Secrets of chelation revealed on NaturalNews Talk Hour

(NaturalNews) This week's NaturalNews Talk Hour presents "Beyond Chelation - How to Stop Heart Attacks". Take the steps necessary to empower yourself to go beyond the limitations of misleading dis-ease labels. It's time to start asking important questions designed to help us focus on health. We'll examine food sensitivities, infections, genetics, heavy metals and toxins.

What is Chelation?

Chelation therapy is a safe and effective method for drawing toxins and metabolic wastes from the bloodstream. Chelating agents administered intravenously have been proven to increase blood flow and remove arterial plaque. Chelation therapy can help reverse atherosclerosis, can prevent heart attacks and strokes, and is used as an alternative to bypass surgery and angioplasty.

Our show begins this Thursday evening at 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern, and registration is FREE. Simply enter your email address in the registration form on the right column of this page and you'll receive call-in details for the show.

I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the weekly Natural News Talk Hour, where I continually learn so much from your carefully chosen, very knowledgeable, and extremely conscientious guest speakers. - Victor

Is Chelation Safe?

Chelation therapy has been used safely on more than 500,000 patients in the United States for the past forty years, but EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid), the drug used during the infusions, has yet to receive FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval for anything other than lead and heavy metal toxicity. Still, there are over 1,000 physicians who recommend and use chelation therapy for cardiovascular disease and related health problems.

Dr. Gordon says, "Today's rapidly increasing levels of pollution has made continuous Zeolite or Oral Chelation-based detoxification essential for anyone hoping to reach their maximum intended useful lifespan, while enjoying optimum health. The evidence is clear - we all need to 'get the lead out'!"

The Future of Chelation

Because the patent for EDTA has expired, it is unlikely that any pharmaceutical company will invest the money necessary to fund studies for FDA approval of chelation therapy, despite the overwhelming evidence of its effectiveness. Robert Haskell, MD writes, "Of all the regimens you can use to help a patient combat degenerative disease and restore health, chelation therapy is the most powerful. It produces the greatest number of benefits to the body - far beyond those of improved blood flow. If you want to get your prescribed nutrition to those parts of the body in which they must work - chelation therapy is the way to do it."

This week's guest: Garry F. Gordon, MD, DO, MD(H)

Garry F. Gordon, MD, DO, MD(H) - "Beyond Chelation - How to Stop Heart Attacks" Thu. July 1st

Dr. Gordon received his Doctor of Osteopathy in 1958 from the Chicago College of Osteopathy in Illinois, his honorary MD degree from the University of California Irvine in 1962 and his Radiology Residency from Mt. Zion in San Francisco, California in 1964.

Recognized as the "Father of Chelation Therapy" - Dr. Gordon is an expert on nutrition, mineral metabolism, and longevity. He serves as full-time consultant for Longevity Plus, LLC – a nutritional supplement company based in Payson, Arizona where he is responsible for designing effective, natural, non-toxic alternative supplements for the treatment of every disease known to man.

Join Us! Connect with other NaturalNews readers, gain knowledge and have fun at the same time. Space is limited. Be sure to call a few minutes early to reserve your spot on the show. Register now using the email form in the right column, and you will be emailed show details. Register Now!

Gourmet 'truly raw' organic almond butter from Sicily now available at NaturalNews Store

(NaturalNews) Thanks to efforts by the USDA and the Almond Board of California, it is illegal for commercial almond producers in the United States to sell raw almonds. The almonds now have to be fumigated with chemicals or pasteurized (cooked) to meet "food safety requirements" that really have nothing to do with food safety but everything to do with killing your food. See my related CounterThink Cartoon at: http://counterthink.com/The_Killing...

Because of this unfortunate situation, health-conscious consumers in the USA who love almonds and almond products (such as almond butter) have been forced to purchase almonds from other countries. You see, almond growers in Italy can sell raw almonds to the USA without any problem. That's perfectly legal. Only U.S.-based producers are required to kill their almonds with heat or chemicals. (Just another brilliant move in Washington to destroy the livelihoods of U.S. farmers, isn't it?)

In any case, it now turns out that the best truly raw almond butters come from Sicily, Italy, where the "tuono" and "correnta" varieties are known for their robust aromas and flavors. They are the gourmet almonds of the world, and they're used quite liberally in the Mediterranean Diet.

I love almond butter. It's a delicious and highly nutritious natural nut butter that I use on everything from raw sandwiches to mouth-watering desserts. Now, through a special arrangement we've once again managed to put together for you, we've acquired a few thousand jars of raw, organic almond butter from Sicily, made from some of the finest almonds in the world. And as you've come to expect, we've managed to make this available directly to you at a ridiculously good price.

You see, since the USDA required that all California almonds be fumigated or pasteurized, the price of raw almonds has skyrocketed. A 16 oz. jar of truly raw almond butter can now set you back $25 at retail. Crazy, huh?

We're trying to bring that price back down to Earth with the fantastic pricing we're able to achieve due to our large reach and low overhead. While supplies lies, we've got 16 oz. glass jars of organic, raw almond butter from Sicily for just $13.95! (That's a savings of nearly 40% over the usual retail price of $22.95.)

Click here to take advantage of this special now.

This is for the good stuff! This is truly raw, truly organic, gourmet Italian almond butter made from Sicilian almonds. Raw almond butter doesn't get any better than this! (Taste it yourself and you'll see!)

The price, though, does get better: When you purchase a 3-pack of this raw almond butter, the price per jar drops to just $12.56 per jar, or a 45% discount off the usual retail price.

Click here for the 3-pack special of this raw almond butter.

As with all our store specials, this is only good while supplies last. (We received a single shipment of a few thousand fresh jars, and when they're gone, they're gone...)

While you can probably find a better price on pasteurized, non-organic almond butter, I'm confident you won't find a better price on raw, organic, non-fumigated almonds that are truly raw and nutritionally intact. This is "premium" almond butter at a non-premium price.

And unless the Almond Board of California reverses its decision requiring the fumigation of California almonds, you'll probably never see a price this low again on truly raw almond nut butter.

Historical information about almonds

Here's some interesting information about almonds, provided by our supplier of this remarkable raw almond butter:

Almonds are mentioned as far back in history as the Bible. The Bible’s “Book of Number” tells the story of Aaron’s rod that blossomed and bore almonds, giving the almond the symbolism of divine approval. Through history , almonds have maintained religious, ethnic and social significance.

They were a prized ingredient in breads reserved to Egypt’s pharaohs. Their exact ancestry in unknown, but almonds are thought to have originated in China and Central Asia. Explorers ate almonds while travelling the “Silk Road” between Asia and the Mediterranean. Before long, almonds trees flourished in the Mediterranean, especially in Spain and Italy.

Almonds were central to many cultural traditions around the world. In classical times Romans presented gifts of sugared almonds to important dignitaries as well as personal friends. At weddings they also tossed almonds to the bride and groom as a symbol of fertility. Today, Italians and Americans give guest at weddings a bag of sugared almonds, representing children, happiness, romance, good health and fortune.

In Sweden, cinnamon-flavored rice pudding with an almond hidden inside is a Christmas custom. Find it, and good fortune is yours for a year.

Cultivating almonds it’s a tradition that comes from afar. The earliest varieties of almonds were found in China carried by traders down the ancient silk road to Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East. Nestled between the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Pacific Coast Ranges is California’s fertile Central Valley, home to one of the oldest and most beautiful flowering fruit trees. Unlike other flowering fruit trees that bear edible fruit, this tree’s “pearl” is the delicious nut found inside the fruit, the almond.

Botanically, the sweet almond is considered a stone fruit, closely related to the cherry, plum, apricot, and peach. The almond's botanical name comes from the Greeks who called them "amygdalon."

Almonds are a surprisingly source of calcium: Although we would have to consume 330 calories' worth of almonds to get a significant quantity of this bone-supporting mineral, almonds are higher in calcium than all other nuts. Almonds are also a significant source of magnesium, and they supply a healthy amount of vitamin E.

These sweet, versatile nuts have the highest dietary fiber content of any nut or seed; like all nuts, almonds are a good source of protein and they are cholesterol free. Vitamin E, considered a powerful antioxidant, is plentiful in almonds. They're also high in magnesium, containing even more than spinach. They’re abundant in phosphorus, potassium, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, and trace amounts of the B vitamins thiamine and riboflavin.

Click here to see all the NaturalNews Store specials.

(And enjoy your raw almond butter!)

Low vitamin D levels linked to poor blood sugar control in type 2 diabetes

(NaturalNews) According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), almost 11 percent of Americans age 20 or older have diabetes. And the most common form of this disease, type 2 diabetes, has reached epidemic proportions. Now scientists have found a link between vitamin D deficiency and the inability of many patients with this kind of diabetes to keep their blood sugar under control. What's more, this raises the strong possibility that, along with being overweight and sedentary, a lack of vitamin D could be a major factor in triggering type 2 diabetes in the first place.

Esther Krug, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an endocrinologist at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, just presented this research in San Diego at the Endocrine Society's 92nd Annual Meeting. "This finding supports an active role of vitamin D in the development of Type 2 diabetes," Dr. Krug said in a statement to the media.

Krug and her research team reviewed the medical charts of 124 people between the ages of 36 and 89 years old who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and treated at an endocrine outpatient clinic between 2003 and 2008. As part of their health evaluations, all of these patients had their serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels measured at the clinic. So the researchers looked to see how many of the patients had normal levels of the so-called "sunshine" vitamin.

The answer? Almost none. In fact, an astonishing 91 percent of the patients studied had either vitamin D deficiency (defined as a level below 15 nanograms per deciliter, or ng/dL) or vitamin D insufficiency (15 to 31 ng/dL), the authors reported. When the investigators looked at the patients' levels of hemoglobin A1c (a measure of blood sugar control over the past several months), they came up with another startling fact. There was a clear relationship between uncontrolled blood sugar and low levels of vitamin D. African-Americans were found to have the highest A1c levels and were most deficient in vitamin D, when compared to Caucasians.

"Since primary care providers diagnose and treat most patients with type 2 diabetes, screening and vitamin D supplementation as part of routine primary care may improve health outcomes of this highly prevalent condition," Dr. Krug concluded.

NaturalNews has previously reported on other natural ways to treat and even prevent type 2 diabetes -- including eating Mediterranean style by consuming a diet rich in "good" fats (like Omega-3s and olive oil), veggies, fruit and whole grains. A study published last fall in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded the Mediterranean diet dramatically improved type 2 diabetes and even eliminated the need for many people to take blood glucose regulating medication (http://www.naturalnews.com/027140_d...).

For more information:
http://www.naturalnews.com/Type_2_d...
http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pu...
http://www.endo-society.org/

95 percent of 'preventive' mastectomies offer no benefit, study finds

(NaturalNews) A new study shows that the increasingly popular practice of "preventive mastectomy" in non-cancerous breasts provides no benefit to the vast majority of women.

"It's important for women to understand that, except for one subset of breast cancer patients, they don't need to do this," said lead author Isabelle Bedrosian of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. "Hopefully, it'll reassure patients wondering if they should."

Approximately 40,000 women die from breast cancer in the United States each year, and another 200,000 cases are diagnosed. Because cancer in one breast is known to increase the risk of cancer recurrence in the other breast, doctors are increasingly recommending that cancer survivors opt to have both breasts removed as a "preventive" measure. And women are opting for it in huge numbers, seeking the peace of mind that it is said to offer.

The number of preventive mastectomies in the United States increased two-and-a-half-fold between 1998 and 2003. Today, 11 percent of all women undergoing a mastectomy on a cancerous breast choose to have the non-cancerous breast removed as well. Analysts have attributed this increase to more advanced screening techniques that detect cancers smaller and earlier; popularization of genetic screening and the idea that some genes may predispose families to breast cancer; and wider public acceptance of plastic surgery combined with advances in reconstructive technology.

Yet while it has been strongly established that elective mastectomy does reduce the risk of breast-cancer recurrence, there has been no research to suggest that it actually lengthens a woman's life span.

"We have not had real data to guide us," Bedrosian said. "We can't sit down with a woman and say, 'If you do this, this is your expected benefit.' And when we don't have those data, then biases become the big drivers of decision making."

In the new study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Bedrosian and colleagues analyzed the records of 107,106 women in the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results registry. All the women had undergone a mastectomy to treat breast cancer of Stage III or lower; 8,902 had chosen to have a healthy breast removed, as well.

After controlling for other risk factors, the researchers found only a small difference in survival rates between women who had chosen to have two breasts removed and women who had chosen to have only one removed. Upon further analysis, they discovered that this benefit was only present in women under the age of 50 with estrogen receptor-negative, early-stage tumors. In this group, elective mastectomy increased the survival rate by 4.8 percent, amounting to just under five lives saved for every 100 surgeries.

Elective mastectomy provided no survival benefit to women outside this demographic.

The researchers believe that even when cancers recur, most women will not be killed by them but will instead die of other causes first. Only in women whose cancers lack estrogen receptors and who would otherwise have long lives ahead of them does recurrence appear to pose a serious threat to survival.

The most effective breast cancer drugs on the market are those that lower the body's production of estrogen, which fuels the growth of many cancers. Tumors that lack estrogen receptors do not depend on the hormone for their growth, however, meaning that women with these cancers cannot use the most effective drugs and tend to have higher mortality rates.

Breast-cancer specialist Larry Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City expressed skepticism about the study's methodology and cautioned against doctors and patients giving it too much weight.

"This is an observational study, and hence it is impossible to control for confounding variables," Norton said, "and should not be used for individual clinical decisionmaking."

Norton admitted, however, that ethics make it impossible to perform a true controlled study on the question, since such an experiment might end up increasing cancer mortality in one group of participants.

Bedrosian disputed Norton's criticism, noting that the researchers used rigorous statistical analysis and controlled well for interference from other variables. She believes that the conclusions are, in fact, strong enough to help women make better-informed decisions about elective mastectomy.

"We looked at this in multiple different ways, and we got the same answer every time. And the results make good clinical sense. That adds another level of reassurance," she said. "Our hope is that when women hear the numbers, they will take a second look and decide not to go forward with a preventive mastectomy [in their healthy breast] if it won't give them a survival benefit."

Victor Vogel, national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society, said the results suggest that women should wait a full year before going through with the removal of a healthy breast.

"In a younger woman with [estrogen receptor]-negative disease, an [elective} mastectomy may be considered," he said. "In the vast majority of women older than 50 with ER-positive disease, prudent waiting is probably the most appropriate."

Bedrosian said that the point of the study was not to impose "a uniform mandate" that women should never get the procedure, but that their decisions must be well informed.

"This is still a decision to be made by the patient after talking with her doctor," Bedrosian said.

"We hope this study helps women make better decisions [and] provides some reassurance that perhaps a [preventive] mastectomy is not necessary, perhaps overly aggressive and perhaps a bit too much."

Sources for this story include: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl... http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/art... http://www.time.com/time/health/art....

Nutrition labels could be mandated on package fronts

(NaturalNews) According to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Kathleen Sebelius, the FDA is working on a plan that would require food manufacturers to print nutrition information on the front of their packaging rather than on the back. The alleged goal of the proposed new mandate is to help busy shoppers quickly decipher nutrition information without having to look at the back of a product.

"Busy shoppers will be able to go into grocery stores and have some easy-to-understand information on the front of packages, giving them quick data on what is a healthier choice," she explained.

While it may seem like a good proposal that would help to improve nutrition transparency, many manufacturers are concerned that the requirement could end up needlessly costing them millions of dollars. Since packaging changes are typically very expensive, many smaller producers might be put out of business by the mandate.

James McCarthy, president and CEO of the Snack Food Association (SFA), expressed opposition to the mandate and instead proposed that the change be made voluntary. Because his organization represents 400 snack food manufacturers and suppliers worldwide, many of which are small- or medium-sized operations, he understands the incredible burden that would be placed on them by the requirement.

And his argument is a rational one, considering the fact that nutrition information can easily be found on products as they currently are. Forcing manufacturers to redesign their packages at a tremendous cost to them hardly seems beneficial. If someone is unwilling to turn the package around to read the nutrition information on the back, it is highly unlikely that he or she will bother reading it off the front.

Others disagree, insisting that the mandate would help to combat childhood obesity. Yet it is unclear precisely how the plan will actually accomplish this, and critics see the plan as nothing more than attack on American business.

The FDA is also seeking to establish universal guidelines for how health information is displayed on product packages. The agency would like to eliminate all self-labeling, or labels that indicate that a product is a "healthy choice" or that it benefits "heart health".

According to Sebelius, all labeling should have a "scientific background" and should be tested through an "evidence-based approach." Therefore her agency made recommendations to the FDA that a "national standard" be developed to accommodate such an approach.

Sources for this story include:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/63959

Doctors test cure for peanut allergy

(NaturalNews) Doctors from Cambridge University are testing a technique that they believe may functionally cure people who suffer from inconvenient and dangerous peanut allergies, researcher Andrew Clark announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.

Clark and colleagues have had success in a pilot study of their technique, which involves giving children slowly increasing doses of peanut flour. They emphasized that trials are only in an early stage, however, and that people should not try the technique at home without the supervision of a doctor.

More than 1.5 million people in the United States suffer from peanut or other tree nut allergies, and the number appears to be rising. These allergies can be so severe that exposure to even trace amounts can send some sufferers into potentially fatal anaphylactic shock, in which their air passages close up and make it impossible to breathe.

In their initial study, the researchers gave 23 people suffering from peanut allergies a daily dose of peanut flour, starting at about 1 milligram and increasing a little each day. When the participants could tolerate 800 milligrams per day (equivalent to five nuts), the researchers instructed them to maintain this daily dose for another six weeks.

After a year, twenty of the participants were able to safely tolerate doses of 32 peanuts a day, meaning they no longer had to read food labels or worry about trace nut contamination in their environments. In a followup study, the researchers will now test the technique on 104 British children between the ages of seven and 17.

"This is going to be the largest trial of its kind in the world and it should give us a definitive idea of whether the approach works and whether it's safe," Clark said.

The "cure" works on a principle called desensitization, in which the body becomes used to progressively higher doses. It does not actually eliminate the allergy. If successful, however, it would provide an important technique for managing a potentially debilitating condition.

Sources for this story include: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8527530.stm ; www.examiner.com/x-11648-DC-Parenti....

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

(NaturalNews) In its never-ending attempt to fabricate "mental disorders" out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they've invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you're "mentally diseased" and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, "Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" and goes on to claim this "disease" is called orthorexia nervosa -- which is basically just Latin for "nervous about correct eating."

But they can't just called it "nervous healthy eating disorder" because that doesn't sound like they know what they're talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn't). That's where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means "bones with holes in them").

Getting back to this fabricated "orthorexia" disease, the Guardian goes on to report, "Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out."

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there's something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be "normal?" If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that's okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

What is "normal" when it comes to foods?

I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It's an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that's all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, "The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished."

Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating "good" foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That's about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I've ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition!

Shut up and swallow your Soylent Green

It's just like I reported years ago: You're not supposed to question your food, folks. Sit down, shut up, dig in and chow down. Stop thinking about what you're eating and just do what you're told by the mainstream media and its processed food advertisers. Questioning the health properties of your junk food is a mental disorder, didn't you know? And if you "obsess" over foods (by doing such things as reading the ingredients labels, for example), then you're weird. Maybe even sick.

That's the message they're broadcasting now. Junk food eaters are "normal" and "sane" and "nourished." But health food eaters are diseased, abnormal and malnourished.

But why, you ask, would they attack healthy eaters? People like Dr. Gabriel Cousens can tell you why: Because increased mental and spiritual awareness is only possible while on a diet of living, natural foods.

Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control, you see. It literally messes with your mind, numbing your senses with MSG, aspartame and yeast extract. People who subsist on junk foods are docile and quickly lose the ability to think for themselves. They go along with whatever they're told by the TV or those in apparent positions of authority, never questioning their actions or what's really happening in the world around them.

In contrast to that, people who eat health-enhancing natural foods -- with all the medicinal nutrients still intact -- begin to awaken their minds and spirits. Over time, they begin to question the reality around them and they pursue more enlightened explorations of topics like community, nature, ethics, philosophy and the big picture of things that are happening in the world. They become "aware" and can start to see the very fabric of the Matrix, so to speak.

This, of course, is a huge danger to those who run our consumption-based society because consumption depends on ignorance combined with suggestibility. For people to keep blindly buying foods, medicines, health insurance and consumer goods, they need to have their higher brain functions switched off. Processed junk foods laced with toxic chemicals just happens to achieve that rather nicely. Why do you think dead, processed foods remain the default meals in public schools, hospitals and prisons? It's because dead foods turn off higher levels of awareness and keep people focused on whatever distractions you can feed their brains: Television, violence, fear, sports, sex and so on.

But living as a zombie is, in one way quite "normal" in society today because so many people are doing it. But that doesn't make it normal in my book: The real "normal" is an empowered, healthy, awakened person nourished with living foods and operating as a sovereign citizen in a free world. Eating living foods is like taking the red pill because over time it opens up a whole new perspective on the fabric of reality. It sets you free to think for yourself.

But eating processed junk foods is like taking the blue pill because it keeps you trapped in a fabricated reality where your life experiences are fabricated by consumer product companies who hijack your senses with designer chemicals (like MSG) that fool your brain into thinking you're eating real food.

If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don't expect to be popular with mainstream mental health "experts" or dieticians -- they're all being programmed to consider you to be "crazy" because you don't follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals.

But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods.

Some people are ready to take the red pill, and others aren't. All you can do is show them the door. They must open it themselves.

In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There's nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the health experts who keep inventing new fictitious diseases and disorders, check out my popular Disease Mongering Engine web page where you can invent your own new diseases at the click of a button! You'll find it at: http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-...

Sources for this story include:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2...

Vitamin B6 and methionine slash lung cancer risk by 50 percent

(NaturalNews) Lung cancer, which usually develops in the cells lining air passages, will be diagnosed in about 222,520 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In addition, the NCI says nearly half that many people -- about 157,300 -- will die from the disease in 2010.

Although lung cancer is notoriously difficult to treat successfully, French scientists have discovered several natural substances that offer substantial protection from the malignancy. In a huge study of almost 400,000 participants, those who had higher blood levels of vitamin B6 and the essential amino acid methionine (found in many forms of protein) had the lowest risk of lung cancer -- even those who were former or current smokers.

For the study, which was just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Paul Brennan, Ph.D., of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France, and colleagues documented B vitamins and methionine levels based on serum samples from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort study. In all, they investigated 385,747 research subjects from 10 European countries. By 2006, 899 had been diagnosed with lung cancer; they were compared to 1,770 control participants and all were individually matched by country, sex, date of birth, and date of blood collection.

The results of the researchers' analysis revealed a dramatically lower risk for lung cancer among participants with the highest blood levels of B6 and methionine. In addition, a moderately lower risk for lung cancer in former and current smokers was observed in those with higher serum levels of folate.

"Similar and consistent decreases in risk were observed in never, former, and current smokers, indicating that results were not due to confounding (factors that can influence outcomes) by smoking. The magnitude of risk was also constant with increasing length of follow-up, indicating that the associations were not explained by preclinical disease," the researchers stated in their JAMA article.

50 percent reduction in lung cancer

"Our results suggest that above-median serum measures of both B6 and methionine, assessed on average five years prior to disease onset, are associated with a reduction of at least 50 percent on the risk of developing lung cancer. An additional association for serum levels of folate was present, that when combined with B6 and methionine, was associated with a two-thirds lower risk of lung cancer," the scientists wrote.

So how could these natural substances keep lung cancer at bay? The key may be found in previous research which has shown that B vitamin deficiencies likely increase the probability of DNA damage and subsequent gene mutations. "Given their involvement in maintaining DNA integrity and gene expression, these nutrients have a potentially important role in inhibiting cancer development, and offer the possibility of modifying cancer risk through dietary changes," the authors concluded. They also pointed out that B vitamin deficiencies are known to be high in many western populations.

Additional good news about lung protection was presented earlier this year at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference. Scientists have found eating a handful of pistachios daily may offer significant protection from lung cancer (http://www.naturalnews.com/027732_p...).

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...
http://www.naturalnews.com/lung_can...
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/...

Conventional doctor's faith in Big Pharma shattered after Glaxo's latest scams

(NaturalNews) Writing in Forbes magazine, Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz notes that in spite of his desire to believe in the good intentions of the pharmaceutical industry, the actions of companies such as GlaxoSmithKline continue to disappoint him.

"I want to believe in America's pharmaceutical companies," Krumholz wrote on Feb.25. "I want to believe that people in these companies believe that the best strategy for success is to do what is best for patients. I want to believe that they are interested in scientific truth and eager to know of any safety issues and ready to share that information with the public.

"This week I was disappointed again."

Krumholz was referring to a report, issued by the Senate Finance Committee, concluding that even as Glaxo scientists were voicing warnings about the safety of the blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia, the company was taking aggressive measures to discredit critics who publicly raised similar concerns.

"The pages of the Senate report read like a spy novel: Glaxo receiving confidential documents leaked by a sympathetic academic who consulted for the company; the company embarking on a campaign to intimidate critics who warned about potential safety issues with the drug; and executives pulling strings to release data early from a scientific study that was supposedly controlled by an 'independent' committee of researchers," Krumholz said.

The report drew on more than 250,000 internal company documents.

In his article, Krumholz calls for an end to secrecy and intimidation in pharmaceutical research. He calls for all studies conducted on a drug to be made public for independent review once that drug secures FDA approval. He calls for an end to company interference in the studies they finance, and an end to intimidation of academics who question drugs' safety.

"The free flow of information about the effects of drugs . . . will best serve the public's interest," he concludes.

Sources for this story include: http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/24/di....

A healthy diet cuts Alzheimer's risk by 40 percent

(NaturalNews) A recent study conducted by researchers at Columbia University in New York has found that people who eat a diet rich in olive oil, fish, nuts, poultry, and fruits and vegetables, lower their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by 40 percent.

Dr. Yian Gu, one of the researchers involved in the study, commented on what most in the natural health community already know. "Diet is probably the easiest way to modify disease risk," she explained concerning the research.

In comparison to other Alzheimer's studies that focus on isolated nutrients, this study focused on food groups that are commonly associated with lowering Alzheimer's disease risk. These include brain-boosting foods that are rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, B vitamins, folate and vitamin E.

"People who adhered mostly to this dietary pattern compared to others have about a 40 percent reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease," explained Gu in a Reuters interview.

The team evaluated more than 2,100 people over the age of 65 for about four years. Every 18 months, they checked patients for Alzheimer's disease, and they discovered that those who ate best were least likely to have developed the illness.

People in the healthier category ate less red meat and dairy products, and more fruits, nuts, fish, cruciferous vegetables, and dark, leafy greens.

The researchers determined that a heart-healthy diet protects the brain from strokes, which in turn protect people from developing Alzheimer's disease. The isolated nutrients also work to promote brain health and protect it from degenerative disease.

The researchers did insist the diet only works preventatively and that there is no cure for Alzheimer's, however other research seems to indicate that high doses of certain nutrients and foods may actually reverse the serious form of dementia that afflicts more than 26 million people around the world.

Some of the things that are commonly attributed to causing Alzheimer's include aluminum in anti-perspirant deodorants, artificial nitrates and nitrites added to meat, food additives and preservatives like MSG, and foods in general that are high in bad fats and processed sugars.

Eating a Mediterranean diet like the one evaluated in the study is a good start, but there are additional ways to help ensure that you never get Alzheimer's disease. Some examples include juicing fresh, organic fruits and vegetables everyday and supplementing your diet with a wide variety of antioxidant-rich superfoods.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...

Kangaroos being poisoned by fluoride

(NaturalNews) Hundreds of kangaroos have been euthanized due to acute fluoride poisoning in the Australian state of Victoria, the country's Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has announced.

The poisonings appear to be occurring due to emissions of fluoride from the Alcoa aluminum smelter at Portland and the Austral Bricks factory at Craigieburn, the state's first and second biggest emitters of fluoride dust, respectively. According to Bruce Dawson of the EPA, the toxic chemical is being absorbed by nearby plants that kangaroos and other animals forage on. The animals may also be breathing in the chemical directly.

The levels of fluoride being emitted by Alcoa and Austral are fully legal under Australian law. The smelter emits 120 tons of the dust per year, while the factory emits 66 tons.

Fluoride can produce discoloration and deformity of teeth and bones, a problem known as "fluorosis" that has been well documented in cattle and humans. According to the Sunday Age, more than 200 kangaroos in Victoria have been euthanized after suffering from lameness caused by fluorosis.

The EPA was first alerted to the problem in 2005, although wildlife workers had noticed lameness in kangaroos in the area as early as 2001. According to Jenny Charles of Melbourne University, 90 percent of 130 kangaroos living near the Alcoa smelter showed signs of dental fluorosis, and 25 percent had visible lumps in their legs or arms.

Forty-eight of 49 kangaroos autopsied after being culled from the smelter area in a single day were suffering from excessive bone growth and lesions on their ankles, calves and paws.

''They were in real pain,'' said wildlife shelter operator Manfred Zabinskas, recounting his horror at seeing so many sick kangaroos.

Although the kangaroos at the brick factory site had lower levels of fluoride in their bodies, their fluorosis symptoms were even worse than those seen near the smelter.

Sources for this story include: www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02... www.theage.com.au/victoria/roos-vic....

McDonald's threatened with lawsuit over toys in Happy Meals

(NaturalNews) The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is planning to sue fast-food giant McDonald's if the company does not comply with its demands to remove toys from "Happy Meals". CSPI claims that marketing unhealthy food with toys is contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic and should be stopped immediately.

The announcement by CSPI comes just weeks after a California county banned not only toys but all other promotions aimed at children that involve McDonald's Happy Meals. By doing this, the county believes that children will be less attracted to fatty foods that are high in salt and calories.

According to the same article, back in April, Santa Clara County, California, also banned toy promotions from fast food meals sold in unincorporated parts of the county.

Spokesmen from McDonald's denied that Happy Meals are inherently unhealthy, citing the fact that the meals are of an appropriate size and that children have the option to swap out the fries and soda for apples and juice. They also explained that giving away toys with children's meals is part of the fun of a family dining experience.

Since 2008 when apples were first introduced as an option in Happy Meals, customers have ordered them more than 100 million times, illustrating that when given healthier options, customers often choose them for their children instead.

But those opposed to the toys insist that including them in Happy Meals is contributing directly to the obesity epidemic because it makes the generally unhealthy meals highly attractive to children who do not know any better.

And while acknowledging that parents ultimately bear the responsibility of controlling their children's food choices, CSPI believes that using toys to lure kids into McDonald's is so powerful and "predatory" as a form of marketing that parents often have a difficult time resisting their children's nagging

Still others say that placing heavy restrictions on what McDonald's can include in Happy Meals may be a bit severe and overbearing, and that it will do little to effectively reverse the nation's obesity epidemic.

Some are even suggesting a compromise in which McDonald's limit its new toy offerings to once a month rather than once a week, in order to reduce the number of times children want to go to McDonald's to get a new toy.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.latimes.com/news/health/...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ch...

To save America's health, we must end nutritional illiteracy among doctors, patients

(NaturalNews) An obese doctor comes home to his wife at dinner time carrying yet another bag full of drive-through junk food from a local restaurant.

Worried about his health, his wife asks, "Don't you realize all that junk food you keep eating is destroying your entire body?"

"That's not my concern," the doctor replies. "I'm only an ear, nose and throat specialist."

This joke illustrates an important point: That even the most brilliant scientists, doctors and researchers can seem downright clueless when it comes to their own health. And this joke isn't really a joke at all: It's a sad but true commentary about the blind spots in the knowledge of those who are among society's most intelligent thinkers.

I've known many brilliant people. Even a few geniuses. But rarely do I meet anyone whose knowledge of food and nutrition rises very far above outright ignorance. Perhaps one in a hundred people in the western world today have taken it upon themselves to actually learn about foods and health -- the rest simply wing it, going along with the mainstream. (And the mainstream is diseased...)

Brilliance in one field doesn't always translate into nutrition

But here's the really interesting part: The more intelligent a person is in their own field of specialty, the more informed they think they are about foods and nutrition (even if they aren't). A typical rocket scientist, for example, is so used to being right that when it comes to his dietary decisions and food shopping habits, he thinks he is right by the mere fact that he is the one making his food consumption decisions. Because he's always right, then whatever decision he makes -- whether it deals with food, finances or relationships -- must also be the right decision.

Making matters even worse, really smart people are especially susceptible to strategies of non-conscious persuasion -- such as those used by food advertisers. Food companies don't appeal to logic and reason when advertising their junk foods because there really isn't much logic or reason behind consuming their products at all. Instead, they use emotional anchoring to unconsciously attach feelings to brands. That way, when you're in the store shopping, you unconsciously experience a preference for a particular product or brand without knowing why.

This gets the smart people every time, it seems. They may have superior logic and intellect compared to the rest of the world, but when you examine their grocery store receipts, they're buying all the same junk as the guy with an IQ of 70 who lives next door.

Having brains, it seems, doesn't necessarily translate into making good decisions about food and health. And yet these people should know better.

Food and consequences

Most scientists, doctors and high-IQ people believe in The Law of Cause and Effect. Every action (a cause) results in some reaction (an effect). Every input has an output.

Most people acknowledge this universal truth, and yet when it comes to foods and health, there's a bizarre disconnect about this. People have been trained by the big food companies -- and even government regulators to a large extent -- that what they choose to eat has almost no bearing on their health outcomes. The establishment would rather have you believe that your genes control your health while glossing over the far more important point that it is your diet that controls the expression of your genes.

They would rather ignore the truthful fact that vitamin D prevents infectious disease 500% better than a vaccine because this allows them to promote vaccines rather than teach nutritional responsibility. Even mainstream dieticians from the American Dietetic Association are taught that there is no difference between dead foods and living foods. A calorie is a calorie, they're taught, no matter where it comes from or whether it's in a plant from Mother Nature or a sugar factory made by Man.

The nutritional ignorance in our culture is astounding, and as long as such ignorance remains so widespread, we will never achieve a health care system that's both effective and affordable. As long as our doctors remain nutritionally illiterate, we will never have a health care system that values educating patients about what they put in their mouths.

Ignorance is the enemy of lasting health, and sadly our own government institutions such as the FDA maintain policies of enforced ignorance that outlaw companies selling natural products from linking to scientific studies that discuss the health benefits of their products. Everything from cherries, green tea and walnuts have been under relentless attacks by the FDA, which threatens company founders with arrest and prosecution unless they remove their website links that point to scientific studies published in peer-reviewed science journals. (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html)

One important victory over FDA censorship has just been achieved in the courts (http://www.naturalnews.com/028929_F...), but the FDA's campaign of enforced ignorance continues.

Even our public schools reinforce nutritional illiteracy among our children. While nearly everyone agrees it's important to teach our children how to read, write and understand math and science, there is no real effort to teach children how to feed themselves in a healthy manner. Health class is a nutritional joke, and school lunch programs actually teach students precisely the wrong message by serving up dead, processed "institutional" foods that promote diabetes, cancer, heart disease and behavioral disorders. (You can also find McDonald's restaurants in many U.S. hospitals, by the way, but that's another story...)

Nutritional ignorance may be fantastic for generating obscene profits for the drug companies, but it's a terrible policy for public health. Americans will only achieve true lasting health when they are granted open access to truthful information about the healing capabilities of natural foods, superfoods, nutritonal supplements and herbal remedies.

Until that day comes, we will remain a nation locked in a cycle of ignorance and disease that will ultimately bankrupt us at every level. Nutrition can help us break that cycle, but only if we can get past the ignorance and unleash a new era of nutritional literacy for our people.

Read my related report, "Nutrition Can Save America!" for more details on how this might work: http://www.naturalnews.com/report_N...

And keep reading NaturalNews.com to stay informed. We'll keep bringing you more news about natural remedies, nutritional cures, and the dangers of synthetic chemicals.

If you'd like these stories brought to your attention via email, just subscribe to our free daily email newsletter using the subscription form below. It's free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

The total failure of modern psychiatry

(NaturalNews) Modern psychiatry went wrong when it embraced the idea that the mind should be treated with drugs, says Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

Shorter studies the history of psychiatry and medicine.

Modern U.S. psychiatry has adopted a philosophy that psychological diseases arise from chemical imbalances and therefore have a very specific cluster of symptoms, he says, in spite of evidence that the difference between many so-called disorders is minimal or nonexistent. These "disorders" are then treated with expensive drugs that are no more effective than a placebo.

"Psychiatry seems to have lost its way in a forest of poorly verified diagnoses and ineffectual medications," he writes.

Shorter calls for U.S. psychiatry to abandon its emphasis on "psychopathology" and instead adopt the European approach, which focuses on the symptoms and needs of people as individuals. Yet the draft of the latest edition of psychiatric diagnostic "Bible," the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), shows that U.S. psychiatry has no intention of changing course.

"With DSM-V, American psychiatry is headed in exactly the opposite direction: defining ever-widening circles of the population as mentally ill with vague and undifferentiated diagnoses and treating them with powerful drugs," Shorter writes.

U.S. psychiatry was not always obsessed with psychopharmacology, he notes. Its early years were marked by a psychoanalytic approach that categorized mental disorders in broad, fluid categories such as "nerves," "melancholia" or "manic-depressive illness." These categories sufficed because similar treatments would work for people suffering from any version thereof: lithium treated both mania and severe depression, for example, while the specific symptoms experienced by an anxious person had little influence on the therapies needed.

"Our psychopathological lingo today offers little improvement on these sturdy terms," Shorter said. "A patient with the same symptoms today might be told he has 'social anxiety disorder' or 'seasonal affective disorder.' ... The new disorders all respond to the same drugs, so in terms of treatment, the differentiation is meaningless and of benefit mainly to pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for these niches."

In the 1950s and '60s, a new wave of psychiatrists sought to turn away from psychoanalysis -- perceiving it as focusing excessively on "unconscious psychic conflicts" -- and toward a more "scientific" model instead. As a result, the DSM-III introduced the vague new categories of "major depression" and "bipolar disorder," even though evidence suggests that there is no substantial difference between the two conditions. At the same time, "major depression" absorbed what Shorter calls two very different conditions, "neurotic depression" and "melancholia."

"This would be like incorporating tuberculosis and mumps into the same diagnosis, simply because they are both infectious diseases," he writes.

DSM-V only continues the trend of extending the disordered label to more and more normal people, Shorter warns: "To flip through the latest draft of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in the works for seven years now, is to see the discipline's floundering writ large."

For example, the new disorder of "psychosis risk syndrome" associates a whole new class of people with full-blown schizophrenia, under the logic, Shorter says, that "even if you aren't floridly psychotic with hallucinations and delusions, eccentric behavior can nonetheless awaken the suspicion that you might someday become psychotic." The implication, of course, is that such people should be treated with antipsychotics.

Symptoms of "psychosis risk syndrome" include such vague descriptors as "disorganized speech."

Other new "disorders" include hoarding, mixed anxiety-depression and binge eating. "Minor neurocognitive disorder" describes a reduction in cognitive function over time, such as that normally experienced by people over the age of 50, while "temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria" refers to children who suffer from outbursts of temper.

"DSM-V accelerates the trend of making variants on the spectrum of everyday behavior into diseases," Shorter says, "turning grief into depression, apprehension into anxiety, and boyishness into hyperactivity."

Sources for this story include: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100....

Texas leads the pack in wind power generation

(NaturalNews) The race to develop alternative energy sources to offset traditional ones has been intensifying as states look to take advantage of federal incentives. Wind energy in particular is quickly becoming a hot new market, and none other than Texas is ahead of the game in this particular sector.

Texas tops Iowa, Washington and California in wind energy generation, harboring a capacity of nearly 10,000 megawatts in 2009. According to data, roughly five percent of Texas energy is now produced by wind, an impressive statistic considering that it has been achieved in less than a decade.

When Texas first deregulated electricity in 1999, it established a requirement that 2,000 megawatts of power be derived from wind by 2009. It was the first state to make such a move. Texas achieved – and exceeded – this goal by 2005, and is set to reach production of 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2025.

Texas' Public Utility Commission is currently working on constructing a matrix of new transmission lines across the state that will accommodate the full capacity of the state's wind power potential. Since the grid can only handle a certain amount of wind energy in its current format, the system has to be expanded in order to handle the load.

The network is expected to be finished sometime between 2013 and 2015, and by the time it reaches completion, it will be able to handle up to 18,000 megawatts of wind power at its peak output.

But because wind energy can be fickle, literally "changing with the wind," it is difficult to rely solely on it for energy production. But Texas is forging the way in developing technologies that help to forecast the weather and control the storage of wind energy to accommodate changing weather patterns.

Interestingly, Texas is having considerable success with wind because it cut itself off from the rest of the nation during the New Deal of the 1930s. While other states were partnering to share energy and transmission lines with one another, Texas exempted itself from partnerships and remained independent.

Other energy providers in Texas are not so pleased with the success of wind power, particularly because it is heavily subsidized by federal grants that keep it artificially inexpensive. Many of them, including natural gas providers, are having a tough time competing and think that wind energy should have to survive on its own without the need for subsidies.

They also believe that wind energy providers should help pay for the cost of meeting reserve requirements when the wind is not blowing. Basically, the consensus is that the wind industry should have to abide by the same standards as everyone else in the energy sector.

The good news is that legislators are working with the industry to establish fair guidelines that will keep everyone happy and allow for the continued growth of clean, renewable energy.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/0...

Lawsuit likely over 'baby DNA' being secretly stored in military database

(NaturalNews) A civil rights lawyer is threatening to sue the Texas Department of State Health Services for secretly handing over genetic data on 800 newborns to the U.S. military for a law enforcement database.

Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, only recently settled a lawsuit with the department for collecting the DNA in the first place without parents' consent. After it became known that hospitals were taking blood samples from the heels of newborn infants and storing them indefinitely, Harrington and four parents took the state to court over unlawful search and seizure. The case was settled when the department agreed to destroy 5.3 million blood samples.

After the case became public, the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring health workers to inform parents before taking such blood samples, giving them a chance to opt out.

According to Harrington, the Department of Health Services never admitted during negotiations that any off-site use had been made of the blood samples.

"I can't tell you how many times we sat there, and they said no law enforcement," Harrington said. "They said, 'It's only about medical research, it's only about medical research."

"This is the worst case of bad faith I have dealt with as a lawyer," he said.

Recently, however, the Texas Tribune discovered information on the department's web site indicating that 800 of the samples had been sent (without identifying information) to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory database project.

The genetic material might help identify "ethnic or ancestral origins of unidentified corpses using mitochondrial DNA," said department spokesperson Carrie Williams, defending the decision to participate in the program. "We believed it was an important research project that could potentially help in missing persons cases."

Regarding why no one was notified that DNA collected without consent was being sent to the military, she said, "We don't publicize every agency initiative or contract, and obviously this is a sensitive topic."

Harrington has threatened another lawsuit unless the samples are destroyed.

Sources for this story include: www.statesman.com/news/texas-politi....

Bill Gates now pushing genetically modified seeds in Africa

(NaturalNews) By now, almost everyone is aware of the out-of-control oil spill down in the Gulf of Mexico that seems to be getting exponentially worse with each passing day. But what people may not know is that BP's efforts to control the oil by burning it are actually burning alive a certain rare and endangered species of sea turtle.

For several weeks now, rescue crews have been feverishly trying to save Kemp's Ridleys sea turtles, as well as four other endangered varieties, from being caught in the oil corral areas that are being intentionally burned by BP, but according to Mike Ellis, one of the boat captains involved in the project, BP has now blocked all such rescue efforts from taking place.

"They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there," he explained in an interview with Catherine Craig, a conservation biologist.

According to Dr. Brian Stacy, a veterinarian with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are five different endangered sea turtles living in the Gulf that are all at risk, but the type being found "dead or covered in oil" the most is the Kemp's Ridleys variety, which is the rarest species of them all.

So why would BP intentionally block rescue efforts aimed at protecting and saving wildlife and other endangered species from being burned alive in controlled burning pits? For starters, the Kemp's Ridleys sea turtle is listed in the Endangered Species Act, which means there are severe penalties for those who harm or kill them.

According to the law, harming or killing even one animal on the endangered species list can result in a fine of up to $50,000 and may include prison time. This means that the hundreds, or even thousands, of endangered sea turtles being burned alive by BP are going to cost the company a lot of money, not to mention the prison time its executives might have to serve.

At this point, it is difficult to determine exactly how many sea turtles are being, or have been, destroyed by BP because access to the pits has ceased, but crews are doing what they can to keep track of the animals they do know of to be sure that BP is held responsible in the end.

Sources for this story include:

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0620/bp...

http://news.gather.com/viewArticle....

New research: probiotic found in breast milk benefits nerves in gut, calms digestive disorders

(NaturalNews) Meat allergies may be much more common than previously thought and may even induce potentially fatal anaphylaxis in some people, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Virginia and presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in New Orleans.

The researchers tested three groups of people across the U.S. Southeast with a history of recurrent anaphylaxis without known cause for an immune reaction to alpha-gal, a kind of sugar found in mammal meat.

Although most allergic reactions are caused by proteins, scientists recently discovered that alpha-gal is responsible for anaphylactic reactions to cetuximab, a cancer drug. Further studies revealed that people who experience immune responses to alpha-gal also develop allergic symptoms within three to six hours of eating mammalian meat.

Alpha-gal is not found in the flesh of bird or fish.

The researchers found that between 20 and 50 percent of participants tested positive for allergy to alpha-gal. Overall, 25 of 60 participants (42 percent) showed signs of meat allergy.

Although doctors have known of meat allergies for some time, they have previously presumed them to be uncommon. The new study suggests that as many as half of all unexplained food allergies may be attributed to meat, however.

"This would make me personally think about including these foods in my differential diagnosis," said Michael Pistiner of Children's Hospital Boston, who was not involved in the study.

Meat allergies may be harder to detect than other food allergies because it takes the body three to six hours to produce a reaction to alpha-gal. They also tend to develop in adults rather than children, in contrast to most food allergies.

Although the study only looked at patients suffering the most severe reactions, co-author Scott. P. Commins noted that alpha-gal allergies probably occur in a wide variety of severities, just like other allergies.

Sources for this story include: http://www.businessweek.com/lifesty... http://www.emaxhealth.com/1275/74/3... http://www.medpagetoday.com/Meeting....

Eating meat may cause severe allergic reactions in some people

(NaturalNews) Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms similar to the "friendly" bacteria found naturally in the body's digestive system. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), there's evidence from a variety of studies that probiotic formulations can help treat diarrhea, urinary tract infections, irritable bowel syndrome and dermatitis (eczema) in children; probiotics may reduce the recurrence of bladder cancer, too.

Now Canadian researchers have published research in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) journal that explains why certain strains of probiotics are particularly soothing to indigestion related problems. It turns out the probiotic strain Lactobacillus reuteri, which occurs in the gut of many mammals and is found in human breast milk, immediately and directly affects nerves in the gut.

For their study, scientist Wolfgang Kunze of the McMaster Brain-Body Institute and Department of Psychiatry at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Ontario, Canada, and his research team took isolated pieces of small intestine removed from healthy and previously untreated mice. Then they added Lactobacillus reuteri to a warm salt solution which was sent flowing through the lumen, or hollow part, of the intestine. The pressure caused by natural contractions in the intestine sections was measured before, during and after adding the probiotic-containing solution. The scientists tested the electrical activity of single intestinal sensory nerve cells, as well.

The results? The researchers documented that the force of muscle contractions in the gut tissue decreased within minutes of exposure to the probiotic solution. This discovery explains why intake of probiotics can often alleviate symptoms of a whole host of digestive disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease and constipation.

"Scientifically and evidence-based approaches to nutrition to correct potential bacterial imbalance in the intestine and thereby promote better health could possibly restore health in diseases associated with these imbalances," Kunze said in a statement to the media.

This is the latest of a growing body of research backing up what many natural health advocates have said for decades -- probiotics (which can be found in supplements and in many foods including yogurt, kefir, fermented and unfermented milk, miso and tempeh, as well as breast milk) can promote health and protect from illness. For example, as NaturalNews previously reported, researchers have found that taking probiotics may help people lose excess weight (http://www.naturalnews.com/028023_i...). And a study published in the journal Postgraduate Medicine concluded that taking probiotics regularly boosts the immune system in a specific way which helps the body fight off flu infections (http://www.naturalnews.com/026265_p...).

Editor's note: NaturalNews is opposed to the use of animals in medical experiments that expose them to harm. We present these findings in protest of the way in which they were acquired.

For more information:
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/a...
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/probiotics/

BP is burning rare sea turtles alive, blocking efforts to save them

(NaturalNews) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to throw its support behind risky genetically modified (GM) seeds as a means for feeding hungry Africans, ignoring safer and more reliable technologies that already exist.

Not long after publicly blaming GM critics for prolonging hunger in Africa, Gates announced that his foundation is partnering with DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred to develop higher yield GM strains of corn. Two years ago, the Gates Foundation also partnered with Monsanto to develop drought-tolerant GM corn.

The companies claim that these GM seeds will be delivered to small farmers free of charge. Yet Monsanto says its drought-tolerant corn will not be ready until 2012, at which point it will be introduced into the commercial market. It will not be made available to poor African farmers until 2016.

Pioneer is using conventional (non-GM) breeding techniques to produce higher yielding corn by 2014. There is no projected date for when a GM version of this new strain will be developed.

"It's hard not to think that Monsanto, Dupont and their ilk are turning into the Bernie Madoff of agriculture," writes "Grist" blogger Tom Laskawy. "Convince gullible foundations along with the federal government to send billions in research dollars their way based on a promise of magically awesome results. Sometime down the road, of course."

As Laskawy notes, the Nigeria National Variety Release Committee has already developed -- without the use of biotechnology -- various new corn strains that are resistant to drought, pests, disease, and poor soil fertility. These conventionally bred seeds do not pose any of the well-documented risks of GM crops, such as toxic health and environmental effects; the production of "super-weeds" and contamination of organic crops through cross-pollination; increased pesticide use; or encouraging monocultures and a loss of seed diversity.

"If only Bill Gates, not to mention USDA Chief Tom Vilsack or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would spend some of their money getting those Nigerian seeds into farmers' hands today," Laskawy writes. "Instead, they'd prefer to funnel billions of dollars to biotech giants because, well, 2016 isn't really so long to wait."

Sources for this story include: www.grist.org/article/gates-foundat....

WHO to tax your internet usage to fund vaccines in third-world countries

(NaturalNews) The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing hard to impose global consumer taxes to help fund its various programs, including a new proposal that would tax the internet in order to pay for vaccines and other pharmaceutical medicines for third-world countries. Yes, you read that right - WHO wants every person in the world to help pay for drugs that make Big Pharma even richer.

Consider it a reverse Robin Hood ploy: They're stealing from the working class and giving to the ultra wealthy drug companies!

Of course this isn't the first time the UN has petitioned governments around the world to illegally tax citizens in order to further its own agenda. This body of unelected officials tried to push "cap and trade" legislation for supposed climate change just last year (but failed to do so because many countries simply refused the idea).

In the current scheme, WHO appointed a so-called panel of "medical experts" to prepare a report highlighting various financing ideas that would fund all the projects WHO is trying to accomplish in the world. One of those ideas is to have governments tax internet usage in their countries and give the money to WHO for "medical research and development" in poorer, developing countries. (This is code-speak for unlawfully pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of Big Pharma in the name of charity).

An executive summary of the report is available at:
(http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf...)

Other ideas for funding include taxing people when they make financial transactions like paying bills online or withdrawing cash, as well as taxing the international arms trade. WHO also threw in the idea of possibly having governments voluntarily contribute (which is actually the only somewhat legitimate idea in the report, considering the U.N. has no legal power over any sovereign nation to force it to pay global taxes).

As usual, the entire proposal is blanketed in expressed concern for the health of people from poorer nations who don't have access to the same medical treatments as people from richer nations. Although this may sound nice and good in theory, the real agenda here is to transfer wealth from the people of developed nations to the U.N. and then to either wealthy drug companies or the corrupt governments of poorer nations. The everyday people of these poor nations will receive little to no actual benefit from the tax money (other than the vaccinations that will be forced on them, if you consider that a benefit).

WHO wants to control the world's health

On page 8 of WHO's Executive Summary for its proposals, there's an interesting statement about WHO's global health agenda. When speaking about its more than 90 proposals for obtaining funding, the organization reveals that it also wants to restructure the global health system and place itself in control.

"[The proposals] include proposed structures to centralize, manage and disburse funds to health research and development," it states, adding that in order to do this, it would need funding and certain "mechanisms" in place first.

WHO basically wants all nations to give up their sovereignty, particularly in terms of medical research and development, and hand it over to them so they can distribute "health" as they see fit. Nobody else will have a say in the matter as WHO will be the sole health care authority in the world. This matches perfectly with the UN's agenda of world domination through other means (blue helmet military forces, for example).

If WHO's funding and control dreams were to come true, most of the tax money it received would probably end up in the pockets of WHO officials, corrupt third-world country governments and dictators, and Big Pharma executives. Whatever is left over will be used to pay for pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, both of which actually harm the local environments in any country where they are used due to their chemical runoff impacts on aquatic ecosystems.

Global taxes are illegal in the U.S.

According to the U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, only the U.S. Congress has the power to collect taxes. In fact, there's a whole list of what taxes can be collected for, and there's no mention of funding a global entity that wants to control health care (nor is there any mention of nationalized health care at all, for that matter).

Then again, since when did any presidents or political leaders in the United States actually honor the Constitution they swore to protect? What we have in Washington today is not a band of dedication Constitution defenders but rather Constitution destroyers who seem determined to hand over our sovereignty to some global authority as quickly as they can pull it off.

What WHO is trying to do is not only illegal in the U.S., but detrimental to real health care worldwide. It will not bring true health to the poor, but rather drugs, vaccines and other patented chemicals that make a few people rich but everyone else poorer and more dependent on medical intervention for years to come.

Notice that the WHO plan doesn't try to bring nutrition to poor nations? Feeding those people some vitamin D, vitamin C and plant-based nutrients would do more to end sickness and disease (including infectious disease) than any vaccine or pharmaceutical. It would also be significantly less expensive. But nothing in the WHO's world domination agenda includes anything about nutrition. It seems that nutrition has no place in the WHO's vision of the world -- it's all about chemicals and vaccines.

That's the world they want to force upon us: A world where you and I are taxed to pay for the mass poisoning of populations around the world with toxic pharmaceuticals and dangerous vaccines. Remember, the WHO is the same organization that fronted a false pandemic because its health advisors are on the take from the pharmaceutical industry. The WHO is essentially being bribed by Big Pharma to push an agenda that benefits only Big Pharma, not the people. And the only reason they're now trying to tax you and I to pay for all this is because the profit margin on drugs and vaccines is so ridiculously high that working people even poor nations can't afford to pay for these items themselves. Instead of lowering the prices on their medicines, they're trying to force a tax upon everybody else.

The WHO, much like the FDA, is operated as a criminal racket. And like any criminal racket, they want to force everybody to pay them as much money as possible. It's like a mob-style shakedown: Pay up or else! Things might be different if they were using the money to fund vitamin D nutrition programs or genuine nutritional education programs in poor nations, but those ideas aren't even on their radar. They are 100% fixated upon the Big Pharma agenda of drugging everyone on the planet while pocketing obscene cash profits at the same time.

Do your part to demand that the USA resist WHO domination over health care, and speak out against any global internet tax that would be used to inject viral fragments into the bodies of people who live in poor nations.

Suzy Cohen joins NaturalNews Talk Hour to reveal secrets of healthy living without Big Pharma's drugs

(NaturalNews) This week's NaturalNews Talk Hour presents "Drug FREE Living - Natural Solutions without Medications". Get advice, options, and amazing cures from America's most trusted pharmacist. Discover the natural secrets for total body health from behind the counter. Look younger, feel healthier, plus save time and money with NO doctor required!

Our show begins this Thursday evening at 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern, and registration is FREE. Simply enter your email address in the registration form on the right column of this page and you'll receive call-in details for the show.

Click Here - Meet Our Guest (video).

Thanks for the wonderful work you guys are doing! - Carole

What Are "Drug Muggers"?

An over-the-counter, prescribed medication, food, herb or lifestyle choice that is capable of robbing your body's natural stores of an important vitamin, mineral or hormone. For example, bone-building drugs are drug muggers of calcium and smoking is a drug mugger of vitamin C.

According to Dr. Samuel Cohen, "The drug mugging effect is real. It's not a debatable thing that scientists are still trying to figure out. Should you care? You bet your life! Even though studies regarding the drug mugging effect have been published in peer-reviewed journals for many years, millions of people have suffered anyway."

Click Here - Meet Our Guest (video).

Jonathan Landsman, Host of the Talk Hour says, "This will be one of the most important shows of the year. Too many people are completely unaware of the threat posed by conventional medicine, food and alike. If you or someone you know takes medicine for any reason - don't miss this program!"

Did YOU Get Mugged by a Drug?

Hundreds of popular medications are dangers to our health, such as oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapies, statin cholesterol reducers, blood pressure drugs plus many more. These drugs can make you feel weak, fatigued, short of breath, even cause heart problems. If you think your medication is hurting you - seek alternative therapies with a trusted, health care provider - as soon as possible.

This week's guest: Suzy Cohen, America's Most Trusted Pharmacist

Suzy Cohen - "Drug FREE Living - Natural Solutions without Medications" Thu. June 24th

Suzy Cohen, RPh has been a pharmacist for 22 years and knows the power of medicine. She's dubbed "America's Most Trusted Pharmacist" because of her fearless attitude and willingness to inform consumers about natural health options.

Suzy is the author of "Dear Pharmacist" a syndicated health column which she has been writing for 13 years. It appears in newspapers nationwide, and you can get it to your email by signing up for her newsletter at DearPharmacist.com.

Don't Miss Out! Connect with other NaturalNews readers, prepare to become inspired and have fun with us. Space is limited. Be sure to call a few minutes early to reserve your spot on the show. Register now using the email form in the right column, and you will be emailed show details. Register Now!

Loja and Vilcabamba, Ecuador: Destinations for health-conscious people

(NaturalNews) Are you a health-conscious person looking to visit the Valley of Longevity in Ecuador? The small town of Vilcabamba sits in that valley, just 45km South of the city of Loja. For people who are new to the area, it's sometimes difficult to know where to find healthy foods and products, so here's a quick guide for visitors:

In Loja, you'll want to stop at the health food store called Alivinatu. Located just half a block East of the Southeast corner of the Loja town square, Alivinatu offers fresh juices, soy burgers for lunch, nutritional supplements, herbal medicines, vitamins and even a health spa on the second floor.

It's not quite a Whole Foods, but it's the closest thing you'll find in Loja. The owners and staff are friendly, too. Prices are a bit on the steep side for Ecuador, but they aren't terrible.

Just 1-2 blocks down the street to the East of Alivinatu, you'll find another juice store with much better pricing (and no crowds). I don't recall the name, but it's on the same side of the street as Alivinatu and has a large yellow sign with a sun symbol on it. They offer fresh fruit juices, carrot juice and other medicinal juices. Service is frustratingly slow, even when it's not busy, but the owners are friendly and you can chat with them while they're working on your order.

Looking for fresh fruit and nuts? You'll want to visit the Frutaria on 18 de Noviembre. No, that's not a date, it's a street name. Ecuadorians often name their streets after famous holidays. I don't know what happened on the 18th of November, but it was a significant date in Ecuador's history.

In any case, if you head South from the main town square on 18 de Noviembre, you'll pass a street market area on your right. A few blocks later (to the South), you'll reach the furniture district. On the left side of the street, look for a small green awning and the word "Frutaria." Inside, you'll find a tiny shop that's jam packed with fresh fruits and nuts. The owner is talkative, and once he realizes you're actually spending some money there, he'll treat you to all sorts of free samples. Here are some of the amazing items you can find in this store:

• Organically grown hydroponic tomatoes from a local grower in Loja.
• Pitahaya cactus fruit grown on the owner's own farm in Vilcabamba.
• Almonds, macadamia nuts and pistachios.
• Pineapples, papayas, babaco fruits, mangos and berries.
• Flax seeds, flour, corn meal and other staples.
• Dried figs, dates and other fruits.

It's a wonderful shop with an impressive variety of foods considering how small it is. Service isn't speedy, but the selection is fantastic, and visiting this shop gives you a chance to practice more Spanish, too.

The local grocery store

Continuing South on 18 de Noviembre, you'll shortly arrive at Super Maxi on your left. This is the main grocery store for the town. While it's not a health food store, there are nonetheless many items you can find there that are quite healthy.

In the fresh produce section, of course, you can find everything from cactus fruit to blackberries. They usually have a good selection of avocados, citrus fruit and vegetables. You'll pay a lot for apples (because they're imported from Chile), and you can find avocados at half the price in Vilcabamba, but if you want the convenience of everything in one place, check out Super Maxi.

Near the cereal section, you can also find quinoa flakes. In the peanut butter section, check out the local, Ecuadorian-made peanut butter. It's non-hydrogenated.

Raw, local honey

In Malecatos, the town just North of Vilcabamba, you can find raw local honey! It's not easy, though: You have to ask around. Just ask for "miel de abejas" which means "honey of bees." People can point you in the right direction. Eventually, you'll end up at a house where a guy is selling small plastic containers of honey out of his living room. I paid something around $3.50 per pint container, I believe. It seemed like a reasonable price, but prices always vary depending on how good your Spanish is.

Healthy food in Vilcabamba

Virtually every restaurant around Vilcabamba serves fresh, raw fruit juices. You can also get Tomate de Arbol, which is a "tree tomato" fruit that's actually not a tomato, but it sort of tastes like one. (I like this juice a lot.)

There are several good restaurants around town, too. Sambuca Cafe is right on the town square, and you can get some good salads there. Papaya's Cafe, owned by an American, is a great destination for healthy food in a really fun atmosphere (nice decorations, too!). The La Roca restaurant, located two blocks North of the town square (next to the police station) is owned by an Ecuadorian family from Cuenca. They offer a nice Sunday brunch, and at times they have live music on Friday or Saturday nights.

Just one block to the East of the main square, you'll find a vegetarian restaurant, and a few miles South of town, you can enjoy the kitchen of the Hosteria Izhcayluma. On the other side of town, the North side on the way to Loja, you can find Madre Tierra which has a nice kitchen, too. In that same direction, you'll also find the Hosteria Vilcabamba which offers a very nice fruit plate and some fresh juices.

Sunday markets

And then, of course, you always have the Sunday markets, both in Vilcabamba and Malecatos. In these markets, you can often buy a huge quantity of fresh fruits like mangos, papaya, oranges, etc. My friend Matt likes to buy 40 - 50 mangoes, then he takes them home, dices them and freezes the chunks for use in smoothies.

You can also find fresh coconuts from time to time, depending on what's available. Ask around for fresh cocos and you might get lucky.

Now, all the fresh produce available at the Sunday markets is not necessarily organic (even if they tell you it is). Pesticides are used in Ecuador, and some local farmers in the Valley of Longevity are definitely using pesticides. So you have to be careful about your sources. Or better yet, grow your own...

Growing your own

The best way to get healthy food in the Valley of Longevity is to grow your own. That's what I've been doing for most of the past two years, and the food production capability of the region is downright legendary. I'm convinced it is among the very most land on the planet for producing large quantities of food year-round.

The really amazing thing about growing food in Vilcabamba is that you can plant garden veggies any day of the year. So you can grow and harvest carrots, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes and other similar plants every single day of the year. There are no cold seasons: It's Spring-like weather year round!

There are a few properties for sale right now in the deep topsoil area of the Hacienda San Joaquin, located just outside the town of Vilcabamba. One piece of land is 2.5 acres selling for five figures. Another piece is 20 acres selling for mid six figures (it has a house, a working well, massive gardens and a young orchard). A third piece is smaller but is a world-class estate with tennis courts, indoor pool, a 5,000 square foot house and more. It's selling in the low seven figures.

If you're interested in any of these, email us at vilcaland@gmail.com and let us know what interests you. We'll forward your email to the correct party where you can see photos and a full description of various properties that might interest you. You can see some pictures of my own food production property here: http://www.naturalnews.com/Valley-o...

Growing your own food in Ecuador is ridiculously easy, and we used neem oil, tobacco juice and pepper juice as our organic pesticides. They worked great! The irrigation water is FREE (since it comes from your own well), and labor is extremely affordable, too. If you do visit Vilcabamba, be sure to check out the properties that are available -- and be sure to check the soils at each property, because soil quality varies widely throughout the valley. Some areas are mostly rocks, other are deep top soil. So you have to check before you buy.

Again, contact us at vilcaland@gmail.com if you're interested in food production land there.

Enjoy Loja, Vilcabamba and the Valley of Longevity!

Dr. Oz under fire for endorsing alternative views about health

(NaturalNews) Dr. Oz, from the popular The Dr. Oz Show, is drawing attention from some in the mainstream media and medical establishment who are critical of his acceptance of certain alternative points of view pertaining to health. According to them, Dr. Oz is lending credence to ideas that are "unsupported by science".

More than three-and-a-half million people tune in to Dr. Oz's daily television show, and his columns are published in magazines like Esquire and Time. He has a large following that appreciate the time he gives to differing points of view about health, and the fact that he is actually a doctor himself.

But the mainstream establishment is upset because they claim that only their point of view is correct, and that Dr. Oz is deviating from "accepted" science. According to them, Dr. Oz is peddling dangerous ideas when he and his guests suggest things like investigating the safety of certain vaccines or trying alternative methods to treat disease.

Spokesmen for Dr. Oz responded to the allegations by emphasizing that the goal of Oz's work is to offer his audience a variety of information from different sources and points of view so that they can make up their own minds about an issue. His web site even prioritizes topics based on popularity, pushing unpopular ones towards the bottom and bringing popular ones to the top.

But some do not agree with this independent approach.

"Science is not a democracy where people's votes decide what is right," explained Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Look at the data, look at science and make a decision based on science that has been published."

Oz's critics think it is irresponsible of him to warn new parents about the potential dangers of the rotavirus vaccine, which can cause a rare intestinal disorder called intussusception. They claim that because the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization all recommend the vaccine, that Oz is out of line for even questioning.

Oz has also dared to give airtime to authors, books and protocols that recommend natural, dietary change approaches to treating autism. This is a major no-no because such treatments are allegedly "unproven". Yet an article about this very subject remains at the number two slot on Oz's web site, indicating that people are very interested in hearing these ideas.

Interestingly, Dr. Oz is not necessarily pro-alternative medicine in every category. He simply allows for differing ideas to be heard by his viewers. But to the establishment, this is crossing the line and unacceptable.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl...