Watchman News

Walter Breuning turned 114 years old on September 21.
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Breuning is the fourth-oldest living person in the world and the world’s oldest living male.
Born in 1896, Walter has lived in three separate centuries.
View the video to see how sharp this gentleman still is at 114 – and hear his advice on the simple, natural secrets to living a long, healthy life.

In this video, I discuss a very important topic that is fraught with confusion and controversy, namely whether or not soy is a health food.

Getting older, in and of itself, is not the cause of so-called “senior moments”. A new study found that even these mild memory lapses are caused by the same brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
Researchers found that in the last four to five years of life, people’s memory showed a very rapid decline. Pathologic lesions were found to be related to this rapid decline. The preceding years showed a much more gradual decline that was the actual result of normal aging.
According to Newswise:

“… [R]ecognizing that the earliest changes in memory are related to Alzheimer’s pathology can lead to early diagnosis and will be critical information if a treatment is developed that can alter the pathologic course of the disease.”

A new study is the first to provide a comprehensive characterization of the effects of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in an indoor pool environment. It found that swimming in indoor chlorinated pools may induce DNA damage that can lead to cancer.
DBPs form from reactions between disinfectants and organic matter. Previous studies have found an association between DBPs in drinking water and bladder cancer.
The new study looked at close to 50 healthy adults after they swam for 40 minutes in the chlorinated pool. The researchers found increases in two genotoxicity biomarkers associated with cancer risk.
Newswise reports:

“… the authors identified more than 100 DBPs in the pool waters, some never reported previously in swimming pool water and/or chlorinated drinking water. In vitro assays showed that the swimming pool water was mutagenic at levels similar to that of drinking water but was more cytotoxic (can kill cells at a lower concentration) than drinking water.”

Dr. Gabor Forgacs is one of the leading experts in the world in the area of what is now called “organ printing,” where aggregates of cells for a particular organ are delivered with an ordinary (but modified) inkjet printer onto biological scaffolding gels (the “paper”).
Dr. Forgacs is a biophysicist with degrees in biology as well as advanced physics and is currently heading up a biophysics lab called Forgacslab at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research focuses on the physical mechanisms in cellular and developmental biology.
He wrote a book with Stuart A. Newman titled The Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo in 2005, which is the first of its kind to bridge the gap between developmental biology and physics.

By Dr. Mercola

If Pfizer has its way, your child’s gummy bears may be replaced with chewable Lipitor
The exploitation of children for the sake of profit is yet another loathsome strategy drug manufacturers are willing to deploy, this time for the purpose of extending Lipitor’s patent to hold off generic brand competition.
We are already drugging children into complacency with psychotropic stimulants such as Ritalin if they are bored or distracted in the classroom, and devastating their developing immune systems with massive amounts of sugary drinks and a growing barrage of mercury-laden vaccines.
The following trends are quite disturbing:

According to one study, American children take antipsychotic medications at six times the rate of U.K. children.
One in four American kids takes a prescription drug for a chronic health condition.
One in five teens has high cholesterol.
Heartburn and acid reflux medications among adolescents has jumped 147 percent since 2001.
Girls aged 10 to 19 taking medications for type 2 diabetes has jumped almost 200 percent in the past nine years.
Children and adolescents make up the leading growth category for the pharmaceutical industry, with increases nearly four times higher than those seen in the rest of the population.

“No Child Left Unscreened”

Pumping statins into your children, like we are already doing with psychiatric drugs, would be disastrous, as the damaging side effects are now well established.
And if the government gets involved in mandating cholesterol screenings, it then becomes a slippery slope toward YOUR loss of parental choice about YOUR child’s medical care. Often the government passes off recommendations as “medical decisions” but they are really “monetary decisions.”
You should be the person in charge of your child’s health — not some government agency with a competing agenda!

Generation XL

It is indisputable that childhood obesity is placing the very future of the developing world at stake — a topic I am so concerned about that I wrote a book called Generation XL. If the childhood obesity epidemic is not reversed, we will, for the first time in history, see children living shorter lives than their parents.
Indeed, something must be done about escalating childhood obesity and “adult” diseases showing up in our children.
But massive statin campaigns are certainly NOT the answer.
The cause of the problem is unhealthy lifestyle choices — and drugs do nothing to address this. As mentioned in the source article, Harvard researchers found 85 percent of heart disease can be prevented by lifestyle changes alone — diet, exercise, and supplemental nutrients.

What is Really Making Your Child Fat?

The modern Western diet has become exceedingly reliant on high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), refined grains, processed foods and artificial sweeteners — a “perfect storm” for weight gain and poor health.
HFCS is now the number one source of calories in the US, and free-floating fructose is now the leading culprit for the obesity epidemic.
Sugar — specifically fructose — is metabolized by your child’s body in such a way that nearly all of it is converted to fat.
Fructose is a very different sugar from glucose, which humans were designed to use for energy. Fructose is actually closer to ethanol, in terms of how it’s metabolized. Unfortunately, fructose is the number one source of calories in the American diet, and children and adolescents are its number one consumers.
If you wish to promote your children’s health and well being, it is essential to limit their fructose consumption.
You may have been deceived into thinking that dietary fat is the reason for your child’s weight problem. But low-fat diet foods actually CAUSE weight gain in the majority of people, rather than saturated fats.
There are other factors that influence whether or not your child may develop a weight problem and other related health issues. There are genetic, emotional, social and environmental factors.
For example, researchers at the University of Illinois and the Harvard School of Public Health report that toddlers in day care tend to gain more weight than those who are cared for at home. They found babies spending more than 9 months in day care gained 0.4 pound more than those cared for by their parents. Although the higher weight gain was not easily explained, they speculated it had to do with “irregular eating patterns,” as well as possibly the types of foods they were fed.
One hypothesis suggested by scientists was that day care workers might use food to sooth crying babies more than parents do, which could theoretically set up your baby for “emotional eating.”
There is evidence that childhood obesity is not only related to adult obesity but to poor health in adulthood as well, so it is very important to pay attention to your child’s diet and eating patterns from day one.

Total Cholesterol Number Alone is Virtually Useless

If your doctor is urging your child to get her total cholesterol level checked, you should realize this test tells you virtually nothing about her risk of heart disease — unless it is 330 or higher.
Without also knowing lipid values, total cholesterol is meaningless. If you are going to participate in a screening, make sure a complete fasting lipid profile is what is being done.
What matters is how much HDL your child has in relation to her LDL and triglycerides.
The purpose of HDL is to take cholesterol from your child’s tissues and arteries and transport it back to her liver, where it can be reused. It is her body’s way of recycling and reusing cholesterol — because cholesterol is vital for health, not the villain it has been made out to be.
LDL particles come in a variety of sizes, and it’s the small, dense ones (VLDLs) that can potentially be a problem because they can squeeze through the lining of your child’s arteries and oxidize, causing inflammation.
Here is a simple way to determine if your child has too much bad LDL (VLDL):

If her triglycerides are low and her HDL is high, then the LDL she has is the good variety.
If her triglycerides are high and her HDL is low, then the LDL she has is the bad variety. The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is a far better indicator of cardiovascular disease than the total cholesterol-to-HDL ratio that nearly everyone uses.

Here are two ratios, easily calculated from a lipid panel, which can help you evaluate your child’s heart disease risk:

HDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio: Should ideally be more than 24 percent. If it’s less than10 percent, your child has a significant risk for developing heart disease.
Triglyceride/HDL Ratio: Should be less than 2.

Now, here’s the bottom line: Dietary fat raises the large, buoyant LDL — the one that is harmless. Dietary SUGAR raises the small, dense LDL (VLDL) — the one that correlates with heart disease.
The type of fat that is beneficial comes from organic meats and dairy and natural whole foods, NOT trans fats, which can be deadly and should be avoided altogether.

Cholesterol is NOT the Villain in Childhood Obesity

Cholesterol has been terribly vilified, when in reality it is essential for a wide variety of vital functions in your child’s growing body, including:

Maintaining healthy cell membranes
Producing a variety of hormones, including estrogen, testosterone and vitamin D
Producing bile acids, which aid in fat digestion
Cholesterol also helps your child’s brain form memories and is vital to her overall neurological function.

On the flip side, there is 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.
Before 2004, a 130 LDL cholesterol level was considered perfect. But now, many physicians are recommending levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk. In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs!
So, the guidelines have progressively widened the pharmaceutical market. If children are subjected to universal cholesterol screening, the drug companies increase their target market that much more.

Statin Side Effects: Keep Out of the Reach of Children!

In 2007, the American Heart Association first recommended the use of statin drugs for children with high cholesterol. Then, in 2008 the American Academy of Pediatrics followed suit, recommending cholesterol-lowering drugs for children as young as age 8.
Now they are concocting ways to place more and more children on statins, in spite of the overwhelming evidence for serious side effects — nearly 900 studies point to the damaging effects of these drugs.
The list of statin-related health problems includes the following:

Muscle damage (potentially permanent), mostly related to CoQ10 depletion
Heart damage, heart failure and strokes
Neuropathy
Immune system suppression
Pancreatic dysfunction
Hepatic dysfunction
Increased cancer risk
Cognitive impairment
Depression

In addition to these risks, there are also risks from insufficient CoQ10 levels, which directly relate to the use of statins:

Impaired white blood cell activity
Reduced muscle strength contraction — especially for the heart muscle
Impaired liver function
Decreased cell growth and division
Decreased ability to neutralize free radicals

And now, it would appear, they are pushing a massive kiddie-statin campaign, disguised as “preventative medicine.”
Pfizer has been in legal trouble a number of times over fraudulent claims about the “health benefits” of Lipitor. Lipitor is particularly damaging if you are diabetic, doubling your risk for stroke. And with childhood diabetes rates increasing by leaps and bounds, prescribing Lipitor would be extremely risky to these diabetic or pre-diabetic kids.
According to an excellent report in 2008 in the New England Journal of Medicine, long-term data about the safety of statins for children is completely lacking. Ferranti and Ludwig write:

“At 8 years of age, a child’s brain and other organ systems remain in dynamic stages of growth and development, raising concern that long-term pharmacotherapy initiated at this age may adversely affect the central nervous system, immune function, hormones, energy metabolism, or other systems in unanticipated ways.”

It is one thing to medicate the child who has a rare genetic defect in cholesterol metabolism, but quite another to treat masses of at-risk children whose symptoms reflect easily modifiable lifestyle factors.
As the article says, “Once this door has been opened, the pharmaceutical industry will happily walk through it.”

Top 10 Ways to Help Your Child Achieve Optimal Health and Body Weight — Without Drugs

While prescription of a cholesterol-lowering medication may be warranted in a few rare cases, 99 times out of 100, hyperlipidemia and hypercholesterolemia can be corrected with some simple lifestyle changes.
Here are my top 10 recommendations:

Eliminate all sodas and fruit juices.
If your child is already overweight or obese it is particularly important to lower their total fructose intake, INCLUDING fruit, until their weight normalizes. It would also be helpful to severely limit grains, even apparently healthy ones like whole organic grains, until their weight normalizes.
Help your child get regular exercise.
Prepare the right foods for your child’s nutritional type. I now offer the full nutritional typing program free of charge.
Encourage your child to eat a good portion of her food raw.
Make sure your child is getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega3-fats. My favorite is krill oil.
Introduce your child to a variety of heart-healthy foods such as olive oil, coconut and coconut oil, organic raw dairy products and eggs, avocados, raw nuts and seeds, and organic grass-fed meats that fit within her nutritional type guidelines.
Introduce your child to strategies that help her address emotional challenges, such as EFT.
Make sure your child gets plenty of restorative sleep.
Finally, make sure your child’s vitamin D levels are within therapeutic levels.
Vitamin D is not “just a vitamin,” but rather the only known substrate for a potent, pleiotropic (meaning it produces multiple effects), repair- and maintenance hormone that serves multiple gene-regulatory functions in your child’s body.

Low levels of vitamin D are associated with an increased risk of heart disease.
About 70 percent of U.S. children have inadequate levels of vitamin D, so this should be one of the first issues you address to keep your child’s heart healthy.

A Call to Action for the Sake of ALL Children

The Alliance for Natural Health has an on-line “action alert” letter you can send to your Congressional representatives about repealing the law that allows drug companies to extend their patents by testing drugs on children.
It is quick and easy to do! Just click here.
If you care about this issue, I encourage you to take a moment to let your rep’s know how you feel.

In 2006, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an influential breast cancer survivors’ organization, released a study, which estimated that in 90,000 cases, women who received a diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ (D.C.I.S.) or invasive breast cancer either did not have the disease or received incorrect treatment.
Advances in imaging technology over the past 30 years have meant that pathologists must render opinions on ever smaller breast lesions. Discerning the difference between benign lesions and early stage breast cancer is a particularly challenging area of pathology.
Diagnoses of D.C.I.S. have a history of confusion, differences of opinion, undertreatment, and overtreatment.
According to the New York Times:

“There is an increasing recognition of the problems, and the federal government is now financing a nationwide study of variations in breast pathology, based on concerns that 17 percent of D.C.I.S. cases identified by a commonly used needle biopsy may be misdiagnosed.
Despite this, there are no mandated diagnostic standards or requirements that pathologists performing the work have any specialized expertise, meaning that the chances of getting an accurate diagnosis vary from hospital to hospital.”

The artificial sweetener aspartame gained FDA approval in 1981, and was perhaps the most hotly contested FDA approval in history, for good reason. The toxic additive has been silently destroying people’s health ever since.

By Dr. Mercola

Tens of millions of Americans are taking cholesterol-lowering drugs—mostly statins—and some “experts” claim that many millions more should be taking them. I couldn’t disagree more.
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. For starters, reported side effects include:

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

Acidosis
Sexual dysfunction

Immune depression

Cataracts

Pancreas or liver dysfunction, including a potential increase in liver enzymes
Memory loss

 
Muscle problems are the best known of statin drugs’ adverse side effects, but cognitive problems and memory loss are also widely reported. A spectrum of other problems, ranging from blood glucose elevations to tendon problems, can also occur. There is evidence that taking statins may even increase your risk for Lou Gehrig’s disease, diabetes, and even cancer. Statins currently available on the U.S. market include1 :

Advicor (lovastatin with niacin) – Abbott
Crestor (rosuvastatin) – AstraZeneca
Mevacor (lovastatin) – Merck
Simcor (niacin / imvastatin) – Abbott

Altoprev (lovastatin) – Shionogi Pharma
Lescol (fluvastatin) – Novartis
Pravachol (pravastatin) — Bristol-Myers Squibb
Zocor (simvastatin) – Merck

Caduet [atorvastatin with amlodipine (Norvasc)] – Pfizer
Lipitor (atorvastatin) – Pfizer
Vytorin (ezetimibe/simvastatin) – Merck/Schering-Plough
 

Statin Drugs: A Surprising Cause of Diabetes

Statins have been shown to increase your risk of diabetes through a few 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.
Now, it’s important to realize that 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. So if friends or loved ones you know are on a statin (and one in four Americans over 45 are) and they are told they have diabetes, please do them a favor and tell them about the information in this article.

Major Statin Drug Study Found to Be Flawed

A study known as the JUPITER trial initially suggested cholesterol-lowering statin drugs might prevent heart-related death in many more people than just those with high cholesterol. But two years after its publication in 2008, researchers came out saying the JUPITER results are flawed — and that they do not support the benefits initially reported. Not only is there no “striking decrease in coronary heart disease complications,” but a more recent report has also called into question drug companies’ involvement in such trials.
According to a report by ABC News2 :

“… major discrepancies exists between the significant reductions in nonfatal stroke and heart attacks reported in the JUPITER trial and what has been found in other research … ‘The JUPITER data set appears biased,’ [the researchers] wrote in conclusion.”

If You Take Statins, You MUST Take CoQ10

Statins deplete your body of CoQ10, which can have devastating results. If you take statin drugs without taking CoQ10, your health is at serious risk. Unfortunately, this describes the majority of people who take them in the United States. CoQ10 is a cofactor (co-enzyme) that is essential for the creation of ATP molecules, which you need for cellular energy production. Organs such as your heart have higher energy requirements, and therefore require more CoQ10 to function properly. Produced mainly in your liver, it also plays a role in maintaining blood glucose.
Physicians rarely inform people of this risk and only occasionally advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement. As your body gets more and more depleted of CoQ10, you may suffer from fatigue, muscle weakness and soreness, and eventually heart failure.
Coenzyme Q10 is also very important in the process of neutralizing free radicals. So when your CoQ10 is depleted, you enter a vicious cycle of increased free radicals, loss of cellular energy, and damaged mitochondrial DNA. If you decide to take a CoQ10 supplement and are over the age of 40, it is important to choose the reduced version, called ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is a FAR more effective form—I personally take it daily for its many far-ranging benefits. As for dosage, Dr. Graveline, a family doctor and former astronaut, made the following recommendation in a previous interview on statins and CoQ10:

If you have symptoms of statin damage such as muscle pain, take anywhere from 200 to 500 mg
If you just want to use it preventively, 200 mg or less should be sufficient

Statins Impair Numerous Biological Functions

Statin drugs also interfere with other biological functions, including an early step in 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)

It’s still uncertain whether statins actually deplete your body of vitamin D, but they do reduce your body’s natural ability to create active vitamin D (1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol). This is the natural outcome of the drug’s cholesterol-reducing ability, because you need cholesterol to make vitamin D! It’s the raw material your body uses for vitamin D conversion after you’ve exposed your skin to sunlight. It’s also well-documented that vitamin D improves insulin resistance, so needless to say, when you take a statin drug, you forfeit this ‘built-in’ health-promoting mechanism, which is yet another clue as to how statins can cause diabetes.

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 power of marketing, corruption and corporate greed, because the odds are very high— 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.
And, 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. 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.

Statins Should NEVER Be Used By Pregnant Women

One in four Americans over the age of 45 is now taking these drugs, and few are properly warned about the related health risks. Part of the problem is that many doctors are not even aware of all the risks. A study published last spring highlighted this dilemma.
Most disturbingly, the researchers found that physicians were lacking in awareness of the teratogenic risks3 (ability to cause fetal malformations) of statins and other cardiovascular drugs they prescribed for their pregnant patients. The study followed an earlier report, which had concluded statins should be avoided in early pregnancy due to their teratogenic capability4. An even earlier 2003 study5 had already established that cholesterol plays an essential role in embryonic development, and that statins could play a part in embryonic mutations or even death…
Indeed, it’s difficult to look at these facts and not reach the conclusion that the pharmaceutical industry is quite willing to sacrifice human lives for profit. Statins are in fact 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.

Parents Beware: Outrageous Push to Put Kids on Statin Drugs!

In a bold attempt to increase profits before the patent runs out, Pfizer has introduced a chewable kid-friendly version of Lipitor. Its US patent for Lipitor expired in November 2011, and seeking to boost sales of the drug, children have become the new target market, and the conventional medical establishment is more than happy to oblige.
Researchers and many doctors are now calling for universal school screening of children to check for high cholesterol to find those “in need of treatment.” In addition, older siblings, parents, and other family members might be prompted to get screened as well, the researchers say, which would uncover additional, previously undiagnosed adults in need of the drug.
This is clearly NOT the way to improve public health. On the contrary, it could produce a new, massive wave of extremely dire health consequences in just a few years’ time.
So rather than improving school lunches, which would cost about a dollar a day per child, they’d rather “invest” ten times that for tests and drugs that in no way, shape, or form address the root cause, which is an improper, unhealthy diet! All they’re doing is allowing all the industries to maintain or increase their profits: Big Pharma, Big Sugar, Big Corn and the processed food industry.
Who pays?
You and your children! And in far more ways than one!

Optimizing Your Cholesterol Levels, Naturally

There’s really no reason to take statins and suffer the damaging health effects from these dangerous drugs. The fact is that 75 percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels. Therefore, if you optimize your insulin levels, you will automatically optimize your cholesterol. It follows, then, that my primary recommendations for safely regulating your cholesterol have to do with modifying your diet and lifestyle:

Optimize your vitamin D levels. Research by Dr. Stephanie Seneff has shed additional light on the extreme importance of appropriate sun exposure for normalizing your cholesterol levels and preventing heart disease. For more information, please see this previous interview.
Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your diet. Ideally, you’ll also want to consume a good portion of your food raw.
Make sure you are getting plenty of 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 as appropriate for your nutritional type.
Exercise daily. Make sure you incorporate Peak Fitness exercises, which also optimizes your human growth hormone (HGH) production.
Address your emotional challenges. My favorite technique for stress management is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT).
Avoid smoking or drinking alcohol excessively.
Be sure to get plenty of good, restorative sleep.

Unlike statin drugs, which lower your cholesterol at the expense of your health, these lifestyle strategies represent a holistic approach that will benefit your overall health—which includes a healthy cardiovascular system.

The Baycol Statin Recall and Safety Issue:

In August 2001, Bayer AG, the maker of Baycol (cerivastatin), a popular cholesterol-lowering drug used by about 700,000 Americans, pulled the medicine off the market after 31 people died from severe muscle breakdown, a well-recognized side effect of cholesterol-lowering drugs. Related articles follow:
Statins: Is the Danger in the Dose?
Here is the hard data on Baycol-associated adverse reactions. If you or someone you know is taking one of the statin cholesterol-lowering drugs, this is a “must-read” article by Jay Cohen, MD to help you understand the potential dangers that this exposes you to.
Baycol Pulled From Market as Numerous Deaths Linked to It
Baycol, a cholestrol-lowering drug (statin), has been voluntarily pulled off the market because of numerous deaths associated with its use.
The Baycol Recall: How Safe is Your Statin?
With the recall of Baycol, patients are now searching out a new drug to take its place, but are other statins really safe? Here are some precautions necessary for anyone taking Baycol or any statin.
Baycol: Another Fluoride Drug Bites the Dust
Baycol is just one of many fluoride drugs to be pulled from the market due to health hazards posed. Read about this and some of the others in this informative article written by Andreas Schuld and Wendy Small.
BMJ: Bayer faces potential fine over cholesterol lowering drug
Bayer might have to pay a fine to the German government of about $23,400 for withholding from the German authorities information on the drug’s potentially fatal interaction with another drug.
Lipitor Tied to Liver, Kidney Injury, as Well as Muscle Damage
It seems that Baycol is not alone among cholesterol lowering drugs in posing serious dangers to the public. A number of legal actions are also being pursued against Pfizer Inc., the manufacturer of the Lipitor.
Excerpts from Public Citizen’s Health Research Group’s Petition to Require a Box Warning on All HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitors (“Statins”):

” … Public Citizen, representing 135,000 consumers nationwide, hereby petitions the FDA pursuant to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act 21, U.S.C. Section 355(e)(3), and C.F.R. 10.30, to add a black box warning and additional consistent bolded warnings about this serious problem to the label of all statins marketed in the United States.”
“Doctors and the public must be warned to immediately discontinue use of statin drugs at the onset of muscle pain, muscle tenderness, muscle weakness or tiredness.”
“Prompt cessation of the use of statins at the first sign of muscle pain, muscle tenderness, muscle weakness or tiredness and prompt evaluation by a physician including a blood test for creatine phosphokinase (a measure of muscle destruction) may avoid the progression to more extensive muscle damage, rhabdomyolysis and death.”
“Rhabdomyolysis has been reported with all statins currently marketed in the United States.”

About the Experts
Joseph Mercola, DO
Founder and Owner of Mercola.com. 
Uffe Ravnskov, MD
Born 1934 in Copenhagen, Denmark Graduated 1961 from the University of Copenhagen with an M.D. 1961-1967: Various appointments at surgical, roentgenological, neurological, pediatric and medical departments in Denmark and Sweden. 1968-1979: Various appointments at the Department of Nephrology, and the Department of Clinical Chemistry, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden. 1975-79: As an assistant professor at the Department of Nephrology. 1973: PhD at the University of Lund. 1979-2000: A private practitioner. Since 1979 an independent researcher. A specialist in internal medicine and nephrology. Honored by the Skrabanek Award 1998.
For more information about him, see Dr. Ravnskov’s Web site.
Jay Cohen, M.D
Jay Cohen, M.D., is an associate professor of Family and Preventative Medicine and of Psychiatry at the University of California in San Diego. He is the author of two books and has numerous papers published in peer-reviewed journals. His book, Over Dose: The Case Against the Drug Companies, is an outstanding read.

Certain ingredients in shampoo, detergents and other cleaning agents may help form a suspected cancer-causing contaminant in water. The poorly understood water contaminant, called NDMA, is of ongoing concern to health officials.
NDMA and other nitrosamines can form during water disinfection with chloramine. Substances called quaternary amines, which are found in cosmetics and household cleaning agents, may play a role in the formation of nitrosamines.
Eurekalert reports:

“… laboratory research showed that when mixed with chloramine, some household cleaning products — including shampoo, dishwashing detergent and laundry detergent — formed NDMA … quaternary amines are used in such large quantities that some still may persist and have a potentially harmful effect in the effluents from sewage treatment plants.”

In 2009, the increase of prescription drug use among children was nearly four times higher than in the overall population, making children the leading growth demographic for the drug industry.
One in four insured children, and nearly 30 percent of adolescents, took at least one prescription medication to treat a chronic condition in 2009.
Reuters reports:

“Over the past nine years, the most substantial increases in the medicating of children were seen in drugs for conditions not typically associated with them, such as for type 2 diabetes and antipsychotics … Some long-standing childhood maladies also saw large increases, such as asthma.”

A new study shows that high doses of resveratrol may improve brain blood flow and could potentially boost brain health.
Resveratrol is a bioactive compound found in grapes and red wine. Interest in the compound began in 2003 when research showed that resveratrol was able to increase the lifespan of yeast cells.
NutraIngredients notes that:

“Since then studies in nematode worms, fruit flies, fish, and mice have linked resveratrol to longer lives.

Other studies with only resveratrol have reported anti-cancer effects, anti-inflammatory effects, cardiovascular benefits, anti-diabetes potential, energy endurance enhancement, and protection against Alzheimer’s.”

A 2009 study in The Lancet found that new cases of type 1 diabetes in kids could double in the next 10 years. Possible reasons for this dramatic rise include:

Too big too fast. The “accelerator hypothesis” theorizes that children who are bigger and grow more quickly are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes.
Too little sun. The “sunshine hypothesis” comes from data showing that countries situated closer to the equator have lower rates of type 1 diabetes.
Too clean. The “hygiene hypothesis” is the notion that cleanliness — lack of exposure to certain germs and parasites — may increase susceptibility to diseases like diabetes.
Too much cow’s milk. The “cow’s milk hypothesis” states that exposing babies to infant formula containing cow’s milk in the first six months of life damages their immune systems, and can trigger autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes.
Too much pollution. The “POP hypothesis” alleges that being exposed to pollutants increases diabetes risk.

Unlike type 2 diabetes, which is caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin signaling due to inappropriate diet and lack of exercise, people with type 1 diabetes do not produce insulin and must therefore inject insulin several times a day if they are to remain alive.
Tragically those with type 1 diabetes can have the healthiest lifestyle possible yet still suffer many diseases, as current technology is a poor substitute for a fully functioning pancreas.
Type 1 diabetes is actually an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system destroys pancreatic cells that produce insulin. The disease tends to progress rather quickly and therefore needs to be diagnosed early, as it can result in serious long-term complications including blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and stroke.
While type 1 diabetes is far less common than type 2, accounting for only 5-10 percent of people with diabetes, it is steadily on the rise. Rates of type 1 diabetes in children under 5 are expected to double between 2005 and 2020, and cases among children younger than 15 are expected to rise by 70 percent during this time, a Lancet study showed.
What is fueling this rise is the question on everyone’s mind, and the research is pointing to one very prominent, and easily fixable, problem: vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D May Prevent Type 1 Diabetes

It has been known for some time that type one diabetes is virtually unheard of the closer one gets to the equator. This spurred research which suggested that if a pregnant woman has optimal vitamin D levels during her pregnancy she should radically reduce if not virtually eliminate the child’s risk of getting type 1 diabetes!
Receptors that respond to vitamin D have been found in nearly every type of human cell, from your bones to your brain, and also your pancreas.
According to Dr. Michael Holick, who is one of the leading vitamin D researchers in the world, children receiving vitamin D supplementation from age 1 on had an 80 percent decreased risk of developing type 1 diabetes.

New Research Confirms Pregnant Women Seriously at Risk of Vitamin D Deficiency

This is crucial information for any woman who is pregnant or planning to become pregnant, as a separate study by Drs. Hollis and Wagner found that over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state. As a result, they recommended that all mothers optimize their vitamin D levels during pregnancy, especially in the winter months, to safeguard their babies’ health.
To do so, pregnant women may need to consume 10 times as much food-based vitamin D than is currently recommended, a new study by Dr. Hollis and colleagues confirmed.
Currently, guidelines recommend pregnant women consume from 200 IU to 400 IU of vitamin D a day, an amount that is far too low.
In the new study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver, B.C., women who were at least 12 weeks pregnant took 400, 2,000 or 4,000 IU of vitamin D a day.
Those who took the highest amount — 4,000 IU a day — were the least likely to go into labor early, give birth prematurely or develop infections.
Unfortunately, according to a separate new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 97 percent of African Americans have vitamin D levels that are too low for optimal health, along with 90 percent of Mexican Americans and 71 percent of whites.
These are staggering numbers that could increase your newborn’s risk of developing type 1 diabetes!
Also, if you are the parent of an infant, it is crucial that you test their vitamin D levels and use safe sun exposure and supplementation as necessary to increase their levels. Doing so now could potentially save them the lifelong pain of developing type 1 diabetes.

What Should Your Child’s Vitamin D Levels Be?

From my perspective, with the mountain of scientific evidence we now have on the benefits of optimal vitamin D levels in pregnancy it is reprehensible criminal malpractice to not routinely check a pregnant woman’s vitamin D level during the pregnancy.
Of course, it is still not the “standard of care” at this point and no physician will lose his license for failing to do this check, but you don’t have to wait for the “standard of care” to catch up to reality. Encourage every pregnant woman you know monitor her vitamin D level during her pregnancy.
Based on the most recent research, the current recommendation for dosage via oral supplementation is 35 IU’s of vitamin D per pound of body weight, as shown in the chart below.

Vitamin D Dose Recommendations

Age
Dosage

Below 5
35 units per pound per day

Age 5 – 10
2500 units

Age 18 – 30
5000 units

Pregnant Women
5000 units

WARNING:
There is no way to know if the above recommendations are correct. The ONLY way to know is to test your blood. You might need 4-5 times the amount recommended above. Ideally your blood level of 25 OH D should be 65 ng/ml.

 
Keep in mind that these recommendations are only an estimate, as it is simply impossible to make a blanket recommendation that will cover everyone’s needs.
The only way to determine the correct dose is to get your blood tested since there are so many variables that influence your vitamin D status.
Getting the correct test is the first step in this process, as there are TWO vitamin D tests currently being offered: 1,25(OH)D and 25(OH)D.
The correct test your doctor needs to order is 25(OH)D, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is the better marker of overall D status. This is the marker that is most strongly associated with overall health.
I recommend using Lab Corp in the U.S. When you get your results back, the “normal” 25-hydroxyvitamin D lab range is between 20-56 ng/ml. As you can see in the chart below, this conventional range is really a sign of deficiency, and is too broad to be ideal.

In fact, your or your child’s vitamin D level should not be below 32 ng/ml, and any levels below 20 ng/ml are considered serious deficiency states, increasing your risk of cancer and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, just to name a few.
The OPTIMAL value that you’re looking for is 50-70 ng/ml.
This range applies for everyone: children, adolescents, adults and seniors.
For more information on optimizing your vitamin D levels, please watch my free one-hour vitamin D lecture.

What Else Can You do to Help Prevent Type 1 Diabetes?

There are a number of other factors that may also contribute to type 1 diabetes. To keep your, and your children’s, risks as low as possible, try the following steps.

Breastfeed your baby: Bottle-fed babies tend to grow faster, and this is not a positive result. Instead, babies that gain a lot of weight in their first year of life may have an increased risk of type 1 diabetes.
The second reason why breastfeeding is preferred is because you will not have to expose your child to pasteurized milk-based formula. Exposure to pasteurized cow’s milk early in life may also increase your child’s risk of type 1 diabetes.

Avoid feeding your infant cereal: Cereal is often one of the first solid foods to be introduced into the infant diet and most pediatricians encourage their patients to start these foods at about 4 to 6 months of age. This is truly unfortunate, as grains are not a healthy choice for most people, including infants, and infants fed cereal also have an increased risk of type 1 diabetes.

Infants will do just fine starting out on a vegetable source of carbs, so do your child a favor and give them veggies rather than cereal.

Do your homework before vaccinating: There is speculation that the growing number of autoimmune diseases plaguing children may be related to the growing number of vaccinations they receive. There has been a 17-fold increase in type 1 diabetes, from 1 in 7,100 children in the 1950s to 1 in 400 now, according to Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD, which correlates with a rise in vaccines.

Is There a Cure for Type 1 Diabetes?

As it stands, seeking to prevent type 1 diabetes is currently your best option, and I cannot stress enough the importance of optimizing your vitamin D levels, especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
That said, there is encouraging research involving the use of stem cells to replace pancreatic islet cells and thereby cure type 1 diabetes.
In 2007 the British Times Online reported on the first clinical evidence for the efficacy of Hematopoietic stem cells (stem cells derived from bone marrow) in type 1 diabetes.
The Brazilian study, published in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that treatment-related toxicity was low, with zero mortality. All but two of the volunteers (93 percent) in the trial did not require daily insulin injections for up to three years after the end of their treatment, as the therapy allowed their bodies to start producing the hormone again naturally.
The main drawback with the particular therapy used in that study, from my standpoint, is that drugs were used to first suppress the patients’ immune system before receiving transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.
Suppression of your immune system could lead to all types of health problems — after all, your immune system is your primary line of defense — however, the theory of using stem cells to reactivate natural insulin production is an intriguing and hopeful one and I remain highly optimistic that it will one day soon provide an effective treatment option for type 1 diabetics.
The technique has not yet reached the mainstream, as there is little incentive for drug companies to sponsor research into such therapies that may free their current “customers” from insulin, but it’s not completely out of the question yet.
In an accompanying editorial in JAMA titled “Cellular therapy for type 1 diabetes: has the time come?”, Dr Jay Skyler of the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami, wrote:

“Research in this field is likely to explode in the next few years and should include randomized controlled trials, as well as mechanistic studies.”

Again, for now please use prevention as your primary route of attack against type 1 diabetes. For those of you who already have it, stay tuned to the newsletter, as I’ll be reporting on any new information that comes up.

Smoking, drinking too much, lack of exercise and poor diet can age you by 12 years.

The findings come from a study that tracked close to 5,000 British adults for 20 years. Over the course of the study, 29 percent of the people with all four unhealthy behaviors died. Only 8 percent died among the people with none of the four habits.

USA Today notes that:

“The findings don’t mean that everyone who maintains a healthy lifestyle will live longer than those who don’t, but it will increase the odds.”

Up to a third of breast cancer cases in Western countries could be avoided if women ate less and exercised more, researchers at a breast cancer conference said.
Experts said the focus should shift to changing behaviors like diet and physical activity.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. A woman’s lifetime chance of getting breast cancer is about one in eight. Obese women are up to 60 percent more likely to develop any cancer than normal-weight women.
Many breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, a hormone produced in fat tissue. So experts suspect that the fatter a woman is, the more estrogen she’s likely to produce, which could in turn spark breast cancer. Even in slim women, exercise can help reduce the cancer risk by converting more of the body’s fat into muscle.

Over 80 percent of the people on the Internet search for health information, but the field is loaded with misinformation, deception, and outright fraud.
When I started this Web site in 1997 it was with the intention to provide you and your family with a treasure trove of knowledge and health wisdom that will allow you to identify inexpensive safe and natural alternatives to dangerous drugs.

Origins of “Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death”

In July, 2000 I analyzed a JAMA article by Dr. Barbara Starfield from Johns Hopkins School of public health. I carefully reviewed her data and drew the conclusion that doctors were the third leading cause of death. I created that headline, and over the last ten years it has been widely distributed all over the Internet.
When I contacted Dr. Starfield for a follow-up, she told me that she did not agree with my conclusion, but still felt that the conventional medical system was the leading cause of death. Well, four years later, Gary Null published a report which indeed confirmed that fact.
So, with time I realized that one of my primary purposes in life is to catalyze a transformation of this fatally flawed medical system that has been corrupted by multinational corporate drug and food industry interests which put their bottom line profits far ahead of improving the human condition.
The purpose of this site is to provide a comprehensive educational effort to expose the fraud, deception and misinformation that is prematurely killing hundreds of thousands of people every year in the US alone, and also causing needless pain and suffering in millions of others.
It might be obvious to most that I am bucking this corporate system, and they are not going to go down without a fight. They are constantly seeking to discredit me so the message won’t be heard.

Truth is Violently Opposed Before it is Accepted as Self Evident

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher known for his philosophical clarity. I believe he made one of the most valuable observations on the shifting of human views when he stated that all truth goes through three stages:

First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident

This is not only true for health but all areas of life. However since my entire formal professional training is in health, I would like to share with you a dozen experiences from my professional career that validates Shopenhauer’s observation, and why I will not quit despite the efforts of my critics and detractors.
I already covered the first three in this previous article.
The next three of the 12 truths I will cover in this four-part series have reached the final stage and are now widely accepted by the medical profession, although some of my recommendations still include refinements that have yet to be embraced by conventional medicine.
The remainder is in varying degrees of acceptance, and some will not be widely accepted for quite some time, but the evidence is clear for all those who are willing to objectively review the data.

Truth # 4: Omega-3 Fats are Essential for Optimal Health and Brain Function

It is widely accepted that omega-3 fats are useful for health. Even the FDA allows claims for omega-3 for heart disease. This is one of the only food health claims that the FDA allows.
Unfortunately, a majority of people are sorely deficient in this essential nutrient, and making matters worse, our modern diet is loaded with omega-6 fats, which can cause health problems when consumed in excess.
The ideal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats is 1:1. Today, though, our ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 averages from 20:1 to 50:1! When the ratios between the two fats are this skewed, poor health is virtually guaranteed.
Researchers have agreed that including more omega-3 than omega-6 in your diet may help protect your tissues and organs from inflammation, one of the underlying causes of countless chronic diseases and aging.

Why You Don’t Want to Be Deficient in Omega-3’s

Fortunately the vast majority of the public already understands and appreciate the importance of omega-3 fats. Even the conservative FDA allows claims for the reduction of heart disease for omega 3 fats because of the overwhelming scientific evidence.
Omega-3 deficiency can cause or contribute to serious health problems, both mental and physical, and may be a significant underlying factor of up to 96,000 premature deaths each year. Compare that to the estimated 40,000 women who die from breast cancer each year in the U.S. and the implications of omega-3 deficiency becomes quite clear.
In fact, omega-3 deficiency has recently been revealed as the sixth biggest killer of Americans, so this is yet another recommendation that could prove to be life-saving.
But there is still plenty of confusion about omega-3 fats as many “experts” fail to appreciate the importance of animal based omega-3 fats. They advocate primarily plant based omega-3 fats that have ALA. While plant based omega-3 fats are necessary and highly beneficial and should also be consumed, the evidence is very clear that they are not an acceptable substitute for animal based omeg-3 fats.
This is primarily related to the fact that your body does not easily convert the ALA in plant based fats to the longer fats of EPA and DHA. If you have diabetes, are overweight, have high blood pressure or high cholesterol, your body has even more difficulty converting these fats.
Animal based omega-3 fats contain two fatty acids crucial to your health, DHA and EPA. These two fatty acids, not ALA, are pivotal in preventing heart disease, cancer, and many other diseases. It is also important to realize that over 50 percent of your brain is is made up of DHA Low DHA levels have been linked to depression, schizophrenia, memory loss, and a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
In fact, the results of three studies published in 2008 showed that low concentrations of EPA and DHA resulted in an increased risk of death from ALL causes and accelerated cognitive decline.
Researchers are now also linking inadequate intake of these omega-3 fats in pregnant women to premature birth and low birth weight, and to hyperactivity in children.
I first started emphasizing the importance of this healthy fat in 2000 Unfortunately, many are still not getting enough omega-3 in their diet — a problem that’s easily remedied by supplementing with a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fats.
The practical question becomes how you are going to obtain your high quality omega-3 fats. Ideally we would all receive them from sea food. Unfortunately due to industrial pollution most of the sea food is now contaminated with heavy metals like mercury and industrial toxins like PCBs, PDEs and dioxins.
Because of this, most have decided to take a fish oil supplement. This is what I had recommended ten years ago but new evidence suggests that there may be even better sources of animal based omega-3 fats.
My current favorite is krill oil. Krill are very tiny shrimp like creatures that are actually the largest biomass in the world, far exceeding the amount of fish in the world. Their harvest is carefully regulated so that they are not at risk of being harmed for centuries under current harvesting guidelines. They are clearly the most sustainable source of animal based omega-3 fats in the world today.
Their harvest is carefully regulated by major environmental organizations like the World Wildlife Foundation and CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources).
Additionally because the krill fat is attached to phosphates they are far more readily absorbed than fish oil and therefore you need FAR less. A typical dose is only 1 gram per day not the 3-5 grams that are used in fish oil. Their better absorption also virtually eliminates any problem with burping or belching.
Lastly, they have very powerful antioxidants, called astaxanthin that help protect the highly perishable DHA and EPA fats and help protect and preserve them until you are able to swallow them.
About the only problem with krill is that they should not be taken if you have an allergy to shellfish.
An emerging modification of the omega-3 recommendation is the importance of HIGH QUALITY omega-6 fats. Omega-6 fats have been vilified for their negative influence on health. But there’s an increasing appreciation that this may not be entirely accurate.
Why?
Because most of the omega-6 fats found in modern, processed foods are damaged through heating and processing. Consuming large amounts of these damaged omega-6 fats is likely what magnifies the health problems related to omega-3 deficiency.
It is clear to me that the future of medicine will eventually become more precise in this area and recommend avoiding or eliminating damaged omega-6 fats, especially trans fats, and replacing them with high quality, unprocessed or minimally processed, omega 6 fats.

Truth # 5: Vitamin D and Sun Exposure Saves Lives

Public health officials, the media and most physicians have been telling you for years that the sun is dangerous and should be avoided. And to complicate matters they encourage you to slather yourself with sunscreen every time you go outside.
It is shocking that this highly counterintuitive recommendation could have been so widely accepted, as nearly everyone realizes that you feel better when it is sunny outside. You NEED sun to stay healthy.
As a result of a relentless marketing campaign linking sun exposure to skin cancer, vitamin D deficiency is now the norm rather than the exception.
In the United States, the late winter average vitamin D is only about 15-18 ng/ml, which is considered a very serious deficiency state. It’s thought that over 95 percent of U.S. senior citizens, and even higher percentages of deeply pigmented African Americans or other deeply pigmented individuals may be deficient, along with 85 percent of the American public!

The Role of Vitamin D in Your Body

There are only 30,000 genes in your body and vitamin D has been shown to influence over 2,000 of them. That is one of the primary reasons it influences so many diseases, from cancer and autism to heart disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
The misguided advice to avoid the sun like the plague may very well be responsible for over 600,000 preventable cases of cancer each year, and the loss of as many as one million lives worldwide from other preventable diseases!
These are extraordinary statistics, and the remedy is so shockingly simple, and inexpensive …
By getting more appropriate sun exposure, your body will naturally produce vitamin D, which has been found to be a major key that can help prevent a vast number of major diseases and minor ailments alike.
For example, studies have shown you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure.
Vitamin D even fights colds and the flu, as it regulates the expression of genes that influence your immune system to attack and destroy bacteria and viruses. In fact, it is very rare for someone with optimized vitamin D levels to come down with the flu.
I have been extolling the virtues of safe sun exposure and optimizing your vitamin D levels for over a decade now. Hopefully you have been paying attention and are now reaping the benefits.
The best way to obtain your vitamin D is by regularly safely exposing large surface areas of your skin to the sun or a safe tanning bed. Notice I said large surface areas of your skin. Simply walking outside to your car completely clothed will simply not cut it.
Also, if your schedule or geography prevents this type of exposure then you will want to take oral vitamin D. It is not nearly as good as sun exposure but will help you benefit from vitamin D. The typical adult dose is 5,000-6,000 units per day. Avoid taking 1,000-2,000 units and thinking you are doing ok. In all likelihood, you’re NOT.
Two thousand units a day is simply NOT enough vitamin D for nearly any adult unless they are receiving UV exposure from the sun or a safe tanning bed.
I’ve also recently released updated dosing recommendations. Based on the most recent research, the current recommendation is 35 IU’s of vitamin D per pound of body weight. So for a child weighing 40 pounds, the recommended average dose would be 1,400 IU’s daily, and for a 170-pound adult, the dose would be nearly 6,000 IU’s.
The KEY to remember with all dosing recommendations however is that they are only to be used as suggestions. The only way to tell if you are taking the correct dose is to measure your vitamin D blood level, 25 hydroxy D.. You do not need to do the more expensive 1,25 dihydroxy D, and it is important to have the test done at Lab Corp.

If you’re still unsure about how to go about optimizing your vitamin D, I recommend you begin by watching my free one-hour lecture, which covers the basics.
Just imagine, following the seriously flawed health advice to avoid sun exposure at all cost may have claimed literally several million lives over the past decade. During that time, those who opposed this dogma were viewed as dangerous quacks, and now there are well over 800 scientific references proving beyond a doubt that getting proper sun exposure is not a luxury, but an absolute necessity.

Truth # 6: Cholesterol is Not the Villain You’ve Been Told it is

In the United States and many other countries, the demonization of cholesterol is very much engrained in most people’s minds. But this is a harmful myth that I have been trying to set the record straight on for more than a decade.
First of all, it’s important to realize that there’s a major difference between average and healthy cholesterol levels. It’s very similar to what we’re now seeing with vitamin D levels.
Today, with respect to cholesterol, ever lower levels of cholesterol levels are being recommended, primarily due to the significant influence of the drug industry. Cholesterol lowering drugs (statins) now generate profits to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year.
Before 2004, a 130 LDL cholesterol level was considered healthy. The updated guidelines, however, recommended levels of less than 100, or even less than 70 for patients at very high risk.
In order to achieve these outrageous and dangerously low targets, you typically need to take multiple cholesterol-lowering drugs. So the guidelines instantly increased the market for these dangerous drugs.
Please understand that you have not been told the whole truth about cholesterol. Rather what you’re getting from most conventional health practitioners is little more than cleverly distorted marketing scams.
Lower is NOT always better when it comes to cholesterol. And, if your levels are too low, it could actually pose a serious health risk in and of itself.

What is Cholesterol, and Why Do You Need it?

Your body needs cholesterol. This soft, waxy substance is an integral part of your cell membranes, and it’s also the precursor (the raw material) your body uses to make your steroid hormones — one of which is vitamin D. Your skin contains cholesterol, and when UVB rays from the sun hits your skin it converts that form of cholesterol to vitamin D3, which is then transported to your blood. Your body then further converts it into the active form of vitamin D.
It also helps produce bile acids that help you to digest fat, and it’s involved in the formation of memories and is vital for your neurological function.
If you have increased levels of cholesterol, it is at least in part because of increased inflammation in your body. The cholesterol is there to help your body heal and repair.

The Risks of Low Cholesterol

Low cholesterol has its own set of health risks. It’s been linked to a variety of neurological problems, including memory loss, but it also:

Increases your risk of depression
Can increase your risk of suicide
May lead to violent behavior and aggression
Increase your risk of cancer and Parkinson’s disease

What is Too High?

Personally, I believe anything above 330 is likely too high. But another powerful way to determine if you’re at risk from abnormal cholesterol metabolism is to check your ratio of HDL, or “good” cholesterol, and your total cholesterol.
Your HDL percentage is a potent heart disease risk factor.
Simply divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. That percentage should ideally be above 25 percent. Typically, the higher the better, as there are no known side effects of having too high good cholesterol.
If your ratio falls below 15-20 percent you are at high risk, and below 10 percent, it’s a significant indicator of risk for heart disease.

Other Heart Disease Predictors that May Be Even More Important than Your Cholesterol Levels

In addition, another predictor of heart disease is your triglyceride to HDL ratio. In combination, high triglycerides and low HDL levels are an even bigger risk and are even more important to your heart health than the standard good vs. bad cholesterol ratio.
Simply divide your triglycerides level with your HDL to get this ratio. That percentage should be below 2.
One study found that people with the highest ratio of triglycerides to HDL had 16 times the risk of heart attack as those with the lowest ratio of triglycerides to HDL. So while you strive to keep your HDL cholesterol levels up, you’ll want to decrease your triglycerides.
How?
You can increase your HDL levels by exercising and getting plenty of omega-3 fats like those from krill oil. Triglycerides are easily decreased by exercising and avoiding grains and sugars in your diet.
A third heart disease predictor is your fasting uric acid levels. This too is another far more potent predictor than your total cholesterol levels. You’ll want your fasting uric acid levels to be between 3 and 5.
As I have been warning since around 2004, conventional medicine misses the boat entirely when they recommend that lowering cholesterol is the way to reduce your risk of heart attacks, because what is actually needed is to address whatever is causing your body damage — and leading to increased inflammation and then increased cholesterol.

What’s the Safest, Most Effective Way to Treat High Cholesterol?

I’ve written many articles warning you about the dangers of using statin drugs to treat high cholesterol, and equally many advising you on the proper ways to normalize your levels.
There are simple, basic strategies that can help you regulate your cholesterol.
First, you need to understand that simply lowering your dietary cholesterol intake is not an effective primary strategy. This is because 75 percent of your cholesterol is produced by your liver, which is influenced by your insulin levels.
Therefore, if you want to regulate your cholesterol levels, you need to optimize your insulin levels. High insulin levels also increase inflammation in your body, which is a primary reason why your body increases its cholesterol production. So the two – insulin and cholesterol — are tightly linked.
One of the most powerful ways you can optimize your insulin levels is by exercising, and paying attention to the foods you eat. Remember, foods that increase your insulin levels will also contribute to high cholesterol by making your liver produce more of it.
Here are my primary recommendations for safely lowering and regulating your cholesterol levels:

Get an appropriate amount of exercise.
Reduce, with the plan of eliminating, grains and sugars in your daily diet, especially fructose. It is VITAL to keep your total fructose level below 25 grams a day.
Eat the right foods for your nutritional type.
Eat a good portion of your food raw.
Make sure you’re getting plenty of high-quality, animal-based omega3-fats. I prefer those from krill oil.

I’ve treated between 20,000-30,000 patients, and I’ve only found about five people who were unable to respond to the recommendations I’ve given here. In these cases they likely had a condition called familial hypercholesterolemia.
It is extremely rare, affecting about one in 1,000 people who are on cholesterol lowering medication, but for those there may actually be some benefit to taking a statin drug.
Some have asked me about taking red rice yeast to control their cholesterol, and there is some confusion on that issue. Please understand that red rice extract is also a statin drug, with the same exact mechanism of action as other statins, even though it’s available over the counter.
The issue of cholesterol (and cholesterol-lowering drugs) is so fraught with misunderstanding and misinformation, I wrote a 17-page special report to shed some more light on the facts. It’s available for free at this link, and if you have not yet read it, I strongly urge you to do so now.
For part 1 in this series, please see this link.

The U.S. soft drinks industry says it has dramatically cut the number of high-calorie soft drinks sold in schools as part of a drive to tackle obesity. The American Beverage Association said shipments of full-calorie drinks to schools were down 95 percent.
Nearly one in three children and teenagers in the U.S. are overweight or obese, and health experts say sugary drinks are part of the problem. Several U.S. states and cities are considering taxing soft drinks.
Under voluntary guidelines in place since 2006, full-calorie soft drinks were removed from school canteens and vending machines. However, other drinks, including diet sodas, are being promoted in their place.

More than 1 in 10 American adults have diabetes. But the multibillion-dollar blockbuster drugs marketed as treatment for diabetes haven’t proved to be so successful against the biggest cause of death related to it: heart disease.
Four new studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine are a stark warning to diabetics who rely on drugs to lower their risk of heart attacks and strokes.
One found that using antihypertensives to lower systolic blood does nothing to lower risk of heart complications; another found no benefit to adding a drug to raise HDL (“good”) cholesterol. And no heart benefits were associated with two drugs given to lower high blood sugar levels.
Evidence is accumulating that diabetics may not benefit — and may even be worse off — when they’re treated with a number of diabetes medications. The real take-home message here is that those with diabetes shouldn’t forget about the importance of lifestyle factors. Losing excess weight, increasing activity levels, and improving nutrition habits will lead to better control of diabetes and lower risks of heart disease.

More animals than ever suffer from injuries and stress on factory farms. Veal calves and gestating sows are so confined as to suffer painful bone and joint problems.
The unnatural high-grain diets provided in feedlots cause severe gastric distress in many animals. And faulty or improperly used stun guns cause the painful deaths of thousands of cows and pigs a year.
A New York Times Op-ed column suggests one way to “solve” this problem — genetically engineer livestock so that they suffer less.
Neuroscientists have found that by damaging a laboratory rat’s anterior cingulate cortex, they can block its affective perception of pain. Recently, scientists have learned to genetically engineer animals so that they lack certain proteins that are important to the operation of the anterior cingulate cortex.

The theory of the genetic origin of diseases is one of the most firmly upheld doctrines of today’s medicine.

Medical science claims that cancer is brought on by “mistakes in DNA replication,” causing cells to gradually change from normal to “abnormal” and eventually to “malignant” cells.
Studies in the science of Epigenetics show that genes are by no means ‘set in stone’ but that they can alter themselves in response to a person’s environment.
In short, the DNA and thus the biology of an organism are constantly adjusting themselves to signals from outside the cells, including energetic information arising from thoughts and beliefs.
Diseases such as cancer are not caused by defective genes, as claimed by mainstream geneticists, but rather by non-genetic factors that alter the expression of genes without changing the DNA sequence.
Your brain controls all processes in your body. By comparing brain CT scans with medical records and personal histories, it becomes evident that emotional trauma or “conflict shock” leaves a visible mark in precisely the same area of the brain that controls the disease process.
In fact, diseases are not senseless “disorders” but in reality meaningful biological processes trying to save an organism rather than to destroy it. Your whole organism is engaged in facilitating a conflict resolution. The conflict-related organ responds with functional changes to assist the individual on the physical level during the unexpected distress.
A positive attitude, letting go of anger, feelings of trust and forgiveness can significantly reduce the intensity and duration of a conflict and therefore the “disease”-symptoms.
German New Medicine shifts or rather elevates “prevention” and “healing” to a level where the biology of human beings can be understood as intimately connected with spirituality and a chance for spiritual growth.
An understanding of GNM and the Five Biological Laws has in itself a healing effect as it liberates your mind from fear and inspires trust in the creative wisdom of Mother Nature.

Developed by Dietrich Klinghardt, MD, PhD., autonomic resonance testing (ART) is a comprehensive diagnostic system that uses changes in muscle tone as a primary indicator. The journal Chiropractic & Osteopathy published a review on the reliability and validity of manual muscle testing in 2007. (Scott C Cuthbert and George J Goodheart Jr, Chiropractic & Osteopathy 2007,15:4 doi:10.1186/1746-1340-15-4).
Dr. Klinghardt is also a world leader in the areas of psychoneurobiology, environmental toxicity, chronic infection, and family systems influences, and how these lead to chronic illness.
Here Dr. Klinghardt shares his more than 25-years of experience synthesizing traditional and alternative medicine, and the many benefits of ART.
If you are interested in learning about more of Dr. Klinghardt’s work, he has compiled a five disc DVD set that I highly recommend.

Americans today receive far more medical radiation than ever before. The average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation has increased sevenfold since 1980, and more than half of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy.
Often, patients know little about the harm that can result when safety rules are violated and ever more powerful and technologically complex machines go awry.
The complexity of medical radiation technology has created new avenues for error—through software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training.
When those errors occur, they can be deadly.
Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. Accidents are chronically underreported, and some states do not require that they be reported at all.
Last year a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer—and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because a powerful linear accelerator had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.

Donald (“Donnie”) Yance, an internationally known herbalist and nutritionist who founded the Centre for Natural Healing in 1992, and the Mederi Foundation in 2006, shares his vast botanical knowledge, including how you can use herbs to help restore your health and overcome the flu.

Forbes has declared Monsanto “Company of the Year,” calling criticism of the notorious company “vicious” attacks against a company that “has been working to make humanity better fed.”
What’s more, Forbes claims that the attacks come because Monsanto has close to a monopoly in some seed markets, which Forbes argues is because they are making “seeds that are too good.”
You read that right. Apparently, Monsanto’s decades-long attempt to control the seed market — which has led it lawsuits against small farmers and genetically modified plants that never regerminate, forcing farmers to buy seeds year after year — is apparently just a result of their being “too good.”
I encourage you all to BOYCOTT Forbes and cancel any subscription you may have.

Osteoporosis is a disease that causes bones to become thinner, more porous and break more easily. Osteopenia is different from osteoporosis — it is a slight thinning of bones that occurs naturally as women get older and typically doesn’t result in disabling bone breaks.
Osteopenia is a condition that only recently started to be thought of as a problem that required treatment. Until the early 1990’s, only a handful of people had even heard of the word. But osteopenia has transformed from a rarely heard word into a problem that millions of women swallow pills to treat.
The term “osteopenia” was never originally meant to be considered as a disease — it was a research category used mostly because some thought it might be useful for public health researchers who like clear categories for their studies.
But in 1995, a man named Jeremy Allen was approached by the drug company Merck. The pharmaceutical giant had just released a new osteoporosis drug called Fosamax. Since osteoporosis is a serious problem that affects millions of women, the potential market for Fosamax was enormous. But the drug wasn’t selling well.
Allen persuaded Merck to establish a nonprofit called the Bone Measurement Institute. On its board were six of the most respected osteoporosis researchers in the country.
But the institute itself had a rather slim staff: Allen was the only employee.
In 1997 the institute and several other interested organizations successfully lobbied to pass the Bone Mass Measurement Act, a piece of legislation that changed Medicare reimbursement rules to cover bone scans. More and more women got bone density tests (at Merck’s urging), and the very existence of the word “osteopenia” on a medical report had a profound effect.
Millions of women were worried by the diagnosis. And when clinicians saw the word ‘osteopenia’ on a report, they assumed it was a disease. Merck did not disabuse them of the notion.
There are no long-term studies that look at what happens to women with osteopenia who start Fosamax in their 50’s and continue treatment long-term in the hopes of preventing old-age fractures. And none are planned.