It’s been nearly 20 years since the artificial sweetener aspartame gained FDA approval, but the debate about its safety, or lack thereof, has continued on unabated. Today, aspartame can be found in more than 6,000 products, including food products not specifically aimed at diabetics or dieters.
Might you be overdosing on this neurotoxic sweetener?
Clean, pure water is a cornerstone of good health. Your body is mostly water, so the ongoing intake of water is essential to your every function.
It’s common knowledge that most water sources are now polluted, but there is tremendous confusion about what kind of drinking water is the most health promoting, and what kind of home water treatment produces the best drinking water.
Today, too many people are choosing soda instead of pure water as their primary beverage and the health of an entire culture is at risk.
The number one source of calories in the U.S. comes from high fructose corn syrup primarily in the form of soda. Americans drink an average of one gallon of soda each week, and this excessive fructose consumption is a driving force behind obesity and chronic degenerative disease in this country.
The most practical and economical strategy to combat obesity and chronic disease is to replace all sodas and other sweet beverages with pure water.
The trouble is, most public water supplies are loaded with hazardous contaminants, such as disinfection byproducts, fluoride, and pharmaceutical drugs, to name just a few.
Nevertheless, you DO need to make water your beverage of choice if you want to be healthy—but it should be purified water.
But beyond water filtration, there’s also the issue of pH—alkaline versus acidic water. There are quite a few astonishing health claims being made about alkaline water, but are they true?
Most of them are not.
The theory behind alkaline water is, in a nutshell, that alkaline (ionized) water is a powerful antioxidant with surplus electrons that can “mop up” the dangerous free radicals you have coursing through your veins. Marketers claim alkaline water can correct excess acidity in your tissues, which can then prevent or reverse cancer, arthritis, and other degenerative diseases.[i]
Above is my interview with Houston Tomasz on this topic. He’s a ten-year veteran in the water filtration industry and this article expands on some of the items that we discuss in our interview. The segment is part of a much longer interview that we will air in future issues. Additionally, I have interviewed two other experts on this topic and they both agree that ionizers that produce alkaline water are not your best choice.
When I posted a comment on my Facebook page, announcing I was interviewing Houston, I asked for questions and the most popular question by far was whether or not to drink alkaline water.
Many alkaline water enthusiasts are convinced its powers are unparalleled and will vehemently defend it. I am also certain that many will post vigorous objections to my position, and that is their choice. It is also my choice and responsibility to provide information on a system that many people are relying on to provide health benefits that I feel are unjustified.
It is my impression that the scientific justification for these water systems is absent and these consumers have merely fallen under the spell of a skilled marketer who selectively misused pseudoscientific information, and twisted it around to scare them into buying their product.
There are a plethora of testimonials and so-called scientific studies on the Internet claiming alkaline water will cure your every ill. Many consumers, struggling to make sense of the scientific jargon, eventually throw up their hands in frustration.
In truth, there are very, very few legitimate scientific studies about the effects of alkaline water on human health.
The reality is, most of the circulating information is distributed by clever marketers, with very little scientific validity to back up their claims.
Complicating matters is the fact that most water ionizers and alkalizers are being marketed by multi-level marketing (MLM) companies with less than stellar ethics. They sell you a very expensive machine, for which you get a good discount if you sign up as a rep, and once you’re part of the MLM, you can’t very well change your mind about its benefits (especially if you’re going to sell the units)—even if you realize that the alkaline water is no longer “working” for you.
I have been personally approached many times and encouraged to sell these systems and there would have been large revenue streams had I chosen to do so, but I would never promote anything that I would never use personally, and I can assure you that I would never use alkaline water as a regular source of water.
Please understand I have no ax to grind here, and I am not selling any competing products. The sole purpose of this report is as a public health message to warn people that alkaline water is not all it is hyped up to be.
I have no doubts that many people do notice improvements in their health when they initially start drinking alkaline water, but I believe there are other reasons for this, and I am convinced that this is not a healthful strategy in the long run, so it is my strong recommendation to avoid alkaline water ionizers.
Some people experience an initial “high” when they start drinking alkaline water. This can easily be attributed to detoxification, and the fact that they are likely just becoming better hydrated.
Detoxification is about the only benefit of this type of water, and this benefit is limited to very SHORT TERM USE (no more than a week or two).
I will elaborate on what is known about alkaline water, but first you’ll need a basic understanding of the properties of water and a few definitions.
As I will review in a future interview with Houston, there are many reasons why you want to avoid drinking tap water, or as Daniel Vitalis, a raw water enthusiast, refers to it: “tap liquid.” He believes calling what flows from your unfiltered tap “water” is being overly generous, and I would have to agree.
In terms of types of water, here are some basic definitions to keep in mind:
Purified water: Water that is physically processed to remove impurities (e.g., distillation, deionization, reverse osmosis, carbon filtration, etc.)
Distilled water: Water that is boiled and evaporated away from its dissolved minerals, and then the vapor is condensed.
Bottled Water. This water is typically from a spring or has gone through reverse osmosis before it is bottled. However, some brands are simply bottled tap water that may or may not have gone through any additional filtering.
Ionized water or alkaline water: Water that has been separated into alkaline and acid fractions using electrolysis, which takes advantage of the naturally occurring electric charges found in the magnesium and calcium ions; in the drinking water industry, ionized water refers to alkaline water, which has a pH greater than 7.
Deionized or demineralized water: Water in which the mineral ions (salts such as sodium, calcium, iron, copper, chloride and bromide) have been removed by exposing it to electrically charged resins that attract and bind to the salts.
Hard and soft water: Hard water is any water containing an appreciable quantity of dissolved minerals; soft water is treated water in which the only cation (positively charged ion) is sodium.
The concept of the acidity or alkalinity of your body—or of water—is based on the pH scale. So it’s necessary to have a basic understanding of what pH is.
PH is simply a measure of the concentration of hydrogen ions. In fact, the acronym “pH” is short for “potential of hydrogen.” The higher a liquid’s pH, the fewer free hydrogen ions it has; the lower its pH, the more free hydrogen ions it has. One pH unit reflects a tenfold change in ion concentration—for example, there are ten times as many hydrogen ions available at a pH of 7 than at a pH of 8 [ii].
The pH scale goes from 0 to 14, and a pH of 7 is neutral.
Anything with a pH below 7 is considered acidic, with battery acid being the most extreme example, around 1. Anything with a pH above 7 is alkaline (or basic), with lye at the top of the scale, around 13. [iii]
Natural water on our planet ranges in pH from 6.5 to 9.0, depending on surrounding soil and vegetation, seasonal variations and weather, and even time of day responses to sunlight. Human activities further influence the pH of our water, from the barrage of toxic industrial pollutants.
According to an educational website called “Water on the Web”2:
“Pollutants in water can cause it to have higher algal and plant growth, as a result of increased temperature or excess nutrients, causing pH levels to rise. Although these small changes in pH are not likely to have a direct impact on aquatic life, they greatly influence the availability and solubility of all chemical forms in the lake and may aggravate nutrient problems.
For example, a change in pH may increase the solubility of phosphorus, making it more available for plant growth and resulting in a greater long-term demand for dissolved oxygen.”
Most aquatic animals and plants have adapted to life in water with a very specific pH, and will die from even slight changes. A pH below 4 or above 10 will kill most fish, and very few animals can tolerate waters with a pH below 3 or above 11 [iv].
With living systems being so sensitive to changes in pH, it should comes as no surprise that YOU, as another living organism on this planet, would be sensitive to your water’s pH as well.
So, what are the recommendations for optimal drinking water pH?
The WHO has published a nearly-600 page document called “Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality.” [v]
In this voluminous tome, you would expect to find everything you’d ever want to know about your drinking water, right?
Well, everything EXCEPT a pH recommendation—there are no health-based guidelines for pH!
They state that pH usually has “no direct impact on consumers,” yet they also write pH is one of the “most important operational water quality parameters.”
They do recommend your water pH be in the range of 6.5 to 8.0 so as not to corrode your pipes—and they’re NOT talking about your body’s plumbing:
“Alkalinity and calcium management also contribute to the stability of water and control its aggressiveness to pipe and appliance. Failure to minimize corrosion can result in the contamination of drinking water and in adverse effects on its taste and appearance. Failure to minimize corrosion can result in the contamination of drinking water and in adverse effects on its taste and appearance.”
It appears that the WHO is more concerned about the pipes in your house than the pipes in your body.
Most likely the optimal pH of the water you were designed to drink is somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5.
Although the research is clear that alkaline water has detrimental effects on plants and animals, there are not many studies with humans.
A review of the literature turns up a variety of anecdotal evidence about the importance of ph to various living organisms, however, and as you might expect, optimal pH varies, depending on the organism.
The scientific literature indicates pH is important for nutrition and vitality. For example:
Michigan State University studied greenhouse growth media (including the pH of that media), finding it is extremely important for the media pH to be properly adjusted prior to planting. Too high of a pH (greater than 6.5) increases the chances of micronutrient deficiencies. To low of a pH (less than 5.3) results in calcium and/or magnesium and/or manganese toxicity. [vi]
Ohio State University Extension Service reports that alkaline water affects a plant’s ability to obtain nutrients from the soil and can alter the soil’s pH over time.[vii]
An ecological study in the Netherlands found that an influx of alkaline water led to the demise of a native plant called Stratiotes aloides L. [viii]
Fish chronically exposed to alkaline soft water exhibit signs of stress (sometimes fatal), while fish in alkaline hard water experienced no such adverse effects, according to a study at the University of British Columbia. [ix]
If you are a gardener, you can view a helpful illustration of the environmental effects of pH in your own garden. If your pH is low, your hydrangea produces pink flowers, but if your pH is high, you’ll get blue flowers.
But what about us bipeds?
There has been a great deal of debate about battling cancer by making your body alkaline. This has become a focus of interest as cancer rates have skyrocketed (along with many other chronic, debilitating diseases), while our bodies have become more acidic from our processed-food diets.
The scientific research about the benefits of alkalinity is by no means conclusive.
PH appears to have a major influence on cell mitochondria:
Normal cells die under extremely alkaline conditions. A study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that alkalosis (rising cellular pH) causes alkaline-induced cell death as a result of altering mitochondrial function. [x]
Another study out of Cornell University states that antioxidants have not proven to be effective against many neurodegenerative diseases, and they state it may be a result of how the mitochondria operate within the cell in certain pH conditions.[xi]
There are some scientific studies that really argue against alkalinity, at least with respect to preventing or treating cancer.
Consider the research by Robert Gilles, who has studied tumor formation and acidity.[xii] According to Gilles, tumors, by their very nature, make themselves acidic—even in an alkaline cellular structure. In other words, they make their own acidity.
Scientists who are in the process of developing prototypes for potential new anticancer agents that selectively kill tumor cells by interfering with the regulation of intracellular pH, have found that alkaline treatments do NOT have the desired effect—but strongly acidic treatments do.[xiii]
Talk about fighting fire with fire—they are fighting acid-loving cancer cells with acid!
LESS alkalinity inside a cancer cell seems to be what you want, not more.
So, all of those ionizer salesmen promising alkaline water will lower your cancer risk are completely clueless when it comes to what the scientific research actually shows.
Even more interesting is a 2005 study by the National Cancer Institute, which revisits the use of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) to treat cancer. They found that, in pharmacologic doses administered intravenously, ascorbic acid successfully killed cancer cells without harming normal cells.[xiv] This is yet another example of cancer cells being vulnerable to acidity, as opposed to alkalinity.
It’s clear that the relationship between alkalinity and cancer has been grossly oversimplified by those jumping to premature conclusions—and of course by those trying to profit off your fear.
The bottom line is that alkaline water isn’t cancer’s magic bullet.
As is true with many things, in the end it’s a matter of balance.
Water that is too acidic or too alkaline can be detrimental to human health and lead to nutritional disequilibrium. This was demonstrated in a Swedish well water study [xv], which found both pH extremes to be problematic.
Your body simply was not designed to drink highly alkaline water all the time.
So I believe it’s best to be VERY careful when it comes to something as foundational as the water you drink on a daily basis. If you get it wrong, you could really cause yourself some major damage.
It makes sense that you are designed to drink water that occurs naturally, which excludes alkaline water with pH levels of 8 and above.
And if you drink alkaline water all the time, you’re going to raise the alkalinity of your stomach, which will buffer your stomach’s acidity and impair your ability to digest food as low stomach acid is one of the most common causes of ulcers. This can open the door for parasites in your small intestine, and your protein digestion may suffer. It also means you’ll get less minerals and nutrients over time—in fact, some of these health effects can already be seen in hard-core alkaline water drinkers.
Alkalinity is also potentially a problem because it is antibacterial, so it could potentially disrupt the balance of your body’s beneficial bacteria.[xvi]
What you want is pure water—water that is clean, balanced, and healthful, neither too alkaline nor too acidic. Ideally, the pH of your water should be close to 7, which is neutral.
Somewhere between 6 to 8 is likely fine.
And some of the most healthful waters in the world—that emerging from mountain springs—are actually acidic in the range of 6.5. and would absolutely be my preference if it were readily available.
If this is something that interests you there is a web site, FindaSpring.com where you can find springs in your local area.
That is “living water,” which is living in the same way that raw food is “living food.”
One reason I am such an advocate for eating plenty of fresh, organic raw food is for its biophotons. Biophotons are the smallest units of light, which are stored in and used by all biological organisms—including you. Vital energy finds its way into your cells from the biodynamic foods you eat.
In the same way that raw foods are alive with biophoton energy, natural water is “alive” in a similar way.
If you really want to alkalinize your body it would seem wise to encourage it with the highest quality water possible which is obtained from vegetable juice. Green vegetable juices will help your body normalize your body’s pH naturally.
If this is new to you and you are interested in more information you can review my juicing manual for free.
I cannot think of “living water” without thinking of the visionary work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, the Japanese researcher who experimented with the crystal forms of water. What he discovered is that different forms of energy influence water’s ability to organize into beautiful crystal forms.[xvii]
He demonstrated that water crystallization depends on the natural health of the water. He found that water from natural springs, healing water sources, etc., formed beautiful and complex crystalline geometries—like snowflakes. Water that had been distilled or polluted lost its inner order, and its ability to crystallize was profoundly disturbed.
You wouldn’t want to eat dead food... so why would you want to drink dead water?
It is really important to understand that the ionization process in no way, shape, or form purifies your water. Many of them have additional carbon-based filtration systems added, as reverse osmosis or distilled water will not allow the ionizer to produce alkaline water.
If for whatever reason the information I am presenting here does not convince you to avoid using ionizers, then you will need to carefully analyze the water filter that is being used.
This article only addresses ionizers and alkaline water. In the near future I will post a comprehensive review of water filters as it is complex issue that is beyond the scope of this article.
In order to ensure your water is pure, you should use a high quality water filter in your home and workplace. You can narrow down the choices by making sure the product you choose is certified by a reputable independent water certification agency.
Two of the best, most stringent certifications are NSF and ANSI, who write the standards. If a water purifier is certified by NSF or ANSI, the product claims have been verified, the system is structurally sound, and the literature and labeling is not misleading. Look for the NSF seal.
Three other less rigorous certifications are Pace Analytical, Underwriters Laboratories, and The Water Quality Association (WQA).
There is no national regulation of water products—states have their own regulations, which vary greatly state by state.
The EPA has published a chart listing their limits for every type of water contaminant, including microorganisms, disinfectants and disinfectant byproducts, organic and inorganic chemicals, and radionuclides, viewable here.
Please beware that some companies may mislead you by listing their UL certification, but this certification is good for the electrical components only, and has no bearing on water quality whatsoever.
The typical American diet is loaded with sugar and processed foods, which throws off your body’s ability to optimize your pH. Although your body has mechanisms to buffer your pH, many of you are likely living in a state of low-grade acidosis from eating too many low-quality processed, devitalized food..
You can optimize your body’s pH by eating like your ancestor’s did—a diet rich in raw, organic, whole foods—and this will help your body achieve homeostasis.
Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all nutrition plan that works for everyone, which is why Nutritional Typing is so helpful. Determining your nutritional type will help you narrow down the foods that are best for YOUR body’s individual chemistry.
A diet that makes one person “acidic” may make another person “alkaline,” so there is no one single universal food list for perfect pH.
For example, protein types can “over-alkalize” their systems by consuming too many dark green vegetables, which can worsen rather than improve their health, in spite of the many beneficial phytonutrients in leafy greens. (I am very familiar with this mistake as it’s one I made prior to understanding nutritional typing!)
I want you to be aware of just how important it is to understand your body at a deeper level. Your body is a complex, multi-faceted biochemical system that is unlikely to respond well to shot-in-the-dark treatments, like alkaline water.
References
Careful With Your Water Filters
Recalls of prescription and over the counter drugs are surging in the U.S. The FDA reported more than 1,700 recalls last year, compared to less than 430 in 2008.“The fast pace of drug recalls seems to be continuing in 2010 ... High-profile recalls of Tylenol and other products ... have drawn attention to quality concerns in manufacturing ...
The spike in recalls, especially of generic and over-the-counter drugs, is being driven by manufacturing lapses, experts say. Some of the biggest culprits: the quality of raw materials, faulty labeling and packaging and contamination.”
| Dr. Mercola's Comments: |
CNN's chart, below, shows the number of drug recalls between 2006 and 2009. Over the initial three years, recalls kept inching upward, only to spike dramatically between 2008 and 2009, from 426 recalls to 1,742.
That’s an increase of 309 percent in one year!
A single drug repacker, which has since been shut down, accounted for over 1,000 of those recalls, but even if you discount that one rotten apple, drug recalls still rose by over 50 percent.
As recently as May, drug maker Johnson and Johnson voluntarily recalled all unexpired lots of certain over-the-counter (OTC) pediatric drugs, including Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl products, after they discovered “manufacturing deficiencies that could affect the quality, purity or potency of the medicines.”(A full list of the products affected by the recall can be found at this link.)
The recalled products were found to contain either:
Amazingly, that was the second mass recall of these types of OTC drugs within less than a year.
- Higher concentration of active ingredient than specified
- Inactive ingredients that may not meet testing requirements
- Tiny particles of unspecified origin
In September of 2008, 21 children’s and infant’s Tylenol liquid products were deemed potentially unsafe due to bacterial contamination found in one of the inactive ingredients.
With all these recalls occurring, how can any health conscious consumer trust the safety or the effectiveness of any of these drugs?
I find it astonishing that while drug prices in general are soaring, drug manufacturers are still using rising costs as an excuse for failing to produce high-quality, pure products.
How about getting by with a little less profit in order to ensure each product is at minimum free of contamination and contains the specified amount of ingredients?
After all, as of 2007, the pharmaceutical industry was worth more money than the gross domestic product (GDP) – which is the market value of all the output produced in a nation in one year -- of entire COUNTRIES, including Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland, according to statistics from the World Bank.
In fact, if placed on the list ranking the countries of the world according to gross domestic product, the pharmaceutical industry ranked number 17 out of 185 countries in 2007!
But apparently, that’s still “not enough”…
As the patents on many blockbuster drugs are expiring, and Big Pharma is increasingly found liable for damages from dangerous drugs, drug companies have shifted their focus from drugs to vaccines.
There are currently vaccines against everything from obesity to smoking, and even stress, in the pipelines – health concerns that have precious little to do with bacterial or viral infections, which is the basis for the vaccine theory in the first place (and even that theory is up for discussion).
Aside from being potentially dangerous to the extreme, why is this trend so troubling?
In a nutshell: Lack of liability.
Drug companies have fiercely defended every single drug ever recalled as being safe and effective – until definitively proven dead wrong, and sometimes they still wouldn’t fess up to their culpability.
The same shameless, misleading strategies used for drugs are being used for vaccines.
But with vaccines, not only are the health risks far greater for you and your family, the subsequent liability for the drug company is greatly reduced or even eliminated!
So you take ALL the risk, while the drug companies demand your trust, take your money, and avoids any legal actions should your life be destroyed by one of their vaccines.
From a drug maker’s perspective, vaccines may be one of the absolute “safest” products to make, because their liability is negligible to non-existent, depending on the vaccine.
Pandemic vaccines are 100 percent risk-free for the vaccine maker, as laws ushered in after 9/11 exempt them from ANY liability. And, making matters worse, the laws create a negative incentive to test it for safety, because if they are fully aware of problems, then they could potentially be held liable for willful misconduct! It’s in their best interest to know as little as possible about the adverse reactions their vaccine might cause.
Non-pandemic vaccine injuries fall under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which is a no-fault federal vaccine injury compensation program. But again, very few vaccine injured children ever receive compensation from this program, and as explained in this previous article, the program is so seriously flawed as to be useless.
Getting back to the issue of recalling dangerous medicines, without liability, what incentive is there to voluntarily recall a vaccine when dangers or serious problems are discovered?
None!
The HPV vaccine Gardasil has obvious problems that have led to 53 recorded deaths of vibrant, healthy young girls, and yet everyone is moving on like nothing is the matter. No recall. Not even an official warning.
So should we buy into the promises of safe, pure, effective vaccines, when history has shown us that mistakes occur FAR more frequently than anyone would dare to guess – both in drug and vaccine manufacturing?
The answer, of course, is up to you. But they won’t be getting my vote of confidence anytime soon.
Adding to this debauched mess is the rise in out-and-out deception, as Prevent Disease describes so well in this recent article.
It’s become very apparent that disinformation operations are at an all-time high – or at least it is the most OBVIOUS campaigning we’ve ever been privy to.
Prevent Disease, in an attempt to demonstrate the outright lies by national governments and the media, highlights three examples from the last year alone — the H1N1 scandal, airport body scanners, and the BP oil disaster.
According to Prevent Disease:
“... [T]he H1N1 scandal reached its pinnacle in the fall of 2009 ... From radio, internet, television, newspapers, magazines, outdoor posters, signage and promotions, you could not escape the flu hype campaigns so diligently pursued by all the malicious agendas at play who only wanted one thing — to promote a dangerous H1N1 vaccine.And when news first unfolded about the BP oil disaster, the immediate response was to cover-up, deny, and respond with ignorance. In the end, a private company was permitted to use extremely potent toxins to mask the extent of their environmental crime while putting tens of thousands, if not millions of American’s health at risk.
After hundreds of reports exposed the criminal activity by all levels of government, we left the same people in power to do it all over again.”
Prevent Disease goes on to list “25 rules of disinformation,” employed with great success by a number of individuals with the intent to “prevent rational and complete examination of any chain of evidence which would hang them.”
It may be well worth your time to read through them, as being aware of how the con is done will help you avoid being conned in the first place.
Another interesting article that ties in here was published in the British Guardian, under the headline: “Drug firms hiding negative research are unfit to experiment on people. Another pharmaceutical giant has settled a big compensation claim. So why are they allowed to go on misleading the public?”
That is becoming the ten thousand dollar question…
Why are drug companies ALLOWED to continue maintaining the status quo despite being caught lying, defrauding, even knowingly killing, time and time again?
And perhaps even more intriguing, why is the public still falling for their tactics?
Just how many bizarre and devastating side effects must be rattled off at the end of a drug ad before it grabs your attention and make you question its stated benefit?
I believe that humans inherently want to trust and depend on authority. The question is, at which point does critical thinking and pure self-preservation kick in? It seems we’re still waiting for critical mass to be reached when it comes to this point, but I think we’re getting closer…
One such authority that have been granted full trust are scientists, employing the scientific method to prove or disprove the causes of health, disease, and drug safety, among many things.
But even in these prestigious vestiges of medicine, we’re now finding more and more evidence of corruption that threatens the entire premise of the scientific method. Dr. Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD has shared shocking information about the underbelly of medical science in this newsletter, as well as Dana Ullman.
If you missed either of those interviews, I highly recommend reviewing them now.
Ullman also has a phenomenal column in the Huffington Post, where he recently wrote:
“Doctors today commonly assert that they practice "scientific medicine," and patients think that the medical treatments they receive are "scientifically proven."Recent court cases highlight the truth of what Golomb and Ullman discuss. For example, it was discovered that AstraZeneca purposefully “buried” studies with unflattering results for their drug Seroquel.
However, this ideal is a dream, not reality, and a clever and profitable marketing ruse, not fact.”
The Guardian’s Ben Goldacre writes:
“In trial 15, patients with schizophrenia who were in remission were randomly assigned to receive either Seroquel, or a cheap, old-fashioned drug. After a year, the patients on Seroquel were doing worse. These negative findings were left unpublished.Smoke and mirrors… Ain’t that the truth! And that is oftentimes what you’re using when making decisions that affect your health.
… Here is the opening of another email in that quetiapine case. Richard Lawrence writes in an internal memo to colleagues: "Lisa has done a great smoke and mirrors job on trial 15.””
In the case of Seroquel, this smoke and mirrors job led to tens of thousands of people developing drug-induced diabetes, in addition to not actually working as advertised... Once these buried studies were unearthed, AstraZeneca ended up paying off more than 17,500 patients who had developed diabetes and related illnesses.
Again, I remind you that class action lawsuits against drug manufacturers for vaccine damage is not an option. They rigged the game years ago and effectively lobbied Congress to make it illegal to sue them for any vaccine related injuries.
So, beware jumping on the vaccine bandwagon for every ill.
It should be self evident by now that the idea of synthetic chemicals being the answer for your health problems is FALSE.
However, there are certain basic tenets of optimal health that have remained permanent truths, regardless of the claim-of-the-day spouted by modern science, and these include:
- Eat a healthy diet that’s right for your nutritional type, paying very careful attention to keeping your insulin levels down. This typically involves increasing your consumption of whole (preferably organic) foods, while avoiding processed foods and sugary drinks of all kinds, as they are loaded with fructose, genetically modified ingredients, and chemicals.
- Drink plenty of clean water
- Address your day-to-day stress
- Exercise
- Get plenty of appropriate sun exposure
- Limit your exposure to toxins
- Consume healthy fats
- Eat plenty of raw food
- Optimize your insulin and leptin levels
- Get plenty of sleep
The diet of the African children was similar to that of people living in the modern Western world thousands of years ago. Of the Italian children, only those who were still breast-feeding harbored bacteria resembling the African children's.
The trillions of microbes that inhabit your gut help you to digest food, protect against disease-causing bugs and limit inflammation.
The Telegraph reports:
"Pediatrician Dr Paolo Lionetti … and colleagues said children in industrialized countries who eat … 'Western' diets may reduce microbial richness — potentially contributing to a rise in allergic and inflammatory diseases in the last half-century."
Obesity is not the only health risk your child faces if he eats a diet consisting mainly of processed foods and snacks. As illustrated by this study, a junk food diet – with is a largely denatured diet, devoid of "live" nutrients such as healthy bacteria – can also set the stage for asthma, eczema, and a variety of allergies, inflammatory conditions and autoimmune diseases.
Sadly, as the Western-style diet spreads across the globe, much of the natural microbial diversity that is so crucial to good health is actually starting to disappear! Here, the authors stress the importance of "preserving this treasure of microbial diversity from ancient rural communities worldwide."
Indeed, the importance of eating a gut-healthy diet cannot be underestimated. Your gut plays a major role in your physical and even mental health, and having a healthy gut entails maintaining a balance of "good" and "bad" bacteria – something you simply will not accomplish by eating highly processed, "dead" foods.
Until recently, most doctors dismissed the notion that your digestive system did much of anything outside of breaking down food, but in recent years scientists have revealed just how inaccurate this thinking was.
For example, an estimated 80 percent of your immune system is actually located in your gut, so supporting your digestive health is essential to also supporting your immune system, which is your number one defense system against ALL disease.
Therefore, it should come as no major surprise to find out that lack of beneficial bacteria in your intestines will also allow allergies, inflammation and autoimmune diseases to flourish where they might not otherwise.
Common signs and symptoms that you may need to address your intestinal balance include:
- Gas and bloating
- Constipation or diarrhea
- Nausea
- Headaches
- Fatigue
- Sugar cravings, and cravings for refined carb foods
Chances are, if you or your entire family eats a lot of processed junk foods and fast foods, this list may be a description of a more or less an everyday "normal" state for you
Soda
In my mind this is where most people will get the biggest payoff for the amount of effort involved. The average person consumes more than one gallon of soda per week. Reducing or eliminating soda from your diet is one of the easiest shifts to make.
Most diet sodas are worse than regular sodas, as you can read in my recent review on aspartame. When people ask me what is safer to drink: diet or regular soda, I ask them what they would rather be hit in the head with -- a baseball bat or a sledgehammer? It's a tough call, but I think a case can be made for regular soda being the lesser of two evils...That said, regular soda with its high sugar content promotes yeast overgrowth, which in turn promotes allergies. In fact, many people with yeast-related allergies and food sensitivities tend to have sugar cravings, which is doubly problematic since it actually feeds the yeast that is already overgrown in their systems.
While many of you are not likely consuming many sodas, it is vital to understand the importance of this simple change for your friends and family who are not as health savvy as you. Gentle persistent encouragement of this principle will have massively profound implications on their health.
Fortunately there are simple alternatives that are relatively easy to implement. The best is pure clean water. I just completed a four-hour video interview with a leading water industry water expert and hope to share that with you in the next few weeks for more details.
For those who are really struggling, you can purchase carbonated water and use flavored liquid stevias for a taste that is very similar to most sodas. You can also use Turbo Tapping, which is a highly effective, free EFT tapping technique.
Doughnuts and Pastries
Overall these foods are worse than soda as they not only contain sugar, typically in the form of high fructose corn syrup, but they also contain dangerous trans fats. The reason I did not list this one first is that they are not consumed by as many people on a regular basis.
For more information about how trans fats promotes allergies, while saturated fats relieve them, please see this previous article.
French Fries
Oh, they taste so good, but are ever so bad for you as they are loaded with the worst types of fat on the planet -- typically highly refined and genetically modified omega 6 oils, such as corn, canola, and soybean oils.
If you're still unaware of the link between allergies and genetically engineered food ingredients (particularly soy), please review this recent article by GMO expert, Jeffrey Smith.
These highly processed omega-6 oils are bad enough if you eat them in the form of unheated salad dressing, but when these oils are heated to a high temperature, they transform into a potent mixture that is sure to destroy your health.
Avoid these like the plague. Be particularly careful when ordering hamburgers and other similar foods in a restaurant as most will include fries by default, and once they are at your table they're hard to resist. So please be sure to order a healthier alternative.
Nearly All Breakfast Cereals
Breakfast is, without question, the single most challenging meal to eat outside of your home. Most of the typical breakfast offerings will drag your health down. The most commonly consumed breakfast are breakfast cereals, which are merely disguised forms of high fructose corn syrup loaded with genetically modified (GM) grains. But pancakes, French toast, waffles, scrambled eggs and rolls don't do much to improve your health either.
Many may wonder about the scrambled egg concern but the high heat oxidized cholesterol in the eggs and severely damages it. Far better to have the eggs MINIMALLY cooked or better yet raw eggs.
Processed Foods and Snacks
In addition to these specific examples, processed foods in general can contribute to allergies for a number of different reasons. Most processed foods contain a variety of food colorings, flavors, preservatives, and other additives can have a major impact. Junk foods also has a detrimental effect on your gut flora, which has major consequences for your overall health, weight control, and the development of allergies.
The ideal ratio between the bacteria in your body is 85 percent "good" and 15 percent "bad." That's right – you need FAR more beneficial bacteria (probiotics) than you might think in order to maintain the right balance.
The key here is to avoid as many processed foods as you can. This is a challenge because over 90% of the foods that Americans eat are processed and the number source of calories is high fructose corn syrup. So the general principle is to avoid processed foods, but some foods are more particularly pernicious than others so let me give you some examples.
This ratio is essential for:
- The proper development and function of your immune system
- Protection against over-growth of other microorganisms that could cause disease
- Digestion of food and absorption of nutrients
- Producing vitamins, absorbing minerals and eliminating toxins
As you can see, probiotics perform a wide variety of functions, which renders them useful and beneficial for a number of health concerns, including the prevention or control of:
- Food and skin allergies in children
- Vaginitis
- Premature labor in pregnant women
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Recurrent ear and bladder infections
- Chronic diarrhea
One of the ways friendly bacteria help prevent allergies, infections and inflammatory conditions is by training your immune system to distinguish between pathogens and non-harmful antigens, and to respond appropriately.
When you're deficient in these healthy bacteria, your immune system is ill equipped to address the many pathogens and antigens entering your system on a daily basis, and health problems can easily ensue.
The microflora in your digestive system is also emerging as a major player in weight management, and needless to say, junk food and weight gain typically go hand in hand.
Your gut flora is by no means the only underlying reason for this, but it does play an important part.
Multiple studies have shown that obese people have different intestinal bacteria than slim people, and it appears that the microbes in an overweight body are much more efficient at extracting calories from food.
Researchers have also suggested that certain bacteria may cause low-grade inflammation in your body, further contributing to obesity and difficulty to lose weight.
One such study found that the bifidobacteria counts taken from infants at the age of 6 months and 12 months were twice as high in healthy weight children as in those who became overweight, while S. Aureus levels were lower.
Interestingly, this finding may explain why breast-fed babies are also at a lower risk of obesity, as bifidobacteria flourish in the guts of breast-fed babies.
The breast-fed Italian babies in the study above were also the only ones harboring bacteria resembling the African children's, which indicates your "diet may dominate other factors such as ethnicity, sanitation, geography or climate," the researchers said.
Two previous studies found that obese people had about 20 percent more of a family of bacteria known as firmicutes, and almost 90 percent less of a bacteria called bacteroidetes than lean people. (Firmicutes help your body to extract calories from complex sugars and deposit those calories in fat.)
This latest study confirms those results, as here too, the African children had significantly higher levels of Bacteroidetes and far lower levels of the firmicutes linked to obesity.
Fortunately, influencing the ratio of bacteria growing in your body is relatively easy. One of the most important steps you can take is to stop consuming processed and sugary foods. This includes cutting down on grains, as most grains are quickly converted into sugar in your body.
Keep in mind, of course, that if you or your children need to lose some excess weight, balancing your gut bacteria is only one part of the equation. Regular exercise and addressing any emotional blocks are also very important.
When you eat a healthy diet low in sugars and processed foods, one of the major benefits is that it naturally causes the good bacteria in your gut to flourish.
Yet, even with an extremely low-sugar diet, there are other factors that influence your gut bacteria. Antibiotics, chlorinated water, antibacterial soap, agricultural chemicals, pollution -- all of these things help to kill off your good bacteria. This is why it's a wise choice to "reseed" your body with good bacteria from time to time by taking a high-quality probiotic supplement or eating fermented foods.
In the past, people used fermented foods like yogurt and sauerkraut to support their digestive health, as these foods are rich in naturally beneficial bacteria. This is still the best route to optimal digestive health.
Healthy choices include:
- Lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner)
- Fermented milk, such as kefir
- Various pickled fermentations of cabbage, turnips, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, squash and carrots
- Natto (fermented soy)
If you were to eat a diet rich in fermented foods that have NOT been pasteurized (as pasteurization kills the naturally occurring probiotics), then you would likely enjoy great digestive health without any additional supplementation.
However, if you simply do not like any of these types of fermented foods, your next best option is to use a high quality probiotic supplement.
I have used many different brands over the past 15 years and there are many good ones out there. I also spent a long time researching and developing my own, called Complete Probiotics, in which I incorporated everything I have learned about this important tool over the years.
Keep in mind, however, that processed foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast, so you can't use the drug approach to probiotics -- meaning, you can't maintain a diet high in processed foods while taking a probiotic supplement to counteract the ill effects.
You may be able to temporarily suppress some of the troublesome symptoms caused by that kind of diet, but it won't work in the long run.
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