Signs Your Body Is Too Acidic and Ways to Quickly Alkalize It

07/05/17

Recently it has come to light that our bodies may be too acidic and this can lead to major health issues.

It can create the perfect environment for illness, bacteria, and yeast to thrive. When the body is overly acidic, the body will extract minerals from vital organs and bones to neutralize the acid and remove it from the body. Because of this, the body’s mineral reserves such as calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium can be depleted and cause damage that can go undetected for years, until it becomes a the medical crisis and can lead to complications such as acidosis.

Many people are consuming enough acid forming foods in their diets, such as dairy, grains, meats and sugar.

Since the body is constantly generating acidic waste products from the metabolism, those waste products need to be neutralized or excreted in some way. In order to neutralize the constant acid generation, we need to supply the body with more alkaline foods.

Health problems caused by mild acidosis (poor pH balance):

Inflamed sensitive gums, cavities
•Immune deficiency
•Sciatica, lumbago, stiff neck
•Respiratory problems, shortness of breath, coughing
•Yeast fungal overgrowth
•Low energy and chronic fatigue
•Cardiovascular damage, including the constriction of blood vessels and reduction in oxygen
•Heart problems, arrhythmias, increased heart rate
•Weight gain, obesity and diabetes
•Bladder and kidney infections
•Accelerated free radical damage
•Premature aging
•Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
•Osteoporosis, weak brittle bones, hip fractures, bone spurs
•Headaches, confusion, sleepiness
•Joint pain, aching muscles and lactic acid buildup
•Allergies, acne

Doesn’t the body adjust pH on its own?

Answer according to The Hearty Soul: Yes it can, but it does so at a price. The normal pH for all tissues and fluids in the body, except the stomach is alkaline. With the exception of blood, all of the body systems have a wide pH range, in part so they can shift to maintain the blood pH, which must be maintained at the very narrow margin of 7.35 to 7.45. For example, if the system becomes too acidic, the blood will take alkaline forming elements from the digestive enzyme system of the small intestine. This now creates a less than optimal environment for proper digestion. So while the body can adjust pH on its own, it does so at a price to other systems in the body, which can lead to additional health problems.

Start by learning what your pH Levels are

pH testing is important because it allows an individual to get a numeric representation of the current level of acidification in their body. A healthy average pH reading will range anywhere from 6.75 to 7.25. The optimal pH numeric reading is 7.36. There will be more eferences at the bottom of this article to point you in the right direction to better health.

Taste alone won’t tell you if food is acidic or alkaline

An example, most people think of lemons as acidic, while it is classified as an acidic fruit, it is actually an alkaline forming food. During the process of digestion the acids are oxidized into carbon dioxide and water, therefore they do not create an acid condition in the system.

Calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium and sodium are the main alkalizing minerals. Foods that are high in this minerals are considered alkaline forming food. Most foods have both acid and alkaline minerals in them. If acidic minerals are greater in concentration than that food is considered acidic and vice versa.

The body has its limits

The body has limits for how much it can compensate for acid imbalance. Therefore food intake plays a critical role in maintaining the acid-alkaline balance. Many diseases and general malaise are the result of the body’s attempt and failure to rebalance the internal environment.

Generally speaking, if the diet includes too many acid forming foods, such as high amounts of meats, grains, dairy, sugars, the body becomes more acidic. If you eat too many alkaline producing foods such as greens, fruits, sea vegetables the body can become too alkaline. Balance is key.

How does your body respond to specific foods?

It’s important to understand how your body responds to various foods depends on your dominant constitutional type. If your dominant type is oxidative then fruits and vegetables move the body to the more acid side, while proteins make your body more alkaline. If however you are more dominant to the autonomic system (ANS) then proteins cause your body to become more acidic and fruits and vegetables shift the body to a more alkaline environment.

Ways you can improve your alkalinity

1. Check your pH regularly

2. Drink plenty of water (alkaline water when possible)

3. Remove acidic foods

4. Replace a traditional lunch with a large green salad.

5. Use lettuce leaves and collard greens as wraps.

6. Try not to consume processed foods

7. Eliminate soda, sugars and coffee. Replace them with herbal tea, herbal coffee and green drinks

8. Replace dairy milks with coconut or almond milk

9. Add green juices or smoothies to your diet

What kinds of foods you consume matters

Working at improving pH levels may require a little more thought, but you’ll appreciate the healthy benefits of your efforts as you begin to feel more energetic and vibrant and your overall health improves.

There is no question about it, what you eat has a direct impact on your overall health. It was Ann Wigmore, founder of the renowned Hippocrates Health Institute who said, “The food you eat can be either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.”

References:
http://theheartysoul.com/how-to-alkalize/
http://www.myhealthmaven.com/diy/health-tests-at-home/understanding-ph/
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001181.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3195546/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11842945
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1995/pdf/1995-v10n0304-p177.pdf

Natural Blaze

6 Ways To Detox Fluoride – A Known Neurotoxin – From Your Body

MAY 22, 2016 By Amanda Froelich

Sodium fluoride is classified as a neurotoxin – in the same category as arsenic, lead, and mercury, but it’s still prevalent in the United States’ water supply. Here are six ways to detox the substance from your body.

For years, health experts have been debating about whether or not sodium fluoride is toxic to the human body. Small amounts applied topically may prevent tooth decay, but there is little evidence suggesting that fluoride improves health when it is ingested.

In fact, according to the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, the additive is actually a neurotoxin and is classified in the same category as arsenic, lead, and mercury. Because it is commonly ingested through fluoridated water, certain foods, and commercial toothpastes, researchers believe that the additive is contributing to a worldwide “pandemic of developmental neurotoxicity” that results in disabilities such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other cognitive impairments.

The report coincides with 2013 findings by a Harvard University meta-analysis which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers concluded that children in areas with highly fluoridated water have “significantly lower’ IQ scores than those who live in areas with low amounts of fluoride in their water supply. In addition, the Harvard website states that “extremely high levels of fluoride are known to cause neurotoxicity in adults, and negative impacts on memory and learning have been reported in rodent studies.” In addition, “little is known about the substance’s impact on children’s neurodevelopment.”

Despite these findings, fluoride is still added to approximately 60% of the United States’ water supply. This is especially concerning, considering that sodium fluoride was once used as rat poison.

Because the toxin accumulates in the human body and can manifest in problems over time, including dental fluorosis – or far worse health issues, it’s important every individual follows the steps below to eliminate the additive from their body.

Note: You might experience detox symptoms at first – such as headaches, sluggishness, or aches and pains, but this is a sign that foreign agents are leaving your body. Drink plenty of water and follow the six steps listed below to naturally eliminate fluoride from your system.

1) Get Adequate Iodine

Iodine is an important element for the normal metabolism of cells, especially thyroid hormones. It pushes the fluoride from your body via urine. Some good sources of iodine include seaweed (nori, dulse, wakame, etc…), cranberries, organic yogurt, potatoes, organic strawberries, and organic navy beans.

2) Consume More Boron

Boron is a natural element that helps flush fluoride from your body. Boron-rich foods include most nuts, dates, prunes, honey, broccoli, bananas, and avocado.

3) Eat Some Tamarind

This African fruit and spice is used extensively in Ayurvedic medicine. It can be used in a tincture or tea to cleanse the body of fluoride.

4) Increase Magnesium/Calcium Intake

Most people are deficient in magnesium because the soils have been depleted of this mineral through modern agricultural methods. It plays an important role, however, in the metabolism and synthesis of nutrients within your cells. It also inhibits the absorption of fluoride into your cells. Along with magnesium, calcium seems to help attract fluoride away from bones and teeth, allowing the body to eliminate it.

Both should be taken together, and this can easily be accomplished by consuming dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, fish, beans, whole grains, avocados, organic yogurt, bananas, dried fruit, and dark chocolate.

5) General Liver Cleanse

The most important step to detoxify from excess fluoride may be to cleanse your liver. The liver is responsible for over 400 functions in the body, and when it gets overburdened, a number of symptoms may manifest. Because fluoride isn’t a product found naturally in the body, some sources claim that it may get stuck in the liver.

If you drink lemon water upon rising and eat liver-friendly foods, such as garlic, turmeric, lemons, limes, and avocado, your body will have an easier time removing heavy metals and toxins.

6) Sit In A Sauna

Saunas are great for ridding your body of toxins, as they inspire the body to sweat them out. The penetrating heat feels good, as well. Just be sure to drink plenty of water before and after to prevent dehydration. If you have any medical conditions, consult your healthcare provider first.

By adopting a wholesome, plant-based diet, getting plenty of exercise, receiving 15-20 minutes of sunlight per day, thinking positive thoughts, and taking time off to keep your stress levels in check, you’ll find that you feel better and have more energy than before. These additional tips will improve your body’s ability to detox fluoride and other toxins from your system, as well.

Disturbing: Researchers Finally Confirm That Cancer Is A Purely Man-Made Disease

By Amando Flavio

Researchers from the University Of Manchester, United Kingdom, have concluded that cancer is a purely modern, man-made disease.

In the United Kingdom alone, Cancer claims more than 150,000 lives each year. Statistics also show that about one in three people in the United Kingdom is likely to get cancer.

The researchers spent a great deal of time studying mummies, fossils and classical literature before arriving at their conclusion.

The researchers said the disease is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life. This is because tumors were rare until recent times, when pollution and poor diet became an issue.

In the study of Egyptian mummies, for example, the researchers found no signs of cancer in many of them—with the exception of one isolated case. Slivers of tissue from hundreds of Egyptian mummies were rehydrated and placed under the microscope. The researchers found only one case of cancer in the mummies examined.

In the past, some researchers have argued that the ancient Egyptians did not live long enough to develop cancer. To dismiss this weak argument, the researchers pointed out that other age-related disease, such as hardening of the arteries and brittle bones, occurred during this time.

The journal Nature Reviews Cancer reports that fossil evidence of cancer is not solid, with scientific literature providing a few dozen, mostly disputed, examples in animal fossils. Even the study of thousands of Neanderthal bones has provided only one example of a possible cancer.

Evidence of cancer in ancient Egyptian texts is also tenuous, with cancer-like problems more likely being caused by leprosy or even varicose veins. It is said the ancient Greeks were probably the first to define cancer as a specific disease, and to distinguish between benign and malignant tumors.

The 17th century provides the first descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers. However, the first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumors only occurred in the past 200 years. Nasal cancer in snuff users appeared in 1761. Scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps was also discovered in 1775.

Lead researcher of this current study, Michael Zimmerman said there should have been plenty of cancer-related evidence available in ancient societies because they lacked effective healthcare.

“In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer-causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization,” Zimmerman said.

Professor Rosalie David, who also played a key role in the analysis of the possible reference to the disease in classical literature, fossil records and mummified bodies, said:

“In industrialized societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle. The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data. Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.”

The researchers recommended a healthy diet, regular physical activity and maintenance of a healthy weight. These three lifestyle choices are believed to be able to prevent about a third of the most common cancers known to researchers.

Why Oncologists Don’t Like Baking Soda Cancer Treatment

Dave Mihalovic, Prevent Disease

Waking Times

Even the most aggressive cancers which have metastasized have been reversed with baking soda cancer treatments. Although chemotherapy is toxic to all cells, it represents the only measure that oncologists employ in their practice to almost all cancer patients. In fact, 9 out of 10 cancer patients agree to chemotherapy first without investigating other less invasive options.

Doctors and pharmaceutical companies make money from it. That’s the only reason chemotherapy is still used. Not because it’s effective, decreases morbidity, mortality or diminishes any specific cancer rates. In fact, it does the opposite. Chemotherapy boosts cancer growth and long-term mortality rates and oncologists know it.

A few years ago, University of Arizona Cancer Center member Dr. Mark Pagel received a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the effectiveness of personalized baking soda cancer treatment for breast cancer. Obviously there are people in the know who have understood that sodium bicarbonate, that same stuff that can save a person’s life in the emergency room in a heartbeat, is a primary cancer treatment option of the safest and most effective kind.

Studies have shown that dietary measures to boost bicarbonate levels can increase the pH of acidic tumors without upsetting the pH of the blood and healthy tissues. Animal models of human breast cancer show that oral sodium bicarbonate does indeed make tumors more alkaline and inhibit metastasis. Based on these studies, plus the fact that baking soda is safe and well tolerated, world renowned doctors such as Dr. Julian Whitaker have adopted successful cancer treatment protocols as part of an overall nutritional and immune support program for patients who are dealing with the disease. The Whitaker protocol uses 12 g (2 rounded teaspoons) of baking soda mixed in 2 cups water, along with a low-cal sweetener of your choice. (It’s quite salty tasting.) Sip this mixture over the course of an hour or two and repeat for a total of three times a day. One man claims he has found a cure for cancer using baking soda and molasses and actually successfully treated his own disease by using baking soda.

When taken orally with water, especially water with high magnesium content, and when used transdermally in medicinal baths, sodium bicarbonate becomes a first-line medicinal for the treatment of cancer, and also kidney disease, diabetes, influenza and even the common cold. It is also a powerful buffer against radiation exposure, so everyone should be up to speed on its use. Everybody’s physiology is under heavy nuclear attack from strong radioactive winds that are circling the northern hemisphere.

Dr. Robert J. Gillies and his colleagues have already demonstrated that pre-treatment of mice with baking soda results in the alkalinization of the area around tumors. The same researchers reported that bicarbonate increases tumor pH and also inhibits spontaneous metastases in mice with breast cancer.

What is Baking Soda?

Baking soda is a white crystalline solid that appears as fine powder. It is also called cooking soda, bread soda and bicarbonate of soda. Its chemical name is sodium bicarbonate or sodium hydrogen carbonate.

Baking soda is different from washing soda (sodium carbonate) although they share the same slightly salty and alkaline taste.

This widely used soda is commonly dissolved in mineral water and used as a leavening agent in baking. It works as a leavening agent by neutralizing the acidic components of batter. The neutralization releases carbon dioxide and leads to the “raising” or expansion of baked foods.

Baking soda has also been used to soften vegetable and to tenderize meat.

As a household chemical, baking soda is used as a cleaning agent. It is included in toothpastes for similar reasons where it serves as an antiseptic, acid-neutralizer, whitening agent and plaque-removing agent as well as a cleaning agent.

Other common personal hygiene products in which baking soda can be found include deodorants and shampoos.

Baking Soda and pH Medicine

The pH of our tissues and body fluids is crucial and central because it affects and mirrors the state of our health or our inner cleanliness. The closer the pH is to 7.35-7.45, the higher our level of health and wellbeing. Staying within this range dramatically increases our ability to resist acute illnesses like colds and flues as well as the onset of cancer and other diseases. Keeping our pH within a healthy range also involves necessary lifestyle and dietary changes that will protect us over the long term while the use of sodium bicarbonate gives us a jump-start toward increased alkalinity.

The pH scale is like a thermometer showing increases and decreases in the acid and alkaline content of fluids. Deviations above or below a 7.35-7.45 pH range in the tightly controlled blood can signal potentially serious and dangerous symptoms or states of disease. When the body can no longer effectively neutralize and eliminate the acids, it relocates them within the body’s extra-cellular fluids and connective tissue cells directly compromising cellular integrity. Conversely when the body becomes too alkaline from too much bicarbonate in the blood, metabolic alkalosis occurs, which can lead to severe consequences if not corrected quickly.

Jon Barron presents a way of looking at pH that opens up one of the major benefits of alkaline water:

Hydrogen ions tie up oxygen. That means that the more acid a liquid is, the less available the oxygen in it. Every cell in our body requires oxygen for life and to maintain optimum health. Combine that with what we know about hydrogen ions and we see that the more acid the blood (the lower its pH), the less oxygen is available for use by the cells. Without going into a discussion of the chemistry involved, just understand that it’s the same mechanism involved when acid rain “kills” a lake. The fish literally suffocate to death because the acid in the lake “binds up” all of the available oxygen. It’s not that the oxygen has gone anywhere; it’s just no longer available. Conversely, if you raise the pH of the lake (make it more alkaline), oxygen is now available and the lake comes back to life. Incidentally, it’s worth noting that cancer is related to an acid environment (lack of oxygen)–the higher the pH (the more oxygen present in the cells of the body), the harder it is for cancer to thrive.

Understanding this is important for two reasons: (1) it reveals one of the primary benefits of alkaline water–more “available” oxygen in the system and (2) it explains why alkaline water helps fight cancer.

How Baking Soda Can Help “Cure” Cancer

Basically, malignant tumors represent masses of rapidly growing cells. The rapid rate of growth experienced by these cells means that cellular metabolism also proceeds at very high rates.

Therefore, cancer cells are using a lot more carbohydrates and sugars to generate energy in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate).

However, some of the compounds formed from the energy production include lactic acid and pyruvic acid. Under normal circumstances, these compounds are cleared and utilized as soon as they are produced. But cancer cells are experiencing metabolism at a much faster rate. Therefore, these organic acid accumulate in the immediate environment of the tumor.

The high level of extracellular acidity around the tumor is one of the chief driving force behind the metastasis of cancer tumors.

Basically, cancer cells need an acidic environment to grow and spread rapidly.

Some cancer experts, therefore, believe that by buffering the tumor microenvironment with an alkalizing compound, the pH of tumors can be raised enough to starve them and stop their growth and spread.

Curiously, this rather simple solution to cancer has been proven right.

What is even more remarkable is that there is no need to cook up some fancy synthetic drug to lower the acidity in the immediate environment of the tumor. A simple, commonly obtained compound like sodium bicarbonate will do.

Obviously, it is desirable to deliver the sodium bicarbonate as close to the tumor as possible since its pH-raising effect is needed in the microenvironment of the tumor. Therefore, directly injecting sodium bicarbonate in the tumor site is considered a better solution than oral administration. However, oral sodium bicarbonate is just safer and can be readily used at home.

A 2009 study published in the journal, Cancer Research, is among the first to confirm that the alkalinizing effect of sodium bicarbonate can indeed stop cancer.

By injecting sodium bicarbonate into a group of mice, the authors of the study were able to determine how the growth and spread of cancer tumors were effected by raising the pH of the organ affected by the cancer.

The study results showed that baking soda indeed raised the pH and reduced spontaneous metastases in mice induced with breast cancer.

The researchers also determined that sodium bicarbonate works by raising the pH outside cells and not within cells. This is an important finding because it suggests that sodium bicarbonate does not interfere with cellular metabolism even as it makes the microenvironment unconducive for tumor growth.

Other findings from this study show that baking soda:

Reduced the involvement of the lymph node on the transport of cancer cells

Does not lower the levels of circulating tumor cells

Reduced the involvement of the liver and, therefore, the spread of tumor cells to other organs

Inhibit the colonization of other organs by circulating tumor cells

The Baking Soda Formula for Cancer

To make the baking soda natural cancer remedy at home, you need maple syrup, molasses or honey to go along with the baking soda.

In Dr. Sircus’ book, he documented how one patient used baking soda and blackstrap molasses to fight the prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones. On the first day, the patient mixed 1 teaspoon of baking soda with 1 teaspoon of molasses in a cup of water.

He took this for another 3 days after which his saliva pH read 7.0 and his urine pH read 7.5.

Encouraged by these results, the patient took the solution 2 times on day 5 instead of once daily. And from day 6 – 10, he took 2 teaspoons each of baking soda and molasses twice daily.

By the 10th day, the patient’s pH had risen to 8.5 and the only side effects experienced were headaches and night sweat (similar to cesium therapy).

The next day, the patient had a bone scan and too other medical tests. His results showed that his PSA (prostate-specific antigen, the protein used to determine the severity of prostate enlargement and prostate cancer) level was down from 22.3 at the point of diagnosis to 0.1.

Another baking soda formula recommends mixing 90 teaspoons of maple syrup with 30 teaspoons of baking soda.

To do this, the maple syrup must be heated to become less viscous. Then the baking syrup is added and stirred for 5 minutes until it is fully dissolved.

This preparation should provide about 10-day worth of the baking soda remedy. 5 – 7 teaspoons per day is the recommended dose for cancer patients.

Care should be taken when using the baking soda remedy to treat cancer. This is because sustaining a high pH level can itself cause metabolic alkalosis and electrolyte imbalance. These can result in edema and also affect the heart and blood pressure.

One does not have to be a doctor to practice pH medicine. Every practitioner of the healing arts and every mother and father needs to understand how to use sodium bicarbonate. Bicarbonate deficiency is a real problem that deepens with age so it really does pay to understand and appreciate what baking soda is all about.

***

3 Mineral Waters That Can Remove Aluminum from the Brain

Friday, June 19, 2015

There has been a dramatic increase in neurological diseases linked to aluminum toxicity. The blood-brain barrier doesn’t stop aluminum’s intrusion into our gray matter. Aluminum accumulates and remains in tissue that doesn’t have a rapid cellular turnover.

Apoptosis is the natural cell death and replacement process that occurs throughout the body, excluding cancer cells. Cancer cells keep reproducing and colonizing into tumors unless apoptosis is introduced or the cells are outright killed from chemical compounds, both natural and synthetic.

Aluminum accrues to toxic levels over time in slow apoptotic cell turnover tissues, such as bone matter, the heart and the brain. The brain and its associated nervous system is where diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, MS, chronic fatigue and other neurological or auto-immune diseases manifest, including the complete autistic spectrum, from learning disorders to full-blown autism.

There is no shortage of aluminum toxins in our environment. It’s in cookware, beverage containers, foil, cigarette smoke, cosmetics, antiperspirants, sunscreen, antacids, and those ubiquitous chemtrails that most ignore from which aluminum nanoparticles can be breathed into our lungs and routed directly into our blood or through the sinuses into our brains.

Aluminum is in all vaccines. Injecting aluminum bypasses the possibility of eliminating it through normal channels. Straight into the blood it goes to be carried into the brain and heart, adding to their accumulated aluminum toxicity loads.

According to Dr. Chris Exley, PhD, we have come into the aluminum age. Many trolling commentators love to explain how aluminum is the most common mineral on the planet and, therefore, it’s harmless. Dr. Exley has dedicated over two decades of his scientific life to researching aluminum toxicity. He calls the period of time from the early 20th Century to now the “Age of Aluminum.”

Before then, aluminum remained in the ground as the most abundant mineral in earth that hadn’t yet been mined. Dr. Exley claims mining aluminum and using it in so many ways corresponds to the marked increase of neurological diseases.

Dr. Chris Exley’s Message to the 2011 Vaccine Safety Conference

A key aspect of his conference delivery concerned helping vaccinated kids improve their neurological damage. Ironically, it involves the second most abundant mineral in mother earth – silica. Exley has put kids who had autism spectrum disorders or other neurological damage from vaccinations on a form of silica known as silicic acid with excellent results.

Silicic acid is basically oxygenated silica. Exley considers this the best and most bio-available way to get silica through the gut and into the blood, then into brain matter where it binds with the aluminum molecules and leads them out of brain cell tissue safely through the urine.

He had used a Malaysian mineral water called Spritzer on aluminum toxic children suffering from autism spectrum disorders with significant success. Aluminum is in almost all vaccines. Later he and his team had 15 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients use that water at the same rate of one liter per day for 13 weeks.

Aluminum levels were lower by anywhere from 50 to 70 percent in all the subjects involved, and of the 15 AD patients, eight no longer deteriorated and three actually showed substantial cognitive increase. Perhaps coconut oil is better for reversing AD, but mineral waters high in Orthosilicic or ionic silicic acid will reduce aluminum toxicity in the brain to help ward off AD.

The more USA accessible mineral waters with similar levels of silicic acid to Spritzer, which can penetrate the blood-brain barrier, are Volvic and Fiji. My personal favorite is Fiji because it has the highest level of ionic suspended silica as silicic acid and is the least expensive. I’ve seen it in WalMart at $1.99 per liter.

Also, People’s Chemist Shane Ellison analyzed various water bottles and said Fiji water bottles are free of BPA and “its chemical cousins”. Others he rates highly as BPA free are Voss, Evian, and Smart Water.

The suggested protocol is at least five days consuming a 1.5 liter bottle of water daily. More is required for high levels of aluminum toxicity. Dr. Exley considers drinking the whole bottle within an hour as the most efficient method of detoxing aluminum from the brain.

Dr. Exley explains that there are three commercial bottled waters listing silica amounts as milligrams (mg) per liter on the bottle. Fiji has the highest amount of the three. Neither of us is affiliated with Fiji.

Silica mineral waters can be supplemented to help prevent dementia. Obviously it can also be used as an adjunct with pure cold pressed coconut oil to stop early onset Alzheimer’s or even reverse most of the symptoms after AD symptoms appear.

Aluminum (Al) is passed out through the urine when one supplements silica sufficiently. It seems there’s little danger of taking too much, as long as adequate water is consumed and vitamin B1 and potassium levels are maintained.

More About Silica

Silica helps ensure collagen elasticity of all connecting tissues in the body, including tendons and cartilage. This reduces aches and pains and maintains your body’s flexibility. It has also been determined that high levels of blood serum silica keep arterial plaque from building and clogging blood vessels.

A major culprit for arterial plaque has recently shifted from cholesterol buildup to arterial calcification from serum calcium that is not absorbed as bone matter. It’s known that silica is an important part of building bone matter.

Without sufficient silica, magnesium, and vitamin K2, calcium doesn’t become part of bone matter and remains in the blood to potentially calcify in the soft tissue of inner artery walls and the heart.

Silica is vital for keeping strong bones and a healthy cardiovascular system. This qualifies silica as an essential anti-aging mineral that is much more than a skin deep beauty mineral. Other good sources of silica are the herb horsetail, cucumbers, and diatomaceous earth powder.

Although these three other sources are helpful for the recent aforementioned reasons, they lack the ionic suspension of silicic acid found in the mineral waters to penetrate the blood-brain barrier.

Sources:

http://proliberty.com/observer/20071104.htm
http://www.eidon.com/silicaresearch.html
http://diatomaceous.org/
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/horsetail-000257.htm
http://www.realfarmacy.com/mineral-builds-connecting-tissue-bone-improves-cardiovascular-health-detoxes-aluminum/

Paul Fassa is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com, where this article first appeared.

***

Flesh eating bacteria creates fear on the beaches of Florida- preventive measures released for the beachgoers

by The Extinction Protocol  15/6/15

June 2015 – FLORIDA - Florida- According to the state health officials, up till now seven people have become infected and two have lost their lives due to the attack of deadly bacteria that dwells in the warm seawater. This deadly bacteria is found in the warm marine water of Florida beaches. Florida health department has revealed that by far in 2015, almost seven had become severely infected due to the bacteria and two people have lost their lives. “People can get infected with Vibrio vulnificus when they eat raw shellfish,” revealed Florida Health Department spokesperson Mara Burger. “Since it is naturally found in warm marine waters, people with open wounds can be exposed to Vibrio vulnificus through direct contact with seawater.”

Researchers have also revealed that it doesn’t matter whether you go swimming or not, still you can easily get infected through the bacteria while having a meal. If you have eaten food that has been contaminated due to this bacterium then the chances are that you are instantly going to reveal the symptoms of abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. The bacteria known by the name of Vibrio vulnficus, if enters your body through an open wound then its flesh-eating action could cause your skin to breakdown and the infections would also force it towards deadly ulcers. It has been reported that people with sound and good health only witness slight and bearable symptoms while people who have been facing many complications due to weakened immune system would have to bear severe and deadly complications. Especially, the people with chronic liver disease would be at higher risk to face the painful symptoms of this infection.

The bacterium is powerful enough to invade your bloodstream and would make you ill by causing you to face severe chills, high fever, septic shock, blistering skin wounds; at last resulting in death. Almost 32 cases of Vibrio vulnificus were reported in Florida, previous year. According to the CDCP (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention), these infections occur on a seasonal basis and are at their extreme during the months of May and October. In order to avoid the infection, doctors strongly recommend not entering the sea water if you possess any sort of open wound or deep cut. –Benchmark Reporter

US Government Admits Americans Have Been Overdosed on Fluoride

- SOURCE (http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/us-government-admits-americans-have-been-overdosed-on-fluoride/#sthash.zg9bceDV.dpuf)

25/5/15

By Dr. Mercola

Why Is a Drug Added to Water When the Dose Cannot Be Controlled?

Many Will Still Be at Risk for Overexposure at Lowered Fluoride Level

Dental Fluorosis Is NOT the Only Risk of Water Fluoridation

Fluoride Has No Benefit for Teeth When Swallowed

THE EFFECT OF ORGANICS (Published on May 4, 2015)

Want to know what happens in your body when you switch from eating conventional food to organic? Watch this! The study was conducted by the Swedish Environmental Research Institute IVL, and the full report is available here: https://www.coop.se/organiceffect

The Hug of the Century

 8/5/15 (re-published  article from July 14, 2014)

A woman found a badly injured lion in the forest. She took it with her and nursed it back to health. When it was better, she made arrangements with a zoo to take the lion and give it a new and happy home. This video was taken when she returned to the zoo some time later to see how her lion was doing. Watch the lion's amazing reaction when he sees her!

Could BROCCOLI protect against cancer? Compound in green cruciferous veg is found to 'stop the growth of tumours'

Scientists are developing a new treatment called 'green chemoprevention'

Involves patients eating daily extracts of broccoli, cabbage or cress

These vegetables are high in sulforaphane, which protects against tumours

Compound caused changes in the cells lining the mouth that protected

By MADLEN DAVIES FOR MAILONLINE

 20 April 2015

Broccoli has long been hailed as a superfood, and it could soon protect people from cancer of the mouth, throat, neck and head, a study claims.

Scientists are developing a new treatment known as 'green chemoprevention' in which broccoli and other vegetables are used to prevent the disease.

They explained that cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and garden cress have a high concentration of sulforaphane – which is why they have a slightly bitter taste.

Previous studies, including large-scale trials in China, have shown sulforaphane helps 'undo' the effects of cancer-causing agents in the environment.

Broccoli could soon protect people from cancer of the mouth, throat, neck and head. Sulforaphane - the compound that gives the vegetable its bitter taste - was found to reduce the number of tumours in patients

Now, lab tests have shown extracts made from broccoli sprout protected mice against oral cancer.

American scientists now plan to carry out clinical trials on patients at high risk of having their head and neck cancer return.

They will be given capsules containing broccoli seed powder to determine if they can be tolerated, and to test whether it has enough of an impact on their oral lining cells, where cancers form, to prevent the disease.Associate professor Dr Julie Bauman, of the University of Pittsburgh, said: 'People who are cured of head and neck cancer are still at very high risk for a second cancer in their mouth or throat, and, unfortunately, these second cancers are commonly fatal.

Sickening: Major food corporations use tissue from aborted babies to manufacture flavor additives in processed foods

SOURCE:- (http://www.naturalnews.com/049367_aborted_babies_flavor_chemicals_food_corporations.html#ixzz3XSb6pgwt)

(NaturalNews) Every time you purchase mass-produced processed "food" from the likes of Kraft, PepsiCo, or Nestle, you're choosing, whether you realize it or not, to feed your family not only genetically engineered poisons and chemical additives, but also various flavoring agents manufactured using the tissue of aborted human babies.

It's true: A company based out of California, known as Senomyx, is in the business of using aborted embryonic cells to test fake flavoring chemicals, both savory and sweet, which are then added to things like soft drinks, candy and cookies. And Senomyx has admittedly partnered with a number of major food manufacturers to lace its cannibalistic additives into all sorts of factory foods scarfed down by millions of American consumers every single day.

Known as "HEK-293," the aborted human fetal cell line used by Senomyx is manipulated to evaluate how the human palate will react to synthetic flavors used in the production of processed foods. Since most processed foods on the market today are hardly food to begin with, and typically lack any real flavor or appeal on their own, chemical companies like Senomyx are hired to develop artificial ones (which are often deceptively labeled as "natural flavors") in order to make them taste like real food.

But because these ingredients can be legally disguised with vague descriptors like "artificial flavors" and even "natural flavors," most consumers have no idea that these additives, in some cases, are actually made using the cell tissue of unborn babies that were murdered through abortion. It's sickening but true, and people must learn the truth in order to avoid partaking in what EndAllDisease.com says amounts to a satanic ritual.

"What they don't tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 -- human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors," Debi Vinnedge of the pro-life group Children of God for Life said about the ugly truth of the flavoring chemical industry. "They could have easily chosen animal, insect, or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors."

Vaccines, "beauty products" loaded with chemicals made from unborn babies murdered via legalized genocide

If the master planners of the universe are anything, it is predictable in their behavior. No matter what rules they seek to impose, you can always count on a healthy dose of hypocrisy.

SOURCE:-http://www.naturalnews.com/049092_death_with_dignity_mandatory_vaccination_New_York.html#

Take the issues of assisted suicide and mandatory vaccination. While on the surface the two may not seem related at all, they both have to do with life, ironically enough.

As reported by the New York Observer, some lawmakers in the state of New York want to give terminally ill residents the choice of ending their own lives, under the care of a doctor -- a bill modeled after an Oregon law that garnered national attention last fall when Brittany Maynard moved there to end her own life.

"The option to end one's suffering when facing the final stages of a terminal illness should be a basic human right, and not dependent upon one's zip code," State Senator Diane Savino said in a statement. "With solid support for aid in dying across every demographic, I believe there will be strong bipartisan backing for this bill."

Savino is a co-sponsor of the New York End-of-Life Options Act, which was introduced in mid-February. Like its Oregon model, the New York legislation would permits adults to get a physician-issued prescription for a lethal dose of a medication that a patient would then take on their own to end their own lives.

"She really did touch a lot of people"

Bill sponsors told the Observer in January that they were inspired by Maynard's story and wanted to give the same options to their constituents that were made available to her in Oregon.

The paper reported further:

Aid in dying laws are on the books in just five states, including Oregon, where Maynard, 29, moved from California so she could end her life while suffering from the effects of a terminal brain tumor. With Compassion & Choices, an advocacy group that supports death with dignity legislation and is backing the push for the bill in New York, Ms. Maynard took her story public, releasing a video stating her intentions to end her life under the law.

"She really did touch a lot of people in a way that really got them thinking," Maynard's husband, Dan Diaz, told the Observer in January. "We don't like to think about death, but because she put a face to it, because of her age, because of being so young and being well-spoken and speaking up, it did have an impact."

Since his wife's death, Diaz has been stumping for more liberal death with dignity laws (they used to be called "right to die" laws, but its advocates have since changed the language to make it sound more palatable). He has also spoken to New York lawmakers about their legislation, the Observer reported.

"It just boils down to, if you applied this to yourself, if you were unfortunately found to be in this position, would you want the option?" he told the paper.

Choosing death okay; trying to prevent death is not

Meanwhile, New Yorkers who are opposed to mandatory vaccination of their children -- because they fear that many vaccines are dangerous to their kids and could harm or kill them -- are forced by state law to get them a number of required shots before sending them to NYC public schools.

As reported by The New York Times, in June a federal judge upheld the requirement, citing a 109-year-old law giving states broad authority to regulate public health matters:

Judge William F. Kuntz II of Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled against three families who claimed that their right to free exercise of religion was violated when their children were kept from school, sometimes for a month at a time, because of the city's immunization policies.

So in New York, a state controlled for years by Democrats, it may soon be okay to end your own life "with dignity," but don't you dare think about keeping your kids safe from dangerous mercury-filled vaccines.

Sources:

http://observer.com

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.tc.umn.edu

http://www.nytimes.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/049092_death_with_dignity_mandatory_vaccination_New_York.html##ixzz3VF60nhlJ

Holistic Christian families now criminalized in America; parents having to flee with children

SOURCE:- NATURAL NEWS     Sunday, February 22, 2015

(NaturalNews) The old adage "let's just agree to disagree" is no longer a relevant concept when it comes to your personal medical views. It seems that the new American normal is for the government to literally mandate that you and your children consume junk foods and pharmaceuticals and get vaccinated, or else face harsh punishment, as evidenced by a string of recent state interventions against families who made medical decisions that differ from what's popular in the mainstream.

There's no room for agreeing to disagree anymore when what someone else disagrees with you about can potentially land you in prison or have your children taken away from you by Child Protective Services (CPS). Erica Carey and Cleve Goheen-Rengo, a couple from Washington state, recently learned this after being snitched on by a neighbor and tracked down by police and CPS officers over their decision to make alternative medical choices for their children.

According to reports, the couple decided to have a home birth last fall in which they birthed a set of twin boys, without ever going to a hospital or getting an ultrasound. A nosy neighbor heard Erica giving birth to the children inside her home and decided to call the police, who showed up at the residence and promptly invaded the couple's personal privacy, accusing them of failing to adequately nourish and care for their children.

The couple's children were ultimately removed from their own home for a short time over these allegations, escalating the situation rapidly to the point that, once the family got the children back, they decided to flee the area in order to avoid having their children abducted again by the state. A "Be On The Lookout" warning was issued throughout the West Coast as a result, and one obedient statist, after spotting the couple at a gas station in Santa Cruz, immediately called the police.

After arriving on the scene, California Highway Patrol (CHP) and CPS officers proceeded to arrest Erica while taking her and her husband's children into state custody. Her crime? Well, there doesn't appear to be one other than her and her husband's personal decision to avoid giving birth at a superbug-ridden hospital, without drugs or assistance from a licensed nurse or physician, which is their God-given right.

The state denies that this is the case, of course, but refuses to provide any concrete evidence of abuse or wrongdoing, which leads us to believe that this is yet another case of police state inebriation, with state officers drunk on power and perceived authority.

"Send a message to America for me," screamed a sobbing Erica as she was being forced into a police vehicle during her arrest. "Children don't belong to the government. The government belongs to the people."

US parents who make medical decisions that go against state recommendations increasingly being persecuted

There's a growing pattern of this type of police state abuse occurring all across the country. Children are being forced to undergo chemotherapy treatments, against their own will, as in the case 17-year-old Cassandra from Connecticut. And with all the recent vaccine hysteria, there are now calls by some doctors for parents of unvaccinated children to be arrested and have their children abducted by the state -- it's happened numerous times in the past.

These types of cases represent nothing short of medical tyranny, plain and simple. If the state disagrees with your mode of action in response to a particular disease, or even just your personal decisions for everyday life, then you may be accused of putting the lives of yourself and your children in danger, and punished accordingly.

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com

http://vactruth.com

Comment by Steve N S: I know that it is a tough one, and my wife and I have a daughter and two grand-daughters living in the USA; not that it will be mucher better in the UK where I live in the not-too distant future, than the USA, but if I was living in the USA right now, I would find a way to move out to a safer country. It just seems to becoming one of the most restricted countries on earth from what used to be the land of the free!  So sad!

Report Finds We Are Eating ‘2,500 Tons of Fake Food’ From fake antifreeze vodka to phony butter

Are you drinking beverages out of antifreeze containers and chewing on horse meat in your pre-packaged ‘hamburgers?’ As it turns out, new evidence from an Interpol investigation reveals that many ‘brand-name’ food items may actually be comprised of some very different ingredients than advertised. All in all, the food investigators seized a whopping 2,500 tons of fake food from wthin the food supply.

The reports are hitting the media from the UK to Thailand, which are two of the nations included in new operations through which government officials are cracking down on entire factories churning out phony food items. In the U.K., for example, there exists a major issue in which producers were selling fake ‘brand-name vodka’ in antifreeze containers that had been chemically treated to remove the repulsive smell. Unsurprisingly, alcohol was actually the most highly counterfeited substance of them all.

Others included:

• Seafood
• Mineral water
• Dietary supplements
• Mozzarella
• Pharmaceutical drugs
• Eggs
• Dried fruit
• Cooking oil

And that’s just a partial list of items seized from over 47 different countries by a joint operation conducted by Interpol and Europol over a two month period. And according to Time magazine’s take on the results, we are still dealing with several thousand tons of fake items on the market — ranging from common grocery items to extravagant imports.

Time author Mandy Oaklander writes:

What does this mean for you? This news is another reminder to purchase high quality products from your local vendors — and the simpler, the better. Even the experts on food regulation agree, eating organic and natural food items are the answer to truly knowing what you’re eating.

Markus Lipp, senior director for food standards at United States Pharmacopeia, told Time that eating such foods “will aid us in helping to prevent adulteration or buying adulterated products.”

There’s few things that people truly despise more than unknowingly eating concerning ingredients in their food, which is why McDonald’s is in sharp financial decline. Time and time again, we come back to the conclusion that it is now more essential than ever to know what you’re truly putting in your mouth — and what it’s going to do to your body.

Why All the Anger?

by Dr. Jack Wolfson

I recently did an interview which was aired on NBC Phoenix. I was asked my opinion on vaccinations in response to the current measles outbreaks that have occurred at Disneyland in California. My reply has generated quite a bit of anger in thousands of people.

There has also been a tremendous amount of support to my comments and opinions. In short, The Society Against Injecting Our Kids With Chemicals (TSAIOKWC for short) has a lot of followers.

I want to address all this misguided anger and see if we can re-direct it where it belongs.

1. 1.  Be angry at food companies. Sugar cereals, donuts, cookies, and cupcakes lead to millions of deaths per year. At its worst, chicken pox killed 100 people per year. If those chicken pox people didn’t eat cereal and donuts, they may still be alive. Call up Nabisco and Kellogg’s and complain. Protest their products. Send THEM hate-mail.
2. 2.  Be angry at fast food restaurants. Tortured meat burgers, pesticide fries, and hormone milkshakes are the problem. The problem is not Hepatitis B which is a virus contracted by drug users and those who sleep with prostitutes. And you want to inject that vaccine into your newborn?
3. 3.  Be angry at the companies who make your toxic laundry detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets. You and your children are wearing and breathing known carcinogens (they cause cancer). Call Bounce and Downy and let them know. These products kill more people than mumps, a virus which actually doesn’t cause anyone to die. Same with hepatitis A, a watery diarrhea.
4. 4.  Be angry at all the companies spewing pollution into our environment.(Editor:- including CHEMTRAILS) These chemicals and heavy metals are known to cause autism, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease and every other health problem. Worldwide, these lead to 10’s of millions of deaths every year. Measles deaths are a tiny fraction compared to pollution.
5. 5.  Be angry at your parents for not breastfeeding you, co-sleeping with you, and stuffing your face with Domino’s so they can buy more Tide and finish the laundry. Breastfeeding protects your children from many infectious diseases.
6. 6.  Be angry with your doctor for being close-minded and not disclosing the ingredients in vaccines (not that they read the package insert anyway). They should tell you about the aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, aborted fetal tissue, animal proteins, polysorbate 80, antibiotics, and other chemicals in the shots. According to the Environmental Working Group, newborns contain over 200 chemicals as detected by cord blood. Maybe your doctor feels a few more chemicals injected into your child won’t be a big deal.
7. 7.  Be angry with the cable companies and TV manufacturers for making you and your children fat and lazy, not wanting to exercise or play outside. Lack of exercise kills millions more than polio. Where are all those 80 year olds crippled by polio? I can’t seem to find many.
8. 8.  In fact, be angry with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for creating computers so you can sit around all day blasted with electromagnetic radiation reading posts like this.
9. 9.  Be angry with pharmaceutical companies for allowing us to believe living the above life can be treated with drugs. Correctly prescribed drugs kill thousands of people per year. The flu kills just about no one. The vaccine never works.

Finally, be angry with yourself for not opening your eyes to the snow job and brainwashing which have taken over your mind. You NEVER asked the doctor any questions. You NEVER asked what is in the vaccines. You NEVER learned about these benign infections.

Let’s face it, you don’t really give a crap what your children eat. You don’t care about chemicals in their life. You don’t care if they sit around all day watching the TV or playing video games.

All you care about is drinking your Starbuck’s, your next plastic surgery, your next cocktail, your next affair, and your next sugar fix!

This post was created with love and with the idea of creating a better world for our children and future generations. Anger increases your risk of suffering a heart attack. Be careful.

About the Author

Dr. Jack Wolfson is a board certified cardiologist in Phoenix. He is known as The Paleo Cardiologist and The Natural Cardiologist

Operation Mockingbird – From the Inside Out

 February 6, 2015

SOURCE:- (http://thedailycoin.org/?p=17976#sthash.RVVAOBOx.gfhvxx0x.dpuf)

 If you have any questions about the lying, cheating, thieving criminals in Washington DC, simply spend the next 8 minutes watching this “bureaucrat” squirm in his chair with guilt.

Can you say crocodile tears? I knew you could. Be sure and allow the “hysteria” being whipped up over the measles to drive your car to the nearest inoculation center and have all your family injected with a serum that permanently changes your body chemistry. It seems the criminals in charge are doing what they do best; lying about a situation, blowing it out of proportion and parading an endless line of idiots across the TV screen to give “credibility” to their claims. Anyone who believes that the cocktail of vaccines, flu shots and other injectibles that are currently being passed around are healthy and good for your family–go ahead guinea pig, just leave me and my family alone and DO NOT demand that I participate in ANY program administrated by lying, cheating, stealing criminals.

Why the current push regarding an immunization that only works in some cases? From what I have read, including here, here and here, that measles death is a rare occurrence and measles vaccine kills just about as many people as the actual virus. It’s really pretty simple. So, what does, uninformed, brain-bed mother of three have to say? Arrest them all, and FORCE their families to inject drugs into their system that may kill them.

But please don’t take my word for it, allow the head of the Swine flu program in 1976 explain it all, in true “sell the lie” form, to you and be sure to pay close attention to the body language, as that is where the true communications are speaking the loudest. People are dying from these injections and the people running the programs know this. They know these injections cause permanent damage to the body, mind and spirit. It is all kept under lock and key at the CDC in Atlanta, because if you knew the truth you would begin to question every aspect of these criminals actions.

CBS “60 MINUTES” documentary on the swine flu epidemics of 1976 in the U.S. It went on air only once and was never shown again.

In this stunning video interview done by Mike Wallace, you will hear that:

1) The CDC did NOT test the actual vaccine that ultimately went to 46 millions Americans (X-53).
2) The vaccine killed hundreds of people and permanently maimed/injured several thousands in America.
3) The public was NOT warned about the possible permanant neurological sicknesses that could result from taking the shot.
4) The CDC knew that the shot was dangerous but did NOT put this information on the waivers that people would sign before getting the shot.
5) The entire vaccine campaign was ordered and started BEFORE any confirmed case of swine flu was actually found.
6) The actual only confirmed flu case that was deadly (and this is dubious since the soldier refused a sick bed order), was one soldier who had the flu and collapsed on a forced march, all other soldiers, four of them, were back to normal within days without getting a shot.
7) The CDC freely used the names of well-known movie stars without their permission to launch the campaign successfully, including Mary Tyler Moore.
8) Mary Tyler Moore did NOT take the shot, although the CDC said she did. She wisely said “NO” because she suspected it was not healthy. Her doctor ultimately agreed.
9) Dr. Sencer, head of the CDC at the time, ordered the campaign as well as the advertising for it, and not once was any danger mentioned in any of the literature!
10) The CDC LIED to the public to sell a vaccination campaign, and Mike Wallace nailed the head in this interview, as Dr. Sencer is left squirming in his chair! [Source]

Say kids, you ready to run down the local “health department” or “quick care” and get the latest and greatest vaccine? Ice cream for everyone who goes!!! How sick are these animals running our country? The sad part it’s not really the criminals at the top, but the minions, like this butt-face, actually doing the dirty work and then defending their actions and policies before the world. What chance do we have when we have people that are sick enough as to only consider their pay-check when making decisions that effect the entire population of a country?
- See more at: http://thedailycoin.org/?p=17976#sthash.RVVAOBOx.gfhvxx0x.dpuf

IS STRESS MAKING YOU SICK

8,000 scientific papers link refined white sugar to chronic disease

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

(NaturalNews) One of the worst things you can do to your body is feed it sugar -- not necessarily natural sugar like the kind found in fruit, but refined sugar. A team of scientists from the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) recently pored through more than 8,000 scientific papers on how sugar affects the body and came to the conclusion that it not only makes people fat but also makes them sick.

The project, which has been dubbed SugarScience, exposes sugar as a primary culprit in the formation of metabolic disease, which can lead to conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Lead author Laura Schmidt, a UCSF School of Medicine professor, says her team's findings are comprehensible -- sugar is highly toxic to the body and vital organs, including the liver.

According to their investigation, nearly three-quarters of all packaged and processed foods contain added sugar. This sugar is typically listed under 61 different names, including things like high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), dextrose, evaporated cane juice and sucrose. It is often difficult to identify added sugar because of this, and current regulatory requirements don't mandate that suggested daily values of both natural and added sugar be identified.

A full listing of the 61 common names for sugar is available at the following link.

SugarScience.org.

The result is millions of people regularly consuming far more sugar than they should be, leading to metabolic syndrome, a classification of risk factors associated with a host of chronic illnesses. If left to run its course, metabolic syndrome can lead to early death in the form of liver failure, heart attack, blood clots and various other life-threatening conditions.

"Too much sugar causes chronic metabolic disease in both fat and thin people," said pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, a member of the SugarScience team and author of Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease, pointing out that obesity is an entirely separate issue from the extensive bodily damage caused by sugar consumption.

"And instead of focusing on obesity as the problem, we should be focusing on our processed-food supply."

SugarScience project exposes "all calories are equal" myth as scientific fraud

Part of the problem is that many people still don't realize just how much sugar they're actually consuming. According to Medical Xpress, the average American consumes nearly 20 teaspoons, or about 78 grams, of sugar daily, which is far more than the maximum level recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA).

A single 12-ounce can of soda pop contains as much as 9 teaspoons, or 36 grams, of added sugar, which is the AHA's maximum recommended daily level for adult men. Adult women, says the group, should consume no more than 6 teaspoons, or 24 grams, of sugar daily, while children should limit themselves to between 3 and 6 teaspoons, or 12-24 grams, daily.

The best way to consume sugar is naturally, of course, whether it be in fruit, vegetables or unprocessed dairy products. Fruits and vegetables contain dietary fiber and other nutrients that help buffer how quickly sugar is processed, protecting organs like the pancreas from having to work overtime to produce insulin, which can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes.

SugarScience's research also reiterated that not all calories are the same, as is commonly believed in the mainstream.

"SugarScience shows that a calorie is not a calorie but rather that the source of a calorie determines how it's metabolized," explains Lustig.

To learn more about the dangers of sugar and how to avoid it, be sure to visit SugarScience:

SugarScience.org.

Sources:

http://medicalxpress.com

http://www.sugarscience.org

http://www.lef.org

http://science.naturalnews.com

***

PreventDisease.com

Blueberry Powder Outperforming Pharmaceuticals In Reducing Blood Pressure

JANUARY 15, 2015 by MAE CHAN

Blueberries have been championed for their high antioxidant potential and anti-inflammatory properties. They are recognized as a good source of flavonoids, especially anthocyanins, which have strong antioxidative activity, some of which have antioxidant activity shown in laboratory studies. New research shows they can reduce both systolic and diastolic blood pressure and potentially better than pharmaceuticals.


The blood pressure relief comes from pterostilbene, a compound found in both grapes and blueberries. This antioxidant is chemically related to reservatrol, another heart-healthy compound that is found in the skin of grapes. Various studies have shown pterostilbene to have possible anti-cancer and anti-diabetes properties.

A growing body of research is also establishing blueberries as a potential ally to protect against diseases such heart disease and Alzheimer's -- so it's no surprise that more and more people are picking blueberries than ever before!

Blood Pressure Benefits

Eight weeks of consuming a daily dose of 22 grams of freeze-dried blueberry powder resulted in 5.1% and 6.3% reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, wrote the researchers in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

"The potential is enormous," said Dr. Anais Archambeault commenting on the study. "Many patients on antihypertensives experience less than a 5% decrease in overall blood pressure and here we clearly have a natural product that may eventually outperform well known drugs," she said.

Dr. Archambeault claims that with the right nutriceutical prescription, blueberry powder in combination with other antioxidants may prove very effective for patients who don't react well or benefit from blood pressure medication.

The benefits were also linked to an increase in levels of nitric oxide (NO), which were found to increase from 9.11 to 15.35 micromoles over the course of the study. NO is a potent vasodilator, helping to relax the walls of blood vessels and lower blood pressure.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the effects of blueberries on arterial function as was done in this study, as well as in this study population," said corresponding author Bahram Arjmandi, PhD. "These findings suggest that blueberries may prevent the progression to full-blown hypertension."

"Considering the prevalence of hypertension in the US, preventive strategies such as dietary modifications (e.g. functional foods and dietary supplements) that aim to improve hypertension and its related complications are warranted."

Growing Interest Based on Research

"Compelling" data published recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition indicated that blueberry flavonoids could boost endothelial function and enhance heart health.

Endothelial dysfunction may play an important role in the increases in blood pressure that occur after menopause. Further, endothelial dysfunction is known to increase arterial stiffness, which is involved in the development and progression of both hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

The exact way in which flavonoids affect the brain are unknown, but they have previously been shown to cross the blood brain barrier after dietary intake.

An acute dose of blueberries (300 grams) was found to be associated with an 18% decrease in DNA damage to blood cells due to oxidative stress, according to findings published in Nutrition Research.

A study appearing in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that that although there are over 600 species of blueberries and blueberry-like fruits growing in Mexico, Central and South America, two types of neotropical blueberries were extreme super fruits -- they had significantly more antioxidants than a type of blueberry commonly sold in U.S. supermarkets stores. The researchers say that these neotropical blueberries "have the potential to be even more highly promising edible fruits."

Study Details

The Florida State researchers recruited 48 women to participate in their eight-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 22 grams per day of freeze-dried blueberry powder or 22 grams of a control powder for eight weeks. This dose was equivalent to one cup of fresh blueberries.

The data showed that the blueberry powder was associated with significant reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

"The changes in blood pressure noted in this study are of clinical significance as they demonstrate that blood pressure can be favorably altered by the addition of a single dietary component (e.g. blueberries)," said lead author Sarah Johnson, PhD.

In addition, improvements in brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity were also reported. Pulse wave velocity is a non-invasive method for assessing arterial stiffness and has been shown to predict future cardiovascular events. In the current study, brachial ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV), which is a composite measure of central (aortic) and peripheral arterial stiffness, was significantly reduced after eight weeks in the blueberry-treated group, whereas there were no changes in the control group.

On the other hand, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV), the best measure of aortic stiffness, did not change in either group. This suggests that peripheral arteries may be more responsive to dietary interventions than central arteries.

"This [study] suggests that regular consumption of blueberries over the long term could potentially delay the progression of hypertension and reduce cardiovascular risk in postmenopausal women," concluded the researchers.

The study was supported by the US Highbush Blueberry Council and the US Department of Agriculture.

Sources:

andjrnl.org

The JB Bardot Archives

USC Researchers Discover How To Regenerate Your Entire Immune System In 72 Hours

Posted by JB Bardot

Written by Nick Meyer

The immune system is something that is highly misunderstood not just by everyday people but also by the many conventional doctors who we depend on for health advice.

Most people resort to things like synthetic vitamins and medicines (ignoring better natural alternatives) to deal with colds and improve immunity, but the cycle of sickness always seems to continue.

For people with compromised immune systems, there are many natural options, and now researchers have discovered what could well be one of the best ways to reset and recharge your immune system; one that happens to be free and is believed to work even in the elderly as well.

Three Days to a Whole New Immune System

According to researchers at the University of Southern California, the act of fasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in elderly people.

The researchers said that fasting helps the body’s stem cells to begin producing new white blood cells, which help to fight off infection.

They added that the discovery could be especially effective for people suffering from damaged immune systems, including chemotherapy patients, who were protected from the toxic impacts of the treatment during the fasting period (note: we personally don’t recommend chemotherapy; consult a holistic doctor for more information).

Flipping a “Regenerative Switch”

As the researchers noted, the act of fasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in elderly people.

“Fasting gives the ‘OK’ for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system,” Prof. Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California, told the UK’s The Telegraph.

He added that the body actually removed parts that were damaged, old or inefficient during the fasting process, creating “literally, a new immune system.”

According to Dr. Longo a person’s system recycles unneeded immune cells, especially damaged ones, in order to create energy while they are fasting.

Over the course of his study’s trials, participants were asked to regularly fast between 2-4 days over a 6 month period.

The study was released in June and Dr. Longo said that clinical trials must still be completed, but added that the research looks “very promising.”

You can read the full study in the journal ‘Cell Stem Cell’ by clicking here.

Sources:

http://www.realfarmacy.com/usc-researchers-discover-regenerate-entire-immune-system-72-hours/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10878625/Fasting-for-three-days-can-regenerate-entire-immune-system-study-finds.html

http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909%2814%2900151-9

15 Foods That Are Proven To Deliver A Better Sex Life!(http://kingworldnews.com/15-foods-that-are-proven-to-deliver-a-better-sex-life/)

January 12, 2015

 15 Foods That Are Proven To Deliver A Better Sex Life! – Want to increase your mojo or just get it back? Do you know the ingredients to this very special diet? These 15 foods are proven to deliver, no little blue pill required.

 By Heather Hurlock

Do you know the ingredients to the virility diet? These 15 foods are proven to deliver, no little blue pill required.

Watermelon

The summer fruit is high in citrulline, which—like that little blue pill—stimulates nitric-oxide production and increases blood flow to the penis, strengthening erections.

Dark Chocolate

 This treat is loaded with flavonoids that dilate your arteries. Eat about 1.6 ounces of dark chocolate (about the size of a regular Hershey’s bar) daily—that’s the amount researchers at the University of California found improved blood-vessel dilation by more than 10 percent.

Cherries

 Studies show that flavonoids in red, blue, and purple berries cleanse free radicals from arteries, relaxing them and improving blood flow.

Oysters

 Yes, they really are aphrodisiacs. Raw oysters are the richest dietary source of zinc, which not only improves blood flow but also fuels testosterone production. When testosterone levels drop, so do your performance and your libido, Lamm says. Wild eastern oysters have the most zinc, followed by eastern farmed and wild Pacific.

Grass-Fed Butter

 Recent studies have shown that people with the highest intakes of the vitamin K2, found in grass-fed beef and dairy products like butter, cut their risk of coronary heart disease in half. And what’s good for your ticker is always good for your erections.

Bananas

 Don’t giggle: Bananas are high in potassium, which relaxes blood-vessel walls, allowing for better blood flow throughout the body. Plus it offsets a high-sodium diet, keeping your blood pressure in check, according to a study in the journal Hypertension. Narrow blood vessels lead to low blood flow, which leads to … well, not much.

Garlic

 This allium vegetable boosts blood flow to the penis by increasing nitric-oxide production and relaxing blood vessels.

Walnuts

The amino acid L-arginine, found abundantly in walnuts, is one of the building blocks of nitric oxide. Translation: A diet that includes these nuts with the rock-hard shell makes for consistent, rock-hard erections. According to a panel conducted by the European Food Safety Authority, you should eat about ¼ cup a day.

Ginger

 By scrubbing blood vessels of free radicals and decreasing inflammation, ginger relaxes arteries and improves blood flow. According to a study in the International Journal of Cardiology, about 1 teaspoon a few times a week is all you need to reap ginger’s cardiovascular rewards.

Nutmeg

 A study of natural aphrodisiacs in the BMC Complementary andAlternative Medicine journal found that nutmeg increases libido and erectile performance. Nutmeg also contains myristic acid, which has been shown to stimulate production of the all-important nitric oxide, the key to a healthy erection.

Olive Oil

 According to a study in the journal Lipids, olive oil helps increase testosterone production.

Salmon

 Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, salmon promotes erectile health by effecting a threefold increase in nitric-oxide production, according to the journal Fertility and Sterility. The researchers recommend 1 gram of omega-3s a day, which you can get in 3 ounces of salmon.

Alcohol

 Moderation is the key. According to research conducted by David R. Meldrum, M.D., a reproductive endocrinologist and a clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, one to two drinks daily can have beneficial effects on erectile function, but more than that can suppress blood flow and decrease nitric-oxide production. Red wine is generally the best, Meldrum says. But the antioxidant content can vary a lot. Generally, warmer growing regions produce wines with more antioxidants.

Pistachios

 Adding a daily handful of pistachios to your diet can improve your erectile function, “sexual satisfaction, orgasmic function, sexual desire, and overall satisfaction,” according to a study in the International Journal of Impotence Research. These tasty snacks are high in arginine, which increases nitric-oxide production.

Almonds

 Vitamin E, of which almonds are a prime source, enhances nitric-oxide production, according to the  British Journal of Urology International . A small handful a few times a week is all you need.

How Modern Life Is Making Us Addicted and Insane

 November 6, 2014

(http://www.alternet.org/how-modern-life-making-us-addicted-and-insane?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

Constant distraction creates an insecure attachment with kids, which can lead to addiction and mental health issues.

    Over the past decade or two, seasoned therapists who treat young people have been seeing some increasingly worrisome trends. Although solid statistics are hard to come by, one indication of a surge in troubled young adults comes from the reports of college mental health services. A 2010 survey by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles of almost 202,000 incoming college freshmen at 279 colleges and universities showed a shocking decline in self-reported mental and emotional well-being—at its lowest level since 1985, when HERI began conducting the surveys. In this recent survey, the percentage of students who rated their emotional health “above average” fell from 64 percent in 1985 to 52 percent. According to the June 2013 APA Monitor, 95 percent of surveyed college counseling-center directors said that the number of students with “significant psychological problems is a growing concern,” citing anxiety, depression, and relationship issues as the main problems. Another 2013 survey, the American College Health Association–National College Health Assessment, reported that 51 percent of 123,078 responders in 153 US colleges had experienced “overwhelming anxiety” during the previous year, 31.3 percent had experienced depression so severe it was difficult to function, and 7.4 percent had seriously considered suicide.

I regularly speak with tens of thousands of child professionals, parents, educators, and kids across the country, and as chair of a large nonprofit psychotherapy training and treatment agency, I compare notes with the directors of other centers as well. These extensive dialogues, though not as formal a means of data collection as the surveys above, allow me to see trends emerging just under the radar—the current one being a wave of intense anxiety and affective disorders sweeping through agencies and schools across the country, reaching deep down into elementary and even preschool. Of course, teens and young adults have always been vulnerable to the onset of serious mental illness, but these days they seem to suffer from a new kind of emotional fragility. It’s as if at a core level, their fundamental security, the very ground of their psychic being, is increasingly shaky and unreliable.

Many of these clients come into therapy initially giving few hints of standing on the edge of a deep chasm with the wind at their backs. But as treatment proceeds, we begin to hear about a range of troubling behavioral patterns that are now pretty standard: anxiety-fueled ruminations once considered to be in the realm of psychotic process, binge drinking as a regular social pastime several nights a week, even more over-the-top and exotic substance use on weekends (ketamine, molly, Xanax bars, increased-THC marijuana), random and unprotected hookups that may well include near asphyxiation-induced orgasms. We hear reports of ubiquitous cutting and growing numbers of young men who not only cut themselves, but fiercely and compulsively punch themselves. Almost all describe chronic sleep–wake reversals, up until 4 or 5 a.m. most nights. And while they may be foodies of sorts, they forget regular meals, engaging in catch-as-catch-can eating while in the midst of all-nighters watching every episode of every season of Breaking Bad, one after another.

Many of these young people have been doping and drinking heavily since eighth grade, so by “late and later adolescence,” as I call it, their young brains have already been pickled in alcohol and assorted chemicals. And yet these young people function just well enough to maintain a precarious balance in life. They may be holding their own (barely) in school, working just competently enough at a job not to get fired, staying out of jail, while maintaining a somewhat wobbly equilibrium in life.

Until, that is, there’s a crisis of some sort. For example, the parents of a 19-year-old woman I was seeing called to tell me that she was in a hospital, nearly comatose. After she’d downed a dozen shots in one night, her blood-alcohol level was registering above 0.30, the point of unconsciousness. In another case, a young man who’d seemed troubled yet relatively stable, began to have such severe panic attacks after the loss of a close friend that he couldn’t leave home—which immediately morphed into not going to school, 18 hours a day of ESPN, and suicidal ideation. Quickly, what had seemed like a quotidian case of needing to nudge somebody into adulthood became an all-stops-out, life-or-death emergency. These clients, and hundreds like them, who seem mentally “whole,” even if unhappy, as the surveys suggest, have little internal sense of self, barely containing the unmoored chaos reigning inside—until it bursts from its frail container.

So what’s going on with these troubled teens and young adults? Increasingly I’ve come to the conclusion that a root cause of their unsettled and precarious emotional state is a new kind of pseudo-connection in their relationship with mostly loving and well-meaning parents, one that has become a disturbingly pervasive fact of childrearing today.

The Death of Parental Hierarchy

For the past several decades, therapists have been seeing growing numbers of kids across the economic spectrum who were “out of control,” treating their parents with a mix of indifference and contempt. Initially, in line with family systems thinking, therapists blamed the problem on lapsed parental hierarchy, and the sovereign remedy was to reestablish authority in the home—put mom and dad in charge again. Only, as so many therapists, teachers, and parents were telling me by the early ’90s, there wasn’t much adult authority anymore, no matter how hard individual parents struggled to exert it. The self-contained family unit that had once held real power over kids’ lives had been coopted by a voracious pop-and-peer kid culture—what I call “the second family”—that, in essence, had supplanted most meaningful adult authority in kids’ lives. Indeed, many of the teens I saw, and those seen by countless other therapists, had less and less contact with their “first families” at home, the hopelessly ineffectual people who’d actually birthed and tried to instill discipline and respect in them.

This trend wasn’t a result of parents’ not caring enough or not being competent enough to wield a little power over their kids’ lives: it came from an attenuation of the social contexts that had sustained and reinforced family authority. For better and worse, intact families were being broken by divorce, and tightly knit communities—in which everyone knew the neighborhood children—were fragmenting. At the same time, as many researchers have documented, the complex influence of traditional support systems, like extended kin networks, churches and synagogues, and community organizations, was waning. Into this void rushed the technologically burgeoning forces of pop culture and peer group, a massive external locus of influence, which even today continues to seep into our homes and consciousness, usurping much of traditional family authority.

By the early ’90s, I was aware of another increasingly potent solvent of family ties: the nonstop distraction of work and culture, which further fragmented parents’ attention into tiny shards. Even when parents were physically with their children, they were often too busy to be genuinely with them. By this time, the techie innovations that would transform our world were well on their way to becoming the ubiquitous gadgets we now can’t seem to live without. But today, a growing body of research suggests that this technology and the information overload it dumps on us undermine not only our ability and desire to interact directly with real human beings, but also our capacity to focus for long on much of anything—even our children.

In 2012, In Technology reported that one-third of American mothers had mobile devices and averaged 6.1 hours per day on their smartphones, with 89 percent of these mothers saying their devices were always within arm’s reach. It’s the inevitability of interrupted attention that jumps out. As one mother recently told me, between texting, tweeting, online chatting, checking Facebook, and sharing Instagram photos, she was always running from stimulus to stimulus. When another devoted young mother described the time she was spending nursing her baby, no sweet image of blissful attunement emerged. Instead, she admitted to thinking things like Thank god, time to nurse her so I can sit for a while. I can text Annie while I do this and, hey, I might as well make my credit-card payment. Wait, is that my phone ringing? Should I take the call? No, I shouldn’t; this is my time with my baby. But it might be important. Oh, I forgot I’ve got to get ready for that meeting tomorrow and put those sales objectives together. Wait, the baby’s squirming. Okay, calm down, calm down. Ah, finally, she looks so peaceful and beautiful. Where’s my camera? I have to post this image!

So we see in our offices a generation of late teens and young adults who’ve grown up getting this kind of agitated, fragmented, distracted attention from their parents. No wonder over the past decade or so, attachment seems largely to have replaced hierarchy as the buzzword of choice in psychotherapy circles. But the insidious effect of jagged consciousness on attachment from well-meaning parents is still insufficiently recognized. I’m not saying that technology lures parents away from kids: rather, I’m highlighting a redefining of connection in which hyperaroused parents can’t stop shifting focus. If love is, as has been suggested, focused interest, how can chronic distraction translate into secure attachment? Perhaps that’s why so many of the kids and parents we see in therapy resort to intense drama to get through to each other.

Recently, a study published in the journal Pediatrics by Jenny Radesky demonstrated with surreptitiously observed caregivers and children in fast-food restaurants how device-distracted the adults were. The caregivers, usually parents, were spending much of the meal absorbed in their smartphones, ignoring their children, who were making repeated and escalating bids for attention. A baby in a stroller, for example, made faces and smiled at her mother, who was absorbed by a YouTube video and didn’t respond. Three little boys escalated their attempts to get their father’s attention by singing silly songs, giggling, and slamming into each other, to which the father responded with increasing irritation, telling them repeatedly and more loudly to stop it, and immediately returning to his cell phone. Just last night, in fact, my daughter’s friends reported that on their obstetrics residencies they’d noticed fathers glued to cell phones—during delivery!

Untethered Helicopters

You might be wondering, Isn’t this supposed to be the age of helicopter parenting? Aren’t parents too involved in their children’s lives? Well, yes—but this is another powerful way that connection has been altered, another shade of pseudo-attachment. Helicopter parenting doesn’t equate with connection. It means that overinvolved parents who keep their kids on a bullet-train of activity can’t help but repeatedly push them away from the anchoring of soothing, reliable attachment—always on to the next activity. For example, I consulted with a high-school senior who thought he’d finally made the break from mom and dad after his acceptance into a state school on an athletic scholarship. But he was wrong. Wanting to make sure he didn’t slip up and lose the scholarship, they continued pushing on every homework assignment that needed to be tackled, every final exam on the docket, and every after-school activity.

Is it surprising that in treatment he suddenly revealed going through bouts of suicidal thinking, buried beneath flash rages in which he’d suddenly throw objects at family members or open the car door and threaten to leap out onto the parkway? Again, this is the kind of dramatic burst of impulsivity I increasingly hear. After talking to mom and dad, it became clear that they all loved each other, but moments of attachment were almost always cut short by sudden redirection to the next tasks that needed to be accomplished.

It wasn’t much different when I interviewed 20 middle-school kids in a charter school. My job was to bring their message back to teachers and parents, and an eighth-grader articulated it bluntly: “Tell them to stop moving us from one thing on the conveyor belt to another. Isn’t there anything else they want to do with us?” If, as the research shows, restful downtime is necessary for kids’ brains to synthesize new information, slow comfort time may also be necessary to internalize secure attachment—and this sort of time is equally endangered.

Confused Connection

Certainly, we’re living in an era of pervasive psychological information, in which every parent is provided an inexhaustible waterfall of advice, much of it state of the art. But I wonder about the impact of all this advice on parenting. The same unstoppable flow of child-rearing information that lifts our knowledge base often confuses mothers and fathers, right out of their truly felt responses, creating another shade of pseudo-attachment between parent and child.

There are more than 86,000 parenting titles currently listed on Amazon.com, countless Internet sites and blogs authored by parenting professionals, teaser headlines every time we open our browsers, along with endless TV advice and reality shows. Parenting research has grown exponentially, as has the number of theories and perspectives. All this knowledge is to be commended, but in terms of secure attachment, it’s also a kind of trap, instilling the idea that every move a parent makes has the power to destroy a child’s chances in life before he or she even reaches toddlerhood. Naturally, wanting to do what’s best for their kids, many parents are sitting ducks for this flood-tide of information, too often turning them into insecure child-rearing advice junkies, who, paradoxically, spend so much time worrying about sorting out the right move that they often don’t have the conviction to be fully present in the moment.

Rather than experiencing and expressing a full-bodied emotional connection to their own child—whether in love or anger or disappointment—parents sometimes seem to be acting out an in vivochild-rearing manual. For decades with diverse audiences, when I’ve asked the simple question “What makes for good consequences when a child misbehaves?” the response has become an ever increasing list of abstract shoulds, including “Consequences should be natural . . . immediately follow the event . . . fit the crime . . . teach values . . . impart empathy . . . match a child’s learning style,” and so on. While such ideas certainly make sense, it’s as if these bloodless responses were taken from a textbook on enlightened criminology, rather than coming from the heart and mind of an emotionally committed parent struggling to instill discipline in a beloved, but undeniably wayward, son or daughter.

Self-Conscious Attachment

Today, the continual pressure to do parenting right makes parents superconscious about not only any sign of pathology in their kids, but themselves as parents. Never before have parents tried so relentlessly to think through every step of the child-rearing experience, from the first detection of pregnancy until well into their child’s young adulthood. Mothers-to-be now routinely join online groups of other newly pregnant women and submerge themselves in a sea of how-tos and debates about what constitutes correct preparation for motherhood and infant care. Here’s a fairly typical stream of consciousness from the mom of an elementary-school child I met with: I shouldn’t have yelled at him, but he was about to break that plate, and he’s got to learn that he can’t have everything. How long is it okay for me to let him wail like that? He’s got to learn the meaning of ‘no,’ doesn’t he? Didn’t that article say disappointment helps with resilience? So maybe I shouldn’t comfort him. Is that too Tiger Mom-ish? Okay, breathe along with him at the same pace. It helps the baby’s amygdala relax. . . or something.

Of course, as a parent, this resonates with me. Recently, my wife and I were sitting in a waiting area for several hours. A captive audience, we were entertained—if that’s the word—by TV shows featuring several parenting experts offering different views on issues such as eating disorders, nutrition, Asperger’s, and after-school activities. Even at this point in our lives, my wife and I—both therapists and a relatively confident, middle-aged couple—could still be reduced to jangling insecurity about our own parenting skills by this high-def show detailing all the ways we might have failed or, at the very least, done a lot better.

These days, I’m regularly startled by the sophistication of mothers and fathers in every part of the country—urban, suburban, and rural—about childhood psychiatric diagnoses and their hawkeyed vigilance for signs of same in their own children. Despite the incredible good that early detection has done, I now have the impression that many parents are not really seeing their child directly. Instead, they’re looking at their child, on the alert for pathology, for a sign or symptom. When, 20 years ago, I began asking parents about specific issues, like sensory defensiveness or low-tone upper bodies or temperament, they used to stare at me blankly, not knowing what I was talking about. Now, they regularly cite behaviors that worry them and ask, “Do you think my child is on the autism spectrum? Is this normal anxiety, or is my 5-year-old showing the signs of OCD or PTSD? I know it’s only elementary school, but do you think she could be bipolar?”

While diagnostic sophistication saves countless lives, I’ve been writing for years about how mothers and fathers are held hostage by fears about their kids and how this affects their ability to establish hierarchy. But now I’m equally concerned about its impact on secure attachment. There’s something different in a child’s being seen and held by parental love, rather than inspected for a potential disorder. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many more teens and young adults I work with these days come in with intense anxiety and ruminative symptoms. Preoccupied, worried mothers and fathers can’t help but transmit their overanxious concern through vigilant attachment.

Claire, a 15-year-old girl I saw, was riddled with disordered eating severe enough that every calorie for the next three meals completely occupied her mind. She also suffered through sudden ruminative spiraling about her parents’ safety if she didn’t do her bedtime rituals correctly. This led to anxiety attacks so severe she needed several emergency-room visits. Exposure therapy had helped a little, but what turned the tide was when I encouraged her divorced parents to try to stop subtly inspecting her mental well-being. They were on the lookout for the sleeper-effect of separation, especially prevalent among girls, that they’d been warned about so often. Tipping off this unhealthy shade of attachment, Claire said to me, “When I get up in either house, they stare at me as they say ‘good morning,’ looking me over. I always feel like I’m under a microscope. And then I don’t want to be near them!”

Premeditated Parenting

As we move slowly beyond the great recession, today’s young people are the first American generation in a long while expected to be less well-off than their parents. So we have a paradoxical situation, in which the pressure to produce successful kids has never been more relentless or harder to achieve, especially with mass culture suggesting that if kids do fail, it must be because mom and dad failed in some way. Thus, it’s easy to understand how parental focus can shift from the child to the child-as-product, underlining a kind of premeditated parenting with calculated ends in mind. If you’d asked any of our own parents why they said goodnight or read us a bedtime story or grounded us for the weekend, they’d have been hard pressed for an answer beyond “that’s what everyone does” or “because I’m the parent.” Certainly, they wouldn’t have had a psychological agenda in mind, much less a strategy to “build strong attachment bonds” or “improve emotional adjustment in life.”

It’s striking to consider the attachment implications when parental behavior isn’t really about what it seems to be about, but is in service of a whole other agenda. Yet this is exactly what I hear from diverse groups with statements like “I give my child a hug when he does something well because kudos build self-esteem” or “When she bumped herself, once I realized she wasn’t really hurt, I let her cry because she needs to develop grit” or “We’re strict about keeping schedules because rituals instill emotional security.”

To try to raise a child “by the book,” or according to the dictates of thousands of experts (like me) gabbling away, is like trying to determine a good diet by following food fads. After all, butter was once very, very bad; now it’s good—sort of. Both are enterprises doomed to fail, or at least to create unintended consequences. So we have earnest, committed, caring parents trying their best to follow an almost infinite number of often contradictory prescriptions to produce a perfect commodity with greater market potential. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Three-Dimensional Attachment

A lot! The usurpation of parenting instincts has serious attachment consequences. For one thing, as brain imaging one day will show, kids can tell the difference between authentic, three-dimensional connection and a two-dimensional parental processing that passes for the real thing. It’s not easy to describe this subtle kind of relational shift, but I believe that the problems so many young adults bring into therapy are related to the contextually driven dilution of parental connection into something not quite fully there—a parental attachment facsimile.

This pseudo-connection has deep implications for the clients we see. We live in a culture immersed in emotional dysregulation—a kind of nonstop, excessively stimulating too-muchness. This is all fine, as long as you have the ego strength and stability to absorb hyperstimulation without being undone by it. But, as we’re learning, people need secure attachment, along with the luck of a good genetic and temperament draw, to develop a sturdy sense of self. And this is exactly where the long-term erosion of effective parental hierarchy, and now the diminution of unself-conscious parenting, create many new shades of pseudo-attachment. By the time teens and young adults reach us, they’ve spent years seeking out intense attachments in the “second family” of the peer group and pop culture; yet for all the relational good that happens between kids every day, these are often dysregulated bonds, fraught with techno-driven highs and instant-feedback lows.

Given the subtle but pervasive pseudo-attachment between teens and their parents, my goal is to help them differentiate and at the same time become closer, or—to use a decidedly nonclinical term—more three-dimensional. That means along with limits, I strongly focus on creating points of connection, encouraging things frowned upon in the glory days of family hierarchy: mutual caretaking, greater companionship, sharing of confidences, and becoming partners in fun and relaxation. As a central part of that, I try to allow myself to be a fuller, more spontaneous person in the consulting room than I’d ever have imagined myself to be earlier in my career.

When Johnny first came to my office, he was a 20-year-old college student on academic probation despite being strikingly smart. Like many young adults, he’d had an extremely wild adolescence, partying most nights and barely attending school. He experienced intense moods and bursts of anger, brimming with character assaults that often left his overwhelmed single mother, Maggie, feeling psychologically shredded when she wasn’t intensely frustrated with him. While Johnny had a capacity for kindness and empathy, his volatility and continued school failure were wreaking havoc with his future.

Maggie, a small-town girl from a straight-laced family, had become a successful mid-level administrator in a male-dominated field, and believed in “enlightened” parenting. Despite previous therapists encouraging her to put limits on Johnny, she continued to think that, yes, limits were good, but Johnny was fragile and needed shoring up with praise. In sessions with her, I tried to help her cut down on the disconnected, forced kudos, but it had no impact. So in a joint meeting with Johnny and Maggie that had been going nowhere, I hesitantly began to share stories about how other families, including my own, were also rigidly self-conscious with their kids. “Even given all my experience, I can’t believe how hard it’s been to break out of parenting roles and be more unself-consciously honest,” I said. “If you’re like me, you’ll have to work at it for years to unlearn old, bad habits.” Slightly emboldened, Maggie turned to her son and said with tears in her eyes, “I’m afraid not only of your anger, but of how fragile you sometimes seem. That’s why I back off. That’s why I’m always making such a fuss over you.”

At this, however, Johnny flew into a rage, called her a “stupendously stupid bitch,” and stormed out of the room.

Nothing changed for weeks. Between her own screaming complaints for him to do better in school, which Johnny simply ignored, Maggie continued to swoon with calculated affection, only increasing Johnny’s contempt, as well as their disconnection. Meeting with him, I addressed his anger in direct and personal terms. “I love talking to you,” I said. “But I shudder to think about being on the receiving end of one of your diatribes. I know you don’t expect to hear this from a therapist, but you simply need to be nicer to your mother!”

Johnny erupted, “That’s what mothers are for! I’m supposed to walk all over her! Besides, as I keep telling her, she’s a phony!”

“Yes,” I replied. “She’s phony because she’s misguided about parenting. Even so, your mother is trying to do the right thing and deserves better from you.” Johnny looked at me with scorn. And I wondered how, after so many years of sophisticated clinical training, I could have found myself deliberately and so directly trying to induce guilt in a young client.

But Johnny was right about Maggie’s overdone, self-conscious displays of support, regardless of his behavior. Thus, I began to focus on what genuine emotion might lurk beneath all the hovering earnestness. I wanted to get at Maggie’s mostly hidden outrage at Johnny’s behavior to jolt her into more spontaneous ways of connecting. “The way he speaks to you bothers me,” I said, “It’s like a punch to the solar-plexus. Maggie, you’re allowed to get angry when he’s mean. What keeps you from saying, ‘You’re being incredibly cruel right now’ and just leaving the room?”

“No, I can’t do that,” Maggie responded. “I can’t let him know that he gets to me. I’ve read in a lot of places he needs to see I can take it. I need to be a role-model of strength.”

“That’s one of those parenting myths that gets in the way,” I said. “I’ve fallen for it myself. Sometimes, to connect, we just need to find how to tell our kids the truth.”

Maggie was listening now, but still unconvinced. I realized that her relationship with her son was so decidedly two-dimensional that besides her good-parenting strategies, she didn’t have many ways to talk with him. So I suggested to her, “Instead of constantly doling out praise, I’d love to see you spend time with him doing absolutely nothing. Just get comfortable.”

One night, despite Johnny’s moving to the other end of the sofa, Maggie sat with him watching TV, saying little at all. Unexpectedly, after doing nothing together, he kissed her goodnight. Maggie was a bit stunned. Like other parents of teens and young adults, she’d resigned herself to inexplicable shifts in closeness and distance, although they left her Googling whether this might indicate a bipolar disorder. Johnny was similar to many of the mercurial kids I see. He alternated harsh outbursts with times when he tried to reconnect by draping himself like a baby chimp around his mother, often seconds after raking her over the coals.

I asked Maggie how she felt when he came over to give her a hug soon after an eruption. “Frankly, I feel disgusted,” she said.

Finally sensing an opening, I moved. “So be a real person. I know it sounds impossible for a ‘good’ parent, but if he’s spoken to you brutally, turn him away if he wants to hug you. Besides, let’s face it, given how resentful he just made you feel, it’d be a phony connection anyway.”

That week, after Johnny had vented his anger at her over some trivial incident, Maggie was finally able to look him in the eye and forcefully say without screaming, “Get away from me. That was incredibly nasty.” Afterward, she shook with anger, as well as fear that she’d lost him forever. So she was totally taken aback when she received the following text sent from the next room: “Sorry. I’ll cook dinner tonight.”

From that point, the disconnected focus on teaching, praising, and taking whatever Johnny dished out began to shift, as did her own frustrated outbursts. After he completed the first term paper in his long, uphill academic struggle, Maggie said nothing encouraging or praiseworthy, but simply suggested, “Hey, would you like to go out for lunch?” At the local diner where the two went, they didn’t say much. But a few days later, Johnny emailed her an essay he’d written about the astonishingly wild life he’d led in high school—way beneath her radar—along with the unexpressed loss he felt over his father’s sudden death. Maggie then sent back a couple of stories detailing her own defiance when she was growing up, adding in her ambivalent feelings about Johnny’s dad and the way he sometimes treated her in the midst of his depressive episodes. These were the kind of personal truths and meaningful exchanges about shared trauma they’d never been able to have before, despite my best efforts individually and in sessions together.

Meanwhile, the more Maggie responded directly to Johnny’s actions without flailing or focusing on building his self-esteem or following the good-parenting rulebook, the fewer outbursts they had at home. At the same time, the relationship between Johnny and me opened up. We’d get into heated arguments about our different values, a major one being how he treated women as commodities to be used and then immediately discarded. “I really can’t stand how you are with women,” I told him. “If you ever decide to sleep with one because you actually like her, instead of just because ‘she’s there,’ I’ll respect you more.”

“Fuck you,” he graciously responded.

“Say what you want,” I continued, “but I remember the exact moment this happened for me—when I knew I wanted to sleep with a girl only because I liked her.”

“Tell me about it!” he said, relishing the sudden role reversal. And I did, in detail, quite aware that I was venturing out on a personal limb and grateful not to have a supervisor to report this to.

As the temperature at home warmed up a bit and his harsh moods softened in our sessions, I pushed Johnny toward greater self-care, toward becoming mindful of how his body was affected by the college world of fast food, nonexistent sleep, and excessive drinking. Slowly, he learned to think through to how anxious and self-critical binge drinking made him feel. He started recognizing his substance threshold points—when he’d get out of control—and began talking about this openly with Maggie, whose own wild past was an effective, genuine way to connect with him.

Although in the orthodoxies of modern parenting, reversals in the caretaking hierarchy are verboten, I encouraged Maggie to expect not only better behavior, but more empathy and genuine attention from her child. So one day she said to him, “It’s time you visit me at work. I want you to understand me inmy world.” She was asking for respectful acknowledgement from him, instead of only the other way around. The following week, out of the blue, Johnny invited her to see his favorite music group with him. And this mother–son duo had a great time together, at a rap concert no less!

As therapists, we can’t expect parents to embrace a more genuine, three-dimensional way of responding to their children unless we’re willing to do so ourselves. That means a willingness to be both tough and tender with kids in sessions, as I was with Johnny, who finally met a girl he really cared about, one who fearlessly stood up to him. He worried, however, that she’d leave him once she discovered his tendency to be furiously overcritical. He cried as he confessed this worry to me and I told him earnestly, almost in a whisper, “She’ll learn to see past your moods and love you, just the way everyone who gets to know you has, including me—if you let her.” Johnny did; they became serious and began living together. And he became decidedly more focused on school, even graduating with honors and landing a steady job in this difficult economy.

Maggie has moved on to become a financial advisor, a field where flexibility and brutal candor are necessities. Johnny occasionally heats up in patches of moodiness with his girlfriend, and he and Maggie still go up in ephemeral flames. But it’s now Johnny who works to keep both relationships from getting close to the point of rupture.

-----

Like most of us, regardless of the outcome, I can’t be sure what difference my therapeutic efforts actually make. But I am sure that in a world in which it’s harder and harder for all of us to respond to each other in person, clinicians everywhere privately improvise ways to have more of an emotional impact on the distracted and dysregulated young people who come to our offices. What we need to keep reminding ourselves of is that the technical side of treatment accounts for only part of whatever positive effect we may ultimately have. It’s truly ironic that in our sometimes narrow fascination with theory and clinical methodology, we can find ourselves mirroring the subtly disconnected state of modern childrearing. For ultimately, the force that fuels connection and change comes from the kind of vital human presence that creates three-dimensional relationships and secure attachments in our consulting rooms.

We need to learn how to do this more effectively, not so much by the seat of our pants. Admittedly, it’s a challenging paradox to teach ourselves what characterizes genuine connection in treatment without becoming self-conscious in the process. But kids and parents need real, three-dimensional therapists, just as surely as they yearn for three-dimensional connections at home. And who we are in a relationship, regardless of our training or preferred theory or pet method, is at the heart of what we offer the troubled kids and confused parents who seek our involvement and guidance at the most difficult times in their lives.

Ron Taffel, PhD, is the chairman of the board of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York. His books include Breaking Through to Teens: Psychotherapy for the New Adolescence andChildhood Unbound: Authoritative Parenting for the 21st Century. Contact: rontaffel.com.

Natural cure for Alzheimer's Disease

People are reporting incredible benefits from consuming coconut oil. (See: Coconut Oil and Diabetes and Coconut Oil and Alzheimer's

A new study done at Rhode Island Hospital continues to confirm that Alzheimer's Disease has a strong link to brain insulin resistance, or type 3 diabetes. Since the National Institute of Health financed the study, we can probably expect people with Alzheimer's to now be prescribed even more drugs, the same drugs that are prescribed for type 2 diabetes.

Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical companies have a terrible track record when it comes to diabetes drugs. The drug Actos, a drug that France and Germany pulled from the market a year ago after it was found to cause bladder cancer and tumors in people using it for type 2 diabetes, is a drug still found in the market in the United States. Since the FDA has not pulled it off of the market in the US, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed, including one from a whistle blower claiming the manufacturer "is benefiting in tens of billions of dollars in sales at the expense of the lives of people still taking the drug." Another diabetes drug, Avandia, was removed from pharmacies because it led to increased heart attacks killing thousands of people.

Today's senior citizens living in managed care facilities are taking an average of over 30 different prescription drugs! The one class of drug that is prescribed the most, statin drugs to lower cholesterol, is linked to increasing the incidence of Alzheimer's by starving the brain of needed cholesterol. Another side effect of statin drugs is: diabetes! (See: Statin Drugs Shown to Increase Risk of Diabetes Significantly, Yet the Media Scramble to Protect the Drugs' Reputation; FDA Admits Statins Cause Memory Loss, Liver Damage, and Diabetes; and Lower Your Cholesterol, Increase Your Diabetes Risk By 48%) One out of every four Americans over the age of 55 is currently taking statin drugs.

So while it is positive to see studies like this help us understand some of the causes of Alzheimer's Disease, turning to drugs to treat these symptoms is heading in wrong direction. Type 2 and type 3 diabetes is a lifestyle issue, and can be controlled or even prevented by dietary choices and avoiding too many drugs. There has also been tremendous success in controlling and eliminating diabetes through a low-carb and high fat diet (see: The Positive Effects of Low-Carbohydrate High Saturated Fat Diets on Diabetes;  Study finds that patients with diabetes can discontinue their medication if they follow a low carb, ketogenic diet; and Ketogenic Diet for Remission in Type 1 Diabetes).

Given all the evidence regarding insulin resistance, diabetes, and the link to Alzheimer's, it is not surprising that people are reporting incredible benefits from consuming coconut oil. (See: Coconut Oil and Diabetes and Coconut Oil and Alzheimer's

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EXCESS SUGAR CAUSES AGING

Friday, October 17, 201

Natural Blaze

Sugared Soda Consumption, Cell Aging Associated in New Study

by Jeffrey Norris

Sugar-sweetened soda consumption might promote disease independently from its role in obesity, according to UC San Francisco researchers who found in a new study that drinking sugary drinks was associated with cell aging.

The study revealed that telomeres — the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells — were shorter in the white blood cells of survey participants who reported drinking more soda. The findings were reported online October 16, 2014 in the American Journal of Public Health.

The length of telomeres within white blood cells — where it can most easily be measured — has previously been associated with human lifespan. Short telomeres also have been associated with the development of chronic diseases of aging, including heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer.

“Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence disease development, not only by straining the body’s metabolic control of sugars, but also through accelerated cellular aging of tissues,” said Elissa Epel, PhD, professor of psychiatry at UCSF and senior author of the study.

“This is the first demonstration that soda is associated with telomere shortness,” Epel said. “This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level. Telomere shortening starts long before disease onset. Further, although we only studied adults here, it is possible that soda consumption is associated with telomere shortening in children, as well.”

The authors cautioned that they only compared telomere length and sugar-sweetened soda consumption for each participant at a single time point, and that an association does not demonstrate causation. Epel is co-leading a new study in which participants will be tracked for weeks in real time to look for effects of sugar-sweetened soda consumption on aspects of cellular aging. Telomere shortening has previously been associated with oxidative damage to tissue, to inflammation, and to insulin resistance.

Based on the way telomere length shortens on average with chronological age, the UCSF researchers calculated that daily consumption of a 20-ounce soda was associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging. This effect on telomere length is comparable to the effect of smoking, or to the effect of regular exercise in the opposite, anti-aging direction, according to UCSF postdoctoral fellow Cindy Leung, ScD, from the UCSF Center for Health and Community and the lead author of the newly published study.

The average sugar-sweetened soda consumption for all survey participants was 12 ounces. About 21 percent in this nationally representative sample reported drinking at least 20 ounces of sugar-sweetened soda a day.

“It is critical to understand both dietary factors that may shorten telomeres, as well as dietary factors that may lengthen telomeres,” Leung said. “Here it appeared that the only beverage consumption that had a measurable negative association with telomere length was consumption of sugared soda.”

The finding adds a new consideration to the list of links that has tied sugary beverages to obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and that has driven legislators and activists in several U.S. jurisdictions to champion ballet initiatives that would tax sugar-sweetened beverage purchases with the goal of discouraging consumption and improving public health.

The UCSF researchers measured telomeres after obtaining stored DNA from 5,309 participants, ages 20 to 65, with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease, who had participated in the nation’s largest ongoing health survey, called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, during the years 1999 through 2002. They found that the amount of sugar-sweetened soda a person consumed was associated with telomere length, as measured in the laboratory of Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, professor of biochemistry at UCSF and a winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her telomere-related discoveries.

Additional study authors include, from UCSF, Nancy E. Adler, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Health and Community, and Jue Lin, PhD, an associate researcher with Blackburn’s lab; from UC Berkeley, Barbara A. Laraia, PhD, director of public health nutrition; from the University of Michigan, Belinda Needham, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology; and from Stanford University, David H. Rehkopf, ScD, assistant professor of medicine.

Major funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health. Lin is a shareholder of Telomere Diagnostics, Inc.

UCSF is the nation's leading university exclusively focused on health. Now celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding as a medical college, UCSF is dedicated to transforming health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with world-renowned programs in the biological sciences, a preeminent biomedical research enterprise and top-tier hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals.

University of California San Francisco

photo credit: Benson Kua via photopin cc

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Medical Daily

Foods To Avoid? 10 Things In Americans' Favorite Foods That Are Banned In Other Countries

By Samantha Olson | Oct 21, 2014 09:00 AM EDT

Americans keep eating foods containing ingredients banned in other countries because of health hazards. Photo courtesy of Mercola

In a country so consumed with counting calories, the gluten-free fad, and fast food, the ingredients section on the back of packages are widely overlooked and riddled with internationally banned foods. The health center Mercola has compiled a list of the worst offenders, and they include harmful additives, growth hormones, and genetically engineered ingredients laced throughout foods designed to satiate the unsuspecting American appetite. Maybe the reasons behind why these foods are banned in other countries will fill our bellies with enough disgust and fear, we won’t be hungry for harmful ingredients any longer.

Americans Still Eat These 10 Foods & Ingredients Banned Around The World:

1. Farm-Raised Salmon

Banned in Australia, New Zealand, and Russia.

Salmon has been a hot debate topic in the past decade, especially at a time when overfishing and other environmental concerns are pushing to the forefront. Farmed fish feedlots hold up to one million fish in an area the size of two football fields and are becoming more popular as the world’s fish stocks decline and the American appetite continues to grow. Studies have found contaminants found in farmed salmon are well below the tolerance levels approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but they exceed the safety levels for frequent consumption by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Farmed salmon don’t have a lot of room to swim, don’t follow their natural migration patterns, and have an unnatural diet of grains, which is why they’re fattier than wild salmon and contain 50 percent less omega-3 fats and protein. They’re grown with a mix of antibiotics, vitamins, drugs, and chemicals and don’t have wild salmon’s natural color, so they’re fed a synthetic astaxanthin to achieve the pinkish-red shade. Nearly 90 percent of the toxins farmed salmon contains can accumulate in your body, and if you’re pregnant it can pass on to your newborn baby and secrete through breast milk.

2. Ractopamine-Tainted Meat

Banned in Russia, Mainland China, Taiwan, and 160 countries across Europe

Ractopamine, also known as Paylean and Optaflexx, is a drug fed to livestock to reduce the fat content and enhance muscle, making the meat more profitable per animal. It was originally used to treat asthma and is found in 45 percent of pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle, and an unknown percentage of turkeys. As much as 20 percent of Ractopamine may remain in the meat you purchase with a drug label warning “Not for use in humans” and “individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure.”

Ractopamine is linked with decreases in reproductive function and increased death and disability. In humans, it’s known to affect the cardiovascular system, causing hyperactivity, chromosomal abnormalities, and behavioral changes. It’s the meat additive you didn’t expect to land on your plate. But how are you supposed to stop ordering and buying it if you don’t pay attention to what exactly you’re eating?

3. Genetically-Engineered Papaya

Banned in the European Union.

In the 1990s, the ringspot virus greatly threatened the Hawaiian papaya crop. They were genetically engineered to resist the virus, but by 2004 Hawaii reported a widespread contamination of papaya crops by the new variant. Five years later, nearly 20,000 papaya seeks from the islands were contaminated with genetically modified organisms, more commonly known as GMOs, and cows fed the variety suffered a wide range of illnesses. After three generations of cows, they were still experiencing intestinal damage, multiple-organ damage, massive tumors, birth defects, premature death, and near or complete sterility from the GMOs.

Yet, genetically modified papayas remain as the only commercially grown GMO fruit in the U.S. because they were grandfathered in by Hawaii’s County councilmen because it was deeply ingrained in their tradition and made them financially profitable.

4. Flame Retardant in Drinks

Banned in Japan and 18 European countries.

In 1977, the FDA itself approved brominated vegetable oil (BVO), a patented flame retardant used in sodas and sports drinks in the U.S. Recently Coca-Cola and PepsiCo announced they’re working on removing the controversial BVO from their drinks as a result of petitions. The FDA permitted the use of BVO on an “interim basis” pending additional studies to prove its safety or health dangers, but decades later they never conducted those studies.

Bromine toxicity can cause skin rashes, acne, loss of appetite, fatigue, and cardiac arrhythmias. It’s been linked to major organ damage, birth defects, growth problems, schizophrenia, and a slew of other health consequences. Despite animal studies proving it was harmful back in the 70s, it still made its way into Mountain Dew, Sunkist, Powerade, Gatorade, Squirt, Fresca, and Fanta.

5. Processed Foods with Artificial Food Colors and Dyes

Banned Norway and Austria. If it’s not banned in a country outside of the U.S., it requires a warning label.

Red 40, yellow 5, yellow 6, and blue 2 weave their way into the American ingredients list of a wide variety of foods. They’re the most commonly used dyes in the U.S., found in mac-and-cheese, cheddar flavored crackers, Jell-O, and children’s cereals. With more than 3,000 food additives, preservatives, flavorings, colors, and other synthetic ingredients in our foods, research says we’re at risk for cancers, birth defects, allergies, behavioral changes, and increased hyperactivity in kids.

6. Arsenic-Laced Chicken

Banned in the European Union.

Chronic arsenic exposure can cause anemia, headaches, skin lesions, low blood pressure, kidney damage and failure, increased risk of diabetes, miscarriage, stillbirth, low birth weight, and infant mortality. What is arsenic doing in our chicken? Since the 1940s, farmers have been feeding livestock arsenic to fight off disease; however, they now use it to make animals grow quicker and make the meat appear pinker and fresher. It’s not a carcinogen itself, but when it’s consumed by our body it converts into a cancer-causing form. In 2007, nine billion domesticated chickens were still being fed Roxarsone, an arsenic-based feed drug. That’s 70 percent of the chickens grown, slaughtered, and lined up in grocery aisles.

7. Bread with Potassium Bromate

Banned in the European Union, Canada, and China.

Potassium bromate helps make the dough more elastic and to hold up better on the bread hooks that move it through commercial baking factories. It has been linked to kidney and nervous system damage, in addition to thyroid problems, gastrointestinal discomfort, and even cancer.

Bread with Potassium Bromate by Mercola.com

8. Olestra/Olean

Banned in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Procter & Gamble created this cholesterol-free fat substitute for their fat-free snacks. It was the snacking industry’s answer to their high-fat problem and swiftly approved by the FDA in 1996. People began reporting diarrhea, cramps, leaky bowels, and anal leakage after eating what they thought to be a healthier alternative to indulging. But in 2011, Purdue University researchers published a study that found rats who were fed foods with Orlean gained more weight than those fed a high-fat diet with regular fat potato chips. (You can also find the fake fat in French fries.) Doctors soon discovered their body’s had a difficult time absorbing fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A, D, E, and K.

9. Preservatives BHA and BHT

Banned in Japan and the European Union.

At high doic and foul-smelling foods. At high temperatures, vitamin E is an effective alternative to BHA and BHT and can keep foods stable and preserved in the grocery store.

10. Milk and Dairy Products Laced with rBGH

Banned in Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Canada, and the European Union. In order to increase a cow’s milk production, scientists invented a rBGH, a synthetic version that mimics a natural hormone produced in their pituitary glands, known as bovine somatotropin. When rBGH came onto the market, the United Nations Safety Agency ruled unanimously not to endorse it in 1999, and eventually U.S. milk was internationally banned from being imported into their countries. In the U.S., approximately one in six dairy cows are injected with growth hormones on a regular basis, causing pus and antibiotic contamination and 16 other adverse health effects.

Milk rBGH by Merola.com

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Six natural remedies for lowering blood pressure fast

(http://www.naturalnews.com/03           8567_blood_pressure_natural_remedies_foods.html)

High blood pressure is no longer just an affliction of the elderly, as more than one-third of young people between the ages of 16 and 34 are now said to suffer from some form of hypertension. And a recent study out of California revealed that, if left unchecked, this cardiovascular malady, even in its mild form, can lead to premature aging and brain damage.

The conventional solution to this growing health epidemic is to simply take more blood pressure medications like angiotensin-receptor blockers, which have been scientifically linked to causing cancer and other serious health problems. But the alternative route, which should really just be called the common-sense route, is to eat more foods and herbs that naturally lower blood pressure without causing any harmful side effects.

Here are six natural and quick remedies that will help you keep your blood pressure in check, and avoid the long-term health pitfalls associated with prolonged hypertension:

1) Raw almonds. Eating just a handful of truly raw almonds every day can make a significant difference in keeping your blood pressure levels in check. A key component of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Diet, also known as DASH, raw almonds are rich in monounsaturated fats, which have been scientifically proven to help lower blood cholesterol levels, reduce arterial inflammation, and ultimately lower blood pressure levels.

Even though they are high in fat and calories, almonds also help promote weight loss and the building of lean muscle mass, which means they naturally promote healthy circulation. When eaten in conjunction with other blood pressure-lowering nuts like walnuts, almonds are one of the most powerful cardiovascular "superfoods" available.

2) Cayenne pepper. Arguably one of the fastest foods to lower blood pressure, cayenne pepper is a powerful vasodilator, which means it helps expand blood vessels and improve blood flow. This effect naturally lowers blood pressure levels by increasing the rate at which blood flows throughout the circulatory system, which in turn takes some of the pressure off arterial walls.

Mixing one or two teaspoons of cayenne pepper in either warm water or tea with both honey and aloe vera is a powerful homemade remedy for alleviating hypertension. If this beverage is too spicy for your tastes, taking cayenne pepper capsule supplements is another great option for lowering blood pressure naturally.

3) Coconut water. Rich in potassium, electrolytes, and other important nutrients, coconut water has been shown to help significantly lower blood pressure levels in most of the people that drink it. A recent study published in the West Indian Medical Journal found that drinking coconut water helped 71 percent of participants achieve a significant reduction in systolic pressure, and 29 percent of participants achieve a significant reduction in diastolic pressure. The results were even more amplified when participants drank both coconut water and mauby, a tropical drink made from buckthorn tree bark.

4) Raw cacao. Rich in flavonoids and other anti-inflammatory nutrients, raw cacao is another food-based weapon against hypertension that you will want to keep readily stocked in your health arsenal. Not only do the flavonoids in cacao function as adaptogens to help the body better deal with stress, which is a common cause of hypertension, but they also help regulate stress hormone levels throughout the body, which play a critical role in blood pressure regulation.

Numerous studies have also found that cacao flavonoids demonstrably reduce blood pressure levels upon consumption, resulting in an average blood pressure reduction of 4.7/2.8 millimeters of mercury (mmHg). Cacao flavonoids also help protect the body against stroke and heart disease, which are commonly linked to high blood pressure.

5) Turmeric. Modern science is just barely hitting the tip of the iceberg concerning the superfood capacity of turmeric, also commonly known as curcumin. But one of the herb's already known benefits concerns its abilities to significantly decrease inflammation throughout the body, which is a primary cause of high cholesterol and even high blood pressure. By actively reducing inflammation, turmeric helps improve cardiovascular function and maintain healthy blood flow.

When taken alongside non-irradiated black pepper, the primary active ingredient of which is piperine, turmeric is a powerhouse at loosening up blood vessels and clearing the buildup that often leads to high blood pressure. Turmeric is also a natural blood thinner, which is another way this powerful herb aids in the fight against hypertension.

6) Garlic. A 2010 study out of Australia found that garlic is another powerful food-based medicine that naturally lowers cholesterol levels and reduces blood pressure. Taking garlic tablets or capsule supplements is a great way to regularly consume the herb in high enough amounts to derive significant benefits.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturalnews.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038567_blood_pressure_natural_remedies_foods.html#ixzz34FZVP5Nj