Month: April 2012

Xenoestrogens
There are a class of environmental pollutants which, when ingested, breathed in as fumes or applied to the skin in personal care products find their way into our bodies and mimic the effect of estrogen. Called xenoestrogens they are found in car exhaust, pesticides, solvents (such as nail polish and remover), emulsifiers common in soap and cosmetics, and plastic water bottles. There is also potential for exposure via synthetic hormones such as those found in birth control pills which are flushed regularly into the sewers and find their way into soil and water and hence back into our bodies.

Estrogen promotes weight gain
One of estrogen's major functions is to promote weight gain by converting calories into fat. In fact, it is regularly given to beef cattle to fatten them for market, and people who eat this kind of beef ingest these hormones along with their hamburger or steak.The other major female hormone, called progesterone, promotes weight loss balancing estrogen's impact when it is sufficient. However, as women near and enter menopause they have less progesterone resulting in a condition called estrogen dominance according to Dr. John Lee. Unfortunately, Lee also states that estrogen dominance, which is aggravated by the presence of xenoestrogens, leads to cravings for sugary food and weight gain.

Some common xenoestrogens
While it is difficult to control some sources of xenoestrogens such as car exhaust, it is within our control to use only the best natural beauty products. Use anything else and the chance for exposure to a daily load of xenoestrogens goes way up. Two of the most common ones to watch for are parabens and phthalates. This time of year sunscreens, many of which use the xenoestrogen 4-methylbenzylidene camphor (4-MBC), are also a common source.

Xenoestrogens are synthetic and therefore not biodegradable. Rather, they stay in the body stored in fat cells which grow larger or, in some cases, according to Dr. Susan Fried, become more numerous with weight gain. The result is even higher levels of toxicity, more hormonal disruption and potential for gaining and retaining weight.

Multiple products can cause big disruptions
While manufacturers may argue that the amount of these toxins is minimal in any one product, in fact most people use multiple products. Consider moisturizers, foundation, eye makeup, nail polish, shampoos, conditioners, shaving supplies, colognes, mouth washes, contact lens solutions…the list is very long. For this reason it helps to become familiar with common toxic ingredients and scrutinize each label carefully, even if it states that the product is organic or natural.

Do skin care products contribute to weight gain? They can definitely cause hormonal disruptions which promote the gaining and retaining of weight. This means the best natural beauty products, the ones that are truly organic, may support your decision to lose weight and keep it off.

If you don't have a green thumb, don't worry. Gardening, like all skills, requires time to develop. There isn't even a standard to follow. How you develop your garden will all depend on the resources on hand and how you want develop it.

Gardening as a hobby
Creating a vegetable garden is not rocket science. In fact, producing your own food and feeding your family in the process can be fun and inexpensive way of engaging in food production. It teaches you as well your family the value of self-reliance and food security.
You can indulge in this venture as a hobby and a source of physical activity, which contributes to the maintenance of mental health. As a means of making your own personal contribution, it is a delightful way to earn extra cash. The following are some techniques that you can use in plotting out your organic farming venture:

1. Avoid the use of chemical inputs – In organic farming, no chemical products like herbicides, pesticides or even fertilizers are used. Plants are allowed to grow without the intervention of chemicals allowing for safe handling from farm to plate guaranteeing a nutritious and healthy yield. Moreover, because no chemical inputs are used, it translates to large savings for farmers while keeping the environment safe.

2. Take advantage of the "biological fight"- In nature, agriculture can take advantage of organisms that are natural predators of parasites and are allies to plants. Insects like ladybugs and chrysopes feed on aphids, while frogs and birds eat insects, snails and worms. Welcoming these animals in your garden contribute to a healthy ecosystem that ensure your vegetables are safe from toxins.

3. Preserve hedges and thickets, replant along the borders to offer shelter and food to animals and insects useful to cultivation – To take advantage of the "biological fight," provide the necessary environment for insects and animals that feed on pests can take shelter and feed. Preserving hedges and thickets encourages these beneficial predators to stay in your property and assist in your efforts at organic farming. This symbiotic mutual relationship can help farmers improve their yield while providing a balanced and sustainable nature-friendly ecosystem.

4. Use cultivation – Cultivating the earth depletes it from nutrients. It is, therefore, necessary to give it fallow period, so it can regain what it had lost after a cropping season. This method allows for simplification of organic farming since it can provide some natural advantages. The interchange of different plants that undermine disease and pests is cost-effective, because it takes away pest control and disease prevention and is normally done as a commercial, agricultural venture that makes for an ideal option to farmers everywhere.

5. Use natural fertilizers -Nature has its own fertilizers. They are either of animal origin such as manure or plant origin, like green manure or organic leftovers from the kitchen. Fertilizers help the soil retain nutrients. Moreover, the introduction of legumes whose roots contain bacteria that convert nitrogen in the air to soluble nitrogen in crop rotation allows for keeping the soil's fertility intact.

6. Monitor seasonal conditions – Keeping tab on the environment to schedule the right moment to carry out treatments against certain diseases affecting plants can be identified, thus resulting in the use of the necessary products at the right time, saving money, time and effort.

7. Consider using raised beds -This method is advantageous for controlling aching backs and can help keep weeds at bay while saving space for other uses. Raised beds mean you don't have to walk on your beds, and they are no wider than a couple of meters. You can reach anywhere in the bed without stepping on the soil and once undertaken, the garden won't require some heavy digging.

Gardening is neither a new concept nor is it a fad. It is the oldest and most practical means of producing food. Organic vegetables are prettier, healthier and tastier than their non-organic cousins. Moreover, it benefits not just you but the environment as well as the animals that live of the land, resulting to a balanced and healthy ecosystem.

The Daily Caller reports that the DoL, under the guidance of the Obama Administration, is proposing that child labor laws be modified to prohibit children under the age of 16 from working with animals, for instance, or from being allowed to work with food storage bins. The proposal also seeks to prohibit children from "being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials," which essentially makes it a crime for farmhands to touch produce once it has been picked.

Originally put forward by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis last fall as a way to further protect children from unsafe working conditions, the proposal threatens unprecedented government overreach into the normal operating procedures of private farms. And while the new provisions would reportedly contain an exemption for children working on farms owned by their parents, they would still drastically limit the freedom of children to learn about agriculture from a young age.

You can view the DoL's proposal announcement here:
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20111250.htm

"I started working on my grandparent's and uncle's farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12," said John Weber, a 19-year-old college student majoring in agriculture, to The Daily Caller. "The work ethic is a huge part of it. It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life. If they do this it will prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It's harder to get a 16-year-old interested in farming than a 12-year-old."

Many others also share Weber's sentiments, as they too have told reporters in recent days about how being immersed in a farming environment that involved performing farm chores from a young age was crucial to their now-developed understanding and appreciation of agriculture. Without these experiences, many of these individuals likely would have ditched farming and chosen other professions instead.

Federal government to take over all on-farm safety training programs
Besides all the restrictions, the labor law proposals would also end the federal government's support for independent safety training and certification courses taught by youth-based agricultural groups like 4-H and FFA. Instead, children interested in agriculture would have to take a 90-hour federal government training course that would likely be far less beneficial and effective, and a lot more bureaucratic.

So not only does the government want to dictate who can and cannot work on farms, but it also wants to steer the entire ship of early childhood agricultural education. And since the government has made it abundantly clear in recent years that it favors industrial, genetically-engineered agriculture systems over family-scale farms, we all know where this crackpot, government-run endeavor would lead.

Endgame goal to separate Americans from their land, from their animals, and ultimately from each other
As benign as such proposals may seem to some — the government is only trying to protect the children, right? — they truly represent just another nail in the coffin of individual liberty, particularly as it pertains to private agriculture. If you have been following the escalating trend of government tyranny against small farms and food freedom in recent years, it should be abundantly apparent that the government's primary goal in these new proposals is not to protect children from danger, but rather to further separate Americans from the food they eat.

Working hand-in-hand with Monsanto and the drug companies to create a total monopoly on food and health, the federal government is working feverishly to remove Americans from their own land, and create a culture of complete ignorance about food, nutrition, and agriculture. If Americans have no idea how to farm, in other words, they will be at the mercy of a centralized agricultural system that dispenses only chemical-laced genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and other toxic substances for consumption.

The only way to stop all this madness is to refuse, in the form of blatant civil disobedience, any and all provisions and restrictions that erode or destroy our freedom to grow, buy, sell, and eat the foods of our choice. And this includes continuing to teach each new generation, regardless of whatever laws may or may not be passed, how to independently produce safe food without interference by government tyrants.

A new report published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology raises a disturbing possibility: that aluminum hydroxide, the dominant metal-based adjuvant used in vaccines today, is causing aluminum overload at injection sites, and contributing to the pathogenesis of diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome, macrophagic myofasciitis and subcutaneous pseudolymphoma.

Vaccine Protocol

Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. Despite almost 90 years of widespread use of aluminum adjuvants, medical science's understanding about their mechanisms of action is still remarkably poor. There is also a concerning scarcity of data on toxicology and pharmacokinetics of these compounds. In spite of this, the notion that aluminum in vaccines is safe appears to be widely accepted. Experimental research, however, clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences. In our opinion, the possibility that vaccine benefits may have been overrated and the risk of potential adverse effects underestimated, has not been rigorously evaluated in the medical and scientific community.  [ii]

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are serious multisystem developmental disorders and an urgent global public health concern. Dysfunctional immunity and impaired brain function are core deficits in ASD. Aluminum (Al), the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant, is a demonstrated neurotoxin and a strong immune stimulator. Hence, adjuvant Al has the potential to induce neuroimmune disorders. When assessing adjuvant toxicity in children, two key points ought to be considered: (i) children should not be viewed as "small adults" as their unique physiology makes them much more vulnerable to toxic insults; and (ii) if exposure to Al from only few vaccines can lead to cognitive impairment and autoimmunity in adults, is it unreasonable to question whether the current pediatric schedules, often containing 18 Al adjuvanted vaccines, are safe for children? By applying Hill's criteria for establishing causality between exposure and outcome we investigated whether exposure to Al from vaccines could be contributing to the rise in ASD prevalence in the Western world. Our results show that: (i) children from countries with the highest ASD prevalence appear to have the highest exposure to Al from vaccines; (ii) the increase in exposure to Al adjuvants significantly correlates with the increase in ASD prevalence in the United States observed over the last two decades (Pearson r=0.92, p<0.0001); and (iii) a significant correlation exists between the amounts of Al administered to preschool children and the current prevalence of ASD in seven Western countries, particularly at 3-4 months of age (Pearson r=0.89-0.94, p=0.0018-0.0248). The application of the Hill's criteria to these data indicates that the correlation between Al in vaccines and ASD may be causal. Because children represent a fraction of the population most at risk for complications following exposure to Al, a more rigorous evaluation of Al adjuvant safety seems warranted.[iii]

The U.K.'s Telegraph reports that Kimber had been staying with her grandmother when the overdose occurred. According to Kimber's father, the young girl apparently started to complain about leg pain, cramps, and muscle spasms in the hours before her death. Not long after, she collapsed and was unable to be revived.

A toxicology report later revealed that Kimber had 96 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) of dextromethorphan, the active ingredient in most cough medicines, in her blood. The upper limit of this drug for adults is 40 ng/ml. Kimber also had 490 ng/ml of cetirizine, the active ingredient in the allergy medication Zyrtec, in her blood as well. The upper limit for cetirizine is between 271 and 352 ng/ml.

"In my opinion, the combination of these drugs — which were the ingredients of the over-the-counter medications with which Kimber was being treated — caused her death," said Dr. Carol Huser, the coroner who conducted the autopsy. "People do not understand medication you buy off the supermarket shelf can be harmful. Common drugs like aspirin, Tylenol and Benadryl will kill you if you take too much of them."

Though the Sixth Judicial District Attorney's Office has already initiated an investigation to see whether or not criminal charges should be filed, Dr. Huser has declared the incident an accident. After all, the drug dosages Kimber took were not necessarily all that high based on the levels that were in her blood, which means it would have been relatively easy to accidentally overdose on them.

This is not the first case where children have died as a result of taking cough medicine. Back in 2008, an Illinois mother sued Walgreens and McNeil Pharmaceuticals, maker of Tylenol and a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, when her son died from taking cough medicines containing dextromethorphan.

Dextromethorphan is so dangerous, in fact, that a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel in 2010 evaluated whether or not drugs containing it should even remain on shelves without a prescription. However, the panel apparently never followed through, as dextromethorphan is still readily available on drugstore shelves.

His name is Steve Cooksey, and his website is http://www.diabetes-warrior.net

He's being targeted by state "dieticians" (which is another word for "nutritional moron" as you'll see below) who say that Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to "practice dietetics or nutrition." His website's advocating of the Paleo diet for individuals who have health challenges is, they claim, a violation of law.

So they've threatened him with arrest if he does not take down his website… or at the very least stop advocating the Paleo diet to readers.

Criminalizing health advice
But wait a second. People give nutritional advice on their websites all the time. Millions of websites and blogs, in fact, currently offer advice on fitness, nutrition, disease prevention, natural remedies and more. Are all those people now criminals if they live in North Carolina?

And even worse, could this censorship insanity spread to other states? Might such censorship be pursued at a federal level?

Truth is, such an effort has already taken place. I don't recall who was behind it, but nearly a decade ago, several U.S. Senators got together and tried to push a bill that would make it a federal crime to offer health advice on the internet. That effort failed, and we never heard anything more about it. But now that the U.S. government has crossed what I call the "threshold of criminality" and has devolved into a police state gang of total thugs (TSA, anyway?), it's not hard to imagine these people trying to bring back their loony ideas of criminalizing health advice on the web.

The point behind all this, of course, would be to monopolize information while silencing those who freely share the truth about natural cures, vitamin D, cancer prevention and so on. The truth about nutrition quite obviously threatens the power and profits of the pharmaceutical industry — an industry that thrives on nutritional ignorance and highly deceptive marketing of its poisons to the uninformed masses. Merck, in fact, was just fined $321 million for criminal violations in the illegal marketing of Vioxx (http://www.naturalnews.com/035690_Merck_Vioxx_marketing.html).

In North Carolina, monopolistic thuggery and oppression of Free Speech is making the state look pretty ugly from a liberty perspective. As reported in the Carolina Journal: (http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8…)

"Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail. The board’s director says Cooksey has a First Amendment right to blog about his diet, but he can’t encourage others to adopt it unless the state has certified him as a dietitian or nutritionist."

The key here is found in the phrase, "…can't encourage others." Thus, the mere "encouraging" of someone to eat something healthy is now considered a crime in North Carolina.

Thus, the sentence, "Eat more vegetables and less meat" can suddenly land you in jail. Or posting a blog that includes, "You will be healthier if you drink fresh raw veggie juice each day" suddenly turns you into a criminal.

The purpose of licensing boards is to enforce intellectual monopolies
This all comes from the bewildering brain of one Charla Burill, the director of the North Carolina Board of Dietetics & Nutrition. Like all state licensing boards, the purpose of this board is to create a state-run monopoly over a group of professionals. And like any group, it wants to criminalize anyone it can't control. This is why state medical boards that license M.D.s are also in the business of criminalizing herbal medicine, chiropractic medicine and other forms of therapy they cannot control.

Licensing boards have a poor track record of respecting freedom. In Texas, for example, the medical board has long sought to criminalize cancer research pioneer Dr. Stanislawy Burzynski whose innovative methods have saved countless cancer patients. (http://www.naturalnews.com/032998_Burzynski_cancer_cures.html) Other medical licensing boards around the nation routinely attack and criminalize naturopaths and Chinese Medicine practitioners.

So it's not necessarily a surprise that North Carolina's Board of Dietetics / Nutrition wants to criminalize those it cannot control through its licensing monopoly.

What other speech might soon be criminalized?
Charla Burill is a tyrant much like any other government tyrant we've seen in recent history. She wants to strip private citizens of their First Amendment rights in order to subject them to the onerous licensing requirements (and legal jurisdiction) of the board she controls. This is a blatant and outrageous violation of the fundamental right to Free Speech. And if it is allowed to stand, where else might it lead?

If a person can be criminalized for advocating a specific diet or nutritional approach on a website, then couldn't the same warped logic be used to criminalize anyone offering relationship advice? Or mental health advice? Financial advice? Political advice? Pet care advice? Advice for raising children?

I supposed in the mind of people like Charla Burill, the state should be in charge of licensing and controlling every single expression of speech on the internet. If you talk about pet care, you're supposed to apply for (and pay for) a "pet dietician" license. If you talk about relationships, you need a "counseling license." If you advocate self pleasure on the 'web, you might even need a "masturbation license," which I'm sure North Carolina's pot-bellied government goons are experts at granting.

Under North Carolina's interpretation of its (false) authority, virtually the entire NaturalNews website is "criminal." Yep, when we say you should drink some green tea for its antioxidants, well that's a crime, you see? When we say "get more vitamin D" to help prevent cancer, that's a violation of North Carolina's dietician rules!

Dieticians – the lowest sub-class of nutritional grunts
Dieticians, for the record, are the sub-class of processed food grunts who regurgitate government-approved nutritional DIS-information and design school lunch programs, prison food programs and hospital food programs. These are, for the record, the three worst places to get food, as nearly all the food served in these locations will leave you even more diseased than ever.

"Dieticians" are widely discredited in the world of real nutrition, and the dietician community has yet to even acknowledge any qualitative difference between DEAD foods and LIVING foods. Dieticians are all about counting calories, and they couldn't care less where they come from. These are the morons who actually tell cancer patients to drink Ensure! (Yeah, seriously…)

I'm not sure why anyone would even want to be labeled a "dietician." It's sort of like being called a "retard" in grade school. Because, of course, the nutritional knowledge of dieticians is rather retarded, as in "lacking in development." It's basically stuck in the dietary "science" of the 1950's, when scientists thought there were only 4 vitamins.

But instead of upping their knowledge and entering the 21st century of nutritional wisdom, these state-monopolized dietician groups want to force everybody to stay stuck in the 1950's while harassing everyone who dares to offer modern scientific nutritional knowledge on issues like raw foods, phytonutrients, anti-cancer medicinal herbs and other similar topics.

In fact, I would submit that the "North Carolina Board of Dietetics / Nutrition" is misnamed! They're so far behind on modern nutrition that the name itself is misleading. To be accurate, the board would have to be renamed the "North Carolina Board of Malnutrition." Because that's what the board teaches and enforces with its monopolistic (false) authority.

Action item: Tell the North Carolina Board of Dietetics / Nutrition to leave bloggers alone
It's time to tell this group of malnourished morons to keep their mitts off bloggers who are practicing Free Speech. In fact, I would say that the blogger who overcame diabetes using the Paleo diet probably knows MORE about nutritional principles than the dieticians who run the NC board!

If anything, the NC board should be studying this guy's blog and learning something useful. After all, type-2 diabetes can be cured with nutrition, but the dieticians groups never teach this simple truth. In their minds, food can never treat disease. And that's a truly idiotic limitation under which they operate.

Join me in CALLING the North Carolina Board of Dietetics / Nutrition and demanding they stop harassing health bloggers:

http://www.ncbdn.org/contact_ncbdn/
North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition
1000 Centre Green Way
Suite 200
Cary, NC 27513

Phone: (919) 228-6391
Toll Free: (800) 849-2936
Fax: (919) 882-1776

But worse than that is the shield of silence obscuring a humble small town physician who cured polio victims in the late 1940s and early 1950s using mega-dosages of vitamin C. His name was Frederick Robert Klenner, MD.

His successful healing with high-dose ascorbic acid vitamin C was ignored even after producing papers on his cures and making a presentation of his findings on polio at the Annual Session of the American Medical Association on June 10, 1949 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The allopathic medical monopoly still refuses to acknowledge mega-dose vitamin treatments today. Both orthomolecular medicine and psychiatry are marginalized, forbidding its practitioners to make claims of healing while forcing them to work obscurely in the shadow of AMA/Big Pharma's monopoly.

Polio and other mega dose vitamin C cures hidden in plain sight
Dr. Klenner was an early pioneering orthomolecular physician who treated many different maladies successfully, including polio, with massive doses of different vitamins. Vitamin C was the major medicine he employed for polio.

He had hospital privileges at Reidsville Hospital, where he delivered several babies, dubbed "vitamin C babies" by the staff. Dr. Klenner's wife worked as his only nurse and staff out of a small office in Reidsville, North Carolina. They didn't bill patients if they couldn't pay for treatments immediatley; their patients paid when they could.

Motivated by earlier orthomolecular discoveries, Dr. Klenner simply administered injections of high dose ascorbic acid vitamin C to patients with pneumonia. His trial and error method wound up curing all of them within days.

Note: No grants, no lab testing, and no cruel animal testing were required. Why? Because vitamin C is not a synthetic toxin.

Big Pharma research employs tests and experiments, to the tune of millions of dollars. This "orthodox" system entitles Big Pharma to create patented synthetic toxins that can be monopolized for big bucks with protective policing from the AMA and FDA, including the elimination of any inexpensive competition.

Dr. Klenner received his fair share of polio victims during a 1948 epidemic. He cured them all, even one with both legs paralyzed. He asserted: "When proper amounts are used, it will destroy all virus organisms. Don't expect control of a virus with 100 to 400 mg of C."

He handled the polio virus easily and inexpensively without adverse side-effects before the Salk polio vaccine was introduced. But Dr. Klenner's colleagues simply ignored him.

Dr. Klenner once said, "Some physicians would stand by and see their patient die rather than use ascorbic acid because in their finite minds it exists only as a vitamin."

This still happens when healing occurs in plain sight. Recently in New Zealand, Alan Smith was cured of double pneumonia and leukemia with mega-dose IV C and a special type of oral C. He had been on life support and was within a day from having the plug pulled until the Smith family forced the hospital to administer mega-dose C.

After the hospital stopped administering adequate IV C dosages, Alan's family sneaked in special oral liposome encapsulated C packages, which are even better at getting the C into tissue cells than IV C. Liposome encapsulated C can be ordered online or made at home.

After a few short weeks, Alan walked out of the hospital in good health, an example that Dr. Klenner would have no-doubt been proud of.

Researchers from National Jewish Health reporting in The Journal of Immunology have discovered specific molecular and signaling events by which vitamin D inhibits inflammation to help prevent and possibly even treat a host of potentially deadly diseases. Current levels considered satisfactory by most medical professionals did not inhibit the inflammatory cascade, leading to the progression of many forms of disease. Conversely, individuals that maintain significantly higher blood levels of vitamin D had lower levels of inflammatory markers known to aggravate disease progression and were protected against the major killers so prevalent today.

High vitamin D status inhibits inflammatory messengers to prevent chronic disease
The study author, Dr. Elena Goleva noted that this research "goes beyond previous associations of vitamin D with various health outcomes. It outlines a clear chain of cellular events, from the binding of DNA, through a specific signaling pathway, to the reduction of proteins known to trigger inflammation." Current guidelines call for minimum vitamin D blood serum levels of 20 ng/ml, a benchmark set decades ago that was intended to prevent rickets in children and promote bone health. Researchers conducting this study found improvement in inflammation levels at a minimum of 30 ng/ml, leaving millions at risk for chronic disease.

Scientists conducting this study examined the specific mechanisms exhibited by vitamin D to act on immune and inflammatory pathways. They incubated white blood cells with different saturation levels of vitamin D and then exposed the culture to an inflammatory molecule known to promote intense inflammatory responses. Cells exposed to low levels of vitamin D (less than 15 ng/ml) produced excessive levels of the inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-alpha, associated with disease development and progression. The highest level of inflammatory inhibition occurred at 50 ng/ml and above as cells become fully saturated with the prohormone and maximum immune response is observed.

Researchers identified a new location where the vitamin-D receptor appears to bind directly to DNA and activate a gene known as MKP-1, interfering with the inflammatory cascade promoted by long-term stress and a highly refined, processed food diet. Dr. Goleva concluded "The fact that we showed a dose-dependent and varying response to levels commonly found in humans also adds weight to the argument for vitamin D's role in immune and inflammatory conditions." Maintain your vitamin D blood levels above 50 ng/ml (measured with the 25(OH)D test) to afford maximum protection against chronic inflammatory-mediated diseases.

by Robert G. Smith, PhD

(OMNS April 24, 2012) A recent article in the prestigious journal Nature explains that sugar, especially fructose, widely available in soft drinks and other processed foods, is responsible for many serious non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and liver failure [1,2]. One of the contributing reasons is that fructose and other high-calorie substances such as alcohol cannot be directly utilized by the body's tissues so they must be metabolized by the liver, where they generate toxicity and set the body on a path to diabetes [3]. Further, fructose interferes with the body's sense of satiety, so that an excess of calories tend to be ingested. This overwhelms the liver, which then must convert the overdose of sugar into fat, which harms the liver and can lead to diabetes. Thus sugar such as fructose, when added to processed foods, has been compared to alcohol in its toxic effect. Even non-obese people are susceptible to "metabolic syndrome," in which fructose induces hypertension, cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and damage to biological molecules such as proteins and lipids [1-3].

Chromium

Soft drinks that contain mainly sugar, such as sodas and filtered fruit juices, don't have enough nutrients to keep the body healthy and free from disease. They provide calories without essential nutrients that you would find in the whole fruit. These "empty" calories then replace other foods such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables that are the main source of essential nutrients. But added sugar is not limited to soft drinks. Added fructose, as in high-fructose corn syrup or just plain sugar (sucrose, which is 50% glucose and 50% fructose), is found in a wide variety of processed foods such as breakfast cereal, juices, jellies and jams, candy, baked goods, sauces, desserts, and even ready-made dinners and processed meat. Fructose tastes sweet but does not satisfy hunger as well as more nutritious foods.

The high added fructose content of processed foods is addictive in a similar way to alcohol, especially for young children. This has caused an epidemic of obesity in both children and adults. Further, the metabolism of fructose in the liver is similar to alcohol because it tends to perturb glucose metabolism, generating fat and causing insulin resistance, which leads to inflammation and degeneration of the liver and many other problems [4]. Overall, this dietary pattern caused by overloading our bodies with fructose is a vicious cycle that leads to widespread deficiencies of nutrients such as vitamins and essential minerals, along with damage and inflammation throughout the body. This vicious cycle of sugar addiction, consistent with the "metabolic syndrome," is in large part responsible for the high death rate from the modern diet.

If the modern diet could be adjusted to satisfy hunger without excess calories and to contain a larger proportion of essential nutrients, the epidemic of disease from added sugar might be averted. When ingested in the form of fruit, fructose is less harmful because it is absorbed slowly by the gut and importantly is accompanied by essential nutrients. Supplements of essential nutrients can help, but only if knowledge about the adequate doses and their benefits is made widely available. Examples are supplements of vitamin A, B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium, omega -3 and -6 essential fats, which in the proper forms and doses can help prevent dietary deficiencies that cause heart disease, cancer, and diabetes [5]. Other lifestyle choices can help, for example, reducing total calories, increasing ingested fiber, and more exercise [3]. But the benefits of these healthy choices have not been convincing to the modern consumer. Ubiquitous high pressure marketing of soft drinks contributes to the problem.

To correct the problem of sugar overconsumption, it has been suggested that sugar be regulated like alcohol and tobacco [1]. The goal would be to change habits to reduce consumption. Many schools have already banned the sale of sodas, but have replaced them with juices or artificial drinks that contain added sugar. According to this suggestion, the sale of sweetened drinks and processed foods containing added sugar could be limited in school vending machines or elsewhere during school hours. Age limits on the sale of sugary foods in stores might also help. A limit or ban on television commercials advertising products containing added sugar might also be helpful. A tax on sugar, especially high-fructose corn syrup, could be used to fund research into essential nutrients and advertise their benefits. The idea behind such regulation would be to persuade the public, especially children, to consume less sugar and more nutritious foods [1,2]. This could greatly benefit public health.

It has been argued that similar regulation of alcohol is widely accepted because it has kept alcohol consumption under control [1]. For example, in other areas of our lives, changes in what is perceived as acceptable behavior have been successful, like bans on smoking in public places, designated drivers who don't drink alcohol, and the inclusion of air bags in cars. To some, a similar type of governmental regulation of sugar would seem justified because at the cost of some loss of personal freedom it could improve health and cut short the epidemic of non-infectious disease.

On the other hand, many people see regulation of sugar by taxing foods containing added sugar as abhorrent and draconian. After all, although it is addictive [4], sugar doesn't cause the danger of being drunk on the highway, and it doesn't present an imminent danger to health comparable to smoking. It's more insidious than that. And sugar has long been part of dietary habits of many cultures. Thus, any governmental regulation of food will have many critics who explain that regulation would be ineffective, and further, we should be able to purchase and eat any food according to our preference.

The underlying issue in this debate is public access to knowledge about nutrition. If the harm that added fructose causes to our health could be widely publicized, along with information about inexpensive and readily available healthy alternatives, this could lead to better health for millions of people. It would cause shoppers to consider other choices, such as vegetable juice or a glass of water, along with unprocessed nutritious foods and vitamin supplements in adequate doses. What is needed is a campaign that provides practical information about diet: what nutrients we need, how to determine the proper doses, and the dangers of a processed-food diet. This could include televised advertisements and health programming, as well as curricula taught at levels from grade school to medical school. It might also include more informative labeling about the nutrient content of food, as well as more healthy and tasty food served at restaurants and dining rooms. Marketplace pressure might then convince food companies to sell more healthy food with a minimum of added sugar and an adequate content of essential nutrients. Orthomolecular medicine, the practice of treating illness by providing sufficient doses of essential nutrients to prevent deficiencies, can help to provide this information [5-8]. We can all become more healthy by forgoing added sugar and other processed foods that lack essential nutrients. And when this is impossible, we can supplement with these essential nutrients to prevent the epidemic of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.

(Dr. Robert G. Smith is Research Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of many scientific papers, and an upcoming book, The Vitamin Cure for Eye Diseases.)

References:

1. Lustig RH, Schmidt LA, Brindis CD (2012) The toxic truth about sugar. Nature 482:27-29.

2. Jacobson MF (2005) Liquid candy: how soft drinks are harming Americans' health. Center for Science in the Public Interest. http://www.cspinet.org/new/pdf/liquid_candy_final_w_new_supplement.pdf.

3. Bremer AA, Mietus-Snyder M, Lustig RH. (2012) Toward a Unifying Hypothesis of Metabolic Syndrome. Pediatrics. 129:557-570

4. Lustig RH. (2010) Fructose: metabolic, hedonic, and societal parallels with ethanol. J Am Diet Assoc. 110:1307-1321.

5. Brighthope IE (2012) The Vitamin Cure for Diabetes: Prevent and Treat Diabetes Using Nutrition and Vitamin Supplementation. Basic Health Publications. ISBN-13: 978-1591202905.

6. Roberts H, Hickey S (2011) The Vitamin Cure for Heart Disease: How to Prevent and Treat Heart Disease Using Nutrition and Vitamin Supplementation. Basic Health Publications. ISBN-13: 978-1591202646.

7. Hoffer A, Saul AW (2008) Orthomolecular Medicine For Everyone: Megavitamin Therapeutics for Families and Physicians. Basic Health Publications. ISBN13: 9781591202264.

8. Hoffer A, Saul AW, Foster HD (2012) Niacin: The Real Story: Learn about the Wonderful Healing Properties of Niacin. Basic Health Publications ISBN-13: 978-1591202752

According to a group of researchers from the Jay W. Forrester's institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a computer simulation concluded that the world could suffer a "global economic collapse" coupled by a "precipitous population decline" at current rates of resource consumption.

The research was conducted on behalf of a group known as the The Club of Rome, which bills itself "as an informal association of independent leading personalities from politics, business and science, men and women who are long-term thinkers interested in contributing in a systemic interdisciplinary and holistic manner to a better world." Founded in 1968, The Club of Rome aims "to identify the most crucial problems which will determine the future of humanity through integrated and forward-looking analysis; to evaluate alternative scenarios for the future and to assess risks, choices and opportunities," and to help find solutions to "challenges."

According to the group's web site, the research project "took into account the relations between various global developments and produced computer simulations for alternative scenarios."

"Part of the modeling were different amounts of possibly available resources, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control or environmental protection," it said.

World still on course for self-destruction

The recent MIT research builds upon an earlier body of work from the same esteemed institution, dated 1972, that some in the scientific community regard infamous. According to a report in the Smithsonian Magazine, a team led by researcher Dennis Meadows used computer modeling for the first time in an attempt to answer "a centuries-old question: When will the population outgrow the planet and the natural resources it has to offer?"

That work was later made into a book titled The Limits to Growth and has since sold over 10 million copies in 37 languages. Essentially it "warned that if current trends in population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continued, that dark time — marked by a plummeting population, a contracting economy and environmental collapse — would come within 100 years," the Smithsonian Magazine reported.

That work was later supported by data presented in the form of a graph designed by Australian physicist Graham Turner, which purports to show how actual data from the 30-year period between 1970 and 2000 matches almost exactly predictions set forth in Meadows' work.

Meadows, who retired in 2004 after 35 years as a professor at MIT, Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire, discussed his original research with the Smithsonian on the 40th anniversary of the publishing of The Limits to Growth. He said his team's "goal was to gather empirical data to test" a theoretical situation showing "the interrelationship of some key global growth factors: population, resources, persistent pollution, food production and industrial activity."

In describing what he meant by a "collapse," Meadows said the model assumed a "business-as-usual" approach to pressing issues of overuse and over-consumption.

"In the world model, if you don't make big changes soon — back in the '70s or '80s — then in the period from 2020 to 2050, population, industry, food and the other variables reach their peaks and then start to fall," he said. "That's what we call collapse."

Most of the computer models found steady population and economic growth rates until about 2030. Then, the researchers found, conditions begin to decline, and without "drastic measures for environmental protection," scenarios began predicting higher likelihoods of population and economic crashes.

But is there a bright spot?

Despite the dire predictions, the research team said not all hope is lost.

The study said "unlimited economic growth" was still very possible, providing governments develop and enact policies and invest in clean- or green-energy technologies that limit the widening of the human ecological footprint.

Others say the situation is not nearly as ominous as the MIT report makes it sound. For instance, the late Yale University economist Henry Wallich, who served a dozen years as a governor of the Federal Research Board, for a time as its chief international economics expert, said once that any attempts to regulate global growth would be akin to "consigning billions to permanent poverty."

Still, other experts believe the matching trends of the earlier 1972 study and the most recently completed body of work are telling, in that they show a similar trajectory of demise.

"The issue of global carrying capacity is one that is fraught with all sorts of technical, scientific and philosophical problems," admits Meadows. But he believes now, as he did four decades ago, that sustainable development is not possible.

"When I use the term sustainable development — which I consider to be an oxymoron actually — I am trying to capture the meaning that most people seem to have," he said. "Either way you use the term, it is just a fantasy. […] We're at 150 percent of the global carrying capacity."