by Tony Isaacs

(NaturalNews) Two large studies published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the PSA blood test used to screen for prostate cancer saves few lives and can lead to risky and unnecessary treatments for 95% of the men who are screened.

Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the two studies – one in Europe and the other in the United States – are "some of the most important studies in the history of men`s health."

The PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test, which measures a protein released by prostate cells, does what it is supposed to do – indicates a cancer might be present, leading to biopsies to determine if there is a tumor. Most of the cancers tend to grow very slowly and are never a threat and, with the faster-growing ones, even early diagnosis might be too late. Until the release of the results of the two new studies, it has been difficult to know whether finding prostate cancer early saves lives. Both studies have confirmed that in most instances it does not.

The findings, which are the first based on robust, independently audited evidence and randomized studies, confirmed some longstanding concerns about the wisdom of prostate screening and indicated that the practice of widespread prostate screening may result in far more harm than benefits. Prostate cancer treatment can result in impotence and incontinence when surgery is used to destroy the prostate, and, at times, painful defecation or chronic diarrhea when the treatment is radiation. In addition, many believe that the practice of cancer biopsies often leads to the spread and more rapid development of cancer.

The European study commenced in the early 1990`s and involved 182,000 men in eight countries Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland – with an overall follow-up of up to 12 years. The other study, by the National Cancer Institute, involved nearly 77,000 men at 10 medical centers in the United States. Although both studies are continuing, the results so far are considered significant and the most definitive to date.

In both studies, participants were randomly assigned to be screened – or not – with the PSA test and in each study the two groups were followed for more than a decade while researchers counted deaths from prostate cancer, asking whether screening made a difference.

In the European study, for every man whose death was prevented within a decade of having a PSA test 48 men were told they had prostate cancer and needlessly treated for it, and the study found that there were only seven fewer prostate cancer deaths for every 10,000 men screened and followed for nine years.
The American study, found no reduction in deaths from prostate cancer after most of the men had been followed for 10 years. Instead, by seven years the death rate was 13 percent lower for the unscreened group.

Sources Included: NY Times, NEJM, ScienceDaily

Prosta Rx
Saw Palmetto/Pygeum

It's official: Vitamin D deficiency is so widespread in U.S. children that it poses a huge threat to the future health of an entire generation. A new study published in the journal Pediatrics paints a disturbing picture of vitamin D deficiency across the population of children aged 1 through 21. Three-fourths of young African American children, for example, are deficient in vitamin D. Much the same pattern holds true for Mexican American children. Even white kids, with their fairer skin and greater vitamin D production, hit the charts with 50% – 60% deficiency, depending on the age group.

Of course, in classic medical doublespeak style, health researchers don't actually call it "deficiency." (Because that would trigger a whole new urgency to correct the problem.) Instead, they call it "vitamin D insufficiency," while reserving the term "deficiency" for children who have virtually no vitamin D in their blood whatsoever.

Of course, "insufficient" means "deficient" in the real world, since kids who are now labeled as "insufficient" in vitamin D are, of course, actually quite deficient in the nutrient. And keep in mind that these frighteningly common vitamin D deficiencies exist even when the accepted standards of vitamin D levels in the blood are artificially low to begin with. If you use real numbers of the vitamin D levels required for peak human performance, the truth is that as many as 90 percent of U.S. children are chronically deficient in vitamin D.

"It's astounding," said Michal L. Melamed of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, in a Washington Post report (source below). "At first, we couldn't believe the numbers. I think it's very worrisome."

But why are American kids so deficient in vitamin D in the first place?

The answer, of course, is because kids are sunlight deficient. And that's due to a few reasons: First, too many kids today spend most of their hours in front of computers, televisions or gaming consoles. The live almost like vampires, staying awake all night, sleeping during the day, living off the flesh of other creatures (beef jerky and hamburgers…).

Many of their parents, too, are part of the problem. Today's moms seem terrified that their kids might actually experience "the outdoors" for more than a few moments. They wait with air-conditioned cars at the school bus stops, then hustle their kids into pre-cooled cars to drive the quarter mile back to their artificially air-conditioned homes. Sunlight almost never touches these kids (they might turn to dust).

The sunscreen industry also shares some blame in all this, as it thrives on the silly idea that sunlight is bad for children and that all kids need to be smothered in sunscreen lotions before venturing outdoors. (Of course, they never admit their own sunscreen products are filled with cancer-causing chemicals in the first place…)

Above all, the medical establishment is to blame for vitamin D deficiency. Rather than teaching parents and children about the importance of vitamin D, they seem to have declared a blackout on most useful information about the nutrient, preferring instead to prescribe toxic pharmaceutical drugs to treat the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency. Osteoporosis drugs, in particular, are made virtually obsolete by vitamin D alone. That's why you don't see any drug companies talking about vitamin D — it would destroy osteoporosis drug sales!

The entire "sick care" industry (including Big Pharma) actually depends on widespread nutritional deficiencies in order to create repeat business. Vitamin D deficiency, of course, figures prominently in this equation: It promotes cancer, bone loss, obesity, depression and heart disease. It's no coincidence that these are some of the biggest profit earners for drug companies.

Drug company profits, to say it another way, depend heavily on widespread vitamin D deficiency. That's why medical schools (which are heavily funded by drug companies) and cancer non-profit (also funded by Big Pharma) almost never teach anyone about the health-protective properties of vitamin D. It's simply bad business to admit that a simple nutrient (that people can get for free) could prevent cancer or other high-profit diseases.

Check out all the popular cancer non-profit groups: The American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen, etc. Have you ever seen any of them actually promote sunlight and vitamin D as a way to prevent or reverse cancer? Of course not! It's bad for business. They collect a lot more cash convincing people that they're "searching for the cure" when, in reality, the cure already exists: It's called vitamin D.

That's why I've often stated that these cancer non-profit groups are really in the disinformation business. In order to protect their own existence, they spread disinformation about cancer that leaves people ignorant about real solutions like vitamin D. As such, these organizations are inherently destructive and evil, and we would all be better off if they simply ceased to exist (or were shut down by the Justice Dept for their racketeering ways…).

When considering today's grand, lumbering debate over health care reform, you'd have to be a complete idiot to not realize that vitamin D could slash health care costs across the board. Considering that this one nutrient helps prevent so many diseases — cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, depression, obesity, diabetes, etc. — it's almost like the "miracle health reform nutrient" that our modern world has been waiting for.

And yet there's not a single lawmaker in Washington who has uttered the name of this nutrient in the context of health care reform. In fact, it's a pretty good guess that most lawmakers in Washington are vitamin D deficient themselves. And their nutritional ignorance is, of course, inherited by the health care reform legislation these people craft. The end result? A truly short-sighted health care reform system that continues to pay for treatments of preventable disease rather than promoting a single nutrient that could slash health care costs by as much as twenty percent all by itself (by my estimate, anyway).

Despite all the bickering, the accounting, the negotiating and the grandstanding, the simple truth is that our health care reform dialog is missing half the picture: Nutrition!

This new research about widespread vitamin D deficiency supports this important point:

You can't talk seriously about health care reform unless you address vitamin D deficiency in the population.

Because unless you correct these nutritional deficiencies, all you're doing is flushing money down the Big Government toilet (which is almost stopped up from all the wads of paper money they keep forcing into it).

In other words, the entire dialog about health care reform taking place in Washington right now is a complete waste of time. It's absolutely useless. There will be no real health reform until you admit that nutrition plays a role in human health. And the FDA, of course, insists that all nutrition is biologically inert — that only "drugs" have any ability to prevent or treat any disease, not vitamins or minerals. That's literally the FDA's official position. That's also the position of various medical associations, medical journals, med schools and far too many old-school doctors: Nutrition? It's not even on their radar.

Meanwhile, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars treating diseases that can be cured with vitamin D. Cancer is one of them. Most cancer tumors simply cannot grow in the presence of vitamin D. You show me someone on chemotherapy, and I'll show you someone who's deficient in vitamin D.

The vitamin D cover-up is, of course, a grand conspiracy. There is actually a concerted effort to downplay nutrition (and even outlaw it, if you're the FDA) while keeping the population nutritionally ignorant so that people remain sick, diseased, bankrupt and easily controlled by powerful corporations and oppressive governments. It's the new American way: Keep the people stupid, sick and broke. And it's working like gangbusters.

Even while the American people are ridiculously diseased and bankrupt, the real sickness in America isn't with the people — it's with the pursuit of profit. This cancerous condition has spread through the U.S. economy, causing corporations to abandon products and policies that help the People and, instead, promote products and policies that maximize corporate profits.

As a result of this insidious pursuit of profit, a huge portion of the U.S. economy is now based on ripping people off, selling them things that actually harm them: Junk food, diet soda, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy, etc. Vitamin D, of course, produces no real profit (since it can't be patented), so it remains universally ignored by all the corporations that dominate health care today.

It's the same story with zinc, magnesium, calcium, selenium or natural plant-based nutrients. They're all ignored (or outlawed) because they generate no profits. That's why there's no real talk of solving our nation's health care crisis with nutrients like vitamin D — even when the research clearly shows the majority of the population is deficient in the nutrient!

The whole situation is truly astonishing: The solutions to our health problems are staring us right in the face, but modern medicine refuses to acknowledge them (because they aren't made in a lab or available by prescription). So real solutions remain ignored while high-profit, short-term "treatments" get all the attention.

As long as that's the case, health care reform will simply never work. Even if you had all the money in the world, it's still not enough to pay for a nation of diseased people who are intentionally kept ignorant and sick. Sooner or later, you've got to either go broke as a nation or find a way to promote nutrition and wellness.

America, sadly, has chosen the former.

Vitamin D3

by David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) A higher dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids may protect men from prostate cancer even if they have a genetic predisposition to the disease, researchers have found.

"We detected strong protective associations between increasing intake of long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and more advanced prostate cancer," said lead researcher John S. Witte. "These fatty acids are primarily from dark fish such as salmon."

"And the decrease in risk may be even more pronounced if one has a high-risk genetic variant," he said.

In a study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, Witte and colleagues compared the diets and genetic profiles of 466 men suffering from aggressive prostate cancer with those of 478 healthy men of similar age and ethnic distribution. Average participant age was 65, and cancer patients were recruited an average of 4.7 months after diagnosis. Healthy controls were recruited from among men undergoing standard annual health checkups.

The researchers focused only on aggressive tumors because these represent the most dangerous form of the disease. Many men with non-aggressive, slow-growing tumors die of other causes before ever experiencing any cancer symptoms.

Researchers had all participants fill out food frequency questionnaires, classifying their intake of various kinds of fish as "never," "one to three times per month," or "one or more times per week." All men were screened for nine different mutations of the cox-2 gene. These variables were then analyzed for their relationship with prostate cancer, adjusting for other known risk factors such as smoking, obesity, family cancer history and prior prostate screening results.

The study was conducted by researchers from the Institute for Human Genetics, University of California and University of Southern California, and funded by the National Institute of Health and a dean's grant from Laval University McLaughlin.

The researchers found that men with cancer had a significantly higher intake of calories, fat and linoleic acid (an omega-6) than healthy men. They had a significantly lower intake of omega-3s, shellfish and dark fish.

Men who ate dark fish one to three times a month had a 36 percent lower chance of developing an aggressive prostate cancer than those who ate it rarely or never, while those who ate such fish once a week or more had a 63 percent lower risk.

"The strongest effect was seen from eating dark fish such as salmon one or more times per week," Witte said.

The researchers found that men with a particular cox-2 gene variant, rs4647310, had 5.5-times the risk of aggressive prostate cancer as men without that variant. This elevated risk was not seen, however, among men with a high omega-3 intake.

"Men with low intake of dark fish and the high-risk variant had a substantially increased risk of more advanced prostate cancer," Witte said.

Omega-3s are believed to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and autoimmune disorders, and to improve cognitive health. The mechanisms for these benefits are not well understood, but are believed, in some cases, to be linked to reduced inflammation.

The cox-2 gene is known to play a role in prostate inflammation, a risk factor for prostate cancer.

"Previous research has shown protection against prostate cancer [by omega-3s]," Witte said, "but this is one of the first studies to show protection against advanced prostate cancer and interaction with cox-2."

Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer in the United States, and the second most common cause of male cancer death. In the United Kingdom, it is the second most common cause of overall cancer death. Obesity is one of the most well-known risk factors for the disease.

"One way men can reduce their risk of developing advanced prostate cancer, as well as risk of many other diseases, is to maintain a healthy weight," said Eric Jacobs of the American Cancer Society.

Flax Oil
Omega 3-6-9
Borage Oil

by Paul Fassa

(NaturalNews) Magnesium is a very underrated, virtually ignored mineral for our diets, yet it is the most crucial and essential to over 300 bodily biochemical and cellular metabolic processes. It has been called the "Master Mineral" because of its central importance to so many cellular functions and proper body glucose balance. Because of poor topsoil conditions and poor eating habits, almost everyone is magnesium deficient to some extent.

So How Do You Know If You Are Low?

All the symptoms related to magnesium deficiency can overlap with other health issues. So it is confusing to determine magnesium deficiency by symptoms alone.

Weakness, inappropriate fatigue, irritability, muscle spasms or twitches, muscle aches, light or sound sensitivity, chronic constipation, and "restless leg syndrome", where either the legs or arms have weird sensations that can only be relieved by often changing their position, are usually directly related to magnesium deficiency.

Indirectly, fibromyalgia, arrhythmia and other heart conditions, asthma, and hypertension along with high blood pressure can also be at least partly due to insufficient magnesium in our cells. And within the cells is where the action is mostly with magnesium as a catalyst and synthesis agent for approximately 80% or our biochemical processes.

That's why Dr. Otis Woodward, MD, a holistic physician, recommends a red blood cell (RBC) test over a simple blood test to determine magnesium levels. It can look good in your blood, but if it is not in your cells you won't get the benefits. RBC testing is not as good as white blood cell testing, but it is easier to obtain, less expensive, and sufficient.

Applied kinesiology or muscle testing by a skilled holistic healer can also help determine your need for magnesium. But let's face it, if your health can be better and your diet is not so great, considering that almost everyone is magnesium deficient should motivate you to look into how to increase your magnesium level.

Increasing Your Magnesium Intake With Foods

Lots of sugar, processed table salt and processed foods, especially those made with bleached flour will deplete your magnesium by a sort of leeching process. So avoiding or minimizing that part of your diet will be a good start. You can replace processed table salt with real organic sea salt or Himalayan salt to eliminate the poisons inherent in table salt and add magnesium to your diet.

Stress is another magnesium burner. Indulging in some humor and handling stress by being more upbeat in general will help conserve your body's stored magnesium.

Vegetables with leafy greens, whole grains, many legumes including peanuts, and raw nuts are good sources of magnesium. But all is not so good with commercially grown agribusiness crops. It has been determined that organic crops contain up to 10 times the magnesium of regular supermarket foods.

However, it's the depleted topsoil that is the problem. So organic should include that the crops are rotated and the topsoil is regenerated for optimum mineral and magnesium content. Simply not spraying with pesticides does little to improve the topsoil.

Sugar cane roots go much deeper than topsoil and those roots have access to minerals not available in the topsoil. Ironically, the "waste" from processing table sugar produces a super food for minerals known as black strap molasses. The unsulphured variety is the best. Mostly known for it's high iron content, unsulphured black strap molasses is also high in magnesium.

Another super food very high in magnesium is fulvic (not folic) acid. A good fulvic acid liquid is said to contain all the minerals and elements a body needs. Fulvic acid minerals in solution are purported to be highly bioavailable.

Remember the leafy greens suggestion? At the core of chlorophyll is magnesium. So any of the super foods that are green, such as spirulina and especially chlorella, are high in magnesium as well as other nutrients. Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, recommends 10 grams of spirulina or 5 grams of chlorella daily. It's easier, more absorbable, and more economical if you use the powdered form mixed in a suitable liquid of your choice.

Since most of us who grew up on processed and agribusiness non-organic foods have impaired digestive systems, it is suggested by most health experts that you include some sort of digestive aid to increase the bioavailibility of the magnesium in those foods and super foods.

Investigate probiotic sources or high intestinal flora kefirs and kombuchas to see what suits your fancy and budget. You can even make your own kefir or kombucha, or use sauerkraut that is home made with organic foods. There is a tasty Korean dish known as Kimchi for a daily diet to enhance probiotic production in your intestinal tract. Here is an article link that contains a Kimchi recipe:
http://www.bodyecology.com/07/02/01…

Supplements, an Adjunct, and Extreme Measures

Of course there are supplements as well. The better ones are in powdered form to be dissolved in water or juice. Often they are in conjunction with calcium. So make sure the ratio is around 2 to 1 calcium to magnesium. If your diet is high in calcium sources, using just magnesium as a supplement or a cal/mag with a lower ratio is recommended. Magnesium oxide is not as endorsed by doctors and holistic healers as much as magnesium citrate or magnesium citrate malate. Read your labels.

Holistic physicians often use magnesium injections or intravenous feeds for patients with severe deficiency problems. They will then prescribe oral magnesium supplementation along with vitamin B6 as an adjunct when that intense therapeutic event is completed. If you add B6 to your oral supplementation of magnesium, it is recommended that you include a full B complex supplement to prevent a B vitamin imbalance.

NOTE:Important Caveats!

People with kidney and heart problems are advised against magnesium supplementation unless they consult a physician. Also, magnesium supplements tend to be alkaline, so too much of the magnesium supplements can impair digestion unless tempered with organic apple cider vinegar in water. Otherwise, too much alkaline can lead to poor absorption and disrupt your pH balance. Dr. Len Horowitz recommends fresh lime or lemon squeezed into your water to cheaply maintain pH balance. Even too much of the transdermal applications listed below can alter your skin's pH balance. This caveat does not apply to food and super food sources.

Transdermal Applications You Can Do Yourself

Transdermal simply means applied to unbroken skin, as creams and lotions are. This implies that you may ensure bioavailability of the magnesium regardless of any digestive impediments. Lately, magnesium oils have sprouted onto the health supplement market that can simply be applied to your skin. The body then absorbs the magnesium through the skin where it is applied.

If you prefer sitting and soaking over standing and showering, you are in luck for increasing your magnesium intake. Magnesium salts are available for your bath.

A more available and economical transdermal source of magnesium is Epsom salt. Yes, you can soak in Epsom salts to ease your aches and pains while absorbing magnesium through your skin. Epsom salt is essentially magnesium sulfate. Two cups of Epsom salt in a standard sized bathtub, soaking for 12 minutes three times a week should be sufficient.

Again, it is advised to stay within that protocol and not exceed it.

Magnesium Needs To Be Nurtured

Awareness of your magnesium level and what you're doing for it is more essential to good health than is commonly realized. It is also essential to the synthesis of glutathione, which is considered the master antioxidant that controls all other antioxidants!

This should be enough data to motivate your nurturing magnesium levels. But if you need an even more comprehensive, detailed report on magnesium, go to the first source link below.

Coral Calcium
Cal/Mag
Himalayan Salt

by S. L. Baker

(NaturalNews) When scientific studies found possible biomarkers for cardiovascular disease in recent years, it didn't take long for the medical industry to start manufacturing and promoting blood tests for them, especially the main, supposedly new risk factor for heart disease and stroke known as C-reactive protein (CRP). The claims for CRP testing being important were based on findings it might be a marker of inflammation which leads to heart attacks and strokes. But two new studies just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reach conclusions that seem to indicate it is far better to use plain common sense to identify individual risk factors such as being overweight, having high blood pressure, smoking tobacco, and not exercising as ways to predict who will have cardiovascular problems — not a host of expensive and unproven tests currently being hyped and promoted by many doctors and medical centers.

Olle Melander, MD, PhD, of Lund University in Sweden, and colleagues assessed a whole list of cardiovascular biomarkers to see if they were more useful in predicting future cardiovascular events than standard risk factors like hypertension. The study included 5,067 people with an average age of 58 who didn't have signs of heart disease at the beginning of the study, which recruited patients between 1991 and 1994. The research subjects were followed until 2006 and the Swedish national hospital discharge and cause-of-death registers were used to see if they had experienced cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke or coronary death.

Many of them had fallen ill to these health problems. In all, there were over 600 coronary and cardiovascular events experienced during this time. But did expensive biomarker tests turn out to predict who would have one of these events? The use of combinations of biomarkers including CRP and newer ones dubbed cystatin C, lipoprotein-associated phospholipase 2, midregional proadrenomedullin (MR-proADM), midregional proatrial natriuretic peptide, and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (N-BNP) showed some slight statistical ability to predict who was going to have heart attacks and stroke, but the finding was very minimal. In fact, the authors wrote, the biomarker testing "did not reclassify a substantial proportion of individuals to higher or lower risk categories". Bottom line: all those tests made no significant difference in figuring out who was at risk and who wasn't.

Another just-published JAMA study comes down even harder on the idea that CRP tests can predict heart attack and stroke risk. A group of international scientists, including researchers from Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada, put together data from several health studies which had collected DNA from 128,000 research subjects. Headed by epidemiologist Paul Elliott of Imperial College in London, the research team searched for proof that people who have genes known to raise CRP levels have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

But the findings showed that wasn't the case. There have also been claims in previous studies of associations between CRP and type 2 diabetes and even being overweight. But an association is not proof CRP is the cause of any of these health problems — nor a cause of heart attacks and strokes.

And there is now no evidence at all CRP testing should be carried out on the masses or that people with elevated CRP need to be treated with new drugs designed to lower it. "Moreover, this study suggests that development of therapeutic strategies targeting specific reductions in plasma levels of CRP are unlikely to be fruitful," the researchers concluded in a statement to the media.

As covered earlier this year in Natural News (http://www.naturalnews.com/026256_I…), it makes more sense to fight heart disease and stroke with a healthy lifestyle. Research conducted by scientists in Iceland found, in fact, that between 1981 and 2006 mortality rates from coronary heart disease (CHD) in Iceland plummeted by an amazing 80 percent in men and women between the ages of 25 and 74 due primarily to good nutrition, exercise and other natural approaches to health.

Cardio EZ
Hawthorne Berry Heart Syrup
Enzymes

by S. L. Baker

(NaturalNews) There is probably no more dreaded and feared disease than memory-destroying and life-robbing Alzheimer's. According to the National Institute on Aging (NIA), as many as 2.4 to 4.5 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and, as Baby Boomers age, those numbers are expected to soar. Unfortunately, despite millions spent on research and the development of drugs to delay or help symptoms, the bottom line is nothing works to truly prevent, stop or heal the disease. At least, nothing from Big Pharma. The National Institutes of Health's NIA web site does list some natural strategies — a nutritious diet, exercise, social engagement, and mentally stimulating pursuits — which may prevent or delay AD. But now there's new and stunning research that strongly suggests a substance found in nature offers another a way to fight Alzheimer's and maybe even reverse its effects: caffeine.

In experiments with lab mice especially bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, University of South Florida (USF) researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center ADRC gave the aged animals the equivalent of the caffeine in five cups of coffee a day. The results? Their severe memory impairment was reversed.

This study, along with other AD research by the same group of scientists, was just published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Both studies show that caffeine significantly decreased abnormal levels of beta amyloid (the protein linked to AD) in both the brains and blood of lab rodents who had symptoms of Alzheimer's. This research follows on the heels of previous ADRC research that found caffeine given to this same strain of mice when they were young prevented memory problems from developing — even though the animals were bred to develop Alzheimer's symptoms as they grew old.

"The new findings provide evidence that caffeine could be a viable 'treatment' for established Alzheimer's disease, and not simply a protective strategy," said lead author Gary Arendash, PhD, a USF neuroscientist with the Florida ADRC, in a statement to the media. "That's important because caffeine is a safe drug for most people, it easily enters the brain, and it appears to directly affect the disease process."

Dr. Arendash and his research team began investigating caffeine's ability to possibly treat Alzheimer's after they read a Portuguese study conducted a few years ago that found people with Alzheimer's had consumed far less caffeine over the last 20 years than people who never came down with AD. There have also been several uncontrolled clinical studies that have noted moderate caffeine consumption seems to offer protection against memory decline during normal aging. So the ADRC scientists decided to conduct highly controlled experiments using Alzheimer's afflicted mice in order to distinguish the effects caffeine might actually have on memory from other lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise.

The Florida ADRC study used 55 of the genetically altered mice who develop memory problems identical to Alzheimer's disease as they become old. Behavior tests were conducted to confirm the mice were experiencing memory problems when they reached the age of 18 to 19 months, the equivalent of a human who's around 70. Then the scientists gave half the mice caffeine-laced water — in all, they received the equivalent of five eight oz. cups of regular coffee a day. As a control, the other half of the mice in the study group received plain water.

After two months, the caffeinated mice could perform much better on tests designed to measure their memory and ability to think. Although the mice that drank plain water continued to show mental deterioration, the mice on caffeine not only had stopped losing their memories, their memories were identical to normal aged mice without dementia. Moreover, the caffeinated mice showed an approximate 50 percent reduction in beta amyloid, the substance linked to sticky lumps of plaques in the brain that are the key sign of Alzheimer's disease.

More experiments by the same research team suggest that caffeine has the ability to restore memory by reducing the enzymes needed to produce beta amyloid. In fact, the Florida scientists think caffeine may suppress inflammatory changes in the brain that lead to the AD-associated increase of beta amyloid.

"These are some of the most promising Alzheimer's mouse experiments ever done showing that caffeine rapidly reduces beta amyloid protein in the blood, an effect that is mirrored in the brain, and this reduction is linked to cognitive benefit," Huntington Potter, PhD, director of the Florida ADRC and an investigator for the caffeine studies, said in the media statement. "Our goal is to obtain the funding needed to translate the therapeutic discoveries in mice into well-designed clinical trials."

Based on their groundbreaking findings in mice, scientists at Florida ADRC and Byrd Alzheimer's Center at USF want to carry out human trials to see if caffeine can benefit people with mild cognitive impairment or early Alzheimer's disease. There's strong reason to think caffeine can fight AD. The researchers have already determined in preliminary studies that caffeine given to elderly non-demented humans quickly affects their blood levels of beta amyloid, just as it did in the Alzheimer's lab animals.

If larger, well documented and controlled clinical studies do confirm caffeine can prevent and/or treat Alzheimer's in humans, as it does in mice, the ramifications will be nothing short of mind-boggling. According to the Alzheimer's Association, at least half of the US population 85 and older have or end up with AD and the disease and other dementias triple healthcare costs for Americans 65 and older, in addition to causing untold suffering .

Editor's note: NaturalNews is opposed to the use of animals in medical experiments that expose them to harm. We present these findings in protest of the way in which they were acquired. We are also opposed to the idea of using large volumes of caffeine as a "treatment" for Alzheimer's, especially given the adrenal depletion caused by ongoing caffeine consumption. The conclusions presented in this story are interesting, but in no way does NaturalNews condone the regular consumption of caffeine as a brain stimulant.

References :
Caffeine Reverses Cognitive Impairment and Decreases Brain Amyloid-B Levels in Aged Alzheimer's Disease Mice; Gary W Arendash, Takashi Mori, Chuanhai Cao, Malgorzata Mamcarz, Melissa Runfeldt, Alexander Dickson, Kavon Rezai-Zadeh, Jun Tan, Bruce A Citron, Xiaoyang Lin, Valentina Echeverria, and Huntington Potter; Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Volume 17:3 (July 2009).

Caffeine Suppresses Amyloid-B Levels in Plasma and Brain of Alzheimer's Disease Transgenic Mice; Chuanhai Cao, John R Cirrito, Xiaoyang Lin, Lilly Wang, Deborah K Verges, Alexander Dickson, Malgorzata Mamcarz, Chi Zhang, Takashi Mori, Gary W Arendash, David M Holzman, and Huntington Potter; Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, Volume 17:3 (July 2009)

Colloidal Gold

by Barbara Minton

(NaturalNews) As all the pushing and shoving over universal health care coverage moves into high gear, one thing remains indisputable. If Americans were healthy the costs of insuring them would be a whole lot less, and coverage could easily be provided for all without breaking a sweat. Healthy people have no need to visit doctors or take expensive medicals tests. They don`t even need checkups or perceived authority figures to tell them what they already know. Unfortunately, most Americans are currently nowhere near a state of vibrant health. This is partly their fault in failing to take responsibility for keeping themselves healthy. But the greater fault lies in the fact that Americans have been victims of an ongoing undeclared war by their government and corporate leaders who have conspired to keep them in a state of disease. To achieve vibrant health for everyone, we as a people must be willing to take responsibility for ourselves and realize we have helped create the world in which we live by silently going along with such a war. To do this requires much courage and change. Here are some starting points:

Restore the quality of food

Hippocrates made the need for high quality food quite clear when he said "Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food." He realized that health rests in the hands of nutrition, and that all the medicine anyone could ever need is contained in food. However, Hippocrates never envisioned the factory farms of today that produce nutritionally depleted food grown in starved soils under farming methods that are an insult to the earth. He had no knowledge of pesticides and genetically modified seeds. It is no coincidence that our modern health crisis parallels the disappearance of clean nutritious foods.

When Americans ate a diet consisting primarily of unprocessed whole foods produced on family farms, the disease rates were a fraction of what is seen today, and health care costs were much less. We have allowed our right to eat healthy food to be stolen from us by greedy people. It`s time to use our dollars to take back this right. By buying only high quality whole foods grown organically on local small farms or in our backyards, we are saying no to the corporations that want to exploit us. When we do this we are also sending a powerful message to our families and friends that says health comes first. The more that people have to sacrifice to afford high quality food, the louder is their message.

Geoffrey Canada, currently working wonders in the Harlem Children`s Zone, realizes the importance of nutrition in raising healthy children and the importance of making it a priority even in families living at the poverty level. He is shown in the current CNN special Black in America Part 2 going door to door in his school`s community, seeing bags of junk food and fast food wrappers and asking the parents where are the apples and bananas. Canada understands that it is up to each person to try to shape the world in which he lives rather than blindly accepting life as it is defined by others.

Make health promoting food available for everyone

To have a healthy nation, access to nutritious food including fruits and vegetables must be available for everyone. This means all people working for a living in the U.S. must be paid salaries that allow them to afford health promoting foods. All jobs are important to the running of an organization, otherwise they wouldn`t exist. The person who cleans the toilets deserves to be paid a livable wage. Certainly education and talent should be rewarded, but not to a degree that makes it necessary for other workers to make ends meet by feeding their families low quality processed food.

The real median household income level in the United States for the year 2007 was $50,233. Compare this figure with the approximately $15,080 annual income for a family with a single wage earner working a full time job paid at minimum wage. This is likely to be the family that frequently eats cheap processed carbohydrates with little or no nutritional value because it is all they can afford. No matter how highly they place health on their priority list, this family does not have ready access to nutritious foods including fruits and vegetables. This is also the family least likely to have health insurance. Approximately 12.5 percent of the U.S. population falls into this category. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release…

Provide a safe water supply

Having access to clean and safe water is a basic human right. This means water that is not contaminated with fluoride. It is widely known that fluoride has the greatest affect on fetuses, infants and children because it is a neurotoxin that compromises the developing brain. Fluoride has long been implicated in bone cancer, and there are new findings that show fluoride may lead to debilitating skeletal fluorosis. http://www.naturalnews.com/024855_f…

As much as 90 percent of the fluoride added to drinking water is in the form of hydrofluoric acid, a compound of fluorine that is a chemical byproduct of of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate, and nuclear weapons manufacturing. Fluoride is the active toxin in several rat poisons. It is carcinogenic industrial waste claiming to be a health product, and it is being foisted on an unsuspecting public. In reality, all the benefit from fluoride goes to the manufacturers while the public is left holding the bag for its impact on healthcare costs.

Right now there are over 1750 professionals from the medical, scientific and environmental communities calling for an end to water treatment with fluoride, but their call is falling on deaf governmental ears. If we are to be a nation of healthy individuals, the drinking water that comes from our faucets and the water we bath ourselves and our children in must be free of fluoride. Only the relatively well off are able to have water filtration systems installed in their houses. The rest of the populace must use water as it comes from the tap.

Insist on products that are free of hazardous chemicals

If we are to become a healthy nation we must refuse to spend our hard earned money on food, personal care and household products that contain chemicals that are hazardous to health. A quick read of the labels before you buy will reveal which manufacturers have the best interest of people at heart and which are only concerned with their bottom lines. If there is a substance that`s not recognizable, it is probably a chemical. Many chemicals used in these types of products are directly carcinogenic or indirect causes of cancer by their depressive actions on the immune system. Check out the degree to which a chemical is a health hazard at http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/in…

Teach what is really worth knowing

Germs make you sick and doctors make you well. That`s what most children leave school thinking in the U.S., because our schools place a greater emphasis on teaching things like what the major export products of ancient Egypt were than on teaching how the human body works and what to do to keep it healthy. Yet knowledge about how the body works and what it takes to keep it in top condition is also a basic human right underwritten by nature. We must insist that schools teach this knowledge if our goal is truly to be a healthy populace.

Students and adults too must be taught the full significance of homeostasis and the fact that the body will affect its own cure when given the support it needs. We must learn that treating symptoms is not the same thing as curing disease. It`s easy to understand our confusion, since we are constantly bombarded by ads for patent medicines that mask symptoms and never hear a word about natural cures. But the truth is that only natural remedies are capable of producing disease free, healthy people. Prescription drugs produce only people sliding further into disease. Natural remedies support the body and help it achieve homeostasis. Prescription drugs tear down the body and ultimately create a condition where returning to homeostasis becomes impossible.

If all the ad space currently used to promote prescription drugs was given to educating people about how to support their bodies the way nature intended, the U.S. could become a country of healthy people in short order, causing health insurance rates to plummet.

Included in the human health curriculum should be instruction in anatomy and physiology, and the basics of proteins, vitamins, minerals and herbs. The special compounds found in fruits that are so necessary for good health should be explained. Food selection, grouping, and the importance of digestion should be taught, as well as disease processes and how to avoid them. When students begin to graduate feeling knowledgeable and empowered to take charge of their health and well being for the rest of their lives, spiraling health care costs will be a thing of the past.

Many children receive both their breakfasts and lunches at school, and some even get their dinners there. But school meals are usually completely lacking in nutritional value. With the exception of processed orange juice drinks, fruits and vegetables are seldom seen. School meals should be recreated to set an example of healthy eating and to make sure children receive the best nutrition possible on earth to foster their healthy growth and development. When children are energized by a diet of health promoting foods they will be more willing to engage in daily fitness activities both inside and outside of school.

Many disease processes that get their starts during the years children are sitting in school desks for up to 10 hours a day could be circumvented by an experiential curriculum in which children learn by doing. To further knowledge, empowerment and understanding, school activities can be integrated into the community rather than kept separate. Students who are taught to think and problem solve in real situations are more likely to turn into adults who are able to keep themselves healthy.

It is important to realize that schools do everything to rob children of real, useful knowledge and empowerment with their mandate to produce dumbed-down non-thinkers who will fit nicely into positions as corporate and government drones. Financial education is seldom taught in schools because keeping young adults ignorant of financial matters puts them in a position to be exploited as they were in the recent mortgage fiasco. No person with even the most basic understanding of how money works would have signed up for an interest-only mortgage. A basic understanding of finance is critical to creating a secure place for one`s self in the world. Since money is the number one cause of stress, becoming a truly healthy society will elude us until there is freedom from exploitation and until people are able to hang onto the money they earn and use it for their own benefit and health.

Forget the overtime and get a good night`s sleep

Working 55 or more hours a week is associated with poor health. Dr. Paul Landsbergis from the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has noted that several studies of myocardial infarction and two studies of hypertension have shown an association of these diseases with long work weeks. He sees recent trends in the organization of work affecting workers` health by "increasing stress-related illnesses, such as cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and psychological disorders, by increasing exposure to hazardous substances and violence on the job." Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, January, 2003)

The Japanese call it karoshi. It means death from overwork, and it has been rising at an alarming rate in Japan. Strokes and heart attacks from overwork killed 147 Japanese workers last year. Once recognized, karoshi did not lead to immediate change. Instead, acceptance of long working hours and toughing it out remained the norm. But this may be changing, at least in Japan. A recent ruling by the labor bureau actually listed the cause of death for a Toyota employee as overwork, making his family eligible for benefits. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy…

In the U.S. extended work weeks are still on the rise, and there is as yet no word in the English language that means death from overwork. During the current "financial crisis" which has resulted in staggering unemployment rates, people here have felt the need to suck it up too, as employers try to squeeze extra labor out of them.

Anthropologist T. S. Wiley cites a pile of research showing that the reason overwork leads to poor health and death is because it robs people of a good night`s sleep. In her ground breaking book Lights Out she documents that nine hours of uninterrupted sleep is required to complete the full melatonin, prolactin cycle so necessary for a fully functioning immune system. When people sleep less than that amount, the immune system becomes compromised and is unable to protect against diseases such as cancer. People who work long hours still need time for commuting, chores, quality time with children, exercise and relaxation. They don`t have much time left for sleeping.

A psychologically healthy nation does not demand that its people work themselves to death. If we want to create a healthy population that makes insurance easily affordable by everyone, we need to end corporate tyranny over our work force and return work to its proper place as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Put an end to bio-weaponry build up

A nation that is careless with the health of its people will forever have escalating health insurance rates. Recent designer diseases such as Lyme, AIDS, West Nile, and Legionnaires that have accidentally or purposefully been released from bio-weaponry labs such as Plum Island and Fort Detrick have done much to escalate the cost of health care.

Bio-engineering and warehousing of pathogens has created the potential for these pathogens to be released into the environment where they can infect people and set the stage for expensive but deadly vaccination programs to be initiated. A March 11th, 1979 episode of the television show 60 Minutes covered the massive vaccination program foisted on the public supposedly as a response to the 1976 swine flu outbreak. The CDC subsequently admitted that the virus originated at the Fort Dix bio-facilities, according to Dr. Ghislaine Lanctot quoted in a Kurt Nimmo article. http://www.infowars.com/canadian-do…

Army criminal investigators from Fort Meade are currently looking into the possibility that disease samples of H1N1 are missing from the bio-lab at Fort Detrick, the same lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released. (Fort Detrick disease samples may be missing, Fredrick News Post, April 26th).

Michael Carroll`s, Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government`s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory was released in 2004. The book explores the insidious connection between the Department of Homeland Security`s bio-lab at Plum Island and the newest inexplicable diseases. It presents a compelling mound of evidence that Lyme was created at Plum and unleashed on the American public using ticks as its vector. The deadly outbreak of West Nile virus and its connection to Plum is also documented. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control admitted that Lyme disease was a "potential bioterrorism agent"