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.

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America infects the world with its false beliefs about mental illness

(NaturalNews) U.S. ideas of mental illness are spreading around the world, leading to an actual change in the kinds of mental disorders experienced in other cultures.

In contrast to the view held by modern psychiatry, the forms of madness have varied widely throughout space and time -- including such unique phenomena as "amok," in which men from certain Southeast Asian cultures would go into a murderous rage then forget about it; zar, in which Middle Easterners would experience dissociative episodes marked by laughing, shouting and singing; and a wave of leg paralysis that struck European women in the late 1800s.

"We might think of the culture as possessing a 'symptom repertoire' -- a range of physical symptoms available to the unconscious mind for the physical expression of psychological conflict," wrote Edward Shorter of the University of Toronto in his book Paralysis: The Rise and Fall of a 'Hysterical' Symptom.

Yet the standard manual for psychological diagnosis, the DSM-IV, crams all such conditions into five pages under the heading of "culture-bound syndromes." All other conditions in the book are presumed to be real, physical disorders independent of culture.

Evidence does not support this supposition, say a growing number of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. As evidence, they point to mental disorders such as anorexia, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that were once virtually unknown in most cultures and are now spreading rapidly as a direct consequence of their media portrayal. This was precisely what happened in Hong Kong in the 1990s, when media reports portraying anorexia in a Western fashion led to the near disappearance of the rare local version of the disorder and a huge increase in prevalence of the Western type.

Studies show that the Western "disease model" of mental illness is becoming more widely accepted worldwide. Yet they also show that the more people subscribe to the idea that the mentally ill have something wrong with their brains, the more frightened and harsh they become toward such people.

This may go a ways toward explaining why schizophrenics in Third World countries continue to cope much better over time than those in the First World.

Sources for this story include: www.nytimes.com.

Hemp History Week, a look back at America's hemp heritage

(NaturalNews) Let U.S. farmers grow hemp! This is the battle cry of those who recognize the value and history of hemp and lament the fact that domestic farmers have been unable to legally grow it for over 50 years. In an effort to change this, Vote Hemp and the Hemp Industries Association have announced May 17-23, 2010, as Hemp History Week, a time when patriotic Americans are encouraged to anchor and organize events in their hometown as part of a national grassroots, media and public education campaign about hemp.

Contrary to popular belief, hemp is not marijuana. At least not Cannabis sativa L., the kind that has been grown worldwide for food and industrial purposes for thousands of years. A look back at American history reveals that hemp was also widely grown and used by early Americans.

To set the record straight, cannabis sativa L. has no drug value. Its seed contains no tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of marijuana. Cannabis sativa L. will not cause a person who consumes it to test positive on a drug test. It is a completely different plant than the marijuana plant.

As far as functionality, there are literally thousands of uses for hemp. Its seed and oil are powerful superfoods and its fiber is useful in a host of various textile applications. For example, hemp is used to make clothing and paper, and is also used in composite door paneling, fiberboard and concrete foundations.

For food, hemp seeds are a rich source of highly-digestible essential fatty acids (EFAs), or omega-3s. In fact, they contain a perfectly balanced omega-6/omega-3 ratio of 1:3, which many believe is perfect for the human body. Hemp seeds have a nutty flavor similar to that of pine nuts, and they can be used in all sorts of food applications.

Hemp oil is delicious and nutritious as well. Unlike flax and fish oil, hemp oil is rich in Super Omega-3 Stearidonic Acid (SDA) and Super Omega-6 Gamma Linolenic Acid (GLA) which together help to reduce inflammation and improve mental functionality. These also assist in improving the metabolization of necessary fatty acids.

As opposed to cotton, which accounts for nearly 25 percent of the world's pesticide use in order to grow it, hemp requires no pesticides or agricultural chemicals in order to thrive. It is an entirely non-toxic, renewable resource that actually helps to suppress weeds and regenerate soil naturally. It is a favorite among farmers who use it as a rotation crop.

Back in the early days of America's founding, hemp was a commonly grown and used resource. America's hemp heritage includes the following little-known facts:

-Early laws in some American colonies actually required farmers to grow hemp.
-Many of our earliest presidents, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, all grew hemp.
-The American Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper.
-Abraham Lincoln used hemp seed oil to fuel the lamps in his home.
-The U.S.S. Constitution was rigged with 60 tons of hemp sails and rigging.
-In 1942, Henry Ford built an experimental car body out of hemp fiber, which is ten times stronger than steel.

Other interesting discoveries about hemp include a USDA bulletin published in 1916 that found that hemp produces four times more paper per acre than trees do. In 1938, Popular Mechanics published a piece about hemp called the "New Billion Dollar Crop" that explained how hemp could be used to manufacture over 25,000 different products, "from cellophane to dynamite".

Unfortunately, domestic hemp growing ceased in the 1950s due to misinformation and confusion about hemp's relation to marijuana. Around the same time, government incentives were launched that propped up the fossil-fuel plastics industry at the expense of the hemp industry. As a result, all the key hemp producers went bankrupt and hemp quickly became an industry of the past.

In recent years, however, the truth about hemp has been resurfacing. Following a 2004 Ninth Circuit Court decision that permanently protects the sale of hemp foods and body care products in the U.S., there have been major initiatives to once again allow hemp to be grown domestically. As it stands, nearly all of the hemp sold and used in the U.S. is imported from places like Canada, but many hope that will change.

In 2007, two North Dakota farmers were given licenses to grow hemp. This is the first time in over 50 years that hemp has been grown in the U.S., and it represents a shift back towards this valuable and environmentally-friendly crop. Hemp has the potential to revolutionize our economy and bring real prosperity back to America.

Most American farmers today raise subsidized crops like corn and soy, which generate less than $50 per acre in net profits. The average net profits for Canadian farmers who grow hemp in some cases is upwards of $500 per acre. If American farmers are once again permitted to grow hemp, and American industries are able to effectively use hemp for industrial purposes, the American landscape would change dramatically for the better. The possibilities are endless.

Please visit www.votehemp.com to learn more about hemp. Also, be sure to take a look at the information there about Hemp History Week and do your part to bring this nutritious, sustainable and versatile crop back to America.

Sick-care America now needs another $1.9 trillion increase in debt limit just to stay afloat

(NaturalNews) The US government is running out of money... again. So Democrats want to increase the debt limit by trillions of dollars... again. The newly requested debt limit increase is a jaw-dropping $1.9 trillion, which would put the total national debt at $14.3 trillion.

These are more than just numbers on pieces of paper. It's easy to get lost in the numbers and not realize the significance of what's happening here, but as I've explained many times here on NaturalNews (and on www.CounterThink.com as well), what you are watching is the financial crumbling of the American empire.

No nation can support endless, increasing debt. It is a law of economics, much like gravity is a law of physics. America is testing that law by pushing the boundaries of debt spending with each passing day, but it's going to find that no nation can fiscally defy gravity for long. America's debt spending is spiraling out of control and cannot be sustained.

Much of this debt spending, as you well know, stems from the poor health of the nation. The sick-care spending on pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy, unnecessary surgeries, and of course the immense loss of economic productivity due to people prematurely dying from pharmaceuticals and junk foods.

I've said this a hundred times before, and now even author Michael Pollan is saying it: Our toxic food supply will bankrupt our nation with health care costs.

What will happen to the money supply

America cannot sustain its current path of poisoning its people with toxic foods, poisoning them further with pharmaceuticals, and borrowing trillions of dollars from the world to pay for our disease, debt and war. The numbers just don't add up.

Sure, you can sneak by for a little while, borrowing money from other countries to support your own debt addiction. But now we are watching an accelerating blowout of U.S. debt that can never be reversed. Mark my words: The U.S. national debt will never be paid back. The voters won't tolerate it! (Because it would mean spending less and consuming less today.)

And that means all those countries who have loaned money to the United States should be prepared to lose that money. When lenders lose money, they aren't very happy about lending more money. And that means countries will reduce or halt their purchases of U.S. debt -- which is how debt spending money is typically raised.

It's already happening, in fact. China is already shifting its purchases of debt away from the U.S. dollar and towards other currencies. Many other countries are following suit. Because of this mass exodus away from "investing" in U.S. debt, the total amount of debt that the United States can sell off in a year is strictly limited -- to under $400 billion right now and probably much less in years to come.

Yet at the same time, the annual gross deficit of spending by the U.S. government is roughly $1 trillion a year, meaning that the total national debt increases by a trillion dollars a year, too. (These are really rough numbers. To see more detailed figures, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United... )

The great counterfeit machine: $600 billion a year

The upshot of all this? If the U.S. needs to borrow $1 trillion a year, but other countries will only buy roughly $400 billion a year, the U.S. must print $600 billion a year in new money just to keep itself afloat. This is massive money creation and it leads to the obvious destructive effects: Currency deflation (the dollar becomes worth less) and price inflation (goods and services cost more dollars).

This means the dollars you're earning or saving will become increasingly worthless as all this kicks in.

We are now late in the game on this debt situation. If the U.S. government were a cancer patient, it would be a stage-four patient, breathing on a respirator and barely conscious. And yet somehow most of the American people take absolutely no notice of the extremely precarious financial situation.

There is a mass hallucination under way in America right now, where people think we can all go on consuming natural resources, feeding our children junk food, poisoning our bodies (and rivers) with pharmaceuticals, polluting the DNA of our crops with GM seeds, and ignoring the healing powers of herbs, nutritional supplements and super foods.

This mass hallucination has created what Dr. Gabriel Cousens calls "a culture of death" where people are invested in industries of death and philosophies of death. The sick care industry, in particular, is an industry of death. The food industry is an industry of death (because they sell mostly dead foods). The meat industry is an industry of death, as is the pesticide industry, too.

This culture of death pervades American culture -- a culture preoccupied with imperialistic expansion, the destruction of nature through unlimited urban development, and endless pursuits of "economic activity" through corporations whose profits depend on sickness, disease and death. So much of the U.S. economy is now invested in disease and death that transforming the U.S. economy into one based on health and happiness would devastate the economy with job losses. It's really that bad...

Optimism, or just gullibility?

There are those who believe that America can somehow pull itself out of this spiral of disease and debt. They think that somehow, some future political leaders will magically discover a conscience and guide America to live within her means. Some even believe that members of Congress will be suddenly and magically imbued with a sense of health awareness and sustainability, and they will overthrow the corporatocracy by voting against their own self-interests and instead voting to defend the interests of the people.

To believe that such things might occur is foolish. I have no such illusions. I've been around enough to know that when it comes to corporations and politicians, short-term greed always wins out over long-term sustainability. People want their debt spending NOW. They want their junk foods NOW. They want their "free" sick care system NOW. Very little thought is given to the concepts of what might be better for the long-term sustainability of a family, a community or a nation. Or the world, for that matter.

There is no saving America from its self-inflicted financial demise. It is now only a matter of time before the financial blowout takes its course, leaving Americans diseased and bankrupt, sitting on piles of useless paper dollars and wondering how it all happened...

Why America needs to fail before it can succeed

But this is good news in the bigger picture, because America actually needs to learn a tough lesson about health and finances in order to have a brighter future. The day the federal government goes broke and can no longer pay the salaries of FDA employees is a great day for health freedom. The day that the whole system of government-sponsored Big Pharma medical tyranny goes broke is the day that America might finally set a new course for a healthier future based on health freedom and safe, affordable natural medicine rather than monopoly-priced chemicals sold by criminally-operated corporations.

America needs to fail before it can succeed because the lessons of sustainable civilization have not yet been learned by America's leaders (or most of its people). The sooner this corrupt, broken system of disease and debt fails, the sooner we can all get on with the business of structuring a new society based on healthy food, honest money and health freedoms.

So don't mourn the coming financial death spiral of the United States of America. From its impending failure and rebirth, we (and our children) can learn important lessons about how to structure a more successful society in the future. I can tell you this: No successful society can sustain a huge pharmaceutical sector because pharmaceuticals cause both death and debt -- the two very things that destroy a society at its core.

In order for America to have a future, Big Pharma needs to be put out of business. And it will be when the federal dollars run out. After all, if given a choice of how to spend their own money, virtually no one would choose a $200 bottle of chemical pills over a $10 bottle of natural supplements that are safer and more effective. Big Pharma's very survival, in other words, depends on the financial survival of the U.S. government, and that's a bet the pharmaceutical industry will eventually lose.

Health freedom will always win in the end because no government that denies its people access to healing foods and natural medicines will survive for very long.

Sources for this story include:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100120...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Initi...