels compared to rats being fed the same diet but not receiving celery extract. It’s believed that celery helps lower high blood pressure by acting as a smooth muscle relaxant and improving the flow of calcium and potassium into and out of cells. Celery extract helps blood vessels to expand and contract, improve blood flow, and aid in overall heart health.

4. Helps Prevent Ulcers

Here’s one of the benefits of celery you may not have known about: It can help prevent or reduce the formation of painful ulcers. A 2010 study published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Biology found that celery contains a special type of ethanol extract that is useful in protecting the lining of the digestive tract from ulcers. Celery extract has the ability to significantly replenish depleted levels of gastric mucus that is needed in the stomach lining to prevent tiny holes and openings from forming.

Researchers believe celery nourishes the stomach, colon and intestines due to the presence of chemical constituents such as flavonoids, tannins, volatile oils and alkaloids that control the level of gastric acid released while also improving the level of protective mucus. (4)

5. Protects Liver Health

When researchers from the Department of Nutrition and Food Science at Helwan University in Egypt fed rats celery (along with chicory and barley), these rats experienced a reduction in the amount of dangerous fat buildup within the liver.

Precisely, when researchers supplemented the high-cholesterol diets of rats with celery, chicory and barley powder, they observed an improvement in liver enzyme function and blood lipid levels. The more celery, chicory and barley the rats were given, the more their liver health improved. This suggests that a diet high in celery, as well as chicory and barley, can be beneficial for people suffering from liver disease. (5)

6. Beneficial for Weight Loss

Celery is extremely low in calories and can be a valuable food to help you lose weight because of its ability to provide vital nutrients and to help regulate lipid (fat) metabolism. One of the major benefits of celery is that it’s so nutrient-dense, meaning it provides antioxidants, electrolytes, vitamins and minerals like vitamin C, B vitamins and potassium – all with very little calories.

7. Boosts Digestion and Reduces Bloating

Celery seeds contain an odorless and oily compound known as NBP that has a diuretic effect and helps the body to detox. In studies involving rats, urine volume was significantly greater when rats were given celery extract compared to a control group. (6)

The digestive benefits of celery are partly due to its diuretic effect. This could also be one of the possible anti-hypertensive mechanisms of celery seeds that helps to lower blood pressure. Because it improves circulation within the intestines, it’s also useful for improving digestion by helping to relieve bloating and puffiness from water retention.

8. Contains Anti-Microbial Properties That Fight Infections

Celery seeds have actually been used for centuries as an herbal medicine with reported antibacterial effects. A 2009 report published in the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology shows that celery contains special anti-microbial components found in the seeds of the celery plant. (7)

When extract was taken from celery seeds and combined with harmful bacteria compounds that cause infection in humans, the celery extract was able to significantly purify and reduce the bacteria’s growth, suggesting celery can be used to naturally boost immunity and fight bacterial infections.

9. Helps Prevent Urinary Tract Infections

Because celery helps to reduce uric acid and stimulates urine production, it’s beneficial for fighting bacterial infections within the digestive tract and reproductive organs. Similarly to cranberries that are known for fighting urinary tract infections (UTIs), celery can help prevent such UTIs, as well as bladder disorders, kidney problems and possibly even cysts on reproductive organs.

10. May Help Protect from Cancer

Another one of the important benefits of celery? It’s in the same plant family as cancer-protective vegetables like carrots, celery, fennel, parsley and parsnips, which all contain chemo-protective compounds called polyacetylenes. Early studies have shown that polyacetylenes help reduce toxicity and fight against cancer formation, specifically breast cancer, intestinal cancer and leukemia.

Polyacetlynes have many immune-boosting effects, including tumor-fighting abilities that stop mutated cells from proliferating. According to faculty of the Department of Agricultural Sciences at the Aarhus University of Denmark, “polyacetylenes have shown many interesting bioactivities including anti-inflammatory, antiplatelet-aggregatory, cytotoxic, antitumor activity, as well as activity against bacteria and mycoplasma.” (8)

Celery’s History

Celery is an extremely old vegetable, with records showing that celery leaves were part of the remains found in the tomb of pharaoh “King Tutankhamun,” who died in 1323 BC. In ancient Greece, celery leaves were used as garlands for the dead and to make wreaths or crowns that were given to winners of battles. Celery is even mentioned in Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey; horses were said to grow on wild celery that grew throughout Troy.

In the past, celery was grown as a vegetable mostly during the winter and early spring months. People liked to eat celery to help with “cleansing” and believed that celery acted as a natural detox tonic that could prevent sickness. Celery seeds were also used to help relieve pain.

How to Buy and Store Celery

Today, in North America, the type of celery most grown and eaten is called “pascal celery,” while in Europe “celeriac” celery is more popular. Celery is considered a long season crop and somewhat hard to grow, since it needs constant moisture and can’t withstand heat very well. It grows in cool, moist climates best and can be found most times of the year, especially during the fall through winter months.

Knowing that celery is one of the most chemical-sprayed vegetables there is, always look for organic celery whenever possible to get the most benefits of celery without consuming toxins and chemicals. The Environmental Working Group’s 2014 report shows that celery is usually sprayed with multiple types of pesticides and is on the list of the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables that contain the most pesticide-residues. (9)

When picking out celery, make sure the stalks seem firm and aren’t too limber. If the stalks have their leaves attached still, look for brightly colored leaves that are not wilting.

Don’t wash celery right away after bringing it home because this can cause it go bad quicker. Store dry celery, wrapped in a paper towel if you’d like, inside the refrigerator for about 5–7 days at the most. After this time, celery tends to get limp and its nutrient content starts to decrease. It’s also not recommended to freeze celery because it easily wilts and will become mushy once defrosting it.

To clean and cut celery, discard the base that’s usually firm and white. You can save the leaves and use these in recipes, such as soups or a sauté. Celery leaves are a good source of vitamins and minerals just like the stalks, so don’t waste them! Rinse the celery stalks and leaves well to remove any dirt of lingering pesticide spray and then cut the stalks into pieces.

EXCELLENT Article a MUST READ for ALL

2017-05-20T08:11:00.004-04:00

‘Before the Flood’ — A Global Exploration for Answers to Climate Change

May 20, 2017 •

Story at-a-glance-

“Before the Flood” explores the potential of catastrophic disruption of life on planet Earth
To sustain our dependence on fossil fuels, we’ve implemented increasingly risky and environmentally devastating extraction methods, such as fracking, mountaintop removal, offshore drilling and tar sands
Waste pollution is choking our waters and deforestation is rapidly causing serious consequences to the earth

By Dr. Mercola

In the National Geographic film, "Before the Flood," actor, environmental activist and United Nations messenger Leonardo DiCaprio explores what must be done to prevent catastrophic disruption of life on planet Earth.

We all accept that we are harming this planet to our own detriment and we must stop our wasteful and polluting ways. Whether you are an adversary or proponent of the highly politicized phrase “climate change,” the solutions we need to implement for our long term viability are obvious, necessary and beneficial for everyone that desires a regenerative world.

There are four primary components that can unite everyone and bypass further arguments. Protecting and improving our air, water and soil is simply essential — not doing so is suicide. I recommend you think about four indisputable actions that can help avoid arguments and preserve regenerative systems. These practices are essential and universally agreeable; getting caught up in any debate is unnecessary.

Before the Flood

Whether you believe man-made climate change is real or not, I urge you to lay your judgments aside for an hour-and-a-half and watch this film. A fact that cannot be denied is that our world has become increasingly and devastatingly toxic, and these toxins are damaging our ecosystem, thereby placing the survival of mankind at risk.

We are eroding soils, polluting water, draining aquifers and contaminating our air. Any one of these issues progressing will have devastating consequences, and at our current pace we have roughly 50 years before time will run out. Some instances of pollution, such as the plastic now choking our oceans, or agricultural runoff contaminating our fresh water supplies, highlight serious damage that we can and must stop.

The decimation of forests, be it for the purpose of tar sands operations or paper milling or building cities and suburbs, also has an impact on the Earth. Whether man-made CO2 is instrumental in climate change or not, what's clear is that our Earth is in peril, and it's up to all of us, corporations included, to reassess our impact on the world at large.

We Must Reassess Our Dependence on a Fossil Fuel Economy

To sustain our dependence on fossil fuels, we've had to implement increasingly risky and environmentally devastating extraction methods, such as fracking for natural gas, mountaintop removal to extract coal, offshore drilling for oil and tar sands for synthetic crude. All of these methods are extremely disruptive and destructive to the environment. The past few years alone are rife with examples of massive spills and accidents causing environmental damage of absolutely epic proportions.

This is no overnight change, but first and foremost we can all be more efficient with our energy consumption in our homes, businesses and transportation. Solar energy will likely play the largest role in this transition, but in the meantime we need to look at all aspects of how we use energy and use less while minimizing pollution.

Melting in the Arctic

DiCaprio visits Baffin Island, situated in the Canadian Arctic, above the Arctic Circle. There, he interviews National Geographic explorer-in-residence Enric Sala, Ph.D., and Jake Awa, a native Arctic guide and hunter.

Awa recalls that in earlier years, they always used to have solid, frozen ice. Today, it has a slushy consistency, with large puddles everywhere. According to Sala, if the melting trend continues, by 2040 we will be able to sail across the North Pole. There will be no Arctic ice left.

This in turn will have wide-ranging consequences, changing currents and weather patterns across the globe. Floods and droughts will become more severe and catastrophic. As noted by DiCaprio, we're now far beyond the point where making small changes — such as changing your light bulbs to more energy efficient versions — can have an impact.

Even if the temperature were to stabilize at the levels we've seen in the past decade, Greenland will still vanish. In the past five years alone, one lower Greenland weather station has seen about 30 feet of ice melt, amounting to hundreds of cubic kilometers of ice.

Will China Lead the Next Green Revolution?

China has now overtaken the U.S. as the No. 1 polluter in the world. There, people have become quite familiar with the realities of pollution in the water, air and soil. Chinese media are being "very helpful," in this regard, says Ma Jun, founding director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Faced with the immediate (and easily recognizable) threat to health posed by pollution, most civil protests are now over environmental issues, with people demanding greater transparency and solutions. In most cities, people will wear face masks when venturing outside, as the pollution burns the lungs.

Jun created a website showing which of the 9,000 factories are in or out of compliance with pollution standards on any given day, allowing people to continuously pressure those factories to meet the standards.

As a result of public pressure, China has resolved to invest in "green," energy solutions such as solar. And, while the country is still heavily vested in fossil fuels, they are transitioning to renewables faster than anticipated. The question is: Can developing countries make the same transition, or will they simply repeat the mistakes of the developed world?

Balancing Immediate Energy Needs With Global Pollution Ramifications

In India, about 30 percent of households, more than 300 million people, do not have access to electricity. As noted by Sunita Narain with the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, India stands poised to follow in the footsteps of the developed world, because coal is both abundant and inexpensive in India.

"If you created the problem in the past, we will create it in the future," she says. "We have 700 million households that cook using biomass fuel today. If those households move to coal, you have that much more use of fossil fuels. Then the entire world is fried."

However, she also notes that if using solar is so simple, convenient and inexpensive, why hasn't the U.S. made the conversion already? The U.S. needs to put its money where its mouth is, and if we're so concerned about climate change, then we need to take a long, hard look at our own consumption first, before we lay eyes on India.

According to Narain, the average American uses the energy equivalent to 1.5 citizens of France, 2.2 citizens of Japan, 10 citizens of China, 34 citizens of India, and 61 citizens of Nigeria, each and every day of the year.

"Your consumption is really going to put a hole in the planet," she says. "The fact of the matter is, we need to put the issue of lifestyle and consumption at the center of climate negotiations."

In short, Narain believes Americans must take responsibility, both for our bloated energy consumption and our own addiction to fossil fuels. If we were to invest in and transition to renewable energy, then others, including India, could pressure its leadership to follow.

Crisis in Kiribati

In Kiribati, an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean, rising seawater has now started to enter homes, farmland and the freshwater ponds used for drinking water. According to Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, the projections put forth by scientists is that the islands will eventually be completely submerged by rising sea levels. The question is what can be done about it?

Short-term, people have been relocated inland, but Tong realizes that a long-term solution must be prepared, for eventually the island will not be able to accommodate all of its inhabitants. Ultimately, migration is inevitable. Kiribati has acquired part of the Fiji Islands, and if people choose to migrate, now or later, they have someplace to go. As noted by one Kiribatian, many of the island nations that contribute the least to global warming are the ones experiencing the worst, and earliest, impact.

Industrialization and pollution have also taken a dramatic toll on oceanic ecosystems. In the last three decades alone, HALF of all coral has been lost. And with the death of coral the entire ecosystem falls apart, ultimately leading to starvation — as more than 1 billion people worldwide depend on fish for sustenance — and loss of livelihood, which leads to poverty.

The ocean soaks up about one-third of the CO2 dumped into the atmosphere. This makes oceans a stabilizing force in climate. The problem is we have been, and certainly still are, creating CO2 at a faster rate than the oceans can process and filter. Ultimately, that is the problem: We're killing ALL of the systems that would normally help stabilize the Earth's climate, such as oceans and rainforests.

Carbon displacement is real, and soil erosion and the burning of fossil fuels are taking carbon from the land and moving it to water and air. Regenerative agriculture is the most promising and productive means we have to remedy this situation while improving the quality of our foods and water efficiency.

Destroying the Lungs of the World

Another type of oil that is robbing our grandchildren of a future is palm oil, an inexpensive oil found in countless household products, from soaps and cosmetics to processed foods and cooking oils. In Indonesia, massive fires are intentionally set to clear rainforest for palm oil plantations.

As noted in the film, "This cheap commodity is making companies tremendous profits." The ultimate price: rainforests — the lungs of the world. Today, palm oil plantations have taken over about 80 percent of the rainforest in Indonesia.

The forest fires of 2015 released more carbon into the atmosphere than the entire U.S. economy, each and every day. In the process, populations of rhino, orangutans, elephants and tigers were also decimated. The reasons these forests are being destroyed is because people keep buying products containing palm oil. This is yet another case where the purchasing decisions of consumers are driving an incredibly destructive process.

Is Transition to Solar Energy a Feasible Goal?

Revisiting the issue of transitioning to renewable energy like solar, DiCaprio talks to Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. Would it actually be possible to transition not only the U.S., but the entire world, to solar energy?

At Tesla's gigafactory in Reno, Nevada, Musk is working on producing batteries that can efficiently store solar energy. This is a much-needed component of the solution, as the sun does not always shine, no matter where you live. A massive advantage of solar panels and batteries is that you avoid having to build any kind of electrical power plants.

A single battery pack could store energy collected by solar panels and supply power to an entire village, without having to build a power plant and draw power lines.

"It's like what happened with landlines versus cellular phones," Musk says. "A lot of developing countries didn't do the landline phones. They went straight to cellular."

Musk has calculated how many gigafactories like the one in Reno would be required to transition the whole world to renewable energy. The answer? One hundred gigafactories, measuring about 15 million square feet each. That's all that would be required to make enough solar powered batteries to give solar energy to not just the U.S., but every nation on the globe.

As noted by Musk, were larger industry giants to get in on this, along with nations like China, the transition could be accomplished rather quickly. It would be even quicker if governments were to implement laws and regulations favoring renewable energy. Some countries are already well on their way.

About 30 percent of Germany's energy comes from solar energy, for example. Denmark uses as much as 100 percent solar, and Sweden recently declared its intention to become the first fossil fuel-free nation in the world.

The Easiest Way to Opt Out of a Destructive System

As noted by Gidon Eshel, Ph.D., a research professor of environmental physics at Bard College, one of the absolute easiest ways to opt out of destructive systems — without appealing to or waiting for governments and corporations to change — is by changing your own diet.

Eshel is a scientist who studies the effects of agriculture on climate. According to Eshel, 47 percent of the land is used for food production and, of that, 70 percent is used to grow feed for cattle in feedlots. Fruits, vegetables and nuts account for a mere 1 percent of the agricultural land.

While I believe everyone needs some beef, most Americans do eat as much as five times more than they need, so cutting back on beef could also have a number of health benefits. An even more important change would be to switch to grass fed beef which reduces the carbon footprint and improves the soil, water and environment.

Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) create an enormous amount of waste that pollutes soil, air and water. CAFOs also routinely use antibiotics, thereby promoting antibiotic-resistant disease and drug-resistant pandemics.

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Voting for a Cleaner World With Every Meal

Hopefully you can find the time to watch "Before the Flood." I think you'll find it to be an eye-opener. And, while realizing the extent of the environmental destruction can be distressing, it's important to realize where your power lies. In this case, the greatest power you have as an individual is your purchasing power.

Each decision you make either adds to the problem or facilitates the solution. So take responsibility for your decisions. As mentioned, one of the easiest ways to opt out of a number of destructive systems is to change your diet.

By supporting your local farmers and choosing fresh, local produce over "cheap" conventional varieties commonly sold in larger grocery chains, you help steer the agricultural industry toward safer, more sustainable systems. You can also slash your food bill by focusing on locally grown foods that are in season, typically a bargain at that time of year, or by growing some of your own. Remember to choose organic, grass fed/pasture-raised beef, poultry and dairy, in addition to organic produce.

While many grocery stores now carry organic foods, it's preferable to source yours from local growers whenever possible, as much of the organic food sold in grocery stores is imported. If you live in the U.S., the following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods:

EatWild.com

EatWild.com provides lists of farmers known to produce wholesome raw dairy products as well as grass fed beef and other farm-fresh produce (although not all are certified organic). Here you can also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass fed products.

Weston A. Price Foundation

Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.

Grassfed Exchange

The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S.

Local Harvest

This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass fed meats, and many other goodies.

Farmers Markets

A national listing of farmers markets.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals

The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, hotels and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA)

CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

FoodRoutes

The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, Community Supported Agriculture memberships (CSAs) and markets near you.

The Cornucopia Institute

The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO "organic" production from authentic organic practices.

RealMilk.com

If you're still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund1 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.2 California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at www.OrganicPastures.com.

Plant Species are Natural Healers

2017-05-18T10:23:00.002-04:00

UK survey finds 28,000 plant species for medical use

Maureen COFFLARD AFP May 17, 2017

Despite their potential, just 16% of the plants Kew, seen in 2016 during a plant DNA extraction process, recorded as being for medical use are cited in regulatory publications (AFP Photo/DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS)

London (AFP) - More than 28,000 species of plants around the world have a medical use but POOR documentation means people are not making the most of the health benefits, according to a survey released on Thursday.

Britain's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London recorded 28,187 species in its latest annual survey and said it was probably a "very conservative figure". New plants discovered over the past year include nine species of a climbing vine used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, the survey found.

"The report is highlighting the huge potential that there is for plants, in areas like diabetes and malaria," said Monique Simmonds, deputy director of science at the world-famous botanical group. The report said two plants, artemisinin and quinine, are "among the most important weapons" against malaria, which killed over 400,000 people in 2015. Despite their potential, just 16% of the plants Kew recorded as being for medical use are cited in regulatory publications. Kew's expansive gardens in west London and vast botanic collections, containing over 8.5 million items, are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The institution's second annual "State of the World's Plants" report involved 128 scientists from 12 countries, who since the first survey have discovered 1,730 new plant species.

They include five new species of Manihot found in Brazil, seven new Aspalathus plants used for making South African rooibos tea, and a new parsnip species uncovered in Turkey.

- Risks from globalisation -

The report also traced the destruction of plants by analysing satellite imagery.

In doing so Kew found that over the past 16 years "an average of around 340 million hectares of the Earth burns every year", which Kew researcher Sarah Wyse likened to the size of India going up in flames annually. While the figure appears alarming, Wyse said some plants require fire to regenerate.

"These fires are not inherently bad for many ecosystems because most plants adapt to fire," she told AFP. Researchers also look at the health of plants, warning the world could face a $540 billion (492 billion euros) annual bill if the spread of invasive pests and pathogens is not stopped. Kew blamed increased travel and trade in plants for spreading pests and called for stricter biosecurity measures as they are sent around the world. As well as being costly, the impact can also be deadly, with Kew citing starvation in Africa caused by maize crops decimated by the armyworm. The director of science at Kew, Kathy Willis, said the broad survey of the current state of affairs should contribute to appreciating and helping plants. "I hope this will enable us to have a global conversation about what we need to protect and conserve," she said.

Walking causes improved brain function

2017-05-16T16:56:00.001-04:00

Walking linked to improved brain function

May 16, 2017 By Shereen Lehman

A moderate-intensity walking regimen may reduce symptoms of mild cognitive impairment that are linked to poor blood vessel health in the brain, a small study suggests.

Participants with vascular cognitive impairment, sometimes called vascular dementia, who walked 3 hours per week for 6 months had improved reaction times and other signs of improved brain function, the Canadian team reports in British Journal of Sports Medicine. Vascular cognitive impairment, or VCI, refers to mildly impaired thinking or more advanced dementia that’s due to the same kinds of blood vessel damage seen with heart disease elsewhere in the body. It is the second most common cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. “It is well established that regular aerobic exercise improves cardiovascular health and cerebrovascular health,” the study’s senior author Teresa Liu-Ambrose told Reuters Health in an email.

“More specifically, it reduces one’s risk of developing chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes (type II), and high cholesterol. These chronic conditions have a negative impact on the brain - likely through compromised blood flow to the brain,” said Liu-Ambrose, a researcher with the Aging, Mobility, and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The brain is a highly metabolic organ and to keep it healthy, it requires good blood flow to deliver the necessary nutrients and oxygen to its tissues, she added.

“It is worth noting that in our study, reduced blood pressure (secondary to exercise) was associated with improved cognitive function,” Liu-Ambrose said. Aerobic exercise may also benefit the brain by increasing growth factors, which are substances made by the body that promote cell growth, differentiation and survival, she said. Liu-Ambrose and colleagues randomly assigned 38 older adults with mild VCI to one of two groups. One group followed an aerobic training program consisting of three one-hour walking classes each week for six weeks, while the other group continued with their usual care. In addition, both groups were given information about vascular cognitive impairment and tips for eating a healthier diet.

Before the exercise program began and at the end of six weeks, all the participants also had functional MRI brain scans and other tests that measured neural activity and cognitive ability. People in the aerobic training group had significant improvements in their reaction times on the cognitive tests, and showed changes in their brain activity that made them resemble healthy brains more. The comparison group showed no changes.

Overall, exercise appears to be a promising strategy for promoting cognitive health in older adults, Liu-Ambrose said.

“While more research is needed to better understand how it brings about its benefits and what factors may impact the degree of benefit observed, there is minimal negative consequence of exercising,” she said.

Liu-Ambrose said she doesn’t know if exercise can actually prevent VCI because there have been no studies to determine that. “However, population based studies do suggest that physical activity does reduce the risk of developing VCI. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, aerobic exercise is very effective in reducing vascular risk factors associated with VCI, such as high blood pressure.”

The study was small, and because participants had to be able to walk for up to an hour, it’s possible they were physically healthier than average, the authors note. The socializing involved in the walking classes might have also had some effect, they add.

“Given the small sample size, one needs to be cautious about interpreting the results of this pilot study. However, it is encouraging to see that the six-month aerobic exercise program improved certain aspects of cognition and showed changes on functional brain imaging,” said Dr. Joe Verghese, director of the Montefiore Einstein Center for the Aging Brain at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

“The effect of exercise in this, and other studies seems to be on improving executive functions, which are required for planning, thinking and judgment,” Verghese, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

“The findings, if confirmed in larger studies, may have implications in advising exercise in older patients with vascular risk factors for brain protection,” Verghese said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2pXErCo British Journal of Sports Medicine, online April 21, 2017.

Breathing can help control High Blood Pressure

2017-05-12T17:19:00.000-04:00

Breathing Exercises Can Help Control High Blood Pressure

May 11, 2017 • 143,373 views
Disponible en Español

Story at-a-glance

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One in 3 American adults have high blood pressure and nearly 1 in 4 reports feeling extremely stressed. These two conditions are closely related, and both can be addressed through breathing exercises
Essential hypertension (high blood pressure with no known cause), may be prevented by implementing breathing exercises, provided you do it early enough
The reason controlled, purposeful breathing is so calming is because it doesn’t activate specific neurons in your brain that communicate with your arousal center

By Dr. Mercola

One in 3 American adults have high blood pressure (hypertension).1 An equally large segment of the adult population has prehypertension, meaning your pressure is higher than normal but not high enough to qualify as hypertension. Nearly 1 in 4 American adults also reports feeling extremely stressed,2,3 and these two conditions — stress and hypertension — tend to go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, this connection still does not receive the emphasis it deserves.

Many breathing experts also agree that 9 out of 10 people breathe poorly, which negatively impacts both your stress level and your blood pressure. The good news is that correcting your breathing can help alleviate both of these conditions.

Dr. John Kennedy, cardiologist and author of “The 15-Minute Heart Cure: The Natural Way to Release Stress and Heal Your Heart in Just Minutes a Day,” featured on “The Doctors” in 2011 (above), developed a breathing and creative visualization technique that can be done anywhere, anytime to reduce stress, lower your blood pressure and protect your heart.

Tammy, the test subject on the show, lowered her cortisol by 20 percent simply by doing this technique. Indeed, by teaching your body to slow down and relax, which essentially short-circuits your physical stress reaction, you can protect your health, and your breathing can either trigger or hinder your relaxation response.

Your Breath and Blood Pressure Are Closely Related

Researchers at the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University believe essential hypertension (high blood pressure with no known cause), which is the most common form, may be prevented by implementing breathing exercises, provided you start doing it early enough.4 As reported by HealthCanal:5

“Lead researcher [p]rofessor Andrew Allen says the research parallels what sportspeople and eastern philosophies have long understood about the link between breathing and heart rate. ‘Biathletes have to regulate their breathing to slow down their heart rate before rifle shooting, and eastern meditative practices such as yoga and pranayama have always [emphasized] the interaction between the two’…”

The researchers discovered that by interrupting the activity between two types of neurons — ones controlling breathing and others regulating blood pressure — in young mice, they were able to dramatically reduce the development of hypertension in adulthood.6Unfortunately, in adults, where the synaptic interactions have become more fixed, the blood pressure reduction was only temporary. As reported in the featured article:7

“Breathing and blood pressure are functionally linked through the sympathetic nervous system, which sends nerve signals to the heart and blood vessels.

The altered neural activity leads to increased fluctuations in blood pressure with every breath and are seen in both the animal model and young, healthy adults at risk of developing high blood pressure in middle age. This [emphasizes] the need to identify people at risk of developing high blood pressure early.”

Why Deep, Slow Breathing Is so Calming

Other recent research8 shows the reason controlled, purposeful breathing is so calming is because it doesn’t activate specific neurons in your brain that communicate with your arousal center. Put another way, the reason rapid, shallow breathing is so stress-inducing is because it activates neurons that trigger arousal, which typically translates into worry and anxiety.

In this animal study, researchers were attempting to identify different types of neurons and their role in breathing function. They were focused on the pre-Bötzinger complex, also known as the breathing pacemaker. As reported by The New York Times:9

“More than 25 years ago, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles first discovered a small bundle of about 3,000 interlinked neurons inside the brainstems of animals, including people, that seem to control most aspects of breathing. They dubbed these neurons the breathing pacemaker.”

The researchers honed in on 175 neurons in the breathing pacemaker, which they then "silenced" (eliminated) in the mice, with the expectation that this would alter their breathing patterns. However, that didn’t happen. There were no changes at all in their breathing patterns after the neurons were knocked out.

Instead, the researchers were surprised to find the mice became very relaxed, and remained relaxed even in situations where anxiety would normally be triggered. What they discovered is that these neurons positively regulate neurons in a brainstem structure called the locus coeruleus, which is linked to arousal. It is, in other words, the formerly hidden link between breathing rate and emotional state. Study coauthor Jack Feldman, distinguished professor of neurology at UCLA, told The Verge:10

"It's a tie between breathing itself and changes in emotional state and arousal that we had never looked at before. It has considerable potential for therapeutic use."

While the creation of drugs to target this brain region is likely part of the agenda, there are natural methods already known to do so. Controlled breathing, or pranayama as it's known in the practice of yoga, is a central part of many ancient traditions.

Breathing Exercises Lower Blood Pressure

Breathing exercises have been found to impact both your blood pressure and stress, which makes sense considering how closely tied those two conditions are.

A recent article in University Health News11 cites several studies showing breathing exercises help lower blood pressure. For example, one 2005 study12 found taking six deep breaths in 30 seconds (each inhale and exhale lasting five seconds) lowered systolic blood pressure anywhere from 3.4 to 3.9 units, compared to simply resting in a seated position.

As noted in the article, apps and devices are available that will guide your breathing to help you get down to 10 or fewer breaths per minute. Studies13,14 have found using such devices for five minutes, three to four times per week, can help lower blood pressure in patients with hypertension.

Dr. Konstantin Buteyko, creator of the Buteyko Breathing Method, discovered he could lower his blood pressure simply by bringing his breathing toward normal. In this way, he successfully "cured" his own hypertension. In 1957, he coined the term "disease of deep breathing," having researched the health effects of excessive breathing for over a decade.

The problem with shallow, rapid breathing is that it activates your sympathetic response, which is involved in releasing cortisol and other stress hormones. Controlled deep breathing, on the other hand, helps trigger your relaxation response as it activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn slows down your heart rate and digestion while promoting a state of calm.

Controlled breathing exercises have also been found to modify stress-coping behaviors and initiate appropriate balance in cardiac autonomic tone, a term that describes your heart’s ability to respond to and recover from stressors.15

Sample Breathing Exercise to Control Anxiety and Reduce Stress

There are many different breathing techniques out there. As mentioned above, simply inhaling and exhaling to the count of six can go a long way toward regulating your breathing and lowering your blood pressure. Be sure to breathe through your nose, not your mouth. Another variation is the "HA" breath, which involves inhaling slowly through your nose, then exhaling quickly while saying "ha" out loud.

The following is a Buteyko breathing exercise that can help reduce stress, control anxiety and quell panic attacks. This sequence helps retain and gently accumulate carbon dioxide, leading to calmer breathing and reduced anxiety. In other words, the urge to breathe will decline as you enter a more relaxed state:

Take a small breath into your nose, followed by a small breath out
Then hold your nose for five seconds in order to hold your breath, and then release your nose to resume breathing
Breathe normally for 10 seconds
Repeat the sequence

Master the Light, Effortless Breath

In addition to being slow and deep, ideally you want your breathing to also be very calm and light — so light that the hairs in your nose barely move. This type of breathing, which is part of the Buteyko school of thought, helps you to enter and remain in a calm, meditative state while lowering your blood pressure. The following three steps will help your breath become lighter with practice.

Place one hand on your upper chest and the other on your belly. Your belly should move slightly in and out with each breath, and your midsection should get wider, while your chest should remain unmoving
Close your mouth and breathe in and out through your nose. Focus your attention on the cold air coming into your nose and the slightly warmer air leaving it on the out breath
Slowly decrease the volume of each breath, to the point it feels like you're almost not breathing at all (you'll notice your breath getting very quiet at this point). The crucial thing here is to develop a slight air hunger. This simply means there's a slight accumulation of carbon dioxide in your blood, which signals your brain to breathe

You may feel a slight air shortage at first, but this should be tolerable. If it becomes uncomfortable, take a 15-second break and then continue. After three or four minutes of air hunger, you'll start experiencing the beneficial effects of CO2 accumulation, such as an increase in body temperature and an increase in saliva. The former is a sign of improved blood circulation; the latter a sign that your parasympathetic nervous system has been activated, which is important for stress reduction.

Breathing Is a Cornerstone of Good Health

Download Interview Transcript

I recently interviewed Belisa Vranich — a clinical psychologist and author of “Breathe” — about her breathing program, which has been shown to improve physical and mental health in a short amount of time. There are two basic breathing styles: vertical and horizontal breathing. Chances are you’re breathing vertically, because most people (with the exception of young children) do.

This type of breathing makes you feel a bit taller on the in-breath, as it raises your chest and shoulders, which actually triggers your sympathetic nervous system, essentially signaling your body that you’re stressed out. As noted by Vranich, “If you’re not already in a stressed-out state, it’s going to make you more stressed.”

Correct breathing will cause your midsection to widen, while not raising your shoulders or puffing out the upper part of your chest. At first, you may find it difficult to take a proper breath, as your midsection may be too tight. An exercise that uses exaggerated motions to relearn proper breathing is as follows:

Begin by relaxing and unbracing your midsection
Take a deep breath in and actually feel the middle of your body get wider. Let your belly go
On the exhale, roll backward, tipping your hips underneath you while pressing your fingers gently into your belly, giving it a little squeeze

Eventually, this exercise will teach your body to use the diaphragm to breathe. Vranich also points out that, oftentimes, feeling short of breath is due to insufficient exhalation leaving excess residual air in your lungs. Engaging your diaphragm and intercostals — the muscles that run between your ribs, allowing your chest wall to move — will allow you to take more complete in and out breaths.

The condensed version of her interview is included above for your convenience. For the full interview, please see “Breathing Program to Improve Mental and Physical Health.”

Other Powerful Tools to Normalize Your Blood Pressure

Nitric oxide (NO) is a well-established biological signaling molecule that relaxes blood vessels. Most of us tend to have lower levels the older we get. In the video above, I demonstrate a simple three-minute exercise that, if done three times a day, every day, will radically increase your NO production and help to normalize your blood pressure. It will work synergistically with the breathing exercises described above and other strategies discussed below.

Address insulin and leptin resistance

High blood pressure is typically associated with insulin resistance, which results from eating a diet too high in sugar. As your insulin level elevates, so does your blood pressure. Insulin stores magnesium, but if your insulin receptors are blunted and your cells grow resistant to insulin, you can't store magnesium so it passes out of your body through urination.

Magnesium stored in your cells relaxes muscles. If your magnesium level is too low, your blood vessels will constrict rather than relax, and this constriction raises your blood pressure.

Fructose also elevates uric acid, which drives up your blood pressure by inhibiting the NO in your blood vessels. (Uric acid is a byproduct of fructose metabolism. In fact, fructose typically generates uric acid within minutes of ingestion.) NO helps your vessels maintain their elasticity, so NO suppression leads to increases in blood pressure.

If you're healthy, and want to stay that way, the general rule is to keep your total fructose intake to 25 grams per day or less. If you're insulin resistant and/or have high blood pressure, keep your total fructose to 15 grams or less per day until your condition has resolved.

Eat real food

A processed food diet, loaded with net carbohydrates (non-fiber carbs like sugar, fructose and grains) and trans fat (margarines and vegetable oils) is a recipe for hypertension. Instead, make whole, ideally organic foods the focus of your diet.

Also remember to swap non-fiber carbs for healthy fats such as avocados, butter made from raw, grass fed organic milk, organic pastured egg yolks, coconuts and coconut oil, raw nuts such as pecans and macadamia, grass fed meats and pasture-raised poultry. To learn more about healthy eating, please see my optimal nutrition plan.

Mind your sodium to potassium ratio

According to Dr. Lawrence Appel, lead researcher on the DASH diet and director of the Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Johns Hopkins, your diet as a whole is the key to controlling hypertension — not salt reduction alone.

He believes a major part of the equation is this balance of minerals — i.e., most people need less sodium and more potassium, calcium and magnesium. According to Appel: "Higher levels of potassium blunt the effects of sodium. If you can't reduce or won't reduce sodium, adding potassium may help. But doing both is better."

Indeed, maintaining a proper potassium to sodium ratio in your diet is very important, and hypertension is but one of many side effects of an imbalance. A processed food diet virtually guarantees you'll have a lopsided ratio of too much sodium to potassium. Making the switch from processed foods to whole foods will automatically improve your ratios.

Load up on veggies

Juicing is a simple way to increase the amount of vegetables in your diet, and many NO3-rich veggies (which raise your NO level) are suitable for juicing, such as beets, kale, celery, spinach, carrots and more. Allicin-rich garlic, leeks, shallots and chives also help improve your blood pressure, and are easy to add to salads and various dishes.

Optimize your vitamin D level

To learn more about vitamin D testing, please see my previous article, "How Vitamin D Performance Testing Can Help You Optimize Your Health."

Boost your animal-based omega-3 intake

The best way to boost your omega-3 is to eat plenty of oily fish that are low in mercury and other pollutants. Good options include wild caught Alaskan salmon, sardines and anchovies. Alternatively, take a high-quality krill oil or fish oil supplement. Krill oil has certain advantages over fish oil, which is why I prefer it.

Consider intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting is one of the most effective ways I've found to normalize your insulin/leptin sensitivity. It's not a diet in conventional terms, but rather a way of scheduling your eating in such a way as to promote efficient energy use. Essentially, intermittent fasting means eating your calories during a specific window of the day, and choosing not to eat food during the rest. When you eat, your body reacts by elevating insulin and leptin.

Exercise regularly

A comprehensive fitness program can go a long way toward regaining your insulin sensitivity and normalizing your blood pressure. To reap the greatest rewards, I recommend including high-intensity interval exercises in your routine. If you are insulin resistant, you'll also want to include weight training. When you work individual muscle groups, you increase blood flow to those muscles, and good blood flow will increase your insulin sensitivity.

I also recommend training yourself to breathe through your nose when exercising, as mouth breathing during exercise can raise your heart rate and blood pressure, sometimes resulting in fatigue and dizziness. To learn more about this, please refer to my previous article on the Buteyko breathing method.

Avoid smoking and other forms of pollution

Smoking is known to contribute to high blood pressure, as are other forms of air pollution, and even noise pollution. To address these, avoid smoking, consider using ear plugs during sleep if you live in a noisy neighborhood (provided you cannot move), and take steps to improve your indoor air quality.

Walk barefoot

Going barefoot will help you ground to the Earth. Experiments show that walking barefoot outside (also referred to as Earthing or grounding) improves blood viscosity and blood flow, which helps regulate blood pressure. So, do yourself a favor and ditch your shoes now and then.

Grounding also calms your sympathetic nervous system, which supports your heart rate variability. This in turn promotes homeostasis, or balance, in your autonomic nervous system. In essence, anytime you improve heart rate variability, you're improving your entire body and all of its functions.

Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)

The connection between stress and hypertension is well documented, yet still does not receive the emphasis it deserves. In fact, it has been shown that people with heart disease can lower their risk of subsequent cardiac events by over 70 percent simply by learning to manage their stress.

Suppressed negative emotions such as fear, anger and sadness can severely limit your ability to cope with the unavoidable every day stresses of life. It's not the stressful events themselves that are harmful, but your lack of ability to cope.

The good news is, strategies exist to quickly and effectively transform your suppressed, negative emotions, and relieve stress. My preferred method is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), an easy to learn, easy to use technique for releasing negative emotions.

EFT combines visualization with calm, relaxed breathing, while employing gentle tapping to "reprogram" deeply seated emotional patterns.

This will Help You Sleep Better?

2017-05-04T07:11:00.000-04:00

Can Valerian Root Help You Sleep Better?

May 04, 2017 Story at-a-glance

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Valerian root has a sedative effect and has a long history of use to promote relaxation and sleep. Studies show it helps improve the speed at which you fall asleep, depth of sleep and sleep quality
Melatonin is another helpful sleep aid, with lower doses being more effective than larger ones
For chronic insomnia, you need to address foundational causes. Get bright sun exposure during the day, avoid excessive amounts of light and blue light at night, and avoid electromagnetic fields

Dr. Mercola

Insomnia is defined as a medical condition involving difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep through the night. While aggravating in and of itself, insomnia can also lead to or exacerbate many other health problems, ranging from fatigue and an increased risk of accidents to a heightened risk of diabetes and cancer.

According to the latest estimates, insomnia may affect upwards of 70 million American adults, with men reporting a higher incidence than women.1

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one-third of American adults fail to get at least seven hours of sleep on a regular basis,2 which is associated with an increased risk of chronic ill health and mental distress. As noted by Dr. Wayne Giles, director of CDC's Division of Population Health:3

"As a nation we are not getting enough sleep. Lifestyle changes such as going to bed at the same time each night; rising at the same time each morning; and turning off or removing televisions, computers, mobile devices from the bedroom, can help people get the healthy sleep they need."

Another really crucial lifestyle aspect that can have a profound impact on your ability to sleep is sunlight and artificial light exposure during the day and night. Getting appropriate light exposure at the appropriate time of day — which I'll discuss further below — is perhaps one of the most important factors that needs to be addressed if you're having trouble sleeping.

One of the worst things you can do is reach for a sleeping pill. That said, certain natural supplements may be helpful as a temporary fix while you address the root causes. Here, I'll review a couple of supplements known for their beneficial influence on sleep.

Valerian Root — Nature's Valium

Frequently referred to as "nature's Valium," valerian root (Valeriana officinalis) has a sedative effect and has been used in traditional medicine to promote relaxation and sleep for at least 2,000 years. Some of the sedating compounds in valerian root include:

•Valerenic acid. As noted by Authority Nutrition,4 stress can lower your levels of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), which in turn has been linked to anxiety and impaired, poor quality sleep

The valerenic acid in valerian root has been shown to inhibit breakdown of GABA, resulting in greater calm and relaxation. Valium and Xanax work in similar ways

•Isovaleric acid, which helps prevent involuntary muscle contractions. Its action is similar to valproic acid, used to treat epilepsy

•Hesperidin, an antioxidant with sedative properties

•Linarin, an antioxidant with sedative properties

Valerian has also been shown to help maintain serotonin levels in the brain, which has a mood stabilizing effect. In fact, a number of studies have noted valerian root (sometimes in combination with other herbs, such as lemon balm), can be useful for anxiety brought on by acute or chronic stress.

Studies have also demonstrated its usefulness for hyperactivity, generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, too high a dose can have the converse effect, increasing anxiety. In one study, anxiety was increased when the highest dose, 1,800 milligrams (mg), was administered.5

Valerian May Improve Sleep

Valerian is one of the most commonly used herbal remedies for insomnia. Studies have found it helps improve6 the speed at which you fall asleep, depth of sleep (achieving deep sleep 36 percent faster7), and overall quality of sleep. Bear in mind, however, that herbs can affect different people in different ways, and 1 in 10 people actually tend to feel energized by valerian root, which may impede sleep. If you notice this tendency, clearly valerian is not a good sleep aid for you.

Higher dosages can also have this reverse effect, so always start with a minimal dose, and use the lowest dose needed to achieve the desired effect. Typical dosages used in studies range between 400 mg and 900 mg, taken anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours before bed.

A 2011 study,8 which focused on post-menopausal women, found 30 percent of participants experienced improved sleep quality after taking 530 mg of valerian twice a day for four weeks. An earlier study,9 published in 2001, also found that people who are regularly kept awake at night, plagued by thoughts of work deadlines, relationship problems or other stressful life events might find relief from either valerian or kava.

In that study, adults who had suffered from stress-induced insomnia for over 15 years first received 120 mg daily of kava for six weeks. Then, after two weeks off treatment, they received 600 mg of valerian daily for another 6 weeks.

Overall, participants reported that both herbs significantly relieved their symptoms of stress and insomnia, and while the majority, 58 percent, reported no side effects from either treatment, 16 percent reported vivid dreams after taking valerian and 12 percent experienced dizziness with kava.

In a 1989 study,10 44 percent of participants reported "perfect" sleep and 89 percent reported improved sleep after taking a 400 mg of a valerian preparation called Valerina Natt.

Side Effects and Contraindications

Importantly, studies have not found any serious adverse effects from valerian, although some users report headache, stomach ache, irregular heartbeat or dizziness.11,12 Unlike sleeping pills, when used as directed, valerian will not adversely affect your reaction time, alertness or concentration the following day.

That said, avoid valerian if you're on any kind of sedatives (either drugs or natural herbs or supplements with sedative effects), narcotics, antidepressants or anti-seizure medication. Also, do not take it with alcohol, and do not drive or use machinery within several hours of taking valerian. Valerian may also be contraindicated if you are pregnant or have liver problems, and should not be given to children under the age of 3.

Melatonin May Be an Even Better Option

I personally believe melatonin is one of the best options available, as far as supplemental sleep aids are concerned. Melatonin is a hormone produced by your pineal gland, which is affected by light and dark.

At night, when it gets dark, your pineal gland begins producing melatonin, which makes you feel sleepy. (Melatonin also acts as an antioxidant and regulator of mitochondrial functions,13 which is why chronic sleep problems can raise your risk of disease,14 including cancer15).

When functioning normally, your melatonin levels will remain elevated for about 12 hours (usually between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m.). Then, as the sun rises, your pineal gland typically stops producing melatonin and the levels in your blood decrease, signaling it's time to wake up.

The pineal gland's sensitivity to light explains why LED lights and electronics should be filtered or avoided at least an hour or two before bed, and why something as simple as turning on a light in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom can interfere with your sleep for the rest of the night.

Interestingly enough, studies have shown lower doses of melatonin are more effective, so do not make the mistake of thinking that more is better. You can start with as little as 0.25 mg of melatonin and work your way up in quarter-gram increments from there until you get the desired effect.

As with valerian, too high a dose can have the reverse effect, making it more difficult to fall and stay asleep. Still, even melatonin is only a short-term solution. The best option if you regularly have trouble sleeping is to try to find out the root cause of your insomnia. More often than not, the trouble can be traced back to insufficient sunlight exposure during the day and inappropriate and/or excessive artificial lighting at night.

To Sleep Well, Mind Your 24-Hour Light Exposure

If you have trouble sleeping at night, be sure to:

•Get bright sunlight exposure during the day, as this helps "set" your internal body clock or circadian rhythm. Your body requires exposure to bright daylight, especially in the early morning, to produce healthy amounts of melatonin each night. Artificial indoor lighting is several magnitudes lower than daylight, so there's really no substitute for spending at least 15 to 30 minutes outdoors at some point between 9 a.m. and noon, ideally without sunglasses or regular glasses on.

•Avoid or filter blue light sources in the evening, such as LED lighting, fluorescent lighting and electronic screens, as blue light suppresses melatonin production, thereby impeding your ability to fall asleep and reducing sleep quality.16 You can mitigate the negative impact of artificial lights and electronic screens by wearing blue-blocking glasses.

I now put on my red-colored glasses as soon as the sun sets, as they also filter out yellow and green, which can also disturb melatonin production. I use $9 red laser eye protection safety glasses from Amazon.17 I only wear them after sunset. If I need to shield myself from blue light before sunset I use amber-colored glasses.

Historically, the only light source our ancient ancestors had at night was fire, which has virtually no blue or green light. Even moonlight and starlight is a form of solar (i.e., a form of fire) radiation, and while there is some blue there, it is greatly diminished and nowhere near that of a fluorescent or LED light bulb, or your computer or TV screen.

Exposure to these blue light frequencies after sunset virtually assures that you will lower your melatonin and melanopsin levels. It also increases your risk of blindness from macular degeneration.

•Sleep in total darkness. My rule of thumb is, if you can see your hand in front of your face, then there is too much light for optimal sleep. If you find blackout shades too costly, you could just wear a well-fitting sleep mask to prevent stray light from filtering through your eyelids. It is not as good, though, as your skin has some sensitivity to light, so strive for complete darkness whenever possible.

Electromagnetic Fields Can Also Impair Sleep

Aside from getting the correct kind of light exposure during the day and avoiding excessive amounts of light and blue light at night, it's also important to address the electromagnetic field (EMF) emitted from wiring and electronic devices.

While blue light at night reduces your melatonin secretion and therefore antioxidant protection for your mitochondrial function, EMF from electronic devices not only impairs melatonin secretion, it also harms your mitochondria by producing oxidative damage. Thus, your computer, cellphone and other electronic devices may impair sleep and damage your health in more ways than one.

Cancer is one major concern of EMF exposure,18,19,20,21 as mitochondrial damage lays the foundation for future cancer development. DNA damage triggered by EMF also leads to changes in cellular function and premature cell death. In 2011, the World Health Organization actually classified cellphone radiation as a 2B carcinogen, or "possibly carcinogenic to humans."22

EMF also has a detrimental effect on the health of your brain, altering function and potentially fueling dementia. Even though measured EMF from cellphones is considered low, studies have demonstrated it can alter your brain function and activity.23 EMF from cellphones and Wi-Fi is also linked to changes in brain neurons that affect memory and the ability to learn.24

EMF-Proofing Your Bedroom

Eliminating EMF exposure can be tricky business, as most homes are quite literally swimming in electric currents. Still, there are ways to reduce EMF to a smaller or greater degree, depending on how far you're willing to go. Here are some suggestions, ranging from modest to more extreme:

•Avoid running electrical cords underneath your bed.

•One of the most important is to turn off your Wi-Fi at night. Since you don't need internet access while sleeping, this is a simple remedy that most people can implement.

•Move alarm clocks and other electrical devices away from your head, or ideally out of the room. If these devices must be used, keep them as far away from your bed as possible, preferably at least three feet. Cellphone chargers should be kept at least 4 feet away from your bed, while portable phone bases and wireless routers should be kept as far away from your bedroom as possible.

•Avoid sleeping with your head against a wall that contains unshielded electric wiring and/or electric meters, circuit breaker panels, televisions or stereos on the other side. Unfortunately, few communities in the U.S. require wall wiring to be placed in metal-clad conduit. This is primarily done for fire prevention, but it also eliminates most electric fields.

Therefore, more than likely, you are exposed to electric fields that radiate from the wires in the wall at the head of your bed, even if you don't have any electronics on the other side of the wall. The solutions in both instances are to move your bed 3 feet away from the wall, install an EMF protection canopy over your bed, or turn off the power breaker to your bedroom.

•Pull your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house.

To Sleep Well, Don't Rely on Temporary Fixes

It's important to understand that while herbs are far less problematic than sleeping pills (which fail to live up to their promises while carrying significant health risks), ultimately even these natural supplements are just temporary fixes that don't address the root cause. If you're struggling with insomnia on a regular basis, you are far better off seeking to correct the problem at its foundation, as discussed above.

DANGEROUS Packaged FOODS - Cheerios ?

2017-04-21T08:38:00.003-04:00

Cheerios Nutrition: Is This Popular Food Actually Healthy for Kids & Adults?

by Deborah Oke

They're a popular finger food for toddlers, and countless kids (and adults) chow down on a bowl of them every morning. But is Cheerios cereal really a healthy food to be feeding your children or even yourself? Let's take a look at the Cheerios nutrition information.

Cheerios boast that they are made from heart healthy whole grains. There aren’t any added food dyes and the enriched vitamins and minerals are supposed to be good for you and your family. Therefore it would be easy to assume that Cheerios are a safe, nutritious choice for breakfast − especially since whole grains are part of the USDA's recommended dietary guidelines.

Unfortunately, what is NOT being listed, or listed accurately on the Cheerios nutrition label, is of bigger concern than what's shown on the label. For instance:

Acrylamide
Sugar sources
Emulsifiers
Flavor enhancers
Inorganic salts
Tocopherols

These can all be found in Cheerios and all merit a closer investigation. Let's take a look at what these Cheerios ingredients and additives can do to your health...

What is Acrylamide?

Acrylamide is a carcinogen that is formed when foods containing carbohydrates and sugar are cooked at high temperatures or for an extended period of time. This would include; frying, baking, boiling (process for canned products), and microwaving. The process of making plastic bags and containers also produce significant amounts of acrylamide making them unsafe for packaging food products.

So, the process of toasting the otherwise healthy wholegrain oats produces high levels of the toxic acrylamide. Storing them in a plastic bag inside the box adds even more toxicity. Cancers linked to acrylamide poisoning include: breast, prostate, ovarian, testicular, and thyroid.

The risks are high enough to attract attention from a private watchdog group. Researchers from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) have documented multiple problems with America’s favorite cereals and snacks as related to acrylamide formation during cooking. Claims of cancer and neurological damage are worth reporting. Consumers need to know that what they are eating is affecting them adversely − the more we know the better we can protect ourselves.

So, what can you do to overcome the toxic overdose? The "master antioxidant" glutathione has shown to be an effective detoxifier against acrylamide. Consumption of uncooked vegetables rich in this antioxidant adds to the metabolic reserves that deactivate and flush out the poison.

Foods rich in glutathione include: fresh garlic, kale, green onions, broccoli, arugula (rocket), red peppers, and cauliflower. It is their naturally occurring sulfur-rich content that effectively deactivates the toxins.

It's also good practice to avoid products that are fried, baked at temperatures above 250 F for hours, or foods prepared or heated in a microwave. Canned foods (not to be confused with the canning of fruits and vegetables that you do at home) should also be avoided for the same reason.

You've Heard it Before: Avoid Refined Sugar

The message is finally getting out that refined sugar has negative effects on the entire body. Sugar turns to fat which causes obesity, mood swings, inability to concentrate, and diabetes. Worse than that sugar feeds diseases (including cancer), causing the body to become acidic which increases the proliferation of bad bacteria in the body. It also compromises the immune system and taxes the endocrine system, which is responsible for digestion and metabolism. There is nothing good about refined sugar except its taste, and too many of us are drawn to consume unhealthy foods because of our addiction to sugar.

Sugar is definitely not part of a healthy breakfast. Even worse yet, the “eye candy” factor of using a cute little bee on the packaging for Honey Nut Cheerios with the heart gives the impression that this product is all natural and sweetened with honey. What a scam! But that’s how "Big Food" operates.

Monoglycerides Extend Shelf Life

Monoglycerides and diglycerides go hand in hand. These ingredients are used as cheap emulsifiers and for extending the shelf-life of a product. They are actually hydrogenated oils made up of fatty acids similar to triglycerides (aka trans fats). These additives are found in virtually every name brand food on the market. They are also responsible for causing low-fat ice cream to be both tastier and not melt as it should. (As a side note, there are some interesting videos on YouTube of so-called "ice cream" that never melts!)

Processed food companies are able to hide trans fats through mono and diglyceride labels because they are classified as emulsifiers. This is how manufacturers disguise dangerous trans fats. Their products can be marketed as having zero trans fats when in fact they contain more than the allotted amount for being labeled as such.

This unhealthy duo (mono and diglycerides) are harmful for your health in that they can cause cancer, autoimmune disease, diabetes, strokes, and heart disease according to Dr. Dewey, author of Hydrogenated Oils-Silent Killers. They are also inflammatory, raise bad cholesterol levels, and are responsible for obesity in our children leading to chronic illness.

Cheerios is another big industry brand claiming to be heart healthy and helpful for lowering cholesterol, but don’t be fooled. Any food with a label that you read containing mono and diglycerides, no matter what the marketing jingle claims, is in fact going to be the complete opposite. It will very likely wreak havoc on your child’s health.

Here’s the clue: if it says emulsifiers, Monoglycerides, or Diglycerides then you know it contains trans and hydrogenated fats that should be avoided like the plague.

What Exactly is "Calcium Carbonate?"

This is another one of those mysterious ingredients found in the majority of packaged foods that no one seems to know what it is. People don’t tend to question it because it starts with the word "calcium," which is supposed to be good for you, right? So what could be the issue with this Cheerios nutrition label ingredient?

Calcium carbonate is a synthetically isolated form of calcium derived from bones, stones, and mollusks. It’s commonly used in supplements and in most packaged foods as an inorganic salt. This is a problem because if it’s found in the majority of commercial products on supermarket shelves and in restaurants, it’s likely that you are at risk of getting too much synthetic calcium − especially since it’s cumulative.

Calcium overdose leads to a long list of chronic illnesses including: breast cancer, bone cancer, calcification of the arteries, heart attacks, ovarian cysts, gallstones, kidney stones, and colon cancer. This may account for why so many children in America are being diagnosed with diseases associated with old age.

We should be getting our calcium from organic, unprocessed, plant-based foods. Some of those foods include: leafy greens, spirulina, chlorella, whole untoasted sesame seeds, and many more. So play it safe and eat whole, unaltered food.

Trisodium Phosphate is for Cleaning, Not Children's Cereal

You may have used Trisodium Phosphate (aka TSP) to wash your walls before painting them, but did you know that this industrial cleaner is also an ingredient in Cheerios?! Unbelievably, the FDA permits food manufacturers to use small amounts of TSP in processed foods as a "flavor enhancer."

According to the FDA, the limit for how much TSP can safely be consumed daily is around 70mg, but with the thousands of popular packaged and frozen foods on the market containing TSP, the average American could easily consume 500 mg or more in a single day. Trisodium phosphate is highly carcinogenic, neurotoxic, causes reproductive disorders and swelling of the esophagus − to name a few of its side effects.

Think about it... would you take a box of TSP and sprinkle it on your cereal? Of course not. So why does the FDA and General Mills think it's acceptable for parents to unwittingly feed it to their babies!

Are Vitamin E Tocopherols in Cereals Genetically Modified?

Vitamin E is contained in plants, nuts, and grains but is affected by the processing of those sources when used as a preservative. Some companies use synthetic, petroleum-based Tocopherols to preserve their products. These are not well absorbed by the body so they become useless as a nutrient.

Even though General Mills does not specify what type of Vitamin E Tocopherols are used as a preservative, it is likely going to be soy, corn, or cottonseed oil. The majority of these oils are made from genetically-modified crops so it may still be possible you are getting a GMO product even though General Mills is now stating that their original Cheerios are GMO-free.

It is better to ingest cereals in their natural whole grain state as much as possible, or eat nuts and seeds with fresh fruit instead. Buckwheat is a good alternative to wheat because it is more of a seed than a grain and it's gluten free.

Other sources of vitamin E, a necessary nutrient for nerve health and energy, include: avocado, untoasted nuts, unprocessed olives, extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, and coconut oil. Flaxseed is also a good source and maintains its integrity during baking.

It is so disheartening to discover the many deceptive practices of "Big Food" companies. Profits definitely take precedence in packaged foods. I know, you just want to buy something healthy for your family to eat that isn’t going to take a lot of time. There are alternatives. "We the people" are starting to taking a stand against the polluters of our environment and body so the real healthy options are becoming more numerous and more affordable.

Finally, how many people consume Cheerios without milk? Most people have a lot of milk with their cereal because once again, milk is deemed to be healthy and very necessary. But the truth is milk is not necessary once you have been weaned from your mother’s breast and today commercial cow’s milk is contaminated with dangerous substances.

The Scary Facts About Conventional Dairy Milk

Most people eat cereal along with milk. I know it’s hard to fathom, but cow’s milk is no longer safe to drink unless you know the source is organic grass-fed. You also want to be sure the cows are not being given hormones to increase milk production or antibiotics to counter the adverse effects of the hormones.

Commercial cow’s milk can be tainted with toxic metals, growth hormone, antibiotics, pus from mastitis, GMOs from animal feed, and many more contaminants unfit for human consumption. These contaminants are carcinogenic, and can contribute to an increased risk of a number of types of cancer. They also affect the gastrointestinal tract causing leaky gut and other digestive disorders.

Milk is also mucous-producing and inflammatory which further compromises the immune system. All these problems don’t add up to a healthy protein or calcium source. You're far better off using nut milks instead.

In Conclusion

I know it may be sad to hear all this bad news about one of your favorite cereal brands, but it is better to be informed than sick. I really wish we could trust the FDA and food companies, but the facts make it crystal clear that they care more about their profit margin than how many people are becoming obese, chronically ill, and even dying from over consumption of processed foods.

Nevertheless, I hope I have given you enough information to make better food choices for you and your family. Remember, if you don’t know how to pronounce an ingredient on the label it’s likely the product is better left on the shelf. Choose organic whole foods to get the most nutrients for your body and whenever possible consume them in their natural organic state.

Are you shocked by Cheerios nutrition profile? Please share the article with your friends and family and tell us your thoughts in the Comments section below the article.

Deborah Oke | April 21, 2017 at 12:03 am | Categories: Cancer Causes | URL: https://thetruthaboutcancer.

Future Longevity -Technology Predictions for 2017-2045

2017-04-12T17:37:00.002-04:00

Future Predictions for 2017-2045

Feb. 6, 2017, in Industry News Artificial Intelligence Biotechnology Longevity Medical Technology

Dr Robert Goldman, Co-Founder & Chm-World Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, weighs in with his latest set of predictions for health and technology.

It is estimated that the doubling time of medical knowledge in 1950 was 50 years; in 1980, 7 years; and in 2010, 3.5 years. In 2020 it is projected to be 0.2 years—just 73 days. Computer power is doubling every 18 months, so massive increases in scope and scale. Once nanotechnology and nano circuitry, stem cells, and genetic engineering, come on board, the world as we know it will be unrecognizable. Get ready for the first complete synthetic human brain, moon mining, chips implanted in our brains, self-driving cars, trucks and planes, robotic moon bases and maybe even high-speed rail linking London to Beijing.

The most popular movie super heroes demonstrate cellular regeneration like 'Wolverine' allowing mutations to enable rapid cellular repair & healing achieving Immortality, or Captain America in 1942 using Hormone Therapy/Steroid Augmentation to become an athletic Super Hero and with Cryonics/suspended animation freezing him into the 21st century. This Brave New World is coming into being faster than we imagined. To have the great jobs and careers of the future, you must embrace and see it before it arrives.

Radical Life Extension
Billions of dollars have recently flowed into Anti-Aging Medical research, from the likes of Silicon Valley & Biotech Startups chasing after the 'Fountain of Youth', such as Calico (Google), Johnson & Johnson, Human Longevity Inc, Elysium Health, Synthetic Genomics, GlaxoSmithKline / Sinclair, Startup Health, Mayo Clinic, Scripps Research, Roche , Novartis (Rapamycin), AstraZeneca, AbbVie, Pfizer, Sanofi, Medtronic/Covidien, IBM Watson Healthcare, Quest, Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Facebook, Amazon, Novo Nordisk and other giants. They finally realize that Anti-Aging & Regenerative Medicine is the next generation of healthcare - the age of PRACTICAL IMMORTALITY, where lifespans of 120 to 150 in superior health may become commonplace and may be seen as early as 2029. Others such as Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, for example, has given more than $430 million toward anti-aging research because he finds the quiet acquiescence of mortality “incomprehensible.” XPRIZE entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis co-founded Human Longevity, which, in conjunction with StartUp Health, launched the Longevity Moonshot, whose mission is “to extend and enhance healthy life by 50+ years and change the face of aging.” Google co-founder Larry Page launched a biotech company called Calico, which aims to extend the human life span by a century. Calling it “a longer-term bet,” Page said he was confident they “can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people.” PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel created Breakout Labs to fund scientists and start-ups that include some working on achieving immortality, and he invested millions in funding research to treat aging as an engineering problem to be solved at the cellular level by reprogramming cells to stop aging. The anti-aging literature is loaded with technologies to prolong lifespan by 20-40%, at least in lab animals. Interventions such as caloric restriction, rapamycin, stem cells, genetic engineering, nanotechnology and metformin, etc have been studied for decades for their anti-aging capacity. In the past several years, multiple scientific teams demonstrated the rejuvenating powers of young blood. A study published in the esteemed journal Nature found that eliminating senescent cells in aged mice boosted their lifespan by a hefty 30%. Hundreds of anti-aging drugs are now in the pipeline and billions of dollars are being expended to find real answers. The FDA finally recognized 'Aging' as a disorder that the medical community could target and potentially treat, something the American Academy of Ant-Aging Medicine (A4M) (www.Worldhealth.net, www.A4M.com) has been stating for decades. Notes A4M President Dr Ronald Klatz, "'Aging is Not Inevitable' and we are seeing the largest paradigm shift in the history of medicine." We know that lifespan has essentially been going up roughly 1 year in every 4, but healthspan is not going up at anywhere near the same rate. The United States spends 19% GDP on healthcare, most of which is used in the last 6 months of a person’s life. If you want an exciting career, the anti-aging & regenerative medicine marketplace is one to look at seriously. We can no longer practice the 'disease based' medicine of the past...preventative anti-aging & regenerative medicine is the only viable solution to prevent bankrupting of the national budgets due to massive chronic healthcare costs.

The Robots are Coming
Robotics is a rapidly emerging technology which will penetrate every aspect of business and our daily lives. This will replace massive numbers of manufacturing jobs and manual labor. Japan is expecting one in three of its population to be over the age of 65 by 2030, and one in five to be over 75, creating a major requirement for the care of the elderly. Japan is now using robots to service the elderly. A hotel opened in Japan in 2015 with lifelike robots, called 'Actroids', serving as the check-in staff. Aid assistance in nursing facilities is on the horizon, meaning many of the entry-level jobs in those areas will become obsolete just like bank tellers. Look at the field of Robotics, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and VR (Virtual Reality) technologies for massive growth industries.

Coastal Changes
Climate change will have a strong economic impact in the future. It is anticipated that by 2050, more than 40% of the world’s population will live under severe water stress, resulting in floods or drought that, combined, can put the economic value of assets at risk to record highs. Becoming efficient with resources is socially responsible and cost beneficial. Organizations need to adapt to increasing regulations controlling energy efficiency, waste, water leakage, urban congestion, transportation efficiency, land degradation, freight impact, and other factors. Allowing employees to work virtually also reduces the need for facilities and helps organizations minimize their carbon footprints.

New Energy Sources
Where we get our energy from will change dramatically. The U.S. military has pledged to get half its energy from renewable resources by 2020, and the Navy whole-heartedly believes it can turn to 50% biofuels by then. It makes political sense not to rely on volatile regions for energy, and this push could mean both cleaner vehicle fleets and a major bump in the competitiveness of biofuels in the market. The strangle hold that Middle Eastern oil holds will soon be an ancient memory. Biofuels and renewable clean energy are growth industries of the future..Oil and coal are on their way out.

3D Print Your Organs and Meat
3D Printable Organs are already in process via 3D “bioprint” organ tissues, a process that involves depositing a “bio-ink” made of cells precisely in layers, resulting in a functional living human tissue for use in the lab. These tissues should be better predictors of drug function than animal models in many cases. In the long-term, this has the potential to pave the way to “printing” human organs, such as kidneys, livers and hearts. By 2020, the goal is to have the technology be broadly used by pharmaceutical cos, resulting in the identification of safer and better drug candidates and fewer failures in clinical trials. ...This same 3D Printed technology via stem cells, is also being applied to meat production for human consumption. (Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo -World Economic Forum)

World Will Get Very Small
There is major globalization shift in where business is conducted and is occurring now. McKinsey estimates that half of the world’s largest cos will be headquartered in what are now emerging markets, such as Brazil, India, and eastern European countries. Pressure from global competition and other factors resulted in over 40% of the cos that were in the Fortune 500 in 2000 falling off the list in the next several years. These were replaced largely by new global entrants and technology cos. This will continue to shift to farther parts of the planet.

The Job Skills/Info Gap
The Job Skills Gap and information Gap is the problem and not that workers are unskilled; it’s that workers don’t know what skills employers need. Technology is already disrupting existing jobs, and creating new jobs that never existed before. In fact, the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not even exist in 2004. Change is happening so rapidly that 65% of today’s grade school kids in the U.S. will end up at jobs that haven’t even been invented yet. If u wish to be competitive you must enhance your tech skill levels for future industries not yet mainstream. (Alexis Ringwald, Cofounder and CEO, LearnUp, -World Economic Forum)

Water as a Major Asset
Water is an asset not a liability. Driven by global population growth and rising water scarcity, the UN reports that 75% of the world’s available freshwater is already polluted. Under-investment in water management is exacerbating the problem, causing serious impacts on human health and the environment. A key challenge is the high capital cost, and high energy requirements, of current wastewater treatment and management systems. Desalination plants will spring up worldwide to create massive needed fresh water from sea ocean water. The ability to use biotechnology to extract resources, such as energy, from waste, and the dropping cost of industrial automation, will begin to change our approach to managing water globally. Rather than a liability, wastewater will be viewed as an environmental resource, providing energy and clean water to communities and industry, and ushering in a truly sustainable and economical approach to managing our water resources. (Matthew Silver, CEO of Cambrian Innovation-World Economic Forum)

Super Computers Replacing Your Doctor?
Supercomputers with artificial intelligence taking better care of you than your Doctor? IBM Watson has partnered with Celgene to better track negative drug side effects and IBM is applying its cognitive computing AI technology to recommend cancer treatment in rural areas in the U.S., India, and China. For example, IBM Watson could read a patient's electronic medical records, analyze imagery of the cancer, and even look at gene sequencing of the tumor to figure out the optimal treatment plan for a particular person. The IBM Watson programs are able to instantly scan the world's medical literature data for making a diagnosis and treatment plan, so in the future a nurse or tech may be able do a more detailed evaluation than even team of doctors. And coupled with advanced MRI, CT and PET scans, view the inner body in mind boggling ways and even treating cancers and other issues at the microscopic level. This will turn the medical profession on its ear. (Fortune Magazine)

The Nanobots are Coming
Nanobots (miniaturized robots as small as an atom or electron) could become commonplace and in the future, may even integrate with our brain matter allowing us to merge with computers and the 'Cloud' for a 'Singularity' or merging of our minds with machines & computers. Nanotechnology ("nanotech") is manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology which is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers and such technologies deal with the special properties of matter which occur below the given size threshold potential applications (including industrial and military). Governments have invested billions of dollars in nanotechnology research and can be as diverse as surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor physics, microfabrication, molecular engineering, etc. The associated research and applications are equally diverse, ranging from extensions of conventional device physics to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, from developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale, to direct control of matter on the atomic scale. Nanotechnology may be able to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications, such as in nanomedicine, nanoelectronics, biomaterialsenergy production, and consumer products. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as any new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is warranted.. So with nano circuitry, we may be able to live, basically, in a virtual world — Matrix style....and perhaps even Reincarnate deceased ones virtually and be able to "bring back" those lost through artificial intelligence states some scientists. By the 2030s perhaps we send nanobots into people's brains to extract memories of loved ones. Augment that with a DNA sampling of the deceased, and it may be possible to create a convincing virtual version of somebody who's passed on. This progress is so profound, that within 30 years, computational power of artificial intelligence will be a billion times that of human intelligence, allowing us to upload our minds and maybe even our very souls to a computer, leading to a form of connective 'Singularity', a term created by Google scientist Ray Kurzweil. Even Stephen Hawking thinks it's possible; "I think the brain is like a program in the mind, which is like a computer, so it's theoretically possible to copy the brain on to a computer and so provide a form of life after death," the physicist said. This may in fact lead to virtual bodies like the wild video games and Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) devices we seeing exploding on the scene: (PopSci.com)

Self-Driving Trucks and Cars
The push for self-driving cars is not just because motorists would rather let the machine do the work. It’s because taking humans out of equation could mean safer travel and smarter traffic flow. To look forward to how we will drive in 2020 you just have to look back to 1957.The US electricity industry ran a newspaper ad promising a life of leisure in the future with a now iconic image showing a near empty highway and a family in a self-driving car with a glass bubble roof. Instead of worrying about the road ahead, the family are doing what all families do in their downtime apparently — they play dominoes and clearly don’t have a care for skin cancer. When it comes to self-driving cars, the year 2020 doesn’t just mark a vision of the future but a deadline. Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have set 2020 down as when they plan to introduce cars that can navigate city streets without the need for a driver. Volvo, which will soon begin trialling self-driving cars in Australia, has taken that one step further. Back in 2008, Volvo’s lead safety expert Anders Eugensson predicted that “by 2020, nobody shall be seriously injured or killed in a new Volvo”. Since then, Volvo has added some fine print to that bold prediction. Volvo safety expert Trevor Rourke admitted earlier this year that “not even the Pope is infallible” but said the trend was towards zero fatalities by 2020. No matter how attentive a human driver can be, a self-automated car with lasers, radar, sonar and video sensors gives the car the edge in keeping an eye on the road. In many ways Google is leading the charge towards self-driving cars with its autonomous vehicles now having driving nearly 3 million self-autonomous kilometres with only a handful of minor accidents and most of them caused by drivers running into the self-driving car because they are distracted by the Google logo and sensors on the top. But other new players working on autonomous cars include Uber, Tesla and, if the rumours are true, Apple. As Telstra Chief Technology Officer Vish Nandlall says, we’re already down.

Driverless Trucks
Driverless trucks will be safer and cheaper than their human-controlled counterparts, but that doesn’t mean America’s 3.5 million professional truck drivers are giving up to the machines without a fight. Across the US, truckers collectively haul more than 10 Billion tons of freight each year, but it’s a tough job – the hours are long and lonely, the pay is low and the lifestyle is sedentary. In many ways it’s a job ripe for disruption; robots v truckers. “Picture the taxi drivers around the world acting in response to Uber,” says Andy Stern, the former former president of the Service Employees International Union, referring to protests and violence that erupted in many cities as the $62.5 Billion Silicon Valley on-demand ride-hailing firm challenged conventional, regulated taxis. “Truck drivers will follow a similar pattern,” says Stern. “There will be disruption in different places. You can imagine people ringing state capitals with their trucks.” Much has been written about the advent of the driverless car, with rival versions being developed by Google, Uber and Tesla, yet driverless trucks are likely to roll out at scale much sooner. “Individuals can make their own choices about whether they want to get into a driverless car or taxi, but labour-saving technology will be deployed by businesses much quicker,” explains Stern, whose book Raising the Floor explores the need for a universal basic income as technology replaces jobs. Mining giant Rio Tinto already uses 45 240-ton driverless trucks to move iron ore in two Australian mines, saying it is cheaper and safer than using human drivers. Now the race is on to put driverless trucks on public roads. In May 2015, the first self-driving truck hit the American road in the state of Nevada, and there have been several tests around the world since then including a convoy that drove across Europe to the port of Rotterdam. That convoy used a new automated driving technology called platooning, which connects trucks using Wi-Fi, sensors, GPS and cameras. The leading vehicle dictates speed and direction, while the rest automatically steer, speed up and slow down in close convoy. In San Francisco, former Googlers have launched a startup called Otto, which promises to retrofit vehicles with driverless capabilities for just $30,000. The average trucker’s wage is around $40,000 per year.

The potential saving to the freight transportation industry is estimated to be $168 Billion annually. The savings are expected to come from labor ($70 Billion), fuel efficiency ($35 Billion), productivity ($27 Billion) and accidents ($36 Billion), before including any estimates from non-truck freight modes like air and rail. It’s regulation, and not technology that stands in the way of eliminating people from behind the wheel. Although trucking companies are likely to lobby hard for the legal reform so they can save on labor, which represents an estimated 34% of operational costs per mile, Morgan Stanley conservatively estimates that the freight industry could save as $168 Billion annually by harnessing autonomous technology – $70 Billion of which would come from reducing staff. In addition to cost savings, fleets of automatedtrucks could save lives. Crashes involving large trucks killed 3,903 people in the US in 2014, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and a further 110,000 people were injured. More than 90% of the accidents were caused at least in part by driver error. What next for drivers? Where does this leave the 3.5 million truckers whose livelihoods depend on the need for a human behind the wheel? Truck Driver is not a profession for the future.

Internet of Things
It’s the simplest of terms that is obsessing the tech industry and confusing the public: The 'Internet of Things'. There are currently 13.4 billion things connected in the world — smartphones, smart TVs, computers, tablets and the odd fridge and robotic vacuum. Juniper Research predicts that figure will reach 38.5 billion by 2020. Technology analysts Telsyte predict the number of connected devices in the average Australian home will jump from the current figure of nine to at least 24 and the internet-enabled white good will become the norm, just as smart TVs are now standard. This is another career growth area in the tech fields.
So we either prepare for these future high tech/Info tidal waves and embrace them, or be swept away by them.

Robert M. Goldman MD, PhD, DO, FAASP
Co-Founder & Chairman-World Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine
World Chairman-International Medical Commission
Co-Founder & Chairman of the Board-A4M
Founder & Chairman-International Sports Hall of Fame
President Emeritus-National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)
Chairman-U.S. Sports Academy’s Board of Visitors

Sugar addictive as cocaine and has toxic effects on your body when consumed in excess

2017-04-12T07:19:00.000-04:00

Coca-Cola Caught Undermining Public Health Initiatives

April 12, 2017 |

By Dr. Mercola

Soda and other sweetened beverages have been identified as a major contributor to the obesity1,2 and diabetes epidemics around the world,3,4 and in light of the scientific evidence, many public health organizations have started recommending daily sugar limits.

At least 10 countries have implemented or are working toward implementing taxes on soda in an effort to reduce consumption and improve public health.

One 12-ounce can of regular soda contains on average between 8 and 10 teaspoons of sugar, far exceeding 100 percent of your recommended daily sugar allotment of 6 teaspoons (25 grams).

Considering sugar is as addictive as cocaine5 and has downright toxic effects on your body when consumed in excess,6 it's no wonder obesity has become such a health crisis.

Previous research conservatively suggests sugary beverages alone are to blame for about 183,000 deaths worldwide each year, including 133,000 diabetes deaths and 44,000 heart disease deaths.7 What's worse, the death rates associated with sweetened beverages were highest in those under the age of 45.

Reducing the number of sugary drinks you consume each day can go a long way toward reducing your risk for metabolic dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke and obesity.

Unfortunately, the continued profitability of the soda industry depends on public ignorance about the dangers associated with their products, and evidence reveals companies such as Coca-Cola are willing to go to great lengths to manipulate public health organizations and distort science to further their corporate agenda.

How Your Body Responds to Coca-Cola

Two years ago, former pharmacist Niraj Naik produced an infographic showing what happens in your body within the first hour of drinking a can of Coca-Cola. At the time, he told The Daily Mail:8

"When I worked as a community pharmacist I had some great success at helping people get off long term medication … Many of them [patients] would consume fizzy drinks on a daily basis. A few on several medications would consume two to three cans a day …

My first advice to them would be to do a simple swap, replacing fizzy drinks with water with fresh lemon or lime juice. In many cases just doing this would have a dramatic effect on their health.

So this indicated to me that fizzy drinks and sugar were big issues relating to blood pressure and metabolic diseases like diabetes and heart disease."

Source: Daily News, originally from The Renegade Pharmacist.

According to Coca-Cola, soda is a perfectly acceptable rehydration choice, even before, during and after exercise,9 but based on its physiological effects, this is a hollow claim indeed. You simply cannot compare clean, pure water to soda when you're thirsty.

Internal Documents Reveal Coca-Cola Works to Undermine Public Health Initiatives

The British Channel 4 documentary, "Secret of Coca-Cola," featured above, reveals how Coca-Cola Co. is fighting the implementation of health and environmental policies that might impact the company's bottom line.

Leaked internal documents and emails — which have become known as "The Coke Files" — shows the soda industry is in fact working against public health in a very coordinated and comprehensive fashion, using well-known tobacco-industry tactics such as:

•Message coordination and influencing media. As an example of how Coca-Cola deals with journalists who fail to follow corporate talking points, in a May 2016 email, Amanda Rosseter, the global group director of strategic communications at the Coca-Cola Co., wrote:10

"A reporter for Wired reached out to our media line late last night with a series of questions and an immediate deadline … The story, however, posted early this morning without waiting for our input.

The story … focuses on sugar, stevia and the Company's attempts to offer options to consumers with a pessimistic tone … We will be reaching out to this reporter to better understand her decision not to include our perspective, and to build her brain around our strategy."

•Developing close ties with influential scientists and experts who then speak on the company's behalf while presenting themselves as "independent" experts.

As just one example, two years ago, Coca-Cola Company was outed for secretly funding and supporting the Global Energy Balance Network, a nonprofit front group that promoted exercise as the solution to obesity while significantly downplaying the role of diet and sugary beverages in the weight loss equation.11

•Debunking and manipulating science. Research has revealed simply funding a study will significantly influence the results.

As just one example, an investigation by Marion Nestle, Ph.D. and professor of nutrition, food studies and public health, found that out of 168 studies funded by the food industry, 156 of them favored the sponsor.12

•Astroturfing — The effort on the part of special interests to surreptitiously sway public opinion and make it appear as though it's a grassroots effort for or against a particular agenda, when in reality such a groundswell of public opinion might not exist.

•Lobbying at every level of government.

Coca-Cola Fights Soda Tax by Influencing Local Politicians

Not surprisingly, since a soda tax would reduce sales — and significantly so if countries around the world adopt the tax strategy — Coca-Cola is fighting tooth and nail to prevent such measures.13,14

What's disturbing is the level of political support Coca-Cola and other soda companies are receiving. In a June 2015 email, Lauren Craig, Coca-Cola's senior manager of public affairs and communications for the greater Philadelphia area, revealed how she successfully sidelined a 2015 soda tax proposal by rubbing elbows with city officials:15

"Our coalition was actively engaged to prevent a beverage tax from being introduced. The coalition's grassroots campaign included small business meetings with council members. Sources in City Hall indicated that council members were wary of a beverage industry campaign against a tax.

Our next steps include furthering relationships with newly elected city council officials to prevent discussion of beverage taxes in the future. We also have an engagement plan for Philadelphia Mayoral Democratic nominee, Jim Kenney."

Last year, email evidence also showed Barbara Bowman, Ph.D., director of the Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aided a Coca-Cola representative in efforts to influence World Health Organization officials to relax its sugar limits.

Soda Industry Has Troubling Ties to Public Health Community

Public health researchers have also warned that the beverage industry has created deep financial ties to the public health community over the past several years, and that this was strategically done to silence critics and gain allies in the fight against regulations.16,17,18,19

A recent study looking into the sponsorship activities of soda companies suggests the reason for soda companies' philanthropic interest in health organizations has little to do with actually supporting measures that would improve public health, and everything to do with influencing such organizations to further the industry's own agenda:20

"From 2011 to 2015, the Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo were found to sponsor a total of 96 national health organizations, including many medical and public health institutions whose specific missions include fighting the obesity epidemic. During the study period, these two soda companies lobbied against 29 public health bills intended to reduce soda consumption or improve nutrition …

These companies lobbied against public health intervention in 97 percent of cases, calling into question a sincere commitment to improving the public's health. By accepting funding from these companies, health organizations are inadvertently participating in their marketing plans."

According to study co-author Daniel Aaron, a student at Boston University's medical school, there can be little doubt that Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo are purposely trying to undermine public health measures in order to protect profits.

We wanted to look at what these companies really stand for. And it looks like they are not helping public health at all — in fact they're opposing it almost across the board …" Aaron told The New York Times.21

Many Health Organizations Compromise Public Health to Satisfy Sponsors

Indeed, the researchers discovered a number of instances where influential public health organizations either turned against a soda tax initiative or remained silent on the matter after receiving an industry donation. Here are just a few examples:

Save the Children, a nonprofit group that provides health education programs for children, had previously supported soda tax campaigns in several states but suddenly stopped in 2010 after receiving a $5 million grant from Pepsi.
In 2012, when New York proposed a ban on supersized sodas, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics cited "conflicting research" as the reason for not supporting the measure. That same year, the Academy had received $525,000 from Coca-Cola. The following year, Coke gave them another $350,000.
Dietitians listed as having received consulting fees from Coca-Cola also participated in a Twitter campaign aimed at defeating the proposed soda tax in Oakland, California.22
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the mission of which is to fight for equality for minorities, opposed soda tax initiatives even though black and Hispanic communities have disproportionally high rates of obesity and related health problems.
The Hispanic Federation has also chosen not to support soda tax initiatives. The reason for their lenience becomes clearer in light of the fact that both of these organizations have received large donations from Coca-Cola. NAACP received more than $1 million between 2010 and 2015, and the Hispanic Federation received $600,000 between 2012 and 2015.

Nigerian Court Rules Coca-Cola Drinks 'Poisonous'

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, a Lagos High Court Judge has ruled two Coca-Cola products, Sprite and Fanta, potentially poisonous, as the benzoic acid and sunset yellow used in the products can pose a health risk when combined with ascorbic acid (vitamin C). (The former is known to turn into benzene, a carcinogen, when mixed with vitamin C.)23 According to CNN:24

"Justice Adedayo Oyebanji ordered the Nigerian Bottling Co. … to place written warnings on Fanta and Sprite bottles against drinking them with vitamin C, and awarded costs of [2] million naira ($6,350) against the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for failing to ensure health standards.

'It is manifest that NAFDAC has been grossly irresponsible in its regulatory duties to the consumers of Fanta and Sprite manufactured by Nigeria Bottling Company,' the judge said. 'NAFDAC has failed the citizens of this great nation by its certification as satisfactory for human consumption products ... which become poisonous in the presence of ascorbic acid.'"

In response to the ruling, Nigeria's Consumer Protection Council has initiated its own investigation. Director general Dupe Atoki said:

"[The council] is extremely concerned about the questions that have arisen from, and on account of this judgment. Fanta, Sprite and Coca-Cola have arguably and consistently been the most widely consumed beverages in Nigeria. The spectrum of consumption is also perhaps the widest, with consumption starting as early as age [4] and far into adult years."

Closer to home, Coca-Cola is dealing with yet another scandal, as machines in a Coca-Cola plant in Northern Ireland somehow became clogged with human feces.25 Fortunately, it appears no contaminated cans were distributed or sold. The company has called in police to investigate how the bizarre contamination occurred.

Diet Soda Is Not the Answer

I firmly believe ditching soda and other sweetened beverages is one of the most important steps you can take to improve your weight and health, and this includes avoiding so-called "diet" drinks as well. Artificially sweetened beverages may in fact be worse for your health than regular soda.

Research has shown artificial sweeteners can stimulate your appetite, increase carb cravings, stimulate fat storage and promote weight gain. In fact, diet sodas may actually double your risk of obesity, while regular soda (at a rate of one can per day) is associated with a 60 percent increased risk of obesity.

In addition to that, aspartame is associated with a long list of other harmful effects, ranging from brain damage to pre-term delivery, while sucralose has been found to be particularly damaging to your intestines. A study26 published in 2008 found that sucralose:

Reduces good bacteria in your intestines by 50 percent
Increases the pH level in your intestines
Affects a glycoprotein in your body that can have crucial health effects, particularly if you're on certain medications like chemotherapy, or treatments for AIDS and certain heart conditions

In response to this study, James Turner, chairman of the national consumer education group Citizens for Health, issued the following statement:27

"The report makes it clear that the artificial sweetener Splenda and its key component sucralose pose a threat to the people who consume the product. Hundreds of consumers have complained to us about side effects from using Splenda and this study ... confirms that the chemicals in the little yellow package should carry a big red warning label."

For Optimal Health, Drink More Clean Water

Unfortunately, many are still in the dark about these health risks. Having healthy gut flora is absolutely vital for your optimal health so, clearly, any product that can destroy up to halfof your healthy intestinal bacteria can pose a critical risk to your health.

Sugar also promotes unhealthy bacterial growth, and many are already deficient in healthy bacteria due to consuming too many highly processed foods. This is why I recommend eating fermented vegetables every day, or at the very least taking a high-quality probiotic.

Remember, pure water is a zero-calorie drink. You cannot find a beverage that contains fewer calories. If you think about it, why on earth would you choose artificially sweetened water over regular mineral water? If you want some flavor, just squeeze a little bit of fresh lemon or lime into mineral water as these citrus fruits have some of the lowest fructose levels of all fruits.

WiFi and Cell Phones can DO Serious Harm

2017-04-09T09:32:00.000-04:00

Cress expose to WiFi. Yum?

Foreign researchers are extremely excited for a biology project from five 9th grade girls.

Researchers from England, Holland and Sweden have shown great interest in the five girls’ biology experiments.

Take 400 Cress seeds and place them into 12 trays. Then place six trays in two rooms at the same temperature. Give them the same amount of water and sun over 12 days, and remember to expose half of them to mobile [Wi-Fi] radiation.

It is a recipe for a biology test so brilliant that it has attracted international attention among acknowledged biologists and radiation experts. Behind the experiment are five girls from 9b in Hjallerup School in North Jutland, and it all started because they found it difficult to concentrate during the school day:

“We all think we have experienced difficulty concentrating in school, if we had slept with the phone next to our head, and sometimes also experienced having difficulty sleeping”, explains Lea Nielsen, who is one of the five aspiring researchers.

The school was not equipped to test the effect of mobile phone radiation on them. Therefore, the girls had to find an alternative. And the answer was Cress.

Six trays of seeds were put into a room without radiation, and six trays were put into another room next to two [Wi-Fi] routers. Such routers broadcast the same type of radiation as an ordinary mobile.

Healthy Cress

The “healthy” cress without the influence of the router. Photo: The girls from 9b

Then it was just necessary to wait 12 days, observe, measure, weigh and take pictures along the way. And the result spoke was clear: cress seeds next to the router did not grow, and some of them were even mutated or dead. (emphasis added – Ed.)

“It is truly frightening that there is so much affect, so we were very shocked by the result”, says Lea Nielsen.

Unhealthy Cress

The “sick” cress exposed to the [Wi-Fi] router. Photo: The girls from 9b

Reactions

The experiment secured the girls the finals in the competition “Young Scientists”, but it was only the beginning. Renowned scientists from England, Holland and Sweden have since shown great interest in the girls’ project so far.

From left: Lea Nielsen, Mathilde Nielsen, Signe Nielsen, Sisse Coltau and Rikke Holm. Photo: Kim Horsevad

The renowned professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Olle Johansson, is one of the impressed researchers. He will now repeat the experiment with a Belgian research colleague, Professor Marie-Claire Cammaert at the Université libre de Bruxelles, for the trial, according to him, is absolutely brilliant:

“The girls stayed within the scope of their knowledge, skilfully implemented and developed a very elegant experiment. The wealth of detail and accuracy is exemplary, choosing cress was very intelligent, and I could go on”, he says.

He is not slow to send them an invitation to go on the road:

“I sincerely hope that they spend their future professional life in researching, because I definitely think they have a natural aptitude for it. Personally, I would love to see these people in my team!”

No mobile by the bed

The five girls from northern Jutland have not yet decided their future careers. They are still very surprised by all the sudden attention.

“It has been such a rollercoaster ride. I still cannot believe it”, says Lea Nielsen.

And Mathilde Nielsen added:

“It’s totally overwhelming and exciting. It’s just not something you experience every day”.

But there have also been other consequences of the cress trial, which is quite low-tech in nature.

“None of us sleep with the mobile next to the bed anymore. Either the phone is put far away, or it is put in another room. And the computer is always off”, says Lea Nielsen.

http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2013/05/16/131324.htm (in Danish)

via C4ST – Danish Students Attract International Attention with Cress and Wifi Experiment.

2nd Opinion From Drs. Nets Different Diagnosis 88% Of Time

2017-04-08T18:01:00.002-04:00

Second Opinion From Doctor Nets Different Diagnosis 88% Of Time, Study Finds

8Apr - by Daniel Steingold -

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic examined 286 patient records of individuals who had decided to consult a second opinion, hoping to determine whether being referred to a second specialist impacted one’s likelihood of receiving an accurate diagnosis.

The study, conducted using records of patients referred to the Mayo Clinic’s General Internal Medicine Division over a two-year period, ultimately found that when consulting a second opinion, the physician only confirmed the original diagnosis 12 percent of the time.

A new study finds that 88% of people who go for a second opinion after seeing a doctor wind up receiving a refined or new diagnosis.

Among those with updated diagnoses, 66% received a refined or redefined diagnosis, while 21% were diagnosed with something completely different than what their first physician concluded.

“Effective and efficient treatment depends on the right diagnosis,” says lead researcher Dr. James Naessens in a Mayo news release. “Knowing that more than 1 out of every 5 referral patients may be completely [and] incorrectly diagnosed is troubling ─ not only because of the safety risks for these patients prior to correct diagnosis, but also because of the patients we assume are not being referred at all.”

Considering how health insurance companies often limit the ability of patients to visit multiple specialists, this figure could be seen as troubling.

Combine this with the fact that primary care physicians are often overly-confident in their diagnoses, not to mention how a high number of patients feel amiss about questioning their diagnoses, a massive issue is revealed.

“Referrals to advanced specialty care for undifferentiated problems are an essential component of patient care,” says Naessens. “Without adequate resources to handle undifferentiated diagnoses, a potential unintended consequence is misdiagnosis, resulting in treatment delays and complications, and leading to more costly treatments.”

The researchers acknowledged that receiving a completely different diagnosis could result in a patient facing otherwise unexpected expenditures, “but the alternative could be deadly.”

According to the release, The National Academy of Medicine cites diagnostic error as an important component in determining the quality of health care in its new publication, Improving Diagnosis in Health Care:

Despite the pervasiveness of diagnostic errors and the risk for serious patient harm, diagnostic errors have been largely unappreciated within the quality and patient safety movements in health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, these errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity.

Astaxanthin adds to Longevity, Minimizes inflammation, triglycerides, blood clots, atherosclerosis

2017-04-05T08:41:00.002-04:00

Astaxanthin Activates the FOX03 'Longevity Gene'

Posted on March 29, 2017, 6 a.m. in Longevity Anti-Aging Research Science Genetic Research

The Astaxanthin compound CDX-085, developed by Cardax, shows the ability to markedly increase the expression of the FOXO3 gene in a lab animal model.

An Astaxanthin compound known as CDX-085 has displayed the ability to boost the expression of FOX03, a gene that is pivotal to longevity. At the moment, studies have been limited to mice. The research was reported by Cardax, a life sciences co, and academicians from the Univ of Hawaii's John A. Burns School of Medicine. The hope is that these findings will lead to a highly effective anti-aging therapy that extends the lifespan of human beings.

A Brief Description of Astaxanthin -- is a compound that naturally occurs in seafood like salmon and shrimp. It is commonly obtained from algae and krill. Numerous studies performed on animals show that Astaxanthin minimizes inflammation as well as damage to the liver and the heart. Astaxanthin even reduces the odds of a stroke and lowers cholesterol levels. Though extensive Astaxanthin research has not been conducted on humans, it is known that the compound decreases triglycerides and inflammation.

Astaxanthin is used as an active ingredient in a compound patented by Cardax known as CDX-085. This compound sends Astaxanthin into the blood stream, allowing for deep absorption. Studies performed on animals show that CDX-085 reduces triglycerides, blood clots and atherosclerosis by more than 70%. About the Research - Every human being has the FOX03 gene that guards against aging. However, one in three individuals has a version of the gene that is tied to longevity. If the gene is activated in all humans, it can function like the longevity version. The above-referenced scientists have found that Astaxanthin activates the gene. The study was the first of its kind to determine the potential of Astaxanthin to activate FOX03. Some of the study's mice were fed high and low doses of Astaxanthin CDX-085 while others were fed regular food. Those fed significant amounts of Astaxanthin CDX-085 enjoyed a large bump (90%) in the activation of the FOX03 within their heart tissue.

Why the Research Matters --This study is acclaimed as groundbreaking as it lends support to the notion that Astaxanthin can combat the aging process and prolong human lives. It is also interesting to note that the research was performed in unison between a publicly funded academic institution and a private co. This is an example of the type of teamwork between government and private industry that will be necessary to advance the human condition across posterity.

Daily Cup of Green Tea Reduces Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia in Seniors

2017-03-30T16:47:00.000-04:00

Daily Cup of Green Tea Reduces Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia in Seniors

March 29, 2017, Don Porter and Brain - Mental Performance Alzheimer's Disease Functional Foods

Drinking green tea decreases cognitive impairment risk by 50% and as much as 86% for those genetically at risk of Alzheimer's.

A recent study by Chinese researchers shows that drinking as little as one cup of tea daily significantly reduces risk of cognitive decline in older adults. Those who are genetically predisposed to developing dementia-related conditions showed an even more significant decrease in risk.

The study was published in Dec 2016 in The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging. Also MANY other studies Vern Varona, Donportercancer, etc

Study Details

The study, a part of the more comprehensive Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study, was conducted by researchers from the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine Department of Psychological Medicine. Assistant Professor of Psychological Medicine Feng Lei led the team.

Data was collected from 957 Chinese seniors over a 7 year period. All participants were at least 55 years old and were cognitively intact at the beginning of the study. Every two years, participants were physically examined and provided information on things like lifestyle habits, medical conditions, and physical and social activities. This information was used to create more accurate statistical models from the research data.

Study participants were not asked to alter their diets or daily activities in any way. Don Porter has been drinking various Green Teas daily as recommended by Vern Varona 10 years ago !

Study Findings

Final analysis of study data shows that participants who consumed "at least one cup of tea daily were 50% less likely to have experienced signs of cognitive degeneration when compared to their non-tea drinking peers".Those who carry the APOE e4 gene, which has been connected to cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s and dementia, were 85% less likely to show signs of degeneration.

The type of teas consumed did not seem to affect the outcome, if it was brewed from whole tea leaves, like black, green, or oolong teas. Asst. Professor Feng states that bioactive compounds found in the tea leaves contain anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and other properties that naturally protect the brain from vascular damage and neurodegeneration. While the exact mechanism is not yet known, bioactive compounds like catechins, theaflavins, thearubigins and L-theanine have been positively linked to better overall brain health.

Effects on Public Health

Per Asst Professor Feng, the study is significant because of the relatively low cost of teas. Neurocognitive disorders are difficult and expensive to treat with existing drug therapies. Other prevention strategies are not yielding desired results. Drinking a cup of tea each day is affordable and does not require difficult lifestyle changes. Tea therapy can substantially reduce future health and social spending for individuals, families, and governments. Don Porter research and due diligence has identified the following teas as providing top results: Kukicha Twig tea Bancha, which has more tea leaves than twigs and stems, Dandelion root tea, Riboos tea (also called African Red Bush--full of antioxidants!)

Replace environmental MESS of Cows etal with “Veggie burger that bleeds”

2017-03-24T11:43:00.001-04:00

“Veggie burger that bleeds” set to take on US market

The Impossible Burger, also known as the “veggie burger that bleeds,” has drawn crowds of curious eaters and inspired dozens of think pieces.

Now Redwood City’s Impossible Foods, which makes this culinary curiosity, is rolling out the next phase in its ambitious plan to supplant animal agriculture with high-tech foods that mimic meat in every sense but the source. The co is moving into a factory in East Oakland that will soon be capable of producing 1 million pounds of the burgers every month. Impossible Foods is betting that the cachet the burger has earned will propel it into restaurants across the country.

On Wed, Impossible Foods held a ceremony, with Mayor Libby Schaaf in attendance, to open its 67,000-square-foot factory at 550 85th Avenue, last occupied by Just Desserts. The company expects to start commercial production by early summer.

CEO Pat Brown, who was a biochemistry professor at Stanford, founded Impossible Foods in 2011 because of his concerns over the environmental impact of meat production. If we couldn’t convince humans to eat less meat, he reasoned, why not create plant-based versions that tasted just like it?

Impossible Foods has raised $182 million, according to the startup database Crunchbase. Bill Gates and Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Khosla Ventures and Google Ventures have bought into Brown’s vision. In the grand tradition of VC-funded startups, Brown regularly calls animals “food technology,” one he’s eager to disrupt.

Impossible Foods’ initial rollout strategy has been to recruit a few well-known chefs as champions, including David Chang of New York’s Momofuku and San Francisco’s Traci Des Jardins (Jardiniere) and Chris Cosentino (Cockscomb). Since last summer, diners have lined up outside their restaurants to taste — and document themselves tasting — the Impossible Burger.

Rumors aside, the plant-based burger doesn’t exactly bleed. It is made primarily with wheat and potato protein larded with chips of coconut oil, whose melting point is similar to that of animal fat. It does not yet taste exactly like beef.

The “blood,” a substance that the company calls “heme,” is produced by genetically modified yeast cells. Heme gives the burger its deep-red color when raw, which fades convincingly as the burger heats up, as well as a subtly metallic character that meat eaters rarely notice until they eat tofu patties and complain about its lack.

Brown says other plant-based meats are also in the works.

The company’s Redwood City facility and a small plant in New Jersey currently supply eight restaurants on both coasts. With the new factory opening, three more restaurants will be added: KronnerBurger in Oakland, the Public House in San Francisco and Vina Enoteca in Palo Alto.

Even after expanding its production capacity more than 250 times, Brown said that the company’s strategy will still be to focus on restaurants. “In our long-term plan, we will be ubiquitous,” he said. “Anywhere that consumers go to buy meat, we intend to be there, competing side by side. In the near term, the market for ground beef in restaurants is humongous.”

The United States consumed 7.4 billion pounds of ground beef in 2016, according to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Almost two-thirds of all beef served at restaurants is ground, representing $10.1 billion in wholesale sales. To replace all of that hamburger, Impossible Foods would have to open hundreds of plants.

The company’s expansion is well timed. In an October study, Lux Research estimated that the demand for meat alternatives should more than double in the next seven years, increasing 14 percent each year. Lux analyst Camilla Stice doesn’t foresee meat production decreasing. Rather, it may plateau, while soy, pea and oat proteins fill the remaining demand as the population grows.

“By 2054, we’re seeing that about one-third of the protein supply is going to be from alternative sources,” Stice said.

High-profile chefs have helped give the Impossible Burger its cachet, but the key to scaling up quickly will be so-called “better burger” chains, like Shake Shack and Five Guys. New York chain Bareburger, with 44 locations, currently serves the Impossible Burger at its flagship site, and Brown says the other locations will add the burger to their menus, too.

Cosentino, who has served the Impossible Burger at Cockscomb since October, said that though the product is no longer new, “we still have a pretty high demand.” Cosentino added that, even after the cult food becomes commonplace, he still plans to serve the Impossible Burger.

When at full capacity, the East Oakland plant should employ 80 workers, and company representatives say they are working with Oakland recruiters to hire locally “whenever possible.”

“One of the things we’d like to be — and the bar is very low — is the most transparent, tour-friendly meat-production facility on Earth,” says Brown. It may take until the end of the year, however, until the public will be allowed in for bloodless sightseeing.

Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com.

Twitter: @jonkauffman

Lyme Disease Will Plague America

2017-03-22T09:06:00.000-04:00

Fatal Forecast: Lyme Disease Will Plague America

March 22, 2017

By Dr. Mercola

National surveillance for Lyme disease began in 1982 and since then the number of reported cases have grown over 25-fold.1 Between 1990 and 2015, the number of reported cases in the U.S. doubled.2 The disease has also spread geographically.3

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it's the fastest growing vector-borne infectious disease in the U.S.4 The CDC reports the disease, and the ticks that carry the disease, are concentrated in the northeast and upper Midwest.5 Ticks carry more than Lyme disease, including Rocky Mountain spotted fever and human babesiosis, a rare microscopic parasite that infects red blood cells.

Each year approximately 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported to the CDC.6However, this number does not reflect all cases diagnosed in the U.S. Following two studies by the CDC, researchers estimate 10 times that number are infected with Lyme disease each year, for a total ranging between 296,000 and 376,000 cases.

Lyme disease is often called "the great imitator,"7 as it may mimic a number of other disorders, such as arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis (MS), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer's disease.

Outwardly, most infected individuals appear healthy, in spite of suffering severe symptoms. Vague and dispersed pain complaints may be misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia.

What Lyme Disease Is and How It's Spread

Lyme disease is a bacterial infection primarily transmitted by ticks that have previously fed on an infected host. However, some top authorities on Lyme disease, like Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt, warn the bacteria that cause the disease may also be spread by other insects such as fleas, mosquitoes, mites and spiders.

Lyme disease remains one of the most serious and controversial epidemics today. The disease usually starts with fatigue, fever, headaches and joint or muscle pain.

It can then progress to muscle spasms, loss of motor coordination, intermittent paralysis, meningitis and even heart problems. Lyme disease was named after the east coast town of Lyme, Connecticut, where the illness was first identified in 1975.

It wasn't until 1982 that Willy Burgdorfer, Ph.D., discovered the bacteria responsible for the infection — a cousin to the spirochete that causes syphilis. They look almost identical under a microscope.

Burgdorfer named the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. The corkscrew shape allows the bacteria to hide in a variety of different body tissues, causing a wide range of symptoms.

The bacteria may also live inside your cells in an "L-form" or coated as a cyst. The ability to change forms explains why diagnosis and treatment is so challenging and why recurrence of symptoms may result after standard antibiotic protocols.

Ticks are not born with the bacteria, but acquire it after feeding on a host. White-footed mice, which are a common carrier, infect an estimated 75 to 95 percent of larval ticks that feed on them. Urban sprawl and reduction in natural predators have allowed the mouse population to quickly multiply, and with them the infected ticks.

The growing number of infections are not surprising, but how the medical community may respond will determine the extent of the damage in the coming years.

Although chronic Lyme disease is more widely recognized as an actual disease, there continues to be resistance in the medical community and with insurers. Sufferers are often told the problem is psychiatric.

Early Spring Is Creating the Perfect Lyme Storm

The majority of time Lyme disease is spread through tick bites. However, it can also be spread by mosquitoes, spiders, fleas and mites.

According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, spring was scheduled to arrive three weeks early this year for nearly half of the U.S.8 If you love being outside without layers of clothing, this may sound like a good thing. However, the warm weather will also pose public health challenges.

Early spring may have an effect on the spread of insects that spread diseases, such as mosquitoes and ticks. Dr. Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Center, commented on the spread of disease and diseases for which no good treatment is currently available:9

"There's no question that when it's too cold, ticks and mosquitoes cannot thrive. An overall warming trend opens up the chance for them to live in new places and to stay alive for longer periods of time.

We don't want to have to resort to spraying potentially harmful pesticides over large swaths of land to kill mosquitoes, or quarantining people who enter the country from certain parts of the world, or exposing our children to vaccines that haven't been tested thoroughly."

The combination of higher risks of flooding with an early spring, milder temperatures, growing populations of ticks and Lyme infected mice and more people being more active outdoors, may increase the number of people infected with Lyme disease.

Interestingly, the ticks do not get sick from the bacteria they carry. Joao Pedra, Ph.D., studies microbiology and immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He wanted to know what was happening in the ticks' immune system and found several genes necessary for mosquito immunity was absent in ticks.10

Instead of identifying a foreign invader by sugar molecules, a tick's immunity identifies lipid molecules, making them uniquely adapted to handle a bacteria that uses lipids to keep the cell structure intact. Pedra speculates the bacteria may also enable ticks to live through cold weather.

Areas Affected by Lyme Disease in the United States Are Growing

Areas of the U.S. affected by Lyme disease are growing, and most notably in the coldest, more northern states. The CDC estimates the two states to be hardest hit by Lyme disease this season are New Jersey and Pennsylvania.11 Researchers in New York have also found the regional mouse population is exploding.

Lyme disease is not exclusive to the eastern U.S., but also has a presence in Wisconsin and Minnesota. However, in recent years the tick population has spread to Michigan, in both the Upper and Lower Peninsulas.

The number of diagnosed cases increased five times over a four-year study period, indicating an expanding geographic distribution northward.12

The increasing number of people diagnosed with Lyme disease may be the result of better diagnosis and an increasing number of physicians who suspect Lyme disease. It may also be attributed to an increasing number of people who are moving to suburban areas that are being reforested.13

Although the number of areas affected by Lyme disease is growing, another challenge is convincing people the threat of this condition is real.

According to a survey of more than 11,000 people done by the CDC between 2009 and 2012, 21 percent of households had one person bitten by a tick in the past year,14 but only 10 percent of those reported seeing a health professional.

Unfortunately, over 50 percent of the respondents to the survey reported they did not take any precautionary or preventive measures during warm weather.

The survey found that exposure to ticks was common and the understanding of Lyme disease was widespread, but preventive methods were used infrequently. This may indicate a poor understanding of the secondary effects of chronic Lyme disease, or a belief that the respondents would not contract the disease.

Symptoms of Lyme Disease May Baffle Your Physician

In this video, U.S. Congressman for New Jersey's 4th District, Chris Smith, describes the challenges patients are facing in the recognition and treatment of Lyme disease. People with Lyme disease are often described as "looking good" and their blood work often comes back normal, making diagnosis of the acute and chronic condition challenging.

In fact, the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) doesn't believe there is a chronic condition, stating symptoms should be gone in two to four weeks after antibiotic treatment.15 As a result, many patients are referred to a psychiatrist and some doctors have gone so far as to accuse patients of being attention seekers fabricating their symptoms. A significant contributing challenge is the disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose using lab testing.

The bacteria is able to infect your white blood cells. Testing measures the antibodies white cells produce, but infected cells don't respond appropriately. Antibodies to the disease appear only after your white cells are functioning normally. This means that to get an accurate blood test, you first have to undergo treatment.16 To overcome this challenge, the CDC recommends a two-step testing process.17

IGeneX lab, which specializes in Lyme testing, has a potentially more accurate test. They are accredited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and hold licensure in several states. Their test is highly specific for bacterial strains and co-infections. They check for bacterial DNA, ideal for people who do not produce antibodies to Lyme disease.18,19

There is great variation in presenting symptoms and the characteristic "bulls-eye" rash is not present in nearly half of patients. The difficulty in diagnosis has led to resistance in acknowledging both the acute and chronic phase of the disease. This occurs in patients who are medical professionals as well. Dr. Neil Spector, oncologist at Duke University, recounts his journey with Lyme disease in his autobiographical book, "Gone in a Heartbeat."20

Spector's doctors attributed his symptoms to stress as his blood work was negative, until severe heart failure required a transplant. He commented:21

"Heaven help the patient whose diagnostic tests do not point to a specific disease. They are likely to end up neglected by the very system that was designed to help them … despite my instincts and research into the field, I was largely being discounted by the medical community. If this can happen to a physician-scientist with extensive knowledge of medicine, just imagine what is happening to others who lack a medical background."

Important to Take Prevention Seriously

The treatment for Lyme disease is challenging and often controversial, making prevention vital. Many people are unaware that young ticks are the size of poppy seeds and may crawl over your shoes and up your pants. Adult ticks are more likely to drop from trees or crawl under an untucked shirt.22

If you live or travel through a high-risk area, maintain your guard against tick bites. Here are several ways you can prevent contracting Lyme disease:23,24,25

Avoid tick-infested areas, such as leaf piles around trees. Walk in the middle of trails and avoid brushing against long grasses path edgings. Don't sit on logs, wooden stumps, stonewalls or the ground.	Ticks are very tiny. You want to find and remove them before they bite, so do a thorough tick check upon returning inside and take a shower. Continue to check your body and bedding for several days after being in an area likely to have ticks.
Considering the high infection rate of rats, you'd be wise to take precautions if you're in an area where rats have been sighted.	Tuck your pants into socks and wear closed shoes and a hat, especially if venturing out into wooded areas. Also tuck your shirt into your pants.
Wear light-colored long pants and long sleeves with a tight weave, to make it easier to see the ticks.	Once you return home, place your clothing in the dryer (before washing) on high heat for 60 minutes to kill any ticks on your clothes.
Your pet can become a host for ticks and may also become infected with Lyme disease, although it is more likely they will test positive but won't experience symptoms.	I don't recommend using chemical repellents directly on your skin as this introduces toxins directly into your body. If you choose to use them, spray the outside of your clothes while outside and avoid inhaling the fumes.
Keep long hair tied back, especially when you are gardening. Remove leaves from your lawn each fall, as ticks will seek shelter from cold weather and snow under piles of leaves.	If you find that a tick has latched onto you, it's very important to remove it properly. For detailed instructions, please see lymedisease.org's tick removal page.26 Once removed, make sure you save the tick so that it can be tested for presence of pathogenic organisms.

Antibiotics Are NOT the Best Treatment Option

While early treatment is critical to prevent complications, traditional treatment involving a course of antibiotics is often unsuccessful in preventing complications, including arthritis, cognitive deficits, heart rhythm irregularities or neurological symptoms.27 Antibiotics damage your gut microbiome and increase your risk of yeast and fungal infections.

For these reasons, it is advisable to exhaust natural strategies to help your body fight Lyme disease. One example is the Nutramedix line of herbal antimicrobials, recommended by one of the most prominent alternative medicine experts, Dr. Lee Cowden. The best feature of this natural treatment for Lyme disease is that it rotates various herbal antimicrobials, so you don't have to worry about bacteria developing resistance.

To help your body fight the infection, you should consume a nutritious diet rich in antioxidants. You can also take antioxidants and other supplements, to help your body fight the infection and relieve symptoms. Here are some supplement recommendations if you are embracing a natural treatment approach:

Astaxanthin: neutralizes toxins and relieves joint pain	Probiotics: optimizes gut flora and supports immunity
Grapefruit seed extract: may help treat Borrelia in cyst form	Cilantro: a natural chelator for heavy metals
Krill oil: helps in reducing inflammation and relieving Lyme symptoms	Resveratrol: helps with detoxification and it may treat the common co-infection, Bartonella
Quercetin: reduces histamine, which is usually high in Lyme patients	Whey protein concentrate: may help with nutrition, a common problem in Lyme patients who are unable to eat properly
Andrographis and Artemisinin: herbs that treat the common co-infection, Babesia	Curcumin: helps reduce brain swelling and eliminates neurological toxins
GABA and melatonin: addresses insomnia, which is common in people with Lyme disease	CoQ10: supports cardiac health, alleviates muscle pain and reduces brain fog
Transfer factors: helps boost immune function

Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt is one of the top authorities on Lyme disease. He has a Lyme disease protocol that can help you recover from the infection. His website explains the protocol in detail, but here are the basic steps to give you an idea of what it entails:28

Evaluate all external factors, and address as appropriate. These include molds, electromagnetic fields, electrosmog and microwave radiation in connection to wireless technologies. Klinghardt advises shielding your home using Y shield (special graphite paint) in order to reduce microwave radiation coming from the outside. Cloth coated with silver is used for curtains. Patients are advised to turn off all fuses at night and eliminate all cordless telephones until they recover from the illness.
Address stress and emotional issues. Energy psychology tools like the Emotional Freedom Techniques can be helpful to address the emotional components of Lyme.
Address parasitic, bacterial and viral infections. Parasites need to be addressed first, followed by bacteria and then viruses. Klinghardt uses an antimicrobial cocktail composed of wormwood, vitamin C, phospholipids and different herbs. Viral infections are addressed with BioPure's Viressence, a tincture of Native American herbs.
Address other lifestyle factors. Determine your need for supplementation (antioxidants) to address nutritional deficiencies.

Additional Resources

International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS)
Tick-Borne Disease Alliance (TBDA). Under the "Diagnosing TBDS" tab, you can find a listing of medical professionals knowledgeable in the treatment of Lyme
Lyme Disease Association, Inc.
LymeDisease.org
Lyme disease expert Dr. Joseph J. Burrascano, wrote what is essentially a manual for managing Lyme disease, "Advanced Topics in Lyme Disease," which is worth adding to your resources. However, beware that his treatment focus is long-term antibiotics, which I believe should not be your first choice. Nevertheless, there is some good information there.