Probiotics Helpful In Children with Stomach Ailments
November 30, 2010 by admin · Comments Off
The search for remedies for common ailments is an ongoing pharmaceutical imperative. There is money to be made, but recent events—recalls and overdosing—has led to the questioning and wisdom of heading to the medicine chest shelf as soon as the first nose runs or stomachache occurs. Not everyone wants the latest antibiotic or cold remedy, particularly for their children.
The Best and Worst Vegetables to Eat
November 29, 2010 by admin · Comments Off
By Dr. Mercola
There's little doubt that one of the best ways to improve your health is to make sure you're eating plenty of fresh, minimally processed high quality vegetables, ideally locally-grown and organic, with a majority of them consumed raw. One simple way to boost your vegetable intake is to juice them.Juicing organic vegetables is highly recommended to patients in our clinic who are working to restore or improve their health. I am firmly convinced that juicing is one of the key factors to giving you a radiant, energetic life, and truly optimal health.
I simply do not know of any other single nutritional intervention that has a more profound influence on health than eating and/or juicing fresh, organic vegetables.
You can review my comprehensive approach to how to juice on my vegetable juicing page.
Are All Vegetables the Same?
If you were to get all of your vegetables from conventionally farmed sources, this would be better for your health than eating no fresh vegetables at all. However, conventionally farmed vegetables are not your best choice. Organic vegetables are a much better option.
Why?
USDA Organic farmers (and many small, local organic farms working without certification), must use different standards when growing vegetables. These standards include never using:
- Pesticides
- Synthetic Fertilizers
- Sewage sludge
- Genetically modified organisms
- Ionizing radiation
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers 60 percent of herbicides, 90 percent of fungicides, and 30 percent of insecticides to be carcinogenic, and most are damaging to your nervous system as well. In fact, these powerful and dangerous chemicals have been linked to numerous health problems such as:
- Neurotoxicity
- Disruption of your endocrine system
- Carcinogenicity
- Immune system suppression
- Male infertility and reduced reproductive function
- Miscarriages
- Parkinson's disease
This information alone should give you pause when considering whether to buy local, organic vegetables or not. But I encourage you to do further research about organic versus conventional farming conditions. I believe that after researching the facts and statistics, you'll come to the conclusion that organic vegetables are far more nutritious than conventionally farmed vegetables.
Conventional Fruit and Vegetable Pesticide Loads
Certainly helpful to your decision about which vegetables should be purchased organic and which conventional veggies may be safe, is the measured pesticide loads found on conventionally farmed fruits and vegetables.
Of the 43 different fruit and vegetable categories tested by the Environmental Working Group and included in their Shoppers' Guide to Pesticides in Produce, these 12 fruits and vegetables had the highest pesticide load, making them the most important to buy or grow organic:
- Peaches
- Apples
- Sweet bell peppers
- Celery
- Nectarines
- Strawberries
- Cherries
- Lettuce
- Grapes (imported)
- Pears
- Spinach
- Potatoes
In contrast, these foods were found to have the lowest residual pesticide load, making them the safest bet among conventionally grown vegetables:
- Broccoli
- Eggplant
- Cabbage
- Banana
- Kiwi
- Asparagus
- Sweet peas (frozen)
- Mango
- Pineapple
- Sweet corn (frozen)
- Avocado
- Onion
So if you need to work within a certain budget, use this information to help guide you to the best choices when it comes to lowering your overall pesticide exposure.
The Importance of Fresh Vegetables
Buying your vegetables from a local organic source is the ideal way to ensure that your vegetables are both fresh and high-quality. I strongly advise you to avoid wilted vegetables of any kind, because when vegetables wilt they loose much of their nutritional value. In fact, wilted organic vegetables may actually be less healthy than fresh conventionally farmed vegetables!
Another reason to buy your organic vegetables from a local source is that fresher vegetables also contain the highest amounts of biophotons.
What are Biophotons?
Biophotons are the smallest physical units of light, which are stored in, and used by all biological organisms – including your body.
Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp was the first to suggest that this light inside all biological organisms must originate, at least in part, from the foods you eat. When you eat plant foods, the light waves (photons) are thought assimilate into the cells in your body.
The purpose of these biophotons is much more important than many have realized, because they are the transmitters of important nutritional bio-information used in many complex vital processes in your body.
Every living organism emits biophotons, or low-level luminescence (light with a wavelength between 200 and 800 nanometers). It is thought that the higher the level of light energy a cell emits, the greater the vitality and potential for the transfer of light energy to your body.
In other words, the more light that a food is able to store, the more nutritious it is when you consume it. Fresh, organic vegetables are naturally rich in this biophoton light energy.
Illness Can Occur When Biophoton Emissions are Out of Sync
Research by Dr. Popp also showed that the light emissions of healthy people follow a set of biological rhythms by day and night and also by week and month.
However, in his studies, the light emissions from cancer patients had no such rhythms and appeared scrambled, which suggests that their cells were no longer communicating properly.
Likewise, according to Dr. Popp's research, multiple sclerosis patients were taking in too much light, leading to what he considered confusion on a cellular level.
Even stress can influence your biophoton emissions, causing them to increase when stress increases.
It's also known that cancer-causing chemicals alter your body's biophoton emissions, interrupting proper cellular communication, while certain natural substances can help to restore proper cellular communication. For instance, Dr. Popp found that mistletoe appeared to restore biophoton emissions of tumor cells to a normal level!
Interestingly, even conventional medicine confirmed that mistletoe extract does appear to have a beneficial effect on cancer, with one study published in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine showing that mean survival rates nearly doubled among breast cancer patients who received mistletoe extract.
An Important Tip for Gathering Valuable Light Energy
As regular readers know, I've long recommended eating a diet of mostly RAW food to stay optimally healthy. This is because living raw foods contain the most biophoton light energy that your body needs.
The greater your store of light energy from healthy raw foods (this should not be confused with your vitamin D status, which is produced by the sun on your skin), the greater the power of your overall electromagnetic field, and consequently the more energy is available for healing and maintenance of optimal health.
I firmly believe it's only a matter of time before the importance of light energy in your health and well-being becomes more widely recognized and applied in the field of medicine. Until then, remember that your body is not only made up of tissue, blood vessels and organs. It's also composed of light.
Reasons to Juice
As I mentioned at the beginning, one of the best ways to get ample amounts of raw vegetables into your diet is through juicing. Many people see juicing as inconvenient, but with the proper juicer it really is not very time consuming at all.
The fact is, many people initially think that juicing will be a real chore, but most are pleasantly surprised to find it's much easier than they thought.
There are three main reasons why you will want to consider incorporating organic vegetable juicing into your optimal health program:
- Juicing helps you absorb more nutrients from the vegetables.
- Juicing allows you to efficiently consume more vegetables.
- Juicing can add a wider variety of vegetables into your diet.
However, you should only start by juicing vegetables that you enjoy eating non-juiced. The juice should taste pleasant -- not make you feel nauseous.
It is very important to listen to your body when juicing. Your stomach should feel good all morning long. If it is churning or growling or generally making its presence known, you probably juiced something you should not be eating. Personally, I've noticed that I can't juice large amounts of cabbage, but if I spread it out, I do fine.
Please review my comprehensive vegetable juicing instructions for more information.
What are the Best Vegetables for Good Health?
Whether you're munching them raw or juicing, some vegetables contain more health building nutrients than others. This list details some of the best and worst vegetables for your health.
| Highly Recommended Vegetables | |
| Asparagus | Escarole |
| Avocado (actually a fruit) | Fennel |
| Beet greens | Green and red cabbage |
| Bok Choy | Kale |
| Broccoli | Kohlrabi |
| Brussel sprouts | Lettuce: romaine, red leaf, green leaf |
| Cauliflower | Mustard greens |
| Celery | Onions |
| Chicory | Parsley |
| Chinese cabbage | Peppers: red, green, yellow and hot |
| Chives | Tomatoes |
| Collard greens | Turnips |
| Cucumbers | Spinach |
| Dandelion greens | Zucchini |
| Endive | |
| Use sparingly due to high carbohydrate levels | |
| Beets | Jicima |
| Carrots | Winter Squashes |
| Eggplant | |
| Vegetables to Avoid | |
| Potatoes | |
Tips to Make Your Juice Taste Better
If you would like to make your juice taste a bit more palatable, especially in the beginning, you can add these elements:
- Coconut: This is one of my favorites! You can purchase the whole coconut or use unsweetened shredded coconut. It adds a delightful flavor and is an excellent source of fat to balance your meal. Coconut has medium chain triglycerides, which have many health benefits.
- Cranberries: Researchers have discovered that cranberries have five times the antioxidant content of broccoli, which means they may help protect against cancer, stroke and heart disease. Limit the cranberries to about 4 ounces per pint of juice.
- Lemons and Limes: You can also add half a lemon or lime (leaving much of the white rind on)..
- Fresh ginger: This is an excellent addition if you can tolerate it. It gives your juice a little "kick"! And, as an added boon, researchers have found that ginger can have dramatic effects on cardiovascular health, including preventing atherosclerosis, lowering cholesterol levels, and preventing the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL).
Nutritional Typing and Juicing Vegetables
According to Nutritional Typing principles, if you are a carb type, vegetable juicing is STRONGLY recommended. With patients in our clinic, we strongly encourage it if they expect to regain their health.
If you are a mixed type, it is certainly useful to juice. However, protein types need to follow some specific guidelines to make it work for them, which I'll review below.
I used to charge a fee for my nutritional typing program; however I'm now able to offer this exceptional tool for FREE, so I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity. You can find the free online typing test here. This program can help guide your food choices even further. We use to charge $29 for this test but I wanted to make it available for everyone, so please take advantage of this free test to help you learn what foods will improve your health.
Protein Types and Juicing Vegetables
If you are a protein type, juicing needs to be done cautiously. The only vegetables that should be juiced are your prime protein type vegetables, which are celery, spinach, asparagus, string beans and cauliflower (including the base).
Also, to make drinking vegetable juice compatible with protein type metabolism (which needs high amounts of fat), it is important to blend a source of raw fat into the juice. Raw cream, raw butter, raw eggs, avocado, coconut butter, or freshly ground flax seed are the sources of raw fat I most recommend.
In addition to adding a source of raw fat to your juice, you may also find that adding some, or even all, of the vegetable pulp into your juice helps to make drinking the juiced vegetables more satisfying.
Final Thoughts about Vegetables
The truth is, scientists really don't know all that much about nutrients, and taking isolated nutrients through supplements is not always a good idea, since it's been shown that using supplements can actually lead to negative health consequences.
A much better way to get the vital nutrients your body needs is through eating whole, fresh organic vegetables. I recommend at least one third of your total diet be eaten raw, and a great way to do this is through incorporating juicing into your eating plan. Personally, I aim for consuming about 80 percent of my food raw, including raw eggs, dairy and meat.
Be sure to also take into account your Nutritional Type, because some people definitely function better with more vegetables in their diets than others. Again, to take my free online nutritional typing test, see this link.
But I want to emphasize that eating any vegetable is better than eating no vegetables at all, so don't get down on yourself if you're able to juice organic fresh vegetables only a few times a week. Even if you have to start slowly, I think you'll soon begin to notice positive changes to your health when you increase your intake of fresh vegetables.
Even better, review my nutrition plan, which can help you take a comprehensive look at your overall health as it relates to food, and may even help you to change the way you think about eating.
Holistic Holiday Jet Lag Cures
November 28, 2010 by admin · Comments Off
With Thanksgiving behind us and Christmas right around the corner, friends and family members are flying all around the world just to be with loved ones. Airports will be jammed, lines will be long, and tempers will be high as frustration peaks when a snowstorm causes delays or too many people are waiting for an overbooked flight. People usually say that it takes as many days to get over jet lag as however many hours out of your regular time zone you are.
Elderly Couple Wins 11 Million Dollars, and Gives it All Away
November 27, 2010 by admin · Comments Off
A retired Canadian couple won $11.3 million in the lottery in July -- but they have already given almost all of it away.
78-year-old Violet Large was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple learned that they'd won the jackpot.
She and her husband Allen decided the money was a headache, so they began an $11-million donation spree to help others.
According to Yahoo News:
"They took care of family first and then began delivering donations to the two pages' worth of groups they had decided on, including the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, where Violet underwent her cancer treatment, and organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. The list goes on and on."
It's inspiring to know that such selfless, generous and giving people still exist in the world. As we start off the holiday season in the United States, the Larges' story serves as a reminder for what we should all be truly thankful for … and nothing on that list can be bought.
As Violet said:
"Money can't buy you health or happiness."
Protect Children from Brain Injury – Act Before December 3rd
November 26, 2010 by admin · Comments Off
By Dr. Mercola
If you have been reading this newsletter for awhile you will know that it is very unusual for me to request anyone to contact their legislators, but if you live in the US, there are two issues that now need your urgent attention and involvement:
- The upcoming US FDA hearings before its Dental Products Panel on December 14 and 15, to determine whether to stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women, and
- The final vote on bill S.510, which takes place on Monday, November 29
I will review both of these issues below, and I urge you to take action on both by contacting your legislators. I've summarized the action items for each, to make this as quick and easy as possible.
First…
Banning Mercury in Dentistry – A Battle We CAN Win!
If you or a loved one has suffered grievous harm from dental mercury, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says you don't exist! Because according to FDA's propaganda machine, dental mercury doesn't hurt anyone.
As America's chief protector of profits for "drill-fill-and-bill" dentistry, the FDA is no doubt hoping you'll stay silent when it holds its hearings on December 14 and 15, which is why I'm issuing this urgent action request.
For the last year we have been working alongside Charlie G. Brown, who is the national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice and the president of the new World Alliance for Mercury Free Dentistry, to help eliminate the use of mercury in U.S. dentistry.
In the past year I have had several calls to action and to date your responses have been nothing short of extraordinary; you are clearly making a real difference!
We ran an article in early September, calling for volunteers to get involved to organize a grassroots project, and the results were phenomenal. Some of you responded and took action, and as a result, Costa Mesa, CA has set the precedent by becoming the first city in the United States to pass a resolution to immediately ban the use of mercury amalgams in dentistry.
If you missed that latest update, please do take a moment to read this inspirational story.
Thanks to your efforts at making your voices heard, on July 15, 2010 the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also chose a mercury-free dentist by the name of Michael Fleming to be on the Dental Products Panel, which will be the group to reassess the safety of mercury fillings for high-risk groups by way of a hearing this December.
Now, your efforts are needed once again in the fight against mercury fillings.
Major Mercury Hearings Coming Up in December
Thanks to a massive response from grassroots America to the FDA's abysmal 2009 amalgam rule, the FDA has agreed to re-examine its pro-mercury fillings position and, this December, will convene hearings before its Dental Products Panel to determine whether to stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women.
Again, in a major victory, and largely thanks to your efforts at making your voices heard, the FDA chose a mercury-free dentist by the name of Michael Fleming to sit on this Panel.
But as we move toward the December hearing, we need your continuing letters and phone calls to the FDA and I'll give details shortly to help you do so.
The FDA Refuses to Protect Your Health – Tell Them You Won't Stand for It Any Longer!
Did you know that the FDA's Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, came to the FDA from the board of Henry Schein Inc., the nation's number one seller of amalgam?
In the rule issued right after Hamburg's arrival, the FDA spares no effort to pump up amalgam sales -- actually claiming that greater amalgam use equates to "positive public health outcomes!"
How convenient for Henry Schein Inc…
As for the scientific backing for their claim, it simply does not exist. Mercury is a well-documented toxic hazard to human health, and it doesn't get any safer when placed in your mouth, where it releases toxic gases with every bite of food…
Instead of protecting you from a well-known, potent neurotoxin, the FDA gave the green light to the deceptive technique of marketing amalgam as "silver fillings," knowing full well that sales plummet when consumers learn that dental amalgams actually contain toxic mercury…
Urgent Action Steps to Ban Mercury from Dentistry in the US
Faced with unprecedented consumer-level pressure, the FDA has been forced to hold a new round of hearings on amalgam, scheduled for December 14 and 15, and to accept public comment on changing its rule.
For those seeking to protect children from brain injury related to mercury amalgam exposure, and for those who want to share how mercury harmed them, the time to act is now.
Here are three ways to make your voice heard at the FDA:
- Submit a comment online to FDA by December 3
Tell them how you were deceived by the term "silver fillings" and subjected to mercury fillings without your knowledge, and/or the story of how you were injured by amalgam– all because the FDA puts corporate profits first.
Submit your comments here (by December 3).
Comments can involve telling the FDA about your injuries, your children's exposure to mercury, how your mercury fillings were implanted without your informed consent, how deceptive the FDA's dental amalgam website is, how mercury hurts our environment, or any other concerns relating to mercury fillings.
- Write the FDA official in charge of amalgam.
Jeff Shuren, M.D. is the director of the FDA's Center for Devices. Contact him at:
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren
301-796-5900
Ask Dr. Shuren:
- Why does FDA approve of dentists telling parents amalgams are "silver fillings"?
- Why does FDA ban mercury for treating the legs of race horses but say it's fine implanted in a human child?
- Does FDA say increased amalgam use is a "positive health outcome" in order to pump up the sales for Henry Schein Inc., Commissioner Margaret Hamburg's company?
- Come to the FDA hearings in person.
The hearings are December 14 and 15, 2010, 8am-6 pm, just outside of Washington DC at:
The Holiday Inn-Gaithersburg, Main Ballroom
2 Montgomery Village Ave.
Gaithersburg, MD 20879
If you want to testify, you must write olgo.claudio@fda.hhs.gov by November 29 to let her know.
If you want to come and watch -- and yes, we need a crowd there -- you may simply show up. If you have questions, write the consumer coordinator working for mercury-free dentistry, Freya Koss at frekoss@aol.com
The FDA will not be expecting a forceful turnout, especially from ordinary citizens, so we can surprise them with a show of force and dogged determination.
We have made significant steps so far, and much of it is due to your continued efforts and support.
Please continue to join in on this important cause to get this toxic element out of U.S. dentistry. We are making a difference and the momentum is strong -- together, we can WIN, and protect the health of Americans, including that of future generations, from this archaic and toxic dentistry practice.
Tell Your Senators to KEEP the Tester-Hagan amendment of Bill S.510
If you live in the US this is another urgent action you can take during this holiday weekend that will impact the quality of the food you are able to secure.
Last week, the US Senate voted 74-25 to move to consideration of S.510, the Food Safety Modernization Act – which will amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to the safety of the food supply.
If you're unfamiliar with this bill, this LewRockwell article provides a nice summary, including "12 reasons why S. 510 could be absolutely disastrous for small food producers and for the U.S. economy."
According to Dr. Shiv Chopra (whom I've previously interviewed on the issue of food safety):
"If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public's right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.
It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one's choice.
It will be unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of God."
Judith McGeary with the farmandranchfreedom.org provided me with the following update on this potentially devastating bill, along with an urgent action request.
Agribusiness has Shown Its True Colors!
After 30 hours of debate and behind-the-scenes negotiations, the US Senators released a final Manager's Amendment that includes a compromise version of the Tester-Hagan amendment. But even though an agreement was reached on the Tester-Hagan amendment last week, the issue is still not over.
The final vote on the bill has been delayed until Monday, November 29, due to disagreements over amendments relating to the health care bill and a ban on earmarks.
In the meantime, Agribusiness has shown its true colors.
For over a year, the big Agribusiness trade organizations have supported passage of S.510. From Agribusiness's perspective, the bill was a win-win: they could absorb the costs of the regulations because of their size; they'd gain good PR for supposedly improving food safety practices; and the competition created by small, local food producers, which are rapidly growing, would be crushed by the regulatory burdens.
This was only speculation until now.
But when the Senators agreed to include the Tester-Hagan amendment in the bill, to exempt small-scale direct-marketing producers from some of the most burdensome provisions, 20 Agribusiness trade organizations fired off a letter stating that they would now oppose the bill!
The letter from the Agribusiness groups states:
"[B]y incorporating the Tester amendment in the bill, consumers will be left vulnerable to the gaping holes and uneven application of the law created by these exemptions.
In addition, it sets an unfortunate precedent for future action on food safety policy by Congress that science and risk based standards can be ignored. And most importantly, this amendment rejects the fundamental purpose of S. 510 that requires FDA to develop standards and set requirements that are based on science and risk."
What science and risk?
No one has produced any data or evidence of any widespread problems caused by local producers and marketed directly to consumers. All of the major foodborne illness outbreaks have been caused by products that went through the long supply chains of Agribusiness.
Agribusiness's real concern about the Tester-Hagan amendment isn't food safety, but the precedent set by having Congress recognize that small, direct-marketing producers are different, and should be regulated differently, from the large Agribusinesses.
Agribusiness is now trying to convince the Senators to pull the Tester-Hagan amendment back out.
While the amendment is currently part of the "Managers' Package" – the amended version of the bill agreed to by six bipartisan sponsors – nothing is certain until the actual vote.
This Thanksgiving week, please take a moment to call or email your Senators to tell them to hold firm on KEEPING the Tester-Hagan amendment part of the bill!
Take Action NOW!
Your voice needs to be heard on this issue, and time is running out. The vote on this dangerous legislation takes place on Monday, November 29.
So take action now!
Here's how:
- Call the Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121, and ask to be directly connected to your Senator's office. Tell your Senator to keep the Tester-Hagan amendment in the bill.
- You can find additional contact information for your US Senator at http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
