Tag Archives: inflammation

Taking Care of Your Health

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Protect Yourself From Disease and Outrageous Medical Costs

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked

In the U.S., 66.5% of bankruptcies are due to medical bills, which amounts to 530,000 medical bankruptcies each year.1 Among those who file bankruptcy due to medical expenses, 72% have health insurance,2,3 highlighting the outrageous state of health care in America.

If you end up in the hospital, you know you’re going to receive a bill — but you don’t typically know how much that bill will be. It’s no wonder that two-thirds of adults worry about being able to afford surprise medical bills like these.4,5

In fact, in a survey of public financial worries, being able to afford unexpected medical bills topped the list, followed by concerns about paying for health insurance deductibles and prescription drugs.6 Staying healthy by taking control of your health is key to avoiding this medical bill debt trap.

Big Pharma Manipulates Patents to Drive Up Drug Costs

If U.S. medical costs seem sky-high, it’s not in your imagination. Big Pharma keeps drug costs elevated due to patents, which last 20 years, and sometimes up to 40, preventing competitors from introducing less expensive generics to the market.7 A report from I-Mak analyzed the 12 best-selling drugs in the U.S., finding that their makers file hundreds of patent applications, most of which are granted.8

While U.S. patent law intends patents to provide 10 years of protection, the mass patents allow drug makers to monopolize the market and drive up costs. “These patents are used by drugmakers for the purpose of forestalling generic competition while continuing to increase the price of these drugs,” I-Mak reported.9

On average, among the top 12 drugs studied, there were 125 applications filed and 71 patents granted per drug. Prices also increased 68% since 2012. According to I-Mak, “There are 38 years of attempted patent protection blocking generic competition sought by drugmakers for each of these top grossing drugs — or nearly double the 20-year monopoly intended under U.S. patent law.”10

Hospitals Charge You Up to 18 Times Over Their Cost

It’s not only drug costs that are bankrupting Americans. Hospital stays can also lead to financial ruin — and it’s easy to see why when you realize the price-gouging going on. In “Fleecing Patients,”11 National Nurses United highlighted that the 100 most expensive U.S. hospitals charge patients from $1,129 to $1,808 for every $100 of their costs.12

That is 11.3 to 18 times what their actual costs are. Many companies, like grocery stores, typically operate on margins of 1 to 3% profits,13 or 0.1 to 0.3 times their costs.

“There is no excuse for these scandalous prices. These are not markups for luxury condo views, they are for the most basic necessity of your life: your health,” Jean Ross, RN, president of National Nurses United, said in a news release, adding:14

“Unpayable charges are a calamity for our patients, too many of whom avoid — at great risk to their health — the medical care they need due to the high cost, or they become burdened by devastating debt, hounded by bill collectors or driven into bankruptcy.”

It’s gotten so bad that 30% of adults in one survey said they had to choose between paying for medical bills or necessities like food and housing.15 Hospitals then go after patients who can’t pay. In Maryland alone, one of the only states to publish such data, hospitals have filed more than 145,000 medical debt lawsuits in the last decade, trying to recover $268.7 million.16

5 Keys to Take Control of Your Health

I’ve long recommended staying out of hospitals as much as possible to protect your health. But doing so will also protect your pocketbook. While you should always seek medical care when you need it — especially in cases of emergency — I am going to list the most powerful lifestyle strategies I know that you can take to radically reduce your likelihood of getting sick and ending up saddled with oppressive medical debt that can lead to bankruptcy.

Assiduously following these recommendations will go a long way to immunizing you against all chronic diseases that are the primary reason most people wind up in the hospital.

1.Get one hour of daily sunshine — Head outdoors for a daily dose of sunshine as often as possible. Ideally, seek to get one hour of sun exposure daily with minimal clothing. If you spend more time in the sun, the rates of many types of cancers would radically decrease and there would be fewer cardiovascular disease deaths.17

One of the primary benefits is that your skin produces vitamin D in response to sun exposure. Vitamin D upregulates your ability to fight infections, as well as chronic inflammation, and produces over 200 antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), one of which is cathelicidin, a naturally occurring broad-spectrum antibiotic.

The cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, or CAMP, is made by immune cells and skin and gut cells, which act as a barrier to infection.18,19 Beyond vitamin D, which may serve as more of a marker for proper sun exposure, getting out in the sun is involved in melatonin production.

Near-infrared rays from the sun penetrate deep into your body and activate cytochrome c oxidase, and also stimulate the production of melatonin inside your mitochondria. Your mitochondria produce ATP, the energy currency of your body. A byproduct of this ATP production is reactive oxidative species (ROS), which are responsible for oxidative stress.

Excessive amounts of ROS will damage the mitochondria, contributing to suboptimal health, inflammation and chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and thrombosis (blood clots). But melatonin essentially mops up ROS that damage your mitochondria. So, by getting plenty of sun exposure during the day, your mitochondria will be bathed in melatonin, thereby reducing oxidative stress.20,21

2.Eliminate seed oils from your diet

Video Link

You might be concerned about getting skin cancer from all the sun exposure in the first recommendation, but it turns out that the primary reason for getting skin cancer is related to the amount of linoleic acid (LA) that is in your skin. It is really hard to get any cancer, including skin cancer, if you have low LA levels.

I would strongly recommend that you view the video above even if you have previously seen it, as it will remind you of the vital importance of this strategy and, more importantly, how to properly implement a low LA diet.

Linoleic acid is the primary fat found in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), including vegetable/seed oils. It accounts for about 80% of the fat composition of these oils. Examples of seed oils high in omega-6 include soybean, cottonseed, sunflower, rapeseed (canola), corn and safflower.22

The single best comprehensive rule to follow is to avoid virtually all processed foods. If you simply do that you will be in the ball park and will only need some fine tweaks that are reviewed in the video above.

3.Avoid all processed foods — LA is found in virtually every processed food, including restaurant foods, sauces and salad dressings, so to eliminate it you’ll need to eliminate most processed foods and restaurant foods from your diet — unless you can confirm that the chef only cooks with butter.

Processed convenience foods are linked to an increased risk of developing and dying from cancer,23 and they contribute to premature death.24 Yet, 61% of Americans’ food intake comes in the form of highly processed foods and drinks. The amount is similar in Canada (62%) and the U.K. (63%).25

When you cut processed foods from your diet, not only will you drastically reduce LA but also other toxic additives, such as emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners, which can lead to pathophysiological changes such as impaired glucose tolerance, neuroinflammation and oxidative stress.26 Eating processed junk foods is also linked to metabolic syndrome and all-cause mortality,27 along with cognitive decline28 and depression.29

One caveat, because animals are fed grains that are high in linoleic acid,30 it’s also hidden in “healthy” foods like chicken and pork, which makes these meats a major source as well. Olive oil is another health food that can be a hidden source of linoleic acid, as it’s often cut with cheaper seed oils.

4.Walk one hour a day — Daily movement is another critical element of health and longevity. Ideally, walk outdoors, so you can combine No. 1 — sun exposure — with your exercise. Walking is a powerful form of activity for a number of reasons. It’s free and accessible — you can do it virtually anywhere. And it’s gentle enough that most people can engage in it, even if you’re out of shape and haven’t exercised in a while.

Walking even 8,000 steps once or twice a week is associated with significantly lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality risk.31 People who participate in outdoor walking groups also enjoy significant reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, resting heart rate, body fat, depression scores and body mass index, along with increases in VO2max, a marker of fitness level.32

Any type of walking appears beneficial, but if you want to increase intensity, Nordic walking, which involves walking with fixed-length ski poles, leads to even greater increases in functional capacity — or the ability to carry out activities related to daily living — compared to other forms of exercise, including high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and moderate-to-vigorous intensity continuous training (MICT).33

5.Improve mitochondrial function — Your mitochondrial health plays a vital role in longevity and disease prevention. To put it simply, if your mitochondria are not functioning well, nothing else will either. Mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells, producing about 85% of the energy generated in your body.

There are a number of ways to optimize your mitochondrial function, but one element is niacinamide (aka nicotinamide), a form of niacin (vitamin B3) that plays a vital role in energy metabolism. It’s essential for the mitochondrial electron transport chain to function. Without it, your mitochondria cannot make energy.

Niacinamide is so important because it is a precursor for NAD+, which is involved in the conversion of food to energy, maintaining DNA integrity and ensuring proper cell function. NAD+ is also a primary fuel for PARP, which is an important DNA repair enzyme. NAD+ also fuels the conversion of cortisol to its inactive form, cortisone.

Niacinamide at a dose of 50 milligrams three times per day will provide the fuel for the rate limiting enzyme for NAD+, NAMPT. Niacinamide also has potent antiobesity effects, can help prevent neurodegeneration and heart failure, and reverse leaky gut.

I recommend getting niacinamide in powder form because the lowest available dose in most supplements is 500 mg, and that will decrease NAD+ due to negative feedback on NAMPT, which is the opposite of what you’re looking for.

Niacinamide will only cost you about 25 cents a month if you get it as a powder. Typically, one-sixty-fourth of a teaspoon of niacinamide powder is about 50 mg. There is a company, though, that has just created an inexpensive 50 mg tablet for convenience.

I also recommend taking about one aspirin tablet daily. Aspirin plays a role in mitochondria function34 and also has other health benefits. Importantly, it helps increase the oxidation of glucose as fuel for your body while inhibiting the oxidation of fatty acids, specifically linoleic acid. I know this one seems silly, but it really does work to prevent so many diseases and it is dirt cheap. Aspirin has been (and still is) the target of a massive discrediting campaign by Pharma as it competes with newer, far more expensive blood thinners and pain relievers.

I will have a very comprehensive article in the future describing the justification for this recommendation. It is important to understand though that you want to take a very pure aspirin as frequently it is the other ingredients in the cheap aspirin tablets that cause complications. I take one that is 99.5% USP which is a pharmaceutical grade and take three of their scoops a day.

If you are taking it for blood thinning the dose is a baby aspirin (85 mg) per day. If you are using it for disease prevention it would be one regular aspirin. Ideally get a clean version of aspirin. You can find a bottle of 1000 on Amazon that only has corn starch. If you are sensitive to aspirin, it would be best to use a salicylic acid or willow bark supplement, as this is the active ingredient. Look for a clean, high-quality willow bark supplement.

By taking the five steps above, you can significantly improve your health — inexpensively — and reduce your risk of chronic disease. In turn, you’re less likely to require expensive medical treatments that put both your physical and financial health at risk.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/08/26/medical-costs-debt-trap.aspx?ui=f460707c057231d228aac22d51b97f2a8dcffa7b857ec065e5a5bfbcfab498ac&sd=20211017&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20230826&foDate=true&mid=DM1455280&rid=1894214522

Guts, Enzymes, Serotonin, And Health — And a note about DNA

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How Endotoxins and Estrogen Can Wreck Your Health

Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked
  • Endotoxin and mycotoxins play an important role in many chronic degenerative diseases
  • Endotoxin, also known as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), is produced by gram-negative bacteria in your gut. When complex carbs aren’t digested in your stomach, they travel down to the intestine where they feed these bacteria, and as the bacteria grow, multiply and die, the bacteria release LPS, which can result in leaky gut, allergic reactions, organ dysfunction and even sepsis
  • Endotoxin also catalyzes metabolic reactions that convert tryptophan in your gut to serotonin. You do not want high levels of serotonin because it’s antimetabolic. It suppresses your body’s ability to create energy in the electron transport chain, so you become tired and fatigued, your metabolic rate slows and you gain weight
  • Estrogen excess can produce symptoms that are identical to endotoxin toxicity, and an estimated 30% of endotoxin cases are misdiagnosed, and are related to excess estrogen
  • Estrogen is one of our biggest toxic threats today, as both men and women are exposed to high amounts of estrogenic compounds in their diet and environment. Most already have too much estrogen, which is a major driver of certain cancers

Today’s interview features Kashif Khan, founder and CEO of The DNA Company, which analyzes your DNA and keeps your data private, unlike 23andMe and other companies that sell your genetic data to third parties like drug companies.

Our discussion here is not about DNA analysis, however, but rather endotoxin and mycotoxin, which can play an important role in many chronic degenerative diseases, and estrogen excess, which can produce symptoms identical to endotoxin. Khan is quite knowledgeable in this area.

“The biggest area where we’re seeing a flood of people coming in, is in the female health world,” Khan says. “Not that this is an answer for everybody, but what we’re seeing is that all these women are concerned about how they feel and it’s been labeled as an endotoxin problem.

We’re diving in and seeing that about 30% of them are misdiagnosed. It’s actually an estrogen problem. They have the same symptoms, same complaints, same everything. We know that endotoxins are a concern, and so that concern is being taught in functional medicine … Mycotoxins are also being misdiagnosed.

So, a big area we end up supporting and helping is actually looking at the hormone pathway and seeing what toxic hormones are people making. This is one piece of the conversation, it’s one slice, but it’s a big slice where the most help is needed …

Whether it’s men producing DHT that’s causing inflammation, or women producing 4-hydroxy estrogen or 16-hydroxy estrogen as this constant trickle of inflammation, representing the same symptoms, same everything, they’re just not getting help. They’re not getting fixed because that’s what’s actually driving the symptoms. And we keep seeing this over and over again.”

What Are Endotoxin and Mycotoxin?

Endotoxin, also known as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), is produced by gram-negative bacteria in your gut. When complex carbs aren’t digested in your stomach, they travel down to the intestine where they feed these bacteria, and as the bacteria grow, multiply and die, the bacteria release LPS, which can result in leaky gut, allergic reactions, organ dysfunction and even sepsis.

Endotoxin also catalyzes a series of metabolic reactions that convert tryptophan in your gut to serotonin. Most people think serotonin is good, but mostly, especially higher levels, it is not good for your health. You do not want high levels of serotonin because it’s an antimetabolite.

This means it suppresses your body’s ability to create energy in your mitochondria in the electron transport chain, so you become tired and fatigued, your metabolic rate slows and you gain weight.

While endotoxin typically is related to gram-negative bacteria, mycotoxin is generated by things like fungi and yeast, such as candida. Mycotoxin such as mold can also have a volatile organic compounds (VOCs) aspect to it. This is the smell or odor, which can make you sick all by itself.

Toxic Reservoirs Must Be Addressed

As explained by Khan, when it comes to endotoxin and mycotoxin, it’s important to realize that you likely have a reservoir of toxin-producing bacteria in your system that will continue causing problems for as long as you keep feeding them. What’s more, within the metabolic pathway of endotoxin, a gene expression change occurs that is triggered by nutrition or environment.

“That triggers production of enzymes and proteins like amylase and cellulase to then convert the fuel that they’re consuming into the building blocks of the ensuing toxins, like mycotoxins, for example,” Khan explains.

“So, you have this internal combustion engine of making more and more, and the genes are being triggered in the actual toxin to make more of the outcome of this inflammatory toxin. And so, it’s happening on the inside too. That’s what people don’t get.

You’re binding and clearing, but if you’re not dealing with innate fungal overgrowth or toxin overload, you’re still making more of it. We often look at the gut as the source of what you need to work on, but it’s not just about what’s coming in. It’s also what you make on the inside. People need to think about that.”

How to Address Endotoxin and Mycotoxin

To address this vicious cycle, you need to heal and seal your gut. Beneficial bacteria, such as bifidobacteria and lactobacillus, and beneficial yeast like Saccharomyces boulardii can help repopulate your gut with beneficial microbes.

Saccharomyces boulardii is frequently prescribed by knowledgeable physicians to individuals who need to take antibiotics, because the saccharomyces are not killed by antibiotics. Intermittent use of binders such as activated charcoal, cholestyramine (a prescription drug), clays and chlorella can also be helpful to clear out some of the endotoxin.

In severe cases, you may even need to use antibiotics to sterilize your gut, although I don’t typically recommend this. Obviously, you also need to reduce the fuel source, so avoid complex carbs and resistant starches.

The strategies for mycotoxin are similar. However, as noted by Khan, most of the mycotoxin you’re exposed to comes from your food, and most of the mycotoxin in food is produced during shipping and storage. Generally, about 10% of the food supply is contaminated at the source, but once it’s reached its destination, the contamination level is 25%. So, to avoid mycotoxin, eating locally-grown food is part of the solution.

Humic and Fulvic Acids Help Clear Intracellular Toxins

If binders and beneficial bacteria and/or yeast don’t do the trick, you may have leaky gut. In that case, your gut also needs to be healed. Signs of leaky gut include constipation or diarrhea, and the route of elimination needs to be fixed before you can start to really move toxins out.

“One really cool thing we’re finding is there’s sometimes solutions that aren’t labeled for a particular problem, but they work. Humic and fulvic minerals are doing a really good job of drawing [out] intracellular [toxins], and healing the cellular membrane, because fulvic minerals have this unique attribute where they have this charge to be able to bring nutrients into the cell.

Once they do that, they flip their charge to draw toxins out. They bring them back out with them. And so, we’re finding people who are taking good minerals are healing much faster, if they’re taking the right stuff, because there’s this double whammy of healing the gut, taking out what’s in the blood, but also intracellular [and] cell membrane-wise.”

You may also need liver and bile support to ensure efficient detox. One thing to remember is that complete healing can take a long time. “It can take two years,” Khan says. “If you’re not just masking a symptom to feel better, it’s going to take time. It’s not a question of weeks.”

Serotonin Toxicity

Getting back to serotonin for a moment, this is a major problem that most people aren’t aware of. There’s a disease process called serotonin syndrome, caused by excess serotonin in the gut. One of the signs of serotonin syndrome is loose stools or diarrhea.

If you’re one of the 40% of adult women in the United States over 40 who are taking an SSRI antidepressant, consider finding a competent physician to help you wean yourself from that drug as soon as possible. There are other safer ways to address depression and anxiety.

Safer, and far more beneficial would be drugs like Benadryl or diphenhydramine, which is an antihistamine. It can block serotonin quite effectively, as can famotidine (Pepsid). Also reduce your intake of tryptophan-rich foods, as tryptophan converts into serotonin. Khan adds:

“When it comes to the serotonin issue, it’s not always about production. It’s more about utilization. We can predict somebody’s genetic propensity to use serotonin. It’s in the length of the receptor. When somebody has the shorter receptor, it’s not that they’re producing less, but they can’t use it. They can’t utilize it efficiently, and so these people are often constantly irritable.

They’re very distractible. It becomes hard for their brain to prioritize a stimulus because they don’t have the right receptor to bind and experience the stimulus as it should be. So, they appear to be irritable and distractible. If things annoy you a lot, if things bother you, if you have trouble staying asleep in the second half of night, those are traits of serotonin dysregulation.”

The Hazards of Estrogen

While estrogen replacement therapy is all the rage, this strategy is likely doing far more harm than good. I strongly recommend avoiding estrogen replacement therapy, even bioidentical, organic estrogen replacement therapy. You can go on other forms of hormone therapy, but not estrogen. Khan explains:

“[Estrogen] is certainly one of our biggest toxic threats today, especially given that you have to think of it contextually. Our context today is not grandma’s context. [Due to] the hormone disruption and estrogen mimics we’re dealing with [today], you already have too much, and you’re adding more through hormone replacement therapy or birth control pills.

So, we’re already in a context where it’s a threat, so you have to pay attention to it. The layers you have to look at are dominance. So, what do I make? Am I more androgenized, am I more estrogenized? And you can predict that through the genes that metabolize each step of the cascade … progesterone to testosterone, to estrogen. What do I do in each one of those steps?

Many women — and men, by the way — are estrogen-dominant and just produce way too much. It’s [due to] a conversion of CYP19A1 to testosterone and estrogen. That’s why aromatase-inhibitor inhibitors work well, because you are just flowing the gene expression down in that one location, and all of a sudden, you have more free flowing testosterone.

By the way, there are three pathways that your estrogens convert into, potentially, before you clear them, and these metabolites are 2-, 4- and 16-hydroxy estrogen. 2-hydroxy estrogen is the good clean stuff you want. 4- and 16-hydroxy estrogen are toxic.

We’ve seen over and over again, when we’re dealing with breast cancer patients, ovarian cancer patients, who were told, ‘You have BRCA, go cut your breasts off.’ And then they’re just getting ovarian cancer instead. Or vice versa. It’s because of this.

So, BRCAs are a repair tool. It’s just supposed to fix things. It doesn’t cause anything. But these two metabolites, the 4 and 16 [are] highly inflammatory, [and] we know all chronic conditions are rooted in inflammation. For men, the 16-hydroxy pathway is closely connected to testicular cancer. In the androgen pathway, dihydrotestosterone fuels prostate cancer.”

Detox and Clearance of Estrogen

To detox estrogen, the same detox pathways used for other toxins also apply here, such as the glutathione pathway, antioxidation, superoxide dismutase and COMT, which is the tail end of methylation. COMT, in particular, is really important for clearing toxic estrogens, whereas glucuronidation deals with some of the androgen toxins.

“If you take a hormone therapy and look at this cascade, what are most women getting? They’re getting estradiol, typically, which converts into 4-hydroxy estrogen, which is a cancer fuel.

If you have a woman who is already teetering on the edge of poor health because she converts into one of these buckets and you give her estradiol, you’ve just given the raw ingredients to fuel this, and then all of a sudden inflammation’s through the roof. And where did this breast cancer come from?

I’m dealing with a family where there’s breast cancer, and a woman that previously had ovarian cancer. And what happened in those two parts of her life? Two years prior to the breast cancer, in menopause, she started her hormone replacement therapy, and she took estradiol …

Keep in mind, in menopause you don’t have a menstrual cycle anymore, so you’re not clearing that toxin. It just gets stored in fat. That’s what your body does with it, which is why you have inflammation in the breast. That’s where you have a lot of fat as a woman.

Take it back a couple of decades, when she had the ovarian cancer, it’s because she was on the birth control pill for eight years. Same thing, she was fueling more estrogen into that bucket that she converted into 4-hydroxy estrogen, which caused ovarian cancer at that time. Same problem. The root is the estrogen dominance and toxicity.

In men, we see things like gynecomastia, loss of libido, hair loss. And you’re seeing that in numbers today more than ever before. There are no manly men. Where did they all go?

We have estrogens in our water. Estrogens don’t break down, they’re like forever chemicals. When a woman flushes her tampon in the toilet or her birth control pill that she peed out and some guy drinks it months later, once it gets past filtration and sanitation, he’s still taking the estrogens in.

They’re still there. The challenge is that the total load just keeps increasing, and we’re all exposed to it. We have to think about not only what we make and who we are, but in the context of this estrogen toxic soup, where it’s everywhere already, so the total load is far too much.”

How to Measure Estrogen Excess

There are two ways to measure or gauge potential estrogen excess. One is to look at your genetics to understand how you metabolize estrogen. The other is to take a standard DUTCH test, which is commonly used to monitor patients on hormone replacement therapy.

Unfortunately, many doctors are not trained on interpreting metabolites. They’re looking at estrogen alone, not understanding that there are genes that metabolize and turn the estrogen into different things.

“We work with a lot of NHL hockey players,” Khan says. “In 2019, a bunch of them were coming to us with man boobs, and we found out there was a new trend of taking this AndroGel pack.

It’s a gel that goes on your stomach. Androgens, testosterone, enters your bloodstream, and the thinking is, ‘I gave you testosterone, you should have more testosterone.’

But … some men had the fast CYP19A1 gene that converts it all into estrogen. So, I gave you testosterone, but your body’s saying, ‘Turn that into estrogen.’ And that’s what you’re doing with it. All those gentlemen needed was an aromatase inhibitor. Just block the estrogen conversion.

That’s where knowing where to intervene in that cascade makes things a lot easier. Most of the time, we already have the raw ingredients, we just need to plug into the right place with the right supplement, either speed something up or slow something down.”

Better Options

I’m not opposed to all hormone replacement therapy. The master precursor hormone, though, is pregnenolone. That is the base hormone that converts to all others, and it’s unlikely to aromatize. The ideal administration route is once a day in a cacao butter suppository. DHEA, which is a male hormone, at 5 to 10 mg can also be added.

Easier, but not as effectively absorbed, would be to swallow it as an oral pill, but it must be taken with a saturated fat to make sure it bypasses liver metabolism. Something like a teaspoon of butter or beef with fat in it would also work.

DHEA can easily aromatize and can form estrogen, which is not a good thing, so you need to be careful about using too much. Those are two base hormones that people can use rather safely. You can also use progesterone, which is anti-estrogen.

The oral route is only about 85% effective with the butter, compared to nearly 100% with the suppository route. Cacao butter works much better than coconut oil, as it is a longer chain saturated fat and does not melt at room temperature. If you do use suppositories, ideally, you should not have a bowel movement for three to four hours after insertion.

Estrogen, aside from increasing intracellular calcium concentration, is also antimetabolic, as it slows down your metabolic rate and inhibits your thyroid function, both of which are bad news. It’s toxic to your body in most cases. It is likely only second to excess LA intake as a factor that increases your risk of cancer.

You do need it sometimes, certainly for reproductive purposes and for wound healing, but most of the time you have more than enough to fill those roles, and it’s just an excess, especially with all the xenoestrogens we’re exposed to in the food supply.

“Menopause is a protective measure,” Khan says. “You’re past the fertility stage of your life and this toxin that you needed for that purpose, you don’t need anymore, so your body naturally goes into a state to protect you by not having so much of it. We break nature and try and maintain it, not understanding why the body does this. It’s to protect you. That’s why you go into menopause.”

More Information

If you’re interested in learning more about gene sequencing and genetic testing, which Khan’s company, The DNA Company, does, please listen to the entire interview. We segue into that toward the end.

We also discuss a new Canadian bill that could potentially eliminate most nutritional supplements on the market. This, even though there has not been a single reported death in Canada from a nutritional supplement since 1965. You can learn more about this bill in “Discussion Paper on 2023 Health Canada Initiatives.”1

Basically, they intend to license supplements as drugs, which means bringing a product to market will end up costing around $250,000 to $500,000. “If you go to your naturopath who’s compounding something … they don’t even sell $20,000 of that product per year, so how are they going to pay $500,000 to get it registered?”

And, there’s no grandfather clause. They intend to do this for all products, including existing ones. The bill has already passed, so now they’re just working on its implementation. As a result of this bill, naturopaths may not be able to remain in business either, since they’ll have virtually nothing to prescribe, other than whole foods. “The intention is to put [supplements] in allopathic health care control,” Khan says.

Perhaps the most important take-home from this dialogue is that we need to be prepared. This is already happening in Canada, which means it probably won’t be long before the same kind of legislation shows up in the U.S. When it does, we have to be prepared to push back with all our might.

In closing, if you’re interested in getting genetic testing, go to thednacompany.com/Mercola for 15% (the discount will show at checkout). If you just want to learn more, visit theDNAway.com. There you can also learn more about Khan’s book, “The DNA Way.” You can also follow him on Instagram

Still Hankering for a Vaccine?

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Note: Thank you to Anne Dachel for transcribing Dr. Larry Palevsky’s presentation to the CT Assembly last February, during which time the religious exemption was in jeopardy. Then…  COVID.

By Anne Dachel

Nightmare in Connecticut

On February 19, 2020 there was hearing by the Connecticut Assembly on vaccine safety. There should have been a packed chamber and lots of press coverage because what one expert testified to was shocking. Sadly, most of the seats were empty, but we need to consider what was said.

Larry Palevsky, MD answered questions for 28 minutes. He described the appalling lack of studies when it comes to vaccine safety, especially involving the use of aluminum in vaccines and its damaging impact on the brain.

“We have never studied whether the aluminum we’re giving in vaccines gets into the brain, and we’ve never measured whether it stays in the brain, and what it does if it does stay in the brain.”

“What we’re seeing is a large outbreak of neurodevelopmental disabilities in adults, including Alzheimer’s, and one of the main factors that they’re finding in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s is the aluminum nanoparticle that’s directly related to the vaccines that we’re giving. “

The representatives should have been more than a little worried over the statistics Dr. Palevsky cited.

“We have more than half of our children with chronic inflamed conditions, and we’ve never allowed ourselves to ask the question: If the vaccines cause inflammation acutely, do they continue to create inflammation chronically

“We have one in 5 with neurodevelopmental disabilities, one in 10 with ADD/ADHD, one in 35 with autism, one in 11 with asthma, and one in 20 under the age of five with seizures.”

For me personally, the most encouraging part of Dr. Palevsky’s remarks was what he said about an upcoming vaccinated versus unvaccinated study. He described a colleague who was studying health outcomes in siblings, some of whom were fully vaccinated, some partially vaccinated, and some totally unvaccinated. These are children who have the exact same genetics and environmental exposures; the only thing different was the vaccines they were given.

“In his preliminary data he’s already seeing quite a stark statistically significance difference.

“Unvaccinated children are unanimously healthier with fewer chronic illnesses. The next fewer illnesses are seen in the partially vaccinated children, and the most severe chronically inflamed conditions are seen in the fully vaccinated children. …

“Those vaxxed versus unvaxxed studies have never been done by the mainstream medical community or scientific community.”

Here is Dr. Palevsky’s full testimony.


###

Hello Connecticut.

I can’t think of a better example of the

Notice the lack of attendance at the hearing.

Larry Palevsky, MD.Testimony Connecticut State Assembly Hearing

 2/19/2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT6I864vwbE

from:    https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/08/dr-larry-palevsky-february-presentation-to-ct-assembly-on-the-nightmare-in-connecticut.html#more

Caffeine, Inflammation, & Longevity

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Caffeine may counter age-related inflammation

A chronic inflammatory process that occurs in some, but not all, older people may trigger cardiovascular problems, a new Stanford study shows. Part of the solution might be found in a cup of coffee.

Jan 16 2017

Man standing in front of kids on a swing set

Mark Davis and his colleagues studied blood samples and a variety of data from more than 100 clinical trial participants and found a link between chronic inflammation and the chronic diseases that accompany aging.
Steve Fisch

Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have unearthed a connection between advancing age, systemic inflammation, cardiovascular disease and caffeine consumption.

Extensive analysis of blood samples, survey data and medical and family histories obtained from more than 100 human participants in a multiyear study has revealed a fundamental inflammatory mechanism associated with human aging and the chronic diseases that come with it.

The study, published online Jan. 16 in Nature Medicine, implicates this inflammatory process as a driver of cardiovascular disease and increased rates of mortality overall. Metabolites, or breakdown products, of nucleic acids — the molecules that serve as building blocks for our genes — circulating in the blood can trigger this inflammatory process, the study found.

The study also provides evidence that caffeine and its own metabolites may counter the action of these circulating nucleic-acid metabolites, possibly explaining why coffee drinkers tend to live longer than abstainers.

“More than 90 percent of all noncommunicable diseases of aging are associated with chronic inflammation,” said the study’s lead author, David Furman, PhD, a consulting associate professor at the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection. More than 1,000 papers have provided evidence that chronic inflammation contributes to many cancers, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis and even depression, he said.

“It’s also well-known that caffeine intake is associated with longevity,” Furman said. “Many studies have shown this association. We’ve found a possible reason for why this may be so.”

Mark Davis, PhD, a professor of microbiology and immunology and the director of the Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, shares senior authorship of the study with Benjamin Faustin, PhD, a cell biologist at the University of Bordeaux in France. Davis is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Caffeine link

“Our findings show that an underlying inflammatory process, which is associated with aging, is not only driving cardiovascular disease but is, in turn, driven by molecular events that we may be able to target and combat,” said Davis, who holds the Burt and Marion Avery Family Professorship.

Notably, this inflammatory mechanism was found to be activated only in some, but not all, of the older study participants. Those in whom it was relatively quiescent tended to drink more caffeinated beverages. Laboratory experiments revealed that the mechanism was directly countered by caffeine and associated compounds.

Coffee cup in the midst of coffee beans

The researchers also found that the inflammatory mechanism was dampened among older participants who tended to drink more caffeinated beverages, such as coffee.
Marian Weyo/Shutterstock

The investigators made this discovery using data gathered from the Stanford-Ellison cohort, a long-term program begun 10 years ago by Davis and study co-author Cornelia Dekker, MD, professor of pediatric infectious diseases, to study the immunology of aging. In that program, healthy participants ages 20-30 and another group older than 60 were monitored annually via surveys, blood draws and reviews of their medical histories.

For the new study, the researchers compared blood drawn from older versus younger study participants to see which genes tended to be more highly activated in older people. They zeroed in on two clusters of genes whose activity was associated with the production of a potent circulating inflammatory protein called IL-1-beta. The genes within each cluster appeared to work in coordination with one another.

The researchers also looked at two particular groups of older participants: One with high activation of one or both inflammatory gene clusters, and the other with one or both clusters exhibiting low activation. On reviewing these individuals’ medical histories, the scientists learned that nine of the 12 subjects with high cluster activity had high blood pressure, compared with only one of the 11 subjects with low cluster activity. Follow-up studies by study co-author Francois Haddad, MD, a clinical associate professor of cardiovascular medicine, revealed that individuals in the “high” group were much more likely to have stiff arteries — a risk factor for cardiovascular complications — than those in the “low” group.

Furthermore, those in the low group were eight times as likely as those in the high group to report having at least one close family member who had lived to age 90 or older. Not only that, but participants in the high group who were older than 85 in 2008 were substantially more likely to have died by 2016 than were those in the low group. The high group’s blood also showed signs of increased activity of free radicals, which can harm cells, compared with the low group’s blood. The high group also had elevated concentrations of IL-1-beta, as well as of several nucleic-acid breakdown products that can be produced by free-radical action.

The researchers found that incubating a type of immune cell with two of those nucleic-acid metabolites boosted activity in one of the gene clusters, resulting in increased IL-1-beta production. When injected into mice, the substances triggered massive systemic inflammation, along with high blood pressure. In addition, immune cells infiltrated and clogged the animals’ kidneys, increasing renal pressure substantially.

How caffeine may affect longevity

Intrigued by the correlation between older participants’ health, gene-cluster activation and self-reported rates of caffeine consumption, the researchers followed up and verified that blood from the group with low cluster activity was enriched for caffeine and a number of its metabolites, compared with blood from the group with high cluster activity. (Examples of these metabolites are theophylline, also found in tea, and theobromine, which abounds in chocolate.)

Incubating immune cells with caffeine and its breakdown products along with the inflammation-triggering nucleic acid metabolites substantially prevented the latter from exerting their powerful inflammatory effect on the cells.

What we’ve shown is a correlation between caffeine consumption and longevity.

“That something many people drink — and actually like to drink — might have a direct benefit came as a surprise to us,” said Davis, who noted that the study did not prove a causal link. “We didn’t give some of the mice coffee and the others decaf. What we’ve shown is a correlation between caffeine consumption and longevity. And we’ve shown more rigorously, in laboratory tests, a very plausible mechanism for why this might be so.”

Other Stanford co-authors are postdoctoral scholars Junlei Chang, PhD, Christopher Bohlen, PhD, and Gabriela Fragiadakis, PhD; former graduate student Matthew Spitzer, PhD; life science research associate Edward Ganio; assistant professor of anesthesia, perioperative and pain medicine Brice Gaudilliere, MD, PhD; professor of microbiology and immunology Garry Nolan, PhD; and professor of hematology Calvin Kuo, MD, PhD.

Researchers from the Sidra Medical and Research Center in Qatar, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research and the University of North Carolina also co-authored the study.

The study was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grant U19AI090019) and the Ellison Medical Foundation.

Stanford’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology also supported the work.

from:    https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/01/caffeine-may-counter-age-related-inflammation-study-finds.html

Oh, Acupuncture!

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Research Confirms this Holistic Treatment is Safer and More Effective than Morphine

Anna Hunt, Staff
Waking Times

A new study has discovered that acupuncture can be more effective in treating pain than intravenous morphine. In addition, the researchers discovered that acupuncture can work faster in relieving pain and have fewer adverse effects. The study was conducted over a one-year period at the Fattaouma Bourguiba University Hospital in Tunisia. The results were published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

The Side Effects of Morphine Use

Morphine is an opioid pain medication which can have severe adverse effects. These include drowsiness, dizziness, constipation, stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, headache, tired feeling, anxiety and mild itching. Other risks associated with morphine use include misuse, abuse and addiction.

In addition, scientific research has shown that prescription opioids may actually worsen chronic pain. It appears that a holistic alternative to treating pain is much-needed in order to mitigate the dangers of conventional pharmaceutical pain treatment.

Now, a groundbreaking study shows that acupuncture is one of these effective holistic alternatives. Considering the study results, it may perhaps be even more effective than morphine.

Study: Acupuncture versus Morphine

A study performed in the Emergency Department of Fattouma Bourguiba University Hospital, which sees about 100,000 emergency patients per year, evaluated the pain treatment approach for 300 ED patients.

The research evaluated 300 emergency patients. 150 were administered up to 15 mg of morphine per day. The other 150 were given acupuncture treatment for address their pain. The researchers summarized the results as follows:

Success rate was significantly different between the 2 groups (92% in the acupuncture group vs 78% in the morphine group P < .001). Resolution time was 16 ± 8 minutes in the acupuncture group vs 28 ± 14 minutes in the morphine group (P < .005).

From the 5-minute time point, the acupuncture group reported significantly larger pain decrease compared with the morphine group.

Overall, 89 patients (29.6%) experienced minor adverse effects: 85 (56.6%) in morphine group and 4 (2.6%) in acupuncture group (P < .001). No major adverse effects were recorded during the study protocol.

In patients with acute pain presenting to the ED, acupuncture was associated with more effective and faster analgesia with better tolerance.

To paraphrase, the acupuncture group in the study experienced significant pain reduction, and the effect occurred faster and with fewer side effects when compared to the morphine group.

Western Medicine Recognizes Acupuncture as an Effective Medical Treatment

Acupuncture originated in China many centuries ago and soon spread to Japan, Korea and other parts of Asia as an accepted medical treatment. Throughout the Asian continent, it is widely used in health care systems, officially recognized by governments, and well received by the general public.

In 1996, acupuncture became an accepted form of medical treatment endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO based their endorsement on data from numerous controlled clinical trials conducted over the two previous decades. The WHO report that resulted from the analysis of these clinical trials states:

Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which acupuncture has been proved – through controlled trials – to be an effective treatment:

  • Adverse reactions to radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy

  • Allergic rhinitis (including hay fever)

  • Biliary colic

  • Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following

  • stroke)

  • Dysentery, acute bacillary

  • Dysmenorrhoea, primary

  • Epigastralgia, acute (in peptic ulcer, acute and chronic gastritis, and gastrospasm)

  • Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders)

  • Headache

  • Hypertension, essential

  • Hypotension, primary

  • Induction of labour

  • Knee pain

  • Leukopenia

  • Low back pain

  • Malposition of fetus, correction of

  • Morning sickness

  • Nausea and vomiting

  • Neck pain

  • Pain in dentistry (including dental pain and temporomandibular

  • dysfunction)

  • Periarthritis of shoulder

  • Postoperative pain

  • Renal colic

  • Rheumatoid arthritis

  • Sciatica

  • Sprain

  • Stroke

  • Tennis elbow

Notice the multiple mentions of conditions that involve pain, such as low back pain, neck pain and headaches. In their report, the WHO also stated that acupuncture has shown to have a therapeutic effect on abdominal pain, cancer pain, facial spasms, and labour pain (although the organization did not have sufficient clinical data to include these in the effective treatment list above.)

Undoubtedly, acupuncture can play a powerful role in pain management. It is an effective drug-free alternative to reducing pain with very few side effects that has been proven over the ages. Finally, science is catching up to reinforce this claim.

from:     http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/01/12/research-confims-holistic-treatment-more-effective-morphine/

Considering Acupuncture

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Acupuncture: Why It Works

 By Dr. Mercola

More than 3 million Americans receive acupuncture each year, and its use is increasing.1 While there are a variety of acupuncture techniques, those typically used in the U.S. incorporate traditions from China, Japan and Korea and involve penetrating your skin with a thin needle at certain points on your body.

The needle is then stimulated by hand or electrically.2 Acupuncture has been in use for thousands of years around the globe, and it has withstood the test of time because it works to safely relieve many common health complaints.

How it works has remained largely a mystery, but last year researchers revealed a biochemical reaction that may be responsible for some of acupuncture’s beneficial effects.

Scientists Reveal How Acupuncture Reduces Inflammation and Pain

An animal study looking into the effects of acupuncture on muscle inflammation revealed that manual acupuncture downregulates (or turns off) pro-inflammatory cells known as M1 macrophages. At the same time, it upregulates (or activates) anti-inflammatory M2 macrophages, thereby reducing pain and swelling.3

This is an effective strategy because M2 macrophages are a source of anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 (IL-10), a cytokine involved in immune response. It’s thought that upregulating M2 macrophages leads to an increase in IL-10, which subsequently helps relieve pain and inflammation. The Epoch Times reported:4

“Acupuncture literally flips a switch wherein initial inflammatory responses are reduced and the secondary healing responses are promoted.

M1 macrophage downregulation and M2 macrophage upregulation triggered by acupuncture was positively associated with reductions in muscle pain and inflammation.”

It’s likely that acupuncture works via a variety of mechanisms. In 2010, for instance, it was found that acupuncture activates pain-suppressing receptors and increased the concentration of the neurotransmitter adenosine in local tissues.5

Adenosine slows down your brain’s activity and induces sleepiness. According to a Nature Neuroscience press release:6

“ … [T]he authors propose a model whereby the minor tissue injury caused by rotated needles triggers adenosine release, which, if close enough to pain-transmitting nerves, can lead to the suppression of local pain.”

Acupuncture Influences Your Body on Multiple Levels

With documented use dating back more than 2,500 years, acupuncture is based on the premise that there are more than 2,000 acupuncture points in the human body, which are connected by bioenergetic pathways known as meridians.

According to traditional medicine, it is through these pathways that Qi, or energy, flows, and when the pathway is blocked the disruptions can lead to imbalances and chronic disease.

Acupuncture is proven to impact a number of chronic health conditions, and it may work, in part, by stimulating your central nervous system to release natural chemicals that alter bodily systems, pain and other biological processes. Evidence suggests that acupuncture may also work by:7

  • Stimulating the conduction of electromagnetic signals, which may release immune system cells or pain-killing chemicals
  • Activation of your body’s natural opioid system, which may help reduce pain or induce sleep
  • Stimulation of your hypothalamus and pituitary gland, which impact numerous body systems
  • Change in the secretion of neurotransmitters and neurohormones, which may positively influence brain chemistry

Acupuncture May Relieve Pain From Knee Osteoarthritis

Acupuncture is often used for the treatment of chronic pain, and it may be particularly useful for pain from knee osteoarthritis.

In a study by researchers from the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture received five times a week for four weeks significantly reduced pain and improved stiffness in patients with knee osteoarthritis.8

In this study, the improvements increased even more when acupuncture was combined with Chinese massage called Tui Na. Other research has also shown benefits, including one of the longest and largest studies on the topic to date.

More than 550 patients diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis took part in the 26-week trial. The participants were randomly assigned to receive one of three treatments: acupuncture, sham acupuncture, or self-help strategies recommended by the Arthritis Foundation (the latter served as a control group).

Significant differences in response were seen by week eight and 14, and at the end of the trial, the group receiving real acupuncture had a 40 percent decrease in pain and a nearly 40 percent improvement in function compared to baseline assessments — a 33 percent difference in improvement over the sham group.9

Acupuncture for Relief of High Blood Pressure

There is some evidence that acupuncture may help lower high blood pressure while also relieving associated anxiety, headaches, dizziness, palpitations and tinnitus.

It’s known that high blood pressure leads to elevated concentrations of inflammation-causing tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and TNF-α-stimulated endothelin (ET), peptides involved in constricting blood vessels and raising blood pressure.10,11

It’s thought that acupuncture may downregulate TNF-α and ET, thereby reducing blood pressure. In another study of patients with high blood pressure, 30 minutes of electroacupuncture (in which the needles are stimulated with electricity) a week led to slight declines in blood pressure.12

Study co-author Dr. John Longhurst, a cardiologist at the University of California, Irvine, told WebMD, “Potentially, blood pressure can be kept low with a monthly follow-up treatment.” He continued:13

“A noticeable drop in blood pressure was observed in 70 percent of the patients treated at the effective points, an average of 6 to 8 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure [the top number] and 4 mm Hg for diastolic blood pressure [the lower number].”

Acupuncture Even Works for Fibromyalgia Pain and Pain in Children

One of the most common uses for acupuncture is in treating chronic pain. One analysis of the most robust studies available concluded that acupuncture has a clear effect in reducing chronic pain, more so than standard pain treatment.14

Study participants receiving acupuncture reported an average 50 percent reduction in pain, compared to a 28 percent pain reduction for standard pain treatment without acupuncture.

Even fibromyalgia pain, which can be difficult to treat and is associated with sleep problems, fatigue and depression, may be improved.

In one study, 10 weeks of acupuncture decreased pain scores in fibromyalgia patients by an average of 41 percent, compared with 27 percent in those who received a sham procedure.15

The pain relief lasted for at least 1 year, leading researchers to conclude, “ … [T]he use of individualized acupuncture in patients with fibromyalgia is recommended.” Acupuncture also appears to be a safe and effective treatment for relieving chronic pain in children.

In a study of 55 children with chronic pain, those who received eight acupuncture sessions (each lasting about 30 minutes) reported significant reductions in pain and improved quality of life.16

Acupuncture for Depression, Cancer Patients and More

Acupuncture’s benefits extend to a myriad of other health conditions as well. Research suggests acupuncture works as well as counseling for treating depression, for instance.17 It may also improve fatigue, anxiety and depression in cancer patients in as little as eight weeks — and much more.18

The World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an extensive review and analysis of clinical trials related to acupuncture and reported the procedure has been proven effective for the following diseases:19

Adverse reactions to radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy Allergic rhinitis (including hay fever) Biliary colic
Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following stroke)  Acute bacillary dysentery Primary dysmenorrhea
Acute epigastralgia (in peptic ulcer, acute and chronic gastritis, and gastrospasm) Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders) Headache
Essential hypertension Primary hypotension Induction of labor
Knee pain Leukopenia Low back pain
Correction of malposition of fetus Morning sickness Nausea and vomiting
Neck pain Pain in dentistry (including dental pain and temporomandibular dysfunction) Periarthritis of shoulder
Postoperative pain Renal colic Rheumatoid arthritis
Sciatica Sprain Stroke
Tennis elbow

Additionally, acupuncture has also shown a therapeutic effect for treating the following diseases and conditions, which range from premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and addictions to whooping cough, although further research is needed:

Abdominal pain (in acute gastroenteritis or due to gastrointestinal spasm) Acne vulgaris Alcohol dependence and detoxification Bell’s palsy
Bronchial asthma Cancer pain Cardiac neurosis Chronic cholecystitis, with acute exacerbation
Cholelithiasis Competition stress syndrome Closed craniocerebral injury Non-insulin-dependent  diabetes mellitus
Earache Epidemic hemorrhagic fever Simple epistaxis  (without generalized or local disease) Eye pain due to subconjunctival injection
Female infertility Facial spasm Female urethral syndrome Fibromyalgia and fasciitis
Gastrokinetic disturbance Gouty arthritis Hepatitis B virus carrier status Herpes zoster (human (alpha) herpesvirus 3)
Hyperlipaemia Hypo-ovarianism Insomnia Labor pain
Lactation deficiency Male sexual dysfunction, non-organic Ménière disease Postherpetic neuralgia
Neurodermatitis Obesity Opium, cocaine and heroin dependence Osteoarthritis
Pain due to endoscopic examination Pain in thromboangiitis obliterans Polycystic ovary syndrome (Stein-Leventhal syndrome) Postextubation in children
Postoperative convalescence Premenstrual syndrome Chronic prostatitis Pruritus
Radicular and pseudoradicular pain syndrome Primary Raynaud syndrome Recurrent lower urinary tract infection Reflex sympathetic dystrophy
Traumatic retention of urine Schizophrenia Drug-induced Sialism Sjögren syndrome
Sore throat (including tonsillitis) Acute spine pain Stiff neck Temporomandibular joint dysfunction
Tietze syndrome Tobacco dependence Tourette syndrome Chronic ulcerative colitis
Urolithiasis Vascular dementia Whooping cough (pertussis)

Are Certain Types of Acupuncture Better Than Others?

Similar benefits have been found for different types of acupuncture treatment. For instance, sometimes the stimulation of acupuncture points is done using electricity, lasers or acupressure (the use of pressure to stimulate acupuncture points).

The term acupuncture is often used to describe all of these modalities, as each has shown similar benefits. This means that if you like the idea of trying a natural, ancient technique like acupuncture, but don’t like the idea of having needles inserted into your body, there are needle-free alternatives, such as the Emotional Freedom Techniques, or EFT, you can try that may offer many of the same benefits.

If you decide to try out traditional acupuncture, be aware that the success of your treatment depends on the expertise of your practitioner. While there are acupuncturists that have general specialties, there are also those that specialize in different health conditions, such as pain relief, depression, infertility or neurological disorders. Choose an acupuncturist that is experienced in your area of need who will work with you to develop a plan for healing.

from:    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/06/23/how-does-acupuncture-work.aspx

Benefits of Cannabidiol

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Cannabidiol (CBD): The Cat’s Out of the Bag with This Cure-All

By Makia Freeman –

Makia Freeman
Contributor, ZenGardner.com

The truth about Cannabidiol (CBD)

and the cannabis plant in general can no longer be suppressed – and the exciting thing is that we are just at the beginning. We are literally just at the start on the long road of cannabis knowledge, which will take us to a deeper understanding of this astonishing plant, its varied uses and its manifold medical benefits. We still don’t even know how many cannabinoids (natural chemical compounds endemic to the cannabis plant) it contains – over the years the number has been revised in various places from 66 to 85 to 113+. We certainly don’t know the full range of effects of these cannabinoids, nor do we understand the synergistic way they work together, which is of the utmost importance. However, we do know enough to say that one of the foremost cannabinoids is cannabidiol or CBD, and we do know that it has incredible potential for healing a wide range of diseases, including diabetes, insomnia, anxiety, depression, migraines, asthma, scar tissue, Crohn’s, epilepsy, seizures, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer. Ironically, the whole propaganda campaign of “reefer madness” that tried to demonize marijuana in the 1930s-1950s insinuated that pot caused schizophrenia, and while THC can have some mildly negative psychoactive effects when smoked, it may turn out that CBD-rich cannabis oil cures schizophrenia, not causes it. This demonization campaign, as usual, was led by the Rockefellers and other rich NWO families who were scared that cannabis would destroy their monopolies, such as the Western medical drug industry.

Clearly, the tides of cannabis perception are turning, and many people have overcome the stigma to explore the vast nutritional and medicinal benefits of cannabis. This article focuses on the healing potential of the preeminent cannabinoid, CBD.

Guess Where Else Cannabinoids are Found?

Before we break down the phenomenal effects of CBD, here is a mind-blowing fact. Cannabinoids aren’t just found in the cannabis plant. They’re also found somewhere closer to home: you! That’s right: the human body itself has an entire system which utilizes cannabinoids. It is known as the endocannabinoid system (“endo” is from a Greek word meaning “within”). In this way, we can distinguish among endocannabinoids (those produced by the human body), phytocannabinoids (those produced by the cannabis plant) and synthetic cannabinoids (the approximately 17 synthetic versions produced by the pharmaceutical cartel). Synthetic cannabinoids, by the way, are Big Pharma’s way of trying to pirate and cash in on Nature by modifying or isolating a natural chemical or compound, making it slightly different to its natural state, getting a patent, then marketing it as a drug with a governmentally enforced monopoly. Some synthetic cannabinoids (such as K2, spice, marinol, etc.) have been taken off the market due to their dangerous nature, but after all, they are part of the Big Pharma business plan, and the greater New World Order synthetic agenda, so what do you expect?

cannabidiol CBD cannabis plant

The Endocannabinoid System

The cannabinoid receptors (CB1, CB2, etc.), endocannabinoids and the related enzymes all make up the endocannabinoid system – and it’s not just some insignificant little system in the body. Evidence shows it to be essential in most if not all physiological systems, responsible for numerous processes including appetite, pain-sensation, mood, memory and immunity (yes, the endocannabinoid system influences the immune system too). The Italian researcher, Vincenzo Di Marzo, summed it up well in his 1998 study Endocannabinoids: endogenous cannabinoid receptor ligands with neuromodulatory action:

“‘Relax, eat, sleep, forget and protect’ might be some of the messages that are produced by the actions of endocannabinoids, alone or in combination with other mediators …”

cannabidiol CBD chemical formula

How CBD Works

CBD is a miracle compound. Unlike THC, it does not bind to the body’s cannabinoid receptors (CB1 or CB2), so it is not psychoactive and does not produce the high effect. Cannabidiol works through a number of complex mechanisms. Preclinical studies indicate that cannabidiol has the following list of extensive healing properties. The first 5 items on the list below all pertain to cannabidiol’s capacity as an anti-carcinogenic agent:

Anti-Proliferative: CBD stops cancer cells proliferating or reproducing. Many of its effects listed below stem from its ability to activate PPAR receptors. As the article How CBD Works states, “CBD also exerts an anti-cancer effect by activating PPARs [peroxisome proliferator activated receptors] that are situated on the surface of the cell’s nucleus. Activation of the receptor known as PPAR-gamma has an anti-proliferative effect as well as an ability to induce tumor regression in human lung cancer cell lines.”

Anti-Angiogenic: As the quote above also reveals, cannabidiol can stop cancer cells in another way, by preventing malignant tumors from forming the blood vessels they need to grow. The process of blood vessel creation is called angiogenesis, and since cannabidiol halts this, it is deemed anti-angiogenic.

Anti-Mitogenic: There is a 3rd way cannabidiol prevents cancer. It hinders or stops cell division (mitogenesis). One of the hallmarks of cancer is its unbridled growth, and amazingly, CBD actually stops the cancer spreading out of control by preventing the cancer cell from dividing and reproducing, and thus is deemed anti-mitogenic.

Anti-Metastatic: Metastasis is the process by which a cancer can spread around the body, especially to other organs which have no direct contact with it. Cannabidiol prevents cancer from spreading to other organs, so it is called anti-metastatic.

Pro-Apoptotic: Apoptosis is the medical word for programmed cell death. It’s an important part of every healthy and functional cell that it contains a program for apoptosis, so it can commit suicide or let itself die if it is compromised. Cancer cells characteristically do not undergo apoptosis, however cannabidiol is pro-apoptotic and actually induces cancer cells to die. Incredible!

Anti-Psychotic: In addition to showing impressive potential for curing cancer, cannabidiol also exhibits anti-psychotic properties, which means it could help heal a whole host of mental illnesses. As the aforementioned article How CBD Works states: “CBD’s enzyme-mediated activation of the PPAR-alpha receptor may have antipsychotic effects. Polymorphisms or mutations in the gene encoding PPAR-alpha can result in deficient PPAR-alpha signaling, which has been linked to schizophrenia. PPAR-alpha activation is both anti-inflammatory and can decrease dopamine release, thereby minimizing schizophrenic symptoms.”

Neuro-Protective: Neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s) are another set of horrible diseases which are claiming the lives or more and more people. Fortunately, CBD shows potential for healing these too. Again, the issue comes back to the PPAR-activation (same article): “PPAR-gamma activation degrades amyloid-beta plaque, a key molecule linked to the development of Alzheimer’s disease. This is one of the reasons why cannabidiol, a PPAR-gamma agonist, may be a useful remedy for Alzheimer’s patients. As an aside, PPAR receptors also regulate genes that are involved in energy homeostasis, lipid uptake, insulin sensitivity, and other metabolic functions. Diabetics, accordingly, may benefit from a CBD-rich treatment regimen.”

Anti-Inflammatory: Inflammatory diseases are another massive set of diseases that haunt the populations in developed countries, especially the US. Many nutritional experts and doctors have highlighted the strong connection between inflammation and disease. As Dr. Mark Hyman writes:

“Inflammation is a “hot” topic in medicine. It appears connected to almost every known chronic disease — from heart disease to cancer, diabetes to obesity, autism to dementia, and even depression. Other inflammatory diseases such as allergies, asthma, arthritis, and autoimmune disease are increasing at dramatic rates …”

According to various studies cited by Medical Marijuana Inc, cannabidiol stops inflammation in various ways:

“[cannabidiol decreases] the production and release of pro-inflammatory cytokines and decrease the activation of the LPS-induced STAT1 transcription factor, a key factor in some of the pro-inflammatory process. CBD, however, also reduces the activity of the NF-kappaB pathway, a primary pathway regulating pro-inflammatory genes, and upregulates the activation of the STAT3 transcription factor, which induces anti-inflammatory events (Kozela, et al., 2010).”

Analgesic: Analgesic means pain-relieving. CBD is analgesic and is thus indicated for those suffering from inflammatory disease or conditions with chronic pain.

Anti-Convulsant: CBD has become famous for its ability to stop seizures and treat diseases such as epilepsy. The overwhelming consensus of case studies, surveys and pre-clinical animal studies shows that cannabidiol is a powerful anti-convulsant. For a sampling of the studies done on this, see here and here.

Pro-Anxiolytic: Finally, CBD also helps calms the nerves and reduce or eliminate anxiety, and thus is anti-anxiety or medically speaking pro-anxiolytic. The reason why CBD has this effect is probably due to its activation of the adenosine receptor. Adenosine receptors play major roles in brain and cardiovascular function (regulating oxygen intake and blood flow), as well as having anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body, which ties in with CBD’s anti-inflammatory properties.

cannabidiol CBD cannabis plant closeup

How Cannabis Kills Cancer Cells

For those wanting a little more information on how cannabis kills cancer cells, I recommend watching a few of these short videos. The 1st video shows how and why cannabis curse cancer. The 2nd video is an interview with a man called Dennis Hill, a survivor of stage IV prostate cancer. Dennis reveals how our bodies make cancer cells all the time, but our immune system (which includes the endocannabinoid system) can normally handle them. However, when the immune system is compromised, it gets behind on killing cancer cells.

Cancer cells have distorted or damaged DNA. Luckily, when a cell turns cancerous, the number of cannabinoid receptors in the cell increases. The body uses its endocannabinoid anandamide to stimulate the production of ceramide, which kills cancer cell mitochondria, starving the cancer cell. The ceramide is intelligently guided; it somehow “knows” to kill damaged cells only and leave the healthy ones intact, much like the way vitamin B17, amygdala or laetrile works to selectively target cancer cells too.

The Future of CBD Oil: Made Without Solvents

Rick Simpson, the Canadian hero who made CBD-rich cannabis oil, gave it away for free and healed many people, came up with a form of CBD oil where he used a solvent to extract it. However, there are now many companies who are producing high-quality CBD oil from non-GMO, non-pesticided hemp, which they then decarboxylate (turn the acidic forms of the cannabinoids into the non-acidic forms, i.e. turn CBDa into CBD and THCa into THC, etc.). I believe in the future, due to the unstoppable momentum of cannabis oil, medical marijuana will become completely decriminalized and legalized, and people all over will have access to high therapeutic grade CBD oil which contains no THC or psychoactive agents.

Conclusion: Let’s Explore the Many Uses of Cannabis and CBD Oil

There are no coincidences in our world – only magic, mystery, synchronicity, conspiracy and connection of which we are often unaware. The sheer fact that our body has its own endocannabinoid system, parallel to the phytocannabinoid system of the cannabis plant, is a fact of key significance and beyond mere coincidence. Call it what you want – cannabis, hemp, marijuana, pot, weed, ganja or kush – this plant has massive potential as a first-class healer extraordinaire. It’s time for all of us around the world to study and use this plant for the bounty of benefits it offers, including making paper, textiles, cloth, rope, oil and fuel, as well as for its nutritional benefits (hemp seed, hemp seed oil) and medical benefits (CBD oil). It has already saved people’s lives. Imagine what else it can do …

from:    http://www.zengardner.com/cannabidiol-cbd-cats-bag-cure/

Dealing with Inflammation

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Which Foods Should You Cut to Fight Inflammation?

foods inflammationNobody ever really looks into solutions and therapies for inflammation until it comes time to deal with it. If you’ve ever suffered from inflammation or the number of diseases that stem from it, such as arthritis and other chronic diseases, you’ve probably asked what solutions there are to help relieve the pain.

What you should be asking is how you can prevent inflammation in the first place.

Inflammation is a natural product of the body to repair tissue injury, chronic inflammation is when that process gets out of hand and can’t stop. This overreaction is brought on by certain foods that you consume every day, but luckily they are easily removable!

So what foods should you avoid?

Here is a list of the 3 major chronic inflammation causes:

1. Anything That can Trigger an Allergy

If you have any sort of allergy, you know that it sets your body off in the wrong way. But who knew this could also affect your body’s inflammation processes in the wrong way? It’s important to make sure that you are not eating anything that your body can’t handle, even if it is only a mild reaction.

Common allergens like eggs, dairy products and vegetables are the hardest to avoid since they can be found in some foods that you wouldn’t expect. Make sure you check the ingredients of the food you eat for any form of what you’re allergic to! You might be surprised that something you love actually contains that pesky allergen!

2. Fried Foods

You probably already know that deep fried foods are bad for you for other reasons, but they actually do their part in promoting inflammation as well.

It’s in the oil. Most oils used in fried foods are already stripped of their natural nutrients, and whatever might be left over is destroyed in the heat needed to fry the food. What is left is a kind of toxin that overloads the elimination system of the body and causes the inflammation process to go crazy.

3. Processed Foods and Drinks

Just like the oil in fried foods, most things that are processed before being sold in supermarkets end up losing the majority of their nutrients. Pastries, processed soups, fizzy drinks, all of these and more have been altered so that they do more bad to our bodies than good.

Cutting these foods out of your diet will help your inflammation system do only what is necessary to repair your tissue and nothing else. No overtime, no chronic inflammation, no arthritis.

And don’t you worry, there are other solutions as well!

If you already find yourself with chronic inflammation there are many natural foods that contain anti-inflammatory properties that are readily available at the supermarket such as:

-Coconut oil: the nutrients in coconut oil are not destroyed when cooked, and are easily digested.

-Fish: contains natural anti-inflammatory properties and is known to encourage the production of pain relieving hormones in the body.

-Ginger: Contains significant anti-inflammatory properties in the root.

-Cayenne peppers: contains capsaicin, an anti-inflammatory agent.

from:    http://www.realfarmacy.com/inflammation-foods/

The Benefits of Stinging Nettles

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 Healing Allergy Inflammation With Stinging Nettle

Many of us look forward to Spring. The weather warms up.  We start spending more time outdoors. Plants are growing, and flowers are blooming everywhere. When spring is in the air, so is pollen. For those of us with seasonal allergies, spring is not as lovely. Fortunately, nature has a way with timing and can really help us out if we pay attention.

In the spring, just as all those flowers, grasses and trees are blooming and releasing clouds of pollen, stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) are popping up in full force, ready to come to the rescue.  Not only are they an amazing superfood and an all around useful medicinal plant, nettles work wonders for reducing inflammation.

This is an important thing to know because inflammation doesn’t stop with our sinuses and seasonal respiratory allergies. Food allergies and associated digestive inflammation are a huge problem for many people, and most of the over-the-counter treatments only make the situation worse.

Nettles are a safe, soothing treatment for inflammation, offering the added benefits of vitamins, minerals, and immune-boosting properties.  It’s time to make friends with the stinging nettle, folks. You won’t regret it.

Nettles and Seasonal Allergies

Stinging nettles have been used for centuries as a natural treatment for seasonal allergies,  hay fever, asthma, and hives. Research has shown that consuming nettles in freeze dried capsules effectively reduces histamine levels in the body, thus reducing inflammation of affected tissues. Even a simple nettle tea consumed daily throughout the pollen and allergy season will alleviate allergy symptoms.

Common symptoms such as itchy eyes, sneezing, runny noses, and stuffed up sinuses  are treated as effectively, if not more so, by stinging nettle than over the counter allergy medications. It has been suggested that nettles actually desensitize the body to allergens and decrease our reaction to the allergens over time. Nettles will also spare you the side effects that come with allergy medications, like drowsiness or irritation and ulcers of the digestive tract, which leads to a whole other set of inflammation issues you don’t want.

With high levels of iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorous, sulphur, chromium, cobalt, magnesium, silicon, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin K,  iron, and chlorophyll,  they will leave you feeling energized while assisting your immune system in overcoming the allergy response.

Nettles and Digestive Inflammation

Inflammation of the digestive tract has become a common reality that many of us deal with, and this isn’t really surprising when you look at the variety of culprits  and how common they are in our modern lives.  Food allergies, Candida imbalance, NSAID medications (ibuprofin, aspirin, etc.), chronic stress, sugars, highly processed foods, and environmental toxins are all potential sources of digestive inflammation and daily struggles for a lot of folks out there.

The most common go-to treatment tends to be over-the-counter NSAID medications that target pain and swelling, but they, in fact, contribute to the irritation and inflammation of the digestive tract, creating a vicious cycle that is difficult to break. Here is where the anti-inflammatory benefits of nettles come into play.

When the leaves and stems of stinging nettle are digested, either in the form of a tea, tincture, capsule, or culinary green, the chemical constituents interfere with the body’s production of prostaglandins, resulting in an anti-inflammatory response. Nettles also interfere with pain signals in the body, clean out the intestinal tract, and boost the immune system, providing relief and healing for issues of the digestive system.

Given these healing properties, nettles are beneficial in healing leaky gut syndrome and are listed as a therapeutic ingredient in the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) diet. Nettle tea has been noted as a successful treatment for individuals dealing with gluten intolerance and Celiac disease to reduce gastrointestinal inflammation and discomfort.

Ulcerative colitis and ulcers in other areas of the digestive tract can also benefit from nettles, as they stop internal bleeding  and re-build  the blood with their high iron content and aided absorption.

Nettles for Pet Allergy Care

Allergies are not only an issue for people; their canine companions suffer from them as well. Dog owners may associate the springtime with treating “itchy dog syndrome” along with their pet’s eye discharge, ear infections, and overall discomfort. Stinging nettle is a natural anti-inflammatory for dogs to reduce levels of histamines, detox their system, and help desensitize their body to allergens. By giving dogs regular nettle supplements during allergy season, their allergies have been shown to actually go away over time. Nettles can be administered to dogs by adding it in freeze dried form to their food or through supplementation.

Where to Find Nettles

If you are interested in wildcrafting your own nettles, you can find them growing in moist soils at the edge of forests, streams, marshy areas, and pastures. You may even find them growing in your own backyard. They are one of the first plants to come up in the spring. They are very distinct with square shaped stems and opposite, serrated leaves tapered to a point, so they are fairly easy to find. With a good plant ID guide and advice from local foragers, you can venture out and gather your own nettles all through the spring months.

You can also establish a nettle patch at home in your garden either with nettle seeds from an heirloom seed company or by transplanting rhizomes from wild nettle patches. If you are working with fresh nettles, be sure to wear gloves while picking and handling them in the kitchen. The prickly hairs on the skin contain formic acid and can cause an irritation to the skin, which is a nuisance but not harmful. Cooking, drying, and grinding will break down the hairs so they are no longer an issue.

Nettles are very easy to dry and use throughout the rest of the year when they aren’t found growing outside. For those of us who may not have access to foraging areas or garden space, you can always purchase dried nettle leaf and a variety of nettle supplements. Sometimes grocery stores will even carry fresh wildcrafted nettles in the spring.

Anti-Inflammatory Nettle Tea Recipe

  • 3 fresh nettle tops (three leaf nodes down the plant) or 3 Tbsp dried nettle leaf
  • 1 Tbsp dried marshmallow root
  • 2 slices fresh ginger root

Boil 4 cups water, and pour over herbs. Steep for 7 minutes, covered. I prefer using a quart mason jar with a lid.

Hay Fever Relief Nettle Tea Recipe

  • 3 fresh nettle tops (three leaf nodes down the plant) or 3 Tbsp dried nettle leaf
  • 1 Tbsp dried elder flower
  • 1 Tbsp dried chamomile

Boil 4 cups water, and pour over herbs. Steep for 7 minutes covered. I prefer using a quart mason jar with a lid.

 

from:    http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/healing-allergy-inflammation-with-stinging-nettle

Inflammation & Heart Disease

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Prestigious Heart Surgeon’s Confession Reveals the Truth About Heart Disease

Statin DrugsAlex Pietrowski, Staff

Waking Times

A physician’s word is often taken very seriously and with little skepticism. An opinion from one or two doctors, when made in a professional office or hospital, can persuade a worried patient to take drugs with complex side-effects, or even undergo traumatic treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy. Yet, when the same doctors, with years of experience and thousands of satisfied customers, give an opinion that questions a therapy established by mainstream medicine, the mainstream media calls them irresponsible, or quacks, or even criminals.

Many doctors are highly admirable people, bu they are still human beings. They all make mistakes, they all learn from them, but the really good ones are willing to admit to them.

Dr. Dwight Lundell

Which brings us to Dr. Dwight Lundell. He’s an experienced heart surgeon and retired Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa, Arizona. Not so long ago, Dr. Lundell made the following statement of confession:

“We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol. The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice. It Is Not Working!

These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible.”

Not surprisingly, Lundell’s statement regarding the medical establishment’s approach to treating heart disease caused a ripple in the medical industry. It challenged the validity of statins – commonly known as cholesterol-lowering medications – such as Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor, and others.

The reason Lundell’s statement created such a buzz is because statins are big business. In the United States alone, about 25% of the population takes statin medications. They cost from as little as $53 per month to more than $600. Pfizer’s Lipitor went on sale in 1997 and its lifetime sales have surpassed $125 billion. AstraZeneca’s Crestor was the top-selling statin in 2013, generating $5.2 billion in revenue that year alone. The statin industry is estimated at around $30 billion in sales per year. Nevertheless, in the United States, more die each year of heart disease than ever before.

Lundell went on to say:

“The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated. The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation. While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.”

Simply, it is the foods that are baked or soaked in soybean oil and ones that are processed for long shelf-life that are creating an extreme imbalance of omega-6 and omega-3 fats in people’s bodies. Lundell estimates the ratio of imbalance “ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6.” A healthy ratio is closer to 3:1.

But what makes Lundell’s statements controversial is that cholesterol does not cause heart disease…which makes statin drugs superfluous. And he suggests a treatment to heart disease that doesn’t make Big Pharma any money:

“Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today. The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers. What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.”

It probably comes as no surprise that Lundell has been portrayed as a quack by the mainstream medical establishment. The main argument to back up his “quackery” was that his medical license was revoked in 2008…although the man was already retired and had no plans to return to the surgery room. He was not called a quack when he was performing surgeries, but once he took his 25 years of practice and discerned what he believes is the cause of heart disease, it was then that he was attacked by his peers. Which brings up the question if Lundell came onto the American Medical Association’s radar as he was working on and promoting his book, The Cure for Heart Disease, which was published in 2007.

Millions of dollars are made from heart disease treatment and statin medications. This established industry does not want anyone to interfere. Lundell said it himself, “Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.” And it sure is easier to discredit a retired heart surgeon and chief of surgery with 25 years of experience if you revoke his license.

Dr. Dwight Lundell’s full statement, here

About the Author

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and an avid student of Yoga and life.

Image Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27423152

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/10/06/prestigious-heart-surgeons-confession-reveals-the-truth-about-heart-disease/