Doctors Finally Testing Patients For Vitamin D Deficiency
September 3rd, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
Growing awareness about the prevalence and risks of vitamin D deficiency is leading more and more doctors to test their patients’ blood levels of the vitamin.
“Upwards of 70 percent of American adults are vitamin D deficient or insufficient,” said cardiologist James O’Keefe of St. Luke’s Mid-America Heart Institute. “In the last year, awareness of vitamin D deficiency has really exploded.”
Vitamin D is more properly classified as a hormone, and it helps regulate gene function in various parts of the body. It is naturally synthesized in the skin upon exposure to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, but sedentism and growing use of sunblock have worsened deficiency rates in recent decades.
According to O’Keefe, vitamin D testing has become the most popular “a la carte” blood test ordered by doctors in the past year. The test costs about $100, and is covered by some insurance providers.
Vitamin D is known to play a role in bone health and immune function, but many doctors are now fingering deficiency for a number of more general complaints. Carla Aamodt, another doctor at St. Luke’s, notes that when she orders supplementation for patients with vitamin D levels below 10 nanograms per milliliter, the patients feel better overall, have more energy with less muscle aches and pains.”
The jury is still out on optimal vitamin D levels, but researchers agree that they fall somewhere between 30 and 40 nanograms per milliliter.
Billie Howard Barnes of Kansas City suffered from chronic pain until her doctor ordered a vitamin D test and discovered that her blood levels were a paltry 5 nanograms per milliliter.
“I’m 43, and getting up in the morning, my feet would hit the floor and every joint in my body was sore,” Barnes said. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. It just kind of crept up on me.”
After taking a high-dose supplement for a few weeks, Barnes began to recover.
“It wasn’t an instant thing, but I just feel much better,” she said. “I’m not as stiff. Colleagues say there’s more pep in my step.”
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Ancient ‘Paleo’ Diet Key To Healthy Living And Weight Loss
September 3rd, 2010
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
Eat like a cave man to lose weight, build muscle and feel great. This is what advocates of the “Paleo” diet say is the key to healthy living, a diet that consists only of meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and mushrooms — also known as the “Paleolithic”, or Paleo diet.
A recent Chicago Tribune article tells the story of Rick Larson, co-owner of a West Sacramento, Calif., gym called CrossFit. Larson, a Paleo diet supporter, explains in the story that many of his gym members were getting great workouts, but that few were following healthy diets. After experiencing incredible success himself on the Paleo diet, he decided to offer the program to his members as well.
“For the first time in my life, I started to feel quite healthy. I didn’t get any respiratory problems, my arthritis problems went away, and I felt like I gained more muscle mass,” he explained in the report about his own experience. After 11 weeks on the diet, he was also able to drop excess weight and achieve a body fat percentage of 2.7.
Fifteen of Larson’s gym members agreed to participate in the diet program and also experienced good results, including Santinia Pasquini, 33, who dropped eight pounds after just one week.
The key to the Paleo diet is to avoid all refined sugars, grains, dairy products, beans, legumes and anything processed. Though difficult, advocates say sticking to a Paleo diet fits the human genetic makeup better than most modern diets because it represents the foods that our ancestors ate and thrived on.
According to Johny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., in his book The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why, the Paleo diet has other benefits, including helping to clear up acne.
“[T]he Paleo Diet might not entirely clear up acne in every single person who has acne, but it will almost always have an important positive effect on blood sugar and weight,” he says.
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10 Ways Your Taxes Kill The Environment
September 1, 2010
Alter Net
by Stephanie Rogers
Urban sprawl, pollution, over-consumption, deforestation…like it or not, U.S. taxpayers are still paying for all of these things to occur in America and beyond. Despite recent investments in green jobs and technology, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible while greener, healthier industries like solar power and vegetable farms get a pittance.
10. Highways
When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.
9. SUVs
In case you aren’t already taking optimal advantage of the polluting power of our nation’s sprawling web of highways, the government would like to make your impact even greater by setting you up in a nice gas-guzzling subsidized SUV. A portion of the tax code revised in 2003 gives business owners a huge deduction for up to 30% of a large vehicle’s cost, which can add up to $25,000 in the case of a Hummer – far more than the credit given to individual purchasers of energy-efficient vehicles. Attempts to axe this provision in 2007 failed.
You only get the credit if it seats more than 9 passengers or weighs more than 14,000 pounds, but they don’t really care whether your business actually requires such a vehicle. So, by all means, get the Escalade.
8. Paper Mills
Paper mills cut down trees while sucking up massive amounts of fossil fuels and get big money from the government to do it – all through a loophole in a law that was supposed to benefit renewable energy. A law enacted in 2005 contains a section that gives businesses an incentive to mix alternative energy sources with fossil fuels. To qualify for the tax credit, paper companies started adding diesel fuel to “black liquor”, a pulp-making byproduct that they were already using to generate electricity on its own.
But time might be running out for this egregious misuse of taxpayer money: the unemployment extension bill approved by the Senate and on its way to the House would eliminate this loophole and use the funds for health care. (Editor’s note: We’ve contacted both the editor and writer of this story at BusinessWeek to confirm that this loophole will still be closed in the bill just passed by the Senate, and will update if more information becomes available. In the meantime, there’s this resource which seems to confirm the loophole is in fact being closed.)
7. Commercial Fishing
About half of the $713 million in subsidies given to the U.S. fishing industry directly contributes to overfishing, according to a new study by the Environmental Working Group. The subsidies – which equal about a fifth of the value of the catch itself – lower overhead costs and promote increased fishing capacity, meaning more fish are caught than can be naturally replaced.
Overfishing is a huge environmental problem – up to 25% of the world’s fishery stocks are overexploited or depleted, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. But that’s not the only result of the subsidies; because roughly half of the money goes toward fuel costs, other consequences include wasteful fuel consumption as well as air and water pollution.
6. Nuclear Power
The nuclear industry’s decade-long, $600 million lobbying effort finally paid off as President Obama agreed to grant loan guarantees for nuclear power plants. Obama has been promising since the early days of his campaign that he would find a way to “safely harness nuclear power”, but the $55 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are going forward despite continued reservations about uranium mining and the storage of radioactive waste.
5. Factory Farming
American factory farms are literally filthy cesspools of their own making, and who else is cleaning up all that shit but American taxpayers? Giant factory farms make up just 2% of the livestock farms in the U.S. yet raise 40% of all animals in the U.S., and they do it using practices that are not only harmful to workers and the animals themselves, but to the environment.
4. Corn Ethanol
In the quest to beat back fossil fuels, cleaner fuels that we can grow seemed like a good idea – until we realized that some, like corn, make a huge dent in the world’s food supply. But that isn’t stopping the U.S. government from giving billions in subsidies to the corn industry in general, and corn ethanol in particular.
Corn-based ethanol gobbled up 76% of federal government renewable energy subsidies in 2007, leaving little for more environmentally sound renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Worse yet, it’s a huge drain on water resources, gulping down up to 2,138 liters of water per liter of ethanol.
This isn’t just an unwise investment – it’s also destroying the rainforest. As American farmers have abandoned soy for subsidized corn, soy prices have risen worldwide – and led to an increase in Amazon deforestation. Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy next to the U.S., and growing demand has meant more clear-cutting for soy plantations.
3. Processed Foods
Ethanol isn’t the only product that comes to us courtesy of U.S. corn subsidies. There’s also plenty of craptastic processed “food” products packed with multiple subsidized ingredients: wheat, sugar, soy and of course, corn. Gee, could the obesity epidemic have anything to do with the fact that our government makes junk food cheap, and encourages its consumption through the food stamp program?
It’s a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie costs less, calorically speaking, than a carrot. Meanwhile, farmers who produce fruits and vegetables (aside from corn), don’t get a dime in government subsidies. While the government is considering junk food taxes, a change to the Farm Bill might be more efficient.
2. Coal
You would think that the coal industry’s long-held dominance of the American energy market would have eliminated the need for subsidies. After all, the industry spent $47 million last year on PR alone. But the fact is, coal companies are milking the government for all it’s worth while continuing to pump greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air and turn the Appalachian Mountains into post-apocalyptic hellholes.
Coal subsidies have survived this long because of the industry’s staggering influence on lawmakers, and because constituents in coal states often fear the economic repercussions of a scaled-back coal industry more than they fear the harm to their health and homes. And on top of the federal coal subsidies lumped in under ‘fossil fuels’, the industry gets untold breaks on a state and local level in places like Kentucky, where the coal industry netted $115 million in subsidies in 2006.
1. Oil
Climate change: brought to you by the U.S. government! According to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuels received over $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, while traditional sources of renewable energy were given just $12.2 billion.
But the oil industry won’t even admit that the direct spending and tax breaks they get are subsidies – they prefer to call them “incentives”, and claim that attempts to roll back some of those subsidies are actually “new taxes”.
As Grist notes, the ELI report is actually pretty conservative – it didn’t include things like military spending to defend oil in the Middle East or infrastructure spending. But the fossil fuel industry’s free ride is almost over: President Obama’s new federal budget proposal wipes out these breaks and increases funding for clean energy research (and, unfortunately, nuclear power).
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Avoid Salmonella Contaminated Eggs
September 1, 2010
Natural News
by Jonathan Benson
In response to the massive egg recall, some mainstream news outlets have begun addressing the real cause of food contamination: inhumane and unsanitary food production methods. A recent MSNBC article explains that organically-grown eggs from chickens who live and feed in natural pastures are healthier and safer than the caged, industrially-grown ones most people buy.
According to the report, more than 90 percent of store-bought eggs come from chickens who live in tight, filthy cages. Such conditions actually encourage the growth and spread of dangerous bacteria like salmonella. Commercial chickens regularly eat unnatural feed as well, and are typically unable to go outside and get any exercise, which greatly affects the quality and integrity of both their eggs.
“When you put four or five chickens in tiny cages, they can’t engage in normal chicken behavior — pecking in the dirt, dusting,” explained chicken expert Gail Damerow, author of Storey’s Guide to Raising Chicken, to MSNBC. “The pressure of the wire cages against their feet causes infections, their feathers rub off on the side of the cages…they can’t run around and eat flies and take dust baths.”
The end result is a whole lot of sick chickens that end up spreading disease around the entire coup, which ultimately ends up contamination the eggs and sickening the public.
Pastured chickens, on the other hand, are free to dig around for bugs, worms and forage, which increases both the vitamin and omega-3 fatty acid content of their eggs. Based on analysis, pastured eggs contain roughly twice as much vitamin E and two-and-a-half times more omega-3s than conventional, caged eggs. These free-roaming chickens are also far less prone to become contaminated with salmonella and other bacteria.
The best way to obtain safe, healthy eggs is to buy them locally from farmers who raise their chickens on pastures, and that use only organic feed. Or if you have the space, you can even buy or build a small, backyard coup to raise your own chickens.
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Mainstream Media Citing Junk Science To Discredit Omega-3s
September 1, 2010
Natural News
by Ethan A. Huff
A study out of the Netherlands has put the mainstream media in a mindless tizzy about the health effects of omega-3 fatty acids. Because a group of people fed four teaspoons of omega-3-enriched margarine a day for more than three years did not experience a reduction in heart events, many media outlets are foolishly reporting that omega-3s are not as beneficial as commonly believed.
Margarine, as many people now know, is a synthetic, hydrogenated food product that is actually not a food at all. It is a product composed of synthetic trans-fatty acids that are highly toxic and harmful to health. Margarine is exactly the type of substance that causes heart attacks and cardiovascular illness, making it ridiculous to include as part of a health study.
“[T]rans-fatty acids not only increase the likelihood of a variety of metabolic disorders including arthritis and cancer, but also contribute to heart disease,” explains Paul Pitchford in his book Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition. “In the United States, 95 percent of trans-fatty acid ingestion is from eating margarine and shortening.”
So just because a toxic food product is enhanced with low levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids does not mean that it will help people to avoid a heart attack. But it is precisely this flawed methodology that the media has preyed upon in an effort to debunk the true health-promoting benefits from omega-3s.
Ironically, a study conducted several years ago found that women who consume four or more teaspoons of margarine a day are 66 percent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than women who consume less than one teaspoon a month. In other words, margarine is directly responsible for causing heart disease.
But these facts have not stopped the media from initiating what appears to be a misinformation campaign designed to deceive the public into thinking that omega-3s are not all that great. Do not be fooled.
Foods and oils naturally rich in omega-3 fatty acids, and balanced in terms of omega-6 fatty acids, will do wonders to promote health and prevent disease. These include foods like hemp and flax oils, wild fish and chia seeds.
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Alternative Meds Are Beating Out Conventional Meds
September 1, 2010
Natural News
by Jonathan Benson
Despite bearing the brunt of years of mockery from mainstream medicine, alternative remedies continue to gain in popularity among Americans who actually want to cure their ills and improve their health. According to researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), about 40 percent of Americans today utilize some form of treatment that is not officially taught in Western medical schools.
In response to the growing popularity of alternative treatments back in the early 1990s, Congress passed legislation to fund a new division of health called the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). And in 1998, Congress officially established the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) to act as a liaison between the scientific community and the public in matters relating to alternative medicine.
Since that time, NCCAM has helped to provide scientific backing for many alternative treatments such as chiropractic and acupuncture that have become increasingly more popular amongst the mainstream public. Though not always in full support of every alternative and natural remedy out there, the center provides a wealth of useful information about many therapies, and it has helped increase the popularity of non-conventional treatments.
Alternative medicine includes a lot more than just massage therapy and back adjustments, though. Finding natural ways to cure allegedly incurable diseases is part of alternative medicine as well, and increasing numbers of people are turning to alternatives for the treatment of serious illnesses.
A recent VOANews.com article highlights the case of Ann Sterud, an ovarian cancer patient that had unsuccessfully tried for years to cure her cancer with conventional surgery and chemotherapy treatments. She eventually gave up on that and decided to try vitamin C infusions instead, even though this method of treatment is not officially recognized by Western medicine as viable.
“When you feel like your time is starting to run out, you feel you just have to go 100 percent and look for alternatives and that is what I did,” she said.
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Anticonvulsant Drug Makes People Suicidal
August 31, 2010
Natural News
by David Gutierrez
Popular anti-seizure drugs may seriously increase a patient’s risk of suicide and violent death, according to a study conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The drugs, known as anticonvulsants, were initially designed for the treatment of epilepsy but are now widely prescribed “off-label” for conditions such as bipolar disorder, migraine headaches and pain.
“We all know the range of uses of these medications is very, very wide,” researcher Elisabetta Patorno said.
The researchers examined the prescription and medical records of more than 300,000 people above the age of 14 who had been prescribed an anticonvulsant for the first time between July 2001 and December 2006.
All of the drugs, they found, significantly increased a patient’s risk of attempted or successful suicide, as well as violent death by other causes. During the course of the study, there were 801 attempted suicides, 26 successful suicides and 41 violent deaths.
“We found increased risk for suicidal acts beginning within the first 14 days after treatment initiation, opening the possibility that anticonvulsant medications could induce behavioral effects prior to the achievement of their full therapeutic effectiveness,” the researchers wrote.
Based on prior studies, the FDA ruled in 2008 that all anticonvulsants must carry labels warning that they double the risk of suicidal thoughts and actions. These older studies had not been able to determine if any drugs posed higher risks than others, however.
In the current study, researchers compared the rates of suicides and violent deaths among users of topiramate (sold generically and also marketed as Topamax), gabapentin (marketed as Neurontin), lamotrigine (marketed as Lamictal), oxcarbazepine (marketed as Trileptal), tiagabine (marketed as Gabitril) and valproate (marketed as Depakine and Epilim). They found that the risk was lowest in topiramate, and roughly equal in the five other drugs.
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Broccoli Can Cure Stomach Infections
August 31, 2010
Natural News
by Jonathan Benson
It is hardly breaking news that eating cruciferous vegetables like broccoli helps to improve health. But researchers from the University of Liverpool have discovered new benefits to eating both broccoli and plantains — two high-fiber foods — that may help people with Chron’s disease and other digestive disorders. According to the recent study, broccoli and plantains contain compounds that help protect the gut from infection and improve overall stomach health.
Broccoli and plantains are not the only foods that provide this benefit, but they are two in particular that scientists found to have exceptional benefit. The compounds in these two foods actually boost the ability of the stomach lining to ward off bad bacteria, passing it through the tract and out of the body before it can cause harm.
“We have known for some time the general health benefits of eating plantain and broccoli, which are both high in vitamins and minerals, but until now we have not understood how they can boost the body’s natural defenses against infection common in Chron’s patients,” explained Dr. Barry Campbell, who worked on the study.
The intestinal lining in the gut is coated in M-cells, which are designed to maintain intestinal health. But these cells are often disrupted by processed foods, artificial chemicals and other additives. Long-term ingestion of these substances can severely damage a person’s bacterial balance, leading eventually to disease.
“Knowledge of the M-cell role offers a more detailed explanation as to why a healthy diet can improve the health and well being for people with Chron’s disease and healthy individuals alike,” emphasized a spokeswoman from the Chron’s and Colitis Foundation, in response to the study.
“Simple, nonprocessed foods…are associated with positive ecology of friendly bacteria in our intestines,” explains Greg Hicks, M.D., in a book by Dan Buettner called The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.
“These friendly bacteria include immunomodulating and fiber-fermenting lactic acid bacteria. Stressors of this healthy ecological system, such as surgery, certain medications, and consumption of meats and processed foods disrupt a natural balance and shift from friendly to unfriendly bacteria.”
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Little Exposure To BPA Turns Offspring Into Genetic Mutants
August 31, 2010
Natural News
by Jonathan Benson
A recent study published online in the journal Biology of Reproduction further reveals the disruptive nature of bisphenol A (BPA) in gene expression. According to the data, pregnant mice exposed to BPA experience significant genetic changes in their fetal ovaries, indicating that the next generation of their offspring will likely be born with serious genetic defects.
Dr. Patricia A. Hunt and her colleagues at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Wash., exposed female mice to levels of BPA roughly equivalent to the levels humans are exposed to on a regular basis. The team discovered that in as little as 12 hours after exposure, egg production in exposed mice suffered reproductive damage. They believe exposure even altered the reproductive capacity of the mice’s grandchildren.
According to the study report, BPA exposure negatively affects mitosis, the process by which cells divide their nuclei chromosomes in order to reproduce into new cells. BPA also disrupts other normal cell cycle functions and DNA replication, which researchers say can potentially shorten the “reproductive lifespan” of females.
What makes BPA particularly dangerous is the fact that very low levels of exposure to it can cause significant harm. According to reports, there have already been more than 200 studies conducted about BPA’s dangers, many of which implicate the chemical as being highly dangerous even at extremely low levels.
One such study that appeared in the journal Reproductive Toxicology found that newborn animals exposed to BPA experience uterine damage.
“The researchers indicated that such damage is a possible predictor of reproductive diseases in women, including fibroids, endometriosis, cystic ovaries and cancers,” explains Andreas Moritz in his book Timeless Secrets of Health & Rejuvenation: Unleash The Natural Healing Power That Lies Dormant Within You.
Editor’s Note: NaturalNews is strongly against the use of all forms of animal testing. We fully support the implementation of humane medical experimentation that promotes the health and well-being of all living creatures.
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Climate Change Lies Exposed
August 31, 2010
Express.co.uk
by Donna Bowater
A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.
It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.
The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
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