Watchman News

By Dr. Mercola

Melatonin is a hormone your body produces at night, and one of its primary roles is to help you sleep. But this benefit, for which it is arguably most widely known, is only one of many.
Did you know, for instance, that melatonin may help protect against heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and migraine headaches? Or that it may help with weight control and strengthening your immune system? It even appears to play a role in cancer prevention.
Yet, because artificial lighting disrupts your melatonin production, many Americans may be lacking in this veritable ‘wonder hormone.’

Melatonin Combats Inflammation, Offers Mood and Anti-Aging Brain Support

Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant and free radical scavenger that helps ‘cool down’ excess inflammation. In fact, melatonin is so integral to the health of your immune system that a lack of it causes your thymus gland, a key component of your immune system, to shrink in size.1

Because melatonin is a strong antioxidant and is able to cross the blood-brain barrier, it is thought to help protect against Alzheimer’s disease as well as brain aging.

In one study, artificially aged mice treated with melatonin had reduced oxidative stress and markers of cerebral aging and neurodegeneration, indicating the melatonin offered both neuroprotective and anti-aging effects.2

In another study, researchers revealed that combining daily exercise with the daily intake of melatonin appeared to have a synergistic effect against brain deterioration in mice with Alzheimer’s disease-associated mutations.3 Improvements in behavior, learning and memory were noted.

Melatonin’s immediate precursor is the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is a major player in regulating and giving a lift to your mood. And, like serotonin, melatonin plays important roles in your physical and mental health. Studies have shown that insufficient melatonin production can set you up for:

Decreased immune function
Accelerated cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth (including leukemia)

Blood pressure instability
Decreased free radical scavenging

Increased plaques in the brain, like those seen with Alzheimer’s disease
Increased risk of osteoporosis

Diabetic microangiopathy (capillary damage)
Depression and/or seasonal affective disorder (SAD)

Melatonin’s Impressive Role in Fighting Cancer

Peer-reviewed and published research has shown melatonin offers particularly strong protection against reproductive cancers. Cells throughout your body — even cancer cells — have melatonin receptors.

So when melatonin makes its nightly rounds (its production peaks during the night), cell division slows. When this hormone latches onto a breast cancer cell, it has been found to counteract estrogen’s tendency to stimulate cell growth.
In fact, melatonin has a calming effect on several reproductive hormones, which may explain why it seems to protect against sex hormone-driven cancers, including ovarian, endometrial, breast, prostate and testicular cancers. GreenMedInfo lists 20 studies demonstrating exactly how melatonin exerts its protective effects against breast cancer.4
But melatonin’s anti-cancer effects don’t stop there. While causing cancer cells to self-destruct, melatonin also boosts your production of immune-optimizing substances such as interleukin-2, which helps identify and attack the mutated cells that lead to malignant cancer.

Through these dual actions, melatonin delivers a one-two punch! The greatest area of melatonin research to date has to do with breast cancer. Some of the more impressive studies include the following:

The journal Epidemiology5 reported increased breast cancer risk among women who work predominantly night shifts
Women who live in neighborhoods with large amounts of nighttime illumination are more likely to get breast cancer than those who live in areas where nocturnal darkness prevails, according to an Israeli study6
From participants in the Nurses’ Health Study, it was found that nurses who work nights had 36 percent higher rates of breast cancer7
Blind women, whose eyes cannot detect light and so have robust production of melatonin, have lower-than-average breast cancer rates8
When the body of epidemiological studies are considered in their totality, women who work night shift are found to have breast cancer rates 60 percent above normal, even when other factors such as differences in diet are accounted for9

Can Melatonin Help You Fight Fat?

A new study by Spanish scientists suggests that reducing unhealthy weight gain can now be added to melatonin’s impressive roster of benefits. They found that consuming melatonin stimulates the appearance of ‘beige’ fat, which, similar to brown fat, is a heat-generating type of fat that helps your body to burn calories rather than store them. This, the researchers believe, may explain why melatonin helps control body weight, along with its metabolic benefits.
Science Daily reported:10

“The study… showed that chronic administration of melatonin sensitizes the thermogenic effect of exposure to cold, heightens the thermogenic effect of exercise and, therefore, constitutes excellent therapy against obesity.

The fact is that one of the key differences between ‘beige fat,’ which appears when administering melatonin, and ‘white fat,’ is that ‘beige fat’ cell mitochondria express levels of UCP1 protein, responsible for burning calories and generating heat.”

Though this wasn’t discussed in the study, it’s also well proven that lack of sleep is linked to obesity, while if you’re not getting enough sleep, there’s a good chance your melatonin production is not up to par either. The disturbance to your melatonin levels caused by lack of sleep may be one more reason why it leads to weight gain, and this could have far-reaching impacts on your health.

Help for Heart Disease, Headaches, Diabetes and Osteoporosis?

Newer areas of research surrounding melatonin include its role in heart and bone health. Specifically, research suggests it may have beneficial effects for heart disease, including reducing the severity of high blood pressure, limiting the frequency of heart failure and protecting against drug-related damage to the heart.11Also noteworthy, research has shown that taking melatonin before bed reduced the frequency of migraine headaches by half (or more) after three months,12 as well as may be useful for restoring imbalances in bone remodeling to prevent bone loss.13 Finally, recent research showed that people who secrete lower levels of melatonin have double the risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those with the highest levels,14 suggesting a protective role for the hormone with this disease as well.

If You Turn On a Light at Night, You’re Stopping Your Melatonin Production

Given its myriad of invaluable benefits, you certainly want to do all you can to protect your body’s natural production of this hormone. In humans as with all mammals, your biological clock resides in the suprachiasmatic nucleus of your brain (SCN), which is part of your hypothalamus. Based on signals of light and darkness, your SCN tells your pineal gland when it’s time to secrete melatonin. Light comes in through your eyes and travels up your optic nerves to the SCN, which is exquisitely sensitive to cycles of light and darkness.

When you turn on a light at night, you immediately send your brain misinformation about the light-dark cycle. The only thing your brain interprets light to be is day. Believing daytime has arrived, your biological clock instructs your pineal gland to immediately cease its production of melatonin. Whether you have the light on for an hour or for just a second, the effect is the same — and your melatonin pump doesn’t turn back on when you flip the light back off.

Since humans evolved in the glow of firelight, the yellow, orange and red wavelengths don’t suppress melatonin production the way white and blue wavelengths do. In fact, the range of light that inhibits melatonin is fairly narrow — 460 to 480 nm. If you want to protect your melatonin, when the sun goes down you would shift to a low-wattage bulb with yellow, orange or red light. Dr. Russel Reiter suggests using a salt lamp illuminated by a 5-watt bulb in this color range.

How to Improve and Protect Your Melatonin Production

If you’re wondering how to ensure that you’re getting enough melatonin, supplementation may be beneficial but it is FAR more beneficial and certainly less expensive to have your body produce its own melatonin. Small quantities are also found in foods like Goji berries, almonds, sunflower seeds, coriander and cherries, but, again, when you optimize your own production you will get the “perfect” dose of melatonin for you. The way to do this is to improve your sleep hygiene, which will in turn help you optimize your melatonin production. For a comprehensive sleep guide, please see my article “33 Secrets to a Good Night’s Sleep.”

Avoid watching TV or using your computer in the evening, at least an hour or so before going to bed. These devices emit blue light, which tricks your brain into thinking it’s still daytime. Normally, your brain starts secreting melatonin between 9 pm and 10 pm, and these devices emit light that may stifle that process.
Make sure you get BRIGHT sun exposure regularly. Your pineal gland produces melatonin roughly in approximation to the contrast of bright sun exposure in the day and complete darkness at night. If you are in darkness all day long, it can’t appreciate the difference and will not optimize your melatonin production.
Sleep in complete darkness, or as close to it as possible. Even the slightest bit of light in your bedroom can disrupt your biological clock and your pineal gland’s melatonin production. Even the tiniest glow from your clock radio could be interfering with your sleep, so cover your clock radio up at night or get rid of it altogether. Move all electrical devices at least three feet away from your bed. You may want to cover your windows with drapes or blackout shades, or wear an eye mask when you sleep.
Install a low-wattage yellow, orange or red light bulb if you need a source of light for navigation at night. Light in these bandwidths does not shut down melatonin production in the way that white and blue bandwidth light does. Salt lamps are handy for this purpose.
Keep the temperature in your bedroom no higher than 70 degrees F. Many people keep their homes too warm (particularly their upstairs bedrooms). Studies show that the optimal room temperature for sleep is between 60 to 68 degrees F.
Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime. This increases your core body temperature, and when you get out of the bath it abruptly drops, signaling your body that you are ready to sleep.
Avoid using loud alarm clocks. Being jolted awake each morning can be very stressful. If you are regularly getting enough sleep, you might not even need an alarm.
Get some sun in the morning, if possible. Your circadian system needs bright light to reset itself. Ten to 15 minutes of morning sunlight will send a strong message to your internal clock that day has arrived, making it less likely to be confused by weaker light signals during the night. More sunlight exposure is required as you age.
Be mindful of electromagnetic fields in your bedroom. EMFs can disrupt your pineal gland and its melatonin production, and may have other negative biological effects as well. A gauss meter is required if you want to measure EMF levels in various areas of your home.

By Dr. Mercola

Statin cholesterol-lowering drugs are among the most widely prescribed drugs on the market, bringing in $20 billion a year.1 They are a top profit-maker for the pharmaceutical industry, in part due to relentless and highly successful direct-to-consumer advertising campaigns.
One in four Americans over the age of 45 now takes statins, typically for the primary prevention of heart attacks and strokes. Traditionally, primary prevention usually involves healthy lifestyle choices that support heart health, things like eating right and exercising, yet here we have millions of Americans taking pills instead.
Has anyone unbiased stopped to find out if these drugs are really the best method for heart attack prevention? After all, as researchers noted in the Open Journal of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases (OJEMD):2

“…naive indiscriminate acceptance of novel mainstream therapies is not always advisable and prudence is required in unearthing harmful, covert side effects.”

This is precisely the task that researchers from Ireland took on by completing an objective review of Pubmed, EM-BASE and Cochrane review databases.3 Their results speak volumes…

“It is beginning to dawn on some clinicians that contemporary treatments are not only failing to impact on our most prevalent diseases, but they may be causing more damage than good. A perfect example of such an issue is the statin saga.”

The Evidence Is In: Lifestyle Trumps Statins for Primary Heart Attack Prevention

For a drug therapy that appears to offer little by way of primary prevention, the risks were alarming. For every 10,000 people taking a statin, there were:

307 extra patients with cataracts
23 additional patients with acute kidney failure
74 extra patients with liver dysfunction

The landmark review revealed “a categorical lack of clinical evidence to support the use of statin therapy in primary prevention.” They also found that statins actually increase cardiovascular risk in women, the young and people with diabetes. The review also showed that statin therapy increased:

Muscle fatigabilty by 30% with more than 11% incidence of rhabdomyolysis (a life-threatening muscle condition) at high doses
Coronary artery and aortic calcification
Erectile dysfunction, which is 10 times more common in young men taking the lowest dose of statin.
Diabetes
Cancer

The researchers noted:

“There is increased risk of diabetes mellitus, cataract formation, and erectile dysfunction in young statin users, all of which are alarming. Furthermore there is a significant increase in the risk of cancer and neurodegenerative disorders in the elderly plus an enhanced risk of a myriad of infectious diseases. All side effects are dose dependent and persist during treatment.

Primary prevention clinical results provoke the possibility of not only the lack of primary cardiovascular protection by statin therapy, but highlight the very real possibility of augmented cardiovascular risk in women, patients with diabetes mellitus and the young. Statins are associated with triple the risk of coronary artery and aortic calcification.

These findings on statins’ major adverse effects had been under-reported and the way in which they [were] withheld from the public, and even concealed, is a scientific farce.

… Cardiovascular primary prevention and regeneration programmes, through life style changes and abstaining from tobacco use have enhanced clinical efficacy and quality of life over any pharmaceutical or other conventional intervention.”

If You Take Statins, Your Vision Could Be at Risk

The featured review found an increased risk of cataracts with statin use, and this was supported by a new JAMA study,4 which further revealed that the risk of cataracts is increased among statin users, compared with non-users. As a main cause of low vision among the elderly, cataract is a clouding of your eye lens.
It has previously been hypothesized that statin antioxidant effects may slow the aging process of the lens, but the current study revealed that they, instead, raise cataract risk, again calling into question the usefulness of statins for primary prevention of heart attacks. The researchers concluded:

“The risk-benefit ratio of statin use, specifically for primary prevention, should be carefully weighed, and further studies are warranted.”

Certain Statins May Impair Your Memory and May Even Lead to Amnesia

Still more research revealed that rats taking the statin Pravachol (pravastatin) had impaired learning, with lower abilities to perform simple learning and memory tasks.5 This isn’t exactly news, as in 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would be requiring additional warning labels for statins, one of which warned that statins may increase the risk of memory loss and confusion. The warnings, particularly the one for memory loss, came as the result of anecdotal reports compiled over the previous year…
Interestingly, the animal study found no association between another statin drug, Lipitor, and impaired memory in the rats. But Dr. Duane Graveline, a medical doctor and former astronaut, has written an entire book on this very topic, titled Lipitor: Thief of Memory.
In my interview with him, Dr. Graveline shared his powerful story about how Lipitor caused him severe global transient amnesia, which is what brought him out of retirement to investigate statins. There have been thousands of cases of transient global amnesia and other types of cognitive damage associated with statin use, reported to the FDA’s MedWatch site. It is believed that statin drugs damage your brain by creating a cholesterol deficiency.
Insufficient cholesterol results in your brain not having the raw materials it needs to make biochemicals critical for memory and cognitive function, including coenzyme Q10 and dolichols, the latter of which carry the genetic instructions from your DNA to help create specific proteins in your body that are crucial for cognitive function, emotions and mood.

High Cholesterol Levels May Be Protective

Any discussion of statins would be incomplete without a discussion of cholesterol – the ‘villain’ that these drugs mercilessly lower. Many buy into the conventional belief that lower cholesterol equals a lower risk of heart disease, but this is not always the case. And, in fact, high cholesterol levels are indeed protective in some cases, whereas low cholesterol levels are very clearly linked to chronic disease. Writing in OJEMD, researchers explained:

“Cholesterol is crucial for energy, immunity, fat metabolism, leptin, thyroid hormone activity, liver related synthesis, stress intolerance, adrenal function, sex hormone syntheses and brain function. When prescribing HMGCoA reductase inhibitors [statins] one needs to be cognizant of the fact that the body had increased its’ cholesterol as a compensatory mechanism and investigate accordingly.

We seem to have fallen into the marketing trap and ignored the niggling side effects with regard to the HMGCoA reductase inhibitors. The only statin benefit that has actually been demonstrated is in middle-aged men with coronary heart disease. However, statins were not shown to best form of primary prevention.

… In actual fact, high cholesterol levels have been found to be protective in elderly and heart failure patients and hypo-cholestereamic [low cholesterol] patients had higher incidence of intra-cerebral bleeds, depression and cancer. … We are observing the revealing of the utmost medical tragedy of all time. It is unprecedented that the healthcare industry has inadvertently induced life-threatening nutrient deficiency in millions of otherwise healthy people. What is even more disparaging is that not only has there been a failure to report on these negative side-effects of statins, there has actually been active discouragement to publish any negative studies on statins.”

This is, in large part, why so many people are completely unaware that statin drugs have been directly linked to over 300 side effects,6 which include:

Cognitive loss
Neuropathy

Anemia

Acidosis

Frequent fevers

Cataracts

Sexual dysfunction

An increase in cancer risk

Pancreatic dysfunction

Immune system suppression

Muscle problems, polyneuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet), and rhabdomyolysis, a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition

Hepatic dysfunction. (Due to the potential increase in liver enzymes, patients must be monitored for normal liver function)

Ask Yourself – and Your informed Physician — if You Really Need to Be Taking Statins

I’ve long stated that the odds are very high — greater than 100 to 1 — that if you’re taking a statin, you may not even need it, as cholesterol is NOT the cause of heart disease. To further reinforce the importance of cholesterol, I want to remind you of the work of Dr. Stephanie Seneff, who works with the Weston A. Price Foundation.

One of her theories is that cholesterol combines with sulfur to form cholesterol sulfate, and that this cholesterol sulfate helps thin your blood by serving as a reservoir for the electron donations you receive when walking barefoot on the Earth (also called grounding). She believes that, via this blood-thinning mechanism, cholesterol sulfate may provide natural protection against heart disease.

In fact, she goes so far as to hypothesize that heart disease is likely the result of cholesterol deficiency — which of course is the complete opposite of the conventional view. So if your physician is urging you to check your total cholesterol, know that this test will tell you virtually nothing about your risk of heart disease, unless it is 330 or higher. HDL percentage is a far more potent indicator for heart disease risk. Here are the two ratios you should pay attention to:

HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio: Should ideally be above 24 percent. If below 10 percent, you have a significantly elevated risk for heart disease.
Triglyceride/HDL Ratio: Should be below 2.

Additional risk factors for heart disease include:

Your fasting insulin level: Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates like fructose and refined grains generates a rapid rise in blood glucose and then insulin to compensate for the rise in blood sugar. The insulin released from eating too many carbs promotes fat production and makes it more difficult for your body to shed excess weight, and excess fat, particularly around your belly, is one of the major contributors to heart disease
Your fasting blood sugar level: Studies have shown that people with a fasting blood sugar level of 100-125 mg/dl had a nearly 300 percent increase higher risk of having coronary heart disease than people with a level below 79 mg/dl
Your iron level: Iron can be a very potent oxidative stress, so if you have excess iron levels you can damage your blood vessels and increase your risk of heart disease. Ideally, you should monitor your ferritin levels and make sure they are not much above 80 ng/ml. The simplest way to lower them if they are elevated is to donate your blood. If that is not possible you can have a therapeutic phlebotomy and that will effectively eliminate the excess iron from your body

Try This Instead for Primary Heart Attack Prevention

Make no mistake about it, statin drugs are some of the most side effect-ridden medications on the market, and they frequently do more harm than good. Of utmost importance, statins deplete your body of CoQ10, which accounts for many of its devastating results. Therefore, if you take a statin, you MUST take supplemental CoQ10, or better, the reduced form called ubiquinol. If you are interested in optimizing your cholesterol levels (which doesn’t necessarily mean lowering them) and lowering your risk of heart disease and heart attacks, there are natural strategies available for doing so.

Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your diet, replacing them with mostly whole, fresh vegetable carbs and healthy fats. Also try to consume a good portion of your food raw.
Make sure you are getting enough high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil.
Other heart-healthy foods include olive oil, coconut and coconut oil, organic raw dairy products and eggs, avocados, raw nuts and seeds, and organic grass-fed meats.
Optimize your vitamin D levels.
Exercise daily, especially with high-intensity interval training (HIIT) exercises.
Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively.
Be sure to get plenty of good, restorative sleep.

By Dr. Mercola

In 2004, the US government’s National Cholesterol Education Program panel advised those at risk for heart disease to attempt to reduce their LDL cholesterol to less than 100, or even less than 70, if you’re very high risk. Prior to this, a 130-milligram LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy.

In order to obtain the incredibly low LDL levels now recommended, you typically have to take a cholesterol-lowering statin drug, and sometimes two or three of them in combination.

Now, a new class of cholesterol drugs known as PCSK9 inhibitors promises to reduce LDL cholesterol levels to previously unheard of lows. Indeed, this type of drug can drop your level below 50!

My prediction? These drugs will absolutely kill people—not just some, but MANY. I cannot warn you against this terrible idea enough. While many worry that their cholesterol is too high, few give any thought at all to the damage that can result if your cholesterol is too low.

This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I drove (without drugs) my own total cholesterol levels down to a risky 75 when I was a naive young doctor. Alas, when it comes to cholesterol, lower is not always better. In fact, when your cholesterol levels go too low, a host of negative things happen in your body.

Unfortunately, lowering cholesterol levels has become so common in the US that nearly every American reading this either knows someone struggling to do so, or has struggled to do so themselves.

This despite the fact that there is no evidence to support the notion that having an extremely low cholesterol level is beneficial, and increasing numbers of studies point to significant risks associated with cholesterol-lowering drugs.

For example, a 2008 paper published in the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs1 cites nearly 900 studies on the adverse effects of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins), which run the gamut from muscle problems to increased cancer risk.

How Do PCSK9 Inhibitors Work?

Whereas statins (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) reduce your cholesterol by blocking an enzyme in your liver that is responsible for making cholesterol, these newer drugs, PCSK9 inhibitors, target and suppress a particular gene involved in the regulation of how much cholesterol your liver can actually filter out.

Researchers discovered that people with underactive PCSK9 genes had low levels of LDL. They also had low levels of cardiovascular disease. Since high cholesterol has long been mistaken as a primary cause of cardiovascular disease, these findings were akin to striking scientific gold… As reported in the featured article2:

“It’s this discovery that has Sanofi and two other major drug companies, Amgen and Pfizer, racing to develop a drug that mimics the gene’s effects. The best approach, experts say, will be through monoclonal antibodies: antibodies that are created in a lab and help your immune system fight a disease or, in this case, fight cholesterol…

‘This is not to replace statin therapy,’ said Joe Miletich, senior vice president of research and development at Amgen. ‘This is actually to get patients to (their) goal who can’t get there.’… ‘With a statin medication, you can often get somebody’s cholesterol between 70 and 100 mg/dL,’ said Dr. Elliott Antman, president-elect of the American Heart Association and a dean at Harvard Medical School. ‘If you use these monoclonal antibodies, you could see a number way less than 50.'”

I’ve told you before that the odds are very high— greater than 100 to 1—that if you’re taking a statin, you don’t really need it. From my review, the only subgroup that might benefit are those born with a genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia, as this makes them resistant to traditional measures of normalizing cholesterol.
In my view, this warning is just as applicable when it comes to PCSK9 inhibitors. Your body needs cholesterol and it doesn’t matter how you lower it: statins, PCSK inhibitors, or diet and exercise like I did. If your cholesterol drops too low, you will suffer health problems that I review in the next section.

The Health Hazards of Having Too Little Cholesterol

Your body needs cholesterol for the production of cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D, and bile acids that help you to digest fat. It’s not hard to see then why too little cholesterol can have such detrimental effects on your body—especially your brain, where it helps your brain form memories and is vital to your neurological function.

For example, research published in 20083 showed that low HDL is associated with poor memory and decline in memory in middle-aged adults. If you value your brain and want to keep it functioning into your senior years, you’d be well advised to pay attention to what it needs, and that includes cholesterol, along with healthful fats like omega-3. But impaired memory and dementia are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to low cholesterol’s impact on your brain. If your levels get too low, you also increase your risk of:

Violent behavior and aggression
Depression
Suicide
Cancer4
Parkinson’s disease

Even more importantly, heart disease may in fact be a sign of cholesterol deficiency, according to MIT researcher, Dr. Stephanie Seneff. Considering the fact that conventional medicine has been telling us that heart disease is due to elevated cholesterol and recommends lowering cholesterol levels as much as possible, Dr. Seneff’s claims may come as a complete shock to some.

“Heart disease, I think, is a cholesterol deficiency problem, and in particular a cholesterol sulfate deficiency problem…”

She points out that all of this information is available in the research literature, but it requires putting all the pieces together to see the full picture. Through her research, she believes that the mechanism we call “cardiovascular disease,” of which arterial plaque is a hallmark, is actually your body’s way to compensate for not having enough cholesterol sulfate. In a nutshell, high LDL appears to be a sign of cholesterol sulfate deficiency—it’s your body’s way of trying to maintain the correct balance by taking damaged LDL and turning it into plaque, within which the blood platelets produce the cholesterol sulfate your heart and brain needs for optimal function…

What this also means is that when you artificially lower your cholesterol with a statin drug, which effectively reduces that plaque but doesn’t address the root problem, your body is not able to compensate any longer, and as a result of lack of cholesterol sulfate you may end up with heart failure.

Have High Cholesterol? Address the Cause!

Contrary to popular belief, high cholesterol is not a disease in and of itself. It is actually a response to something gone awry in your body. Cholesterol is produced whenever your cells become damaged, as it’s a necessary component in making new, healthy cells, so if you have a lot of damaged cells, you’re also going to have a lot of cholesterol in your bloodstream. This is a sign that your cells need, and are, being repaired. While most conventional doctors do not recognize this sign for what it is and put you on toxic cholesterol-lowering drugs, a more knowledgeable doctor will address the root problem, which is typically related to chronic inflammation brought on by:

A diet too high in sugar/fructose and grains
Too many processed, overcooked foods
Lack of exercise
Emotional stress
Smoking

The remedy involves, of course, addressing these factors by making simple lifestyle changes that are outlined in my optimized nutrition and lifestyle plan. Whatever you do, don’t fall for the mistaken belief that the lower your cholesterol goes, the better. If you lower your cholesterol through artificial means without addressing the underlying causes for your elevated cholesterol levels, your body will continue to degenerate. Leave the decision of how much cholesterol your body needs up to your body, and make the right lifestyle choices to keep your cells in their top condition. This way you get the best of both worlds: the right amount of cholesterol and a body in tip-top shape.

The Many Well-Known Health Hazards of Statin Drugs

First, if you are a woman, it’s critical for you to know that statins are classified as a “pregnancy Category X medication” meaning, it causes serious birth defects, and should NEVER be used if you’re pregnant or planning a pregnancy. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration5 (FDA) also announced it’s considering additional warning labels for statin drugs. Among them are warnings that statins may increase your risk of:

Liver damage
Memory loss and confusion
Type 2 diabetes
Muscle weakness (for certain statins)

In all, statin drugs have been directly linked to over 300 side effects6, including:

Cognitive loss
Neuropathy
Anemia

Acidosis
Frequent fevers
Cataracts

Sexual dysfunction
An increase in cancer risk
Pancreatic dysfunction

Immune system suppression
Muscle problems, polyneuropathy (nerve damage in the hands and feet), and rhabdomyolysis, a serious degenerative muscle tissue condition
Hepatic dysfunction (Due to the potential increase in liver enzymes, patients must be monitored for normal liver function)

Statins Cause Hallmark Symptoms of Heart Disease and Diabetes

Sadly, while millions of people are told to use statin drugs as a form of “preventive medicine” to protect their heart health, research shows that these drugs actually can have significantly detrimental effects on your heart! How is that preventive medicine? For example, a study published just last year in the journal Atherosclerosis7 showed that statin use is associated with a 52 percent increased prevalence and extent of calcified coronary plaque compared to non-users. And coronary artery calcification is the hallmark of potentially lethal heart disease!

Statins can also:

Deplete your body of CoQ10, which accounts for many of its devastating health effects. CoQ10 is used by every cell in your body, but especially your heart cells. Cardiac muscle cells have up to 200 times more mitochondria, and hence 200 times higher CoQ10 requirements than skeletal muscle. Therefore, if you take a statin, you must take supplemental CoQ10, or better, the reduced form called ubiquinol.

A recent study in the European Journal of Pharmacology8 showed that ubiquinol effectively rescued cells from the damage caused by the statin drug simvastatin, thereby protecting muscle cells from myopathies. Again demonstrating the necessity of CoQ10 supplementation during statin therapy, a recent study9 evaluating the benefits of CoQ10 and selenium supplementation for patients with statin-associated myopathy found that, compared to those given a placebo, the treatment group experienced significantly less pain, decreased muscle weakness and cramps, and less fatigue.
Interfere with the mevalonate pathway, which is the central pathway for the steroid management in your body. Products of this pathway that are negatively affected by statins include sex hormones, cortisone, the dolichols (which are involved in keeping the membranes inside your cells healthy), and all sterols, including cholesterol and vitamin D (which is similar to cholesterol and is produced from cholesterol in your skin).
Increase your insulin resistance, which contributes to chronic inflammation in your body. Increased insulin resistance can lead to heart disease, which, ironically, is the primary reason for taking a cholesterol-reducing drug in the first place. It can also promote belly fat, high blood pressure, heart attacks, chronic fatigue, thyroid disruption, and diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and cancer.
Increase your risk of diabetes by raising your blood sugar. When you eat a meal that contains starches and sugar, some of the excess sugar goes to your liver, which then stores it away as cholesterol and triglycerides. Statins work by preventing your liver from making cholesterol. As a result, your liver returns the sugar to your bloodstream, which raises your blood sugar levels.
Drug-induced diabetes and genuine type 2 diabetes are not necessarily identical. If you’re on a statin drug and find that your blood glucose is elevated, it’s possible that what you have is just hyperglycemia—a side effect, and the result of your medication. Unfortunately, many doctors will at that point mistakenly diagnose you with “type 2 diabetes,” and possibly prescribe another drug, when all you may need to do is simply discontinue the statin in order for your blood glucose levels to revert back to normal.

Beware: Statins Can Also Completely Negate Your Fitness Efforts

One of the major benefits of exercise is the beneficial impact it has on your heart health, and exercise is a primary strategy to naturally maintain healthy cholesterol levels. Alas, researchers recently discovered that if you take a statin drug, you’re likely to forfeit most if not all health benefits of your exercise. In fact, the study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology10, discovered that statin use led to dramatically reduced fitness benefits from exercise, in some cases actually making the volunteer LESS fit than before!

The key to understanding why statins prevent your body from reaping the normal benefits from exercise lies in understanding what these drugs do to your mitochondria—the energy chamber of your cells, responsible for the utilization of energy for all metabolic functions. As mentioned above, the primary fuel for your mitochondria is Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), and one of the primary mechanisms of harm from statins in general appears to be related to CoQ10 depletion.

A 2011 review published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism11 pointed out that exercise actually induces changes in mitochondrial enzyme content and activity, which can increase your cellular energy production and in so doing decrease your risk of chronic disease. The fact that statin drugs deplete your body of the primary fuel for your mitochondria helps explain why certain statin users in the trial ended up with worse aerobic fitness after a steady fitness regimen. There simply wasn’t enough mitochondrial fuel in their system.

To Evaluate Your Heart Disease Risk, Get the Right Tests Done

If your physician is urging you to check your total cholesterol, then you need to be aware that this test will tell you virtually nothing about your risk of heart disease, unless it is 330 or higher.

One of the most important tests you can get to determine your real heart disease risk is the NMR LipoProfile, which measures your LDL particle number. This test also has other markers that can help determine if you have insulin resistance, which is a primary cause of elevated LDL particle number and increased heart disease risk. The NMR LipoProfile test easy to get and all major labs offer it. Most insurance policies cover the test as well. Best of all, even if your doctor were to refuse to order it, you can order it yourself via third-party intermediaries like Direct Labs, or you can order the test online, and get blood drawn locally. Two other ratios you should pay attention to are your:

HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio: (i.e. take your HDL number and divide it by your total cholesterol number.) This should ideally be above 24 percent. If below 10 percent, you have a significantly elevated risk for heart disease.
Triglyceride/HDL Ratio: Should be below 2.

I have seen a number of people with total cholesterol levels over 250 who were actually at low risk for heart disease due to their elevated HDL levels. Conversely, I have seen many people with cholesterol levels under 200 who had a very high risk of heart disease, based on their low HDL. For four additional risk factors for heart disease that do not involve your cholesterol levels, please see my recent article: Side Effects of Statins.

How to Optimize Your Cholesterol Levels Naturally

The most effective way to optimize your cholesterol profile and prevent heart disease is via diet and exercise. Seventy-five percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. Therefore, if you optimize your insulin level, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol and reduce your risk of both diabetes and heart disease.

There is NO drug that can cure heart disease, as the underlying cause is insulin and leptin resistance and arterial wall damage—both of which are caused by eating excessive amounts of sugars, grains, and especially fructose. So, in addition to regular exercise, my primary recommendations for safely regulating your cholesterol and reducing your risk of heart disease include:

Reduce, with the plan of eliminating grains and fructose from your diet. This is one of the best ways to optimize your insulin levels, which will have a positive effect on not just your cholesterol, but also reduces your risk of diabetes and heart disease, and most other chronic diseases. Use my Nutrition Plan to help you determine the ideal diet for you, and consume a good portion of your food raw.
Start intermittent fasting, which will radically improve your ability to burn fat as your primary fuel and thus help improve your insulin and leptin signaling.
Get plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega 3 fats, such as krill oil, and reduce your consumption of damaged omega-6 fats (trans fats, vegetable oils) to balance out your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio.
Include heart-healthy foods in your diet, such as olive oil, coconut and coconut oil, organic raw dairy products and eggs, avocados, raw nuts and seeds, and organic grass-fed meats.
Optimize your vitamin D levels by getting proper sun exposure or using a safe tanning bed.
Optimize your gut flora, as recent research suggests the bacterial balance in your intestines may play a role in your susceptibility to heart disease as well.
Walk barefoot to ground yourself to the earth. Lack of grounding has a lot to do with the rise of modern diseases as it affects inflammatory processes in your body. Grounding thins your blood, making it less viscous. Virtually, every aspect of cardiovascular disease has been correlated with elevated blood viscosity.

When you ground to the earth, your zeta potential quickly rises, which means your red blood cells have more charge on their surface, which forces them apart from each other. This action causes your blood to thin and flow easier. By repelling each other, your red blood cells are also less inclined to stick together and form a clot.

Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively.
Be sure to get plenty of good, restorative sleep.

Take Control of Your Health

The odds are very high that if you’re taking cholesterol-lowering medication, you’re wasting your money and taking unnecessary risks with your health. From my review, the ONLY subgroup that might benefit from statins are those born with a genetic defect called familial hypercholesterolemia, as this makes them resistant to traditional measures of normalizing cholesterol, which I reviewed above.

Remember, your body needs cholesterol for the production of cell membranes, hormones, and vitamin D, just to mention a few. Cholesterol is also vital to your neurological function. And there’s strong evidence that having too little cholesterol increases your risk for cancer, memory loss, Parkinson’s disease, hormonal imbalances, stroke, depression, suicide, and violent behavior.

Taking a drug that can reduce your cholesterol levels down to 50 or below is absolutely a recipe for disaster, when you consider all your biological functions that need cholesterol!

Also keep in mind that contrary to what you’ve been told by pharmaceutical PR firms, statins have nothing to do with reducing your heart disease risk. In fact, this class of drugs can increase your heart disease risk—especially if you do not take Ubiquinol (CoQ10) along with it to mitigate the depletion of CoQ10 caused by the drug. So please, carefully weigh the risks and benefits!

Poor lifestyle choices are primarily to blame for elevated cholesterol levels, such as too much sugar, too little exercise, lack of sun exposure and never grounding to the earth. These are all things that are within your control, and don’t cost much (if any) money to address. If you have a genetic defect, medication may be needed. If you don’t, you may be surprised at how quickly and easily your cholesterol levels will normalize when you start implementing the required lifestyle changes.

If you’re currently taking a statin drug and are worried about the excessive side effects they cause, please consult with a knowledgeable health care practitioner who can help you to optimize your heart health naturally, without the use of these dangerous drugs. To learn more about statins, please see my special report: “Do YOU Take Any of These 11 Dangerous Cholesterol Drugs”?

By Dr. Mercola

Green tea, prized for many generations in China, Japan and even Britain, has made a name for itself in the US, where many now drink it daily due to its many associated health benefits.
However, while green tea is recognized as an abundant source of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a catechin polyphenol, and other antioxidants, not all green teas are created equal.
If you’re drinking green tea hoping to increase your antioxidant levels, you should know that some green tea brands contain very little antioxidants, while others may contain significant amounts of lead.

One Variety of Tea Tested Contained Almost No EGCG

EGCG is easily the most talked-about green tea compound. As one of the most powerful antioxidants known, the health benefits of EGCG include a lower risk of heart attack and stroke, glaucoma, high cholesterol and more. Several studies have also found that EGCG can improve exercise performance, increase fat oxidation, and may help prevent obesity, as it’s known to have a regulatory effect on fat metabolism.

If you drink green tea, you probably assume you’re getting a healthful dose of EGCG with each cup, but new research shows that’s not necessarily the case. An analysis of the strength and purity of more than 20 green tea products by ConsumerLab.com found that EGCG levels in bottled green tea can range from just 4 milligrams (mg) per cup to 47 mg, while brewable green tea (from tea bags, loose tea or a K-cup) contained levels ranging from 25 mg to 86 mg per serving.1
One variety, bottled Diet Snapple Green Tea, reportedly contained almost no EGCG, while Honest Tea Green Tea with Honey contained only about 60 percent of the 190 mg of catechins claimed on the label.2 Added sugars or artificial sweeteners were also common in the bottled tea brands.

This Type of Green Tea Contained the Most Antioxidants

Green tea brewed from loose tea leaves appeared to offer the most potent source of antioxidants like EGCG. One variety, Teavana contained 250 mg of catechins per serving; green tea sold in bags from brands like Lipton and Bigelow contained lower levels, although represented a more cost-effective alternative.
The different tea brands also varied significantly in the amount of caffeine the products contained. While some contained virtually none, others contained 86 mg per serving, which is similar to the amount of caffeine in a regular cup of coffee.

One green tea supplement even contained 130 mg of caffeine in a single capsule, which is more than is found in a cup of coffee! But higher antioxidant levels is only one reason why you may want to choose loose tea over bags…

Some Tea Bags May Leach Hazardous Compounds Into Your Tea

Some tea bags are made with synthetic polymers, such as nylon, thermoplastic, PVC or polypropylene. While these compounds have high melting points, the temperature at which the molecules in polymers begin to break down is always lower than the melting point, which could allow the bags to leach compounds of unknown health hazards into your tea when steeped in boiling water.
Paper tea bags are also potentially problematic, as they are frequently treated with epichlorohydrin, which hydrolyzes to 3-MCPD when contact with water occurs. 3-MCPD is a carcinogen associated with food processing that has also been implicated in infertility and suppressed immune function. I recommend purchasing tea from manufacturers who can certify that their tea bags do not contain epichlorohydrin, and avoid plastic tea bags. Alternatively, you can opt for loose tea instead.

Why Your Green Tea Should Come From Japan, Not China

Green tea plants are known to be especially effective at absorbing lead from the soil, which is then taken up into the plant’s leaves. Areas with excessive industrial pollution, such as China (where nearly 90% of the world’s green tea is produced),3 may therefore contain substantial amounts of lead.4

According to the ConsumerLab.com analysis, tea from brands like Lipton and Bigelow contained up to 2.5 micrograms of lead per serving compared to no measurable amounts in Teavana brand, which gets its tea leaves from Japan.
While the lead in the tea leaves is not thought to leach very effectively into the tea you end up drinking, if you’re consuming Matcha green tea, one of my favorites, it’s especially important that it comes from Japan instead of China. Matcha tea contains the entire ground tea leaf, and can contain over 100 times the EGCG provided from regular brewed green tea.

That said, because you’re consuming the entire leaf, you want to be sure it comes from a non-polluted, high-quality source. The best Matcha green tea comes from Japan and is steamed, rather than roasted or pan-fried. As a result, Matcha green tea retains all the nutrient-rich value possible from the tea leaf, without additives or contaminants.

A Word of Warning About Fluoride in Tea

Both black and green teas are naturally high in fluoride, even if organically grown without pesticides. This is because the plant readily absorbs fluoride thorough its root system, including naturally-occurring fluoride in the soil. According to fluoride expert Jeff Green, there are reports of people who have developed crippling skeletal fluorosis from drinking high amounts of iced tea alone.5
If you live in an area with fluoridated drinking water, as the majority of Americans do, then you could be getting a double dose of fluoride when you drink tea. When selecting tea of any kind, it should preferably be organic (to avoid pesticides) and grown in a pristine environment because, as mentioned, tea is known to accumulate fluoride, heavy metals and other toxins from soil and water, so a clean growing environment is essential to producing a pure, high-quality tea.

What Does the Research Say About Drinking Tea?

Although I still believe pure water should make up the majority of your daily fluid intake, high-quality tea has numerous health benefits to offer, which vary by type. In addition to Matcha tea, I personally enjoy Tulsi tea (aka Holy Basil tea), which is a powerful adaptogenic herb that provides important therapeutic benefits. There is also growing evidence that the polyphenols in tea, including EGCG and many others, may be protective against cancer. Beyond this, the beneficial properties in tea have been known to:

Neutralize the effects to your body of harmful fats and oils
Inhibit bacteria and viruses
Improve digestion
Protect against oxidation in your brain and liver
Help promote healthy gums

Drinking tea has also been linked to:

Improved mental alertness and slowing of brain-cell degeneration
Reduced blood pressure
Protection against type 2 diabetes

Lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels
Lower risk of breast, colon, lung, ovarian and prostate cancers
Reduced risk of heart attack and stroke

How to Brew the Perfect Cup of Loose-Leaf Tea

Choosing high-quality tea is extremely important. As the ConsumerLab.com analysis showed, the type of tea you purchase can make all the difference in the amount of beneficial antioxidants it contains, with loose-leaf teas appearing to provide the most. There is an art to brewing tea using loose tea leaves, but once you find your “sweet spot” you may never go back to bagged tea again. Here are a few simple guidelines for making the “perfect” cup of tea:

Bring water to a boil in a tea kettle (avoid using a non-stick pot, as this can release harmful chemicals when heated)
Preheat your teapot or cup to prevent the water from cooling too quickly when transferred. Simply add a small amount of boiling water to the pot or tea up that you’re going to steep the tea in. Ceramic and porcelain retain heat well. Then cover the pot or cup with a lid. Add a tea cozy if you have one, or drape with a towel. Let stand until warm, then pour out the water
Put the tea into an infuser, strainer, or add loose into the tea pot. Steeping without an infuser or strainer will produce a more flavorful tea. Start with one heaped teaspoon per cup of tea, or follow the instructions on the tea package. The robustness of the flavor can be tweaked by using more or less tea
Add boiling water. Use the correct amount for the amount of tea you added (i.e. for four teaspoons of tea, add four cups of water). The ideal water temperature varies based on the type of tea being steeped:

White or green teas (full leaf): Well below boiling (170-185°F or 76-85°C). Once the water has been brought to a boil, remove from heat and let the water cool for about 30 seconds for white tea and 60 seconds for green tea before pouring it over the leaves

Oolongs (full leaf): 185-210°F or 85-98°C

Black teas (full leaf) and Pu-erhs: Full rolling boil (212°F or 100°C)

Cover the pot with a cozy or towel and let steep. Follow steeping instructions on the package. If there are none, here are some general steeping guidelines. Taste frequently as you want it to be flavorful but not bitter:

Oolong teas: 4-7 minutes
Black teas: 3-5 minutes
Green teas: 2-3 minutes

Once the desired flavor has been achieved you need to remove the strainer or infuser. If you’re using loose leaves, pour the tea through a strainer into your cup and any leftover into another vessel (cover with a cozy to retain the heat)

By Dr. Mercola

A tall, cool beverage goes hand-in-hand with a hot summer day, but many of the most popular “summer” drinks come with a hefty downside, like exorbitant amounts of sugar.
It’s alarmingly easy to sip and slurp your way through hundreds of grams of excess sugar just by enjoying a cool drink once or twice a day – and that’s only the start.
There are plenty of options to quench your thirst and even satisfy your sweet tooth that will actually support your health at the same time (I’ll get to those later), so there’s no reason to sabotage your health (and your waistline) with these dietary disasters.

8 Top Summer Beverages to Avoid

1. Soda (Regular or Diet)

Drinking soda is in many ways as bad as smoking. Most sodas contain far too much sugar, or even worse, artificial sweeteners.
For instance, the chemical aspartame, often used as a sugar substitute in diet soda, has over 92 different side effects associated with its consumption including brain tumors, birth defects, diabetes, emotional disorders and epilepsy/seizures. Plus, each sip of soda exposes you to:

Phosphoric acid, which can interfere with your body’s ability to use calcium, leading to osteoporosis or softening of your teeth and bones.
Benzene. While the federal limit for benzene in drinking water is 5 parts per billion (ppb), researchers have found benzene levels as high as 79 ppb in some soft drinks, and of 100 brands tested, most had at least some detectable level of benzene present. Benzene is a known carcinogen.
Artificial food colors, including caramel coloring, which has been identified as carcinogenic. The artificial brown coloring is made by reacting corn sugar with ammonia and sulfites under high pressures and at high temperatures.
Sodium benzoate, a common preservative found in many soft drinks, which can cause DNA damage. This could eventually lead to diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver and Parkinson’s.

2. Wine Coolers

Wine coolers are alcoholic beverages made to taste much more like fruit juice than alcohol, which is why they’re a popular drink of choice on a warm summer day. But in order to make them taste sweet, manufacturers typically add fruit juice and sugar to the wine, which is usually the cheapest available grade. Some “wine” coolers aren’t even made from wine but the far cheaper “malt” instead.
These coolers can also contain artificial food colors, artificial flavors and even artificial sweeteners like aspartame. And, of course, they also contain alcohol, which is very similar to fructose both in its addictive properties and the kind of damage it can do to your health.
While I don’t recommend drinking alcohol (it is a neurotoxin that can poison your brain as well as disrupt your hormonal balance), if you’re going to have an alcoholic beverage, a glass of red or white wine is far preferable to a heavily (or artificially) sweetened wine cooler.

3. Beer

The “usual” problems associated with beer – its alcohol content and hefty amount of empty calories – are only the tip of the iceberg for why you should limit your consumption. It turns out that the yeast and all that’s used to make beer work together to make beer another powerful uric acid trigger.

Uric acid is a normal waste product found in your blood. High levels of uric acid are normally associated with gout, but it has been known for a long time that people with high blood pressure or kidney disease, and those who are overweight, often have high uric acid levels as well. It used to be thought that the uric acid was secondary in these conditions, and not the cause.

But research by Dr. Richard Johnson indicates that it could be a lead player in the development of these conditions, rather than just a supporting actor, when its levels in your body reach 5.5 mg per dl or higher. At this level, uric acid is associated with an increased risk for developing high blood pressure, as well as diabetes, obesity and kidney disease.

The classic “beer belly syndrome” is actually quite similar to metabolic syndrome, and includes abdominal obesity, hypertriglyceridemia (high triglycerides), high blood pressure, and even insulin resistance, so minimizing or eliminating beer consumption is also something to definitely consider when you’re watching your weight and trying to improve your health.

4. Lemonade and Fruit Juices

For many, nothing says “summer” like a cold glass of lemonade, but this, and other fruit juices, is usually just another source of sugar you’re better off without.
Lemonade is typically a concoction of sugar or high fructose corn syrup, water, and flavorings. It may or may not contain small amounts of actual lemon juice. In terms of its impact on your health, lemonade and fruit juice will act much like soda, exposing you to excessive amounts of fructose that will increase your risk of weight gain and chronic degenerative diseases. Lemonade is simply soda’s evil twin in disguise! However, if you make fresh lemonade or limeade then it is fine because these are the lowest fruits in fructose. Just be sure if you use a sweetener that you stick to stevia and avoid sugar and artificial sweeteners.

5. Sweetened Teas

Sweet tea is another popular summer beverage, and one that’s often confused as “healthy” because of the tea. While tea can be a good source of antioxidants, sweetened tea is another source of extra sugar that will decimate your health. While the actual sugar content of sweetened teas obviously varies, it’s not unusual to find sweet tea recipes that contain 22 percent sugar, which is twice the amount in a can of soda.1
In the Southern US, sweet tea is not an occasional treat, it’s more of a daily staple, making the health risks even steeper.

6. Energy Drinks

The US energy drink market is expected to reach nearly $20 billion in 2013, which is close to a 160 percent increase from 2008.2 While many choose them for the quick energy boost they provide, 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 rare cases death. Drinking energy drinks has also been compared to “bathing” teeth in acid because of their impact on your tooth enamel.3
If a lack of energy and fatigue state is compelling you to drink energy drinks, please realize that this is likely a result of certain lifestyle choices, such as not enough healthy food, processed foods and sugar, and not enough exercise and sleep, plus an overload of stress. Increasing your energy levels, then, is as easy as remedying these factors.

7. Sports Drinks

Sports drinks are especially popular in the summer months, when many believe they are necessary to restore your electrolyte balance during exercise or other outdoor activities. They basically “work” because they contain high amounts of sodium (processed salt), which is meant to replenish the electrolytes you lose while sweating. But only a very small portion of exercisers work out hard enough that a sports drink might be necessary; typically they aren’t even necessary during a marathon, let alone during most regular workouts.4

Additionally, the leading brands of sports drinks on the market typically contain as much as two-thirds the sugar of sodas and more sodium. They also often contain high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or artificial sweeteners (they can lead to impaired kidney function, depression, headaches, infertility, brain tumors, and a long list of other serious health problems), artificial flavors and food coloring, which has been connected to a variety of health problems, including allergic reactions, hyperactivity, decreased IQ in children, and numerous forms of cancer.

Also, sports drinks are up to 30 times more erosive to your teeth than water. And brushing your teeth won’t help because the citric acid in the sports drink will soften your tooth enamel so much it could be damaged by brushing.

8. Frappes and Other Frozen/Iced Coffees

An iced coffee sounds innocent enough, until you start adding in the copious amounts of sweeteners (sugar, HFCS and artificial sweeteners may all apply) and flavorings that turn ordinary coffee into a treat that more closely resembles a hyped up milkshake. Some leading coffee drinks from restaurants like Dunkin’ Donuts and Seattle’s Best contain 100 grams of sugar or more, which is more than 2.5 times the amount of sugar an adult man should consume in a day!5

Delicious and Refreshing Summer Drinks That BOOST Your Health

I know what you’re thinking… you’re not going to give up the simple pleasure of enjoying a cool, tasty beverage on a hot summer day. And I should hope not! But you needn’t assume that sugar-laden soda, lemonade, sweet tea or frappes are your only options. By thinking outside the box, you can satisfy your craving for a delicious cool beverage in a way that will actually support instead of hinder your health.

Instead Of…
Choose…

Soda

Sparkling mineral water… spruce it up with fresh lemon or lime juice, a drop or two of natural peppermint extract, liquid stevia, cucumber slices or a few crushed mint leaves.

If you’re adventurous, there are mint-flavored chlorophyll drops on the market that can be added to a glass of water. Chlorophyll may help flush toxins out of your blood and improves your breath.

Wine Coolers

A small glass of white or red wine, ideally organic and biodynamic, on occasion.

Beer

Try adding whole gingerroot to chilled carbonated water for a spicy alternative.

Lemonade or Fruit Juice

Here’s a recipe for a refreshing homemade fruit drink that’s actually good for you. You can even throw in frozen berries instead of ice cubes.
Another tasty option is to blend some homemade kefir with frozen blueberries, raspberries or any fruit you enjoy. Kefir is a fermented milk beverage that contains beneficial bacteria that give your immune system a boost, among many other health benefits.

To make kefir all you need is one-half packet of kefir starter granules in a quart of raw milk, which you leave at room temperature overnight.

Sweetened Tea

Iced green tea is a great pick-me-up that’s high in antioxidants. Although green tea contains caffeine, it also contains a naturally calming amino acid called L-theanine, which balances out caffeine’s adverse effects.

If you want it sweet, you can add natural liquid stevia, which is an herb that has no downsides for your health.

Another option is Tulsi tea (aka Holy Basil), which has a naturally delicious taste – slightly sweet and a bit spicy.

Energy Drinks

For the ultimate refreshing vitamin-rich energy drink, make up some green juice from fresh, organic veggies like spinach, parsley, cucumbers and celery.

Add a pinch of sea salt and some lemon juice for a very refreshing beverage that is heavy on nutrition and virtually guaranteed to give you lasting energy.

Sports Drinks

Try coconut water, which is a powerhouse of natural electrolytes, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, amino acids, enzymes, antioxidants and phytonutrients, and is low in sugar but pleasantly sweet.

It’s great for post-exercise rehydration, but also has anti-inflammatory properties, protects your heart and urinary tract, is a digestive tonic, improves your skin and eyes, supports good immune function, and can even help balance your blood glucose and insulin levels.

Look for a brand that has no additives, or purchase a young coconut and drain the coconut water yourself.

Frappes and Frozen Coffee Drinks

Organic dark-roast coffee served over ice (without additives like milk or sugar) is refreshing and may even lower your risk for type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, stroke, and cancers of the liver, kidney and prostate.

When consumed in this healthful manner, coffee may even lower your blood glucose level and increase the metabolic activity and/or numbers of beneficial Bifidobacteria in your gastrointestinal tract.

By Dr. Mercola

Urine can reveal important information about your body’s waste elimination process, providing clues about your overall health status.

Your kidneys serve to filter excess water and water-soluble wastes out of your blood, getting rid of toxins and things that would otherwise build up and cause you to become ill. Many things — from excess protein and sugar to bacteria and yeast — may make their way into your urine.

Instead of ignoring your urine and dashing back to whatever important activity having to pee interrupted, take this golden opportunity to become familiar with your “normal.”

If you notice changes in the way your urine looks or smells, the cause might be something as benign as what you had for dinner last night, such as beets or asparagus. Or, your astuteness may potentially alert you to a serious condition.

If you suspect you have a urinary tract problem, you should consult your physician. One of the first things he or she is likely to do is a urine test. Urine tests have been around for more than 6,000 years1 and are easy, noninvasive tools for quickly assessing your health status2.

Minding Your Pees and Cues

In your lifetime, your kidneys filter more than one million gallons of water, enough to fill a small lake. Amazingly, one kidney can handle the task perfectly well. In fact, if you lose a kidney, your remaining kidney can increase in size by 50 percent within two months, to take over the job of both.3

Urine is 95 percent water and five percent urea, uric acid, minerals, salts, enzymes, and various substances that would cause problems if allowed to accumulate in your body4. Normal urine is clear and has a straw yellow color, caused by a bile pigment called urobilin.

As with your stool, your urine changes color depending on what foods you eat, what medications and supplements you take, how much water you drink, how active you are, and the time of the day.

But some diseases can also change the color and other characteristics of your urine, so it’s important to be alert and informed. With so many variables, you can’t always be sure of what’s causing any particular urine characteristic, short of laboratory testing. However, urine’s character gives you some clues to potential problems that may be developing, giving you time to do something about it.
The following chart outlines some of the most common color variations for urine and their possible origins. The majority of the time, color changes resulting from foods, medications, supplements, or simply dehydration. But there are certain signs that warrant concern.

Color
Possible Cause

Necessary Action

Yellow/Gold

The most typical urine color, indicative of a healthy urinary tract; yellow will intensify depending on hydration; some B vitamins cause bright yellow urine

None

Red/Pink

Hematuria (fresh blood in the urine) related to urinary tract infection (UTI), kidney stone, or rarely cancer; consumption of red foods such as beets, blueberries, red food dyes, rhubarb; iron supplements; Pepto-Bismol, Maalox, and a variety of other drugs5; classic “port wine” color may indicate porphyria (genetic disorder)

***Consult your physician immediately if you suspect you have blood in your urine

White/Colorless

Excessive hydration is most likely. (See Cloudy)

Consult your physician only if chronic

Orange

Typically a sign of dehydration, showing up earlier than thirst; “holding your bladder” for too long; post-exercise; consuming orange foods (carrots, squash, or food dyes); the drug Pyridium (phenazopyridine); liver or pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Drink more water and don’t delay urination; consult physician if orange urine persists despite adequate hydration

Amber

More concentrated than orange so severe dehydration related to intense exercise or heat; excess caffeine or salt; hematuria; decreased urine production (oliguria or anuria); metabolic problem; pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Consult your physician if problem persists despite adequate hydration

Brown

Very dense urine concentration, extreme dehydration; consumption of fava beans; melanuria (too many particles in urine); UTI; kidney stone; kidney tumor or blood clot; Addison’s disease; glycosuria; renal artery stenosis; proteinuria; pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Consult your physician if problem persists despite adequate hydration, especially if accompanied by pale stools or yellow skin or eyes

Black

RARE: Alkaptonuria, a genetic disorder of phenylalanine and tyrosine metabolism marked by accumulation of homogentisic acid in the blood; poisoning

Consult your physician

Green

RARE: Unusual UTIs and certain foods (such as asparagus); excessive vitamins

Usually benign; consult your physician if it persists, especially if you have pain or burning (dysuria), and/or frequent urination (polyuria), which are symptoms of UTI

Blue

RARE: Artificial colors in foods or drugs; bilirubin; medications such as methylene blue; unusual UTIs

Usually benign; consult your physician if it persists, especially if you have pain or burning (dysuria), and/or frequent urination (polyuria), which are symptoms of UTI

Cloudy

Urinary tract infection, kidney problem, metabolic problem, or chyluria (lymph fluid in the urine), phosphaturia (phosphate crystals), pituitary problem (ADH, or antidiuretic hormone)

Consult physician, especially if you have pain or burning (dysuria), and/or frequent urination (polyuria), which are symptoms of UTI

Sediment

Proteinuria (protein particles) or albuminuria; UTI; kidney stones; see Cloudy

Consult your physician

Foamy

Turbulent urine stream; proteinuria (most common causes are diabetes and hypertension)

Consult physician if not due to “turbulence”

Does Your Urine Smell Like Roses?

If you’re a woman from ancient Rome and your urine smells like roses, you’ve probably been drinking turpentine. This is a high price to pay to woo your suitor with pleasant-smelling pee, as turpentine may kill you! Short of drinking turpentine, there are many common substances that may alter the way your urine smells, which is why it’s helpful to know what’s normal. Urine reflects all of the inner workings of your body and contains a wide variety of compounds and metabolic by-products. Some dogs can actually “smell cancer” in human urine6.

Urine doesn’t typically have a strong smell, but if yours smells pungent (like ammonia), you could have an infection or urinary stones, or you may simply be dehydrated. Dehydration causes your urine to be more concentrated and may have a stronger smell than normal, as do high-protein foods like meat and eggs. Menopause, some sexually transmitted diseases, and certain metabolic disorders may also increase the ammonia smell7. Here are some of the more common reasons your urine’s odor may change:

Medications or supplements
Certain genetic conditions, such as Maple Syrup Urine Disease, which causes urine to smell sickeningly sweet8
Certain foods — most notably asparagus. Asparagus is notorious for causing a foul, eggy or “cabbagy” stench that results from a sulfur compound called methyl mercaptan (also found in garlic and skunk secretions). Only 50 percent of people can smell asparagus pee because they have the required gene. Cutting off the tips of asparagus will reportedly prevent the pungent-smelling pee…but of course, this is the tastiest part!
Urinary tract infections
Uncontrolled diabetes is known to cause your urine to have a sweet or fruity or, less commonly, a yeasty smell. In the past, doctors diagnosed diabetes by pouring urine into sand to see if it was sweet enough to attract bugs. Other physicians just dipped a finger in and took a taste. Fortunately, today’s physicians have access to far more elegant diagnostic tools.

When You Feel the Urge to Go, GO

Urinary frequency is also important. Peeing six to eight times per day is “average.” You might go more or less often than that, depending on how much water you drink and how active you are. Increased frequency can be caused by an overactive bladder (involuntary contractions), caffeine, a urinary tract infection (UTI), interstitial cystitis, benign prostate enlargement, diabetes, or one of a handful of neurological diseases.9

It is important to pee when you feel the urge. Delaying urination can cause bladder overdistension — like overstretching a Slinky such that it can’t bounce back. You may habitually postpone urination if you find bathroom breaks inconvenient at work, or if you have Paruresis (also known as Shy Bladder Syndrome, Bashful Bladder, Tinkle Terror, or Pee Anxiety), the fear of urinating in the presence of others. Seven percent of the public suffers from this condition.10

How Much Water Should You Drink?

I don’t subscribe to the commonly quoted rule of drinking six to eight glasses of water every day. Your body is capable of telling you what it needs and when it needs it. Once your body has lost one to two percent of its total water, your thirst mechanism kicks in to let you know it’s time to drink — so thirst should be your guide. Or course, if you are outside on a hot, dry day or exercising vigorously, you’ll require more water than usual — but even then, drinking when you feel thirsty will allow you to remain hydrated.

As you age, your thirst mechanism tends to work less efficiently. Therefore, older adults will want to be sure to drink water regularly, in sufficient quantity to maintain pale yellow urine. As long as you aren’t taking riboflavin (vitamin B2, found in most multivitamins), which turns urine bright “fluorescent” yellow, then your urine should be quite pale. If you have kidney or bladder stones or a urinary tract infection, increase your water intake accordingly.

You and Your Urinary System

You should now have a pretty good idea of how important it is to familiarize yourself with what’s normal for your pee. Urine is a window into the inner workings of your body and can function as an “early warning system” for detecting health problems.

The most important factor in the overall health of your urinary tract is drinking plenty of pure, fresh water every day. Inadequate hydration is the number one risk factor for kidney stones, as well as being important for preventing UTIs. To avoid overly frequent bathroom breaks, stay hydrated but not overhydrated. Drink whenever you’re thirsty, but don’t feel you have to drink eight glasses of water per day, every day. If you’re getting up during the night to pee, stop drinking three to four hours before bedtime.

Limit your caffeine and alcohol intake, which can irritate the lining of your bladder. Make sure your diet has plenty of magnesium, and avoid sugar (including fructose and soda) and non-fermented soy products due to their oxalate content. Finally, don’t hold it. As soon as you feel the urge to go, go! Delaying urination is detrimental to the health of your bladder due to overdistension.

By Dr. Mercola

If you want to improve your nutrition and are itching to grow your own food, sprouts are an ideal choice.
Virtually all sprouted seeds and grains fall in the “superfood” category, and they’re really easy to grow, even if you don’t have a lot of space or an outdoor garden. But what about green grasses like wheatgrass?
Wheatgrass is grown from wheat seeds, and contains high amounts of chlorophyll. Most people juice it, but wheat grass is also available in supplement form.
My main objection to wheatgrass is I believe vegetable sprouts like sunflower, broccoli, and pea sprouts are far more beneficial as a food if you want to improve your nutrition.   If you’re going to grow sprouts, I wouldn’t put wheatgrass at the top of the list.
As reported in the featured article by the Chicago Tribune:1

“Its health benefits and curative powers were promoted in the 1940s by Ann Wigmore, a Lithuanian immigrant to Boston and holistic health practitioner.

Wigmore believed humans could benefit by following the practice of dogs and cats by eating grass and regurgitating to feel better.

She developed the wheatgrass diet, a program which, in addition to consuming wheat grass juice, avoids all meats, dairy products and cooked foods, and focuses on ‘live’ foods such as sprouts, raw produce, nuts and seeds.

The diet and its many touted health and curative claims — detoxification of the body, controlling diabetes, prevention of bacterial infections, the common cold and fever; and protection against ailments like skin problems, gout and even cancer — took off and continues to be alive and well today.”

Potential Benefits of Wheatgrass

As you can see, Wigmore’s inspiration for eating wheatgrass is not really based on its nutritional content but rather the idea that humans might benefit in the same manner as some animals which, upon eating grass, vomit and thereby feel better.
Many alternative health practitioners believe in wheatgrass as being highly beneficial. The Hippocrates Health Institute,2 for example, has a long list of purported benefits of wheatgrass, including the following (for the full list, please see the HHI web site):

Increases red blood-cell count; cleanses the blood, organs and gastrointestinal tract; simulates metabolism
Stimulates your thyroid gland

Reduces over-acidity in your blood and relieve peptic ulcers, ulcerative colitis, constipation, diarrhea, and other gastrointestinal complaints
Detoxifies your liver and blood and chemically neutralizes environmental pollutants
Its high chlorophyll content may help oxygenate your blood. Keeping a tray of live wheatgrass near your bed may also enhance the oxygen in the air and generate healthful negative ions to help improve your sleep
May help reduce damaging effects of radiation, courtesy of the enzyme SOD—an anti-inflammatory compound

They also claim there are a number of health benefits you can reap simply from topical exposure, such as rubbing some juice onto your skin or adding wheatgrass to your bath.

“[Wheatgrass] can double your red blood cell count just by soaking in it. Renowned nutritionist Dr. Bernard Jensen found that no other blood builders are superior to green juices and wheatgrass. In his book ‘Health Magic Through Chlorophyll’

He mentions several cases where he was able to double the red blood cell count in a matter of days merely by having patients soak in a chlorophyll-water bath. Blood building results occur even more rapidly when patients drink green juices and wheatgrass regularly.”

Others, like Mother Nature Network,3 point out that there are no medical studies to support Dr. Jensen’s findings. According to Dr. Chris Reynolds,4 who goes by the moniker “Dr. Wheatgrass,” the benefits of wheatgrass are primarily biological, not nutritional.

“Reynolds argues that there is plenty of evidence to support wheatgrass extract’s role in supporting biological functions, including one preliminary study in the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research,5 which suggests that fermented wheatgrass extract ‘exerts significant antitumor activity.’

The study concludes that the extract requires further evaluation as a candidate for clinical combination drug regimens,” Mother Nature Network writes.

Important Details to Know BEFORE You Use Wheat Grass

Wheatgrass contains large amounts of chlorophyll, and is thought to have a wide variety of health promoting properties; however these benefits are largely related to the quality of how it is grown.  Like any food or supplement, quality is highly variable and if you chose to use it, this is important to pay attention to. It is far less expensive to grow your own, but more importantly you can typically grow a much higher quality grass.
Harvest time is crucial and that is typically around one week after you germinate the seeds at what is called the “jointing stage.”  Some stores that sell wheat grass will harvest it once and then let it grow again for a second harvest  Some also sell frozen wheat grass but this is far less effective than freshly harvested wheat grass.
Most wheat grass tastes very bitter  Many believe that they need to grow it in direct sunlight but this actually contributes to the bitterness. Expose the grass only to indirect sunlight, and harvest it right at the jointing stage when it is at its sweetest.
One of the complications of growing wheat grass is that it is very easy to be contaminated with mold due to it’s tightly bound roots in moist soil. If this occurs, the mold can make you sick. Mold typically grows at the bottom of the wheat grass near the soil. Keeping a gentle breeze blowing, keeping the humidity low, and reducing the quantity of seed so the growth is less dense are three approaches to help limit this. 
If you decide to use wheat grass you need to be very careful though, as excessive amounts of wheat grass can cause you to become very nauseous and catalyze a healing crisis that could make you very sick.  It is also not a food but a detoxifying herb and should not be consumed every day for long periods of time.
It is not uncommon for people who drink wheatgrass juice daily for several months or years to develop an aversion to the taste, or even become nauseated by it. Since it is such a highly detoxifying medicinal herb that can cause cleanse or “Herxheimer” reactions,  it’s a good idea to use wheatgrass juice judiciously. When first starting wheatgrass you should only use one ounce once or twice a day, gradually working up to two ounces.

The Benefits of Raw Juice

While I’m not convinced that wheatgrass is an ideal choice as a food, there’s no doubt that sprouts and green juice play a significant role in optimal nutrition. At the end of this article, I’ll review growing your own sprouts, but first, let’s look at juicing.

Virtually every health authority recommends that we get 6-8 servings of vegetables and fruits per day and very few of us actually get that. Juicing is an easy way to virtually guarantee that you will reach your daily target for vegetables. There are three main reasons why you will want to consider incorporating vegetable juicing into your optimal health program:

Juicing helps you absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. This is important because most of us have impaired digestion as a result of making less-than-optimal food choices over many years. This limits your body’s ability to absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables. Juicing will help to “pre-digest” them for you, so you will receive most of the nutrition, rather than having it go down the toilet.
Juicing allows you to consume a healthier amount of vegetables in an efficient manner. If you are a carb type, you should eat one pound of raw vegetables per 50 pounds of body weight per day. Some people may find eating that many vegetables difficult, but it can be easily accomplished with a quick glass of vegetable juice.
You can add a wider variety of vegetables in your diet. Many people eat the same vegetable salads every day. This violates the principle of regular food rotation and increases your chance of developing an allergy to a certain food. But with juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally enjoy eating whole.

Drinking your juice first thing in the morning can give you a natural energy boost without resorting to stimulants like coffee. Since the juice is already in an easily digestible form, it can help revitalize your energy levels within as little as 20 minutes. For more information about juicing, including detailed recommendations for the types of vegetables to use; different types of juicers, and other helpful tips, please see my three-part interview with Cherie Calbom, better known as The Juice Lady (Part 1, part 2, and part 3). Below, I give a quick overview of juicing, and how to find a juicer that doesn’t cost a fortune.

Sprouts—A DIY Superfood

Wheatgrass is not to be viewed as a food; it is a potent healing agent if used carefully and cautiously. There are other sprouts that fill the role of food very well.  Sprouts are important to optimize your health, as they are an oft-ignored powerhouse of nutrition. They can contain up to 30 times the nutrition of organic vegetables grown in your own garden, and allow your body to extract more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fats from the foods you eat.
During sprouting, minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, bind to protein, making them more bioavailable. Furthermore, both the quality of the protein and the fiber content of beans, nuts, seeds and grains improves when sprouted. The content of vitamins and essential fatty acids also increase dramatically during the sprouting process. While you can sprout a variety of different beans, nuts, seeds and grains, sprouts in general have the following beneficial attributes:

Support for cell regeneration
Powerful sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins and enzymes that protect against free radical damage
Alkalinizing effect on your body, which is thought to protect against disease, including cancer (as many tumors are acidic)
Abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

My two favorites are pea and sunflower sprouts. They provide some of the highest quality protein you can eat. Sprouted sunflower seeds also contain plenty of iron and chlorophyll, the latter of which will help detoxify your blood and liver. Of the seeds, sunflower seeds are among the best in terms of overall nutritional value, and sprouting them will augment their nutrient content by as much as 300 to 1,200 percent! Similarly, sprouting peas will improve the bioavailability of zinc and magnesium.

Planting and Harvesting Sprouts at Home

I used to grow sprouts in Ball jars over 10 years ago but stopped doing that. I am strongly convinced that actually growing them in soil is far easier and produces far more nutritious and abundant food. It is also less time consuming. With Ball jars you need to rinse them several times a day to prevent mold growth. Trays also take up less space. I am now consuming one whole tray you see below every 2-3 days and to produce that much food with Ball jars I would need dozens of jars. 
I am in the process of compiling more specific detailed videos for future articles but I thought I would whet your appetite and give you a preview with the photos below. For now you can get instructions on how to grow them by viewing a step-by-step guide at rawfoods-livingfoods.com.6 One of the important details that many fail to do is to cover the sprouting tray with a cover that not only puts the sprouts in darkness but has a heavy weight on it. The weight is necessary to produce a high quality sprout. It needs the exercise to simulate breaking through the soil.

About to plant wheat grass and sunflower seeds – 2 days after soaking

Wheat grass and sunflower seeds – 3 ½ days post germination

Sunflower seeds and pea sprouts – 3 days until ready for harvest

Sunflower seed sprouts and wheat grass – ready to harvest

Sprouts are a perfect complement to fermented vegetables. My current salad consists of about half a pound of sunflower sprouts, four ounces of fermented vegetables, half a large red pepper, several tablespoon of raw organic butter, some red onion, a whole avocado and about three ounces of salmon or chicken. It is my primary meal. In the late afternoon, I typically only have macadamia nuts and home made coconut candy in addition to drinking 16-32 ounces of green vegetable juice. I break it up occasionally by going to a restaurant with friends.

By Dr. Mercola

Gleevec, a drug used to treat leukemia, costs $70,000 a year in the US but only $2,500 in India. This costly gap exists thanks to US patents that prevent competitors from making and selling lower cost versions.

Such patents do not exist to the same extent in India, and, in fact, just this month India’s highest court again rejected an application to patent the cancer drug – a move that likely would have sent prices soaring.

Indian Government Takes Multiple Steps to Prevent Cancer Drug Patents

Along with rejecting patent applications, the Indian government has also granted (or has plans to grant) compulsory licenses for at least five drugs targeting leukemia, breast, kidney and liver cancers.
The licenses allow local drug companies to produce generic versions of the medications despite patents held by their original makers – and without the need for their permission.
Indonesia, China and the Philippines have adopted similar measures that allow them to circumvent patents and give their populations access to lower priced drugs.
Such moves are likely to increase as cancer rates continue to rise and, with it, the demand for what are deemed conventionally as the “best” treatments. It’s a firestorm in the making, as government enforced protected patents enable drug companies to charge exorbitant prices for their drugs – a measure they claim is necessary to fund the research and development needed to produce “life-saving” medications.
But with more countries circumventing patents — and the plain fact that, as The Atlantic reported, “U.S. patients will not indefinitely pay a 20-fold increase on the price of medicines that Indian consumers pay” – the flawed system is likely to be the source of increasing tensions and, ultimately, is likely to crumble. The Atlantic continued:1

“The fight over cancer drugs in India exposes a fundamental tension in the way we fund pharmaceutical R&D. Patents allow pharmaceutical firms to charge high prices for drugs for a limited period of time to recoup their investment in R&D.

This results in more of the drugs that we need, but makes them less accessible to those who need them. The tension becomes greater in the global context because the income disparities between developed and developing country patients are so vast.”

Patented Cancer Drugs: What are We Really Fighting Over?

Pharmaceutical companies spend nearly TWICE as much on marketing in the US as they do on R&D! This finding was published in the journal PloS Medicine five years ago in 2008.2 So the tune they keep singing – that they need drug patents and outrageous price tags on their drugs to keep making new medications – is growing quite tired.
Drug companies use patents because it allows them to make more money. On average, Americans pay TWICE the price for the identical drugs compared to other countries. But the fight over patentability and drug prices is really only distracting from the much bigger issue at hand, which is the value of the drugs themselves… or rather, the lack thereof.
If you were living in 1900, you very likely would have relied upon the “cutting-edge” treatments of the time, which had reassuring names like Hollister’s Golden Nugget Tablets and Dr. Sawen’s Magic Nerving Pills, and touted promises of curing all that ails you.
Yet, according to a new study that chemically analyzed dozens of patent medicines from the late 1800s and early 1900s, the treatments contained not only beneficial ingredients like calcium and zinc but also toxins like lead, mercury and arsenic.3 The study’s lead researcher told Smithsonian Magazine in an interview:4

“Back in the day, this was a very trial-and-error kind of field… The stuff that we think of as dangerous now, though it was dangerous, was as cutting-edge as they had at the time.”

Today, we look back and scoff at the therapies that our not-so-distant ancestors embraced, because we now know that the ingredients many contained were toxic and could, quite literally, kill you.

100 Years From Now, Will Many Common Prescription Drugs be Seen as Equally Barbaric?

If only we had a window into the future, you would likely see what is already glaring right before your eyes: that many of the “cutting-edge” treatments of the 21st century are no better than the Hollister’s Golden Nuggets of yesteryears. Mercury and other toxic metals like aluminum are still being used in various vaccinations, for instance. We even allow mercury to be implanted directly into our mouths via “silver” fillings!
Other medications may not contain buzz-worthy poisons like mercury or lead, yet they pose equally deadly consequences via other mechanisms. Take Gleevec, the cancer drug that’s at the root of the patent controversy, with patients vying to get their hands on this “life-saving” drug. Unfortunately, though it may help treat leukemia, it also kills heart muscle cells, which may cause fatal congestive heart failure.
So how can we laugh at people 100 years ago for taking deadly medications… when today’s medications – and the entire modern medical system — are still a leading cause of death? This is perhaps no more apparent than with drugs used to treat cancer…

Many Cancer Patients Die From Chemo

The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) study found that more than four in 10 patients who received chemotherapy toward the end of life experienced potentially fatal effects. And after reviewing data from over 600 cancer patients who died within 30 days of receiving treatment, it was found that chemotherapy hastened or caused death in 27 percent of those cases.

Chemotherapy drugs are, by their very nature, extremely toxic and typically do not work with your body to modulate and normalize its response to allow the cancer to resolve normally. Despite its reputation as the gold-standard in cancer treatment, chemotherapy has an average 5-year survival success rate of just over 2 percent for all cancers, according to a study published in the journal Clinical Oncology.5 Meanwhile, a typical, and potentially deadly, side effect of chemo is the destruction of the rapidly multiplying and dividing cells found in your:

Bone marrow, which produces blood
Digestive system
Reproductive system
Hair follicles

Chemo actually supports the more chemo resistant and malignant cell subpopulations within tumors (e.g. cancer stem cells), both killing the more benign cells and/or senescent cells within the tumor that keep it slow-growing, or even harmless. As a result, this unleashes a more aggressive, treatment-resistant type of cancer to wreak havoc on the body.

Another one of the biggest drawbacks to chemotherapy is the fact that it destroys healthy cells throughout your body right along with cancer cells, a “side effect” that often leads to accelerated death, not healing. Effectiveness is a shot in the dark, in many cases, not entirely different from the “miracle cures” popular at the turn of the 20th century.

Prevention is a Far Better Route Than Treatment

The bottom line here is that there’s a lot you can do to lower your chances of getting cancer — you and your family CAN take control of your health. Don’t wait for diagnosis and place your very life on the hopes of affording outrageously expensive chemotherapy drugs… take the reins and be a proactive participant in your own health care, before you end up in need for disease management. I believe you can virtually eliminate your risk of cancer and other chronic diseases, and radically improve your chances of recovering from cancer if you currently have it, by following these relatively simple risk-reduction strategies.

Reduce or eliminate your processed food, sugar/fructose and grain carbohydrate intake. This applies to whole unprocessed organic grains as well, as they tend to rapidly break down and drive your insulin and leptin levels up, which is the last thing you need to have happening if you are seeking to resolve or prevent cancer.
Normalize your vitamin D levels by getting appropriate sun exposure, and consider careful supplementation when this is not possible. However, if you’re taking oral vitamin D, you also need to make sure you’re taking vitamin K2 as well, as K2 deficiency is actually what produces the symptoms of vitamin D toxicity, which includes inappropriate soft tissue calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries. To learn more, please see my previous article: What You Need to Know About Vitamin K2, D and Calcium. If you take oral vitamin D and have cancer, it would be very prudent to monitor your vitamin D blood levels regularly.
Consider reducing your protein levels to one gram per kilogram of lean body weight. It would be unusual for most adults to need more than 100 grams of protein and most likely close to half that.
Control your fasting insulin and leptin levels. This is the end result you’ll get when you remove sugars and grains from your diet and start to exercise regularly. Your levels can be easily monitored with the use of simple and relatively inexpensive blood tests.
Normalize your ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats by taking a high-quality krill oil and reducing your intake of most processed vegetable oils.
Get regular exercise. One of the primary reasons exercise works is that it drives your insulin levels down. Controlling insulin levels is one of the most powerful ways to reduce your cancer risks.
The trick about exercise, though, is understanding how to use it as a precise tool. This ensures you are getting enough to achieve the benefit, not too much to cause injury, and the right variety to balance your entire physical structure and maintain strength and flexibility, and aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels. If you have limited time Peak Fitness exercises are your best bet but ideally you should have a good strength training program as well.
Get regular, good sleep.
Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.
Limit your exposure and provide protection for yourself from radiation produced by cell phones, towers, base stations, and WiFi stations.
Avoid frying or charbroiling your food. Boil, poach or steam your foods instead.
Have a tool to permanently reprogram the neurological short-circuiting that can activate cancer genes. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed. My particular favorite tool for resolving emotional challenges, as you may know, is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
Eat at least one-third of your food raw.

Consider adding cancer-fighting whole foods, herbs, spices and supplements to your diet, such as broccoli, curcumin and resveratrol. To learn more about how these anti-angiogenetic foods, and many others, work to fight cancer, please see my previous article: Dramatically Effective New Natural Way to Starve Cancer and Obesity

By Dr. Mercola

Only about one-quarter of American adults eat three or more servings of vegetables a day. If you are in the majority who does not, you are missing out on major benefits, as consuming fresh vegetables is one of the key cornerstones to optimal health.

Although I am convinced virtually everyone would benefit from some animal protein in their diet, I firmly believe we all need to eat large amounts of fresh, high-quality vegetables every day to achieve high-level health. Some of us need far more than others.

Most vegetables are not very calorie dense and as a result they probably should constitute the bulk of your diet by volume. Even though my diet is 70 percent fat by calories, if you were to spread out all the food I eat in a day, the largest volume of food would be vegetables.

There is little that compares to the nutritional value of organic, raw vegetables, and according to new research, eating your greens may be even more important than previously imagined.

The Importance of Eating Your Greens

Researchers at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s Molecular Immunology division have discovered1 that a gene, called T-bet, which is essential for producing critical immune cells in your gut, responds to the food you eat—specifically leafy green vegetables. According to the press release:2

“The immune cells, named innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), are found in the lining of the digestive system and protect the body from ‘bad’ bacteria in the intestine.

They are also believed to play an important role in controlling food allergies, inflammatory diseases and obesity, and may even prevent the development of bowel cancers.

… [T]he research team revealed T-bet was essential for generating a subset of ILCs which is a newly discovered cell type that protects the body against infections entering through the digestive system.

‘In this study, we discovered that T-bet is the key gene that instructs precursor cells to develop into ILCs, which it does in response to signals in the food we eat and to bacteria in the gut,’ Dr Belz said. ‘ILCs are essential for immune surveillance of the digestive system and this is the first time that we have identified a gene responsible for the production of ILCs.'”

ILCs are thought to be essential for:

Maintaining balance between tolerance, immunity and inflammation in your body
Producing interleukin-22 (IL-22), a hormone that can protect your body from pathogenic bacteria
Maintaining healthy intestinal balance by promoting growth of beneficial bacteria and healing small wounds and abrasions in the gut
Helping resolve cancerous lesions

More Reasons to Eat Your Veggies

Vegetables contain an array of antioxidants and other disease-fighting compounds that are very difficult to get anywhere else. Plant chemicals called phytochemicals can reduce inflammation and eliminate carcinogens, while others regulate the rate at which your cells reproduce, get rid of old cells and maintain DNA. Studies have repeatedly shown that people with higher vegetable intake have:

Lower risks of stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease
Lower risks of certain types of cancer, eye diseases and digestive problems
Reduced risk of kidney stones and bone loss

Higher scores on cognitive tests
Higher antioxidant levels
Lower biomarkers for oxidative stress

Further, if you eat your veggies raw, you’ll also be receiving biophotons, the smallest physical units of light, which are stored in, and used by all biological organisms — including your body. Vital sun energy finds its way into your cells via the food you eat, in the form of these biophotons. They contain important bio-information, which controls complex vital processes in your body. The biophotons have the power to order and regulate, and, in doing so, to elevate the organism — in this case, your physical body — to a higher oscillation or order. Generally, the more sunlight a food is able to store, the more nutritious it is.

Naturally-grown fresh vegetables, raw sprouts, and sun-ripened fruits are rich in light energy. Ideally, look for fresh, non-GMO produce that is organically grown on a local farm in your area. Choose the vegetables that appear freshest first, and consume them raw shortly after purchase for optimal benefits.

If you can’t obtain organic, conventionally-grown vegetables are better than none! Just take extra care with non-organic vegetables by washing them thoroughly and removing peels and cores when possible to minimize your exposure to pesticides. Certain fruits and vegetables also tend to be far more contaminated than others simply because they’re more susceptible to various infestations and therefore sprayed more heavily. Some foods are also more “absorbent,” with thin, tender skins. Such foods would be high on your list for buying organic.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) produces an annual shopper’s guide to pesticides in produce3 that you can download. It lists the produce with the highest and lowest levels of pesticide residue, which can help save you money if you can’t afford to buy everything organic.

Reasons to Eat Sprouts, a Living Food with Amazing Health Benefits

Sprouts are a “super” food that many overlook. In addition to their nutritional profile, sprouts are also easy to grow on your own. I started sprouting seeds in ball jars 10 to 15 years ago. A Care2 article published last year4 listed 10 reasons for eating sprouts, including the following. For the rest, please see the original article:

Sprouts can contain up to 100 times more enzymes than raw fruits and vegetables, allowing your body to extract more vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fats from the foods you eat
Both the quality of the protein and the fiber content of beans, nuts, seeds and grains improves when sprouted

The content of vitamins and essential fatty acids also increase dramatically during the sprouting process. For example, depending on the sprout, the nutrient content can increase as much as 30 times the original value within just a few days of sprouting. Sunflower seed and pea sprouts tend to top the list of all the seeds that you can sprout and are typically each about 30 times more nutritious than organic vegetables you can even harvest in your backyard garden

During sprouting, minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, bind to protein, making them more bioavailable

Sprouts are the ultimate locally-grown food, and can easily be grown in your own kitchen, so you know exactly what you’re eating. And since they’re very inexpensive, cost is no excuse for avoiding them

Planting and Harvesting Sprouts at Home

I used to grow sprouts in Ball jars over ten years ago but stopped doing that. I am strongly convinced that actually growing them in soil is far easier and produces far more nutritious and abundant food. It is also less time consuming. With Ball jars you need to rinse them several times a day to prevent mold growth. Also takes up less space. I am now consuming one whole tray you see below every 2-3 days and to produce that much food with Ball jars I would need dozens of jars. I simply don’t have the time or patience for that. I am in the process of compiling more specific detailed videos for future articles but I thought I would whet your appetite and give you a preview with the photos below.

About to plant wheat grass and sunflower seeds – 2 days after soaking

Wheat grass and sunflower seeds – 3 ½ days post germination

Sunflower seeds and pea sprouts – 3 days until ready for harvest

Sunflower seed sprouts and wheat grass – ready to harvest

Sprouts as Medicine

Sprouts-as-medicine.com5 is a good source for things relating to sprouts: their health benefits, recipes, and how to grow your own. The British verticalveg.org6 is another. The latter gives helpful growing tips for each month of the year. One of the benefits of sprouts is that you can grow them year-round, even when it’s cold and dark. The article 6 Easy Steps to Sprout Heaven7 teaches you how to grow your own sprouts, from start to finish. While you can sprout a variety of different beans, nuts, seeds and grains, sprouts in general have the following beneficial attributes:

Support for cell regeneration
Powerful sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins and enzymes that protect against free radical damage
Alkalinizing effect on your body, which is thought to protect against disease, including cancer (as many tumors are acidic)
Abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

Common Sprouts and Their Superior Nutritional Profiles

Some of the most commonly sprouted beans, nuts, seeds and grains include:

Broccoli: known to have anti-cancer properties, courtesy of the enzyme “sulforaphane”
Alfalfa: a significant dietary source of phytoestrogens. Also a good source of vitamins A, B, C, D, E, F, and K
Wheat grass: high in vitamins B, C, E and many minerals
Mung bean: good source of protein, fiber, vitamin C and A

Clover : significant source of isoflavones
Lentil sprouts: contain 26 percent protein, and can be eaten without cooking
Sunflower: contains, minerals, healthy fats, essential fatty acids, fiber, and phytosterols. It’s also one of the highest in protein
Pea shoots: good source of vitamins A, C and folic acid and one of the highest in protein

My two favorites are pea and sunflower sprouts. They provide some of the highest quality protein you can eat. They have radically improved the nutrition of my primary meal, which is a salad at lunch. They are a perfect complement to fermented vegetables. It is hard to imagine a healthier combination that provides the essentials of nutrition very inexpensively.
I plan on producing some videos on how to grow them later this year but for now you can get instructions on how to grow them by viewing a step-by-step guide at rawfoods-livingfoods.com.8
Vegetarians in Paradise9 offers an in-depth write-up on the history and health benefits associated with sunflower seeds. Of the seeds, sunflower seeds are among the best in terms of nutritional value, and sprouting them will augment their nutrient content by as much as 300 to 1,200 percent! Similarly, sprouting peas will improve the bioavailability of zinc and magnesium. Sprouted sunflower seeds also contain plenty of iron and chlorophyll, the latter of which will help detoxify your blood and liver. The phytosterols in sprouted sunflower seeds can help enhance your immune system. According to Vegetarians in Paradise:

“One of the richest sources of protein, 3 1/2 ounces (100 grams) of sprouted sunflower seeds contains 22.78 grams. The mineral content soars in the sprouted state. That 3 1/2 ounces (100 grams) offers a notable 116 mg of calcium, 5.06 mg of zinc, 689 mg of potassium, 1.75 mg copper, and 354 mg of magnesium.

Vitamins increase during sprouting when the seeds are producing a new life. Vitamin A increases to 50,000 IU, and Vitamin E offers 52.18 mg, while vitamin D provides 92.0 IU for 3 1/2 ounces (100 grams). The vitamin B family offers niacin at 4.50 mg, riboflavin at 0.25 mg, and thiamin at 2.29 mg. Sprouted sunflower seeds are also a rich source of iron, providing 6.77 mg for 31/2 ounces (100 grams) that can be a benefit to people with anemia.”

Simple Ways to Increase Your Veggies

Two of the easiest and most efficient ways to optimize your vegetable intake is to juice your vegetables and add sprouted seeds. Not only will juicing help your body absorb all the nutrients from the vegetables by making them easily digestible, but you’re also avoiding the risk of damaging any of their sensitive micronutrients through cooking. Cooking and processing food destroys many micronutrients by altering their shape and chemical composition. And the sprouting process tends to increase nutrient content and bioavailability of nutrients. Sprouts also contain valuable enzymes that allow your body to absorb and use the nutrients of all other foods you eat.

Another benefit of juicing is that it allows you to add a wider variety of vegetables to your diet that you might not normally enjoy eating whole. This way, you’re working with the principle of regular food rotation, which will lessen your chances of developing food allergies. For more in-depth guidelines and information about juicing, I recommend you review the juicing section of my nutrition plan.

But whatever method you choose, juiced, whole, sprouted or cooked, please make it a point to eat your veggies. This is one food group that is incredibly diverse, so there’s a wide variety to choose from and plenty to suit virtually everyone’s tastes. And mounting evidence shows that eating vegetables every day is a cornerstone of good health, and a habit that can go a very long way toward preventing disease of all kinds, including cancer.