Sales of alternative medicine products are booming

(NaturalNews) Sales of alternative medical products are on the rise in spite of -- and perhaps in part because of -- tough economic times.

According to a study reported in The Daily Mail, the British alternative medicines market has grown by 18 percent in the past two years, to a yearly value of £213 million ($333 million). This value is expected to rise to £282million, or another 33 percent, in the next four years. This increase has been seen across the board, even in less well-known treatments such as traditional Indian ayurvedic medicine.

In the United States, retail sales of vitamins and supplements totaled almost $639 million between October and December 2009, a nearly 10 percent increase from the same period in 2007. Sales of herbal supplements have increased 6 percent. The true scale might even be higher, as the figures do not include sales from Wal-Mart or club stores, where people are more likely to turn when there budgets become more restricted.

This increase is particularly striking given the overall downward trajectory of spending in that same time period.

The Daily Mail reports that analysts at the firm Mintel attribute much of the growing popularity of alternative medicine to wider acceptance by both the public and by governments. In the United Kingdom, for example, acupuncture is now covered by the national health insurance plan.

Another cause might be the rise in the diagnosis of mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Due to the potentially serious side effects carried by psychiatric drugs, many more patients are now turning to homeopathic remedies such as St. John's wort. The herb, used primarily to treat depression, was purchased by an estimated 1.5 million people in the United Kingdom in 2008.

Another major factor driving the growing popularity of alternative medicine, at least in the United States, is its relative cheapness compared with pharmaceutical or other mainstream health remedies. According to a study by the Associated Press, "climbing sales of herbal medicines have paralleled the tanking economy."

"More people are value shopping," said Whole Foods spokesperson Jeremiah C. McElwee, noting that the store has seen a sharp increase in sales of herbal and nutritional supplements.

A U.S. National Institutes of Health study released in December confirms this claim. Approximately 18 percent of survey respondents said they had used nonvitamin, nonmineral products as health care. Twenty-five percent of these said they had also delayed or foregone conventional medical treatment due to the cost.

"I'm trying to save money," said Kristen Kemp of Montclair, N.J., editor for a social networking Web site for mothers. She notes that each prescription and doctor's visit costs her $20, "and I have three kids."

In contrast, she can spend $10 on a bottle of Chinese herbs and use them to treat colds and stomachaches, supplemented with honey. This is even less expensive than purchasing over-the-counter drugs.

"Just in case something bad happens to our jobs, I want more money in the bank," she said.

Cathy Birleffi, a self-employed bookkeeper and notary, said that changes in insurance policies have made health care costs harder for her to meet. Her insurance premiums have risen to $1,300 a month, and reimbursements have gone down.

"The doctors are so much higher [in cost], the insurance isn't paying as much," said Cathy Birleffi, a self-employed bookkeeper and notary. "Every time I turned around, it was $50 here, $75 there."

Birleffi and her husband are now using herbal remedies to treat many of their health problems.

Richard Nahin, co-author of the federal study, encouraged people who use herbal supplements or similar remedies to inform their doctors that they are doing so, as some supplements can interfere with prescription drugs or vitamin intake.

Sources for this story include: www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-... www.allbusiness.com/pharmaceuticals....

Doritos ads represent sick, demented nature of junk food companies and their products

(NaturalNews) Junk food advertising has reached a new low with the recent Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" ads which portray Doritos consumers as violent murderers who will kill fellow human beings to get a bag of Doritos.

One Doritos ad portrays a man backing out of a parking lot when his car strikes an innocent person who drops a bag of Doritos and falls to the ground behind the car. Rather than trying to help the innocent victim, this man throws his car into reverse and drives over the victim, killing him with the vehicle and stealing the bag of Doritos.

The message? Doritos are so valuable that it's okay to kill people just to score a bag. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_D...)

A second Doritos ad shows two loser-looking gym bums being attacked by an insane junk food ninja who uses Doritos chips as throwing stars to murder the guy who stole his bag of Doritos. The message here? Doritos are so valuable that it's okay to kill others to defend your snack. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bRS...)

A third Doritos ad shows one elderly man attacking a young man with a stun gun in order to buy the last bag of Doritos from a vending machine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4YN...). Same gratuitous violence. Same message: Committing violent acts against others is perfectly acceptable when you're pursuing a bag of Doritos.

Yet another Doritos ad shows two grown men smacking each other in the face to decide which loser has to go buy more Doritos. The loser ends up with a black eye after being punched so hard he flies through the air and lands on a coffee table, shattering it. Gee, why not just use the women in this role and make it a wife-beating commercial? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpRb...)

A common theme: Violence against innocent people

What's the common theme of all these Doritos television commercials? Acts of senseless violence committed against fellow human beings.

Doritos marketing executives apparently think these commercials showing gratuitous acts of violence and murder are going to help them sell more Doritos. Maybe they've been eating too much of their own product and their brain function has been suppressed by all the MSG found in Doritos... because these ads aren't funny, they're sick!

"Demented" might be a better term. It's hard to see the humor when there's so much realistic violence in the way. And yet somehow Frito-Lay executives gave these ads the big thumbs up. Let's use violence to sell junk foods!

It sort of makes sense, actually: Junk food consumption is correlated with violent crime. Virtually all the criminals in prison across the country are nutritionally imbalanced due to their consumption of processed junk foods and their lack of sufficient nutritional supplementation. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a study revealed that fried snack foods like Doritos are a favorite food among violent criminals. These are, after all, the kind of people depicted in some Doritos advertisements.

In my view, the violent Doritos commercials accurately reflect the senseless, violent behavior that typifies people (younger males, mostly) who consume large quantities of processed junk foods, sugary soft drinks and gimmicky "sports drinks." These are the people who end up being put on antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs, after which they sometimes end up in a school shooting rampage.

It might make a good Doritos commercial, actually: A kid grows up on junk food and diet soda laced with aspartame. He's drugged up on Ritalin and Prozac. One day he brings a semiautomatic rifle to school, barges into a classroom and opens fire on his classmates, shooting and screaming, "I WANT MY F*@!KING DORITOS!"

Hilarious, huh? Some people think so. The Frito-Lay executives apparently think this kind of violence is appropriate for mainstream television. This is the kind of imagery they're using to try to convince people to buy their products! How sick is that?

Ow, My Balls!

If you've ever seen the movie Idiocracy, you may remember the popular TV show being watched by the dumbed-down, brain-numbed junk food consumers who inhabit the world depicted in the film. That show was called, "Ow, My Balls!" and it consisted of random acts of violence against the testicles of the show host who is seen being kicked in the balls, falling on his balls, being hit in the balls by a wrecking crane and other similar acts. (http://www.naturalnews.com/021558.html)

This show is the single most popular broadcast in the world of Idiocracy. When this parody movie first came out, it seemed impossible to imagine a world full of people who were so stupid that they just sit around watching some guy get kicked in the balls over and over again... but guess what? Idiocracy has become reality! Doritos has achieved the distinction of being the first mainstream consumer product company to produce a series of advertisements that are intellectually equivalent to "Ow, My Balls!"

Doritos contain MSG

Doritos are, of course, a processed junk food made with mosodium glutamate -- a taste-enhancing chemical that experts like Dr. Russell Blaylock link to obesity, food addictions, headaches and neurological damage. MSG is an excitotoxin that's used along with huge amounts of processed salt to enhance the flavor of dead foods like Doritos.

Read more about the dangers of MSG here: http://www.naturalnews.com/msg.html

Being a fried snack food, Doritos also contain acrylamides -- toxic substances formed when carbohydrates are cooked a high temperatures. Acrylamides are linked to cancer and other serious diseases. (http://www.naturalnews.com/acrylami...)

One study shows that eating acrylamides increases the risk of kidney cancer by 59 percent (http://www.naturalnews.com/024585_c...).

PepsiCo, the parent company that makes Doritos, claims that its product isn't made with genetically modified corn, but tests conducted by GreenPeace proved that Doritos sold in India actually did contain GM corn varieties MON 863 and NK 603 (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/S...).

So eating a bag of Doritos involves not only the ingestion of MSG and cancer-causing acrylamides; it may also expose you to genetically modified corn that has been scientifically linked to internal organ damage. (See books by Jeffrey Smith for loads of research on that...)

So now all the violence actually starts to make sense: People who eat Doritos might be brain damaged from the chemicals in the product. And because they're brain damaged, they have lost the higher brain functions of critical thinking or expressing human compassion. They are operating from their lower "reptilian" brain stem functions which respond to two things: Sex and violence.

No wonder the Doritos ads are focused on sex and violence.