Month: May 2010

Crusador Staff

In another move of insanity schools across America are dropping regular soda from their vending machines and switching over to diet soda. Administrators believe the switch will help combat the growing obesity epidemic. While implicating soda as a culprit in the obesity epidemic is a fairly easy thing to do, the replacement diet sodas will only continue fueling an epidemic of neurological disorders as the #1 high fructose corn syrup alternative to sweeten beverages is aspartame. Just do a quick Google search on the dangers of aspartame and you will be baffled as to why schools across America would be ignorant enough to think they are somehow offering a better alternative.

Chromium
IntraMax

A battle over this very issue is currently being waged in Volusia County, Florida. A 4/24/10 Daytona Beach News Journal story reported that:
 
“High-sugar sodas will disappear from Volusia County high school campuses in July, although school officials want to keep vending machines to dispense diet sodas and other beverages to help raise money for student activities. The change, which the School Board will consider Tuesday , would bring Volusia schools into compliance with a 2006 agreement to eliminate regular sodas from American schools to help combat childhood obesity. Flagler schools have already dropped regular sodas from their vending machines, said Mike Judd, assistant to the superintendent. Zero-calorie sodas are still stocked in high school vending machines, but carbonated drinks are banned in elementary and middle schools…

The Volusia County School Health Advisory Committee recently signed off on the proposed request for a new beverage contract on an 11-2 vote. Dr. Bonnie Sorensen, director of the Volusia County Health Department, was among those who endorsed it. While some committee members were concerned about the possible health effects of artificial sweeteners and phosphoric acid in diet sodas, Sorensen said the majority agreed the proposal would be a step forward. ‘Diet sodas, in terms of sugar, are preferable to regular sodas,’ she said. ‘Everyone agreed the less sugar, the better.’”
 
Yeah, that’s right, the less sugar the better – the more neurotoxins the better!

Attorney Jonathan Emord

On May 12, 2010, the U.S. Citizens Association and five individual plaintiff members of that association (Nathan R. Glick, Christopher Barr, Shane K. Ellison, James Grapek, and Eileen Dannemann) filed an historic suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Pub. L. No. 111-148, H.R. 3590), as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (Pub. L. No. 111-152, H.R. 4872) (what the public knows as Obamacare). The suit is unlike every other filed to date against Obamacare. It is filed on behalf of individuals who do not have health insurance and do not want it. The U.S. Citizens Association plaintiffs present a direct challenge to the most significant aspect of Obamacare, the mandate that every American obtain health insurance.

By 2014, every American who volitionally elects not to buy health insurance will be forced to buy “qualified” private plans under Obamacare or suffer a tax penalty. Millions of Americans do not have health insurance of their own free will, not because they cannot afford it but because they choose not to expend their money on it. Their reasons are many. Some prefer alternative medicine that is not covered by health insurance. Others wish to place the thousands of dollars that would otherwise have to be spent on health insurance in savings or investments. Still others wish to devote that money for the acquisition of goods or services other than health insurance. In the end, this suit is about those Americans’ freedom of choice.

Can the government constitutionally compel an American citizen to spend his or her after tax dollars to purchase a single product, health insurance, against that citizen’s will? The plaintiffs in this suit contend that their liberty right under the Fifth Amendment, their right to privacy protected by the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, and their freedom of association protected by the First Amendment forbid that compulsion.

I must disclose a personal bias. I am lead counsel for these plaintiffs. The suit is critical not just for them but for all Americans who value freedom. If it succeeds, key elements in the defense of a Constitution of liberty will be upheld. If it fails, there will be no precedential barrier in place to prevent the federal government from placing additional mandates on private expenditure of after tax dollars.

If the government may constitutionally compel you to buy health insurance with your after tax dollars on the simple public interest argument that all Americans must needs be insured because all must be able to pay for health care, what can stop the government from imposing other mandates on your after tax dollars based on comparable public interest arguments? For example, many members of Congress think fossil fuels evil and wish the pollution they create would disappear. What is to stop Congress from requiring every American who owns a car that runs on fossil fuels to purchase a replacement electric car by a date certain? Why not pass legislation requiring every American located in a region where sunshine is prevalent to purchase solar panels for electric heating in place of power plant generated electricity? Why not pass legislation requiring every American to purchase a set amount of foods per capita deemed by the Food and Drug Administration to be health enhancing? Surely there is a public interest in reducing air pollution, reducing reliance on electricity provided by public utilities, and improving the quality of foods consumed in the American diet.

The mandate imposed by Obamacare is designed to force the nation to favor one industry sector, the insurance industry. It operates on the supposition that insurance is an essential public good. Political decision makers might likewise deem low interest loans an essential public good and mandate that we place a certain amount of our income in government qualified “savings” accounts to help keep interest rates down. They might deem low cost day care an essential public good and mandate that all pay for private day care services, whether they have children or not, to ensure that daycare is affordable for parents in need. If the Constitution permits the federal government to impose mandates on use of after tax dollars to support one industry that political decisionmakers think wise, here health insurance, there is no end to the mandates that can be placed on the expenditure of private resources.

There is at least one undeniable problem with mandates of this sort: they sacrifice individual freedom of choice. They violate the Constitution’s taxing provisions by usurping control of money that is not taxed. The right to direct how your after tax dollars are spent is indispensable to human liberty in a free enterprise economy. Suddenly not only does government assert jurisdiction over the dollars you pay in taxes, but it also presumes to control your after tax dollars, placing public mandates on your private resources to achieve an ever illusive (and ever changing) public good (or, at least, what those in political power deem good). This system operates on the offensive assumption that political decision makers know better than you do what is in your own best interest. On that supposition, those political decision makers will dictate how you spend the very resources on which you depend to be free and independent.

The First Amendment protects your freedom to associate. Under Obamacare, that freedom to associate is taken from you. You must associate with a “qualified” health insurance plan even if you would prefer not to, with precious few exceptions.

The Fifth Amendment protects your right to liberty. The Supreme Court has recognized the liberty right to include the freedom to refuse unwanted medical treatment. Inherent in such refusal is the refusal to pay for unwanted treatment. The Obamacare mandate violates that freedom. It is fundamental because the freedom to refuse medical treatment would be rendered nugatory if that freedom to refuse did not include a freedom to refuse paying for unwanted care.

Various amendments to the Constitution have been deemed bases for assertion of a right to privacy. Central to that right is the protection of health information from unwanted eyes. The Obamacare mandate violates the right of privacy because it forces individuals not insured to obtain health insurance and, by so doing, divulge to insurers their health status (including all physical and mental health information). It thereby forces individuals to reveal to private companies (and to the government) confidences against their will.

In addition to these rights violations, Obamacare operates on the supposition that there is no limit to the extension of the commerce clause when it comes to health care. If correct in that supposition, the Constitution not only condones after tax mandates on expenditure of private resources but also permits those mandates to be imposed on individuals who have no substantial effect on or relationship with health insurance and health insurance markets. The individuals subject to Obamacare mandates in this suit are being regulated because of their choice not to be insured, not because they have involved themselves with health insurance or health insurance markets. Thus, as applied to them, Obamacare obliterates every limit on the extension of the commerce clause.

Our freedom of choice is often expressed in economic terms. Our freedom to travel depends on the liberty to expend money necessary to pay for a preferred mode of transportation. Our freedom to invest in new business enterprises depends on the liberty to risk our own capital in a venture that may or may not succeed. Our freedom to purchase goods or services depends on the liberty to choose among those available the one or ones we think right for us.

Freedom of choice includes the freedom not to choose. The right of dissent, a time honored right meant to be protected against coercive government, cannot coexist with law that compels all to use their own resources to uphold and promote state preferred industries. Much is at stake in this litigation. For the sake of liberty, we should all pray that the plaintiffs are successful.

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) Ultrasound is extremely damaging to the health of any unborn child (fetus). The natural health community has been warning about ultrasound for years, but mainstream medicine, which consistently fails to recognize the harm it causes, insists ultrasound is perfectly safe and can't possibly harm the health of a fetus.

Now, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding a project that aims to temporarily sterilize men by blasting their scrotums with ultrasound. The burst of ultrasound energy, it turns out, disrupts the normal biological function of the testes, making the man infertile for six months.

Ultrasound, in other words, contains enough energy to temporarily deaden the testes and basically destroy sperm function for half a year. So why is it considered "safe" to blast an unborn baby with the same frequencies?

Ultrasound is loud. It no doubt causes tissue disruption and damage in a fetus, and it certainly creates stress and shock for the baby. And yet conceited yuppie parents just can't get enough of it! They want to SEE a picture of their little baby before it's even born, so they subject it to tissue damage and ultrasound trauma in order to get a snapshot they can show off to their yuppie friends. Just to clarify, I'm not opposed to medically necessary ultrasound that has a reasonable justification concerning the health of the mother of the baby. What I'm strongly opposed to is ultrasound used to take pictures of the fetus or to satisfy the curiosity of the parents. This "recreational" ultrasound is extremely selfish, conceited and may pose a very real danger to the health of the baby.

It's so American, isn't it? Damage the baby so we can get a snapshot to post on Facebook. What a way to welcome a baby into the world: Blast it with piercing high-frequency energy in order to impress your friends! Don't forget to vaccinate them, too, as soon as they are born. (And yes, some parents-to-be seriously subject their babies to ultrasound just so they can take pictures. It's demented!)

Sound is very easily transmitted through fluids, by the way, and the fetus is floating in a sac of amniotic fluid that transmits the ultrasound energy right at them.

UltraSound harms the fetus

Here's what some other website have to say about how ultrasound harms the health of the fetus:

From The Independent

Frequent ultrasound scans during pregnancy may result in growth restriction in the womb and the birth of smaller babies, according to a study of almost 3,000 Australian women, writes Liz Hunt.

The findings, reported in the Lancet, have led to calls for more research into the effects of ultrasound, and a leading obstetrician warns that 'prenatal ultrasound by itself can no longer be assumed to be entirely harmless'.

From Midwifery Today
The safety issue is made more complicated by the problem of exposure conditions. Clearly, any bio-effects that might occur as a result of ultrasound would depend on the dose of ultrasound received by the fetus or woman. But there are no national or international standards for the output characteristics of ultrasound equipment. The result is the shocking situation described in a commentary in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, in which ultrasound machines in use on pregnant women range in output power from extremely high to extremely low, all with equal effect. The commentary reads, "If the machines with the lowest powers have been shown to be diagnostically adequate, how can one possibly justify exposing the patient to a dose 5,000 times greater?" It goes on to urge government guidelines on the output of ultrasound equipment and for legislation making it mandatory for equipment manufacturers to state the output characteristics. As far as is known, this has not yet been done in any country.

From NaturalNews
…pregnant mice exposed to ultrasound gave birth to some offspring that suffered brain abnormalities. The mice exposed to ultrasound for 30 minutes or longer experienced a small but significant migration of brain neurons to improper places in the brain.

by: Ethan A. Huff

(NaturalNews) Vitamin D is an amazing nutrient that protect the body from all sorts of diseases and problems. Researchers continually uncover new links between lack of vitamin D and disease, illustrating the fact that it is vital to good health. However recent studies have also found that most people are deficient in vitamin D.

Vitamin D3

A team of doctors from the McGill University Health Centre in Canada was surprised to find that about 59 percent of people evaluated were deficient in vitamin D and about 25 percent were severely deficient. Published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, the study is allegedly the first to illustrate a definitive link between vitamin D deficiency and an accumulation of fat in muscle tissue.

"Because it [vitamin D deficiency] is linked to increased body fat, it may affect many different parts of the body. Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders," explained Dr. Richard Kremer, lead investigator of the study.

The main reason why people are generally lacking in vitamin D is because people spend much more time indoors than they used to. Especially with computers, people often spend their entire days inside cubicles where they are exposed to little or no sunlight.

Vitamin D is not produced in the body on its own. It is created when skin is exposed to sunlight. Some foods contain vitamin D, but in minimal amounts compared to what can be achieved from sun exposure. Most people also do not consume enough vitamin D-rich food to obtain adequate amounts of it.

The McGill study highlights an important link between vitamin D and obesity that, until now, has been largely ignored. Vitamin D deficiency contributes to decreased muscle and increased fat, which is a condition that is increasingly common in industrialized nations. Though diet also plays a role in obesity, it is striking to see vitamin D playing a role in the condition as well.

Perhaps the reason why vitamin D deficiency is linked to all sorts of serious diseases has more to do with the increase in visceral fat that it causes, which in turn leads to such health problems. This study seems to confirm that notion.

The best way to address vitamin D deficiency is to get more sunlight. But when this is not possible, particularly throughout the winter months when the sun is at a lower angle and the ultraviolet (UV) rays are at a minimum, supplementation with vitamin D is the next best option.

The study itself did not confirm one way or another the effectiveness of vitamin D supplementation in reducing fat and increasing muscle, however tests have shown that supplementation does increase blood levels of vitamin D. Many people take vitamin D supplements to alleviate their deficiency and have experience good results.

Currently, the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin D is between 200 and 400 international units (IU) per day, depending on age. Recent studies are showing that these recommendations are too low to maintain optimal health. Some are suggesting that these guidelines be updated to amounts upwards of 1,000 IU per day, including the Canadian Cancer Society.

On a typical summer day, 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight exposure will result in the skin producing about 40,000 IU of vitamin D. At this point, the mechanism that produces it shuts off in order to prevent the body from making too much.

With these levels in mind, many naturopathic doctors recommend supplementing with up to 10,000 IU a day or more. Many believe it is difficult to take too much vitamin D because the safe upper limits are much higher than previously thought.

Currently, the best form of vitamin D is D3, or cholecalciferol, because it is the precursor to the type created by the body from sunlight exposure. Vitamin D3 can be safely taken at amounts much higher than the RDA guidelines.

Safe tanning beds are another option for achieving optimal vitamin D levels without taking a supplement. Despite recent reports that they are unsafe and cause skin cancer, some tanning beds can be used properly and safely to obtain UV rays when regular sunlight is not an option. These beds use electronic ballasts instead of magnetic ballasts that emit electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs), which can cause cancer and other health issues.

Dr. Mercola, another trusted source of natural health information, has a helpful directory of healthy tanning locations across the country. There are also companies that sell these tanning beds for home use.

If you are unsure about your vitamin D levels and wish to consult with your physician, a simple blood test will determine your levels. Whichever route you choose to take, just be sure to get enough vitamin D. Your body will thank you.

Can you guess what conclusion the agency reached? As reported by Reuters, the FDA concluded "…it was safe for doctors to resume giving patients Glaxo's Rotarix and continue using Merck's Rotateq. The agency said there was no evidence the contamination caused any harm…"

In other words, as long as they can bury the evidence and deny any link between vaccines and health problems — which has been the standard excuse of the FDA for decades — they can continue to claim the vaccines are safe enough to inject into little children.

Never mind the fact that the pig virus found in the vaccines actually causes a wasting disease in baby pigs, giving them intense diarrhea and causing them to rapidly lose weight. DNA from these viruses was detected in the "master cells" used to make the vaccines.

Suppressing the evidence of harm
An FDA advisory panel said the risk to human health from the viral contamination was only "theoretical." But of course it's easy to claim anything is "theoretical" if you suppress the evidence that it's real. By simply ignoring any reports of neurological side effects from the vaccine, the FDA can always claim there is "no evidence" of harm. Well, no evidence they're willing to accept as real, anyway.

And that's how vaccine science works these days: Suppress any evidence of harm, deny any links between vaccines and neurological problems, then okay practically any viral contamination from any animal and declare it's all safe to be injected directly into the bodies of infants and children.

So much for science, huh? The vaccine industry operates more like a cult than a scientific organization, and anyone who questions the beliefs of their cult is immediately branded a heretic and publicly condemned.

By the way, even though these rotavirus vaccines are contaminated with a pig virus, the companies that make them claim there is "no manufacturing or safety issue" with the vaccines. In other words, this is normal!

Think about that for a moment: The discovery that a vaccine being injected into children is contaminated with a virus from a pig doesn't even result in a product recall! It doesn't raise any red flags! It's just business as usual in the vaccine industry, where DNA from any number of diseased animals is often used in the vaccine formulas.

Last year, rotavirus vaccines earned nearly a billion dollars in revenues for Big Pharma. The risk of a child in the United States actually dying from a rotavirus infection is ridiculously small. What these kids need is good nutrition and vitamin D, not an injection of a questionable vaccine made with pig virus DNA.

by: S. L. Baker

(NaturalNews) NaturalNews has covered how eating pistachios lowers the risk of lung cancer and how a diet rich in nuts may help prevent age-related blindness. Walnuts appear to have breast cancer-fighting properties, too. And now there's even more reason to be nuts about nuts — scientists have found new evidence that nuts are heart healthy because they dramatically improve blood cholesterol levels, without drugs.

"Dietary interventions to lower blood cholesterol concentrations and to modify blood lipoprotein levels are the cornerstone of prevention and treatment plans for coronary heart disease," Joan Sabate, M.D., of Loma Linda University and colleagues stated in their report, which was just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "Recently, consumption of nuts has been the focus of intense research because of their potential to reduce coronary heart disease risk and to lower blood lipid (fat and cholesterol) levels based on their unique nutritional attributes."

The Loma Linda University researchers investigated data from 25 international nut consumption trials involving 583 women and men with high cholesterol or normal cholesterol levels. Each study compared a control group of research subjects to a group assigned to specifically eat nuts regularly. None of the study participants took cholesterol lowering drugs such as Big Pharma's widely prescribed statins.

On average, the people in the trials who ate about 67 grams (approximately 2.4 ounces) of nuts each day had an overall reduction in total cholesterol levels of 5.1 percent. Even more important, there was a 7.4 percent drop in low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which is known as the "bad" cholesterol, and a significant 8.3 percent change in the ratio of LDL cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the "good" cholesterol that protects from heart disease.

The news got even better when the scientists looked at the effect of nut consumption on high levels of triglycerides in the bloodstream. These blood fats, when excessive, are known to contribute to the development of heart disease, stroke and peripheral vascular disease; triglycerides may play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes, too. The Archives of Internal Medicine report showed that eating nuts didn't change healthy levels of triglycerides in the body. However, in people with high levels, a diet rich in nuts caused triglyceride levels to take a 10.2 percent nosedive.

Bottom line: the researchers concluded the results of their study support the inclusion of nuts as a natural dietary therapy aimed at improving blood cholesterol levels. "Nuts are a whole food that have been consumed by humans throughout history. Increasing the consumption of nuts as part of an otherwise prudent diet can be expected to favorably affect blood lipid levels (at least in the short term) and have the potential to lower coronary heart disease risk," the researchers stated.

by: David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) Regular consumption of pomegranate may help prevent breast cancer, according to a study conducted by researchers from the City of Hope and published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Researchers tested 10 different naturally occurring pomegranate compounds, all of them in the ellagitannin family of chemicals. They found that some of the ellagitannins significantly reduced the activity of the enzyme aromatase in the laboratory.

In the body, aromatase transforms the hormone androgen into the hormone estrogen. Because 75 percent of breast tumors contain estrogen receptors and use the hormone to fuel their growth, aromatase inhibitors are a popular form of treatment for slowing the growth of breast tumors in post-menopausal women.

Pharmaceutical aromatase inhibitors include the AstraZeneca drug Armidex, the Pfizer drug Aromasin and the Novartis drug Femara.

"We were surprised by our findings," researcher Shiuan Chen said. "We previously found other fruits, such as grapes, to be capable of the inhibition of aromatase. But phytochemicals in pomegranates and in grapes are different."

Of the 10 chemicals tested, urolithin B was the most effective at aromatase inhibition. Researchers offered two caveats to their findings, however. First of all, the body does not absorb ellagitannins into the blood very effectively from the digestive tract. Second of all, the researchers tested very high doses of the chemicals, much higher than those found in pomegranate. This suggests that an actual pomegranate-based cancer treatment may still be far in the future.

"We do not recommend people start taking this as a replacement for the [aromatase inhibitors]," Chen said. "[Pomegranate compounds] are not as potent as the real drugs so we think that the interest probably is more on the prevention end rather than in a therapeutic purpose."

Pomegranate juice has been shown to be rich in a wide variety of antioxidants that are believed to reduce the risk of not only cancers, but also other chronic conditions such as Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease.