The Health Conspiracy - Scared Sick

How Free is Free?

noreply@blogger.com (D.B. Thomas) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:57:00 +0000

Article first published as How Free Is Free? on Technorati.

Purchasing products labelled as "free range" may be giving you a false sense of them being the healthier choice over those that do not bear the free range designation. We are slowly being trained, well, you could almost approach the term "brainwashed," into believing that purchasing free range products such as eggs or chickens are obviously the healthier choice. Why not? It sounds like it is a more natural, humane alternative to the way that we have in our minds eye of the way caged farm animals are kept.

We hear "free range" and instantly think of the animals roaming through lush, green fields, laying in the sun and feasting on grass and their natural foods - not kept in cages in barns and eating bagged feeds. How absolutely naive we are! That picture is far from the reality, in fact, in most cases, the animals are subject to the same standards as their non-free range relatives.

According to the USDA definition of "free range", it states verbatim and in it's entirety that "producers must demonstrate to the agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside." Not much of an all-encompassing definition is that? Let's consider a 25,000 square foot barn with a single opening at one end which is just large enough for a single chicken at a time to pass through. How many birds could actually take advantage of having access to the outdoors during the course of a day? How many of them would even realize that there even IS a door to go through? After all, they are not led outside - the door is simply left open.

The definition does not require that they actually go outside, but only that they have access. This was confirmed through a telephone call that I placed to the regulatory agency governing the law. They stated that a producer can put in an opening to the outside, leave that door open for 5 minutes a day and voila', the criteria for being free range is fulfilled and "free range" can now be stamped on their products. Of course, with a free range designate on their products, the cost to the consumer goes up accordingly. That in itself gives us the impression that it must be the healthier choice. Natural products are more commonly more expensive than non-natural products. One only has to look at "organic" foods to realize that!

It is unfortunate that we have been programmed to envision free range being a healthier alternative. It has a healthier sounding name therefore it MUST be better, right? Wrong. The birds may be fed the same feed that non-free range birds are fed. The birds may be subject to the same indoor living conditions. They may be raised, kept, fed and cared for in the same way as non-free range birds. The fact is that even once outside, the grounds could very well be gravel, concrete or a tennis court for that matter - even though the first thought that comes into our minds is a lush, green feeding ground.

As always, I will provide you with the down-to-the-nitty-gritty facts, and you can decide for yourself which way you want to go. I'm not saying that they most definitely aren't healthier, just that quite possibly, they are exactly the same as the non-free range product. As with most every single product on the market available to the consumer, the producers bottom line is their cost and profit. If they can do something with a minimal cost (such as leaving a door open) that will increase their profits, they most likely will. Manufacturers and producers are profit driven - that almighty dollar is the prize in the sky. If they are meeting the definition of "free range," and can charge more for their product...well, the dollar is mightier than the conscience.

Research Information Regarding Your Health

noreply@blogger.com (D.B. Thomas) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Article first published as Research Information Regarding Your Health on Technorati.

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine the other day and she made a statement that has been on my mind since that conversation. A friend of hers has been struggling with a health problem and going through various tests. During her last round of blood tests, the Dr. told her that they were going to test for Lyme Disease. Now, here's where that nagging statement comes in: my friend told her that "The Dr.'s test result will come back negative for Lyme disease because they are always negative from the Dr.'s" My friend has been taking treatments for Lyme for the past 2 years and explained that she was tested by 3 different Dr's and the tests always came back negative; however, when she was tested by her nurse practitioner and a naturopath, the tests came back positive. A statement like that makes me wonder "what do THEY have to gain?" For the past 2 years she has been spending large amounts of money on a barrage of medications for the treatment of Lyme.

It's convenient that her Nurse practitioner sells these medications direct to her. For 2 years she has been putting out as much as $600 a month for the medications as well as following, what I personally think is, an unproven treatment program that has cost literally thousands of dollars a year with little or no improvements. However, she has been convinced that this treatment will work and it needs some time - up to a few years - to conquor the disease.

This made me think of the numerous ways that we are being persuaded to open our wallets and transfer the contents to people who want to help us with their various products and services. I am certainly not going to say that every person selling a product or service is simply out for the money. What I AM saying is do your reaserch. Don't simply blindly accept one persons opinion - especially when it comes to the most valuable thing you have...your health.

Before commiting to any product or service, ask yourself the following:
1. What qualifications do they have?
Places like internet "forums" can be a valuable source of information, they can also be full of unqualified and potentially harmful advice!
3. Does the person/site have a monetary interest?
Are they going to sell you something for the sake of making a dollar, or is this really going to help you?
4. Check around and do your research!
Don't blindly take one persons advice. Research what they are telling you to see if other sources of information agree with their opinion.
5. Has the product/service been succesfull for others?
There is an abundance of people who share their experiences through different media on the internet.

Think back to english class - when we wrote reports we were told to include the 5 W's, in this case they would be:
                                       WHO is providing the information
                                       WHY are they providing the information
                                       WHAT is their motive
                                       WHERE they got their information from
                                       WHEN was the information relevant
                                       HOW they came to their conclusions.

Back in university, molecular biology was certainly not my favorite course. My prof used to recite a mantra that I kept with me for all these years: Question, investigate, theorize and conclude.

Microwaves Destroy Nutrients

noreply@blogger.com (D.B. Thomas) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:19:00 +0000

I’m actually kind of glad that this rumor is floating around both the cyber world and real world "teachers" of healthy living seminars. I get a good chuckle when I hear someone ranting about how microwaves alter the molecular structure of food and destroy its nutritional value. As previously noted, microwaves have no where near the power, or the right wavelength of EM waves that would be required to accomplish this.

Take 5 minutes on the internet and you will come up with hundreds of websites that will tell you how microwaves destroy nutrients. I’ve been to a good number of those websites and have read the same old examples over and over again.

The one example that comes up over and over is the detrimental effects of microwaving broccoli. You don't read about it affecting any other food - only broccoli. Why? It is the one food that is very easily changed by small amounts of EMR. They don't talk about any other foods - only broccoli. The fact is that the parameters surrounding the test were never completely revealed and their results were not reproducible by other scientists. A one in a million chance? No. I could write an article saying that the gravitational force of the earth destroys egg shells. What I WON'T tell you is that I dropped the egg from 6 feet above the hard surface of the ground! Redirection. They play upon our fears. What didn't they want to reveal in this study is that the broccoli was microwaved for a ridiculously long period of time - to the point of non-recognition. “I'll give you the facts that support my case and show what I want you to know....but nothing else.”

So how was their study done? According to the Journal of Science in Food and Agriculture, November 2003, they cooked the broccoli in 2/3 cup of water at the highest power for 5 minutes. The antioxidants that the study cited that were destroyed were destroyed by the long cooking time in water at high temperature – NOT by the microwaves themselves. The Journal noted that it’s the length of time cooked in hot water that determines the amount of nutrients lost. That cooking could be done in a microwave, an oven, pot or pressure cooker.

Cooking itself causes food to lose some nutrients. People have been saying for years that eating raw vegetables is better for you than cooked ones. They are right. So why are they so focused on saying it’s the microwaves that are destroying the nutrients? The fact is that microwaves may preserve more nutrients in the food than conventional cooking since the cooking time is much shorter! Vitamins are very stable in heat, and most vitamins are lost into the water when boiled or steamed. A study at Cornell University found that spinach retained nearly all of its folate (a B vitamin) when cooked in the microwave, but lost 77% when cooked on the stove.

When we read, or hear some sensational news, we owe it to ourselves to learn as much as we can about the facts surrounding it. It is easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and run away screaming from whatever the bad-thing-of-the-day happens to be.

Question, investigate, theorize and conclude. You owe it to yourself!

Microwaves - Electromagnetic waves

noreply@blogger.com (D.B. Thomas) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:11:00 +0000

How often have you talked about heating up something in the microwave and used the term "nuke it"? That phrase has been used over the years and some have interpreted the phrase to imply that a device of nuclear proportions exists right there on their kitchen counter. Let's play a little word association game for a minute; we'll start at "nuclear". Ready? "Nuclear...atomic power plants...atom bomb... radiation...nuclear fallout". Scary? Yep! I’m also scared at where we ended up. Rest assured that your microwave oven is no where near capable of splitting any atoms and your home address will never be synonymous with Chernobyl!

I'll apologize in advance for the length of this section, but it is well worth thoroughly understanding.

In order to understand the difference between harmful and harmless electromagnetic waves, let's go back to high school physics and take a brief but important look at the electromagnetic spectrum. Firstly, let's consider the term "frequency" and outline the difference between low frequency and high frequency and the difference between the two.

Imagine sitting in a chair and having your friend sitting facing you 3 feet away. Your friend (although I'm not sure you'll call them your friend after this example) is shooting popcorn kernels at you through a straw, each of them traveling at the exact same speed. We will assume that your friend is an expert marksman with shooting kernels and will hit the exact same spot with every shot. He starts off by shooting one kernel every 30 seconds. No big deal - we have plenty of time in between each shot to recover and it is relatively painless. He increases the frequency of his shots to one every 10 seconds. Still, relatively harmless to us and we are beginning to feel superhuman in repelling the kernels. Now increase the frequency to one every second. After a little while at this frequency, it starts to become uncomfortable. While your superhuman abilities are decreasing, your friend's is increasing and he is now able to shoot them at you at 5 kernels per second. A few seconds in and we can start to feel the pain. Your body is no longer able to completely recover between kernel strikes and both pain and damage to your body is the result. Now, your friend truly enters superhuman mode and is shooting the kernels at 100 kernels per second. Ouch! There is now much damage being done to your body and the pain becomes unbearable. Can you imagine what the result would be if we increased the frequency to 1000 per second? Now we are beginning to understand the idea about frequency and how an increase in it can affect the damage it can impart. Even though the kernels were shot at the exact same speed, the time between them was cut so short that your body does not have time to recover between kernel impacts.

Although simplistic, the same principle of our above example can be applied to electromagnetic frequency. If we look at the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum and start at its lowest frequency, we see that at the lowest end we find AM radio waves. These waves have a frequency, that is, they are quite literally spaced apart at a distance roughly the width of a football field. Going up the spectrum (increasing in frequency) we next arrive at FM radio waves which have the frequency length about the width of a house. Next, we find our wavelength in question - microwaves. They are approximately the width of a baseball - still relatively large in comparison to what will come. Radar waves, those used by airports to track airplanes as they move through our skies are next. They are slightly larger than the size of the period found at the end of this sentence. Guess what is next in line in this example? That's right, YOU are! The electromagnetic wavelength that YOU emit is found within the infrared section. Certainly, the electromagnetic waves that you emit cause no harm to us! Of course, ask any ten year old boy and he will tell you that Aunt Gretchen’s hugs can be pretty painful to endure sometimes! Interestingly enough, those wavelengths are roughly the size of a human cell. How ironic.

Let's quickly think back to our kernel shooting friend. Can you imagine how shooting that kernel at you, at the same relative speed but over these decreasingly shorter distances is directly proportional to the damage it inflicts? Since the waves are moving at the same speed, but are closer together (since the distance they have to travel is shorter) they can penetrate through smaller openings and subsequently, they cause more damage. Still, with that said, none of the EM waves we have looked at so far have the ability to cause us harm, (save for Aunt Gretchen’s hugs) or change the molecular structure of matter they come into contact with.

Let's move one more step up this EM scale. Light bulbs. Certainly, you can agree that we are constantly struck by waves in this region. The size of these waves is roughly the width of a single bacterium - pretty darn small although still easy to imagine. If we jump up a couple of steps we come to X-rays. Yes, the kind of X-rays that you subject yourself to when getting an X-Ray at the Drs after you slip on the ice in the winter and break your arm! While relatively harmless, it is not advisable to over-expose yourself to these types of waves. They are about the size of the width of a molecule of water and far out of the visible range when using just the naked eye. Next we arrive at some real nasties - gamma rays. These guys are so small, that is, the wavelength is so short and squashed so close together that it's difficult to give you a practical reference as far as size goes. These are the guys that are going to harm you.

As illustrated by our example, the microwaves used in microwave ovens are sandwiched between the waves used for AM and FM radio and those used for radar equipment, television and radio communications. They are in the non-ionizing range of electromagnetic radiation. Non-ionizing radiation is very different from Ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation is extraordinarily high in frequency (millions of trillions of cycles per second). It is, therefore, extremely powerful and penetrating. Even at low levels, ionizing radiation can damage the cells of living tissue. In fact, these dangerous rays have enough energy and intensity to actually change (ionize) the molecular structure of matter. In sufficient doses, ionizing radiation can cause genetic mutations. As outlined in our example, the ionizing range of frequencies includes X-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays. Ionizing radiation is the sort of radiation we associate with radioactive substances like uranium, radium, and the fall-out from atomic and thermonuclear explosions. Non-ionizing radiation is very different. Because of the lower frequencies and reduced energy, it does not have the same damaging and cumulative properties as ionizing radiation.

Microwave radiation (at 2450 MHz) is non-ionizing, and in sufficient intensity will simply cause the molecules in certain types of matter to vibrate, thereby causing friction, which produces the heat that cooks the food.

Now that we know what is on either side of microwaves in the EM spectrum - radio waves on one side and radar and television waves on the other, we know that there is non-ionizing EM waves surrounding the microwave. So...what is the scare all about???

RGA48VS7GNUA

Microwaves

noreply@blogger.com (D.B. Thomas) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 13:48:00 +0000

There is far too much to say about microwaves and their safety (or lack of) to state all at once in a single blog. So I am going to break it down into a couple of sections. That will give you some time to digest all the information and, in the end, make an informed decision from all of the information.

The many myths, rumors and blatant lies that surround microwave ovens are nothing more than scare tactics put out there for their shock value. It amazes me how what may have started off as a few people’s paranoia can evolve into a mass hysteria in a relatively short period of time. That’s the magic of the internet folks – the ability for information (whether it be fact or fiction) to go from one person’s thoughts to the masses can happen in a matter of minutes in the cyber world.

I know, the idea that microwaves are radiation leaking, food infecting, cancer causing machines of reproductive sterility is not a new concept and has been around for much longer than the internet has been in our homes. The difference in this age is that the information, or should I say misinformation, can travel from one person to the next with blinding speed.

The cyber world aside, misinformation is also being fed to us by “trained professionals” in the real world. Case in point is an informational appointment that I attended at, of all places, a chiropractor’s office - a “Healthy Living” program was offered to patients. Curious, I attended an information session there and was astounded at what I was told by their “trained professional”. Apparently, according to the woman giving me the introduction to their program, microwaves “change the molecular structure of food heated or cooked in a microwave, and vitamins and minerals are completely destroyed”. Just after she told me this, I could keep my mouth shut no longer and I explained to her, in short, just how a microwave works and told her that there was no chance of a microwave altering any molecular structure.

I’m sure that she had never been challenged in this way and that most people either follow along like sheep being led off to the slaughter or kept the thought to themselves that this information was way off base. She simply stumbled on her words for a few moments and then finally admitted that she really had no idea just how a microwave works, but this is the information that she had been given to present to prospective clients of their program. Is it just me, or should people not have actual knowledge about the subjects they are teaching, promoting and selling? Is it too much to assume that they would have researched the subject on their own so they would not only be able to intelligently answer questions that may come up, but be able to support their beliefs with evidential facts?

It is unfortunate that many people, both online by way of website ownership or one of the numerous forums online are very quick to offer up opinion, not fact, on any given topic.

RGA48VS7GNUA

"If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It"?

noreply@blogger.com (D.B. Thomas) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:04:00 +0000

"If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It". How many times have you heard that phrase? Perhaps the more important question is: How many times have you, yourself said that phrase...or lived by it?

Unfortunately, there has been a huge movement over the past several years that has drilled that phrase into our memories. But do we, or should we really be living by it to the letter? I am not going to say that there is no truth to it because that would be irresponsible; however, what I AM going to say is, like most all-encompassing statements, take it with a grain of sodium chloride....errrr, I mean salt!

The other side of the "If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It" coin is rarely, if EVER, mentined. So let me flip that coin and take a look at a few things that, if we lived by that over-used statement, we most likely would not be including in our diet.

Some time ago, there was much ado - although from my research into it, was meant in jest for the most part - into a somewhat incorretly named substance. I understand the train of thought behind what they were saying although they were stretching the way substances are named. The substance in question: dihydrogen monoxide or, more commonly called - water. You see, the way scientists name substances is out of nomenclature convention. Technically, the name is correct although it is not recognized by the IUPAC - the world authority on chemical nomenclature. The whole purpose of the scandal with dihydrogen monoxide was to show us just how scary something can sound if we don't understand how to interpret the million dollar words.

That being said, let's take a look at some big scary names for the things that the people who tell us "If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It" tell us that we should be eating:

We hear so much about the benefits of getting enough antioxidants in our diet. A good thing? Of course it is! But, if we lived by the "If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It" theory then would we, or should we, make the choice to eat them?

A couple examples of antioxidants are:
zeaxathin
proanthocyanidin
reserveratrol
cryptoxanthin

Sound scary? Yes, it might, and we may choose not to eat them if they were called by their respective names.

How about making sure we get out vitamins:
B12 - cobalamin
D2 - ergocalciferol
D3 - cholecalciferol
Much has also been said over the years about the benefits of the "super-food" kelp, or, scientifically known as Macrocystis pyrifera. How about the green tea craze that is so wide spread...green tea - Camellia sinensis.

As you can see by the above examples, "If You Can't Pronounce It, Don't Eat It" should be, in my humble opinion, thrown out of our vocabulary. Do your research, know what you are eating and don't be afraid of the million dollar words - but, educate yourself. Make the best informed decision for yourself.

I'm off to have a cup of hot dihydrogen monoxide saturated with camellia sinensis, some sucrose and 15 millilitres of liquid extract from a bos taurus - water, green tea, sugar and milk.

RGA48VS7GNUA