Watchman News

By Dr. Mercola

If you ever feel like it’s difficult to eat enough veggies, making a small investment in a high-quality juicer is one of the best steps you can take for your health. Raw juice can be likened to a “living broth,” as it is teeming with micronutrients that many people are lacking.
When you drink fresh-made green juice, it is almost like receiving an intravenous infusion of vitamins, minerals, and enzymes because they go straight into your system without having to be broken down.
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… and this is only the beginning of its benefits.

Three Reasons Why Juicing Is a Phenomenal Health Habit

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. Virtually every health authority recommends that we get six to eight 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.

You can add a wider variety of vegetables in your diet. Many people eat the same vegetable salads or side dishes every day. This violates the principle of regular food rotation and increases your chance of developing an allergy to a certain food.

Plus, it limits the number of different phytochemicals in your diet, as each vegetable will offer unique benefits. With juicing, you can juice a wide variety of vegetables that you may not normally enjoy eating whole.

Additionally, juicing can help:

Promote weight loss. In one study, adults who drank at least eight ounces of vegetable juice as part of a diet lost four pounds over 12 weeks, while those who followed the same diet but did not drink the juice lost only one pound. The vegetable juice drinkers also significantly increased their intake of vitamin C and potassium, while decreasing their overall carbohydrate intake.

Boost your immune system by supercharging it with concentrated phytochemicals. Raw juice also contains biophotonic light energy, which can help revitalize your body.

Increase your energy. When your body has an abundance of the nutrients it needs, and your pH is optimally balanced, you feel energized. Since it can be utilized by your body immediately, those who juice report feeling the “kick” of energy almost instantly.

Support your brain health. People who drank juices (fruit and vegetable) more than three times per week, compared to less than once a week, were 76 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Kame Project.1

Juice Cleanses: Even Kids Are Doing Them

Juice cleanses are the latest health fad, with juice bars and prepackaged juice cleanses now widely available. There is certainly a case to be made for short (or even lengthier) juice fasts, in which you drink only fresh vegetable juice for a period of one to several days.
This is typically done for cleansing purposes or to treat certain health conditions, and should only be done under the guidance of a natural health care practitioner if you intend to go on a longer juice fast. Some people also drink green juices as part of their intermittent fasting regimens.

Time Magazine recently reported that even children are jumping on the juice cleanse bandwagon, and at least one company markets a cleanse specifically for children for about $100.2 Those geared toward adults can be even costlier – upwards of $600 for a five-day cleanse.
I am not opposed to juice cleanses under the right circumstances, but children are generally not the best candidates, as their bodies require healthy fats and proteins that are missing from fresh juices. Further, you needn’t spend hundreds of dollars on a fancy juice cleanse – it’s easy to make your own juice at home for a fraction of that cost, and it’s going to be fresher, too.
My philosophy regarding juicing is to view it as a regular part of your diet, not just a fad that you engage in once or twice a year. Drinking green juice every day is going to give you far more benefits than a sporadic three-day cleanse will. Kids, too, can enjoy vegetable juice on a daily basis, either as a beverage with a meal or as a snack (ideally along with a source of healthful fat to ensure all those fat-soluble nutrients get absorbed).

Focus on Green Juice, Not Fruit Juice

This is an important distinction to make because, if your juice contains too many fruits, it will be both higher in calories and sugar (fructose). You can add in an apple, a kiwifruit, or a handful of berries to give your juice flavor, but the bulk of it should come from organic, green veggies – spinach, celery, kale, Swiss chard, etc. Unfortunately, green juice has a stigma for tasting bad and many people avoid it simply because of its color. A recent survey by Jamba Juice even revealed that 28 percent of US adults “fear the look” of green juice and 32 percent said green juice is their least favorite type of juice.3 This negative reputation persisted despite the fact that 32 percent said they believe green juice is the healthiest option.
It may take some getting used to, but green juice actually has a very pleasant flavor, and you can tweak it to fit your taste. If you’re new to juicing, you can start with more mild-tasting veggies, like celery and cucumbers. From there you can work your way up to red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, spinach, and escarole, along with parsley and cilantro. Greens like kale, collard, dandelion, and mustard greens are quite bitter, so you’ll want to start slowly and add just a few leaves at a time. If you would like to make your juice taste a bit more palatable, especially in the beginning, you can also add these elements:

Limes and lemons: You can add one half to a whole lime or lemon for every quart of juice. You can actually juice the skin if you want to avoid the hassle of peeling them. Limes work well to cut bitter flavors.

Cranberries: You can also add some cranberries if you enjoy them. Limit the cranberries to about four ounces per pint of juice.

Fresh ginger: This is an excellent addition if you enjoy the taste. It gives your juice a little “kick”!

What Type of Juicer Works Best?

High-speed blenders like Vita Mix are great for green smoothies, but they are not the best juicers. You have a world of options when it comes to actual juicers, starting below $100 on the low end. You start getting into better quality juicers around $150. There are a number of different types of juicers, from fast-spinning centrifugal juicers to slow-moving masticating juicers. The slower the juice is extracted, the more nutrients are preserved. If you are new to juicing, I recommend a mid-priced juicer. The cheap centrifugal juicers (like the Juiceman) break easily, produce low-quality juice, and are very loud, which may contribute to hearing loss.

They also don’t last very long. My favorite are the single gear juicers, which are relatively fast, less expensive and easier to clean than more expensive juicers like twin gears or even the $2,000 Norwalk juicers. Here is my current favorite juicer. When looking at your options, remember to evaluate the cleanup required, as this could influence your willingness to use it every day. As the “juice lady” Cherie Calbom says, “In the end, the best juicer is the one you’ll actually use.”

Juicing Tips to Get You Started

Once you get into the habit of juicing, you’ll find that you’ll look forward to your green juice and even miss it if you skip a day. You can find a detailed guide to juicing here, but to get started, you need a good recipe — something that tastes great, or else you’ll likely quit before you’ve really gotten started.

“Add in some dark greens because that’s so wonderful for your health,” Cherie suggests. “I use coloreds and Swiss chard, kale, parsley. I combine that with cucumber and celery. But if you’ve never juiced before, then you want to add in some flavorful things; a little bit of carrot. Some lemon is wonderful. It really improves the taste. I add lemon to almost everything I make.”

I strongly recommend using organic vegetables as much as possible, and drinking it shortly after you make it. Vegetable juice is highly perishable so it’s best to drink all of your juice immediately. However, if you’re careful, you can store it for up to 24 hours with only moderate nutritional decline. This is really helpful if you are bringing your juice to work with you so you can consume it during the day. To properly store your juice:

Put your juice in a glass jar with an airtight lid and fill it to the very top. There should be a minimum amount of air in the jar as the oxygen in air (air is about 20 percent oxygen) will “oxidize” and damage the juice.
For even better storage, consider purchasing a food vacuum pump like Food Saver with a Ball jar attachment. You can pour your juice into a mason jar and put the lid on and use the Food Saver to suck out the air in the jar to vacuum pack it. This will remove most of the oxygen that will damage the juice.

Immediately store it in the fridge and consume it when you are ready. It is best to drink it as soon as possible and in any case within 24 hours of juicing.

Most people juice in the morning, but if that does not work out well for your schedule, please feel free to choose whatever meal works best for your lifestyle.

By Dr. Mercola

Magnesium is a crucially important mineral for optimal health, performing a wide array of biological functions, including playing an important role in bone health. In fact, of the 25 grams of magnesium found in an average adult, up to 60 percent of it is found in your bones.1
Multiple studies have shown that higher magnesium intake is associated with a higher bone mineral density in both men and women,2 and recent research from Norway has even found an association between magnesium in drinking water and risk of hip fractures.

Magnesium May Lower Your Risk of Hip Fractures

Norway, like the US, has a high rate of hip fractures, but the researchers noted that its incidence varies by region, with those living in urban areas more likely to have hip fractures than those in rural locales. They suggested this could be due to naturally varying levels of minerals like magnesium in the drinking water, although this didn’t turn out to be the case.
What they did find, however, was that while concentrations of magnesium (and calcium) in drinking water were generally low, there was an inverse association between concentration of magnesium and risk of hip fracture in both men and women.3 The researchers concluded:
“Magnesium in drinking water may have a protective role against hip fractures.”

The finding is significant considering how debilitating a hip fracture can be, especially among the elderly. A broken hip carries a great risk of complications and usually requires prolonged specialized care for recovery. It’s estimated that 25 percent of elderly people suffering a hip fracture die as a direct result.4

Magnesium Is Involved in Bone Formation and Health

It’s estimated that 80 percent of Americans are deficient in magnesium, which could have a dramatic influence on bone health. Magnesium influences activities of both osteoblasts (cells responsible for bone formation) and osteoclasts (the cells that break down your bone).
Magnesium is thought to play a role in preventing and fighting osteoporosis.  According to the National Office of Dietary Supplements:5
“Magnesium also affects the concentrations of both parathyroid hormone and the active form of vitamin D, which are major regulators of bone homeostasis… Research has found that women with osteoporosis have lower serum magnesium levels than women with osteopenia and those who do not have osteoporosis or osteopenia. These and other findings indicate that magnesium deficiency might be a risk factor for osteoporosis.”

In fact, one study found that postmenopausal women with osteoporosis were able to suppress bone turnover (which suggests bone loss decreased) just by taking 290 mg/day of magnesium for 30 days.6

Your Calcium-Magnesium Ratio: Are You Taking Too Much Calcium?

Over the past 30 years, women have been told to take supplemental calcium to avoid osteoporosis. Many foods have also been fortified with extra calcium to prevent calcium deficiency among the general population.
Despite such measures, osteoporosis has continued to climb, and this could be, in part, because of an imbalanced calcium-magnesium ratio. According to Carolyn Dean, a medical and naturopathic doctor:
“I’ve heard statistics like a 700 percent rise in osteoporosis in a 10-year period, even while taking all this calcium. The myth that’s been created about calcium is that we need twice as much calcium as we do magnesium. Most of the supplements reflect this. We’ve got a situation where people are taking 1,200 to 1,500 milligrams of calcium and maybe a few hundred milligrams of magnesium.

The 2:1 ratio—that was a mistake; a mistaken translation from French researcher Jean Durlach, who said never ever go beyond two parts calcium to one part magnesium in your food, water, or supplement intake combined.”

This was misinterpreted as meaning a 2:1 ratio was an appropriate ratio, which it’s not. A more appropriate ratio of calcium to magnesium is 1:1. This may not only pose a risk to your bones but also to your heart. If you have too much calcium and not enough magnesium, your muscles will tend to go into spasm. So excessive amounts of calcium without the counterbalance of magnesium can lead to a heart attack and sudden death. Quite simply, with insufficient amounts of magnesium, your heart simply cannot function properly.

For Optimal Bone and Heart Health, You’ve Got to Balance Magnesium with Vitamins K2 and D

When balancing calcium and magnesium also keep in mind that these must be balanced with vitamins K2 and D. These four nutrients perform an intricate dance together, with one supporting the other. Lack of balance between these nutrients is why calcium supplements have become associated with increased risk of heart attacks and stroke, and why some people experience vitamin D toxicity.

Part of the explanation for these adverse side effects is that vitamin K2 keeps calcium in its appropriate place. If you’re K2 deficient, added calcium can cause more problems than it solves, by accumulating in the wrong places, like soft tissue.

Similarly, if you opt for oral vitamin D, you need to also consume it in your food or take supplemental vitamin K2 and more magnesium. Taking mega doses of vitamin D supplements without sufficient amounts of K2 and magnesium can lead to vitamin D toxicity and magnesium deficiency symptoms, which include inappropriate calcification that may damage your heart.

Magnesium and vitamin K2 complement each other, as magnesium helps lower blood pressure, which is an important component of heart disease. So, all in all, anytime you’re taking any of the following: magnesium, calcium, vitamin D3, or vitamin K2, you need to take all the others into consideration as well, since these all work synergistically with one another.

What Else Is Magnesium Good For?

It would be misleading to simply classify magnesium as a mineral for your bones or your heart. Researchers have now detected 3,751 magnesium-binding sites on human proteins, indicating that its role in human health and disease may have been vastly underestimated.7 Magnesium is also found in more than 300 different enzymes in your body and plays a role in your body’s detoxification processes, making it important for helping to prevent damage from environmental chemicals, heavy metals, and other toxins. Even glutathione, your body’s most powerful antioxidant that has even been called “the master antioxidant,” requires magnesium for its synthesis. Recent research also showed that higher intakes of dietary magnesium were associated with a lower risk of colorectal tumors.8 To date more than 100 health benefits of magnesium have been identified so far, including therapeutic benefits for:9

Fibromyalgia
Atrial fibrillation
Type 2 diabetes
Premenstrual syndrome

Cardiovascular disease
Migraine
Aging
Mortality

Watching Out for Symptoms of Magnesium Deficiency

There’s no lab test that will give you a truly accurate reading of the magnesium status in your tissues. Only one percent of the magnesium in your body is distributed in your blood, making a simple sample of magnesium from a blood test highly inaccurate. Some specialty labs do provide an RBC magnesium test, which is reasonably accurate, and other tests that your doctor can use to evaluate your magnesium status include a 24-hour urine test or a sublingual epithelial test. Still, these can only give you an estimation of your levels, and doctors typically need to evaluate them in conjunction with the symptoms you exhibit.

If you suspect you’re not getting enough magnesium, you should keep a watchful eye out for symptoms of deficiency. If you eat a poor diet, including one that’s mostly processed foods, this could apply to you. Further, if any of these conditions below apply to you, you may want to take extra precautions to make sure you’re getting a sufficient amount of magnesium in your diet, or, if needed, from a magnesium supplement, in order to avoid magnesium deficiency. >

An unhealthy digestive system, which impairs your body’s ability to absorb magnesium (Crohn’s disease, leaky gut, etc.)
Alcoholism — up to 60 percent of alcoholics have low blood levels of magnesium10

Unhealthy kidneys, which contribute to excessive loss of magnesium in urine
Age — older adults are more likely to be magnesium deficient because absorption decreases with age and the elderly are more likely to take medications that can interfere with absorption

Diabetes, especially if it’s poorly controlled, may lead to increased magnesium loss in urine
Certain medications — diuretics, antibiotics, and medications used to treat cancer can all result in magnesium deficiency

 
In her book, The Magnesium Miracle, Dr. Dean lists 100 factors that will help you decide whether or not you might be deficient. Early signs of magnesium deficiency to watch out for include loss of appetite, headache, nausea, fatigue, and weakness. An ongoing magnesium deficiency can lead to more serious symptoms, including:

Numbness and tingling Muscle contractions and cramps Seizures

Personality changes Abnormal heart rhythms Coronary spasms

What Are the Best Dietary Sources of Magnesium?

Many people are low in magnesium. In order to ensure you’re getting enough, you first need to be sure you’re eating a varied, whole-food diet like the one described in my nutrition plan. Green leafy vegetables like spinach and Swiss chard are excellent sources of magnesium, as are some beans, nuts, and seeds, like almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds. Avocados are also a good source. Juicing your vegetables is an excellent option to ensure you’re getting enough of them in your diet.
One important point to mention, though, is that the levels of magnesium in your food are dependent on the levels of magnesium in the soil where they’re grown. Organic foods may have more magnesium, as most fertilizer used on conventional farms relies heavily on nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium instead of magnesium. Another one of the major benefits of getting your nutrients from a varied whole-food diet is that you’re far less likely to end up with too much of one nutrient at the expense of others. Foods in general contain all the cofactors and needed co-nutrients in the proper amounts for optimal health, which takes out the guesswork. When you’re using supplements, you need to become a bit savvier about how nutrients influence and synergistically affect each other.

In case you’re interested, another way to improve your magnesium status is to take regular Epsom salt baths or foot baths. Epsom salt is a magnesium sulfate that can be absorbed into your body directly through your skin. Magnesium oil (from magnesium chloride) can also be used for topical application and absorption.

The 8 Forms of Magnesium Supplements: What Type Is Best?

If you opt for a magnesium supplement, be aware that there are several different forms of magnesium. The reason for the wide variety of magnesium supplements on the market is because the magnesium must be bound to another substance. There’s no such thing as a 100% magnesium compound supplement (except pico-ionic magnesium). The substance used in any given supplement compound can affect the absorption and bioavailability of the magnesium, and may provide slightly different, or targeted, health benefits. Following is a general guide to help you sort through the eight different formulas you’re likely to come across:

Magnesium glycinate is a chelated form of magnesium that tends to provide the highest levels of absorption and bioavailability and is typically considered ideal for those who are trying to correct a deficiency Magnesium threonate is a newer, emerging type of magnesium supplement that appears promising, primarily due to its superior ability to penetrate the mitochondrial membrane

Magnesium chloride / magnesium lactate contain only 12 percent magnesium, but has better absorption than others, such as magnesium oxide, which contains five times more magnesium Magnesium sulfate / magnesium hydroxide (milk of magnesia) are typically used as a laxative. Be aware that it’s easy to overdose on these, so ONLY take as directed

Magnesium carbonate, which has antacid properties, contains 45 percent magnesium Magnesium taurate contains a combination of magnesium and taurine, an amino acid. Together, they tend to provide a calming effect on your body and mind

Magnesium citrate is magnesium with citric acid, which has laxative properties Magnesium oxide is a non-chelated type of magnesium, bound to negatively charged oxygen (oxide). It contains 60 percent magnesium and has stool-softening properties

By Dr. Mercola

Every year, millions of Americans turn to acupuncture as part of their health care routine, using it to relieve chronic pain, high blood pressure, nausea and much more. Although in the US, acupuncture is considered an alternative to conventional forms of medicine, it is actually one of the oldest healing practices in the world.
In China, Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries, acupuncture has been used for thousands of years, and its staying power isn’t merely a matter of superstition or coincidence.
Acupuncture has withstood the test of time because it works to safely relieve many common health complaints. And, interestingly, one recent study even showed that not only does acupuncture work, but so, too, does a sham acupuncture procedure…

Acupuncture May Ease Menopausal Symptoms in Cancer Patients
New research has again confirmed acupuncture’s usefulness, this time among women being treated with aromatase inhibitor drugs for breast cancer. The drugs, which lower estrogen, often lead to significant menopausal symptoms including joint and muscle pain, hot flashes, and night sweats.
The study involved nearly 50 breast cancer patients taking aromatase inhibitors. They received either eight weekly acupuncture sessions or a sham procedure involving non-penetrating needles placed in “fake” acupuncture points.1
It turned out that both sets of patients reported significantly improved symptoms, especially among hot flashes. This included those who had received either the real or sham acupuncture.

This could certainly be a demonstration of the placebo effect in action, although the researchers also suggested that the slight pricking of the skin involved in the sham procedure may have caused physiological changes. Either way, if it works to make you feel better, does it really matter why? As Dr. Ting Bao, the study’s lead author, stated:2

“Acupuncture as a medical procedure has been practiced for thousands of years… It has a minimal risk and potentially significant benefits.”

How Does Acupuncture Work?

With documented use dating back more than 2,500 years, acupuncture is based on the premise that there are more than 2,000 acupuncture points in the human body, which are connected by bioenergetic pathways known as meridians. It is through these pathways that Qi, or energy, flows, and when the pathway is blocked, the disruptions can lead to imbalances and chronic disease.

The treatment itself, which involves the insertion of metallic hair-thin needles (typically three to 15) into specific acupuncture points, can be conducted by a physician or a trained acupuncturist. It generally involves little or no discomfort, and patients often report feeling energized or relaxed following the procedure.

Acupuncture is proven to impact a number of chronic health conditions, and it’s thought that it stimulates your central nervous system to release natural chemicals that alter bodily systems, pain and other biological processes. Evidence, in fact, suggests that acupuncture impacts the body on multiple levels, including:3

Stimulating the conduction of electromagnetic signals, which may release immune system cells or pain-killing chemicals
Activation of your body’s natural opioid system, which may help reduce pain or induce sleep
Stimulation of your hypothalamus and pituitary gland, which modulate numerous body systems
Change in the secretion of neurotransmitters and neurohormones, which may positively influence brain chemistry

Acupuncture Has Nearly 30 Proven Uses and 60+ Potential Uses
When it comes to acupuncture, one of the most common uses is in treating chronic pain. One analysis of the most robust studies available concluded that acupuncture has a clear effect in reducing chronic pain, more so than standard drug-based pain treatment.4
Study participants receiving acupuncture reported an average 50 percent reduction in pain, compared to a 28 percent pain reduction for standard pain treatment without acupuncture
However, chronic pain is only one of 30+ proven uses for this natural treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an extensive review and analysis of clinical trials related to acupuncture, and reported the procedure has been proven effective for the following diseases:5

✓ Adverse reactions to radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy
✓ Allergic rhinitis (including hay fever)
✓ Biliary colic

✓ Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following stroke)
✓ Dysentery, acute bacillary
✓ Dysmenorrhoea, primary

✓ Epigastralgia, acute (in peptic ulcer, acute and chronic gastritis, and gastrospasm)
✓ Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders)
✓ Headache

✓ Hypertension, essential
✓ Hypotension, primary
✓ Induction of labor

✓ Knee pain
✓ Leukopenia
✓ Low back pain

✓ Malposition of fetus
✓ Morning sickness
✓ Nausea and vomiting

✓ Neck pain
✓ Pain in dentistry (including dental pain and temporomandibular dysfunction)
✓ Periarthritis of shoulder

✓ Postoperative pain
✓ Renal colic
✓ Rheumatoid arthritis

✓ Sciatica
✓ Sprain
✓ Stroke

✓ Tennis elbow

 
Additionally, acupuncture has also shown a therapeutic effect for treating the following diseases and conditions, which range from premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and addictions to whooping cough, although further research is needed:

✓
Abdominal pain (in acute gastroenteritis or due to gastrointestinal spasm)
✓ Acne vulgaris
✓ Alcohol dependence and detoxification
✓ Bell’s palsy

✓ Bronchial asthma
✓ Cancer pain
✓ Cardiac neurosis
✓ Cholecystitis, chronic, with acute exacerbation

✓ Cholelithiasis
✓ Competition stress syndrome
✓ Craniocerebral injury, closed
✓ Diabetes mellitus, non-insulin-dependent

✓ Earache
✓ Epidemic haemorrhagic fever
✓ Epistaxis, simple (without generalized or local disease)
✓ Eye pain due to subconjunctival injection

✓ Female infertility
✓ Facial spasm
✓ Female urethral syndrome
✓ Fibromyalgia and fasciitis

✓ Gastrokinetic disturbance
✓ Gouty arthritis
✓ Hepatitis B virus carrier status
✓ Herpes zoster (human (alpha) herpesvirus 3)

✓ Hyperlipaemia
✓ Hypo-ovarianism
✓ Insomnia
✓ Labor pain

✓ Lactation, deficiency
✓ Male sexual dysfunction, non-organic
✓ Ménière disease
✓ Neuralgia, post-herpetic

✓ Neurodermatitis
✓ Obesity
✓ Opium, cocaine and heroin dependence
✓ Osteoarthritis

✓ Pain due to endoscopic examination
✓ Pain in thromboangiitis obliterans
✓ Polycystic ovary syndrome (Stein-Leventhal syndrome)
✓ Postextubation in children

✓ Postoperative convalescence
✓ Premenstrual syndrome
✓ Prostatitis, chronic
✓ Pruritus

✓ Radicular and pseudoradicular pain syndrome
✓ Raynaud syndrome, primary
✓ Recurrent lower urinary-tract infection
✓ Reflex sympathetic dystrophy

✓ Retention of urine, traumatic
✓ Schizophrenia
✓ Sialism, drug-induced
✓ Sjögren syndrome

✓ Sore throat (including tonsillitis)
✓ Spine pain, acute
✓ Stiff neck
✓ Temporomandibular joint dysfunction

✓ Tietze syndrome
✓ Tobacco dependence
✓ Tourette syndrome
✓ Ulcerative colitis, chronic

✓ Urolithiasis
✓ Vascular dementia
✓ Whooping cough (pertussis)

There Are Many Different Types of Acupuncture: You Choose What Works Best for You

While traditional acupuncture involves the use of needles (acupuncture actually means “to puncture with a needle”), sometimes the stimulation of acupuncture points is done using electricity, lasers, or acupressure (the use of pressure to stimulate acupuncture points).

The term acupuncture is often used to describe all of these modalities, as each has shown similar benefits. This means that if you like the idea of trying a natural, ancient technique like acupuncture, but don’t like the idea of having needles inserted into your body, there are needle-free alternatives you can try that can offer many of the same benefits.

In one study that evaluated acupuncture for cancer patients suffering from nausea during radiotherapy, one group received traditional acupuncture with skin-penetrating needles while a second group received simulated acupuncture with a blunt placebo needle that only touched their skin.6 Interestingly, 95 percent of the patients in both groups felt that the treatment helped relieve nausea, and 67 percent experienced other positive effects such as improved sleep, brighter mood, and less pain.

My favorite form of “needle-less acupuncture” is The Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, which is the psychological acupressure technique I most highly recommend. EFT is based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments but without the invasiveness of using needles, nor the inconvenience and cost of having to have a practitioner available to treat you.

Instead, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to input kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest while you think about your specific problem — whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, etc. — and voice positive affirmations. This combination of tapping the energy meridians and voicing positive affirmation works to clear the “short-circuit” — the emotional block — from your body’s bioenergy system, thus restoring your mind and body’s balance, which is essential for optimal health and the healing of physical disease.

You can conduct EFT yourself, but if you are not getting the results you would like, or you have a particularly traumatic issue, consider consulting with a skilled EFT professional. Likewise, if you decide to give traditional acupuncture a try, be sure you consult with a qualified practitioner, as your results may vary depending on the practitioner’s skill level.

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

The United States is one of only two countries, the other being New Zealand, that allows drugs to be advertised on TV, and it’s not difficult to understand why nearly every other country has given such ads the boot.

As with all commercials, the ads are intended to influence you to buy their products. In the case of prescription medications, the “product” is a potentially dangerous chemical drug that is loaded with side effects.

In a 2009 Harris Poll, 51 percent said that drug ads encourage them to ask questions when they go to their doctor, and a whopping 44 percent actually believe drug ads make them more knowledgeable about treatments for their ailments.

Now, a new study assessing the effect of direct-to-consumer drug advertising has concluded that TV ads for statins may be a driving factor of overdiagnosis of high cholesterol and overtreatment with the drugs.1

The reason is clear. People who dutifully ask their doctors about a drug advertised on TV usually end up receiving a prescription…

Is it any wonder then that one in four Americans over the age of 45 is now taking a statin drug, despite the fact that there are over 900 studies proving their adverse effects, which run the gamut from muscle problems to diabetes and increased cancer risk.

Odds are likely greater than 100 to 1 that if you’re taking a statin, you don’t really need it. 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.

TV Ads for Statins Drive Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment

To determine the relationship between estimated exposure to direct-to-consumer advertising for statin drugs and two clinical variables: diagnosis with high cholesterol and statin use, the featured study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine,2 used logistic regression to analyze repeated cross-sectional surveys of more than 106,000 Americans, merged with data on the frequency of ads appearing on national, cable, and local television, between 2001 and 2007. Interestingly, those who reported seeing statin ads on TV were:

16-20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with high cholesterol
16-22 percent more likely to be using a statin drug

That’s quite a boost in diagnosis and treatment, and proof positive that advertising works, even when you’re selling something with greater potential harms than benefits, as is the case with statins.

Tellingly, both the diagnosis of high cholesterol and increased statin use was driven almost exclusively by those who were at LOW risk for future cardiac events, indicating that overdiagnosis and unnecessary drug treatment is quite real. Conversely, those at high risk of heart disease were not more likely to be taking a statin after seeing the commercials. According to the authors:

“Our findings raise questions about the extent to which direct-to-consumer advertising may promote over-diagnosis and over-treatment for populations where risks may outweigh potential benefits. In addition, we found no evidence of favorable associations between exposure to statins in television advertisements and statin use among those at high risk for future cardiac events.”

Turning People into Patients — At YOUR Expense

The 1997 change in direct-to-consumer advertising laws unleashed an avalanche of drug commercials. Two years later, the average American was exposed to nine prescription drug TV ads every day. Between 1994 and 2000, TV drug ads increased 40-fold.3

In 2005, two of the top four most heavily promoted drugs were cholesterol-lowering medications. In that year alone, Merck/Schering-Plough spent $161.5 million on ads for Vytorin, and AstraZeneca spent $158.6 million advertising Crestor — down from the $212 million4 they spent the year before.

In all, pharmaceutical companies spend an estimated $4 billion a year on these types of consumer marketing campaigns in the US, so you can bet they’re getting a hefty portion of this expense back in the form of increased profits.

No doubt you’ve heard that drugs cost so much because it’s expensive to perform research and development of new drugs. Yet 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 in 2008.5 According to the authors:

“From this new estimate, it appears that pharmaceutical companies spend almost twice as much on promotion as they do on R&D. These numbers clearly show how promotion predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry’s claim.

While the amount spent on promotion is not in itself a confirmation of Kefauver’s depiction of the pharmaceutical industry, it confirms the public image of a marketing-driven industry and provides an important argument to petition in favor of transforming the workings of the industry in the direction of more research and less promotion.” [Emphasis mine]

The US is, by far, the largest market for pharmaceuticals in the world, representing around 43 percent of global sales. This is in part due to Americans being grossly overcharged. As I recently reported, Americans pay TWICE the price compared to other countries for the identical drugs.6

Well, here’s part of the answer to the question why: You’re paying for their direct-to-consumer advertising, which is illegal everywhere else (with the exception of New Zealand).

Aside from their inherently misleading nature, and the fact that they dramatically increase drug prices, direct-to-consumer drug ads like those on TV often plant a seed in your mind that you may be sick. Drug companies are masters at disease mongering — inventing non-existent diseases and exaggerating minor ones, with the end result making you rush to your doctor to request their drug solutions. It also misleads people into thinking drugs are the only option for every ill. If you think about it, a child who grows up seeing these ads is clearly going to be indoctrinated to turn to a drug when something goes wrong, unless he or she receives a different education from some other source.

Effective Statin Ads Place Millions of Americans at Risk of Serious Health Problems

Statins are HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, that is, they act by blocking the enzyme in your liver that is responsible for making cholesterol (HMG-CoA reductase). The fact that statin drugs cause side effects is well established — there are now 900 studies proving their adverse effects, which run the gamut from muscle problems to increased cancer risk.

Please note that statins are classified as a “pregnancy Category X medication” meaning, it causes serious birth defects, and should NEVER be used by a woman who is pregnant or planning a pregnancy. If it is prescribed, it is simply gross negligence and malpractice.

Statins have also been shown to increase your risk of diabetes, via a number of different mechanisms. The most important one is that they increase insulin resistance, which can be extremely harmful to your health. Increased insulin resistance contributes to chronic inflammation in your body, and inflammation is the hallmark of most diseases.

In fact, 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.

Secondly, statins increase your diabetes risk by actually 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.

Statin drugs also interfere with other biological functions. 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. Statins also 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:

All your sex hormones
Cortisone
The dolichols, which are involved in keeping the membranes inside your cells healthy
All sterols, including cholesterol and vitamin D (which is similar to cholesterol and is produced from cholesterol in your skin)

Ninety-Nine Out of 100 People Do Not Need Statin Drugs

That these drugs have proliferated the market the way they have is a testimony to the effectiveness of direct-to-consumer marketing, corruption and corporate greed, because the odds are very high — greater than 1000 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.

Even more importantly, cholesterol is NOT the cause of heart disease. If your physician is urging you to check your total cholesterol, then you should 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.

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. NMR testing is another important new lipid assessment you can now take to determine your risk for heart disease.

Remember, your body NEEDS cholesterol — it is important in the production of cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps your brain form memories and is vital to your neurological function. There is also 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.

To learn more about statins, please see my special report: Do YOU Take Any of These 11 Dangerous Cholesterol Drugs?

Turn Off the Tube and Tune in to Your Body’s Innate Wisdom

These ads are now on your TV, in magazines and on the Internet, so it’s difficult to eliminate your exposure. What you can do, however, is keep a healthy air of skepticism about you whenever you do see a drug commercial. Really listen to the side effects and ask yourself if cancer is an acceptable risk for a drug to treat an embarrassing skin condition, for example.

If you think you might need the drug, first seek out an unbiased source of information to see if you truly do. The internet can frequently be a helpful tool here.

Also check for the truth about side effects. The average drug comes with a list of 70 potential reactions, according to researchers who used a computer program to analyze 5,600 drug labels. If you take one of the more commonly prescribed drugs, the potential drug reactions rise to about 100 — and some drugs even carry over 500. Given that, it’s not so surprising that more than 700,000 people visit U.S. emergency rooms each year as a result of adverse drug reactions. Not only that, but according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), adverse drug reactions from drugs that are properly prescribed and properly administered cause about 106,000 deaths per year, making prescription drugs the fourth-leading cause of death in the US.

Polypharmacy Raises Drug Side Effects Exponentially

According to the latest statistics from the Kaiser Health Foundation,7 the average American aged 19 to 64 now takes nearly 12 prescription drugs. The average senior is on 28. The word ‘polypharmacy’ means “many drugs,” and essentially refers to these instances where an individual is taking multiple drugs — often because more drugs are prescribed than are clinically indicated.

This is a significant problem, as the more drugs you mix together, the greater the chances of serious side effects. And, if the average American is taking a dozen different prescription drugs, and the average prescription drug carries 70 side effects… do the math! That’s an average of 770 potential individual side effects but the drug to drug interaction is far higher and is likely one to two orders of magnitude greater. To me, this is simply unacceptable, especially considering that most drugs people take are for conditions that can be better treated, and prevented, using natural methods.

Take Control of Your Health

Anytime you’re considering taking a drug, whether you’ve succumbed to a seductive drug ad or your doctor wants to prescribe one for an ailment you’ve presented, please do remember that you carry the ultimate responsibility here. Don’t trust blindly; ask questions about the drugs prescribed to you, such as:

Do I really need this drug?
Is it prescribed appropriately, or is it being prescribed for an off-label use?
What are the side effects?
Is it addictive?
What are the natural alternatives?

In the majority of cases, you’ll likely find that you can prevent or resolve the condition not by taking a drug, but by following these basic tenets of optimal health:

Eat a healthy diet focused on fresh, whole foods (ideally organic and/or locally-grown). Try to eat a large portion of your food raw.

You want to pay careful attention to keeping your insulin levels down, which means avoiding sugars and grains of all kinds, and replacing the lost carbs with healthful fats. Also be mindful of your protein sources, making sure they’re of high quality (ideally organically-raised and pasture-fed). A high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet is likely to improve the health of most people. My optimized Nutritional Plan can guide you, whether you’re at a beginner’s or advanced level.
Consume healthy fat. The science is loud and clear on this point: omega-3 fats are essential for optimal health. Unfortunately most fish commercially available today are polluted with mercury, PCBs and other toxic substances, which is why I recommend you take a supplement like krill oil instead of getting it from your food. Other healthy fats include coconut oil, avocados, olives, olive oil, butter and macadamia nuts. All these fats are low in protein and carbs and will not impair insulin, leptin or mTOR.
Make clean, pure water your primary beverage, and steer clear of all sweetened and/or flavored beverages, including those that contain artificial sweeteners.
Manage your stress.
Exercise regularly. Ideally, you want a comprehensive fitness regimen that includes stretching, high intensity interval training, core strengthening exercises and strength training.
Get plenty of appropriate sun exposure to optimize your vitamin D levels naturally. UV exposure also has additional health benefits beyond vitamin D production.

A robust and growing body of research clearly shows that vitamin D is absolutely critical for your health. The D*Action project has been initiated by GrassrootsHealth along with 42 leading vitamin D researchers to demonstrate how health can be achieved right now with what’s known about vitamin D with a combination of vitamin D measurement and health outcome tracking. To learn more, please see this recent article.

I encourage you to participate in the D*Action Project, which has multiple concurrent vitamin D programs going on. Not only will you be able to take control of your own health by participating, you’ll also become part of one of the most profound public health projects of the 21st Century. To participate, simply purchase the D*Action Measurement Kit and follow the registration instructions included. As a participant, you agree to test your vitamin D levels twice a year during a five year program, and share your health status to demonstrate the public health impact of this nutrient. There is a $65 fee each 6 months for your sponsorship of the project, which includes a test kit to be used at home, and electronic reports on your ongoing progress. You will get a follow up email every six months reminding you “it’s time for your next test and health survey.”

 
Limit your exposure to toxins of all kinds. The number of toxic chemicals and their sources is so large, addressing them all could easily require an entire library, but I believe you can help you keep your toxic load as low as possible by becoming an informed and vigilant consumer. This includes tossing out your toxic household cleaners, soaps, personal hygiene products, air fresheners, bug sprays, lawn pesticides, and insecticides, just to name a few, and replacing them with non-toxic alternatives.
Get plenty of quality sleep. Scientists have discovered that your circadian rhythms regulate the energy levels in your cells. In addition, the proteins involved with your circadian rhythm and metabolism are intrinsically linked and dependent upon each other. Therefore, when your circadian rhythm is disrupted, it can have a profound influence on your physical health. For example, research has also linked disrupted sleep cycles to serious health problems like depression, coronary heart diseases, and even cancer.

If you have any kind of sleep problem, whether you’re having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, my article 33 Secrets to a Good Night’s Sleep is packed with great tips to help you finally get some good rest.

It Takes Personal Involvement to Stay Healthy in a Sick System

Ultimately, it’s your body, and the decision to medicate yourself for an ailment is yours alone. However, I urge you to research any drug your doctor prescribes before you take it. Do not just take your doctor’s word for its safety. Most physicians have little information to offer you aside from what they’ve been told by their drug reps.

Also remember that no drug is completely safe. Even under the BEST circumstances — such as with a drug that has gone through unbiased, stringent, long-term testing — anything can happen when a drug is released into the uncontrolled environment of your body. It may interact badly with another drug you’re taking, or perhaps a food you eat causes an unforeseen reaction, or maybe your genetic makeup, metabolism or the state of your immune system will cause it to have an unpredictable impact.

Ads are intended to make you want to buy a product — they are NOT public health announcements!

In the case of prescription medications, the “product” is a potentially dangerous chemical that may do more harm than good. This is certainly the case with statins. One in four Americans are now taking a statin, when the odds are greater than 100 to 1 that you don’t need it! Please understand that unless you have familial hypercholesterolemia, you do NOT need a drug to normalize your cholesterol. This can easily be achieved via diet and exercise.

By Dr. Mercola

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

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

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

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

Use It or Lose It — the Principles of Brain Plasticity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contributing Factors to Cognitive Decline, and How to Counteract it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Can Benefit from This?

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

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

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

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

How to Implement a Brain Training Program

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Your Daily Lifestyle Can Improve Your Brain Function

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nutrition and Brain Health

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

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

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

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

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

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

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

What Exactly is Leptin?

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

How Do You Become Leptin Resistant?

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

Obesity Helps Spur Cancer’s Growth, New Study Suggests

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

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

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

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

Reduce Obesity to Quench Tumor Potential

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

What is Choline?

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

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

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

Epigenetic Changes May Last for Generations

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

You Have the Ability to Change Inherited Epigenetic Alterations

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

What are the Best Dietary Sources of Choline?

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

Food
Serving
Total Choline (mg)

Beef liver, pan fried
3 ounces
355

Wheat germ, toasted
1 cup
172

Egg
1 large
126

Beef, trim cut, cooked
3 ounces
67

Brussel sprouts, cooked
1 cup
63

Broccoli, cooked
1 cup, chopped
62

Salmon
3 ounces
56

Milk, skim
8 fl oz.
38

Peanut butter, smooth
2 tablespoons
20

By Dr. Mercola

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

BPA Linked to Narrowed Arteries

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

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

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

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

FDA Not Convinced of BPA’s Dangers

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

Actos and its Generic Riddled With Serious Health Risks

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

Actos Whistleblower Reveals Fraud, Deception and Serious Dangers

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

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

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

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

What You Should Know About Diabetes Drugs…

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

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

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

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

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

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

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

Higher Doses Pushed to a Growing Number of Patients

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The FDA Finally Cracks Down

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

Why Eating Breakfast Might Make You Hungrier

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

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

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

Why I Stopped Eating Breakfast

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

The Link Between Intermittent Fasting and Weight Loss, Health Benefits

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

High cholesterol
High blood sugar
Fatty liver disease
Metabolic problems

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

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

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

Is Skipping Breakfast Right for You?

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

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

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

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

Your Diet is More Important Than Exercise for Losing Weight

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

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

2.    Yeast breads, 129 calories a day

7.   Pasta and pasta dishes

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

8.   Mexican mixed dishes

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

9.   Beef and beef-mixed dishes

5.    Pizza, 98 calories a day

10.   Dairy desserts

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

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

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

Should Your Diet Mimic the Hunter-Gatherers’?

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

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

Should You Exercise Like the Hunter-Gatherers Too?

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

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

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

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

Former CDC Director Now President of Merck’s Vaccine Unit

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

Gerberding has a Long History of Disregard for Vaccine Safety

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

Former NIH Director Now Heads Sanofi Research Labs

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

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

Conflicts of Interest Affect Your Life and Well-Being…

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

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

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

What Can You do to Take Control of Your Health?

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

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

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

About My Background

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

Milestones Along the Way…

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

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

Health Liberty

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

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

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

My Deepest Thanks to YOU!

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

15th Anniversary Special

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

By Dr. Mercola

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

Probiotics Become Increasingly Important as You Age

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

Your Gut Bacteria Help Protect Against Food-Borne Illness

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

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

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

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

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

Microbes Affect Your Health in a Myriad of Ways

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strengthened immune response
Eczema
Rheumatoid arthritis

Cirrhosis of the liver
Hepatic encephalopathy
Chronic fatigue syndrome

How to Optimize Your Gut Flora

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

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

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

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

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

How to Identify a High Quality Probiotic Supplement

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

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

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