Watchman News

By Dr. Mercola

A new Coca-Cola ad campaign that encourages people to come together to fight obesity is drawing fire from consumer advocates and obesity experts.1, 2

Coke says it’s trying to make consumers more aware of the healthy choice beverages Coke makes; critics say Coke is simply doing damage control.

There can be no doubt that soda is one of the primary beverages responsible for skyrocketing obesity rates. As Dr. Sanjay Gupta told CNN:3

“…the scientific community has …reached a consensus that soft drinks are the one food or beverage that’s been demonstrated to cause weight gain and obesity. And if we’re going to deal with this obesity epidemic, that’s the place to start.”

Granted, no one is forcing anyone to drink them, but there simply has not been enough public education about the dangers of excessive fructose consumption. In fact, the industry has fought tooth and nail to minimize or flat out deny these health dangers, very similar to the tobacco industry denying the risk of lung cancer..

A perfect example of this ongoing denial is Coca-Cola’s reply to the video below, The Real Bears, produced by CSPI. The company called the short-film “irresponsible” and “grandstanding” that will not help anyone “understand energy balance.”

I cannot think of any instance where you might need a soda in order to maintain correct “energy balance.” You can achieve optimal health without any added sugar or artificial sweeteners. In fact, if you want to understand energy balance, read up on how to become fat-adapted rather than being a sugar burner. This requires cutting out virtually all added sugars.
Still, their vehement refusal to accept responsibility for leading you astray does not surprise me. Just take a look at the history of Coca-Cola’s advertising, and you’ll quickly realize that this leopard is not about to change its spots anytime soon. Two sites offering this history lesson include Arandilla’s “Coca-Cola Advertising Through the Years” blog4, and NPR’s blog page5, “Vigor, Brain Power and Other Health Claims From Coke’s Advertising Past.”

Now, Coca-Cola, the leading beverage brand in the world, realizes it’s losing the information war and is trying to shift your attention to its 180 different no- and low-calorie beverages. Well, this certainly is NOT going to address the obesity problem. On the contrary, artificial sweeteners have been shown to produce even MORE weight gain than regular sugar and even high fructose corn syrup.

Coke Advocating Flawed, Outdated Calorie-Counting Advice

Evidence of just how behind-the-times Coca-Cola is, their brand new multi-million dollar campaign focuses on the sentiment that:

“…beating obesity will take action by all of us, based on one simple, common-sense fact: All calories count, no matter where they come from. …And if you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you’ll gain weight.”6

This “conventional wisdom” has been firmly debunked by science. Not all calories count equally. And the “calories in, calories out” hypothesis for maintaining weight has equally been shown to be incorrect. It is in fact FAR more important to look at the source of the calories than counting them.

In short, you do not get fat because you eat too many calories and don’t exercise enough. You get fat because you eat the wrong kind of calories. At the end of the day, your consumption of carbohydrates, whether in the form of grains and sugars (especially fructose), will determine whether or not you’re able to manage your weight and maintain optimal health. This is because these types of carbs (fructose and grains) affect the hormone insulin, which is a very potent fat regulator. Fats and proteins affect insulin to a far lesser degree. Kudos to The Atlantic7 for calling Coca-Cola on its misleading tactics in its recent article titled, Coke’s Unconscionable New Ad:

“Coca-Cola’s latest attempt to position itself against the rising tide of concern about the role of sodas in the obesity epidemic is unconscionable, because of this statement: ‘All calories count. No matter where they come from including Coca-Cola and everything else with calories.’

For Coca-Cola to suggest that all calories are equal flies in the face of reality as best as we can determine it… Coca-Cola wants us to ignore the considerable research confirming that sugary soda is a major contributor to obesity, and that it has no nutritional value… Coca-Cola could use its considerable advertising muscle to promote healthy exercise, yes, but when it does so as a ploy to confuse the public about the dangers of its products, that’s not a public service, that’s unethical.”

The video above is from Youtube and is available to the public for information and entertainment purposes only.
Mercola.com does not own and did not produce this video.

Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work

Dr. Robert Lustig, an expert on the metabolic fate of sugar, explains that fructose is ‘isocaloric but not isometabolic.’ This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count. This is a crucial point that must be understood.

Fructose is in fact far worse than other carbs because the vast majority of it converts directly to FAT, both in your fatty tissues, and in your liver. And this is why counting calories does not work… As long as you keep eating fructose and grains, you’re programming your body to create and store fat.

Furthermore, research by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado and author of The Sugar Fix and The Fat Switch, demonstrates that large portions of food and too little exercise are NOT solely responsible for why you are gaining weight. Rather it’s fructose-containing sugars that cause obesity – not by calories, but by turning on your “fat switch,” a powerful biological adaptation that causes cells to accumulate fat in anticipation of scarcity (or hibernation). According to Dr. Johnson, based on his decades of research:

“Those of us who are obese eat more because of a faulty ‘switch’ and exercise less because of a low energy state. If you can learn how to control the specific ‘switch’ located in the powerhouse of each of your cells – the mitochondria – you hold the key to fighting obesity.”

According to Beverage Digest, soda consumption in the US has been on a steady decline since 1998.8 A recent article in The Atlantic9 shows consumption of soda “in freefall,” with US consumption having declined by 40 percent since 2003. Unfortunately, many are simply switching to no- or low-cal beverages, which Coca-Cola is now trying to boost, and quite frankly, if I had to choose between these two evils, I’d choose regular soda, as artificial sweeteners are even worse for your long-term health, and have been linked to increased weight gain when compared to calorie-containing sweeteners.

No- or Low-Cal Beverages CONTRIBUTE to Obesity Problem

While soda consumption has gone down, consumption of artificially sweetened “diet” beverages has risen in that same time, according to an October 11, 2012 report by USA Today.10 The industry has effectively convinced people that diet drinks are a healthier choice because they lack any calories. However, if you’re concerned about your weight and health, switching to artificial sweeteners is NOT a wise move.

Mounting research shows that diet soda is not a “guilt-free” treat at all. For example, two studies published in 2011 linked diet soda to poor health outcomes. In one study, people who drank two or more diet sodas a day experienced waist size increases that were six times greater than those of people who didn’t drink diet soda. A second study that found that aspartame (NutraSweet) raised blood sugar levels in diabetes-prone mice.

As you may know, your waist size is not only a matter of aesthetics, but also a powerful indicator of a build-up of visceral fat, a dangerous type of fat around your internal organs that is strongly linked with type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Your waist size is a far more accurate predictor of your heart risks than your body mass index (BMI). Nearly eight years ago, research by Sharon P. Fowler, MPH11 (who was also involved in the newer studies noted above) found that your risk of obesity increases by 41 percent for each can of diet soda you drink in a day. Furthermore, for diet soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

36.5 percent for up to 1/2 can per day
57.1 percent for more than 2 cans per day

For regular soft-drink drinkers, the risk of becoming overweight or obese was:

26 percent for up to 1/2 can per day
32.8 percent for 1 to 2 cans per day
47.2 percent for more than 2 cans per day

How Decreasing Sugar Intake Can Impact Body Weight

In related news, recently published research12 shows that decreasing sugar consumption can help you lose weight. The researchers examined outcomes from 71 studies on sugar consumption and body fat. The duration of included studies ranged from two weeks to one year. According to the authors:

“In trials of adults with ad libitum diets (that is, with no strict control of food intake), reduced intake of dietary sugars was associated with a decrease in body weight (0.80 kg/1.8 lb); increased sugars intake was associated with a comparable weight increase (0.75 kg/1.7 lb).

Isoenergetic exchange of dietary sugars with other carbohydrates showed no change in body weight . Trials in children… in relation to intakes of sugar sweetened beverages after one year follow-up in prospective studies, the odds ratio for being overweight or obese increased was 1.55 (1.32 to 1.82) among groups with the highest intake compared with those with the lowest intake. Despite significant heterogeneity in one meta-analysis and potential bias in some trials, sensitivity analyses showed that the trends were consistent and associations remained after these studies were excluded.”

Skyrocketing Obesity is Related to Misleading You on Health Issues

Obesity is the result of inappropriate lifestyle choices, and unfortunately, our government has done an abysmal job at disseminating accurate information about diet and health. It’s one thing for corporations to put out misleading ads – honesty is not in the self-interest of the processed food and beverage industry. It’s another when the government falls in line with for-profit deception and becomes a propagator of corporate propaganda. And this is exactly what has happened… For example, conventional advice that is driving public health in the wrong direction includes:

Cutting calories: Not all calories are created equal, and counting calories will not help you lose weight if you’re consuming the wrong kind of calories
Choosing diet foods will help you lose weight: Substances like Splenda and aspartame may have zero calories, but your body isn’t fooled. When it gets a “sweet” taste, it expects calories to follow, and when this doesn’t occur it leads to distortions in your biochemistry that may actually lead to weight gain
Avoiding saturated fat: The myth that saturated fat causes heart disease has undoubtedly harmed an incalculable number of lives over the past several decades, even though it all began as little more than a scientifically unsupported marketing strategy for Crisco cooking oil. Most people actually need at least 50 percent of their diet to include healthful saturated fats such as organic, pastured eggs, avocados, coconut oil, real butter and grass-fed beef in order to optimize their health
Reducing your cholesterol to extremely low levels: Cholesterol is actually NOT the major culprit in heart disease or any disease, and the guidelines that dictate what number your cholesterol levels should be to keep you “healthy” are fraught with conflict of interest — and have never been proven to be good for your health

This is just a tiny sampling of the misleading information on weight and obesity disseminated by our government agencies. A more complete list of conventional health myths could easily fill an entire series of books. The reason behind this sad state of affairs is the fact that the very industries that profit from these lies are the ones funding most of the research; infiltrating our regulatory agencies; and bribing our political officials to support their financially-driven agenda through any number of legal, and at times not so legal, means.

Could Warning Labels Be Part of the Answer?

According to Dr. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the non-profit group The California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA), “43 percent of the increase in daily calories Americans consumed over the last 30 years came from sugary drinks.” The CCPHA has published a list of seven things soda makers could do to create “meaningful change,” such as13:

Cease all advertising of sugary drinks to children under 16
Add warning labels to containers stating the link between soda consumption and obesity, diabetes and tooth decay, just like cigarettes must declare its connection to lung cancer
Declare number of teaspoons of sugar the container contains, in large print
Quit marketing sports drinks as healthy beverages

You Can Avoid Becoming a Statistic

Perhaps one of the most powerful scientific discoveries to emerge in the past several years is that the old adage “a calorie is a calorie” is patently false. Furthermore, the idea that in order to lose weight all you have to do is expend more calories than you consume is also false… The research clearly demonstrates that even if you control the number of calories you eat, if those calories come from fructose, you are at increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, or prediabetes, which includes insulin resistance, fatty liver, high blood pressure and high triglycerides.

Conventional thinking tells us that metabolic syndrome is the outcome of obesity, which is simply the result of eating too many calories and not exercising enough. However, Dr. Johnson’s research, discussed above, shows that a high fructose diet is the key to developing metabolic syndrome, and that as soon as you throw fructose into the mix, “calories in versus calories out” is no longer a functional equation.

In short, avoiding fructose in all its forms, along with other sugars, is imperative in order to avoid “flipping the fat switch” that can trigger your body to accumulate excess fat. So please, do yourself and your family a favor, and don’t get swept up in Coca-Cola’s multi-million dollar ad extravaganza. The entire campaign is based on flawed, inaccurate, misleading, and patently false conventions of thinking.

Let’s not forget: Coca-Cola spent $1.2 million to defeat California Proposition 37 last November, which would have required genetically engineered (GE) foods to be labeled as such (which could have included soda containing GE high fructose corn syrup). That, in and of itself, is proof positive that Coca-Cola has no concern for health conscious consumers.

By Dr. Mercola

It was once thought that any brain function lost was irretrievable. Today, research into what’s referred to as “brain plasticity” has proven that this is not the case. On the contrary, your brain continues to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity.

Aside from toxicity, our modern lifestyle plays a part in cognitive decline, as described by Dr. Michael Merzenich, professor emeritus at the University of California, who has pioneered research in brain plasticity for more than 30 years.

He founded the Scientific Learning Corporation in Oakland, California, and Posit Science in San Francisco; both specializing in science research into brain training software.

Dr. Merzenich’s career arose from an interest in philosophy, and a fascination with the nature and origin of the human persona and individuality, and how brain processes might account for the evolution of our individual abilities. He believed that in those who have learning disabilities, the natural progressions of these brain processes must have encountered errors.

Use It or Lose It — the Principles of Brain Plasticity

The inherent plasticity of the brain was discovered some 20 years ago, when animal models demonstrated that brain deterioration and aging was in fact reversible, provided the proper stimulus. Dr. Merzenich describes brain plasticity as follows:

“It’s simple in concept. The brain changes physically, functionally, and chemically, as you acquire an ability or as you improve an ability. You know this instinctively. Something must be changing as your brain advances, as it progresses.

Actually what it is doing is changing the local wiring, changing the details of how it’s connected. It’s also changing itself in other ways, physically, functionally, and those changes account for that improvement, or account for the acquisition of an ability.

You don’t realize it but as you acquire an ability – let’s say, the ability to read – you actually create a system in the brain that does not exist, or that’s not in place, in the non-reader. It [the ability] actually evolves in the brain.”

As Dr. Merzenich explains, your brain is designed and constructed to be stimulated and challenged, and to carefully examine, resolve and interpret your environment. During the early days of mankind’s development, keeping track of the details was imperative for survival.

Today however, we tend to try to remove ourselves from the details of life. For example, instead of keeping track of appointments and to-do lists in our head, we use electronic gadgets with reminder features. Our streets are paved and lit, requiring virtually no attention to navigate from one location to another. And if you don’t sufficiently challenge your brain with new, surprising information, it eventually begins to deteriorate.

“Generally, by the third or fourth decade in life, you’re in decline,” Dr. Merzenich says. “One of the things that happens across this period is that you go from a period of the acquisition of abilities to largely using those abilities that have been acquired earlier in life. By that I mean to say, the fundamental skills that you apply in your profession or in your everyday life are things you master, and you’re doing them without thought.

To a large extent, you’re operating most of your day without really being consciously engaged in the things you’re doing… I’ve gone without really thinking very much about the physical acts of driving. I’m substantially disengaged.

This has been contributed to substantially by modern culture. Modern culture is all about taking out surprises… to basically reduce the stimulation in a sense on one level, so that we could engage ourselves in sort of an abstract level of operations. We’re no longer interested in the details of things. We’re no longer interested in resolving the details of what we see or hear or feel, and our brains slowly deteriorate.”

Contributing Factors to Cognitive Decline, and How to Counteract it

With age, brain researchers have found that there’s an increase in “chatter” in your brain. Dr. Merzenich explains:

“Your brain becomes less precise in how it’s resolving information as you’re operating and listening in language, as you’re operating in vision, or as you’re operating in controlling your actions. And we actually see these other noise processes through the brain as you age. In fact, we can correlate those changes quite directly with the slowing down of your processing.

You know, every older person is slower in their actions, slower in their decisions, and less fluent in their operations than when they’re younger. They’re slower because the brain basically is dealing with information in a fuzzier and degraded form.”

What research into brain plasticity shows us is that by providing your brain with appropriate stimulus, you can counteract this degeneration. A key factor or ingredient necessary for improving brain function or reversing functional decline is the seriousness of purpose with which you engage in a task. In other words, the task must be important to you, or somehow meaningful or interesting — it must hold your attention. Rote memorization of nonsensical or unimportant items will not stimulate your brain to create new neurons.

Dr. Merzenich has been instrumental in the development of a kind of environment — a computer-based brain training program that can help you sharpen a range of skills, from reading and comprehension to improved memorization and more. The program is called Brain HQ1.

“There are some very useful exercises in there that are for free, and you can actually drive improvements, for example, in brain speed, in the accuracy, with which the brain represents information in detail,” he says.

“Basically, what you’re doing is reducing the chatter, the noisiness of the process of your brain. That impacts your capacity, for example, to record that information; to remember it. Because when the information is in its degraded form, when it’s fuzzy, when it’s imprecise, all of the uses of it – like your brain makes basically – are degraded.”

Who Can Benefit from This?

Everybody’s brain is plastic, including yours, so no matter what your age or current level of brain function, your brain can improve to some degree or other. Dr. Merzenich specializes in children, primarily those with learning disabilities or impairments. But seniors and adults of all ages are also starting to use the program, and all age groups have been found to reap significant rewards.

In children operating in the 10th percentile of academic performance are commonly able to improve their scores to the middle or average level with 20-30 hours of intensive computer-based training.

“Now, that’s a big difference for the child,” he says. “It carries the child from a position which is at the bottom of the class, on the average, to be somewhere in the middle of the class. And that gives a child a chance to excel in school.”

Careful control studies in seniors have also been done. After 40 hours of computer-based training, the average improvement in cognitive performance across the board was 11 years. Meaning, if you were 70 years old, after 40 hours of brain training, your cognitive abilities could operate like that of a 59-year old. The same, and in some cases greater, effect can be found in 40-50-year olds using the program.

How to Implement a Brain Training Program

So, how does such a training program work, and what’s the optimal way to implement it in order to maximize the benefits?

“One of the great advantages that we have is that there’s a very large body of scientific information that informs us about the optimum,” Dr. Merzenich says. “It comes from understanding, on a scientific level, the basis of what controls brain change. We know how the machine operates to control brain change. We know that you have to be engaged attentively, and in a sense that the more attentively focused you are, the more positively enabling machine the brain is when turned on.

We know that rewards have to occur, or information or feedback about how you’re doing have to occur, in a specific way to drive the optimum changes in the brain… the way difficulties change in the task are crucial for driving changes with highest proficiency.

One simple thing we do is to [continually] adjust the difficulty level of the task, so that the child is at a level in which they get most things correct but they’re capable of error. Because only when you’re in this demanding situation, only when it matters to the brain, does the machinery turn on to change the brain. We actually regulate this, and as a child progresses session by session, day by day, they notch up their performance to higher and higher and higher and higher and higher levels.”

Ideally, it would be wise to invest at least 20 minutes a day. But no more than five to seven minutes is to be spent on a specific task. When you spend longer amounts of time on a task, the benefits weaken. According to Dr. Merzenich, the primary benefits occur in the first five or six minutes of the task.

You can typically improve yourself to the highest practical or possible level in anywhere between five to a dozen brief sessions of seven or eight minutes each. Again, having a sense of purpose is crucial.

“When it matters to you, you are going to drive changes in your brain,” he explains. “That’s something always to keep in mind. If what you’re doing seems senseless, meaningless, if it does not matter to you, then you’re gaining less from it.”

Dr. Merzenich developed a website, Brain HQ, to help take advantage of the brain’s ability to repair.The Brain HQ website has many different exercises designed to improve brain function and it also allows you to track and monitor your progress over time. While there are many similar sites on the web, Brain HQ is one of the oldest and most widely used.

How Your Daily Lifestyle Can Improve Your Brain Function

Aside from engaging in a computer-based brain exercise program, Dr. Merzenich lists several things you can do on a daily basis, as part of your day-to-day lifestyle, to help maintain optimal brain fitness:

Get 15-30 minutes of physical exercise each day, when exercising, think about using your brain to control your actions. That means, skip the iPod and instead take in the details of your environment.

“Reconstruct it in your mind. Basically, we are constructed to take in the details of our physical environments, and to interpret and reconstruct them. That’s a critical form of exercise for us basically to refine our navigational skills and abilities in this sense – to basically look at the landmarks, to look at the details, to record them in detail,” he says.

Secondly, look for and take note of surprises in your environment. “If you walk across the landscape and are paying attention, you cannot take a walk for 15, 20, or 30 minutes without being surprised,” he says. “And the brain loves surprises, because surprises mean that they must be engaged to interpret what they mean.”

Lastly, pay attention to your physical body. “You should feel yourself again. When’s the last time you actually thought about the feelings of you movements?”

Spend about five minutes every day working on the refinement of a specific, small domain of your physical body. Dr. Merzenich explains:

“That is to say, move in a very variable and controlled way – variable in speed, variable to reach a target, for example, with your big toe or your little finger. Do that every day. I do that in a systematic way, because I’m trying to maintain the fidelity of the neurological control movement. I know that I’m very much thinking about the feeling in my movements as I do that.”

Find ways to engage yourself in new learning as a continuous aspect of your life, such as taking on new hobbies, learning new skills
Stay socially engaged
Practice “mindfulness,” in which you’re attentively focusing on the world around you again, as if you’re seeing it for the first time.

“Look at the wonder in the flower. Look with curiosity again at the movements of the lizard. Engage in the details of the world and in life. Associate what you hear with what you feel on your skin,” he suggests. “It’s incredibly important that you engage the brain and all of its details of how it’s drinking in information, because this again relates to the fidelity with which it will represent it for all of its operations.”

Nutrition and Brain Health

Another factor that cannot be overlooked is your diet. Foods have an immense impact on your brain, and eating whole foods as described in my nutrition plan will best support your mental and physical health. Just like exercise, avoiding sugar (particularly fructose) and grains will help normalize your insulin levels.

This is an important aspect, as sugar causes chronic inflammation that disrupts your body’s normal immune function and can wreak havoc on your brain. But sugar also suppresses BDNF, which is important for proper memory function, and appears to play a significant role in depression as well. At least we know that BDNF levels tend to be critically low in people with depression, and some animal models have suggested low BDNF levels may actually be causative.

The medical literature is also showing that coconut oil can be of particular benefit for brain health, and anecdotal evidence suggests it could be very beneficial in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Ketone bodies have been found to feed your brain and prevent brain atrophy. It may even restore and renew neuron and nerve function in your brain after damage has set in. Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy, and a primary source of ketone bodies are the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) found in coconut oil. Other dietary recommendations to preserve and improve your brain health include the following:

Optimize your vitamin D levels through safe sun exposure, a safe tanning bed and/or vitamin D3 supplements.
Take a high-quality animal-based omega-3 fat. I recommend consuming high quality krill oil to meet the optimal amount of omega-3 fats needed to achieve good health and fight cognitive decline
Avoid processed foods and sugars, especially fructose — Excessive sugar and grain consumption are the driving factors behind insulin resistance, and the strategies that protect your brain are very similar to those for avoiding diabetes. There is simply no question that insulin resistance is one of the most pervasive influences on brain damage, as it contributes massively to inflammation, which will prematurely degenerate your brain.
Ideally, you’ll want to restrict your total fructose consumption to below 25 grams a day. This includes refraining from eating too many fruits, if you normally eat a lot of them. If you consume more than 25 grams a day of fructose you can damage your cells by creating insulin and leptin resistance and raising your uric acid levels.
Avoid grains – Even whole, organic grains will convert to sugar in your body and spike your insulin levels.
Avoid artificial sweeteners – Aspartame, for example, is an excitotoxin that can literally destroy your brain cells. There are many studies showing the dangers of aspartame.For example, one study published in 20082 concluded that excessive aspartame ingestion might cause certain mental disorders, as well as compromised learning and emotional functioning.
Avoid soy — Unfermented soy products are another common food that should be avoided if you want to maintain healthy brain function.

One well-designed epidemiological study linked tofu consumption with exaggerated brain aging. Men who ate tofu at least twice weekly had more cognitive impairment, compared with those who rarely or never ate the soybean curd, and their cognitive test results were about equivalent to what they would have been if they were five years older than their current age. What’s more, higher midlife tofu consumption was also associated with low brain weight. Shrinkage does occur naturally with age, but for the men who had consumed more tofu showed an exaggeration of the usual patterns you typically see in aging.
Dr. Kaayla Daniel has written an excellent book, The Whole Soy Story, which covers the health dangers of soy in great depth and I highly recommend it to anyone still under the illusion that soy is a health food.

By Dr. Mercola

Are you using artificial sweeteners and opting for low-cal “diet” foods in an effort to control of your weight?
If so, you may be surprised to learn that research has repeatedly shown that artificial no- or low-calorie sweeteners are anything but good news for weight loss… Contrary to popular belief, studies have found that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame can:

Stimulate your appetite
Increase carbohydrate cravings
Stimulate fat storage and weight gain

Now, yet another study1 has been published showing that saccharin and aspartame cause greater weight gain than sugar.
The belief that artificially sweetened foods and beverages will help you lose weight is a carefully orchestrated deception. So if you are still opting for “diet” choices for this reason, you are being sorely misled. Ditto for diabetics, as recent research has shown aspartame also worsens insulin sensitivity.
The fact that these are still being promoted as “diet” flies in the face of any rational behavior. One wonders why the FTC doesn’t come down like a ton of bricks on these companies for massively fraudulent marketing.

New Study Negates Weight Management Claims of Artificial Sweeteners

The featured study, published in the January 2013 issue of the journal Appetite2, was done by a Brazilian research team with the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University do Rio Grande do Sul. Rats were fed plain yogurt sweetened with either aspartame, saccharin, or sugar, plus their regular rat chow, for 12 weeks.

“Results showed that addition of either saccharin or aspartame to yogurt resulted in increased weight gain compared to addition of sucrose, however total caloric intake was similar among groups,” the researchers write.3

The reason for the similar calorie consumption between the groups was due to increased chow consumption by the rats given artificially sweetened yoghurt. This type of compensation has been found in previous studies4 as well, indicating that when your body gets a hit of sweet taste without the calories to go with it, it adversely affects your appetite control mechanisms, causing increased food cravings. The authors concluded that:

“Greater weight gain was promoted by the use of saccharin or aspartame, compared with sucrose, and this weight gain was unrelated to caloric intake. We speculate that a decrease in energy expenditure or increase in fluid retention might be involved.”

You Actually Gain Weight by Using “Artificial Sweeteners

A 2010 scientific review published in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM)5 discussed the neurobiology of sweet cravings and the unexpected effect of artificial sweeteners on appetite control. It cites several large scale prospective cohort studies that found positive correlations between artificial sweetener use and weight gain, which flies in the face of “conventional wisdom” to cut calories in order to lose weight. For example:

“The San Antonio Heart Study6 examined 3,682 adults over a seven- to eight-year period in the 1980s. When matched for initial body mass index (BMI), gender, ethnicity, and diet, drinkers of artificially sweetened beverages consistently had higher BMIs at the follow-up, with dose dependence on the amount of consumption. Average BMI gain was +1.01 kg/m2 for control and 1.78 kg/m2 for people in the third quartile for artificially sweetened beverage consumption.

The American Cancer Society study7 conducted in early 1980s included 78,694 women who were highly homogenous with regard to age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and lack of preexisting conditions. At one-year follow-up, 2.7 percent to 7.1 percent more regular artificial sweetener users gained weight compared to non-users matched by initial weight… Saccharin use was also associated with eight-year weight gain in 31,940 women from the Nurses’ Health Study8 conducted in the 1970s.”

Experiments have found that sweet taste, regardless of its caloric content, enhances your appetite. Aspartame has been found to have the most pronounced effect, but the same applies for other artificial sweeteners, such as acesulfame potassium and saccharin.
The reason why glucose or sucrose (table sugar) tends to lead to lower food consumption compared to non-caloric artificial sweeteners is because the calories contained in natural sweeteners trigger biological responses to keep your overall energy consumption constant. This was again evidenced in a study9 published last year, which concluded that:

“The results support the hypothesis that consuming non-caloric sweeteners may promote excessive intake and body weight gain by weakening a predictive relationship between sweet taste and the caloric consequences of eating.”

In essence, real sugar allows your body to accurately determine that it has received enough calories, thereby activating satiety signaling. Without the calories, your appetite is activated by the sweet taste, but as your body keeps waiting for the calories to come, sensations of hunger remain.

“Human research must rely on subjective ratings and voluntary dietary control. Rodent models helped elucidate how artificial sweeteners contribute to energy balance. Rats conditioned with saccharin supplement had significantly elevated total energy intake and gained more weight with increased body adiposity compared to controls conditioned with glucose. Saccharin-conditioned rats also failed to curb their chow intake following a sweet pre-meal…

Increasing evidence suggests that artificial sweeteners do not activate the food reward pathways in the same fashion as natural sweeteners… Lastly, artificial sweeteners, precisely because they are sweet, encourage sugar craving and sugar dependence… Unsweetening the world’s diet may be the key to reversing the obesity epidemic,” the YJBM review states.10

That last statement is probably the most accurate conclusion there is. Americans in particular are addicted to the flavor sweet, which appears to trigger a complex set of biological systems, pathways, and mechanisms that in the end leads to excess weight gain whether that flavor comes loaded with calories or not.

Another Oft-Ignored Mechanism Driving Weight Gain from Artificial Sweeteners

Another reason for aspartame’s potential to cause weight gain is because phenylalanine and aspartic acid – the two amino acids that make up 90 percent of aspartame — are known to rapidly stimulate the release of insulin and leptin; two hormones that are intricately involved with satiety and fat storage. Insulin and leptin are also the primary hormones that regulate your metabolism.
So although you’re not consuming calories in the form of sugar, aspartame can still raise your insulin and leptin levels. Elevated insulin and leptin levels, in turn, are two of the driving forces behind obesity, diabetes, and a number of our current chronic disease epidemics. Over time, if your body is exposed to too much leptin, it will become resistant to it, just as your body can become resistant to insulin, and once that happens, your body can no longer “hear” the hormonal messages instructing your body to stop eating, burn fat, and maintain good sensitivity to sweet tastes in your taste buds.
What happens then?
You remain hungry; you crave sweets, and your body stores more fat. Leptin-resistance also causes an increase in visceral fat, sending you on a vicious cycle of hunger, fat storage and an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and more.
Additionally, large doses of phenylalanine can lower important neurotransmitters like sero­tonin,11 which also influences satiety. Decreased serotonin levels reduce feelings of satiety, which can then lead to over-eating or binge eating. In the end, the research tells us that artificial sweeteners are nothing more than a pipe dream when it comes to being a dieter’s aid, because contrary to what the marketing campaigns claim, low- or no-calorie artificial sweeteners are more likely to help you pack on the pounds than shed them.

What’s the Answer for Stubborn Weight Gain?

The first thing you need to understand is that counting calories is typically useless for weight loss. This is because calories are NOT created equal, and will not have identical effects on your weight or health. And, as reviewed above, trying to fool your body with artificial sweeteners devoid of calories is not the answer. In fact, it will likely make matters worse.
Secondly, it’s important to realize that the preferred fuel for your body is fat, not carbohydrates. Switching from a carb-based diet to a fat- and protein-based diet will help rebalance your body’s chemistry, and a natural side effect of this is weight loss, and/or improved weight management once you’re at an ideal weight. One explanation for this is that you don’t really get fat from eating too much and exercising too little. Nor do you get fat from eating fat.
In fact, there’s reason to believe that most people’s health would benefit from having:

As much as 60-70 percent healthful fats in their diet, and
No more than one gram of protein per kilo of lean body mass or about 0.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. (Can be increased by 25 percent if pregnant or aggressively exercising). To determine your lean body mass, calculate your body fat percentage and subtract that from 100. So if you are 20 percent body fat you would have 80 percent lean body mass. Then, multiply that times your current weight to get lean body mass in kilos or pounds

Dr. Richard Johnson’s latest book, The Fat Switch, dispels many of the most pervasive myths relating to diet and obesity. He discovered the method that animals use to gain fat prior to times of food scarcity, which turned out to be a powerful adaptive benefit. His research showed that fructose activates a key enzyme, fructokinase, which in turn activates another enzyme that causes cells to accumulate fat. When this enzyme is blocked, fat cannot be stored in the cell.
Interestingly, this is the exact same “switch” animals use to fatten up in the fall and to burn fat during the winter. Fructose is the dietary ingredient that turns on this “switch,” causing cells to accumulate fat, both in animals and in humans.
In essence, overeating and excess weight could be viewed as a symptom of the wrong proportion of macronutrients. You’re simply not feeding your body the right fuel. It’s not necessarily the result of eating too many calories, per se, but rather getting your calories from the wrong sources. In simple terms, when you consume too many sugars and carbs, you set off a cascade of chemical reactions in your body that makes you hungry and leaves you craving for sweets.
Even if you have the highest quality raw and organic foods, if you have a non-optimal combination with identical calories, you will likely gain weight. So listen to your body and if you are one of the two-thirds of people who are overweight, seriously consider radically reducing your carbs and replacing them with fibrous vegetables, lowering your protein levels to the quantity discussed above, and replacing those missing calories with healthy fats from coconut oil, olives, olive oil, avocado, pastured grass fed butter, and nuts. You can also try intermittent fasting, which will give you a radical jumpstart in your ability to normalize your weight.

By Dr. Mercola

“Pepsi Special” is the latest “healthy soda” to hit the market, this time in Japan. Infused with dextrin, a type of fiber that’s popular in fiber supplements in the U.S., Pepsi Special is being marketed as a “fat-blocking soda,” as it claims to help reduce your body’s absorption of fat.

How Can Soda Claim to Help You Absorb Less Fat?

Pepsi’s Japanese partner, Suntory Holdings Limited, is reportedly basing their claim, in part, on a 2006 study that found rats fed dextrin absorbed less fat from their food,1 and Japan’s National Institute of Health and Nutrition now allows it to bear the designation as a “food for specified health use.”
These are foods that are meant to be consumed “by people who wish to control health conditions, including blood pressure or blood cholesterol.”2 But can soda really be healthy?
Not likely.
Pepsi Special is far from a health food. Adding fiber to a disastrous combination of high fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid, caffeine and coloring does not make it good for you. But it may “fool” some people into thinking it does, which could make them drink even more of it, further damaging their health.
Soda is a leading contributor to the rising rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases facing much of the developed world, and any claims to the contrary are dangerously misleading. As Dr. Walter Willett, chair of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, told Time:3

“Unless Pepsi can provide data from controlled studies in humans to the contrary, their claim should be regarded as bogus and deceptive.”

Pepsi’s Eager to Cash In on Health-Conscious Consumers

Remember Pepsi Raw, which was introduced in the UK in 2008? This was another one of the soda company’s ridiculous creations – a concoction of sugar, caramel coloring, coffee leaf and sparkling water that was supposed to be another “healthy” version of soda.
While it had 10 percent less sugar than regular Pepsi, Pepsi Raw was simply another sugar-sweetened beverage, not a health drink. It was removed from the market just two years after its release.
Earlier this year, Pepsi Next was released. Pepsi Next claims to have 60 percent less sugar without sacrificing taste, but the secret to keeping its sweet taste comes from the use of not only high fructose corn syrup, but also THREE artificial sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose, all of which are linked to several dozen serious health risks.4
It’s all part of the company’s plan to beef up their share of profits from the “healthy foods” category, with reports noting they hope to boost their nutrition business from $10 billion to $30 billion by 2020.5
This is a classic corporate move. Find something that people are interested in and sell it to them even if it is deceptive and worsens their health. Most of these companies have absolutely ZERO interest for your health; they are only focused on their bottom line profits. So the age old adage is appropriate, Buyer Beware.

Is “Healthy” Soda Too Good to be True?

In a word, yes.
There’s nothing healthy about soda, even if it contains fiber or is sugar free. Drinking soda is in many ways worse for you than smoking, and it is only because of massive marketing campaigns from the industry that these sugary beverages are deemed so acceptable, including for our most vulnerable members of society – our kids.
If I asked you to quickly recall a commercial or slogan from leading soda companies, like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, chances are you’d have no trouble recalling the friendly polar bear commercials or “the real thing” logo, and if you asked your kids, they’d probably come up with a few too.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for how beverage bigwigs have gotten their products firmly embedded into the homes and psyches of millions of Americans and others worldwide. Coca-Cola, for instance, spends close to $3 billion a year on advertising. With that amount of money it’s no wonder the company has managed to hold on to its wholesome reputation.
They, and other beverage giants, are also in the habit of forming strategic alliances with ostensibly health-focused organizations that make it appear as though they are looking out for your health, which is about as laughable as Big Tobacco sponsoring a marathon. For instance, both Coca-Cola and Pepsi are sponsors or partners of the American Dietetic Association (ADA) and have featured exhibits at their annual conference.
Diet Coke has also teamed up with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to raise awareness for women’s heart health program, even though Coca-Cola is one of the main retailers of sugar in the United States and it is very clear that sugar and fructose are actually leading causes in the increasing rates of heart disease.

Fructose: Soda’s Dirty Secret

The primary reason why soda is so dangerous to your health?
Fructose.
The fructose content of the high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) used in many popular soda brands has been grossly underestimated. Around 100 years ago the average American consumed a mere 15 grams of fructose a day, primarily in the form of fruit, not industrially produced isolate, which is infinitely different on a physiological level. One hundred years later, one-fourth of Americans are consuming more than 135 grams per day, largely in the form of soda.
Fructose at 15 grams a day or less is generally harmless (unless you suffer from high uric acid levels). However, at nearly 10 times that amount it becomes a major contributor to obesity and nearly all chronic degenerative diseases. Instead of consisting of 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose, many soda brands, including Coke, Pepsi and Sprite, contain as much as 65 percent fructose, nearly 20 percent higher than originally believed.6 Thanks to the excellent work of researchers like Dr. Robert Lustig, and Dr. Richard Johnson, we now know that fructose:

Is metabolized differently from glucose, with the majority being turned directly into fat
Tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism, as it turns off your body’s appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the “hunger hormone”), doesn’t drive glucose into the cell to create satiety, and doesn’t stimulate leptin (the “satiety hormone”), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.
Rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity (“beer belly”), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure — i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
Over time leads to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers.
Leads to a dopamine-mediated hedonistic syndrome, which causes an insatiable desire to consume more of the same, despite the broad range of adverse, even life-threatening health effects caused by excessive fructose consumption.

Diet soda, by the way, is NOT a healthy alternative, even though it’s fructose-free. People who drink diet soft drinks daily may be 43 percent more likely to suffer from a vascular event, including a stroke or heart attack,7 as well as are more likely to experience weight gain, increased waist size, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.

Warning: 5-Hour Energy Shots Linked to Deaths

If you’re thinking of ditching your soda in favor of another caffeine kick like 5-hour Energy, be warned that 13 potentially related deaths and more than 90 adverse reaction claims (including 33 hospitalizations) following its consumption have already been reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although the product’s label does not disclose how much caffeine it contains per serving, it’s been estimated at over 200 milligrams (compared to about 100-150 for a typical 8-ounce cup of coffee). Consuming large quantities of caffeine in energy drinks can have serious health consequences, especially in children and teens, including caffeine toxicity, stroke, anxiety, arrhythmia, and in some cases even death.

Are You Hooked on Soda and Energy Drinks to Give You a Boost?

There are a number of reasons why people drink soda, but many do so because they’re addicted to the ephemeral energy boost they get from the caffeine and sugar. There are, however, natural ways to give your body lasting energy without any of the downsides of consuming fructose, excessive caffeine or artificial sweeteners.
These include:

Eating a healthy diet with limited sugar, fructose and processed foods. See my nutrition plan for a naturally energy-enhancing diet.
Increasing your intake of animal-sourced omega-3 fatty acids, e.g. krill, wild salmon, free-range eggs, to support your energy levels
Release draining emotional stress and negativity with the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT); this (and Turbo Tapping) can also help you to beat soda cravings
Sleep when you’re tired, and make sure you’re getting high-quality sleep while you’re at it
Exercise, and be sure to include high-intensity interval exercises like Peak Fitness for near endless energy
If you need a supplement, do the above steps first and then try ones that are designed to increase your level of foundational energy at the mitochondrial level. Some of the best are vitamin B12, Ubiquinol and magnesium.

By Dr. Mercola

Leptin, a hormone that plays a key role in regulating energy intake and energy expenditure, may be one of the most important hormones in your body that will determine your health and lifespan. Insulin is another, and the two work in tandem.
Both insulin and leptin resistance are associated with obesity, and impairment of their ability to transfer the information to receptors is the true foundational core of most all chronic degenerative diseases.
Metabolism can roughly be defined as the chemistry that turns food into life, and therefore insulin and leptin are both critical to health and disease. Insulin and leptin work together to control the quality of your metabolism, and, to a significant extent, your rate of metabolism.
By acquiring a better understanding of how leptin and its receptor interact, researchers now believe they will be able to find new treatments for obesity and other metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, as well as inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.
According to recent research published in the journal Molecular Cell,1 the leptin receptor has two hinged legs that swivel until they come in contact with leptin.
Once leptin attaches to the receptor, these legs stop swiveling and become rigid, thereby sending a signal to an enzyme called Janus kinase,2 which has the ability to bind inflammatory cytokines. It is believed that inhibiting the Janus kinases might help improve inflammatory and metabolic disorders.
Alan Saltiel, Director of the Life Sciences Institute, told Medical News Today:3

“This study may help solve an important issue we’ve been struggling with for some time… Since leptin is a master regulator of appetite, understanding why resistance to its effects develops in obesity has been a major obstacle to discovering new drugs for obesity and diabetes. Developing a clear picture of how leptin can bind to its receptor may be the first step in overcoming leptin resistance.”

The fact that the primary focus is on developing drug therapies to “fix” leptin resistance is understandable. That’s the only way the medical industry can make money. However, the way to correct leptin resistance has nothing to do with drugs, and everything to do with diet. But first…

What Exactly is Leptin?

Leptin is a very powerful and influential hormone produced by your fat cells. Your fat, by way of leptin, tells your brain whether you should be hungry, eat and make more fat, whether you should reproduce, or (partly by controlling insulin) whether to engage in maintenance and repair. In short, leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let your brain know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it.
Therefore, leptin may be on top of the food chain in metabolic importance and relevance to disease.
If your leptin signaling is working properly, when your fat stores are “full,” this extra fat will cause a surge in your leptin level, which signals your brain to stop feeling hungry, to stop eating, to stop storing fat and to start burning some extra fat off.
Controlling hunger is a major (though not the only) way that leptin controls energy storage. Hunger is a very powerful, ancient, and deep-seated drive that, if stimulated long enough, will make you eat and store more energy. The only way to eat less in the long-term is to not be hungry, and the only way to do this is to control the hormones that regulate hunger, the primary one being leptin.

How Do You Become Leptin Resistant?

You become leptin-resistant by the same general mechanism that you become insulin-resistant – by continuous overexposure to high levels of the hormone. If you eat a diet that is high in sugar (particularly fructose), grains, and processed foods – the same type of diet that will also increase inflammation in your body – as the sugar gets metabolized in your fat cells, the fat releases surges in leptin.
Over time, if your body is exposed to too much leptin, it will become resistant, just as your body can become resistant to insulin.
The only known way to reestablish proper leptin (and insulin) signaling is to prevent those surges, and the only known way to do that is via diet. As such, diet can have a more profound effect on your health than any other known modality of medical treatment.
A strategic whole food diet, as detailed in my free nutrition plan, that emphasizes good fats and avoids blood sugar spikes coupled with targeted supplements will enhance insulin and leptin sensitivity so that your brain can once again hear the feedback signals from these hormones.

Obesity Helps Spur Cancer’s Growth, New Study Suggests

Leptin and insulin resistance is front and center of the issue of obesity, which is now a problem of epic proportions as it increases your risk for a wide variety of other serious diseases. At least 20 different diseases and conditions are directly attributable to being overweight. This societal problem has emerged in just the past four decades, in large part due to sorely misguided dietary guidelines.
One disease related to excess weight is cancer. And according to recent research, being obese promotes the growth of existing tumors regardless of diet, which may help explain why lean cancer patients often have better outcomes than their obese counterparts.
The animal study, published in the Oct. 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research,4 showed that tumors in obese mice grew much faster than in lean mice eating the same diet. According to the authors:

“In this study, we show that obesity facilitates tumor growth in mice irrespective of concurrent diet, suggesting a direct effect of excess white adipose tissue [fat tissue]. When transplanted into mice, adipose stromal cells can serve as perivascular adipocyte progenitors that promote tumor growth, perhaps helping explain the obesity-cancer link.”

The researchers discovered that the presence of cancer triggered adipose stromal cells – “white” fat cells – to migrate into the blood stream. Once these cells come across a tumor, some of them help provide oxygen and nutrients to the tumor, thereby feeding the growth of the cancer.
Lead researcher Mikhail Kolonin told MedicineNet:5

“The fact that these cells are present in tumors is still an emerging concept. We have shown that not only are they present, but they are also functional and affect tumor growth. Identifying the signals that cause these cells to be recruited to tumors and finding ways to block them might provide a new avenue of cancer treatment.”

Reduce Obesity to Quench Tumor Potential

As stated in the featured article, the implications are clear: “reduce obesity before the appearance of tumors and after.” Unfortunately, there was no mention at all about the role of lifestyle in reducing cancer-boosting “white” fat cells… Again, the focus is on developing drug treatments to convert cancer-boosting “white” fat cells to less harmful “brown” fat (a heat-generating type of fat that burns energy instead of storing it).
If you hinge your health and well-being on that, you’re likely going to miss the boat and join the ranks of cancer statistics. Research has shown that certain groups of people tend to have more brown fat than others, and there are direct correlations between the activation of brown fat and metabolic measures of good health. For example:

Slender people have more brown fat than obese people do
Younger people have more brown fat than elderly people, and
People with normal blood sugar levels have more brown fat than those with high blood sugar

So is there a way to convert harmful white fat into health promoting brown fat, without using a drug? Yes, there is. In one mouse study, the animals converted white fat into brown fat simply by exercising. The study, published in the journal Disease Models and Mechanisms6 in May 2012 found that, during exercise, the animals’ muscles released an enzyme called irisin, which triggered the conversion white fat cells to brown. Another study published in Nature,7 also suggests irisin may be a key to explaining the therapeutic benefits of exercise on metabolic disease. The authors write:

“Irisin acts on white adipose cells in culture and in vivo to stimulate UCP1 expression and a broad program of brown-fat-like development. Irisin is induced with exercise in mice and humans, and mildly increased irisin levels in the blood cause an increase in energy expenditure in mice with no changes in movement or food intake. This results in improvements in obesity and glucose homeostasis.”

Summary

So to summarize: Insulin and leptin resistance are core factors in obesity, which in turn is a risk factor for cancer and may boost tumor growth. But the answer lies not in a pill. To reverse insulin and leptin resistance:

Avoid, sugar, fructose, grains, and processed foods
Eat a healthful diet of whole foods, ideally organic, and replace the grain carbs with:

No-to-low sugar and grain carbs
 As much highly quality healthful fat as you want (saturated and monosaturated). Most people need upwards of 50-70 percent fats in their diet for optimal health. Good sources include coconut and coconut oil, avocados, butter, nuts, and animal fats. Also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil

Similarly, while researchers investigate the pharmaceutical avenues to convert white fat cells to brown in an effort to reduce the potential for cancer growth, other research has already shown that this can likely be achieved through exercise.
As I’ve said before, about 80 percent of the health benefits you reap from a healthy lifestyle comes from your diet, and the remaining 20 percent from exercise – but it’s a very important 20 percent, as it acts in tandem with and boosts the benefits derived from a proper diet. For maximum benefits, you’ll want to make sure to include high-intensity interval training, which is at the heart of my Peak Fitness program. To learn more, please see my previous article: The Major Exercise Mistake I Made for Over 30 Years.

By Dr. Mercola

Folic acid is perhaps the most well known B vitamin, and is especially important for pregnant women to avoid certain birth defects.
Now researchers have highlighted the importance of another member of the B vitamin complex – choline – which they say may one day be recommended for all pregnant women, the way folic acid is today.

What is Choline?

Choline is an essential nutrient your body makes in small amounts, however you must consume it through your diet to get enough. In adults, choline helps keep your cell membranes functioning properly, plays a role in nerve communications, prevents the buildup of homocysteine in your blood (elevated levels are linked to heart disease) and reduces chronic inflammation.
In pregnant women, choline plays an equally, if not more, important role, helping to prevent certain birth defects, such as spina bifida, and playing a role in brain development.
Prior research has concluded that choline intake during pregnancy “super-charged” the brain activity of animals in utero, indicating that it may boost cognitive function, improve learning and memory, and even diminish age-related memory decline and the brain’s vulnerability to toxins during childhood, as well as conferring protection later in life.1
It’s recommended that pregnant women consume 450 milligrams of choline a day, but the new study found this may not be enough…

Double the Recommended Amount of Choline During Pregnancy Protects Baby from Stress, Metabolic Disorders and More

The new research, published in The FASEB Journal,2 found the consumption of 930 mg of choline in the third trimester of pregnancy was linked to a 33 percent lower concentration of the stress hormone cortisol, compared to those who consumed 430 mg a day.
It’s known that babies exposed to high levels of cortisol in utero, such as might occur if a woman is under extreme stress, facing anxiety or suffering from depression, have an increased risk of stress-related and metabolic disorders. The researchers believe the beneficial impact of choline on lowering cortisol may protect the baby later in life from mental health conditions, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Interestingly, the higher choline intake led to changes in epigenetic markers in the fetus. Specifically, it affected markers that regulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls hormone production and activity. The higher intake of choline contributed to a more stable HPA axis, which in turn meant lower cortisol levels in the fetus. The changes in fetal genetic expression will likely continue into adulthood, where they play a role in disease prevention.

Epigenetic Changes May Last for Generations

One of the most intriguing aspects of epigenetics is that these changes are often passed down through generations. This was first shown by the research of Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., M.D., who conducted studies on cats in the 1930s. He found that cats fed a healthy, raw-food diet thrived, while those fed on a primarily cooked-meat diet developed degenerative diseases – and those changes continued on through three generations.
Each generation of “junk-food” cats got progressively sicker, until they could no longer reproduce and eventually died off completely by the fourth generation.
Just this year, a study on rats showed those exposed to chemicals or foods that raise estrogen levels during pregnancy produce daughters that have a higher than normal risk for breast cancer – and that risk is passed on to the next two generations.3 It was not genetic mutations that were passed on, but rather epigenetic alterations that modulate the expression of your genes, similar to what was found in the FASEB Journal study.

You Have the Ability to Change Inherited Epigenetic Alterations

The good news about all of this is that even if you inherited a certain increased disease risk from your mother or grandmother (or you think you passed one on to your child), it is not set in stone. As you age, your genome does not change but your epigenome changes dramatically, especially during critical periods of life, such as adolescence. It is influenced by physical and emotional stresses, and lifestyle factors, which, depending on their effects, may either optimize your genetic expression for health or make it favor disease development.
There are literally new epigenetic discoveries being made every day, and it’s becoming quite clear that eating healthy foods is one of the most powerful steps you can take to optimize your genetic expression.
Certain foods, such as broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, garlic, and onions contain substances that activate tumor suppressor genes and deactivate cancer-associated genes (oncogenes). And now we see that choline appears to influence cortisol production in utero. Your best bet is to take advantage of the many epigenetic influencers in your diet by eating a wide variety of whole foods…
For additional tips, I suggest you read through my comprehensive and recently revised nutrition plan, which will give tools for eating healthy, dealing with stress, and living a lifestyle that will support your epigenetic health.

What are the Best Dietary Sources of Choline?

If you’re currently pregnant, it seems prudent to make sure your diet contains plenty of choline-rich foods, as this will be your primary source of this essential nutrient (most prenatal vitamins do not contain choline). Unfortunately for many vegetarians, animal foods like eggs and meat are some of the best sources of choline, so if you’re a vegan or vegetarian who does not consume any animal foods, you may be at risk of deficiency.
The following chart shows some of the best choline sources to help you choose your foods wisely:4

Food
Serving
Total Choline (mg)

Beef liver, pan fried
3 ounces
355

Wheat germ, toasted
1 cup
172

Egg
1 large
126

Beef, trim cut, cooked
3 ounces
67

Brussel sprouts, cooked
1 cup
63

Broccoli, cooked
1 cup, chopped
62

Salmon
3 ounces
56

Milk, skim
8 fl oz.
38

Peanut butter, smooth
2 tablespoons
20

By Dr. Mercola

A new study indicates bisphenol-A (BPA) – a chemical already found to be an endocrine disrupter linked to cancer and reproductive and fetal development problems – may be contributing to narrowed arteries.
Unfortunately, unequivocal proof of the chemical’s dangers to the arteries will be difficult to obtain because experiments on humans are not feasible, but the study’s authors said the growing body of evidence is impressive enough to add BPA exposure to the known risk factors for heart disease.

BPA Linked to Narrowed Arteries

Coronary, carotid and aorticartery stenosis – specific examples of a condition generally known as narrowed arteries – can block blood flow in your arteries, with serious if not lethal health consequences. The narrower your arteries become, the more blood flow gets blocked, which can ultimately lead to not only symptoms of chest pain and tightness but also heart attack and stroke.
In the latest study, researchers looked at levels of urinary BPA levels and artery narrowing in close to 600 people, and found that those with higher urinary BPA levels were more likely to have an increased risk for severe narrowing of the arteries.1 The same research team has conducted three other studies that have also shown an association between BPA and heart risks, including:

A 2008 study that found higher BPA concentrations were associated with heart2
A 2010 study that found higher BPA exposure was consistently associated with heart disease in the general U.S. adult population;3 in fact, U.S. adults with the highest levels of BPA in their urine were more than twice as likely to develop coronary heart disease than those with the lowest levels
A 2012 study that found for each 4.56 ng/mL increase in BPA concentration, there was a 13 percent greater risk of heart disease4

BPA is Found in Nearly Everyone… and Heart Disease is the Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.

While these studies are not proof that BPA causes heart disease, they certainly raise serious questions about why the chemical is still being so widely used across the globe.
BPA is so pervasive that scientists have found that 95 percent of people tested have potentially dangerous levels of BPA in their bodies… and heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States. BPA is clearly not the only factor involved in heart disease, but given its widespread use – and the fact that it is even commonly found in the umbilical cords of babies in utero – any negative impact it makes on human health could prove disastrous.
Not to mention, heart disease is not the only problem with BPA.
BPA is an endocrine disrupter, which means it mimics and/or interferes with your body’s hormones, subsequently “disrupting” your endocrine system. The glands of your endocrine system and the hormones they release are instrumental in regulating mood, growth and development, tissue function, metabolism, as well as sexual function and reproductive processes.
Some of the greatest concern regarding BPA surrounds early-life, in utero exposure to BPA, which can lead to chromosomal errors in your developing fetus, causing spontaneous miscarriages and genetic damage.
But evidence is also very strong indicating these chemicals are influencing adults and children alike, and leading to decreased sperm quality, early puberty, premature mammary gland development, disrupted reproductive cycles and ovarian dysfunction, cancer and heart disease, among numerous other health problems. Research has even found that “higher BPA exposure is associated with general and central obesity in the general adult population of the United States,”5 while another study found that BPA is associated not only with generalized and abdominal obesity, but also with insulin resistance, which is an underlying factor in many chronic diseases.6

FDA Not Convinced of BPA’s Dangers

Despite the concerning research pouring in, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states that they are aware studies have found BPA is a hazard to people, but says they have “carefully assessed these studies and finds no convincing evidence to support that belief.”7
Unfortunately, although the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a petition with the FDA calling for the agency to prohibit the use of BPA in products manufactured in the United States, earlier this year the FDA announced that it would be denying NRDC’s petition, noting that it would “make any necessary changes to BPA’s status based on the science.”
In September 2010, Canada declared BPA a toxic substance, but to date no other country has followed suit, although BPA has been banned in baby bottles in Canada, Europe and the United States. Many U.S. companies have voluntarily removed the chemical from their products in response to consumer demand, but it is still widely used. Thanks to the FDA’s refusal to ban BPA from U.S. food packaging, the chemical will continue to experience steady growth in 2012, with an estimated 4.7 million tons set for production this year.
This, in turn, will earn BPA manufacturers a handsome profit of $8 billion.8

Plastics to Canned Goods: How are You Being Exposed to BPA?

You’re probably aware that BPA is often found in plastic food containers and bottles, but plastic is not the only route of exposure. Canned goods, which often have a lining that contains BPA, may in fact be an even greater contributor. In one study, eating canned soup for five days increased study participants’ urinary concentrations of BPA by more than 1,000% compared to eating freshly made soup.9
The researchers believe canned goods may be an even greater source of exposure to BPA than plastics. So watch out for canned tomatoes and other canned vegetables, canned soups and canned beverages, like soda or juice.
Other often-overlooked routes of exposure include:

Receipts: A study in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry found that of 13 thermal printing papers (the type often used for receipts) analyzed, 11 contained BPA.10 Holding the paper for just 5 seconds was enough to transfer BPA onto a person’s skin, and the amount of BPA transferred increased by about 10 times if the fingers were wet or greasy.
Currency: In a study published in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers analyzed paper currencies from 21 countries for the presence of BPA, and the chemical was detected in every sample.11 They also measured the transfer of BPA from thermal receipt paper to currency by placing the two together in a wallet for 24 hours. This dramatically increased the concentrations of BPA on the money, which again suggests that receipts are highly contaminated.

So in order to really reduce your BPA exposure, you need to watch out for:

Canned foods and soda cans
All BPA-containing plastics and food packaging
Certain tooth sealants
Certain BPA-free plastics (which can contain similar endocrine-disrupting chemicals)
Receipts and currency (seek to limit or avoid carrying receipts in your wallet or purse, as it appears the chemical is transferring onto other surfaces it touches. It would also be wise to wash your hands after handling receipts and currency, and avoid handling them particularly if you’ve just put on lotion or have any other greasy substance on your hands, as this may increase your exposure)

By Dr. Mercola

Actos – the brand name for a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes – is presently embroiled in thousands of lawsuits alleging that the drug causes severe side effects including heart failure, macular edema and bladder cancer.
Even so, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has gone ahead and approved Mylan Lab’s plan to sell a generic version of this dangerous drug (pioglitazone), justifying their reasoning by saying this gives patients “affordable treatment options.”
The FDA addressed the heart failure and bladder cancer possibilities with a recommendation that doctors carefully monitor patients taking the new generic version… however, what the new generic drug really does is expose even more people to this drug class’ unacceptable, and sometimes deadly, side effects – to treat a disease that responds very well to dietary and exercise changes!

Actos and its Generic Riddled With Serious Health Risks

Actos works by helping to control blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes, a method that “experts” say will help to reduce the long-term health complications of diabetes and keep the disease under control. 
But diabetes treatments concentrating merely on lowering blood sugar can actually worsen, rather than remedy, the underlying metabolic dysfunction that is at the root of type 2 diabetes. And along with completely ignoring the underlying reasons why the diabetes developed in the first place, Actos carries some very serious health risks.
For starters, Actos has a Boxed Warning that states the drug may cause or worsen heart failure.
This risk has been somewhat overshadowed by the attention given to Avandia, a similar diabetes drug in the same class that has been found to cause a 43 percent increased risk of heart attack, and a 64 percent higher risk of cardiovascular death, compared to patients treated with other methods.1 However, although Actos is regarded as a “safer” option for your heart than Avandia, it also poses serious risks to your heart.
And that’s not all.
Actos’ label also notes that the use of pioglitazone for more than one year may be associated with an increased risk of bladder cancer. In fact, new research just out from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that people who take this drug for five years or more are two to three times more likely to develop bladder cancer than those who take a different form of diabetes drug.2 
Actos has already been removed from the market in both Germany and France due to the bladder cancer risks… but in the United States we now have not only Actos, but a generic version as well!
In a twist to the story, two days before the FDA approved Mylan’s generic Actos, Watson Pharmaceuticals sued the FDA for not following through on giving Watson exclusivity for its generic version of Actos, which was originally scheduled to be released on August 17.
There are as many as 13,000 Actos lawsuits currently pending, related to both heart failure and bladder cancer cases, as well as other side effects including bone fractures and lactic acidosis.

Actos Whistleblower Reveals Fraud, Deception and Serious Dangers

Dr. Helen Ge worked for Takeda (Actos’ maker) in the company’s pharmacovigilance division. There, Dr. Ge was in charge of reviewing side effects of Actos that were reported by patients and doctors. She then prepared safety reports that were filed with the FDA – reports that Ge says she was ordered to water-down or not report at all, so Actos would look safer than it actually was.
She believes Actos is even more dangerous than Avandia, the diabetes drug mentioned earlier that has been removed from pharmacies because of the risk of heart attacks. Dr. Ge says that besides bladder cancer and tumors Actos is also connected to heart attacks and stroke, suicide, schizophrenia, homicidal ideation, and renal failure.

Dr. Ge filed her lawsuit in September 2011, alleging that Takeda, like many pharmaceutical companies, was interested in protecting their profits, first and foremost, which makes the approval of a generic version of this drug all the more unsettling. Actos is Takeda’s most profitable drug, bringing in $3.4 billion in annual sales.
Dr. Ge noted:3

“Takeda’s motivation to fraudulently report and under-report the serious adverse events was driven by an economic desire to falsely enhance Actos’s safety profile and to increase sales.”

So far Avandia has been the poster child for what is wrong with drug treatment of type 2 diabetes. And it took nearly 10 years of the drug being on the market for the FDA to take action and restrict access to this dangerous drug. In the meantime, millions of people have taken Avandia and have been exposed to these unacceptably high-risk side effects, for a drug that in no way treats the underlying causes of diabetes.
More than 80,000 diabetics have suffered from strokes, heart failure or other complications including lethal heart attacks from this dangerous drug… and now it appears Actos and its generic versions may be stepping in to fill its shoes.

What You Should Know About Diabetes Drugs…

Drugs can’t cure diabetes, as they do nothing to address the underlying causes. Drugs like Actos and Avandia work by tricking diabetes patients’ bodies to become more sensitive to their own insulin, helping to control blood sugar levels. Tricking the body in non-ancestral and time-honored ways in which our biochemistry and genetics have adjusted to for many eons typically results in devastating effects eventually if pursued long enough, and the Actos and Avandia experience confirms this.
But it is important to understand that diabetes is NOT strictly a blood sugar disease like your doctor may have led you to believe. Type 2 diabetes is actually a disease caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin (a relatively recently discovered hormone produced by fat) signaling, both of which are regulated through your diet.
Conventional treatment, which is focused on suppressing the symptom of elevated blood sugar rather than addressing the underlying causes, is doomed to fail in most cases.
Because type 2 diabetes arises from faulty leptin and insulin signaling it is therefore a fully preventable condition that can be controlled or reversed by recovering your insulin and leptin sensitivities. However, the only known long-term effective way to reestablish proper leptin and insulin signaling is through proper diet and exercise. There is NO drug that can safely accomplish this – a fact that makes the current disease paradigm even more tragic, as diabetes continues to skyrocket, and the conventional treatments are needlessly killing diabetics prematurely.
If you have type 2 diabetes, I strongly suggest that you consult with a health care practitioner who is knowledgeable about its true underlying cause, and who can work with you to reverse the condition without the use of drugs. Some of the most helpful guidelines to successfully do this include:

Severely limit or eliminate sugar and grains in your diet, especially fructose, which is far more detrimental than any other type of sugar. Following my Nutrition Plan will help you do this without too much fuss.
Exercise regularly. Exercise is an absolutely essential factor, and without it, you’re unlikely to get this devastating disease under control. It is one of the fastest and most powerful ways to lower your insulin and leptin resistance. I recommend including some high-intensity Peak Fitness exercises for optimal results.
Avoid synthetic trans fats.
Get plenty of omega-3 fats from a high quality, animal-based source, such as krill oil.
Optimize your vitamin D levels. Recent studies have revealed that getting enough vitamin D can also have a powerful effect on normalizing your blood pressure, which has virtually identical response improvement to diabetic interventions.
Optimize your gut flora. Your gut is a living ecosystem, full of many different types of bacteria. The more beneficial bacteria you have, the more likely your blood sugar will be in balance. Indeed, new research published in the journal Lipids in Health and Disease found that a combination of prebiotics and probiotics, taken for 30 days, resulted in a significant reduction in fasting blood sugar in human subjects.4

Fortunately, optimizing your gut flora is relatively easy. You can reseed your body with good bacteria by eating fermented foods (like natto, kefir, raw organic cheese, miso, and fermented vegetables) or by taking a high-quality probiotic supplement.

Address any underlying emotional issues and/or stress. Non-invasive tools like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) can be extremely helpful and effective.
Get enough high-quality sleep every night.
Monitor your fasting insulin level. This is every bit as important as your fasting blood sugar. You’ll want your fasting insulin level to be between 2 and 4. The higher your level, the worse your insulin sensitivity is.

By Dr. Mercola

Three anemia drugs – Epogen, Procrit and Aranesp – have been among the best-selling prescription drugs in the United States for years, generating more than $8 billion a year for their makers, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson.
They were blockbuster drugs that stimulate your body to produce new red blood cells, which supposedly helped boost kidney and cancer patients’ energy and, ultimately, enhanced their lives.
But now, after millions of people have taken these drugs, it’s come out that the benefits were “wildly overstated, and potentially lethal side effects, such as cancer and strokes, were overlooked.”1
Worse still, the Washington Post has uncovered a series of unsettling events that show just how far drug makers were willing to go to get rich…

Doctors Earned Profits of Up to 30 Percent Just for Prescribing the Drugs

And this was one of the first problems. Drug makers lobbied Congress in order to put a system into place so that doctors and hospitals would be reimbursed more for the drugs they prescribed to Medicare patients than what they actually paid for them. The markup could be as high as 30 percent, and the higher the dose prescribed, the more money they made.
According to Charles Bennett, endowed chair at the Medication Safety and Efficacy Center of Economic Excellence at the University of South Carolina, in the Washington Post:

“It was just so easy to do – you put this stuff in the patient’s arm, and you made thousands of dollars… An oncologist could make anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 a year from this alone. And all the while they were told that it was good for the patient.”

Higher Doses Pushed to a Growing Number of Patients

Initially, patients with kidney disease, who often suffer from anemia, were the key target market for the drugs. If anemia is severe enough, blood transfusions are required to boost red blood cell counts. Epogen, Procrit, and, later, Aranesp, were able to accomplish the same boost in blood cells without the need for transfusions.
The Washington Post reported:

“The trouble would arise as the drugmakers won FDA approval for vastly expanded uses, pushing it in larger doses, for milder anemia and for patients with a wider array of illnesses. Very quickly, the market included nearly all dialysis patients, not just the roughly 16 percent who required blood transfusions. The size of average doses would more than triple. And over the next five years, the FDA would approve it to treat anemia in patients with cancer and AIDS, as well as those getting hip and knee surgery.

The key to their marketing was the claim that the drugs at higher doses could make patients feel better. By 1994, the drug’s label, approved by the FDA, advertised a range of benefits: ‘statistically significant improvements for… health, sex life, well-being, psychological effect, life satisfaction, and happiness.'”

These claims, however, were based on a series of incomplete and never-published research, some of which were drawn out over a decade or more only to show inconclusive results. One safety study on cancer patients that was supposed to be finished in 2008 is still not complete, and won’t be until 2017, according to Amgen, which will be nearly 25 years after the drugs were approved for cancer patients.
And as it turns out, the claims that the drugs lead to improved quality of life have since been withdrawn because they don’t meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) standards of proof.

Higher Doses Increased Patients’ Risk of Dying – Study Results Missing Key Data

In 1998, the Normal Hematocrit Trial was published, which explored giving higher doses of drugs to dialysis patients in order to boost their red blood cell count above those generally achieved with transfusion.2 The study did, in fact, find that patients receiving the higher drug dose were dying or having heart attacks at a higher rate than those receiving the lower dose; the trial was actually halted because of this.
However, rather than sounding an alarm bell, when the study was published the authors downplayed the danger, calling the increased death and heart attack rate “not significant.” And while no difference was found in quality of life between patients receiving the higher or lower dose, this was not noted in the published study. (Four of the study’s eight authors were employed by Amgen, and two have served as consultants.)
As the years went by, health care providers and the drug companies continued to profit from the ever-rising doses of these drugs being prescribed – despite continued studies coming out questioning their safety. It wasn’t until years later, in 2011, that the FDA put out a safety announcement calling for more conservative dosing of the drugs “because of data showing increased risks of cardiovascular events.”3
The Washington Post reported:

“For years, a small Bethesda-based nonprofit think tank, the Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute, had been publishing studies that challenged the conventional enthusiasm for the drug and the government policies that it said promoted their overuse.
Then in November 2006, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that kidney patients targeted for higher doses were linked to higher risks of hospitalization, strokes and death. In December, a group of Danish researchers said that it had stopped a trial of Aranesp in cancer patients because of an increase in deaths and tumor growths. And that was just the beginning of the bad news…”

The FDA Finally Cracks Down

The Danish research seemed to be the breaking point for the anemia drug trio.

“‘Then the FDA cracked down,’ The Washington Post reported. ‘The drugs’ use was ruled out in cancer patients considered curable, it was ruled out in patients considered just slightly anemic, maximum recommended doses were lowered, and the agency told doctors in many cases to use the smallest amount possible to avoid a blood transfusion.

The agency also began to look askance at the alleged benefits, for which the evidence, in retrospect, seemed flimsy. There was no solid proof, under revised FDA guidelines for such measures, that use of the drugs leads to ‘statistically significant’ improvements in happiness and other benefits, the agency said. Those quality-of-life claims, once so critical to the drug’s adoption, were removed from the label.

…Last year, nearly two decades after the Office of the Inspector General first suggested it, the economic incentives to use more of the drugs on patients in dialysis disappeared.”

No major class-action suits have so far been filed against the drugs’ makers; it is often difficult to prove the drugs were the cause of death, particularly because patients who received them were typically already facing chronic health problems. Still, Amgen has put aside a reported $780 million to settle various claims, including some for alleged illegal sales tactics – a paltry compensation to those who have lost loved ones. This is, unfortunately, just the latest drug scandal to be brought to the public’s attention… and it surely won’t be the last.

Pharma Giant Pfizer Fined for Bribing Officials in Eastern Europe and China

Earlier this month, it was revealed that U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its subsidiary Wyeth have been charged with paying off officials, doctors and healthcare professionals in Eastern Europe and China to secure approval and registration of the companies’ products.

The company allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes from 2001 to 2007. The bribery was so blatant and entwined in the sales practices that they even offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be the best customers, according to the head of the SEC’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit. Obviously, such corrupt pay-offs puts honest companies at a disadvantage, James McJunkin, assistant director of the Washington field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation pointed out.4

And that is the over-riding theme we see again and again – these companies are typically NOT honest, yet we trust them with the most sacred possession we have, our health. For punishment, Pfizer will be paying various fines ranging from $15 million to $26 million – barely a slap on the wrist for a company that makes billions of dollars a year.

Big Pharma’s Lack of Ethics, Regard for Patient Safety Seemingly Knows No Bounds

If it seems like the number of lawsuits that Big Pharma is settling – many of them out of court without going to trial – are rising, they are. From Merck’s $950-million Vioxx deal to the latest announcement that Pfizer has made an $896-million settlement with Prempro victims, the deals show no signs of stopping. Most of the lawsuits are being filed in conjunction with, or aided by, the U.S. Department of Justice, many of them originating from former employees-turned-whistleblowers who divulged marketing misdoings by their employers.

The litigation and settlements are starting to rattle the drug industry, which is becoming no stranger to billion-dollar settlements. Most likely near the end of 2012, Johnson & Johnson reportedly will settle for as much $2.2 billion for its fraudulent marketing of the antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

That amount rivals what was the largest health care fraud settlement to date – $2.3 billion paid by Pfizer in 2009, also for illegally promoting uses of four of its drugs. However, now it’s come out that GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to a whopping $3-billion settlement – the largest in U.S. history for health care fraud – with the U.S. government, again for advertising drugs for unapproved uses, along with using gifts to persuade doctors to prescribe the drugs.5

Unfortunately, Americans are disproportionally supporting this behemoth of an industry. Americans, including children, are the most drugged people in the entire world, with the average adult taking 11 prescription drugs – each of which comes with an average of 70 different potential side effects that are then typically addressed with even more drugs…

The situation has gotten out of hand, especially since there’s a mountain of evidence supporting the use of alternatives, and there’s very strong evidence that some “alternative” treatments, such as diet and exercise, are FAR more effective, not to mention safer, than any of the drugs currently in use. My site is chock full of free comprehensive recommendations that can serve as an excellent starting point to break free from this fatally flawed paradigm. The tools I provide on this site will help you to reduce your reliance on the broken health care system, including its overuse of drugs, and provide you with the tools and resources to Take Control of Your Health.

By Dr. Mercola

Do you ever find that eating breakfast – even a “solid” breakfast like steak and eggs – makes you hungry?
You start your day off right, re-fueling after sleep, then sometime around 30 minutes to 2 hours or so later you’re hungry again, as though you never even ate. It’s not all in your head, and you’re not alone.
Many experience a similar reaction to breakfast, and in the featured article nutritional consultant and personal trainer Martin Berkhan may have the answer to why post-breakfast hunger occurs, and what will get you on the right eating track.
This might sound surprising at first, but it actually begins with omitting breakfast altogether.

Why Eating Breakfast Might Make You Hungrier

The interesting aspect about eating first thing in the morning is that it coincides with your circadian cortisol peak, that is, the time of day when your cortisol (stress hormone) levels rise and reach their peak.
The circadian cortisol peak has an impact on your insulin secretion, such that when you eat during this time it leads to a rapid and large insulin release, and a corresponding rapid drop in blood sugar levels, more so than when you eat at other times of the day. If you’re healthy, your blood sugar levels won’t drop to a dangerously low level (such as can occur with hypoglycemia) but they can drop low enough to make you feel hungry.
Berkhan explains:

“In the “glucostatic theory”, Jean Mayer in the 1950’s proposed that low blood sugar served as the primary hunger-triggering signal that prompted us to feed. Later studies have taught us that appetite regulation is way more complicated than that, but there is clearly a role for blood glucose in this equation.
Building on Mayer’s theory, Campfield has proposed a more complex and refined theory, in which he – briefly summarized – suggests that falling blood glucose levels might serve as a hunger signal. This has been echoed elsewhere, in the sense that the speed of which blood glucose falls can serve as an alarm signal in a sense – while a prompt lowering of post-prandial blood glucose levels is desirable, too steep of a decline can be interpreted as danger, and trigger a hunger signal.”

This is more commonly experienced in people who are not insulin resistant (such as those who are overweight or have type 2 diabetes), but rather are lean and “insulin sensitive.” Because the circadian cortisol peak adds another insulin-boosting effect on top of an already insulin-sensitive individual, the low blood sugar, and subsequent hunger, can be more pronounced.
Although this idea goes against the conventional idea of making sure to never skip meals, especially breakfast; Berkhan says that once he ditched breakfast he found it was much easier to control food cravings and hunger throughout the day.

Why I Stopped Eating Breakfast

I have revised my personal eating schedule to eliminate breakfast and restrict the time I eat food to a period of about six to seven hours, which is typically from noon to 6 or 7 pm. Our ancestors rarely had access to food 24/7 like we do today, and it makes sense that our genes are optimized for intermittent fasting.
It takes about six to eight hours for your body to metabolize your glycogen stores and after that you actually start to shift to burning fat. However if you are replenishing your glycogen by eating every eight hours, you make it far more difficult for your body to actually use your fat stores as fuel.
On the days that I exercise in the morning, I will have two scoops of Pure Power Protein about 30 minutes after the workout to provide nutrients, especially leucine, for muscle growth and repair.
Interestingly, since adopting this approach for the past few months I have lost two inches from my waist size and gained three pounds, which means I have lost body fat and gained muscle mass. This has been a personal experiment of mine to see if I can get back to my high school waist size of 32 inches, even though I weighed 20 pounds less back then. A growing body of intriguing research is, in fact, showing that intermittent fasting may be a key weight loss tool.

The Link Between Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss, Health Benefits

When researchers from the Salk Institute fed mice the same high-fat, high-calorie diet but altered when they were able to eat, some striking results occurred. One group had access to food both day and night, while the other group had access to food for only eight hours at night (the most active period for mice). In human terms, this would mean eating only for 8 hours during the day.
Despite consuming the same number of calories, mice that had access to food for only eight hours stayed lean and did not develop health problems like high blood sugar or chronic inflammation.1 They even had improved endurance motor coordination on the exercise wheel. The all-day access group, on the other hand, became obese and were plagued with health problems including:

High cholesterol
High blood sugar
Fatty liver disease
Metabolic problems

Another recent animal study published in the International Journal of Endocrinology showed a beneficial glycemic effect from fasting that resulted in a lower gain in body weight than in non-fasting animals.2 Other research suggests fasting triggers a variety of health-promoting hormonal and metabolic changes similar to those that occur when you exercise.
Fasting is historically commonplace as it has been a part of spiritual practice for millennia. Modern research has also confirmed there are many good reasons to fast intermittently, including:

Normalizing your insulin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health as insulin resistance is a primary contributing factor to nearly all chronic disease, from diabetes to heart disease and even cancer
Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as “the hunger hormone”
Promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production, which plays an important part in health, fitness and slowing the aging process
Lowering triglyceride levels
Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage

There’s also plenty of research showing that fasting has a beneficial impact on longevity in animals. There are a number of mechanisms contributing to this effect. Normalizing insulin sensitivity is a major one, but fasting also inhibits the mTOR pathway, which plays an important part in driving the aging process. Fasting has even been linked to a dramatic rise in human growth hormone (HGH)—1,300 percent in women, and an astounding 2,000 percent in men!3
HGH, commonly referred to as “the fitness hormone,” plays an important role in maintaining health, fitness and longevity, including promotion of muscle growth, and boosting fat loss by revving up your metabolism. The fact that fasting improves a number of potent disease markers also contributes to fasting’s overall beneficial effects on general health.
Exercising while in a fasted state has also been shown to produce many beneficial changes, and it works particularly well to exercise first thing in the morning and delay your first meal until later in the day. To learn more about this strategy, please see this previous article by fitness expert Ori Hofmekler.

Is Skipping Breakfast Right for You?

There’s no cut and dry answer to this question, as everyone responds differently to intermittent fasting.
For example, there is good evidence supporting the recommendation to eat a protein-heavy breakfast if you want to lose weight, and even more so if you exercise first thing in the morning to optimize muscle growth and recovery. But there may be times when you feel like you’ve hit a plateau, and while your diet and exercise routine may be good, the simple act of skipping breakfast and exercising on an empty stomach could be just the thing that will kick start you onto that next level.
Certain health conditions should make you think twice about fasting, including if you’re hypoglycemic or diabetic. Hypoglycemia is a condition characterized by an abnormally low level of blood sugar. Ideally, you should avoid fasting if you’re hypoglycemic, and work on your overall diet to normalize your blood sugar levels first. Then try out one of the less rigid versions of fasting before even considering a full 24-hour fast.
As for pregnant and/or lactating women, I don’t believe fasting would be a wise choice. Your baby needs plenty of nutrients, during and after birth, and there’s no research supporting fasting during this important time. There are several studies on fasting during pregnancy, and all suggest it might be contraindicated, as it can alter fetal breathing patterns, heartbeat, and increase gestational diabetes. It may even induce premature labor.
If you’re healthy and you do decide to give intermittent fasting a try, do so gradually (don’t try to do a 24-hour fast on your first day). Ultimately, you can opt for a 16-, 20-, or 24-hour fast once or twice a week, or try fasting every other day, or simply delaying certain meals, such as skipping breakfast and exercising on an empty stomach.
There are many options, and you can discover what works best for you by listening to your body, and going slow; work your way up to longer fasts if your normal schedule has included multiple meals a day. You can also start out by ending your meals earlier in the evening or late afternoon and fasting overnight while you sleep.
Your body will let you know whether you’ve found the right combination of intermittent fasting for you, as you should experience a boost in energy and likely weight loss, if necessary, once you get started. If you feel weak, lightheaded, very hungry or fatigued while fasting, these are signs that you may be fasting for too long and it’s time to tweak your program.

By Dr. Mercola

Could it be that the number of calories you burn in a day is more dependent on your biological roots than the number of minutes you spend being physically active?
Intriguing new research has indeed shown that it’s possible human metabolic rates are more evolutionary in origin than a reflection of our modern lifestyles – confirming that what you choose to eat could be the most important factor in your risk of becoming overweight or obese.

Hunter-Gatherers Burn the Same Number of Calories as the Average American

The Hadza tribe of Tanzania still leads an ancient lifestyle that includes daily hunting and foraging for berries, roots and fruit. It’s all done on foot, using bows, digging sticks and axes – no guns. Clearly, this is a high level of physical activity that would, according to current beliefs, burn a far greater number of calories than, say, sitting at a computer for eight hours.
What the new research found, however, was that even though physical activity levels were greater among the Hadza people, the average daily energy expenditure was no different than that of Westerners! In other words, even though tribe members spent many hours trekking long distances to hunt and forage for food, they still expended no more calories each day than adults in modern Europe and the United States.
Upending the long-held science of metabolism, the findings indicate that daily energy expenditure may be an “evolved physiological trait largely independent of cultural differences.”
Of course, what this means to modern man is that eating more than the number of calories most human bodies are “wired” for could mean you’ll gain weight – even if you’re exercising religiously. Study author Dr. Herman Pontzer of the department of anthropology at Hunter College, New York told the BBC News:1

“This to me says that the big reason that Westerners are getting fat is because we eat too much – it’s not because we exercise too little. Being active is really important to your health but it won’t keep you thin – we need to eat less to do that.”

Your Diet is More Important Than Exercise for Losing Weight

As I’ve been saying for years, about 80 percent of your ability to reduce excess body fat is determined by what you eat, with the other 20 percent related to exercise and other healthy lifestyle habits such as sleep and stress reduction. What this means is that if your diet is based on sugar/fructose and processed junk food, it’s highly likely that your weight is going to become an issue.
About one-third of U.S. adults fall into the obese category, and a staggering two-thirds or more of Americans are overweight. Dietary culprit #1 is easily fructose, sugars and grains. According to the 2010 Report by the Advisory Committee on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans,2 the top 10 sources of calories in the American diet are:

1.    Grain-based desserts (cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars) 139 calories a day
6.    Alcoholic beverages

2.    Yeast breads, 129 calories a day

7.   Pasta and pasta dishes

3.    Chicken and chicken-mixed dishes, 121 calories a day

8.   Mexican mixed dishes

4.    Soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks, 114 calories a day

9.   Beef and beef-mixed dishes

5.    Pizza, 98 calories a day

10.   Dairy desserts

 
Looking at this list detailing the top sources of calories in the American diet, it’s easy to recognize that the dietary roots of the American weight problem is linked to carbs—sugars (primarily fructose) and grains—in the form of processed foods and sweet drinks. If it’s true that we burn about the same number of calories a day as Tanzanian hunter-gatherers who are physically active at a level only the most dedicated of athletes in America likely attain – then the reason why so many Americans are overweight while the hunger-gatherers are lean comes down to food choices.
I believe the two primary keys for successful weight management are severely restricting carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet, and increasing healthy fat consumption. This will optimize insulin and leptin levels, which is key for maintaining a healthy weight and optimal health. For more details, I suggest you review my Optimized Nutrition Plan, which is a comprehensive and step-by-step guide to help you make health-promoting food and lifestyle choices. This includes:

Limit your fructose to less than 25 grams per day, and, ideally to less than 15 grams per day, as you’re likely consuming ‘hidden’ fructose if you eat processed foods or sweetened beverages
Limit or eliminate all processed foods
Eliminate all gluten, and highly allergenic foods from your diet

Increase the amount of fresh vegetables in your diet, and consider juicing
Eat at least one-third of your food uncooked (raw), or as much as you can manage
Avoid artificial sweeteners of all kinds

Should Your Diet Mimic the Hunter-Gatherers’?

During the Paleolithic period many thousands of years ago, people ate primarily vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots and meat—and a wide variety of it. Today, these staples have been largely replaced with refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, cereal, bread, potatoes and pasteurized milk products… and a much narrower selection of fruits, vegetables, roots and nuts.
While we may consider ourselves to be at the pinnacle of human development, our modern food manufacturing processes have not created a race of super-humans in possession of great health and longevity. Humans today suffer more chronic and debilitating diseases, including obesity, than ever before. And there can be little doubt that our food choices play a major role in this development. By eating foods that are concordant with your genetic ancestry, you can avoid many of the diseases associated with our modern diet, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
You can actually mold your diet around the principles of Paleo eating rather easily by following my nutrition plan.
Episodes of intermittent fasting may also be important, as our ancestors clearly did not have access to food on a 24/7 basis like we do today. I believe it to be one of the most profound interventions for the 21st century. Quite simply, we’ve strayed too far from the foods we are designed to eat, so going back to basics and refocusing your diet on fresh, whole, unprocessed, “real” food can improve just about anyone’s health. In addition to the points noted above, a “healthy diet” is qualified by the following:

Unprocessed whole foods
Organic or grass-fed, and free from additives and genetically modified ingredients
Comes from high-quality, local sources
Carbohydrates primarily come from vegetables (except corn and potatoes, which should typically be avoided)

Should You Exercise Like the Hunter-Gatherers Too?

While your diet may be the driving factor behind your weight, exercise is still an essential component of good health, fitness and longevity. Interestingly, just as a hunter-gatherer diet may be beneficial, there’s a lot to be said about moving like a hunter-gatherer too. Instead of being sedentary for much of the day and then running for an hour on a treadmill, our ancient ancestors combined lots of walking with regular lifting and short bursts of high-intensity activities, and health experts agree that this may be a healthier way to live because this is what your body is “wired” for.
My Peak Fitness program incorporates this essential factor, which is, I believe, why so many people have achieved such great results with it. A summary of what researchers believe might be an ideal exercise prescription would include the following aspects of normal hunger-gatherer living:

A variety of exercises performed regularly (weight training, cardio, stretching, etc.)
Alternate difficult days with easier days
Exercise outdoors, which helps maintain vitamin D levels and improve mood

Peak Fitness sessions performed no more than three times a week
Weight training 2-3x a week
Walk and run on softer, uneven terrain, such as grass and dirt, possibly barefoot or using “simpler shoes that do not drastically restrict foot motion or alter natural foot strike dynamics”

Exercise with a friend to receive social stimulation as well
Ample time for rest after physical exertion
Recreational activities, including dancing and sex

By Dr. Mercola

It’s been nearly 15 years since we started this journey together, when, in 1997, I combined my two primary passions in life ― health and technology― and made it my mission to share exciting new developments in natural health with you. 
Thanks to you, this site has become the world’s No. 1-ranked Natural Health web site for the last seven years, and is now approaching nearly two million subscribers.
My motivation has always been to help make you as healthy as you can possibly be by sharing knowledge and simple tools that allow you to Take Control of Your Health. This involves:

Providing up to date natural health information, research and resources, and
Exposing corporate, government, and mass media propaganda that diverts you away from what is truly best for your health

Mercola.com is funded by me personally, and therefore, I am not handcuffed to any advertisers, silent partners or corporate parents. This gives me the freedom to report the facts as I see them, and base my recommendations on the available research and input from experts, without having to appease advertisers with conflicting interests.
When I offer or recommend products, I do so because I have actively researched them and find they are the best in that category for your health. I ignore substandard products, and products not directly pertinent to your health, regardless of any potential financial upside. I have a top-notch research- and development team to help me in this process.
Through the years the interest for products has grown into a full-fledged online store with well-researched and independently tested health products of the highest quality. Profit generated from the sale of my products goes right back into maintaining and building a better site and providing you with more free tools, videos, special reports, and in-depth articles.

About My Background

For those of you who are unfamiliar with my background, I was trained and am licensed as an osteopathic physician, also known as a DO. DOs are,similar to MDs; they can prescribe medication and perform surgery in all 50 states. DOs and MDs have similar training requiring four years of study in the basic and clinical sciences, and the successful completion of licensing exams.
For 25 years I treated over 25,000 patients and have loads of real world clinical experience to base my comments on how to avoid drugs and surgery using inexpensive natural approaches. I was also a paid speaker for a major drug company when I first started out so I have been to the dark side, and know firsthand how it works..
I am also board-certified in family medicine and served as the chairman of the family medicine department at St. Alexius Medical Center. I am trained in both traditional and natural medicine.
Believe it or not, when I opened my practice in 1985, my philosophy was very traditional. Like most doctors, I focused on treating people’s symptoms rather than addressing the root cause of their illness, so I prescribed drugs most of the time. I was even paid to lecture other doctors about the benefits of hormone replacement therapy. However, my interest in exercise and natural health grew, and in the early 90’s, I became increasingly focused on finding more natural ways to treat my patients.
A bit to my surprise, I quickly discovered I had much greater success getting people healthy this way, compared to the drug therapies I’d prescribed in the past.
By the time I quit seeing patients in order to dedicate my time to this newsletter, I’d already helped tens of thousands of patients address their health problems. I decided I could leverage my insights and help educate many more people on how to take back control of their health through this newsletter than I ever could seeing patients one-by-one. It was a decision I’ve never regretted, and I’m continually gratified by letters and feedback from readers who report feeling better than they’ve ever felt before as a result of their implementing the lifestyle changes.
In November 2009, I was named the top Ultimate Wellness Game Changer by the Huffington Post, an honor that celebrates “100 innovators, visionaries, and leaders in 10 categories who are harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world.” Huffington Post readers voted me to the top to receive this special award. Two of my books, The Great Bird Flu Hoax and The No-Grain Diet, have also gone on to become New York Times Bestsellers.

Milestones Along the Way…

We’ve made many changes at Mercola.com since our humble beginnings in 1997. We’ve gone from sending out a newsletter once a week, to providing in-depth articles on a daily basis, and over the years we’ve helped pave the way in demanding transparency in FDA actions, and exposed the realities of how many health programs are intricately tied to Big Pharma, and the revolving doors existing between government and big industries and corporations like Monsanto and Merck.
We’ve reached tremendous milestones during this 15-year journey, and have consistently shared the news well before the mainstream. Examples of topics we’ve been frontrunners of include:

Exposing the swine flu pandemic for the hoax that it was. That article ended up being among the top five pages viewed on the entire internet the day we posted it, and it crashed all our servers.
Exposing Merck’s drug, Vioxx, for the killer that it was, years before major media started reporting it. I actually issued the first public warning about Vioxx while it was still in clinical trials—a year before it became available by prescription.
Warning about the emergence of statin drugs, which I stated were an accident waiting to happen. My first warnings were issued 11 years ago, in 2001. Fast-forward to a decade later and the truth of this has become quite evident, and the dangers of statins are now well-documented.
I’ve long warned of the dangers of routine mammograms, and in the past couple of years, a number of studies have emerged showing that mammograms appear to do more harm than good, and are not, in fact, saving women’s lives.
Educating about the health benefits of vitamin D and safe sun exposure, and the many benefits of astaxanthin

Health Liberty

Last year we founded the Health Liberty initiative, with a call for you to join me in standing up for your right to control your health.  Today, government and Big Pharma, as well as other multinational corporations like Monsanto, want to take away that right. With our new Health Liberty initiative, we’ve let government and public health agencies know that our bodies belong to us.
The government does not own our bodies, and we don’t want―or need―mandates or Big Brother operatives working hand-in-hand with huge corporations dictating our lives. To that end, through the Health Liberty Initiative, I let you know, last year, that I’m putting my money where my mouth is with an investment of a minimum of a million dollars toward several major health liberty goals:

To abolish the use of mercury in dentistry.
To get the toxic poison fluoride removed from our water systems.
To provide an objective voice of common sense that is lacking from the media and public health officials and educate the public about vaccines; to demand the right to informed consent when it comes to vaccines, and to insist on the freedom to choose whether or not we even want to be vaccinated.
To fight for the right to know and the labeling of genetically engineered foods.

You’ve been a huge help in this last project. Many of you responded to our call for donations to the Money Bomb Against Monsanto, and your donations will help carry on the fight for the labeling of genetically modified foods in California. We believe the California ballot initiative will have the same effect as an FDA regulation when it is passed this November, and be the beginning of the end of genetically engineered foods in the US.
This is one of the most important, if not the most important health freedom project we’ve embarked on since I started this site and I thank you for being part of it.
The movement to demand labeling of genetically modified foods in the U.S. is an absolute necessity. We need to label these foods just like they are labeled in other countries. India, for example, just decided to label genetically modified foods as of January of next year. The Millions Against Monsanto was a start. We are fighting for the right to know what’s in our food. 

My Deepest Thanks to YOU!

Because of your loyal support, we’ve slowly but surely awakened the world to the false promises of the fatally flawed conventional medical view, which claims disease is best treated with drugs, and that the government knows what’s best for your health and should be allowed to dictate your health options.
That model is a prescription for disaster for personal health and freedom.
The truth is, it’s health that counts―and the freedom to choose health over treating symptoms of disease will always be our goal. So it’s with great excitement and hope for the future that I promise you my team and I will continue educating and creating awareness to allow you to make your own informed health choices.
Most of all, after 15 years, I am really excited to see the community that has been created, and I want to personally thank YOU for being here and continuing to be part of the revolution that succeeds when we can All TRULY take control of our own health.

15th Anniversary Special

Many of the changes to this web site have occurred in response to requests and suggestions from you, and I encourage you to continue sharing your thoughts and ideas for how to make it even better as we move forward.
For example, my online store grew in response to your requests for an easy and safe method to purchase high quality health products over the Internet that have been carefully vetted and independently tested.  Mercola.com evolved to give you just that―an online health products store that you can trust. In the next few weeks we will announce yet another significant partnership and milestone that will make your online shopping even more convenient.
To celebrate these first 15 years together, we’re extending a special Anniversary offer to all of you. Just spend $50 or more in our online store beginning August 2, and ending at midnight on August 8, and receive 15% off your entire order. Retail Customers must enter Promotional Code 15ANNIV to recieve the discount.  Premier Customers must enter Promotional Code PRM15YR to receive the discount. (Please note that this sale does not apply to wholesale customers.)

By Dr. Mercola

There’s no shortage of stories detailing conflicts of interest—so many in fact that you may be getting sick and tired of hearing of them. However, this is a truly important issue that must be tackled, and one of the ways of doing that is by exposing it to the harsh light of day. As long as people remain unaware, or turn a blind eye, it will continue unabated.
The price we pay for not paying attention is the loss of health, as the information disseminated by grossly compromised health agencies is skewed in favor of various industries, with Big Pharma leading the pack as one of the most powerful political and governmental influences.
Here, I will review two important revolving-door cases, and while neither is recent news, many of you may still be unaware of them.

Former CDC Director Now President of Merck’s Vaccine Unit

In the summer of 2011, Merck president Julie Gerberding said in a news interview1 that she’s “very bullish on vaccines,” as she recounted the various ways she helps Merck sell its products. What she didn’t divulge was her motivation for leaving her job as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—an agency charged with overseeing vaccines and drug companies—and join Merck in the first place, back in January 2010.
If you don’t see the enormity of the influence her former high-level ties to the CDC can have, just consider the fact that Merck makes 14 of the 17 pediatric vaccines recommended by the CDC, and 9 of the 10 recommended for adults, and while vaccine safety advocates are trying to rein in the number of vaccines given to babies, safety concerns keep falling on deaf ears. The vaccine industry is booming, and it’s become quite clear that profit potential is the driving factor behind it.
One of the reasons for this is because vaccine patents do not expire like drugs do, so each vaccine adopted for widespread use has the potential to make enormous, continuous profits for decades to come. Vaccine makers also enjoy a high degree of immunity against lawsuits—and in the case of pandemic vaccines, absolute immunity—so the financial liability when something goes wrong is very low, compared to drugs.

Gerberding has a Long History of Disregard for Vaccine Safety

Joining a parade of other high-ranking government officials who pass through the revolving doors between government and Big Pharma, Gerberding left a trail of controversy behind her when she left the CDC. While a 2009 article by the Institute for Southern Studies lists a number of them2, I believe they left out the most important ones, namely her misinformation campaign about the pandemic swine flu vaccine, as well as her naive stance on vaccine safety issues in general.
The CDC disseminated extremely exaggerated data on the 2009 H1N1 “pandemic” and urged almost everyone in the U.S. to take the new, untested vaccines. When questions arose, they blocked CBS’s requests for samples of the swine flu cases and added obstacles to getting information. Despite the many dangers that have since been linked to the hastily developed vaccine—including the confirmed link to narcolepsy—the H1N1 vaccine is now part and parcel of the “regular” seasonal flu vaccine, although most people are completely unaware of this fact. And the CDC is now, for the first time ever, urging the seasonal flu vaccine on everyone in the country, from six months’ of age until death.
Even more disturbing, the CDC withheld data on miscarriages from the H1N1 vaccines under Gerberding’s lead, while insisting that pregnant women be put first in line to receive it. This was a dramatic reversal of its own recommendations. More than 3,500 post-vaccination miscarriages may have simply been ignored by the CDC.
One of Merck’s potentially most dangerous vaccines right now is Gardasil; a vaccine that so far has been linked to thousands of adverse events and at least 49 unexplained deaths. It’s a situation that the FDA and CDC have repeatedly denied, even as the adverse reports mount.
Gerberding’s 2004 report to Congress, ‘Prevention of Genital Human Papillomavirus Infection’3 likely played a significant role in getting the controversial vaccine approved in the first place. Needless to say, the approval of this questionable vaccine guaranteed her future employer billions of dollars-worth of profits. Gerberding has also been a staunch defender of thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines, and has consistently denied any links between vaccines and autism.
All in all, Gerberding has repeatedly demonstrated that safety is nowhere on her list of priorities or concerns when it comes to vaccines. It’s easy to see why Merck would want her to head up their vaccine unit. For the rest of us, however, her blatant disregard for proven vaccine safety is bad news indeed.

Former NIH Director Now Heads Sanofi Research Labs

Another former government official who’s switched sides is Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—one of the world’s foremost medical research centers, and an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services. Zerhouni is now head of Sanofi-Aventis’ research labs4. He also is a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; a member of the Board of Trustees at the Mayo Clinic; and is a senior fellow for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program5.
As pointed out in a recent article by Forbes Magazine6, Zerhouni is no stranger to controversies over conflicts-of-interest.
In the fall of 2003, the NIH with Zerhouni at its head faced grave accusations when it came to light that hundreds of its scientists had financial ties to the medical and pharmaceutical industries. According to a 2004 article in the NIH Record7, over 100 scientists did not get approval for their industry activities, even though the rules were so loose virtually all requests to conduct outside work were approved by the agency, without any limits on compensation or hours worked for outside entities.
In one case, an academic scientist was found to have a financial interest in a therapy that ended up killing a patient. The case served as a potent warning of how dangerous such conflicts of interest can be. While Zerhouni managed to emerge from the 2003 debacle looking like a good crisis manager, the following paragraphs from the NIH Record8 are quite telling. Essentially, Zerhouni dissuaded Congress from doing the right thing, which is ban all outside activities of those working for the NIH, limiting the restrictions for conflicts of interest to upper level management only:

“[Zerhouni] disclosed that “initially, Congress truly wanted to ban [all outside activities], and the members of the committee have been very public about that…I was fortunate to be able to make contact with legislators and to help them understand what happened, how it happened, and why [a draconian response] might not be the right thing to do.”
Zerhouni said that over the course of long discussion, a good consensus emerged that formed the basis of NIH’s approach to the issue: stewards of public funds should never be vulnerable even to the perception that their activities could result in private gain. The top concern, he said, is, “How do you keep a true firewall and separation between the public trust — the money the public has given us in trust — and the activities of those who manage that resource?”
He doesn’t think it was well appreciated outside of NIH that the agency “has a dual nature — number one, we are a granting agency, but number two, we are also one of the most advanced, most capable biomedical research institutions in the world.
So we’re both sort of an academic, scientific research place, and yet next to that we’re also a government agency with its own rules and regulations…I said, look, we need to build a firewall around those who have fiduciary responsibility relative to the government, and those who do not. And that’s where we came up with these much more stringent rules for directors, deputy directors, and people who have those authorities, versus those who do not.”

Conflicts of Interest Affect Your Life and Well-Being…

When it comes to medicine, mere disclosure of conflict of interest is not nearly enough. Patients need unbiased advice when it comes to making decisions that can impact their very life, and physicians and scientists with financial ties to the drug industry should not be allowed to participate in broad policy and public-health recommendations in the first place. Likewise, while it’s perfectly legal to engage the revolving door and switch jobs from government agencies to private industry and vice-versa, this practice has become so widespread it has undermined the entire system of checks and balances.
Conflict of interest is rampant not only within the field of medicine, but the revolving doors between government and industry has effectively led to a situation where it’s now extremely difficult, if not impossible, to trust conventional health advice from the federal government—which is supposed to be independent due to this massive collusion between government and industry. Here are a few more examples of the many revolving doors between the pharmaceutical industry and the US government:

The American Cancer Society has close financial ties to both makers of mammography equipment and cancer drugs. Other conflicts of interest include ties to, and financial support from, the pesticide, petrochemical, biotech, cosmetics, and junk food industries—the very industries whose products are the primary contributors to cancer
Drug companies pay seven-figure amounts into FDA coffers to gain approval of their drugs. FDA staff knows that the cash means higher salaries and more perks in the agency budget. (Incidentally, the FDA’s commissioner Margaret Hamburg came straight from the boardroom of America’s largest seller of dental amalgam, Henry Schein, Inc.)
Conflicts of interest are also rampant in a mass vaccination infrastructure that has the same people who are regulating and promoting vaccines also evaluating vaccine safety.
The vaccine industry gives millions for conferences, grants, and medical education classes sponsored by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The vaccine industry even helped build AAP’s headquarters.
President Obama’s nominee at the Department of Homeland Security overseeing bioterrorism defense, Dr. Tara O’Toole, served as a key advisor for a lobbying group funded by a pharmaceutical company that asked the government to spend more money for anthrax vaccines and biodefense research9

There are countless others—so many, in fact, I’m sure you could fill an entire book with examples. These types of blatant conflicts should simply not be tolerated, but they most certainly are. For now the majority still does not understand the pharmaceutical industry’s power and influence over government, and the field of conventional medicine itself, but the tide is beginning to turn, and will continue to do so as more and more people get informed.

What Can You do to Take Control of Your Health?

The good news is that increasing numbers of people are now waking up to these harsh realities, and you, being among those who are informed, can help share this knowledge with others. Remember that the definition of fascism is a government system that has complete power in regimenting all industry and forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism. What we have here is a hybrid—a sort of corporate fascism, where industry has powerful control over government, and forcefully suppresses anything that threatens their monopoly on profits.
Unfortunately, this can be extremely dangerous as it pertains to your health.
Virtually every measurable index indicates that despite the ever-increasing amounts of money invested, if you live in the United States your chance of achieving optimal health through the medical system is only getting worse. While the U.S. spends more than twice the amount on health care as other developed nations, we rank 49th in life expectancy worldwide—far lower than most other developed nations! The time is ripe for you to take control of your health, and this site is full of free comprehensive recommendations that can serve as an excellent, truly independent starting point.
When it comes to your health, you simply cannot accept claims at their face value … you’ve got to dig below the surface and use all the resources available to you, including your own commonsense and reason, true independent experts’ advice and other’s experiences, to determine what medical treatment or advice will be best for you in any given situation. Ultimately, you must come to the realization that YOU are responsible for your, and your family’s health — not me, not your physician, and certainly not any researchers or government health agencies on a drug or vaccine manufacturer’s payroll.
You’ve got to become an active participant in your care and make sure you are making decisions that correspond with your own best judgment, knowledge and experiences.

By Dr. Mercola

Probiotics, along with a host of other microorganisms, are so crucial to your health that researchers have compared them to “a newly recognized organ.” In fact, your microflora – a term used to describe the bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microbes that make up your microbial inner ecosystem – impact far more than your digestive tract.
Mounting research indicate the bacterial colonies residing in your gut may play key roles in the development of cancer, asthma, allergies, obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases and even brain-, behavioral- and emotional problems like ADHD, autism and depression.
Recent research also shows that your diet, and subsequently the microorganisms present in your gut, can affect how well you age.
The study was published in the journal Nature1, and some of the findings were surprising: the microflora in persons in long-term care not only was less diverse, but significantly correlated with measures of frailty, co-morbidity, markers of inflammation and other factors that contribute to aging and death. According to the authors, the implications of these findings are that senior citizens may need certain dietary supplements to improve their microbial health.

Probiotics Become Increasingly Important as You Age

Previous research has shown that around age 60, there is a significant drop in the number of bacteria in your gut. According to Dr Sandra McFarlane from the microbiology and gut biology group at the University of Dundee, people over 60 typically have about 1,000-fold less “friendly” bacteria in their guts compared to younger adults, and increased levels of disease-causing microbes2, making them more susceptible to gastrointestinal infections and bowel conditions like IBS.
As you age, your cellular immunity also declines.3 These are the white cells that are absolutely critical to your ability to fight infection and life-threatening diseases such as cancer. A nine-week long New Zealand study4 of seniors between the ages of 63 and 84 found that consumption of the probiotic strain known as Bifidobacterium lactis resulted in increases in both the number and disease-fighting capacity of white cells. In fact, the greatest improvement was seen in seniors with the worst immune system responses prior to the study.

Your Gut Bacteria Help Protect Against Food-Borne Illness

Other recent research has found that Lactobaccilus reuteri, one of the more than 180 species of Lactobacilli, commonly found in the human gut, can help protect against foodborne infection5. However, just because a study has not been done with a particular strain does not mean it is not effective.  These studies need to be paid for and most are not done unless there is a potential to commercialize a strain.  Nevertheless, according to an article in the Arizona State University news blog:

“Their results demonstrate that this beneficial or probiotic organism, which produces an antimicrobial substance known as reuterin, may protect intestinal epithelial cells from infection by the foodborne bacterial pathogen Salmonella. The study examines for the first time the effect of reuterin during the infection process of mammalian intestinal cells and suggests the efficacy of using probiotic bacteria or their derivatives in future therapies aimed at thwarting Salmonella infection.
… The results of this study may provide fundamental knowledge for development of new probiotics and other functional food based strategies… Intestinal infections by non-typhoidal Salmonella strains induce diarrhea and gastroenteritis, and remain a leading source of foodborne illness worldwide. Such infections are acutely unpleasant but self-limiting in healthy individuals. For those with compromised immunity however, they can be deadly and the alarming incidence of multi-drug resistant Salmonella strains has underlined the necessity of more effective therapeutics.
The use of benign microorganisms offers a promising new approach to treating infection from pathogens like Salmonella and indeed, L. reuteri has been shown to help protect against gastrointestinal infection and reduce diarrhea in children.”

Remember, 90 Percent of the Genetic Material in Your Body is NOT Yours

For every cell in your body there are about ten bacterial cells. The microflora in your gut plays an active role in a wide variety of diseases, and, naturally, it stands to reason they affect your health status throughout your life. For the reasons mentioned above, the importance of probiotics increase with advancing age, but maintaining a healthy gut is really essential from birth onward.
If you want to dig into the research, check out the Human Microbiome Project (HMP)6, whose goal is to characterize microbial communities found at multiple human body sites and to look for correlations between changes in the microbiome and human health. There you can find 15 demonstration projects investigating the role of microflora and conditions like psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, obesity, acne and more. A recent article in The Hindu quotes Dr. Julie Segre, senior investigator at the U S National Institute of Health7:

“The Microbiome project is a process of discovery. We need to start thinking of ourselves as super-organisms. This is the second genome – the bacterial genomes as well as the human genomes, all of that is part of the true genetic content of a human.”
… The hope is that this research will pave the way for more personalized treatments which could help get our bacterial communities get back on the right track. The Microbiome project sees any one person’s microbes as one community. So rather than studying them individually, they are studying the microbes and their genetic material collectively.”

Microbes Affect Your Health in a Myriad of Ways

Researchers have also discovered that your gut bacteria play key roles in:

Behavior: A study published in Neurogastroenterology & Motility8 found that mice lacking in gut bacteria behave differently from normal mice, engaging in what would be referred to as “high-risk behavior.” This altered behavior was accompanied by neurochemical changes in the mouse brain. According to the authors:

“Bacteria colonize the gut in the days following birth, during a sensitive period of brain development, and apparently influence behavior by inducing changes in the expression of certain genes.”

Gene Expression: Your gut flora is a very powerful epigenetic variable. As noted above, researchers have also discovered that the absence or presence of gut microorganisms during infancy permanently alters gene expression.
Through gene profiling, they discerned that absence of gut bacteria altered genes and signaling pathways involved in learning, memory, and motor control. This suggests that gut bacteria are closely tied to early brain development and subsequent behavior. These behavioral changes could be reversed as long as the mice were exposed to normal microorganisms early in life. But once the germ-free mice had reached adulthood, colonizing them with bacteria did not influence their behavior.
In a similar way, probiotics have also been found to influence the activity of hundreds of your genes, helping them to express in a positive, disease-fighting manner.
Diabetes: Bacterial populations in the gut of diabetics9 differ from non-diabetics, according to a study from Denmark. In particular, diabetics had fewer Firmicutes and more plentiful amounts of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria, compared to non-diabetics. The study also found a positive correlation for the ratios of Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes and reduced glucose tolerance. According to the authors: “The results of this study indicate that type 2 diabetes in humans is associated with compositional changes in intestinal microbiota.”

Sugar nourishes pathogenic bacteria, yeast, and fungi in your gut, which may actually harm you more than its ability to promote insulin resistance.  One of the major results of eating a healthy diet (low in sugars and grains; high in whole raw foods and fermented or cultured foods) is that it allows your beneficial gut bacteria to flourish, and they secondarily perform the real “magic” of restoring your health. There are other studies that show optimized gut flora can help prevent type 1 diabetes.
Autism: Establishment of normal gut flora in the first 20 days or so of life plays a crucial role in appropriate maturation of your baby’s immune system. Hence, babies who develop abnormal gut flora are left with compromised immune systems and are particularly at risk for developing disorders such as ADHD, learning disabilities and autism, particularly if they are vaccinated before restoring balance to their gut flora.
To get a solid understanding of just how this connection works, I highly recommend reviewing the information shared by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in this previous interview.

Download Interview Transcript
Obesity: The make-up of gut bacteria tends to differ in lean vs. obese people. This is one of the strongest areas of probiotic research to date, and you can read about a handful of such studiesin my previous article, Probiotics May Help Fight Obesity. The bottom line is that restoring your gut flora is an important consideration if you’re struggling to lose weight. Studies have also documented the beneficial effects of probiotics on a wide variety of disorders, including the following10:

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
Constipation and diarrhea

Colon cancer
Eradication of H. pylori infection, which is associated with ulcers
Vaginal infections

Strengthened immune response
Eczema
Rheumatoid arthritis

Cirrhosis of the liver
Hepatic encephalopathy
Chronic fatigue syndrome

How to Optimize Your Gut Flora

A healthy diet is the ideal way to maintain a healthy gut, and regularly consuming traditionally fermented or cultured foods is the easiest way to ensure optimal gut flora. Healthy options include:

Fermented vegetables of all kinds  (cabbage, carrots, kale, collards, celery spiced with herbs like ginger and garlic)
Lassi (an Indian yogurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner)
Tempeh

Fermented raw milk such as kefir or yogurt, but NOT commercial versions, which typically do not have live cultures and are loaded with sugars that feed pathogenic bacteria
Natto
Kim chee

 
Just make sure to steer clear of pasteurized versions, as pasteurization will destroy many of the naturally occurring probiotics. For example, most of the “probiotic” yogurts you find in every grocery store these days are NOT recommended. Since they’re pasteurized, they will be associated with all of the problems of pasteurized milk products instead. They also typically contain added sugars, high fructose corn syrup, dyes, and/or artificial sweeteners; all of which are detrimental to your health.
Consuming traditionally fermented foods will also provide you with the following added boons:

Important nutrients: Some fermented foods are excellent sources of essential nutrients such as vitamin K2, which is important for preventing arterial plaque buildup and heart disease. Cheese curd, for example, is an excellent source of both probiotics and vitamin K2. You can also obtain all the K2 you’ll need (about 200 micrograms) by eating 15 grams, or half an ounce, of natto daily. They are also a potent producer of many B vitamins
Optimizing your immune system: Probiotics have been shown to modulate immune responses via your gut’s mucosal immune system, and have anti-inflammatory potential. Eighty percent of your immune system is located in your digestive system, making a healthy gut a major focal point if you want to maintain optimal health, as a robust immune system is your number one defense system against ALL disease
Detoxification: Fermented foods are some of the best chelators available. The beneficial bacteria in these foods are very potent detoxifiers, capable of drawing out a wide range of toxins and heavy metals
Cost effective: Fermented foods can contain 100 times more probiotics than a supplement, so just adding a small amount of fermented foods to each meal will give you the biggest bang for your buck
Natural variety of microflora: As long as you vary the fermented and cultured foods you eat, you’ll get a much wider variety of beneficial bacteria than you could ever get from a supplement

How to Identify a High Quality Probiotic Supplement

That said, if you don’t enjoy the taste of fermented foods, taking a probiotic supplement is definitely advised. However, before you give up on fermented foods, it is best to start with small amounts like half a teaspoon and use them as a condiment integrated with your food, like as a salad dressing.  If you still don’t want to use them then it is important to note that while I do not generally advocate taking a lot of supplements, a high quality probiotic is an exception. I recommend looking for a probiotic supplement that fulfills the following criteria, to ensure quality and efficacy:

The bacteria strains in the product must be able to survive your stomach acid and bile, so that they reach your intestines alive in adequate numbers
The bacteria strains must have health-promoting features
The probiotic activity must be guaranteed throughout the entire production process, storage period and shelf life of the product

Through my years of clinical practice, I’ve found that no single probiotic supplement works for everyone. However, more people seem to respond favorably to Lactobacillus sporogenes than any other probiotic, so when in doubt, that’s a great place to start.

By Dr. Mercola

I’ve long said that the best strategy for achieving health is avoiding a visit to your doctor in the first place. Why? Because in many cases you will simply leave the office with a prescription or two, which will rarely solve your health problem. Most doctor visits result in “solutions” that only suppress your symptoms, often causing other side effects and problems.
Rather than advise patients about the true underlying conditions and real solutions that lead to health, they are left putting toxic Band-Aids on gaping wounds. As shown in the slideshow above, and as I detail in depth below, there are actually many reasons why avoiding your doctor may be in the best interest of your health …

1. Annual Pap Smears

Many physicians still advise women to receive yearly pap smears, but the newest guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force specifically recommend against this. The new recommendations call for women to undergo PAP screening only once every three years, beginning at age 21 and ending around age 65.
When testing is more frequent, or started before age 21, there’s a chance of detecting human papillomavirus (HPV), and associatedlesions, more frequently. If a physician detects such lesions, they will assume they are “pre-cancerous” and treat them accordingly. However, most HPV infections and associated low grade squamous intra-epithelial lesions clear up on their own without treatment,1 while the treatment itself can lead to cervical incompetence and/or miscarriage in the future. Since most cases of HPV clear up on their own, this is a case where the treatment may do more harm than good.
That said, PAP smears (which screen for cervical cancer typically associated with HPV) are one of the best tools for preventing cervical cancer deaths – but getting one every year is likely unnecessary.
Evidence shows that screening women for cervical cancer more frequently than every three years does not detect more cancer. Women who have not been exposed to HPV are not at risk for cervical cancer. Further, even if you are exposed and the infection does not clear up on its own (which is not common), it can take 10 years before it progresses to cancer. Cervical cancers are very slow growing, which is why less frequent PAP screens are still effective.
Despite the new PAP screen guidelines, most physicians continue to recommend annual PAP screening to their patients, mostly because they (and their patients) are in the habit of doing so. Some physicians also fear their patients will not come in for annual exams and other screening if the PAP is not required every year.
There is also a good deal of evidence that the revised PAP guidelines are part of a plan to rescue Gardasil (HPV) vaccine sales, which are embarrassingly low. The HPV vaccine is a heavily promoted and very expensive vaccine, but it has been a flop, with less than 27 percent of women opting to receive it, and reports of serious adverse effects continuing to pour in.

2. Mammograms

Only about 1 in 8 women whose breast cancer was identified during a routine mammogram actually had their lives “saved” by the screening, a recent analysis estimated2 – and this does not accurately account for how many women will fall victim to mammogram-induced breast cancer.
Using breast cancer data from The National Cancer Institute and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers calculated a 50-year-old woman’s likelihood of developing breast cancer in the next 10 years, the odds the cancer would be detected by mammography, and her risk of dying from the cancer over 20 years.
They found that a mammogram has, at best, only a 13 percent probability of saving her life, and that the probability may actually be as low as 3 percent. No matter what analyses they used, including considering women of different ages, the probability of a mammogram saving a life remained below 25 percent. Researchers concluded:
“Most women with screen-detected breast cancer have not had their life saved by screening. They are instead either diagnosed early (with no effect on their mortality) or overdiagnosed.”
This bears repeating:
Mammograms often diagnose lesions or tumors that may never threaten a woman’s life. They also often result in false positives that lead to over-treatment, i.e. misdiagnosed women often undergo unnecessary mastectomies, lumpectomies, radiation treatments and chemotherapy, which can have a devastating effect on both the quality and length of their lives. Plus, a mammogram uses ionizing radiation, which in and of itself can either induce or contribute to the development of breast cancer.

3. Cold and Flu

Think it’s wise to go to a conventional physician for these? Think again. Thanks to routine over-prescription of antibiotics, and the prescription of inappropriate antibiotics, you’re likely to walk away after being told to take a drug you don’t actually need.
Antibiotics do NOT work against viruses, hence they are useless against colds and flu’s. Unfortunately antibiotics are vastly over-prescribed for this purpose. If you have a cold or flu, remember that unless you have a serious secondary bacterial pneumonia, an antibiotic will likely do far more harm than good, because whenever you use an antibiotic, you’re increasing your susceptibility to developing infections with resistance to that antibiotic — and you can become the carrier of this resistant bug, and can spread it to others.
The first thing you want to do when you feel yourself coming down with a cold or flu is to avoid ALL sugars, artificial sweeteners, and processed foods. Sugar is particularly damaging to your immune system — which needs to be ramped up, not suppressed, in order to combat an emerging infection. This includes fructose from fruit juice, and all types of grains (as they break down into sugar (glucose) in your body).
Ideally, you must address nutrition, sleep, exercise and stress issues the moment you first feel yourself getting a bug. Getting plenty of high quality sleep will be crucial to your recovery. This is when immune-enhancing strategies will be most effective. In addition, the research is quite clear that the higher your vitamin D level, the lower your risk of contracting colds, flu, and other respiratory tract infections. I strongly believe you could avoid colds and influenza entirely by maintaining your vitamin D level in the optimal range.

4. Cholesterol

Many doctors are unaware that a high-fat diet is NOT the cause of heart disease. They are fooled into believing that total cholesterol is an accurate predictor of heart disease. If you visit your physician and you have high cholesterol, you’re likely to be told two things:

Take a statin cholesterol-lowering drug and
Don’t eat saturated fat.

While statin drugs do lower cholesterol very effectively, cholesterol is not the culprit in heart disease. Plus a report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims that no study has ever proven that statins improve all-cause mortality3 — in other words, they don’t prolong your life any longer than if you’d not taken them at all. And rather than improving your life, they actually contribute to a deterioration in the quality of your life, destroying muscles and endangering liver, kidney and even heart function. The best ways to optimize your cholesterol levels and your heart health have to do with lifestyle measures, including eating healthy minimally processed fats and avoid highly processed vegetable fats and oils that are loaded with toxic omega-6 fats.

5. Depression

Once again, you’re more likely to leave the doctor’s office with a prescription for a drug that could be more dangerous than the problem itself. Every year, 230 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States. The psychiatric industry itself is a $330 billion industry—not bad for an enterprise that offers little in the way of cures.
Despite all of these prescriptions, more than one in 20 Americans are depressed.4 Of those depressed Americans, 80 percent say they have some level of functional impairment, and 27 percent say their condition makes it extremely difficult to do everyday tasks like work, activities of daily living, and getting along with others.
The use of antidepressant drugs—medicine’s answer for depression—doubled in just one decade, from 13.3 million in 1996 to 27 million in 2005.
If these drugs are so extensively prescribed, then why are so many people feeling so low?
Because they don’t work at addressing the cause.
Research has confirmed that antidepressant drugs are no more effective than sugar pills. Some studies have even found that sugar pills may produce BETTER results than antidepressants! Personally, I believe the reason for this astounding finding is that both pills work via the placebo effect, but the sugar pills produce far fewer adverse effects.
Many people forget that antidepressants come with a slew of side effects, some of which are deadly. Approximately 750,000 people attempt suicide each year in the US, and about 30,000 of those succeed. Taking a drug that is unlikely to relieve your symptoms and may actually increase your risk of killing yourself certainly does not seem like a good choice. In addition, since most of the treatment focus is on drugs, many safe and natural treatment options that DO work — like exercise, the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), vitamin D, and proper nutrition — are completely ignored.

6. High Blood Pressure

The definition of what constitutes high blood pressure expanded greatly in 2003, so that drug companies could sell drugs loaded with side effects to 45 million extra people. Because the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (rife with drug industry conflicts of interest) decided that what were in actuality relatively low blood pressure readings were a risk for heart disease, millions more over the years, were suddenly labeled abnormal, and in need of “treatment” for a condition that didn’t exist in medical literature until that panel met.
Uncontrolled high blood pressure is a very serious health concern that can lead to heart disease and increase your risk of having a stroke. The good news though is that following a healthy nutrition plan, along with exercising and implementing effective stress reduction techniques will normalize blood pressure in most people.

7. PSA Tests for Prostate Cancer

These tests actually reveal very little, and an irrelevant positive result will likely lead to a biopsy that comes with infection risk. The prostate-specific antigen test (PSA test), analyzes your blood for prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a substance produced by your prostate gland. When higher-than-normal levels of PSA are detected, it is believed that cancer is present. However, PSA screening barely has any impact on mortality rates from prostate cancer. As a result, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force will soon recommend that men not get screened for prostate cancer.
Today, many experts agree that PSA testing is unreliable at best and useless at worst for accurately diagnosing prostate cancer. Many also agree that routine PSA blood tests often lead to over-diagnosis of prostate cancer, resulting in unnecessary treatments. Similar to mammograms, the PSA screen has become little more than an up-sell technique. The false positive rate is high, and the bulk of the harm is a result of subsequent unnecessary treatments.
Diet is actually a factor that can greatly impact your prostate health and help prevent enlarged prostate and prostate cancer, but many physicians fail to address this.
You’ll want to eat as much organic (preferably raw) food as possible, and liberally include fresh herbs and spices, such as ginger. Make sure to limit carbohydrates like sugar/fructose and grains as much as possible to maintain optimal insulin levels, which will help reduce your cancer risk in general. Highly processed or charcoaled meats, pasteurized dairy products, and synthetic trans fats correlate with an increased risk for prostate cancer and should also be avoided.

8. Inappropriate and Unwise Dietary Advice

Most doctors are clueless about what constitutes a healthy diet. As such, they will recommend health catastrophes like artificial sweeteners, vegetable oils in lieu of butter, and fat-free pasteurized dairy products. Most will also neglect to tell you about the foods you could be eating more of to optimize your health, like fermented vegetables, raw dairy products, healthy fats (like saturated and animal-based omega-3s), grass-fed beef and more.
In addition, most are ignorant about the importance of how to cook your food – most foods are best consumed when raw or only lightly cooked, and this includes animal proteins like eggs and meat. A discussion about food quality is essential to health (i.e. getting your meat from a small local farmer instead of a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO)) but you will almost never hear this from your family physician. Wondering how to truly eat healthy? See my nutrition plan for a comprehensive (and free) guide.

9. Prescription Drugs Might Kill You and They Don’t Address the Cause of the Problem

A drug prescription is usually a Band-Aid that gets nowhere near the root cause of illness. And many drugs are dangerous. Last year an analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control CDC) revealed that deaths from properly prescribed drugs now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States! And when you add in deaths attributable to other medical care modalities, like hospital admissions and surgery, the modern medical system becomes the leading cause of death and injury in the United States.
Authored in two parts by Gary Null, PhD, Carolyn Dean, MD ND, Martin Feldman, MD, Debora Rasio, MD, and Dorothy Smith, PhD, the comprehensive Death by Medicine article described in excruciating detail how everything from medical errors to adverse drug reactions to unnecessary procedures caused more harm than good. That was in 2003. In 2010, an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine found that, despite efforts to improve patient safety in the past few years, the health care system hasn’t changed much at all.5
For one of many examples, the birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin, which have been endorsed by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee, contain a drug called drospirenone that makes women who take it nearly seven times more likely to develop thromboembolism. This is an obstruction of a blood vessel that can lead to deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, heart attack and death.
Why did the FDA approve this dangerous drug? It turns out that at least four members of the advisory committee have either done work for the drugs’ manufacturers or licensees, or received research funding from them. According to the Alliance for Natural Health:

“Each of those four panelists who received money from the pill’s manufacturer voted in favor of the pill. Interestingly, the committee’s ruling that the drug’s benefit outweighs the risks was decided by a four-vote margin. Ironically, while the FDA allowed voting by advisors with business connections to drospirenone, the agency barred … Sidney M. Wolfe, on the grounds that he … had advised his readers not to take Yaz based on several years of data.”

10. Your Doctor Might Not Even Tell You the Truth

A U.S. telephone survey found that 79 percent of Americans trust their doctor.6 But a recent survey of 1,900 physicians revealed that some are not always open or honest with their patients The results were less than impressive, to put it mildly:

One-third of physicians did not completely agree with disclosing serious medical errors to patients
One-fifth did not completely agree that physicians should never tell a patient something untrue
Amazingly 40% believed that they should hide their financial relationships with drug and device companies to patients
Ten percent said they had told patients something untrue in the previous year

When making health care decisions, you should certainly get your physicians’ advice — that’s what you’re paying them for, after all. Hopefully you have chosen a health care provider who has similar philosophies about health as you do, and whose expertise you can trust. But remember that when making health care decisions, you must be your own advocate; it’s important to ask questions before opting for tests, procedures or treatments, and it’s your decision if you’d rather opt for less medical intervention while choosing a more natural way of healing your body.
Ultimately, the more you take responsibility for your own health — in the form of nurturing your body to prevent disease — the less you need to rely on the “disease care” that passes for health care in the United States. If you carefully follow some basic health principles — simple things like exercising, eating whole foods, sleeping enough, getting sun exposure, reducing stress in your life, and nurturing personal relationships — you will drastically reduce your need for conventional medical care, which in and of itself will reduce your chances of suffering ill side effects.
But in the event you do need medical care, seek a health care practitioner who will help you move toward complete wellness by helping you discover and understand the hidden causes of your health challenges … and create a customized and comprehensive — i.e. holistic — treatment plan for you.

By Dr. Mercola

Ellen Brown is a civil litigation attorney who has written 11 books on health and the politics of health, including the Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System (which focuses on the money and banking system itself), and Forbidden Medicine, which traces the suppression of natural health treatment back to the corrupting influences of our financial system.
In the course of writing her books, Brown was asked to join the legal team of Jimmy Keller, an alternative cancer therapist in Tijuana, who was jailed for, as she puts it, “the alleged crime of representing that he had a high rate of cure for cancer.”

“He always showed the movie World Without Cancer to his patients, which is by Ed Griffin,” she says, “so I read the book World Without Cancer, and it linked the cancer industry—the cancer cartel, basically—with the banking cartel. It showed they had the same roots.
It went back to the Rockefeller-Morgan cartel at the turn of the 20th century. Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie supported drugs, funded the medical schools, and basically got the homeopathic schools shut down. (In the 19th century, the homeopathic schools were the leading health treatment.)
… I realized in the course of that that if you wanted to get to crux of the problem, you had to deal with banking, because that was actually where they got their power. They got their power from the power to create money.”

The Shocking Truth about Our Money System, and the Power it Wields Over Your Health

As Brown explains, the shocking truth about our money system is that virtually all of our money is created by banks when they make loans. It’s not created by the government, as most people believe. The way it works is that, while the banks create the principal, they don’t create the interest, so they’re always getting more back than they’re putting out.

“The thing that most people don’t realize is that banks don’t just take in people’s money, and then lend it out again,” Brown explains. “What they do is, literally, every time they make a loan, they create that money on their books. They need the deposits in order to clear the checks, but they’re basically double-counting the money.
… When you’ve put your money in the bank and then you go to withdraw it, they never say, “Sorry, we just lent your money out to your neighbor for 30 years. You’ll have to come back later.” No, they always give you your money. That’s because your deposit’s still there at the same time that they’ve lent it out. So, if you need the money, then they’ll borrow it from somewhere else. But where do they borrow it from? Basically, from the very bank that the check just went into from the loan that they just made.
It’s like a big check-kiting scheme, where you create the money; it goes into another bank; and then you borrow it back. The banks can borrow it back at 0.25 percent at the moment, which is the Fed funds rate. And of course, they lend it out at five percent, or on credit cards 18 percent… or outrageous industry rates. They get a huge spread on money that didn’t actually exist until they created the loan.
… Their control over money is how they manage to corner politics, buy up the media, and basically monopolize the field.”

The Links Between Big Banks and the Drug Industry

Two good primers if you want to learn more about the banking system and the link between the pharmaceutical industry and banking, are The Creature from Jekyll Island, and World Without Cancer.
To me, this link between banking and Big Pharma intuitively makes sense. It was just earlier this year that I came to appreciate what Brown is talking about here. While the focus of this web site is on the damage done by the drug companies, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the banking system is the behemoth backing the Goliath-like drug industry.
As explained by Brown, the drug connection goes back to the 19th century. John D. Rockefeller’s father was actually, literally, a snake-oil salesman.

“He was a patent remedy seller. The drugs, of course, are oil-based, and John D. Rockefeller was an oil magnate. He also had a bank. So did J.P. Morgan. The drug industry—the patent remedy industry—was in competition with the natural herbal remedies, and the homeopathic remedies. And the way they prevailed in the whole system was that, first of all, they funded the American Medical Association—the AMA Journal, which got their funding from advertising. And if your drug was advertised in the AMA Journal, then you’ve got the AMA’s seal of endorsement… It was a cartel.”

Where the Federal Reserve Fits in

In this interview, Brown discusses far more than I have included here, so to learn more, I urge you to listen to this fascinating interview in its entirety. Of course, it’s virtually impossible to discuss the financial system without touching on the Federal Reserve. According to Brown, there’s an important distinction that needs to be understood regarding the role of the Federal Reserve, because while both banks and the Fed are creating money out of thin air, there are some differences:

“The Federal Reserve is the lender of last resort, so it is allowed to [create money] without actually backing the money from anywhere… There are basically two banking systems.
This is also very complicated, but there is what’s called ‘base money,’ and that’s created by the Federal Reserve. Those are the banks’ reserves. At one time the reserves were gold. You actually, literally, had to keep a certain amount of gold for your depositors, who could cash in their dollars for gold. But in 1933, everybody stopped trusting the banks, because they knew they didn’t have enough gold, so there were runs on the banks. At that time the dollar was 40 percent backed by gold. So, every time somebody would bring two dollars and cash it in for gold, the bank had to call in three dollars’ worth of loans. The whole money supply was just closing in on itself and collapsing.
That’s why Roosevelt finally took the dollar off the gold standard.
Then, to back the dollar, the Fed created “base money” for the banks to use as reserves.  But it’s a separate system. We don’t actually get to borrow the Fed’s reserves. That’s the bankers’ money. The bankers’ bank is the Federal Reserve.” 

The Economics of Our Medical System and the Drug Cartel

While at UCLA law school, Brown wrote an article about the economics of California’s regulations on doctors and other medical professions, and how these regulations effectively eliminate all competition to the conventional medical paradigm.  It may not be immediately apparent, but the medical profession is very cleverly manipulated and influenced in such a way as to bolster profits for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s a tightly controlled profession, and any competition—such as alternative or integrative treatments related to natural health—is more or less illegal. You cannot claim to treat disease without a medical license.

 “I think what’s even worse than that is they control information,” Brown says. “People don’t even know that there are alternative remedies. Or if they do hear about them, they think it’s quackery, and that it’s been disproven, because that’s what the conventional media says [which is largely owned by the same banking cartel as the pharmaceutical industry is]. You really have to dig to find out what’s out there, and how well natural remedies work. Also, you have to dig to find out how drugs don’t work, and how they’ve been over-hyped…”

How Can You Protect Your Health Freedom and Personal Liberty?

When asked to provide some recommendations for what you can do right now to take control of your own health, and how we can win this war on health freedom and personal liberty, Brown shares the following:

“I think the first thing you need to do… is get on the Internet and research what’s [been] done before; what the downside of the drug treatment that they’re trying to recommend for your condition is, for example.
Then we really seriously need to get organized. I was in the alternative healthcare movement for a long time. It seemed to me that the medical doctors were all literally brainwashed… They keep you up all night, because you have to do your rounds… and then, you’re force-fed this information. You want to pass the test; you haven’t had enough sleep; you’re looking at this data, and it says, “All right, give this drug for this condition.” You just accept that, because you’re sort of dazed, locked in a medical school.
The doctors are all trained in one discipline…
They won’t testify against each other in court. And so they’re like this strong wall of solidarity versus all the alternative people, who are all like mavericks and geniuses in their way but they all think the others are quacks. We need to, in some way, form a movement where we have to agree on some basics and worry about the details later. We need a big umbrella that accepts what we’re going to [focus on]… We want something that’s for the body; that helps the body do what it’s trying to do.
Another thing is the cost. American medicine is the costliest in the world, and we do not get the best results. Body-supporting therapies are cheaper than the drugs that are trying to block what the body’s trying to do. Things that block what the body’s trying to do make you unhealthier, which means you have to add more treatment, which means you have to be hospitalized more often, and which means you run up more bills.
We could save a lot of money if our whole approach was to support what the body’s trying to do.
Natural treatments would be much cheaper for the whole country. We cannot afford our healthcare right now, so something has to be done about this whole parasitic medical system; the parasitic banking system; and the parasitic insurance scheme that is draining the profits out of our economy.”

An Alternative Banking Plan that Could Save America, and the World

Brown is also the president of The Public Banking Institute, which stands poised to serve as a powerful part of the solution to the financial debacle we’re currently in, not just in the US, but worldwide. From her research, she came to the conclusion that the main problem plaguing our financial system is the massive interest going into private coffers, and the remedy for that is to replace the privately owned banking system with a public one. She explains:

“After the whole system collapsed in the fall of 2008,… I became aware that there was one state that actually escaped the credit crisis, and that was the only state that had a publicly owned bank—North Dakota. The Bank of North Dakota is owned by the state. They’ve had this bank in place since 1919.
… The private banks are always siphoning off this extra money in interest that they don’t create as principal when they make loans.  But if you have a public system—if banking [and]… credit were a public utility just like water should be, or electricity or highways… these are all blood systems of the economy—if money and credit were considered public utility, owned by the public, then the interest would go back to the public.
That is a sustainable system.
The original model is Benjamin Franklin’s Colony of Pennsylvania, which owned its own bank. The government both printed money, the way all the colonies did… [and] it had a bank. So the bank lent the money, and the money came back to the government. The interest was sufficient to fund the government. During that period, the colonists paid no taxes, they had no government debt, and prices did not inflate. It was a sustainable model.”

From that idea, the Public Banking Institute developed the Return to Prosperity Plan.
It sounds incredible, but 40 percent of the cost of everything we buy is interest, according to research by Margrit Kennedy, a German researcher. This interest is entirely hidden, so you don’t know you’re paying it. This is because at every stage of development of a product, interest is paid, again and again. For example, a business must typically take out a loan in order to pay for raw materials and the workforce before it can have a final product to sell. The same goes for each of the businesses in the supply chain, and for each and every retailer.

“If the state owned the bank… then the people get the interest back…” Brown explains. “For example, in North Dakota, the state’s revenues, by law, go into the Bank of North Dakota, so they have a huge deposit base and a huge capital base….
That means the state could save 40 percent on its projects, which means we could either cut taxes by 40 percent, or we could have 40 percent more services provided with the same amount of taxes that we pay now.  We just have to change bankers. Instead of banking with Wall Street, we should be banking in our own bank (where we get the profits) or cooperative system (where it all comes back). Banking, instead of feeding off the economy, should feed the economy.  And it could be a sustainable system.”

More Information

According to Brown, 18 states have now introduced bills of one sort or another for state-owned banks. And the Public Banking Institute, which is run entirely by volunteers, is continuing to work on furthering this plan.

“We have a very active group,” she says. “People get really excited about this idea. We’ve got representatives all over the country and groups you can join if you want.”

To learn more, please refer to their web site.
I’ve long been aware of the challenges with our whole economic model, but I’ve only recently begun to appreciate the connection between the banking industry and health, as discussed in this interview. Again, I highly recommend listening to it in its entirety, or reading through the transcript, to get a broader view.
The problem is so vast, and that’s true for just about every problem we have these days. But a large portion of it can be traced back to an unsustainable, unscrupulous, parasitic, private banking system that does not benefit those who use it! It has become a fundamental pernicious evil that’s ruining our culture. I think once people understand the concept proposed by this “Return to Prosperity Plan” at a deeper level, it’s going to be an easy step to switch over. But of course, there’s the logistics of educating the public on how it works, and then developing the funding to get these ballot initiatives passed in each individual state.
But I think it’s a marvelous model, and I applaud Brown for what she’s doing to really wake us up—both to the roots of the problem and to sustainable solutions.
My approach as a physician is to treat the root cause of the problem. If you just treat symptoms like the drug model is doing, the industry makes obscene profits while the public health continues to suffer and decline. In many ways, we’ve done the same thing with Wall Street. We’re not treating the root problem, namely a corrupted banking system, which is what Brown’s Institute and economic plan addresses head on.
Creating a nation-wide public banking system for each state seems like a marvelous solution, and we know it works—it’s been proven in North Dakota.  State banks can be more easily monitored than a nationalized bank, while providing more diversity to cater to each state’s own economic model.
To learn more about Ellen’s work, please see her web site, which contains more than 130 articles—mostly on banking, but also some on health—and over 500 interviews.