The average teenage girl consumed 54 grams (1.9 ounces) of French fries or other fried potatoes per day, in comparison with only 40 grams per day among women between the ages of 19 and 65. Teenage girls consumed 14 grams of potato chips and other salty snacks each day, 22 grams of chocolate and candy, and 37 grams of cakes and cookies. In contrast, adult women consumed only 6 grams, 10 grams and 27 grams of these foods per day, respectively.

Teenage girls were getting an average of 13.1 percent of their daily calories from saturated fat, higher than both the percentage in boys (12.7 percent) and the recommended daily maximum (11 percent). When it came to sugar consumption, girls performed marginally better than boys but were still above the daily maximum, acquiring 15 percent of their daily calories from sugar.

Boys were getting 16.3 percent of their daily calories from sugar, in comparison with the recommended maximum of 11 percent.

Teenagers' unhealthy habits do not stop at junk food. Twenty-nine percent of teenage girls reported smoking cigarrettes, as did 16 percent of teenage boys. When it came to alcohol, the disparity was even more striking: 11 percent of girls between the ages of 13 and 15 were drinking alcohol weekly, compared with only 1 percent of boys of the same age.

At the same time, teenage girls were not eating enough overall. In particular, they fell short on consumption of fruits and vegetables, averaging only 2.8 servings per day. Only 7 percent were eating the recommended five per day. Teenage girls also failed to eat enough iron-rich foods, placing themselves at risk of anemia.

"Broadly, teenage girls don't eat enough," said Alison Tedstone of the Food Standards Agency. "Overall, they are a stand-alone group of the population whose diets are poor."

When the adrenal glands are fatigued, they fail to produce adequate amounts of several hormones, including adrenaline, cortisol and aldosterone. Lack of aldosterone can disrupt the sodium balance at a cellular level. This can actually increase your needs for natural sodium and helps explain the salt cravings many people with adrenal fatigue experience.

How to Heal the Adrenals with Sea Salt

First and foremost, choose a high-quality brand of unrefined sea salt. Table salt can't offer a fraction of the benefits of sea salt, which contains sodium in a more usable state in addition to vital trace minerals that will facilitate adrenal healing.

Once you have a good quality salt, you should always salt your food to taste. Someone with adrenal fatigue will naturally enjoy more salt on his/her food; whereas, someone with healthy adrenals will generally prefer less.

Many people with adrenal fatigue also benefit from taking an additional 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of salt with a glass of water in the morning and evening, and throughout the day as needed. The salt can be mixed with the water or taken straight on the tongue and then chased with a glass of water.

It's important to allow your body to dictate how much natural salt you use in your diet. Most people with adrenal fatigue tend to like the taste of added salt to their food, and won't mind the taste of the salt-water mixture or even putting sea salt straight on their tongues. If you are working on healing your adrenals, as time passes you may notice that the salty taste is less appealing. Excess salt may even make you nauseous. This is typically a signal that your sodium needs are decreasing and that you should cut back on your intake.

For most people with adrenal health, sea salt therapy is highly beneficial and has few side effects. However, there are a few exceptions: those with heart disease, hypertension or kidney disease should consult with a professional first as salt may be contraindicated.

Crusador Staff

Milk Thistle is the pre-eminent remedy to protect the liver from degeneration. Compounds found in milk thistle – sylibin, sylimarin – act as antioxidants and also stimulate the repair of the liver. Milk thistle seed extract contains active compound known as flavonolignans, which can protect the cells of the liver from toxins as well as encourage cleansing and detoxification. Milk Thistle is widely used because it protects the liver against toxic damage from alcohol, drugs, poisons and environmental toxins. It helps to lower elevated liver enzymes and prevent cirrhosis and necrotic liver damage for any and all reasons. It will help to regenerate liver cells. Milk Thistle can be used while on or using toxic substances like alcohol, drugs and chemical solvents to protect the liver. It can be used long-term and is non-toxic.

Milk Thistle is specific for Hepatitis, especially the C type. While not a cure, Milk Thistle helps keep the liver healthy and prevents healthy functioning liver cells from breaking down into connective tissue (cirrhosis). It can help turn damaged cells back into healthy cells as well.
 
Modern times have created a host of toxic chemicals to the liver and no other herb helps as much (and without side effects). It is anti-inflammatory and supportive to other therapies for those with many inflammatory illnesses (auto-immune disorders, asthma, psoriasis, eczema, rheumatoid, swollen prostate-BPH). Milk Thistle also protects and assists the liver in detoxing from the results of chemotherapy. Milk Thistle also increases bile so it helps in fat digestion.
 
Side Effects and Safety Concerns
Human studies performed have shown few side effects if milk thistle is taken according to instruction. You may have a brief stomach or intestinal upset (diarrhea) or mild allergic reactions, but this is rare. People with allergies to daisies, artichokes, kiwi, common thistle or plants in the aster family may be allergy sensitive to milk thistle.
 
How To Obtain Milk Thistle?
If you would like to start using fresh Milk Thistle to protect your liver like no other herb can, 7 Lights offers one of the few, certified organic Milk Thistle supplement on the market. Not only are you assured of the best quality, 7 Lights herbal products are about 25% cheaper than the leading brands on average. With our Special Offer of buy 2 get 1 free, there’s no excuse not to use this beneficial, liver protecting herb.

Defined as a person's ability to process thoughts, cognitive function includes memory and the ability to learn new information, as well as speaking and reading comprehension. Aging is known to affect cognitive function in many people, resulting in memory loss and difficulty thinking of the right words while speaking or writing. But what if a lack of vitamin D could be the culprit that is causing or contributing to cognitive impairment in many elders — and not simply aging by itself? If that's the case, it offers hope that adequate vitamin D could help keep minds agile and memory sharp.

Research headed by epidemiologist Katherine Tucker with the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in Journals of Gerontology raises that possibility. Metabolic pathways for vitamin D have been found in the hippocampus and cerebellum — areas of the brain involved in planning, processing, and forming new memories. So it appears a lack of vitamin D could disrupt these cognitive processes.

Dr. Tucker and her colleagues studied more than 1,000 elders receiving home care. The research team investigated associations between measured levels of vitamin D in the blood of these people, who were all between the ages of 65 and 99, and compared them to results of neuropsychological tests. The participants were then grouped by their vitamin D status, which was categorized as deficient, insufficient, or sufficient.

The researchers noted in a statement to the media that older people needing home care have an elevated risk of not getting enough vitamin D because of their exposure to sunlight is often limited. And, in fact, only 35 percent of the research subjects had sufficient vitamin D levels in their blood for health. Those elders who did have adequate vitamin D scored far better on cognitive tests than those in the deficient and insufficient vitamin D categories, particularly on measures of executive performance, which included cognitive flexibility, perceptual complexity, and reasoning. The associations persisted after taking into consideration other variables that could also have influenced performance on the cognitive ability tests.

Another new study just presented at the Endocrine Society's 92nd Annual Meeting held in San Diego provides more disturbing evidence that older adults commonly have low vitamin D levels. Researchers from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam investigated approximately 1,300 Dutch men and women age 65 and older and found almost 50 percent were deficit in vitamin D.

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) One of the side effects of chemotherapy is, ironically, cancer. The cancer doctors don't say much about it, but it's printed right on the chemo drug warning labels (in small print, of course). If you go into a cancer treatment clinic with one type of cancer, and you allow yourself to be injected with chemotherapy chemicals, you will often develop a second type of cancer as a result. Your oncologist will often claim to have successfully treated your first cancer even while you develop a second or third cancer directly caused by the chemo used to treat the original cancer.

 

There's nothing like cancer-causing chemotherapy to boost repeat business, huh?

During all this, the pharmacists are peddling these toxic chemotherapy chemicals to their customers as if they were medicine (which they aren't). While preparing these toxic chemical prescriptions, it turns out that pharmacists are exposing themselves to cancer-causing chemotherapy agents in the process. And because of that, pharmacists are giving themselves cancer… and they're dying from it.

People who live in glass houses should never throw stones, they say. And you might similarly say that pharmacists who deal in poison shouldn't be surprised to one day discover they are killing themselves with it.

Chemotherapy drugs are extremely toxic to the human body, and they are readily absorbed through the skin. The very idea that they are even used in modern medicine is almost laughable if it weren't so downright disturbing and sad that hundreds of thousands of people are killed each year around the world by chemotherapy drugs.

Now you can add pharmacists to that statistic. For decades, they simply looked the other way, pretending they were playing a valuable role in our system of "modern" medicine, not admitting they were actually doling out chemicals that killed people. Now, the sobering truth has struck them hard: They are in the business of death, and it is killing them off, one by one.

The Seattle Times now reports the story of Sue Crump, a veteran pharmacist of two decades who spent much of her time dispensing chemotherapy drugs. Sue died last September of pancreatic cancer, and one of her dying wishes was that the truth would be told about how her on-the-job exposure to chemotherapy chemicals contributed to her own cancer.

The Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA), it turns out, does not regulate workplace exposure to toxic, cancer-causing chemotherapy chemicals. At first glance, that seems surprising, since OSHA regulates workplace exposure to far less harmful chemicals. Why not chemo?

The answer is because the toxicity of chemotherapy has long been ignored by virtually everyone in medicine and the federal government. It has always been assumed harmless or even "safe" just because it's used as a kind of far-fetched "medicine" to treat cancer. This, despite the fact that chemotherapy is a derivative of the mustard gas used against enemy soldiers in World War I. Truthfully, chemotherapy has more in common with chemicals weapons than any legitimate medicine.

So today, while workers are protected from secondhand smoke in offices across the country, pharmacists are still being exposed every single day to toxic, cancer-causing chemicals that OSHA seems to just ignore. The agency has only issued one citation in the last decade to a hospital for inadequate safety handling of toxic chemotherapy drugs.

As the Seattle Times reports, "A just-completed study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) — 10 years in the making and the largest to date — confirms that chemo continues to contaminate the work spaces where it's used and in some cases is still being found in the urine of those who handle it…"

That same article goes on to report more pharmacists, veterinarians and nurses who are dead or dying from chemotherapy exposure:

• Bruce Harrison of St. Louis (cancer in his 50's, now dead)
• Karen Lewis of Baltimore (cancer in her 50's, still living)
• Brett Cordes of Scottsdale, Arizona (cancer at age 35, still living)
• Sally Giles of Vancouver, B.C. (cancer in her 40's, now dead)

As the Seattle Times reports:

"Danish epidemiologists used cancer-registry data from the 1940s through the late 1980s to first report a significantly increased risk of leukemia among oncology nurses and, later, physicians. Last year, another Danish study of more than 92,000 nurses found an elevated risk for breast, thyroid, nervous-system and brain cancers."

The story goes on to report how new safety rules are being put in place across the industry to protect pharmacists, veterinarians, nurses and doctors from toxic chemotherapy chemicals. But even the Seattle Times, which deserves credit for running this story, misses the bigger point:

If these chemicals are so dangerous to the doctors, nurses and pharmacists dispensing them, how can they be considered "safe enough" to inject into patients who are already dying from cancer?

It's a serious question. After all, if nurses can become violently ill after merely spilling chemotherapy chemicals on themselves (it's true), then what effect do you suppose these chemicals have when injected into patients?

The cancer industry, though, has never stopped injecting patients long enough to ask the commonsense question: Why are we in the business of dispensing poison in the first place? Poison, after all, isn't medicine. Not when dispensed in its full potency, anyway.

The whole idea of "safety" in the cancer industry is to find new ways to protect the health care workers from the extremely dangerous chemicals they're still injecting into the bodies of patients. Something is clearly wrong with this picture… if health care workers need to be protected from this stuff, why not protect the patients from it, too?

In contrast to all this, consider the truthful observation that no naturopath ever died from handling medicinal herb, homeopathy remedies or nutritional supplements. These natural therapies are good for patients, and as a bonus, you don't have to wear a chemical suit to handle them.

Furthermore, medicinal herbs, supplements and natural remedies don't cause cancer. They support and protect the immune system rather than destroying it. So they make patients healthier and more resilient rather than weaker and fragile.

But herbs, supplements and natural remedies don't earn much money for the cancer industry. Only the highly-toxic patented chemotherapy drugs bring in the big bucks. So that's what they deal in — poison for the patients. And when you deal in poison, some of it always splashes back onto you.

Beyond this whole issue of pharmacists and health care workers dying from exposure to secondhand chemotherapy, there's the issue of whether chemotherapy actually works in the first place. Scientifically speaking, if you take a good, hard look at what the published studies actually say, chemotherapy is only effective at treating less than two percent of the cancers that exist. And that two percent does not include breast cancer or prostate cancer.

Yet chemotherapy is routinely used to "treat" breast cancer even though it offers no benefit to breast cancer patients. In effect, the cancer industry is engaged in a criminal treatment hoax that promises to make you healthier but actually gives you even more cancer — which is great for repeat business, but terrible for the cancer patients who suffer under it.

The level of quackery at work right now in the cancer industry is simply astonishing. You would think that if doctors and pharmacists were dishing out these chemicals to patients, they would make sure there was some sort of legitimate science to back them up. But they haven't. The science doesn't exist. Chemotherapy doesn't work at anything other than causing cancer — and it accomplishes that indiscriminately, damaging any person it comes into contact with. Merely touching chemotherapy chemicals is dangerous for your health.

So if you're considering chemotherapy for yourself, think about this long and hard: If chemotherapy is so dangerous that it's giving the pharmacists cancer just from touching it, why on earth would you want to inject it into your body?

This is not an idle question. It is perhaps the most important question of all for someone considering conventional cancer treatment using chemotherapy. The question is essentially this: If chemotherapy causes cancer, how can it treat cancer?

Treating cancer with chemotherapy is like treating alcoholism with vodka. It's like treating heart disease with cheese, or like treating diabetes with high-fructose corn syrup. Cancer cannot be cured by the very thing that causes it.

And to those who deal in poison, watch out for the cause-and-effect laws of biology. If you deal in chemotherapy chemicals, don't be surprised if you get cancer one day. If you deal in chemical pesticides, don't be surprised if you get Alzheimer's. If you're a dentist installing mercury fillings in the mouths of clients, don't be surprised if one day you just go stark raving mad (because mercury causes insanity, and dentists breathe in mercury vapor thrown into the air from their drills).

If you work around chemicals, they will eventually impact your health, and never in a good way. There's a karmic element in all this, too: If you spend your life dishing out chemotherapy drugs as a pharmacist, you have a lot to answer for. You have been an enabler of a very real chemical holocaust against the people. Don't be surprised if that holocaust turns against you one day. Karma tends to work that way. Cause and effect is a universal law that cannot be escaped.

And if you're a cancer patient, I urge you to think twice about the toxicity of anything you might allow in your body. If you are trying to HEAL your body, why would you allow yourself to be poisoned with a chemical that causes cancer?

Don't let some cancer doctor talk you into chemotherapy using his fear tactics. They're good at that. So next time he insists that you take some chemotherapy, ask him to drink some first. If your oncologist isn't willing to drink chemotherapy in front of you to prove it's safe, why on earth would you agree to have it injected in your body?

Compared to control groups, chocolate-eaters had an average reduction in systolic blood pressure of 5 mmHg, which is comparable to the blood pressure lowering effects of daily exercise.

Other Chocolate Benefits

The above meta-analysis adds weight to a growing body of evidence concerning the impressive benefits of chocolate consumption. Over the last few years, well-designed (randomized controlled) research has been emerging that gives ample reason for confidence in these conclusions (2).

In the above study, chocolate is specifically associated with lower blood pressure. But over the last several years, many researchers have come to believe that chocolate may have an even larger role to play in cardiovascular health in general (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Chocolate:

– Inhibits the oxidation of LDL

– Improves endothelial cell function

– Inhibits platelet activation

– Reduces LDL

– Increases HDL

– Increases insulin sensitivity

– Reduces inflammatory proteins such as NF-kB

– Lowers blood pressure

Conclusion

Such effects are impressive and desirable, so does this mean that we should all run out and go nuts with the candy bars and chocolate cake? Of course not (but you knew that, didn't you?). When choosing chocolate for your health, reach for the extra dark variety. At least 70% dark is best, and the lower the sugar, the better. Cacao (the bean that chocolate comes from) contains potent antioxidant flavonoids, and actually has a higher ORAC score than other well-known antioxidant powerhouses, such as pomegranates, blueberries, and wine. But beware: Processing and roasting cacao can cause almost all of the beneficial flavonoids to be destroyed (9). It is best to eat raw cacao to attain the above benefits. Raw cacao nibs are widely available at health food stores and on the Internet. Sprinkle them on some berries with some raw nuts, cinnamon, and a splash of cream or almond milk. It is truly delicious, and your cardiovascular system will thank you.

by: Paul Fassa

(NaturalNews) Who would have thought the common watermelon packed so much nutrition? The usual notion about watermelon is they are just water with taste, harmless, but not a good choice for nutritional value. Wrong! Watermelon has the most nutrition per calorie of common foods.

Organic watermelons are hard to find and pricey when found. But conventionally grown watermelons are not among the dirty dozen of the most heavily sprayed produce. Instead, they are actually among the fifteen most clean of non-organic fruits and vegetables.

What Watermelons Have to Offer

Besides tasting great and being low in calories because watermelon is mostly water, it is an excellent source of Vitamin C, which a major antioxidant. It has a high beta carotene concentration, thus offering a fair amount of vitamin A as well. Both beta carotene with vitamin A help support good eyesight and prevent glaucoma.

High intakes of combined beta-carotene and vitamin C have demonstrated, through clinical and scientific studies, a propensity for warding off various cancers and heart disease, reducing arthritis symptoms, and minimizing asthmatic breathing problems.

A surprise nutrient is vitamin B, especially B1 (thiamine) and B6 (pyridoxine). Thiamine is important for maintaining electrolytes and nervous system signal transmissions throughout the body. Pyridoxine is essential for enzymatic functions that convert food into cellular energy.

The meat or pulp of watermelons is usually pink or red. Those colors indicate the highest content of lycopene, an antioxidant lauded for its ability to greatly minimize cancer risks. From the Worlds' Healthiest Foods website (source below), "… lycopene has been repeatedly studied in humans and found to be protective against a growing list of cancers. These cancers now include prostate cancer, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, lung cancer and colorectal cancers."

Then there are the minerals of potassium and magnesium, which watermelons also offer abundantly. Potassium is important for cardiovascular health and brain health and helps the kidneys eliminate kidney stone forming calcium as well as assists with the body's fluid retention.

Magnesium is considered the master mineral. It is involved with over 300 cellular metabolic functions. It happens to be lacking in our diets because of our depleted topsoils. Magnesium deficiencies are directly or indirectly related to most of our population's poor health issues. Obvious symptoms are irritability, tension, sleep disorders, and muscular cramping. After that, it's heart attacks and other serious illnesses.

Picking and Handling Watermelon

Organic watermelons too rare and pricey? Watermelon is among the cleanest 15 commercial agribusiness fruits and vegetables, and it's not part of the dirty dozen of most sprayed.

Sometimes they're cut, so you can avoid any that have some white or light coloring in its pulp. Then you can press lightly at different spots to make sure they're not over ripe while observing the pink/red color quality. Deeper red/pink is better. If they are not cut, pick them up one at a time, holding them on your shoulder and near your ear while knocking on them the way you would knock on someone's door. What you hear should be a somewhat hollow echo. If it goes thunk without as though it solid, that's no good. Too hollow a sound could be less optimum. Trail and error will help you develop the knack for picking the best.

Watermelons don't lose as much nutritional value cut and stored in the fridge as most other produce. But it's wise to pull the piece out long enough for it to go to room temperature. This maximizes its phytonutrient capacity.

So allow yourself to indulge in a great tasting, refreshing, and healthy treat with watermelon whenever you desire.