Category Archives: Vitamin D

A Simple, Inexpensive Trick to Cure a Cold

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Each year Americans catch more than one billion colds, making the cold virus the most common infectious disease in the United States.

It accounts for more school absences and missed work than any other illness, and it’s the number one reason people visit their physicians — even though most physicians have little to offer in the form of treatment.

It’s a widespread misconception that colds are caused by bacteria. Colds are actually triggered by a virus, which means if your physician prescribes you an antibiotic, it will be absolutely useless.

More on this shortly, but before I delve into simple prevention and treatment strategies it’s important you know how colds are contracted in the first place.

How Do You Catch a Cold?

The most common way cold viruses are spread is not from being around coughing or sneezing, or walking barefoot in the rain, but rather from hand-to-hand contact. For instance, someone with a cold blows their nose then shakes your hand or touches surfaces that you also touch.

Cold viruses can live on pens, computer keyboards, coffee mugs and other objects for hours, so it’s easy to come into contact with such viruses during daily life.

However, the key to remember is that just being exposed to a cold virus does not have to mean that you’ll catch a cold. If your immune system is operating at its peak, it should actually be quite easy for you to fend off the virus without ever getting sick.

If your immune system is impaired, on the other hand, it’s akin to having an open-door policy for viruses; they’ll easily take hold in your body. So the simple and short answer is, you catch a cold due to impairment in your immune system. There are many ways this can result, but the more common contributing factors are:

  1. Eating too much sugar and too many grains
  2. Not getting enough rest
  3. Using insufficient strategies to address emotional stressors in your life
  4. Vitamin D deficiency, as discussed below
  5. Any combination of the above

Vitamin D Deficiency: Another Reason You May “Catch” a Cold

It’s estimated that the average U.S. adult typically has two to four colds each year, while children may have up to 12! One reason for the widespread prevalence may be that vitamin D deficiency is incredibly common in the United States, especially during the winter months when cold (and flu) viruses are at their peak.

Research has confirmed that “catching” colds and flu may actually be a symptom of an underlying vitamin D deficiency. Less than optimal vitamin D levels will significantly impair your immune response and make you far more susceptible to contracting colds, influenza, and other respiratory infections.

In the largest and most nationally representative study of its kind to date, involving about 19,000 Americans, people with the lowest vitamin D levels reported having significantly more recent colds or cases of the flu – and the risk was even greater for those with chronic respiratory disorders like asthma.

At least five additional studies also show an inverse association between lower respiratory tract infections and vitamin D levels, and you can read about them in detail here. But the research is very clear, the higher your vitamin D level, the lower your risk of contracting colds, flu, and other respiratory tract infections.

It’s not surprising, then, that the average American gets so many colds each year, as current guidelines for optimal intake and normal vitamin D levels are far too low — and since most people do not get adequate sun exposure on a daily basis (which is what produces vitamin D in your skin) many are deficient. I strongly believe you could avoid colds and influenza entirely by maintaining your vitamin D level in the optimal range.

How Long Do Colds Last … and How Can You Make Your Cold Go Away Faster?

Most uncomplicated colds last between eight and nine days, but about 25 percent last two weeks, and 5-10 percent last three weeks. Even the most stubborn colds will typically resolve in a few weeks’ time; this is actually one of the ways you can distinguish a cold from allergies.

A cold will last, at most, a few weeks, but allergy symptoms can last all season.

How quickly you bounce back is typically defined by you and your collective lifestyle habits — and this does not mean popping over-the-counter cough and cold remedies or fever reducers. In fact, as long as your temperature remains below 102 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9 degrees Celsius) there is no need to lower it.

Cold viruses do not reproduce at higher body temperatures, so a slight fever should help you get rid of the virus quicker and help you to feel better much sooner.

You should avoid taking over-the-counter pain-relief medications as well, as a study showed that people who take aspirin and Tylenol (acetaminophen) suppress their body’s ability to produce antibodies to destroy the cold virus. Aspirin has even been linked to lung complications including pulmonary edema, an abnormal build up of fluid in your lungs, when taken in excess.

You should only use these medications when absolutely necessary, such as if you have a temperature greater than 105 degrees F (40.5 degrees C), severe muscle aches or weakness.

Hydrogen Peroxide: A Simple Trick to Beat a Cold

I don’t advise over-the-counter medications, but one simple treatment you can try that is surprisingly effective against upper respiratory infections is hydrogen peroxide.

Many patients at my Natural Health Center have had remarkable results in curing colds and flu within 12 to 14 hours when administering a few drops of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into each ear. You will hear some bubbling, which is completely normal, and possibly feel a slight stinging sensation.

Wait until the bubbling and stinging subside (usually 5 to 10 minutes), then drain onto a tissue and repeat with the other ear. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide in 3 percent solution is available at any drug store for a couple of dollars or less. It is simply amazing how many people respond to this simple, inexpensive treatment.

So What Else Can You do to Recover From a Cold, Quicker … and Prevent One in the First Place?

As I said above, the number one way to conquer a cold (or flu) is vitamin D. Vitamin D is an amazingly effective antimicrobial agent, producing 200 to 300 different antimicrobial peptides in your body that kill bacteria, viruses and fungi. So optimizing your levels will not only help send a cold virus packing … it will help ward off cold viruses in the first place.

The best source for vitamin D is direct sun exposure. But for many of us, this just isn’t practical during the winter. The next best option to sunlight is the use of a safe indoor tanning device. If neither natural nor artificial sunlight is an option, then using oral vitamin D3 supplements is your best bet.

Based on the latest research, many experts now agree you need about 35 IU’s of vitamin D per pound of body weight. This recommendation also includes children, the elderly and pregnant women.

However, keep in mind that vitamin D requirements are highly individual, as your vitamin D status is dependent on numerous factors, such as the color of your skin, your location, and how much sunshine you’re exposed to on a regular basis. So, although these recommendations may put you closer to the ballpark of what most people likely need, it is simply impossible to make a blanket recommendation that will cover everyone’s needs.

The only way to determine your optimal dose is to get your blood tested. Ideally, you’ll want to maintain a vitamin D level of 50-65 ng/ml year-round.

For an in-depth explanation of everything you need to know before you get tested, please read my latest updates in Test Values and Treatment for Vitamin D Deficiency.

Dietary Strategies to Kick a Cold

If you feel yourself coming down with a cold or flu, this is NOT the time to be eating ANY sugar, artificial sweeteners or processed foods. Sugar is particularly damaging to your immune system — which needs to be ramped up, not suppressed, in order to combat an emerging infection.

So if you are fighting a cold, you’ll want to avoid all sugar like the plague, and this includes sugar in the form of fruit juice and even grains (which break down as sugar in your body).

Ideally, you must address nutrition, sleep, exercise and stress issues the moment you first feel yourself getting a bug. This is when immune-enhancing strategies will be most effective.

So when you’re coming down with a cold, it’s time to address ALL of the contributing factors immediately, which includes tweaking your diet in favor of foods that will strengthen your immune response. Good choices include:

  • Raw, grass-fed organic milk, and/or high-quality whey protein
  • Fermented foods such as raw kefir, kimchee, miso, pickles, sauerkraut, etc, which are rich in probiotics, or good bacteria. Scientific research shows that 80 percent of your immune system resides inside your digestive tract, so eating probiotic-rich foods, or taking a high-quality probiotic, will help support your immune system health.
  • Raw, organic eggs from free-ranging, preferably local, chickens
  • Grass-fed beef
  • Coconuts and coconut oil
  • Animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil
  • Locally grown fruits and vegetables, appropriate for your nutritional type
  • Mushrooms, especially Reishi, Shiitake, and Maitake, which contain beta glucans (which have immune-enhancing properties)
  • Garlic, a potent antimicrobial that kills bacteria, viruses and fungi. Ideally this should be in fresh form, eaten raw and crushed with a spoon just before eating.
  • Herbs and spices with high ORAC scores: Turmeric, oregano, cinnamon, cloves (for more on ORAC, visit www.oracvalues.com)
  • Make sure you are drinking plenty of fresh, pure water. Water is essential for the optimal function of every system in your body and will help with nose stuffiness and loosening secretions. You should drink enough water so that your urine is a light, pale yellow.

And what about the old wives’ tale of chicken soup for your cold?

Chicken soup can help reduce your symptoms. Chicken contains a natural amino acid called cysteine, which can thin the mucus in your lungs and make it less sticky so you can expel it more easily.

Processed, canned soups won’t work as well as the homemade version, however.

For best results, make up a fresh batch yourself (or ask a friend or family member to do so) and make the soup hot and spicy with plenty of pepper. The spices will trigger a sudden release of watery fluids in your mouth, throat, and lungs, which will help thin down the respiratory mucus so it’s easier to cough up and expel.

Three Cold-Busting Lifestyle Strategies

Vitamin D, check! Hydrogen peroxide, check! Healthy diet, check! We’ve covered several of the primary “weapons” you should have in your cold-fighting arsenal, but there are others, too.

  1. High-Quality Sleep, and Plenty of It Pay attention to how you are sleeping. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, or enough restorative sleep, you’ll be at increased risk for a hostile viral takeover. Your immune system is also the most effective when you’re not sleep-deprived, so the more rested you are the quicker you’ll recover. You can find 33 secrets for a good night’s sleep here.
  2. Regular Exercise Regular exercise is a crucial strategy for increasing your resistance to illness. There is evidence that regular, moderate exercise can reduce your risk for respiratory illness by boosting your immune system. In fact, one study found that people who exercised regularly (five or more days a week) cut their risk of having a cold by close to 50 percent. And, in the event they did catch a cold, their symptoms were much less severe than among those who did not exercise.Exercise likely cuts your risk of colds so significantly because it triggers a rise in immune system cells that can attack any potential invaders. Each time you exercise you can benefit from this boost to your immune system.Ideally, establish a regular fitness program, such as Peak Fitness, now, to help you ward off colds and other illness.However, if you’re already feeling sick don’t overdo it. Over-exercising can actually place more stress on your body, which can suppress your immune system — and you don’t want that either. You might just go for a walk if you are coming down with a cold, or simply tone down your regular workout.Any rise in body temperature will be an unwelcome climate for a viral invader, though, so some exercise is likely to be beneficial.
  3. Address Your Emotional Stress Emotional stressors can also predispose you to an infection while making cold symptoms worse. Finding ways to manage daily stress as well as your reactions to circumstances beyond your control will contribute to a strong and resilient immune system.My favorite tool for this is the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a system that helps balance your body’s subtle energies and repair emotional “short-circuits.” EFT may even help you overcome cold symptoms.

Supplements That Send Pathogens Packin’

Supplements can be beneficial for colds, but they should be used only as an adjunct to the lifestyle measures already discussed.

Some of the more helpful options for cold (and flu) — above and beyond vitamin D — are:

  • Vitamin C: A very potent antioxidant; use a natural form such as acerola, which contains associated micronutrients. You can take several grams every hour till you are better unless you start developing loose stools
  • Oregano Oil: The higher the carvacrol concentration, the more effective it is. Carvacrol is the most active antimicrobial agent in oregano oil.
  • Propolis: A bee resin and one of the most broad-spectrum antimicrobial compounds in the world; propolis is also the richest source of caffeic acid and apigenin, two very important compounds that aid in immune response and even fight cancer.
  • A tea made from a combination of elderflower, yarrow, boneset, linden, peppermint and ginger; drink it hot and often for combating a cold or flu. It causes you to sweat, which is helpful for eradicating a virus from your system.
  • Olive leaf extract: Ancient Egyptians and Mediterranean cultures used it for a variety of health-promoting uses and it is widely known as a natural, non-toxic immune system builder.

Remember This Tip: Wash Your Hands Sensibly

Washing your hands frequently is one of the easiest ways to wipe out germs and viruses and reduce your chances of becoming sickened by them. Thorough hand-washing truly is an important step, as you are at far greater risk of passing on an infection by shaking someone’s hand than even by sharing a kiss.

One report even found that regular hand washing may be more effective than drugs in preventing the spread of respiratory viruses such as influenza.

When you wash up, plain soap and water will do. Do not make the mistake of using antibacterial cleansers, as their widespread use is leading to strains of resistant bacteria, or “superbugs,” which cause the ingredients to lose effectiveness for the times when they really are needed, such as for surgeons prior to surgery.

Further, the active ingredient in most antibacterial products is triclosan, an antibacterial agent that kills bacteria and inhibits bacterial growth. But not only does triclosan kill bacteria, it also has been shown to kill human cells.

Antibacterial soaps are also no more effective than regular soaps. One study found people who used antibacterial soaps and cleansersdeveloped a cough, runny nose, sore throat, fever, vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms just as often as people who used products that did not contain antibacterial ingredients. So please avoid making the mistake of using antibacterial liquids and soaps.

Too Much Hand-Washing Can Backfire …

There is another important caveat to remember, and that is your skin is actually your primary defense against bacteria — not the soap.

So resist the urge to become obsessive about washing your hands. If you wash them too frequently you can actually extract many of the protective oils in your skin, which can cause your skin to crack and bleed.

It is rare for a germ on your skin to cause a problem — it is typically only an issue when you transfer that to your nose, mouth or an open wound like cracked skin. So obsessive-compulsive washing can actually increase your risk of getting sick by providing an entryway for potentially dangerous pathogens.

So mild to moderate washing is wise, but excessive washing, especially with harsh soaps, will actually be highly counterproductive.

Avoid the Antibiotics!

More than 300 different viruses can cause colds, so each time you have a cold it is caused by a distinct virus (i.e. adenovirus, rhinovirus, parainfluenza virus, coronavirus). A virus is much smaller than a bacteria; it is a tiny cluster of genetic material surrounded by a protein wrapper.

There are currently NO drugs available that can kill these viruses. Antibiotics, including penicillin, do not have any effect on viruses, but unfortunately have been vastly over-prescribed for this very (useless) purpose. That, coupled with the excessive use of antibiotics in agriculture, has contributed to a steep rise in antibiotic-resistant diseases.

Antibiotic-resistant infections now claim more lives each year than the “modern plague” of AIDS, and cost the American health care system some $20 billion a year!

Further, according to one meta-analysis, the health risk from over-use of antibiotics is also a very personal one, as opposed to simply raising the occurrence of antibiotic resistance in the general population over time.

Whenever you use an antibiotic, you’re increasing your susceptibility to developing infections with resistance to that antibiotic — and you can become the carrier of this resistant bug, and spread it to others.

So please, if you have a simple cold remember that an antibiotic will do far more harm than good.

When Should You Call Your Physician?

Sinus, ear and lung infections (bronchitis and pneumonia) are examples of bacterial infections that do respond to antibiotics. If you develop any of the following symptoms, these are signs you may be suffering from a bacterial infection rather than a cold virus, and you should call your physician’s office:

  • Fever over 102 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9 degrees Celsius)
  • Ear pain
  • Pain around your eyes, especially with a green nasal discharge
  • Shortness of breath or a persistent uncontrollable cough
  • Persistently coughing up green and yellow sputum

Generally speaking, however, if you have a cold medical care is not necessary. Rest and attention to the lifestyle factors noted above will help you to recover quickly and, if you stick to them, will significantly reduce your chances of catching another one anytime soon.

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Correction of This Vitamin Deficiency Shown to Improve Seizure Control in Epilepsy

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Nearly half of people with epilepsy are also vitamin D deficient, but despite this well-known association, only a single study has been published on the effect of vitamin D for seizure control in the last 40 years.

That study revealed that treating epileptic patients with vitamin D2 – the far inferior type of synthetic vitamin D – reduced the number of seizures, and in 1974 researchers concluded that “the results may support the concept that epileptics should be treated prophylactically with vitamin D.“

Now, nearly four decades later researchers have again revealed that “the normalization of serum vitamin 25(OH)D [vitamin D] level has an anticonvulsant [anti-seizure] effect.“

Improving Vitamin D Levels Reduces Seizures by 40%

In the latest study, researchers administered a one-time 40,000-200,000 IU dose of vitamin D3 to patients with epilepsy in order to bring their vitamin D levels out of a deficiency state.

The participants, who ranged in age from 10-42, had vitamin D levels ranging from 4 ng/ml to 34 ng/ml, with a median level of 11.8. This is an absolutely dangerously low level. As you can see in the chart below, anything below 50 ng/ml is a deficiency state.

vitamin d levels

After the treatment dose of vitamin D, the participants’ vitamin D levels did improve to a range of 23-45 ng/ml, with a median of 38 ng/ml. It’s important to note that this is still low according to the latest science … but the improvement still resulted in a decrease in their number of seizures. If their levels were optimized further, it’s likely the results would improve even more.

After increasing their vitamin D levels, the results showed:

  • 10 of the 13 subjects had a decrease in number of seizures
  • Overall, there was a median seizure number reduction of 40%
  • A seizure reduction of greater than 50% was experienced in five patients

The most revealing result, however, occurred among the person whose vitamin D was a dangerously low 4 ng/ml at the start of the study. This person had 450 seizures in a three-month period, but after raising vitamin D level to 43.1 ng/ml, the seizures dropped to 30 in three months! The study did have some limitations, namely the small number of subjects and the lack of a placebo to compare to, but it still highlighted the importance of correcting vitamin D deficiency in epilepsy patients.

Epilepsy Patients are at Increased Risk of Vitamin D Deficiency

The findings are even more important given that people with epilepsy face an even greater risk of vitamin D deficiency than the general population (and even the general population is vastly vitamin D deficient). The reasons are two-fold, with the first being that having frequent seizures may interfere with your ability to get outdoors and stay active.

If you spend most of your time inside, you’ll miss out on regular sun exposure, which is key for the natural production of vitamin D. Even exposing your skin to sunlight through a windowpane will prevent the entry of the UVB rays, which are the specific wavelength that produces vitamin D in your skin. So, it is crucial that you get outside and experience direct skin contact with the sunlight instead of sunning in a sunroom, for instance.

Second, anti-epileptic drugs that are often given to epilepsy patients can interfere with vitamin D metabolism, leading to deficiency. If you take these drugs, it is especially crucial  that you actively monitor your vitamin D levels to avoid this side effect.

Why might vitamin D have such a significant impact on epileptic seizures? Epilepsy is a disorder of the central nervous system, particularly your brain. Vitamin D is not “just” a vitamin; it’s actually a neuroregulatory steroidal hormone that influences nearly 3,000 different genes in your body. Vitamin D receptors can be found in your brain, spinal cord, and central nervous system, and may enhance the amount of important chemicals in your brain needed to protect brain cells, for starters.

The Study Used Supplements, But Sunshine is Better

Researchers used a one-time large dose of vitamin D3 to boost the participants’ vitamin D levels. If you’re going to supplement, vitamin D3 is certainly far superior to the vitamin D2 researchers used back in the 1970s.

Today, however, vitamin D2 is still the form typically prescribed by doctors, so be aware of this if you’re taking this nutrient in prescription form. A meta-analysis of 50 clinical trials looking at mortality rates for “doctor recommended” synthetic vitamin D2 supplements versus natural vitamin D3 shows a 6 percent risk reduction among those who used D3, compared to a 2 percent increased risk among those who used D2.

Research also shows vitamin D3 is approximately 87 percent more potent in raising and maintaining vitamin D concentrations and produces 2- to 3-fold greater storage of vitamin D than does D2. D3 is also converted into its active form 500 percent faster. So by all means use vitamin D3 if you’re going to supplement, not D2 – but even better, simply get out in the sun, or use a safe tanning bed.

The IDEAL way to optimize your vitamin D levels is through appropriate sun or safe tanning bed exposure. While your skin does create vitamin D3 in response to sunlight, which is theoretically the same as the D3 you get from an oral supplement, there’s cause to believe that the vitamin D created from sun exposure may have additional health benefits. Plus, you cannot overdose when getting your vitamin D from sun exposure, as your body has the ability to self-regulate and only make what it needs. You do, however, need to be cautious and avoid burning.

If you cannot get your vitamin D requirements from sun exposure, I recommend using a safe tanning bed (one with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields). Safe tanning beds also have less of the dangerous UVA than sunlight, while unsafe ones have more UVA than sunlight. If neither of these are feasible options, then you should take an oral vitamin D3 supplement. It will certainly be better than no vitamin D at all, but you will need to monitor your levels via blood testing to ensure you stay within the therapeutic range.

You can learn more about maximizing your vitamin D from safe sun exposure in the video below. If you have epilepsy, it’s possible that doing so could help you decrease seizure drugs (a very good thing, since all seizure drugs can increase your risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and some of these drugs can make you lose your memory and your hair).

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Does Sunshine Actually Decrease Dangerous Melanoma Skin Cancers?

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Recent research blaming sunlight exposure for the growing incidences of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has failed to consider crucial information that could turn the entire concept on its head, according to Dr. William Grant, an epidemiologist writing for the Vitamin D Council.

One important point the research missed was that sometimes sunscreen can actually increase your risk of melanoma, especially in the Northern Hemisphere.

There are other studies showing that chronic UV (ultraviolet) light exposure may actually reduce the risk of melanoma.

Allow me to explain …

Are Rates of Melanoma Really Increasing?

The first point that needs to be addressed is whether melanoma cases are really on the rise. As Dr. Grant stated:

“Two recent papers blame increased ultraviolet (UV) exposure for the growing rates of melanoma in the UK. Not considered were other possible explanations for the rising rates of melanoma, including the use of sunscreen, especially at latitudes above 40º, and a combination of underdiagnosis in the past with over diagnosis more recently. [Melanoma mortality rates changed little in the U.S. between 1986 and 2001 while incidence rates more than doubled."

Further research published in the British Journal of Dermatology shows that the sharp increase in melanoma rates over the last three decades may actually be "an artifact caused by diagnostic drift." Diagnostic drift, according to the study, refers to a hefty increase in disease that is being fueled by non-cancerous lesions.

During the study period from 1991 to 2004, there were nearly 4,000 cases of melanoma included in the report, with an annual increase of 9.39 to 13.91 cases per 100,000 per year. The researchers revealed that, rather than being fueled by increasing exposure to sunlight as is commonly suggested, the increased incidence was almost entirely due to non-cancerous lesions misleadingly classified as "stage 1 melanoma." Even the distribution of the lesions reported did not correspond to the sites of lesions caused by sun exposure, leading researchers to conclude:

"These findings should lead to a reconsideration of the treatment of 'early' lesions, a search for better diagnostic methods to distinguish them from truly malignant melanomas, re-evaluation of the role of ultraviolet radiation and recommendations for protection from it, as well as the need for a new direction in the search for the cause of melanoma."

Sensible Sunlight is Protective Against Melanoma

Exposure to sunlight, particularly UVB, is protective against melanoma -- or rather, the vitamin D your body produces in response to UVB radiation is protective. As written in The Lancet:

"Paradoxically, outdoor workers have a decreased risk of melanoma compared with indoor workers, suggesting that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect."

A study in Medical Hypotheses suggested that indoor workers may have increased rates of melanoma because they're exposed to sunlight through windows, and only UVA light, unlike UVB, can pass through window glass.  At the same time, these indoor workers, who get three to nine times less solar UV exposure than outdoor workers, are missing out on exposure to the beneficial UVB rays, and have lower levels of vitamin D. The study even noted that indoor UV actually breaks down vitamin D3 formed after outdoor UVB exposure, which would therefore make vitamin D3 deficiency and melanoma risk even worse. A number of associations between sun exposure and melanoma can be found in the medical literature, such as:

  • Occupational exposure, such as farmers and fishermen, and regular weekend sun exposure are associated with decreased risk of melanoma
  • Sun exposure appears to protect against melanoma on skin sites not exposed to sun light, and melanoma occurring on skin with large UV exposure has the best prognosis
  • Patients with the highest blood levels of vitamin D have thinner melanoma and better survival prognosis than those with the lowest vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D Reduces Your Risk of Cancer

This is an important point, because if you are shunning the sun for fear of skin cancer, you are, ironically, missing out on one of the most potent natural cancer protections available. Vitamin D's protective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, including:

  • Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
  • Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
  • Causing cells to become fully differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
  • Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous

A study by Dr. Grant found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths -- which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States -- could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D. As he stated in the featured article, the potential lives saved from optimizing vitamin D levels through safe sun exposure (or a safe tanning bed) far outweighs the reported number of melanoma deaths:

"In 2007, there were 988 male and 837 female deaths from melanoma in the UK, and a total 71,336 male and 65,458 female cancer deaths. Thus, melanoma accounted for 1.4% of male cancer deaths and 1.3% of female cancer deaths. Assuming a 15% reduction in all-cancer incidence and mortality rates with adequate solar UVB exposure would imply 20,500 reduced cancer deaths in 2007, which is 11 times the number of melanoma deaths."

Similarly, in a review of the health effects of sun exposure, tanning beds and vitamin D, researchers again noted that the benefits of vitamin D production outweigh the potentially increased risk of melanoma:

"The overall health benefit of an improved vitamin D status may be more important than the possibly increased CMM [cutaneous malignant melanoma] risk resulting from carefully increasing UV exposure.”

Again, there’s compelling research showing that sun exposure will indeed protect you against melanoma, as a very low level of vitamin D is a major risk factor for this disease. This is, by the way, also a primary reason why using sunscreen every time you go outdoors may actually accelerate, rather than prevent, cancer.

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D While Minimizing Your Risk of Skin Damage

Sun exposure is the best way to optimize your vitamin D levels, because when you expose your skin to sunshine or a safe tanning bed, your skin synthesizes vitamin D3. I believe this is a very compelling reason to really make a concerted effort to get ALL your vitamin D requirements from exposure to sunshine, or by using a safe tanning bed. If neither of these are feasible options, then you should take an oral vitamin D3 supplement. For more information, see my recent video below on how to know if you are getting enough vitamin D from sun exposure.


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Healing Ear Infections – The Root Cause May Be The Gastrointestinal Tract

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By Andreas Moritz 

Hi, this is a question from someone who is suffering from acute ear infection and is wondering whether she should take antibiotics as a last resort.

Basically ear infections have underlying causes that are not directly related to the ears, but to bacteria that evolve and grow in the ears, and in the auditory ducts, but are basically emerging from sections or parts of the gastrointestinal tract.

Most people think that ears are independent from the gastrointestinal tract but this is not the case. In fact there is a duct that’s called the Eustachian tube and that is the duct that runs from the throat all the way up into the ears and that duct, also known as the auditory duct, is connected to the throat centre and the throat is connected to the gastrointestinal tract as we know, are the mouth, the nose, the ears, they are all basically interconnected.

Now when there is lot of trouble in the gastrointestinal tract in terms of undigested food that is being fermented or putrefied, then there is a large amount of bacterial activity and these bacteria which are part of the fermenting team to dispose of undigested foods, these bacteria produce toxins and these toxins are highly irritating, and many of them move up into the chest area and from there to the mouth, into the ear ducts, and then into the ears, and they continue the irritating effect that is also experienced in the lower parts of the body.

So when food is not digested, which is the main culprit here, then it’s better to address the underlying causes while perhaps also addressing the symptoms, because ear infections can be extremely painful.

I would suggest not to take recourse to antibiotics however, because antibiotics can cause more problems than they can rectify, because once an antibiotic has been consumed, the bacteria in the gut which regulate the digestive process and help to absorb nutrients from the foods we eat can be highly disturbed for up to a year after taking one course of antibiotics. So there is a disadvantage taking recourse to such methods as killing germs. It’s better to set the preconditions, clean out the intestines.

I would suggest to have a colonic irrigation, colon hydrotherapy or colema, to clean out the intestine so that there is an outlet for accumulated waste matter that is backing up into the upper part of the body so that the ears and ear ducts can empty, can release whatever has been accumulated there which harbors obviously fermenting or putrefying bacteria.

So bacteria don’t infect healthy tissue. They only infect tissue that has been congested, where toxins have accumulated, where waste matter, metabolic waste and other cellular debris is accumulated, and that’s where the bacteria will accumulate as well, and that’s where they take action.

So we cannot blame the bacteria for causing such infections, but we need to look at what causes the bacteria to assemble there, and to do their so-called dirty job, cleaning up the mess that somehow we have created in our body.

I suggest to make sure in the future to deal with the digestive process, avoiding foods that can cause a lot of fermentation and lead to the proliferation of what is known as the candida bacteria, and these candida bacteria are responsible for fermenting food that we have not been able to digest properly, and in order to stop candida bacteria ending up going into the ears and causing ear infections. It’s important to deal with it at the root cause, not just on the symptomatic level.

However sometimes it is extremely debilitating to have the pain and the congestion in the ears, given the high pressure and the exposure of nerve endings and the sensitive parts of the inner ear that can easily get inflamed and cause a lot of pain. So in that case, I would suggest to take hydrogen peroxide, the solution that you will find in most pharmacies, 3 or 4 percent, which you put in a tiny little bottle and you spray that into the ear a couple of times and you may want to put the head sideways so that the hydrogen peroxide is sitting there for a while taking its action and it will kill bacteria there and this is obviously just to relieve the symptoms, not to cure the problem.

The cure lies in dealing with the underlying issues, i.e. poor digestion, poor diet, poor lifestyle and eating habits that are responsible for that, and perhaps also poor bile secretion because of intra-hepatic gallstones blocking the bile ducts, not allowing you to have enough bile available for the digestive process. Bile keeps the bacteria population in balance and makes sure that food is properly digested and absorbed, and therefore it cannot become a fertile ground for bacterial proliferation and subsequent infection, so it’s good to always use natural ways rather than unnatural ways that just blindly kill germs… doesn’t matter whether they are the good kind or the bad kind.

In my opinion, there are no bad bacteria, there are bacteria for different reasons for different purposes. Some are for constructive purposes like generating… creating vitamins like B12 and then there are others that have to act on food to break it down and to also dispose of waste matter. So all bacteria are actually good bacteria and we should not just indiscriminately kill them off and cause more harm in the body, because once you have taken antibiotics it is very likely that the same issue is coming back, and it is usually worse each time you have used antibiotics, and eventually antibiotics… the bacteria that are involved in these infections… they become resistant to these drugs and there comes a point where antibiotics are no longer going to work, and that causes far, far more serious issues than the initial pain that you may experience with an infection of the ear.

It’s also important to make sure you get enough sun exposure. Vitamin D deficiency is a major reason for infections, infectious disease, because the immune system depends on vitamin D, vitamin D controls the immune system and thousands of genes responsible for natural defenses in the body. So make sure that you expose your skin to the sun on a regular basis. If the sun is too weak to generate vitamin D in the body, then I would suggest to use a vitamin D lamp or UV lamp, you can find them on the internet and use these till the time the sun is not available or capable of producing vitamin D at that time.

So I would suggest you take these measures as a matter of precaution, prevention, so that you don’t have to deal with the painful consequences as such.

Thank you.

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Different ways to get Sunlight exposure and their Effects

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By Andreas Moritz 

Hi, this is a very good question from John and it’s related to sunlight, vitamin D, and UV-A, which are mentioned in my book as very important factors in the maintenance of good health. And his question relates to whether lying down on one’s stomach in a room, and allowing the sun to shine through the open window, whether the closing of the eyes diminishes the positive effects of UV radiation in order to produce vitamin D. Because I do mention in my book “Heal Yourself With Sunlight” that wearing sunshades, sunglasses, will prevent the positive effects of UV-B radiation in stimulating the secretion of vitamin D in our body.

Vitamin D is essential to maintain a strong good immune system and proper digestive functions and cardiovascular functions amongst other positive benefits.

So when a person is wearing sunshades, there is a hormone in the brain that regulates the secretion of melanin in the cells, and that becomes suppressed when we wear sunshades because the body thinks that it is getting darker outside and will therefore diminish the production of these hormones, that basically shuts down the melanin production and therefore the protection against ultraviolet radiation that can then cause burning in deeper layers of the skin, which in turn can cause damage to the skin, not necessarily skin cancer, because that is an entirely different subject which is largely caused by carcinogens such as sunscreen lotion, or foods that are carcinogenic, or have effects of toxicity inside the skin, which is more an internal process of contamination and build-up of toxins rather than something external such as exposure of the skin to the sun.

Now the going back to the original question, which I find is an excellent question. The reason why we have problems with blocking the protective effects of melanin – that particular substance prevents the skin from burning – when we wear sunshades, that effect is diminished, or closing the eyes and sort of looking down like having the eyes facing the pillow, so that there is no natural light coming in, the body will begin will produce less melanin that protects the skin against burning.

So I would encourage you to keep your eyes either open, or the eyelids themselves even if they are closed will still let the body know that there is sunshine, but I wouldn’t put anything on the eyes or over the eyes, so that the body notices that it is actually sunlight, daylight, and it’s not getting dark.

The question is so good because it really shows the mechanism that takes place here that when we are wearing something over the eyes, then the body is more prone to sunburn, and you can easily see that by let’s say, being in the sun and putting sunshades over the eyes or falling asleep.

When you fall asleep, the eyes turn upward or sideways in some cases which doesn’t allow the body to notice that it is actually light outside, and in that case you find that you are burning much, much faster. Many people will fall asleep while sunbathing, they find themselves… when they wake up… their skin has actually been burned, sometimes seriously, and this can cause many, many problems. Whereas if they were awake and they looked around they saw natural sunlight, the eyes were focused towards the world around them instead of inward then the problem with the sunburn would be greatly diminished, and they wouldn’t have the same burning effect, and so that’s why it’s good to keep your eyes open or at least when you close them, don’t put anything over the eyes in order to protect the skin against severe sunburns.

So I hope that answers your question, and there is something to be said about not wearing sunshades or sunscreens or putting sunscreens or lotions on the skin except something like natural coconut oil, which is very protective of the skin.

The other part of the question related to allowing sunlight to come through windows which nowadays have UV reflecting effects, that means UV-B rays that are stimulating the production of vitamin D in the body are reflected or filtered out or blocked out, and this can lead to an actual deficiency of vitamin D in the body.

So driving around in a car all day and having the sun shining on your face or your arms can create a vitamin D deficiency that most people are not aware of.

The reason for that is because UV-B is the principal UV part of the sun that is stimulating the production of vitamin D, while UV-A rays are actually allowed to go through the glass and enter the body and when UV-A enters the body without the UV-B at the same time, then UV-A penetrates much deeper than it normally would. UV-B is responsible for actually removing vitamin D from the body, it’s that part that normally regulates the balance secretion or production of vitamin D in the body, if the person is in the sun for eight hours it could lead to an overproduction of vitamin D, but this doesn’t happen in the presence of UV-A coming into the skin as well, which then removes any excess amounts of vitamin D so you will never ever be overdosed however long you are in the sun. In that respect it’s very important to not be too close to a window when the sun is shining, let’s say sitting inside the house and then the sun shines through the glass unless of course, you have a glass that doesn’t reflect the UV-B part of the sunlight so this is a very important information.

Also if you are getting a good suntan, natural suntan, and you are therefore producing a lot of vitamin D, it’s important to not right away shower after sun exposure, because the Vitamin D is sitting on the surface of the skin, it needs to be absorbed, otherwise we are just washing it off right away, particularly using soaps will get rid of the vitamin D that you have produced, and you will also develop a vitamin D deficiency in spite of having exposed your skin to the sun, even if it has been done for several hours, you still, you will not be able to absorb enough of the vitamin D to make a difference.

So sunlight can definitely create a lot of healing, but it has to be done properly in a balanced fashion.

When you feel burning of the skin make sure you get out of the sun. It shouldn’t redden, slightly pink if fine, that’s the time when you should move into the shade, you still get UV exposure, not as strong of course when you are directly in the sun, but even just being in the shade and being in open daylight, sunlight ,and you will still get vitamin D production in the body.

And so sunlight is our best friend, it’s not an enemy.

The studies that have been done on sun exposure and there are more and more coming out, showing that regular sun exposure is far, far more important and safe than even having the sun burn the skin, you will not increase the risk of skin cancer, the population has been told now for several decades and there is still no scientific evidence that sunlight can cause skin cancer.

If you want to know more about this piece refer to my book “Heal Yourself With Sunlight” which contains all the details and the scientific data that shows that sunlight cannot cause skin cancer.

Skin cancer typically occurs in areas of the body that are hardly ever exposed to the sun like under the arms or under the thighs, in hidden area and not in the typically exposed areas of the skin. So there is a lot of misinformation going around. There are other things that cause skin cancers but the sun is not one of them.

Thank you for listening and I hope you have a beautiful sun-filled day today.

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Immune Boosters ‘Can be’ Counterproductive

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By Andreas Moritz 


This is a question form Diane Austin and she would like me to share what I think about immune boosters, and she is mentioning the IP6 and AHCC, and she is confused if they are counterproductive.

Certainly, I agree with the idea that immune boosters can be counterproductive, because when you interfere or manipulate the immune system, it can go either one way or the other. Either you boost the immune system, you increase it beyond what it is right now, or you suppress the immune system.  We know that vaccines suppress the immune system and they can eventually lead to severe issues unless of course you use an adjuvant, which are like aluminum, which can lead to a hyper reaction of the immune system which is not advisable, because when you do that, you never know when the immune system overreacts and starts turning against the body, because in a hypersensitive immune system, hyper-reactive immune system, it will start inflaming the body’s own cells and it’s called auto immune disease.

So I am not into boosting the immune system, I am not into suppressing the immune system but supporting the immune system, letting the body make sure it is as balanced as it is necessary.

Sometimes the body keeps the immune system lower in order to prevent an escalation, an inflammatory response, that could kill someone because it becomes too obstructive and so trying to boost the immune system when it is low through immune boosters, it can be very risky. So I am not in favor of that.

Many people’s immune systems are low because they suffer from vitamin D deficiency because they are not exposing their skin to the sun on a regular basis. If there’s, during a long winter period, not enough sunlight or it’s simply too cold to be outside, then I recommend using the vitamin D lamp, UV lamp, Dr. Mercola has great standing UV lamps, or there are simpler ones that basically allow you to expose the head, facial area or the upper chest area with tiny smaller UV lamps which can do the job quite well, giving you the necessary vitamin D that keeps the immune system balanced.

And there is a natural built-in mechanism that comes with regular sun exposure, UV-B is producing vitamin D in the body and UV-A that part of the UV light that penetrates deeper into the skin, UV-A makes sure that you don’t produce too much vitamin D. 

So the body knows too much of one thing or too little of the same can be damaging, and therefore there are mechanisms at place to always make sure that we have the right amount of strength in the immune system, not too little not too much.

So it’s better to go to the root causes of immune deficiency rather than trying to manipulate the immune system through immune boosters or any other mechanisms.

A healthy diet, balanced diet, healthy lifestyle, sleeping habits, all of that make sure that the immune system stays healthy. Keeping the liver clean is a great way to keep the immune system strong and balanced.

The sleep particularly is very important. There are studies to show that for every hour that we go to bed too late, and too late means anything after 10 PM, if we go to bed at 11 PM the immune system can already be deficient by 40 % for every hour you go to bed, later the immune system becomes weaker as we go along. So going to sleep at 9:30 – 10:00 PM is an excellent time to keep the immune system balanced and then having enough sunlight exposure.

Make sure that the body makes enough serotonin, that’s a powerful hormone produced in the brain and the digestive system, that keeps the immune system and the digestive system and the brain powerfully balanced in order to keep the body free of disease, and protect the body from contaminants… contaminants found in food or the environment.

So having said that, I hope this gives you some good idea why immune boosters are detrimental to the body and why we should go for the more natural immune boosters that come with a balanced lifestyle, diet, and stress-free life as much as possible, stress being obviously an immune suppressor.

We know that when we get stressed, emotionally disturbed, then that suppresses the immune system by secreting a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol suppresses the immune system.

So making sure that you have proper sleep, a good diet, clean the liver, which all helps to keep our emotions balanced, and if there is any emotional difficulty to perhaps seek help from others, speaking about it, expressing yourself, which all help to keeping the system as much as balanced as possible. 

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Slash Your Risk of Cancer – by Breaking This Cardinal Rule

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

UV light from the sun and tanning beds is the main vitamin D source for humans, and researchers have identified an astonishing number of health benefits of vitamin D in the past decade.

But since UV exposure has been suspected of causing skin cancer, many conventional health authorities still warn against it.

A recent review of studies sought to review the health effects of solar radiation, tanning beds and vitamin D.

The researchers looked at data from different time periods for populations at different latitudes, with the aim at looking at the relative risk for cutaneous malignant melanoma associated with tanning bed use, vitamin D and UV effects.

They found that increased tanning bed use was NOT associated with melanoma.

According to the authors:

“Due to the fear of skin cancer, health authorities warn against sun and sunbed exposure.

This policy, as well as the recommended vitamin D doses, may need revision.”

And:

“… The overall health benefit of an improved vitamin D status may be more important than the possibly increased [cutaneous malignant melanoma] risk resulting from carefully increasing UV exposure.”

In fact, Ivan Oransky, the editor of Reuters Health, has previously noted that the real risk of getting skin cancer from a tanning bed is less than three-tenths of one percent—and even then, this is likely only from those who habitually overexpose themselves.

Sun Exposure and Skin Cancer

The authors of the featured review state that while sun exposure is commonly assumed to be the main cause of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM hereafter referred to simply as melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer—the matter is actually NOT “settled.”

The theory is still under dispute, and in their analysis, they reviewed the arguments for and against causation.

With a hint of irony, the authors state that “several factors are probably involved, as exemplified by a relationship sometimes found between gross domestic product and melanoma incidence.” They also list a number of associations between sun exposure and melanoma found in the medical literature, such as:

  • Intermittent sun exposure and severe sunburn in childhood are associated with anincreased risk of melanoma
  • Occupational exposure, such as farmers and fishermen, and regular weekend sun exposure are associated with decreased risk of melanoma
  • Sun exposure appears to protect against melanoma on skin sites not exposed to sun light, and melanoma occurring on skin with large UV exposure has the best prognosis
  • Patients with the highest blood levels of vitamin D have thinner melanoma and better survival prognosis than those with the lowest vitamin D levels.

So what about tanning beds—are they more dangerous than regular sun exposure? As you may recall, the Senate’s health-care overhaul bill now includes a 10 percent tax on tanning services to dissuade you from engaging in such “health-harming” activities; a move that is unquestionably short sighted and counterproductive considering the fact that vitamin D deficiency is rampant in the U.S.

Where tanning beds are concerned, the science is more conflicted, with some studies finding no detrimental impact from tanning beds on skin cancer rates while others have found that rates of skin cancer are higher in those using tanning beds than those who do not tan. The reason for these conflicting findings, the authors speculate, could very well be due to differences in UVA/UVB ratios and intensities between different types of tanning beds.

What Makes a Tanning Bed Safe?

I believe they’re likely correct in their speculation that the type of tanning bed may be a major factor in whether or not it will have a beneficial or detrimental impact on your cancer risk. Safe tanning beds have less of the dangerous UVA than sunlight, while unsafe ones emit more UVA than sunlight, and it is the UVA rays, which penetrate your skin more deeply than UVB, that appear to be a much more important factor in causing photoaging, wrinkles and skin cancers.

Another important factor when selecting a tanning bed is the type of ballast it employs, to avoid excessive electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure. Most tanning units use magnetic ballasts to generate light. These magnetic ballasts are well known sources of EMF fields that can contribute to cancer.

If you hear a loud buzzing noise while in a tanning bed, it has a magnetic ballast system. I strongly recommend you avoid magnetic ballast beds, and restrict your use of tanning beds to those that use electronic ballasts.

High-quality indoor tanning devices are safe if you precisely follow the simple guideline of never getting burned. Your skin should only get the lightest shade of pink after using them. The FDA has very strict guidelines that seem overly restrictive and will likely impair most people from getting enough vitamin D.

The FDA also recommends waiting 24-48 hours between doses. The reason for this is that it takes at least 24 hours for the erythema to go away. This exposure schedule can be described as CONTROLLED SUNSHINE, making it a very safe way to receive the benefits of the sun while indoors. Ideally you should do this also when you are initially exposed to sunshine. But once you have a tan you can easily and safely increase exposure to once a day.

IF Sun Exposure Increases Your Risk of Cancer, Just How Great is that Risk?

Even when looking at the research showing an increased risk for skin cancer from sun exposure, just how great is that risk? Ivan Oransky, M.D., editor of Reuters Health wrote an excellent commentary on this last year.

Each year, during the month of May, as the sun slowly begins to thaw away those winter blues, you start getting bombarded with Skin Cancer Awareness ads; all of which pitch the idea that the sun is your enemy. Many will include the statistic issued by the World Health Organization, which states that “use of sunbeds before the age of 35 is associated with a 75 percent increase in the risk of melanoma.”

Sounds horrific, but how real is this threat?

“[W]hat does that really mean? Is it 75 percent greater than an already-high risk, or a tiny one?” Oransky writes.

“If you read the FDA’s “Indoor Tanning: The Risks of Ultraviolet Rays,” or a number of other documents from the WHO and skin cancer foundations, you won’t find your actual risk. That led AHCJ member Hiran Ratnayake to look into the issue in March for The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal, after Delaware passed laws limiting teens’ access to tanning salons. The 75 percent figure is based on a review of a number of studies, Ratnayake learned. The strongest such study was one that followed more than 100,000 women over eight years.

But as Ratnayake noted, that study “found that less than three-tenths of 1 percent who tanned frequently developed melanoma while less than two-tenths of 1 percent who didn’t tan developed melanoma.” That’s actually about a 55 percent increase, but when the study was pooled with others, the average was a 75 percent increase.

In other words, even if the risk of melanoma was 75 percent greater than two-tenths of one percent, rather than 55 percent greater, it would still be far below one percent.” [Emphasis mine.]

So, while statistically true, it’s really misleading, and incites undue fear. By only presenting the relative risk increase (the 75 percent increase) they make the risk sound rather unreasonable. Meanwhile, your absolute risk of developing skin cancer from sun exposure is still, AT WORST, below one percent! And please remember, these highly distorted scare tactics fail to mention the BENEFITS of the exposure, which radically reduce the dangers of the far more common, breast, prostate and colon cancers that are reduced.

Understanding the Difference between Relative Risk and Absolute Risk

Oransky explains the importance of understanding the difference between relative risk and absolute risk in his article:

“Absolute risk just tells you the chance of something happening, while relative risk tells you how that risk compares to another risk, as a ratio. If a risk doubles, for example, that’s a relative risk of 2, or 200 percent. If it halves, it’s 0.5, or 50 percent. Generally, when you’re dealing with small absolute risks, as we are with melanoma, the relative risk differences will seem much greater than the absolute risk differences.

You can see how if someone is lobbying to ban something – or, in the case of a new drug, trying to show a dramatic effect – they would probably want to use the relative risk. … So when you read a study that says something doubles the risk of some terrible disease, ask: Doubles from what to what?”

Tanning Beds Decrease Ten Times More Cancers than they Cause

Another important factor to keep in mind is that vitamin D, ideally from sun exposure, may decrease your risk of many other cancers and chronic diseases.

According to the featured review:

“… it can be estimated that increased sun exposure to the Norwegian population might at worst result in 200-300 more melanoma deaths per year, but it would elevate the vitamin D status by about 25 nmol/l and might result in 4,000 fewer internal cancers and about 3,000 fewer cancer deaths overall.

The lack of sunlight exposure leads to more health problems than bone disease and increased risk of cancer. Other benefits include protection against infectious diseases and non-cancerous diseases (diabetes, CVD, multiple sclerosis, and mental disorders).”

Overall, I believe the less than one percent risk of developing skin cancer from sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is well worth it, as increased vitamin D levels will protect you against so many other debilitating and lethal diseases and cancers… There’s also compelling research showing that sun exposure will indeed protect you against melanoma—the most dangerous form of skin cancer.

Sun Exposure is the BEST Way to Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels

In my view, a safe tanning bed comes in as a close second after natural sun exposure as the ideal way to optimize your vitamin D levels (as opposed to getting it from fortified food items or supplements). In a recent interview, Dr. Stephanie Seneff explained how vitamin D—specifically from sun exposure—is intricately tied to healthy cholesterol and sulfur levels, making the recommendation to get your vitamin D from the sun all the more important.

To review the details, please listen to the interview below.

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This Vitamin Might Ease Menstrual Cramps

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

At least half of reproductive-age women suffer from painful menstrual cramps that begin shortly before the start of menstrual flow and continue for several days.

For some the pain is a mild annoyance, but for others it can be so severe that it interferes with daily activities.

Severe menstrual cramps are actually among the most common reasons for missed work and school days among young women.

For treatment, many women rely on over-the-counter NSAIDs like ibuprofen for pain relief, and conventional physicians may even prescribe birth control pills, which prevent ovulation and reduce the severity of cramps.

Both of these “solutions” carry significant risks of side effects while doing nothing to treat the underlying reasons why menstrual cramps occur.

Now researchers have uncovered another option that might ease menstrual cramp pain naturally via the “sunshine vitamin,” or vitamin D.

Vitamin D Might Relieve Menstrual Cramp Pain

During menstruation, your uterus contracts to expel its lining, a process that’s triggered by hormone-like substances called prostaglandins.

Prostaglandins are associated with both pain and inflammation, and higher levels of these substances are linked to more severe menstrual cramps.

Vitamin D not only helps to decrease the production of prostaglandins, it also helps decrease the production of cytokines, which promote inflammation in your body.

In fact, researchers recently revealed that women with relatively low vitamin D levels (less than 45 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL)) who took a 300,000 IU mega-dose of vitamin D3 had a significant reduction in menstrual cramp pain. Two months after taking the vitamin D, the women rated their pain more than 2 points lower on a scale of 1-10, and all had stopped using painkillers. On the other hand, those who had taken a placebo reported no reduction in pain, and 40 percent were still taking pain medications.

These are impressive results, however I would caution you against taking this massive dose of vitamin D, especially without medical supervision, as it is possible to overdose on vitamin D when taken in supplement form especially when your vitamin A (not beta carotene) and vitamin K2 are not properly balanced. Very high doses of vitamin D3 supplements may lead to hypercalcemia (high blood calcium) over time. This can result in deposits of calcium in your heart, lungs or kidneys, and the damage can be permanent if your vitamin D levels remain elevated for too long.

The ideal way to optimize your vitamin D levels is through safe sun exposure, as this carries virtually no risk of overdosing on vitamin D.

Regular, Consistent Dosing is Best to Optimize Your Vitamin D

Vitamin D deficiency is currently at epidemic proportions in the United States and many other regions around the world, largely because people do not spend enough time in the sun to facilitate this important process of vitamin D production. This is linked to a number of serious health conditions including cancer and heart disease, not to mention that researchers in the above study found that the lower a woman’s level of vitamin D, the more menstrual cramp pain she experienced.

So the first step to ensuring you are receiving all the benefits of vitamin D is to find out what your levels are using a 25(OH)D test, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

There are two vitamin D tests — 1,25(OH)D and 25(OH)D — but 25(OH)D is the better marker of overall D status. It is this marker that is most strongly associated with overall health, and it is the one you should ask your physician for. The point of vitamin D testing is, of course, to be sure you are maintaining a therapeutic level of vitamin D in your blood. A few years back, the recommended level was between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), but more recently the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to at least 50 ng/ml.

Sun exposure is the BEST way to optimize your vitamin D levels; exposing a large amount of your skin until it turns the lightest shade of pink, as near to solar noon as possible, is typically necessary to achieve adequate vitamin D production. If sun exposure is not an option, a safe tanning bed (with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields) can be used.

As a last resort, a vitamin D3 supplement can be taken orally, but research suggests the average adult needs to take 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D per day in order to elevate their levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the absolute minimum for disease prevention. The dosage that is right for you will be determined, ultimately, by how much is needed to keep your levels in the therapeutic range above.

For more details, be sure to read How to Get Your Vitamin D Within Healthy Ranges.

What’s Wrong with Conventional Treatments for Menstrual Cramps?

If you visit a conventional physician complaining of menstrual cramps, you’re likely to leave the office with a prescription for one of two medications: an NSAID or an oral contraceptive. Aside from the fact that these only cover up your symptoms, and do nothing to heal the problem, they carry significant risks. These are made even worse since most women with menstrual cramps seek long-term relief, and may take the drugs for many months or even years.

NSAIDs

NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) are linked to serious gastrointestinal risks, like bleeding of the digestive tract, increased blood pressure and kidney problems. This applies not only to prescription medications like Celebrex but also over-the-counter drugs like aspirin, Advil and Motrin. NSAIDs are also notoriously bad for your heart; a study by researchers at The University of Bern in Switzerland revealed that NSAIDs lead to a two to fourfold increase in the risk of heart attacks, stroke or cardiovascular death, noting that it would only take 25-50 patients being treated with NSAIDs for one year to lead to an additional heart attack or stroke.i

Birth Control Pills

Hormonal birth control methods like “the pill” contain synthetic progesterone and synthetic estrogen — something that is clearly not advantageous if you want to maintain optimal health. These contraceptives contain the same synthetic hormones as those used in hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which has well-documented risks, including an increased risk of blood clots, stroke, heart attack, and breast cancer.

In fact, studies have found that HRT increases post-menopausal women’s breast cancer risk by at least one percent per year, and HRT with progestin increases your risk by eight percent per year, potentially going as high as 30 percent after just four years of use!

Furthermore, using birth control pills to relieve menstrual cramps is counterproductive, because you may end up simply exchanging them for another health condition. Birth control pills have been linked to an increased risk of:

More Natural Strategies to Ease Menstrual Cramps

If painful menstrual cramps are interfering with your quality of life, there are a number of safe, natural strategies to consider, in addition to optimizing your vitamin D levels.

  • Evening Primrose Oil: This contains the essential fatty acid gamma linolenic acid (GLA), which is useful for treating pain. It is also helpful to restore abnormal hormone physiology, which can contribute to PMS symptoms.
  • DIM (diindolylmethane): DIM is a natural phytochemical found in cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. It has unique properties that allow it to modify the metabolism of estrogen, promoting optimal estrogen balance and supporting healthy progesterone and testosterone production. The severity of PMS symptoms in women has been linked to elevated estrogen, with symptoms becoming more severe as estrogen rises.ii DIM exerts a balancing effect on hormones and may benefit conditions like PMS, which are associated with estrogen-progesterone imbalance.
  • Chinese Herbs: Chinese herbal medicine has been used to treat menstrual pain for hundreds of years, and one study found certain Chinese herbs were more effective than NSAIDs, oral contraceptive pills, acupuncture, heat compressions, placebos, or no treatment at all in relieving menstrual cramp pain.iii Herbs in the study included:
    • Chinese angelica root
    • Szechuan lovage root
    • Red peony root, white peony root
    • Chinese motherwort
    • Cinnamon bark
  • Acupuncture: A review of 27 studies found that acupuncture may alleviate menstrual cramps better than drugs or herbal medicine by stimulating the production of endorphins and serotonin in your central nervous system.iv
  • Dietary changes: Dietary changes can be very useful to relieve cramping and other PMS symptoms. You can try:
    • Avoiding caffeine, alcohol, and carbonated drinks
    • Reducing your sugar intake
    • Avoiding smoked cheeses, meats, and fish (as they can increase your fluid retention)
    • Making sure you’re getting enough nutrients in your diet, specifically vitamin B6, manganese, vitamins A and E, calcium,magnesium, animal-based omega-3 fats and tryptophan
  • Exercise: This is another useful tool that helps to relieve menstrual cramps, perhaps because it raises your levels of endorphins, which are chemicals in your brain that are associated with pain relief.
  • Heat: Using a hot water bottle on your lower abdomen or soaking in a warm bath may provide temporary relief of menstrual pain.

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Your Greatest Weapon Against Breast Cancer (Not Mammograms)

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, 200,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed each year in the US, making it three times more common than other gynecological cancers.

Breast cancer will claim the lives of 40,000 people this year.

In fact, the only type of cancer that claims the lives of more women is lung cancer.

Even more disturbing is the speed at which breast cancer rates have risen over the past 5 decades.

In 1960, one in 20 women was diagnosed—but today, it is one in seven.

The following are some important facts about this type of cancer:

  • Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women age 40 to 55.
  • 15 percent of all breast cancers occur in women under age 45; in this age group, breast cancers are more aggressive and have lower recovery rates.
  • 80 percent of breast lumps are NON-cancerous.
  • 70 percent of breast cancers are found through breast self-exams.
  • About 80 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history of breast cancer.

The toxic effects of mammogram radiation are finally being acknowledged as a significant factor in the development of breast cancer. Several recent studies have clearly shown that breast cancer screenings may be causing women more harm than good.

A new study published in the British Medical Journal (December 2011) confirmed that breast cancer screening may cause women harm, especially during the early years after they start screening. This harm is largely due to surgeries, such as lumpectomies and mastectomies, and other (often unnecessary) interventions. The study highlights losses in quality of life from false positive results and unnecessary treatment.

Fortunately, we’re beginning to see the initial stirrings of change, as this latest report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) shows, which calls into question the role environmental exposure may be playing in the development of breast cancer. The IOM committee is absolutely correct in calling for more research into the risks of various environmental exposures over the course of a woman’s lifetime. Isn’t it ironic that the mammogram—the principle diagnostic test given to women to help detect and prevent breast cancer—is responsible for increasing women’s risk for developing it?

Mammogram Radiation is Much More Damaging than a Chest X-Ray

Mammograms use ionizing radiation at a relatively high dose, which can contribute to the mutations that can lead to breast cancer. You can get as much radiation from one mammogram as you would from 1,000 chest X-rays. Mammography also compresses your breasts tightly, which can lead to a dangerous spread of cancerous cells, should they exist. Dr. Samuel Epstein, one of the world’s top cancer experts, has stated:

“The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 rad exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent, with a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade’s screening.”

Breast Cancer Screening May Lead to Unnecessary Treatments and Surgeries that Can Actually SHORTEN Your Lifespan

Another concern is that mammograms carry an unacceptably high rate of false positives—up to six percent. False positives can lead to expensive repeat screenings, exposing you to even more radiation, and can sometimes result in unnecessary invasive procedures such as biopsies, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. In fact, if you undergo breast screenings, you have a 35 percent increased risk of having surgery. If a mammogram detects an abnormal spot in your breast, the next step is typically a biopsy.

This involves taking a small amount of tissue from your breast, which is then looked at by a pathologist under a microscope to determine if cancer is present. These biopsies are notoriously inaccurate, often leading to misdiagnosis and unnecessary treatments, not to mention undue emotional stress.

Just thinking you may have breast cancer, when you really do not, focuses your mind on fear and disease, and the stress is actually enough to trigger an illness. It is well established that stress has damaging effects on your health. So, a false positive diagnosis can be damaging to your health from multiple angles. In a 2009 Cochrane Database Systematic Review of breast cancer screening and mammography, the authors wrote:

“Screening led to 30 percent overdiagnosis and overtreatment, or an absolute risk increase of 0.5 percent. This means that for every 2000 women screened for 10 years, one will have her life prolonged, and 10 healthy women who would not have been diagnosed if they had not been screened, will be treated unnecessarily.”

Unfortunately, the disturbing scientific findings do not end there. This means that by having these breast cancer screenings, you may beshortening your life, rather than extending it. In reference to the 2011 BMJ findings about the damage being done by breast cancer screening, SayerJi of Green Med Info wrote:

“What is perhaps most disturbing about these findings is that, while they clearly call into question the safety and effectiveness of breast screenings, the studies upon which they are based use an outdated radiation risk model, which minimizes by a factor of 4 to 5 the carcinogenicity … What this indicates, therefore, is that breast screenings are not just ‘causing more harm than good,’ but are planting seeds of radiation-induced cancer within the breasts of millions of women.”

Mammograms are NOT Really Saving Lives, Research Says

In September 2010, the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most prestigious medical journals, published the first study in years to examine the effectiveness of mammograms. Their findings are a far cry from what most public health officials would have you believe.The bottom line is that mammograms seem to have reduced cancer death rates by only 0.4 deaths per 1,000 women—an amount so small it might as well be zero. Put another way, 2,500 women would have to be screened over 10 years for a single breast cancer death to be avoided.

So, not only are mammograms unsafe, but they are NOT saving women’s lives, as was commonly thought. Past research has also shown that adding an annual mammogram to a careful physical examination of the breasts does not improve breast cancer survival rates over physical examination alone. If mammograms won’t save you, then what will?

Cancer’s Greatest Enemy: Your Immune System

Recent discoveries suggest that your immune system is designed to eliminate cancer. However, when you implement caustic medical interventions (such as radiation and chemotherapy) that damage your immune system so that it cannot respond appropriately, you are destroying your body’s best chances for healing. Unfortunately, mammograms tend to increase the likelihood that women will undertake medical procedures that interfere with this natural healing ability. There is now a great deal of scientific evidence supporting the theory that your own immune system is your best cancer weapon:

  • Individuals with liver or ovarian cancer survive longer if their killer T cells have invaded their tumors.
  • A 2005 study showed that colon cancers that most strongly attract T cells are the least likely to recur after treatment.
  • Another study found that 60 percent of precancerous cervical cells (found on PAP tests) revert to normal within a year,and 90 percent revert within three years.
  • Some kidney cancers are known to regress, even when highly advanced.

The presence of white blood cells in and around a tumor is often an indication that the cancer will go into remission—or even vanish altogether—as this New York Times article explains. And breast cancer is no exception.

Thirty Percent of Breast Tumors Go Away on their Own

According to breast surgeon Susan Love of UCLA, at least 30 percent of tumors found on mammograms would go away if you did absolutely nothing. These tumors appear to be destined to stop growing on their own, shrink, and even go away completely. This begs the question—how many cancer cures that are attributed to modern interventions like chemotherapy and radiation, are actually just a function of the individual’s immune system ridding itself of the tumor on its own? How many people get over cancer in spite of the treatments that wreak havoc on the body, rather than because of them? It is impossible to definitively answer this question.

But it is safe to say that the strength of your immune system is a major factor in determining whether or not you will beat cancer, once you have it.Nearly everyone has cancerous and pre-cancerous cells in their body by middle age, but not everyone develops cancer. The difference lies in the robustness of each person’s immune system.

Dr. Barnett Kramer of NIH says it’s becoming increasingly clear that cancers require more than just mutations to progress. They need the cooperation of surrounding cells, certain immune responses, and hormones to fuel them. Kramer describes cancer as a dynamic process, whereas it used to be regarded as “an arrow that moved in one direction” (e.g., from bad to worse). What does this mean for you?

The better you take care of your immune system, the better it will take care of you.

One way to strengthen your immune system is to minimize your exposure to mammograms and other sources of ionizing radiation. But you can also build up your immune system DAILY by making good diet and lifestyle choices.  One of the best ways to do this is by optimizing your vitamin D level.

Vitamin D: Cancer Fighter Extraordinaire

Vitamin D, a steroid hormone that influences virtually every cell in your body, is one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters. Receptors that respond to vitamin D have been found in almost every type of human cell, from your bones to your brain. Your liver, kidney and other tissues can convert the vitamin D in your bloodstream into calcitriol, which is the hormonal or activated version of vitamin D. Your organs then use it to repair damage and eradicate cancer cells.

Vitamin D is actually able to enter cancer cells and trigger apoptosis, or cancer cell death.

When JoEllen Welsh, a researcher with the State University of New York at Albany, injected a potent form of vitamin D into human breast cancer cells, half of them shriveled up and died within days.The vitamin D worked as well at killing cancer cells as the toxic breast cancer drug Tamoxifen, without any of the detrimental side effects and at a tiny fraction of the cost.

I strongly recommend making sure your vitamin D level is 70 to 100ng/ml if you’ve received a breast cancer diagnosis. You can achieve this through direct, safe exposure to ultraviolet light, or if this is not possible, by taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement. Vitamin D works synergistically with every cancer treatment I am aware of, without adverse effects. Please watch my free one-hour lecture on vitamin Dfor more information. For a comprehensive guide to breast cancer prevention and treatment, refer to this previous article. Some of the other research-based breast cancer fighters include the following:

  • Eating plenty of fresh, whole, organic vegetables, especially fermented vegetables
  • Avoiding all processed foods, and minimizing sugar, grains and starchy foods
  • Vitamin A plays a role in preventing breast cancer; your best sources are organic egg yolks, raw milk and butter, and beef and chicken liver (from organically raised, grass pastured animals)
  • Curcumin (the active agent in turmeric) is one of the most potent tumor-inhibiting foods; black cohosh, artemisinin, green tea, kelp, cruciferous vegetables and evening primrose oil also show promise in helping to prevent breast cancer
  • Getting plenty of exercise daily

If You Are Diagnosed With Early Stage Breast Cancer

In the event that you are diagnosed with early stage breast cancer, always get a second opinion—and possibly a third and fourth. I cannot stress this enough, as false positive rates are just too high and the diagnostic criteria is too subjective.Before you make any decision about treatment, and definitely before you decide to have surgery or chemotherapy, make sure your biopsy results have been reviewed by a breast specialist who is knowledgeable and experienced in that field.

The majority of breast cancer is preventable. But if you are hit with that diagnosis, don’t lose hope! There is a great deal you can do to harness your body’s own powerful healing abilities.

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How Can Sunscreen Cause Alzheimer’s?

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Alzheimer’s disease is currently at epidemic proportions, with 5.4 million Americans — including one in eight people aged 65 and over — living with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association’s 2011 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures.

By 2050, this is expected to jump to 16 million, and in the next 20 years it is projected that Alzheimer’s will affect one in four Americans.

You do not, however, have to feel powerless against this disease, as although there is no known cure as of yet, there are simple strategies available to significantly lower your risk.

The Alzheimer’s Risk Factor You Probably Haven’t Heard Of …

Do you heed the advice of public health officials who advise putting on sunscreen every time you go out in the sun?

This could very well be raising your risk of Alzheimer’s disease because it blocks not only your body’s ability to produce vitamin D, but also your production of cholesterol sulfate.

Unfortunately most of you reading this have probably only heard of cholesterol referred to in a negative way, but actually adequate cholesterol is essential for good health.

For example, 25 percent of the cholesterol in your body is in your brain, even though your brain is only 2 percent of your body’s weight. The cholesterol is absolutely essential for neuron transport, which is why lack of cholesterol can negatively affect your brain function. But impaired memory and dementia are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to low cholesterol’s impact on your brain. Having too little of this beneficial compound also:

  • Increases your risk of depression
  • Can cause you to commit suicide
  • May lead to violent behavior and aggression
  • Increase your risk of cancer and Parkinson’s disease

That’s a bit of background to get you warmed up to the idea that cholesterol is your friend, not your enemy. Now, getting back to sunscreen and Alzheimer’s, using these products will make it virtually impossible for your body to do what it was designed to do, which is produce important, disease-fighting substances like vitamin D and cholesterol sulfate when exposed to the sun. Dr. Stephanie Seneff, a senior scientist at MIT who has a wealth of information about the importance of sulfur, explains:

” … depletion of sulfate supply to the brain is another important contributor to Alzheimer’s, and I further think that sulfate is supplied to the brain principally by sterol sulfates like cholesterol sulfate as well as their derivatives like vitamin D3 sulfate. Both cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D3 sulfate are synthesized in the skin upon exposure to sunlight, and it is theorized that the skin is the major supplier of these nutrients to the body. This is why I believe that excess sunscreen use and excess sun avoidance are another principal causative factor in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Why is Cholesterol Sulfate so Important?

Your skin produces large amounts of cholesterol sulfate, which is water-soluble and provides a healthy barrier against bacteria and other potentially disease-causing pathogens that might otherwise enter your body through your skin. And, due to its polarity, it can enter both fat cells and muscle cells with equal ease. Dr. Seneff proposes that, because of this, cholesterol sulfate may be able to protect fat and muscle cells from glucose and oxygen damage.

She also argues that when you’re deficient in cholesterol sulfate, your muscle and fat cells become more prone to damage, which subsequently can lead to glucose intolerance, a condition where your muscles cannot process glucose as a fuel. As a result, your fat cells have to store more fat in order to supply fuel to your muscles, and excess fat accumulates as damage increases.

Sulfur also plays an important role in glucose metabolism. She hypothesizes that if a sufficient amount of sulfur is available, it will act as a decoy to glucose, effectively diverting it to reduce the sulfur rather than glycating and causing damage. This would have the beneficial effect of reducing inflammation, as sugar (glucose) is highly inflammatory and wreaks havoc in your body.

What does this have to do with your brain? The process applies not only to fat and muscle cells, but also to cells in your brain (and, in fact, to all cells in your body). Dr. Seneff explains:

“Essentially all cells in the body are surrounded by an exterior coat made up of complex molecules called “GAGs” — glycosaminoglycans. These contain sugars, proteins, and a large population of attached ions, particularly sulfate anions. These serve, I believe, an important role in helping to safely break down sugar. Simply stated, the sulfur atom deflects the reducing actions of sugars away from the vulnerable proteins.

The sulfate anions also provide a negative field around the cell, which is very useful for keeping bacteria out, because bacteria are also negatively charged, and hence repelled by the cell’s negative electric field. So cells with lots of surrounding sulfate are afforded protection from invasive bacteria. If a bacterium does get in, the cell will have to release oxidizing agents to kill it, and the cell itself will suffer damage from exposure to its own defense system. The fats in the cell membrane are more vulnerable to oxidative damage when there is insufficient cholesterol to protect them.”

This means that depletion of the sulfate supply to your brain could leave your brain cells more susceptible to damage and may increase your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Seneff also points out to recent papers that have also linked insufficient cholesterol with Alzheimer’s and mental decline:

  • Serum levels of cholesterol as well as the ability to synthesize cholesterol are inversely associated with mental decline in the elderly
  • A study directly comparing Alzheimer’s patients with age-matched controls showed a reduced serum level of LDL in the Alzheimer’s patients, with the more severe cases showing further reduction in LDL

Vitamin D Deficiency Also Increase Alzheimer’s Risk

Sunscreen is a double-edged sword when it comes to your brain health, as aside from blocking your ability to produce cholesterol sulfate, it also blocks your production of vitamin D — and there is no shortage of research linking vitamin D to brain health. One such study was actually launched after family members of Alzheimer’s patients who were treated with large doses of prescription vitamin D reported they were acting and performing better than before.

Strong links between low levels of vitamin D in Alzheimer’s patients and poor outcomes on cognitive tests were revealed. Researchers believe that optimal vitamin D levels may enhance the amount of important chemicals in your brain and protect brain cells. Vitamin D may also exert some of its beneficial effects on Alzheimer’s through its anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties. Sufficient vitamin D is imperative for proper functioning of your immune system to combat inflammation that is also associated with Alzheimer’s.

Safe Sun Exposure Without Sunscreen

If you work outdoors all day as part of your job, or if you need to protect sensitive areas of your face, like around your eyes, that are particularly susceptible to photoaging and not large enough a surface to impact vitamin D levels if blocked with sunscreen, certain sunscreens available in most health food stores, and my Healthy Skin Sunscreen, are safe to use when the need arises. However, I personally use and recommend wearing a hat when you are in the sun as this typically can shade the sensitive skin around your eyes.

I would avoid applying sunscreen regularly as most commercial ones have toxic chemicals that you should not be exposed to. If you do use a sunscreen make sure it is safe and natural. Remember once your skin turns the lightest shade of pink (if you’re Caucasian), it’s time to get out of the sun. Past this point of exposure your body will not produce any more vitamin D and you’ll begin to have sun damage. And sunburn anywhere on your body is not good for your health.

If sunshine outdoors is not an option for you because of the winter or your job, you can get many of the same benefits by using a safe tanning bed (one with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to electromagnetic fields). Safe tanning beds also have less of the dangerous UVA than sunlight, while unsafe ones have more UVA than sunlight.

In terms of vitamin D, it’s especially important to get it from sun exposure or a tanning bed, rather than a vitamin D3 supplement if at all possible, because when you expose your skin to sunshine, your body produces vitamin D3 sulfate. This form of vitamin D is water-soluble, unlike oral vitamin D3 supplements, which is unsulfated. The water-soluble form can travel freely in your bloodstream, whereas the unsulfated form needs LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) as a vehicle of transport. Dr. Seneff believes that the oral non-sulfated form of vitamin D may not provide all of the same benefits as the vitamin D created in your skin from sun exposure, because it cannot be converted to vitamin D sulfate.

Coconut Oil Offers Profound Benefits for Your Brain

Coconut oil may help protect you from Alzheimer’s by providing your brain with an additional fuel supply. Your brain actually manufactures its own insulin to convert glucose into the fuel it needs, but recent discoveries indicate that your brain can essentially become “diabetic.” As you may know, diabetes is the condition where your body’s response to insulin is weakened due to “insulin resistance”—your body eventually stops producing the insulin necessary to regulate blood sugar.

Just like with diabetes, your brain can become insulin resistant. If this happens, your brain loses its ability to convert glucose into energy, leading to essentially a starvation state, and this can result in brain atrophy. This is what happens to Alzheimer’s patients—portions of their brain start to atrophy, or starve, leading to impaired functioning and eventual loss of memory, speech, movement and personality. Given this, you can now understand why diabetics have a 65 percent increased risk of also being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease—BOTH conditions are tied to insulin resistance.

This is where coconut oil may help.

Coconut oil provides ketones to your brain, and ketones appear to be the preferred source of brain food in patients with diabetes and/or Alzheimer’s. Coconut oil is a primary source of ketones, since it contains 66 percent medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), a type of fat your body can easily and quickly convert into ketones.

In effect, coconut oil is a fat that acts like a carbohydrate in your body, and carbs are your brain’s favorite food. For more about this, refer to this article, which discusses this in more detail. Therapeutic levels of MCTs can be achieved by taking just over two tablespoons of coconut oil daily (about 35ml or 7 level teaspoons), but I recommend working your way up to 4 tablespoons per day, gradually, beginning with just one teaspoon in the morning, WITH a meal to minimize the risk of stomach upset.

Other Important Tips for Alzheimer’s Prevention

In order to effectively prevent a disease, you must address its underlying causative factors. Although we do not have definitive “proof” of what, specifically, causes Alzheimer’s, a number of factors have been linked to an increased risk of dementia, and we know enough about those to in turn make educated recommendations for preventing this type of brain deterioration. Some of the best strategies for Alzheimer’s prevention, aside from adequate sunlight exposure, include:

  • Fructose. You simply MUST keep your level below 25 grams per day. This toxic influence is serving as the master regulator of brain toxicity. Since the average person is exceeding this recommendation by 300% this is a pervasive and serious issue. I view this as the MOST important step you can take.Additionally, when your liver is busy processing fructose (which your liver turns into fat), it severely hampers its ability to makecholesterol. This is yet another important facet that explains how and why excessive fructose consumption is so detrimental to your health.
  • Keep your fasting insulin levels below 3. This is indirectly related to fructose, as it will clearly lead to insulin resistance. However other sugars, grains and lack of exercise are also factors here.
  • Vitamin B12: According to a small Finnish study recently published in the journal Neurology, people who consume foods rich in B12 may reduce their risk of Alzheimer’s in their later years. For each unit increase in the marker of vitamin B12 (holotranscobalamin) the risk of developing Alzheimer’s was reduced by 2 percent. Very high doses of B vitamins have also been found to treat Alzheimer’s disease and reduce memory loss.
  • Eat a nutritious diet, rich in folate, such as the one described in my nutrition plan. Strict vegetarian diets have been shown to increase your Alzheimer’s risk, whereas diets high in omega-3′s lower your risk. However, vegetables, without question, are your best form of folate, and we should all eat plenty of fresh raw veggies every day.
  • High-quality animal based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil. (I recommend avoiding most fish because although fish is naturally high in omega-3, most fish are now severely contaminated with mercury.) High intake of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA helps by preventing cell damage caused by Alzheimer’s disease, thereby slowing down its progression, and lowering your risk of developing the disorder. Researchers have also said DHA “dramatically reduces the impact of the Alzheimer’s gene.”
  • Avoid and remove mercury from your body. Dental amalgam fillings are one of the major sources of mercury, however you should be healthy prior to having them removed. Once you have adjusted to following the diet described in my optimized nutrition plan, you can follow the mercury detox protocol and then find a biological dentist to have your amalgams removed.
  • Avoid aluminum, such as antiperspirants, non-stick cookware, vaccine adjuvants, etc.
  • Exercise regularly. It’s been suggested that exercise can trigger a change in the way the amyloid precursor protein is metabolized, thus, slowing down the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s. Exercise also increases levels of the protein PGC-1alpha. New research has shown that people with Alzheimer’s have less PGC-1alpha in their brains, and cells that contain more of the protein produce less of the toxic amyloid protein associated with Alzheimer’s.I would strongly recommend reviewing the Peak Fitness Technique for my specific recommendations.
  • Avoid flu vaccinations as most contain both mercury and aluminum!
  • Eat plenty of blueberries. Wild blueberries, which have high anthocyanin and antioxidant content, are known to guard against Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.
  • Challenge your mind daily. Mental stimulation, especially learning something new, such as learning to play an instrument or a new language, is associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s. Researchers suspect that mental challenge helps to build up your brain, making it less susceptible to the lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
  • Avoid anticholinergic and statin drugs. Drugs that block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter, have been shown to increase your risk of dementia. These drugs include certain night-time pain relievers, antihistamines, sleep aids, certain antidepressants, medications to control incontinence, and certain narcotic pain relievers.A study found that those who took drugs classified as ‘definite anticholinergics’ had a four times higher incidence of cognitive impairment. Regularly taking two of these drugs further increased the risk of cognitive impairment. Statin drugs are particularly problematic because they suppress the synthesis of cholesterol.As Dr. Seneff reports:

    “Statin drugs interfere with cholesterol synthesis in the liver, but the lipophilic statin drugs (like lovastatin and simvastatin) also interfere with the synthesis of cholesterol in the brain. This would then directly impact the neurons’ ability to maintain adequate cholesterol in their membranes. Indeed, a population-based study showed that people who had ever taken statins had an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a hazard ratio of 1.21. More alarmingly, people who used to take statins had a hazard ratio of 2.54 (over two and a half times the risk to Alzheimer’s) compared to people who never took statins.”

    For more information, read Dr. Seneff’s essay on statins and Alzheimer’s disease.

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He Murdered a Friend After Taking This Best-Selling Drug

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com


A Canadian judge has ruled that a teenage boy murdered his friend because of the effects of Prozac.

The ruling will not be appealed.

The decision has revived the debate regarding the widespread prescription of antidepressants to young people.

Justice Robert Heinrichs ruled that the 15-year-old boy was under the influence of the medication when he stabbed and killed a close friend.

He was sentenced to 10 months on top of the two years he had already spent in jail.

“Prozac is meant to curb the effects of depression, but Justice Heinrich concluded it set off a steady deterioration in the young murderer’s behavior,” CCHR reports.

“He had become irritable, restless, agitated, aggressive and unclear in his thinking,” the judge said.

“It was while in that state he overreacted in an impulsive, explosive and violent way. Now that his body and mind are free and clear of any effects of Prozac, he is simply not the same youth in behavior or character.”

Should Antidepressants Carry Black Box Warning for Homicidal Tendencies?

In 2004, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided SSRI antidepressants must carry a black box warning that the drug can cause suicidal tendencies. But what about violence and homicidal tendencies? Despite mounting evidence that antidepressants and certain other drugs can induce violent behavior and has led to the tragic death of spouses, family members and friends, the FDA has done nothing to warn or curb the use of such drugs.

According to CCHR:

“It is well documented that psychiatric drugs, particularly antidepressants, can cause a host of violent side effects including mania, psychosis, aggression, violence, and in the case of the antidepressant Effexor, homicidal ideation … [P]eople with no prior history of violence (or suicide) became homicidal and suicidal under the influence of antidepressants. … However, despite all the documented violence-inducing side effects of these drugs, the FDA has never issued black box warnings on antidepressants causing violence or homicide despite the fact that at least 11 recent school shootings were committed by kids documented to be on or in withdrawal from psychiatric drugs.”

The expert testimony in this case was supplied by Dr. Peter Breggin, an outspoken critic of psychiatric drugs. The featured article quotes him as saying:

“These drugs produce a stimulant or activation continuum… That continuum includes aggression, hostility, loss of impulse control … all of which are a prescription for violence.”

Other still feel the link between antidepressants and homicide is thin, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s just because they’re refusing tolook at the evidence and give it the attention it deserves. The CCHR website includes a helpful search feature, allowing you to search for all sorts of reports and research relating to psychiatric drugs and their side effects. It took 13 years before the FDA finally agreed SSRI’s can cause suicidal thoughts and behavior. How many decades-worth of evidence will have to mount up before the apparent link to uncontrolled violence and homicide is addressed?

Your Genes May Predispose You to Homicidal Side Effects of Antidepressants

Interestingly, in related news, a 2011 study published in Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine has found that certain genes may predispose you to homicidal behavior following exposure to antidepressants. Both sudden withdrawal from antidepressants and continuing to take them was found to worsen the problem. According to the study’s authors:

“… The results presented here concerning a sample of persons given antidepressants for psychosocial distress demonstrate the extent to which the psychopharmacology industry has expanded its influence beyond its ability to cure.

… [T]he Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (Star *D) study … found that antidepressants were only marginally (2.7%) more efficacious compared with placebos. The same meta-analyses documented profound publication bias, inflating their apparent efficacy as well as bias in failing to report the negative results … The authors argue for a reappraisal of the current recommended standard of care of depression.” [Emphasis mine]

What they discovered is that many people being treated with antidepressants can’t metabolize them due to common genetic mutations, which can cause severe drug interactions and akathisia (a movement disorder characterized by a feeling of inner restlessness). Some researchers and physicians believe that akathisia is the chief symptom that triggers impulsive violence in certain individuals who take antidepressant drugs. This is thought to be an extreme form of akathisia. Homicidal impulses and murderous behavior due to akathisia is now being called “homicidal akathisia.”

Forensic psychiatrist and lead author of the study, Dr. Yolande Lucire, is now campaigning to introduce ways of minimizing over-prescription of antidepressants by taking genetics into account. Of 129 subjects, more than 120 of them were diagnosed with akathisia/serotonin toxicity caused by psychiatric medications. The authors further explain:

“They were tested for variant alleles in CYP450 genes, which play a major role in Phase 1 metabolism of all antidepressant and many other medications. Eight had committed homicide and many more became extremely violent while on antidepressants. … All those described [in the paper] were able to stop taking antidepressants and return to their previously normal personalities.”

Antidepressants Top List of Most Violence-Inducing Drugs

It’s certainly worth paying heed to drug interactions such as violence and homicidal leanings, both as a patient and as a concerned parent, family member or friend. According to a 2010 study published in the journal PLoS One, half of the top 10 drugs disproportionately linked with violent behavior are antidepressants:

  1. Varenicline (Chantix): The number one violence-inducing drug on the list, this anti-smoking medication is 18 times more likely to be linked with violence when compared to other drugs
  2. Fluoxetine (Prozac): This drug was the first well-known SSRI antidepressant
  3. Paroxetine (Paxil): Another SSRI antidepressant, Paxil is also linked with severe withdrawal symptoms and a risk of birth defects
  4. Amphetamines: (Various): Used to treat ADHD
  5. Mefoquine (Lariam): A treatment for malaria which is often linked with reports of strange behavior
  6. Atomoxetine (Strattera): An ADHD drug that affects the neurotransmitter noradrenaline
  7. Triazolam (Halcion): This potentially addictive drug is used to treat insomnia
  8. Fluvoxamine (Luvox): Another SSRI antidepressant
  9. Venlafaxine (Effexor): An antidepressant also used to treat anxiety disorders
  10. Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq): An antidepressant which affects both serotonin and noradrenaline

Is Usage of these Drugs Ever Appropriate?

Depression, or more accurately, un-repaired emotional short-circuiting, can absolutely devastate your health and life. However, using antidepressants as the primary (or only) treatment option is simply not advisable, especially if the one suffering from depression is a child or teenager. Whereas severe depression can indeed progress to suicide if left untreated, antidepressant drugs have been shown to CAUSE both suicidal and homicidal thoughts and behaviors. As mentioned in the featured report, at least 11 tragic school shootings were done by children who were either on antidepressants, or going through withdrawal…

I believe this is an enormous price to pay for what amounts to highly questionable benefits.

Studies have found that up to 75 percent of the benefits of antidepressants could be duplicated by a placebo. So not only do these drugs not work as advertised, but the evidence is quite clear that most of these drugs do in fact increase your risk of suicide and violence. Since depression can be a terminal illness, why take a drug that will actually increase your risk of killing yourself—or someone else?

Please understand that I am not seeking to diminish the impact of mental illness. It is massively pervasive and responsible for tens of thousands of deaths every year and needless suffering in millions of others.

My clinical experience leads me to believe that the only appropriate use of these dangerous medications is as a last ditch effort when the patient is at a serious risk to themselves or others. (And, of course, they must be closely monitored for lethal side effects such as suicidal and/or homicidal thoughts and tendencies!) The drugs should be continued until the condition is under control and they are out of harm’s way, and then carefully weaned. This is a very similar strategy to going to the ER and seeing an orthopedic surgeon for a cast when you’ve fractured a major bone.

You don’t use that cast the rest of your life. You use it until your bone is healed.

The REAL tragedy is that most of the drug companies do NOT view antidepressants this way. There are enormous marketing efforts to classify normal behavior as aberrant or diseased, which then requires lifelong therapy with their drug solution.

How to Address the Root Cause of the Problem

I strongly believe that energy psychology is one of the most powerful tools for resolving emotional issues—specifically a technique called EFT—and I’ll be talking more about that in a moment.

But diet and general lifestyle are clearly parts of the “root” that must be healed if you want to resolve mental health issues. For example, mounting evidence tells us that having a healthy gut is profoundly important for both physical and mental health, and the latter can be severely impacted by an imbalance of intestinal bacteria. I strongly recommend addressing the following lifestyle factors if you’re suffering from depression or any other mental health problem.

    • Dramatically decrease your consumption of sugar (particularly fructose), grains, and processed foods. (In addition to being high in sugar and grains, processed foods also contain a variety of additives that can affect your brain function and mental state, especially MSG, and artificial sweeteners such as aspartame.) There’s a great book on this subject, The Sugar Blues, written by William Dufty more than 30 years ago, that delves into the topic of sugar and mental health in great detail.
    • Increase consumption of probiotic foods, such as fermented vegetables and kefir, to promote healthy gut flora
    • Get adequate vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 deficiency can contribute to depression and affects one in four people.
    • Optimize your vitamin D levels, ideally through regular sun exposure. Vitamin D is very important for your mood. In one study, people with the lowest levels of vitamin D were found to be 11 times more prone to be depressed than those who had normal levels.

The best way to get vitamin D is through safe exposure to SUNSHINE. Remember, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a type of depression that we know is related to sunshine deficiency, so it would make sense that the perfect way to optimize your vitamin D is through sun exposure, or a safe tanning bed if you don’t have regular access to the sun.

    • Get plenty of animal-based omega-3 fats. Many people don’t realize that their brain is 60 percent fat, but not just any fat. It is DHA, an animal based omega-3 fat which, along with EPA, is crucial for good brain function and mental health7. Unfortunately, most people don’t get enough from diet alone. Make sure you take a high-quality omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.

Dr. Stoll, a Harvard psychiatrist, was one of the early leaders in compiling the evidence supporting the use of animal based omega-3 fats for the treatment of depression. He wrote an excellent book that details his experience in this area called The Omega-3 Connection.

  • Evaluate your salt intake. Sodium deficiency actually creates symptoms that are very much like those of depression. Make sure you do NOT use processed salt (regular table salt), however. You’ll want to use an all natural, unprocessed salt like Himalayan salt, which contains more than 80 different micronutrients.
  • Get adequate daily exercise, which is one of the best-kept secrets to preventing and overcoming depression.
  • Get adequate amounts of sleep. You can have the best diet and exercise program possible but if you aren’t sleeping well you can easily become depressed. Sleep and depression are so intimately linked that a sleep disorder is actually part of the definition of the symptom complex that gives the label depression.

New Research Shines Light on the Benefits of EFT

Additionally, it’s imperative to address any underlying emotional issues. I have been a fan of energy psychology for many years, having witnessed its effectiveness in my medical practice and in my own personal life. EFT, as opposed to drugs and supplements, hits at the root of the problem—even if you don’t know exactly what that is. This is the beauty of energy medicine in general—and anyone can learn to apply EFT to themselves, even a young child.

In the following videos, Julie Schiffman, a licensed EFT practitioner at my Center for Natural Health in Chicago, guides you through how to tap for headaches and other pain. As you will see, by simply altering your statements you can use this tapping technique to address virtually any ailment you may be experiencing at any point in time.


Unfortunately, studies have been few and far in-between as science has been trying to “catch up” with clinical experience. But all of that is changing now!

Before I go any further, I want to stress the importance of getting professional help if you suffer from depression, and that includes seeing a qualified EFT therapist. Although you can learn how to do EFT in a few minutes it can take years to apply it effectively. The best therapists are typically those with conventional psychological training who have studied this in addition to conventional methods. There are times where hospital admission may be necessary to prevent a suicide attempt and untrained therapists will not be able to discern this danger.

If the first therapist can’t help you, I recommend seeking out another. Getting a second opinion is pretty standard when it comes to medicine, and this is no different. The connection between you and your doctor or therapist can have a great influence on the success of your treatment or therapy.

As for the success rate of EFT, several studies have recently been published, demonstrating just how safe and effective EFT really is. For example, the following three studies show remarkable progress in a very short amount of time for people with a history of trauma:

    1. A 2009 study of 16 institutionalized adolescent boys with histories of physical or psychological abuse showed substantially decreased intensity of traumatic memories after just ONE session of EFT.
    2. An EFT study involving 30 moderately to severely depressed college students was conducted. The depressed students were given four 90-minute EFT sessions. Students who received EFT showed significantly less depression than the control group when evaluated three weeks later.
    3. A study of 100 veterans with severe PTSD (Iraq Vets Stress Project) showed an astounding reduction of symptoms after just six one-hour EFT sessions. After completing six sessions, 90 percent of the veterans had such a reduction in symptoms that they no longer met the clinical criteria for PTSD. Sixty percent no longer met PTSD criteria after only three EFT sessions. At the three-month follow-up, the gains remained stable, suggesting lasting and potentially permanent resolution of the problem.

[The Iraq Stress Project is still recruiting veteran volunteers. If you are a veteran and interested in participating, you can get more information here.]

Operation Emotional Freedom

In a new documentary film entitled Operation: Emotional Freedom, directed by Eric Huurre, a number of Veterans and their families went through intensive therapy using EFT. The results were truly astounding. EFT developer Gary Craig, along with other EFT practitioners worked very closely with Veterans who recently returned home from war. They were all suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety and a few were suicidal.

At the end of treatment, each one of them describes a new feeling of peace and hope that there is help and they were able to overcome emotional traumas experienced in combat.

This film is a close look at the current state of health care for combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD. The film is about examining the myths and misconceptions surrounding the medical/chemical approach to treating emotional conditions and why drugs are not “the answer” that pharmaceuticals promise. Instead, the story follows this group of volunteer Vets and their families on a journey from the hell of their post-war experiences through a newer vision of health and recovery for PTSD and trauma.

Visit the official website www.operation-emotionalfreedom.com to learn more about efforts to assist veterans and their families through energy psychology.

Clearly, energy psychology beats pharmaceuticals HANDS DOWN as a safer, more effective, longer-lasting treatment for stress and emotional problems. And there have been EFT successes with a wide range of other issues—both emotional and physical. EFT is easy to learn, no matter what your age—children included—so I encourage you to add it to your stress-busting tool kit.

In closing, please remember that your emotional health is intimately connected with your physical health, which is largely controlled by diet and lifestyle choices and your reactions to stress. These daily habits have enormous impact, whether you want to overcome depression or just continue enjoying great health. So please, actively investigate and consider the natural treatments I’ve suggested above, ideally with the support and guidance of a knowledgeable natural medicine friendly healthcare practitioner.

Important Concluding Thoughts…

I want to make something abundantly clear before I leave you. I know firsthand that depression is devastating. It takes a toll on the healthiest of families and can destroy lifelong friendships. Few things are harder in life than watching someone you love lose their sense of joy, hope, and purpose in life, and wonder if they will ever find it again. And to not have anything within your power that can change things for them. You wonder if you will ever have your loved one “back” again.

It’s impossible to impart the will to live to somebody who no longer possesses it. No amount of logic, reasoning, or reminders about all they have to live for will put a smile back on the face of a loved one masked by the black cloud of depression.

Oftentimes you cannot change your circumstances. You can, however, change your response to them. I encourage you to be balanced in your life. Don’t ignore your body’s warning signs that something needs to change. Sometimes people are so busy taking care of everybody else that they lose sight of themselves.

There are times when a prescription drug may help restore balance to your body. But it’s unclear whether it is the drug providing benefits, or the unbelievable power of your mind that is convinced it is going to work.

If you have been personally affected by depression, my heart goes out to you.

A broken body can be easier to fix than a broken mind. Depression is real. It is my hope that you don’t feel judged here, but that you are encouraged and inspired by those who have been there.

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Healing common Colds and Coughs

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By Andreas Moritz 

Hi, this is Andreas Moritz and today I would like to discuss a question from a person who suffers from colds, coughs and runny nose, and the answer to this question is very simple. Let it come out, support it, don’t suppress it, don’t try to stop it, because the experience of having a cold shows that there is a need for purification, for detoxification, that the body is trying to get rid of something through the mucus discharge.

Mucus as you might know, is part of the immune system, it’s the first line of defense that catches toxins, antigens, harmful pathogens, anything that the body doesn’t want to be absorbed into the blood stream or the lymphatic system, and so the mucus discharge or the secretion of extra mucus is a necessary defensive reaction by the body in order to make sure it stays healthy, clean and healthy inside, and therefore there is really only a need to support the body in this effort, rather than stopping the body in its effort to cleanse itself and purify itself and to enhance the immune system, in fact.

Colds have been known to strengthen the immune system once the body has successfully removed toxins, but if you try to stop that, and there are methods to stop it, then the toxins that the body is trying to eliminate will go deeper into the tissues such as the connective tissues of the organs and systems in the body, and this not something I encourage you to do, because the cold is the body’s retrieval system and the relief valve, so to say, to get rid of some things that have been stored for a season or an entire year or many years, and the cold helps you to clear that from your system which is much, much better than keeping it inside.

So I would encourage you to support the body by drinking extra fluids, water that shouldn’t be cold water like from the refrigerator, it should be at least lukewarm or warm water, you can put lemon and honey in there, if there is cough, cough is often helped by adding a teaspoon of honey to warm water and some lemon. The lemon also helps to break down mucus so that it comes out faster. It’s not to stop it, but to come out faster and more easily because if it’s liquefied or thinned, then it can run out through the nose much faster than before.

Also, if there is cough, you may have to realize that a cough is the body’s way to clear toxins from the lung area, from the bronchial system, we should not take cough syrups or something that suppresses that function, but to support it. So hydration, spending time out in the sun to get vitamin D back up, because we only really catch colds when vitamin D levels are low.

So the other thing is avoid foods that cause mucus discharge particularly during the time of the cold such as sugar, any kind of sugar except honey which breaks down mucus as I said before, sugar is increasing mucus secretions. Also dairy products you want to avoid, because they create congestion in the gastrointestinal tract and dairy particles or protein particles in dairy food are always aggravating the mucus lining so that would create more mucus discharge than is necessary, and drink, have some vegetable soups, some herbal teas perhaps, avoiding heavy dinners in the evening, making your main meal at lunch time, so that you can digest it properly and you don’t have to deal with remnants of undigested foods in the gastrointestinal tract, that means you don’t create extra fermentation and bacteria that have to get rid of or break down these undigested foods, so that this is much easier for the body to handle and it allows the body to get rid of the accumulated toxins speedily, as effortlessly as possible, and you feel much better for it after the cold has diminished and is gone. You feel like… exuberant, even euphoric, once you have gone through it successfully without trying to stop it.

Of course, antibiotics don’t help at all because they are not intended for viruses but only work on bacteria and most colds are related to viruses and viruses are particles, protein particles, that are generated only in order to dissolve some chemical toxins, harmful substances in the body. They don’t come into our body just to infect us, have fun spreading throughout the system. They only come when there is a need for it and sometimes they help the inflamed cells that have been damaged beyond repair and the inflammation helps to restore the body, allow new cells to be generated to replace old damaged cells.

So viruses are not something we need to combat, but again, the focus should be on strengthening the immune system, taking care of the digestive functions, take enough rest, so that the body can do all those different things and not have to spend energy on other things as well.

Thank you.

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The Vitamin that has Been Shown to Dramatically Improve Fertility

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Did you know that in northern countries, which have dark, cold winters, couples are less likely to conceive during the winter, whereas conception rates peak in the summer?

There are a number of reasons why this association exists, but new research highlights vitamin D as one of the most important variable.

Vitamin D, a steroid hormone that influences virtually every cell in your body and has been positively linked to health conditions ranging from cancer to heart disease, may significantly boost fertility in both men and women.

If You’re Struggling With Infertility, Get Your Vitamin D Levels Checked

Vitamin D is so crucial to health that I urge everyone to make sure their levels are optimized, but if you’ve been dealing with infertility, this is especially important.

A new report has shown that exposure to sunlight boosts fertility in both men and women by increasing their levels of vitamin D, a benefit that appears to work on multiple levels.

As the researchers reported in the European Journal of Endocrinology:

  • Among women, vitamin D appears to impact in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcomes, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), the most common female endocrine disorder, as well as boost levels of progesterone and estrogen, which regulate menstrual cycles and improve the likelihood of successful conception
  • In men, vitamin D is essential for the healthy development of the nucleus of the sperm cell, and helps maintain semen quality and sperm count. Vitamin D also increases levels of testosterone, which may boost libido

The researchers state:

“Given the high prevalence of infertility as well as vitamin D insufficiency in otherwise healthy young women and men and the possible role of vitamin D in human reproduction, research might lead to new therapeutic approaches such as vitamin D supplementation in the treatment of female and male reproductive disorders.”

Low Vitamin D Levels Previously Linked to Infertility

This is not the first time the “sunshine vitamin” has been linked to infertility. In 2008, Australian fertility specialist Dr. Anne Clark found almost one-third of the 800 infertile men included in her study had lower than normal levels of vitamin D, (bear in mind here that “normal” does not equal “optimal” — so by optimal standards, the rate of vitamin D deficiency was likely far higher than one-third) stating that:

“Vitamin D and folate deficiency are known to be associated with infertility in women, but the outcomes of the screening among men in our study group came as a complete surprise. Men in the study group who agreed to make lifestyle changes and take dietary supplements had surprisingly good fertility outcomes.”

In fact, of the 100 men who agreed to make and maintain certain lifestyle changes (quitting smoking, minimizing intake of caffeine and alcohol, weight reduction, along with a course of vitamins and antioxidants) for three months prior to fertility treatment, 11 of them went on to achieve pregnancy naturally, without IVF treatment.

Previous studies, such as one published in The Journal of Nutrition, also found that although vitamin-D-deficient female rats were capable of reproduction, it reduced fertility by an astounding 75 percent, diminished litter sizes by 30 percent, and impaired neonatal growth.

Interestingly, another study published in November 2009 confirmed that human sperm does in fact have a vitamin D receptor. Analysis indicated that vitamin D is produced locally in the sperm, which suggests that vitamin D may be involved in the signaling between cells in the reproductive system. According to the authors, the study revealed “an unexpected significance of this hormone [vitamin D] in the acquisition of fertilizing ability,” and the results imply that vitamin D is involved in a variety of sperm signaling pathways.

What Else Might be Impacting Your Fertility?

An estimated 1 in 6 American couples struggle with getting pregnant each year, and there’s compelling evidence that lifestyle, diet and environmental exposures are largely to blame. Not only are you exposed to hundreds (if not thousands) of toxins each and every day, but some of the most commonly prescribed drugs, poor diet, and common vitamin deficiencies have also been linked to reduced fertility, just to name a few.

As Iva Keene, author of the Natural Fertility Prescription, stated:

“Conventional IVF and other assisted reproductive technology (ART) treatments don’t address root causes of infertility. These root causes include: nutritional deficiencies, toxin exposure, stress, food intolerances, allergies and immune deficiencies. These subtle but critical factors interact synergistically to impact the quality of your eggs and sperm, affecting your ability to conceive and the health of your embryo.

… during the generation and maturation of gamete cells — sperm and ovum — that form an embryo [a period of 120 days], everything that you and your partner ingest, inhale or are exposed to will influence the health of your eggs and sperm for better or worse, and the ultimate quality of the genetic building blocks you pass onto your child. This is why it’s crucial to follow a good preconception plan for a minimum of 4 months before conception. A baby is a 50-50 product of his or her parents — therefore optimizing the quality of eggs and sperm is of paramount importance.”

You can find 10 tips that may help resolve infertility naturally in her past article, but here are a few initial strategies to consider:

  • Genetically modified food (GM), especially corn and soy, contain significant concentrations of the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup), which has been linked to infertility in a number of studies.
  • Avoid chemicals as much as possible. Bisphenol-A (BPA), phthalates, fluoride (in drinking water), MSG, and many, many others have shown negative impacts on your reproductive health.
  • Consume a healthy diet, rich in healthy fats and antioxidants, and low in sugar and grains. Insulin resistance is an underlying factor responsible for most chronic disease, and it should come as no surprise that it plays a role in fertility as well. The treatment strategy is to reduce or eliminate grains along with sugars, especially fructose.
  • Identify potential gluten intolerance. Celiac disease (gluten intolerance) has been linked to fertility problems in both sexes. In men, it’s associated with abnormal sperm, such as lower sperm numbers, altered shape, and reduced function. Men with untreated celiac disease may also have lower testosterone levels.
  • Be aware of electromagnetic fields, as research suggests cell phones may impact sperm quality as well. One study found men who talked on a cell phone for more than four hours a day had the lowest average sperm counts (50 million per milliliter) and the least healthy sperm.

Are You Ready to Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels?

This is an imperative step for anyone planning a pregnancy, not only for increasing the rate of conception but also for the benefits it offers during pregnancy. Vitamin D deficiency is currently at epidemic proportions in the United States and many other regions around the world, largely because people do not spend enough time in the sun to facilitate this important process of vitamin D production.

So the first step to ensuring you are receiving all the benefits of vitamin D is to find out what your levels are using a 25(OH)D test, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

There are two vitamin D tests — 1,25(OH)D and 25(OH)D — but 25(OH)D is the better marker of overall D status. It is this marker that is most strongly associated with overall health, and it is the one you should ask your physician for.. The point of vitamin D testing is, of course, to be sure you are maintaining a therapeutic level of vitamin D in your blood. A few years back, the recommended level was between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), but more recently the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to 50-70 ng/ml.

To get your levels into the healthy range, sun exposure is the BEST way to optimize your vitamin D levels; exposing a large amount of your skin until it turns the lightest shade of pink, as near to solar noon as possible, is typically necessary to achieve adequate vitamin D production. If sun exposure is not an option, a safe tanning bed (with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields) can be used.

As a last resort, a vitamin D3 supplement can be taken orally, but research suggests the average adult needs to take 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D per day in order to elevate their levels above 40 ng/ml, which is the absolute minimum for disease prevention.

Infertility can be a challenging condition with multiple contributing factors, but you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by optimizing your vitamin D levels. It is free if you do it via sun exposure, and inexpensive if you use a safe tanning bed or vitamin D3 supplement. It’s a simple step that can have a profound impact on your health, even if trying to conceive naturally is not your primary goal.

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Research From 100 Countries Proves This Strongly Protects Against Cancer

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

In 2011, it was estimated that nearly 1.6 million people would be diagnosed with cancer, and more than 570,000 would die of the disease.

With an epidemic such as this, virtually every safe preventive strategy available deserves attention.

But when a simple, and virtually free, strategy emerges that shows promise in reducing rates of not one, not two, but potentially dozens of different types of cancer, it needs to be shouted from the rooftops.

So open your ears — such a strategy does exist: Sun Exposure and Vitamin D!

Sunlight Protects Against Cancer by Stimulating the Production of Vitamin D

New research just in confirms that if you want to slash your risk of cancer, it’s essential that you spend adequate time in the sun or a safe tanning bed, or at the very least supplement with proper amounts of vitamin D3.

Specifically, researchers found that, consistently, the higher the solar UVB, the lower the incidence of 15 different types of cancer, including:

The review, based largely on three studies from the United States, one each from Australia, China, France, Japan, and Spain, and eight multi-country studies of cancer incidence rates that collectively examined more than 100 countries, concluded:

“The evidence for the UVB-vitamin D-cancer hypothesis is very strong in general and for many types of cancer in particular.”

Further, they noted that weaker evidence exists that solar UVB also leads to lower rates of cancer of the following types:

More Than 200 Studies Show Vitamin D Plays a Role in Cancer

Theories linking vitamin D to certain cancers have been tested and confirmed in more than 200 epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies, according to epidemiologist Cedric Garland, DrPH, professor of family and preventive medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. Here are just a few highlights into some of the most noteworthy findings:

  • Some 600,000 cases of breast and colorectal cancers could be prevented each year if vitamin D levels among populations worldwide were increased, according to previous research by Dr. Garland and colleagues. And that’s just counting the death toll for two types of cancer.
  • Optimizing your vitamin D levels could help you to prevent at least 16 different types of cancer including pancreatic, lung, ovarian, prostate, and skin cancers.
  • A large-scale, randomized, placebo-controlled study on vitamin D and cancer showed that vitamin D can cut overall cancer risk by as much as 60 percent. This was such groundbreaking news that the Canadian Cancer Society has actually begun endorsing the vitamin as a cancer-prevention therapy.
  • Light-skinned women who had high amounts of long-term sun exposure had half the risk of developing advanced breast cancer (cancer that spreads beyond your breast) as women with lower amounts of regular sun exposure, according to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
  • A study by Dr. William Grant, Ph.D., internationally recognized research scientist and vitamin D expert, found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths – which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States — could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D.

On a personal level, you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure. And if you are being treated for cancer it is likely that higher blood levels—probably around 70-100 ng/ml—would be beneficial. Vitamin D’s protective effect against cancer appears to work in multiple ways, including:

  • Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
  • Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
  • Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
  • Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous

What are You Waiting For? Why Not Start Optimizing Your Levels Now?

Many Americans simply are not getting enough vitamin D to even maintain healthy bones, much less getting enough to fight off diseases like cancer. There are two primary reasons for this, one being that many people are still worried that going out in the sun will lead to skin cancer. It’s important to understand, however, that the risk of skin cancer from the sun comes only from excessive exposure.

When used properly, sunlight exposure will help you prevent cancer.

To optimize your levels, you need to expose large portions of your skin to the appropriate amounts of sunlight. And, contrary to popular belief, the best time to be in the sun for vitamin D production is actually as near to solar noon as possible. During this time you need the shortest exposure time to produce vitamin D because UVB rays are most intense at this time. Plus, when the sun goes down toward the horizon, the UVB is filtered out much more than the dangerous UVA.

Just be cautious about the length of your exposure. You only need enough exposure to have your skin turn the lightest shade of pink. Once you reach this point your body will not make any additional vitamin D due to its self-regulating mechanism. Any additional exposure will only cause harm and damage to your skin.

Vitamin D from sun exposure or a safe tanning bed is the BEST way to optimize your vitamin D levels. Safe tanning beds have electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, which helps you avoid unnecessary exposure to health-harming EMF fields. They also have less of the dangerous UVA than sunlight, while unsafe ones have more UVA than sunlight. The second primary reason so many are vitamin-D-deficient, aside from lack of sun exposure, has to do with misinformation about supplementation.

If You Use a Vitamin D Supplement, You Need to Know This …

First, let me repeat that sun exposure or the use of a safe tanning bed are the best options to optimize your vitamin D levels. You cannot overdose when getting your vitamin D from sun exposure, as your body has the ability to self-regulate and only make what it needs. If these options are not available, a supplement can be used, but keep the following in mind:

  • According to the most recent findings by Carole Baggerly, founder of GrassrootsHealth, her research of nearly 10,000 people shows the ideal adult dose appears to be 8,000 IU’s a day to get most into the healthy range.
  • When you do supplement with vitamin D, you’ll only want to supplement with natural vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Do NOT use the synthetic and highly inferior vitamin D2, which is the one most doctors will give you in a prescription most of the time unless you ask specifically for D3.
  • Get your vitamin D blood levels checked! The only way to determine the correct dose is to get your blood tested since there are so many variables that influence your vitamin D status. I recommend using Lab Corp in the U.S.
  • The correct test your doctor needs to order is 25(OH)D, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D, which is the better marker of overall D status. This is the marker that is most strongly associated with overall health.
  • As an aside, there is evidence that the safety of vitamin D is dependent on vitamin K, and that vitamin D toxicity (although very rare with the D3 form) is actually aggravated by vitamin K2 deficiency. So if you take oral vitamin D, ideally you should take vitamin K2 as well or use organic fermented foods that are high in vitamin K2, as you need about 150 mcg per day.
  • The “normal” 25-hydroxyvitamin D lab range is between 20-56 ng/ml. But, this conventional range is really a sign of deficiency, and is too broad to be ideal. In fact, your vitamin D level should not be below 32 ng/ml, and any levels below 20 ng/ml are considered serious deficiency states, increasing your risk of cancer and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, just to name a few.The OPTIMAL value that you’re looking for is explained in the chart below. Remember that if you were in the sun nearly every day with large amounts of your skin exposed and not taking any oral vitamin D, your level would be around 100 ng/ml.

This range applies for everyone: children, adolescents, adults and seniors. Remember, unless you get a deep dark tan, which is a pretty good gauge that your vitamin D levels are where they need to be, it is wise to get your blood levels checked; that is the only way to know for certain you have reached therapeutic levels.

Given that optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the simplest and most profound steps you can take to improve and maintain your health, including helping you to prevent cancer, this is information that could, quite literally, save your life.

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Low Vitamin D Levels linked to Depression in Children

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By: Elizabeth Walling
Source: NaturalNews.com

Are your kids getting enough vitamin D? If not, they could be at a higher risk for depression. A new study from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom shows that children and teens with higher levels of vitamin D are less likely to experience depression than those with lower levels.

The study analyzed vitamin D levels in more than 2,700 children who were age nine, and then followed up with them again at age 13. Researchers found that children who had the lowest vitamin D levels were more likely to experience symptoms of depression.

The children with higher levels of vitamin D were 10 percent less likely to have depression. These children also showed a decrease in symptoms of depression as they became teenagers.

The specific form of vitamin D is also important. This study also found that vitamin D3 offered stronger anti-depressant benefits than vitamin D2.

Vitamin D helps with depression in kids and adults

Although this is the first study to link low vitamin D with depression in children, a number of previous studies have demonstrated how vitamin D can prevent or reduce depression in adults.

Studies done in Washington state and in Norway show that raising vitamin D levels in the body can reduce symptoms of depression in women. Other research has shown that higher serum vitamin D appears to reduce the severity of symptoms associated with depression. In Italy, women with low vitamin D levels were twice as likely to experience depression. Men with low vitamin D levels experienced a 60 percent increased risk for depression.

The best source of vitamin D is the sun, which can help you produce thousands of IUs of vitamin D with good exposure in the summer months. However, not everyone can get enough exposure to the sun to correct a vitamin D deficiency. In this case, eating foods rich in vitamin D can help. These include cod liver oil, salmon, mackerel, tuna and organic egg yolks. You can also supplement with vitamin D3 if you do not get enough vitamin D through sun exposure or your diet.

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The Best “Drug” for Slashing Your Risk of Cancer?

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Research in the UK suggests that the number of new cancer cases could rise 45 percent by 2030.

Cancer Research UK, which funded the study, says that the National Health Service must act immediately to avoid being “overwhelmed”.

The research looked at 23 different types of cancer, and found an expected cancer increase of 55 percent for men and 35 percent for women.

BBC News reports:

“The rate of breast cancer is projected to fall by 7 percent.

The authors attribute this to a recent reduction in the use of hormone replacement therapy, which is a risk factor for the disease.  

However the rates of malignant melanoma and kidney cancer are forecast to rise sharply in men and women.”

The primary reason for the rise in cancer cases is attributed to population growth in the UK and an increased ageing population.

Interestingly, while paying lip service to the necessity to create stronger initiatives for smoking, drinking, and obesity reduction.

England’s Department of Health is planning to invest more than £750 million over the next four years to promote earlier cancer diagnosis and “better access to the latest treatments.”

So in essence, they’re going to throw millions of pounds into an already broken system—the Cut, Poison, Burn paradigm—that does nothing to actually prevent cancer…

No wonder cancer rates are projected to rise by 45 percent in the UK over the next 20 years!

New Study—Cost of Cancer Rapidly Becoming Unsustainable

Cancer now surpasses heart disease as the number one killer of Americans between the ages of 45 to 74. The odds are quite high that you or someone you know has cancer, is dying or has already died from it.

While life cannot be measured in dollars and cents, the financial burden of cancer is truly staggering. Currently, 12 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer each year, costing $286 billion annually in medical costs and lost productivity. By 2030, that number could increase to 22 million people each year, with a similar rise in costs.

According to a new report from a panel of 37 experts, the cost of cancer is rapidly becoming unsustainable in many developed countries.  The report was published in the journal Lancet Oncology in September, and was covered in Time Magazine that same month.

According to the authors of the report:

“The burden of cancer is growing rapidly… This is not simply due to an increase in absolute numbers or need for optimized treatments, rather it relates to the unsustainable rate of increase in expenditure on cancer within health-care systems.

What are the drivers and solutions to the so-called cancer-cost curve in developed countries?   How are we going to afford to deliver high-quality and equitable care? In this Commission and the linked Comments, expert opinion from health-care professionals, policy makers, and cancer survivors has been gathered to address the barriers and solutions to delivering affordable cancer-care in high-income countries.”

The report wisely questions the value of expensive new therapies that prolong patients’ lives by mere months. Some cancer drugs, such as Avastin, for example, can cost upwards of $100,000 per year. At that price, even with insurance coverage, your co-payments can easily run as high as $20,000 a year. This despite the fact that studies show the drug prolongs life by just a few months at best, and more recent studies have suggested the drug might be less effective against cancer than the FDA believed when it was approved. It also has potentially lethal side effects that might speed up your ultimate demise.

When the Treatment is Worse than the Disease…

Perhaps more importantly, most conventional cancer treatments tend to add insult to injury by doing more harm than good — a fact that has been largely swept under the rug by the medical industry.

Meanwhile, the real culprits—the underlying causes—are completely ignored, and that is, I believe, the root of the problem. The cancer industry has become a massive for-profit business that is doing everything in its power to maintain the status quo. It is, quite simply, not interested in truly reducing cancer rates; it’s interested in treating cancer. From that perspective, the more cancer cases the better…

This sordid reality has been well-documented in films such as Cut, Poison, Burn, and Burzynski: The Movie.

Getting to the Root of the Problem

Ignoring the fact that cancer is for the most part a disease triggered  primarily by exposure to industrial toxins, the now well-trod path of the Cut-Poison-Burn model is taking us ever further AWAY from the solution. The pharmaceutical researchers would like you to believe they’re doing everything they can to come up with a solution. Yet most of the cancer research is directed towards expensive drugs that target late stages of the disease and greatly enrich the drug companies but simply do not prevent cancer.

Clearly they’re not digging close enough to the root of the problem, because if they did, they’d touch on some of the lifestyle issues I’ll review below.

If ever there was an area in which an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure it is cancer. I firmly believe that if you’re able to work your way up to the advanced health plan, that you will virtually eliminate the risk of most cancers.

From my perspective, you ignore lifestyle factors at your own peril, as environmental- and lifestyle factors are increasingly being pinpointed as the primary culprits fueling our cancer epidemic. An exhaustive list of contributing factors would be exceedingly long, but some of the more obvious ones are listed below. For more information about each, follow the hyperlinks provided, and for specifics on consumer products implicated as contributors to cancer, take a look at the Cancer Prevention Coalition’s “Dirty Dozen” list.

In the last 30 years the global cancer burden has doubled, and as predicted in the featured study, we’re looking at further dramatic increases—unless people begin to take cancer prevention seriously. I believe we can turn this trend around, but to do so the medical community must stop overlooking the methods that can actually have a very real and significant impact.

Three cancer advancements in particular merit special mention, and I will summarize them below. These advancements have not yet been accepted by conventional medicine, and they must be.

Vitamin D Plays a Crucial Role in Cancer Development

There’s overwhelming evidence indicating that vitamin D deficiency plays a crucial role in cancer development. Research has identified a number of vitamin D’s protective mechanisms against cancer, including:

  • Regulating genetic expression
  • Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
  • Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
  • Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
  • Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous

Researchers within this field have estimated that about 30 percent of cancer deaths could be prevented annually simply by optimizing the vitamin D levels in the general population. On a personal level, you can decrease your risk of cancer by MORE THAN HALF simply by optimizing your vitamin D levels with sun exposure. And if you are being treated for cancer it is likely that higher blood levels—probably around 70-100 ng/ml—would be beneficial.

If the notion that sun exposure actually prevents cancer is still new to you, I highly recommend you watch my one-hour vitamin D lectureto clear up any confusion. It’s important to understand that the risk of skin cancer from the sun comes only from excessive exposure. Meanwhile, countless people around the world have an increased risk of cancer because their vitamin D levels are too low due to utter lack of sun exposure.

Why We Need to Re-Embrace Sun Exposure

I strongly recommend optimizing your vitamin D levels with appropriate amounts of sun exposure because when your skin is exposed to the sun, in addition to creating vitamin D3 it also synthesizes high amounts of vitamin D sulfate and cholesterol sulfate—both of which are very important for heart- and cardiovascular health. In fact, research by Dr. Stephanie Seneff suggests that heart disease may be a symptom of cholesterol sulfate deficiency, and healthy cholesterol and sulfur levels are both highly dependent on your vitamin D levels…

Vitamin D sulfate is a water soluble form of sulfur that can travel freely in your blood stream, making it readily available, while oral vitamin D3 is unsulfated, and therefore needs LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) as a vehicle of transport. Dr. Seneff’s suspicion is that the simple oral non-sulfated form of vitamin D may not provide as much of the same heart-healthy benefits as the vitamin D created in your skin from sun exposure, because it cannot be converted to vitamin D sulfate, and therefore will not improve your sulfur status.

Furthermore, sulfur deficiency also promotes obesity and related health problems like diabetes, so all in all, the importance of getting regular sun exposure simply cannot be overstated.

If you can’t get enough sun exposure during certain parts of the year, I advise using a safe tanning bed to allow your body to produce vitamin D naturally. Safe tanning beds have electronic ballasts and produce less UVA than sunshine.

A third option is taking a high-quality vitamin D supplement. According to the most recent findings by Carole Baggerly, founder ofGrassrootsHealth, her research of nearly 10,000 people shows the ideal adult dose appears to be 8,000 IU’s a day to get most into the healthy range. Just remember to get your vitamin D levels tested regularly if you take an oral supplement.

World’s First Breast Cancer Prevention Study Underway!

While virtually all cancer organizations ignore cancer prevention, focusing primarily on early detection instead, Grassroots Health is now in the process of initiating the world’s first breast cancer prevention project and study, to investigate and evaluate vitamin D as a preventive strategy for breast cancer.

If you would like to sign up as a participant in this groundbreaking study, or make a donation to support this project, you can do so here. This project is only for women who are:

  1. 60 years of age and older
  2. have no current cancer
  3. are not currently being treated for cancer

Your Insulin Levels have a Direct Bearing on Your Cancer Risk

The second cancer prevention strategy that everyone needs to be aware of is the importance of normalizing your insulin levels. Aside from optimizing your vitamin D levels, normalizing your insulin levels is one of the most powerful physical actions you can take to lower your risk of cancer. Unfortunately, very few oncologists appreciate or apply this knowledge today. The Cancer Centers of America is one of the few exceptions, where strict dietary measures are included in their cancer treatment program.

High levels of insulin can cause major damage to your body. The most recognized of these is diabetes, but cancer is another common side effect. The good news is that controlling your insulin levels is relatively straightforward:

  1. First and foremost, limit your intake of processed foods, grains and sugars/fructose as much as possible, and
  2. Exercise regularly especially Peak Fitness exercises

Exercise is Slowly Becoming More Recognized for its Cancer Prevention Potential

While exercise might not be at the top of most people’s lists of cancer prevention or treatment strategies, there is actually compelling evidence suggesting that exercise can indeed slash your cancer risk and improve recovery.

For example, physically active adults experience about half the incidence of colon cancer as their sedentary counterparts, and women who exercise regularly can reduce their breast cancer risk by 20 to 30 percent compared to those who are inactive. Furthermore, Harvard Medical School researchers found that breast cancer patients who exercise moderately — 3-5 hours a week — reduce theirodds of dying by about half as compared to sedentary women. In fact, any amount of weekly exercise increased a patient’s odds of surviving breast cancer.

One of the primary ways exercise lowers your cancer risk is by reducing elevated insulin levels, which creates a low sugar environment that discourages the growth and spread of cancer cells. Additionally, exercise improves the circulation of immune cells in your blood, which is your first line of defense against all disease, including cancer.

The trick though is understanding how to use exercise as a precise tool. It can be helpful to view exercise like a drug that needs to be carefully prescribed to achieve its maximum benefit.

You’ll want to include a large variety of techniques in your exercise routine, such as:

  • High-intensity, burst-type exercise, such as Peak 8. (Peak 8 are exercises performed three times a week, in which you raise your heart rate up to your anaerobic threshold for 20 to 30 seconds, and then you recover for 90 seconds)
  • Strength training
  • Aerobics
  • Core-building activities
  • Stretching

Other Cancer-Prevention Strategies

Please understand that you can do a lot, right now, to significantly decrease your cancer risk. Even the conservative American Cancer Society states that one-third of cancer deaths are linked to poor diet, physical inactivity, and carrying excess weight. So making the following healthy lifestyle changes can go a very long way toward ending the failure-streak and becoming one less statistic in this war against cancer:

  1. Focus on fresh, whole organic foods, forgoing as many processed foods as possible. Aim to consume at least one-third of your food raw. Only 25 percent of people eat enough vegetables, so by all means eat as many vegetables as you are comfortable with.Cruciferous vegetables in particular have been identified as having potent anti-cancer properties.
  2. When eating meat, make sure it’s grass-fed. Avoid CAFO beef and ALL processed meats, which have been clearly linked to increased cancer risk.
  3. Get appropriate amounts of animal-based omega-3 fats.
  4. Have a tool to permanently erase the neurological short-circuiting that can activate cancer genes. Even the CDC states that 85 percent of disease is caused by emotions. It is likely that this factor may be more important than all the other physical ones listed here, so make sure this is addressed. My particular favorite tool for this purpose, as you may know, is the Emotional Freedom Technique.
  5. Maintain an ideal body weight. For my top 10 guidelines for normalizing your weight, please see this previous article.
  6. Get enough high-quality sleep.
  7. Reduce your exposure to environmental toxins like pesticides, household chemical cleaners, conventional personal care products,synthetic air fresheners and air pollution.
  8. Reduce your use of cell phones and other wireless technologies, and implement as many safety strategies as possible if/when you cannot avoid their use.
  9. Boil, poach or steam your foods, rather than frying or charbroiling them.

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Low Vitamin D in Children Behind Current Explosion of New Diabetes Cases

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By: John Phillip
Source: NaturalNews.com

Researchers publishing in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism have found that children with low vitamin D levels, especially when overweight and obese, are at much higher risk for developing insulin resistance that progresses to full-blown diabetes by early adulthood. Based on cellular saturation of the vitamin/prohormone, children and adults require higher amounts of vitamin D as body weight increases. The vast majority of children are vitamin D deficient, a problem exacerbated further by additional fat stores. In addition to a healthy lifestyle including plenty of physical activity and proper diet, parents will want to ensure their children reach proper blood levels of this critical vitamin through exposure to the sun or adequate supplementation.

Past research studies have concluded that high rates of vitamin D insufficiency are found most prominently in overweight and obese populations and are linked to dramatically increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. These studies have not explained the mechanism by which excess fat stores and low vitamin D saturation result in chronic disease development and progression.

Low Vitamin D Levels Lead to Insulin Resistance and Diabetes in Overweight Children

Dr. Micah Olson and his team from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center examined the association between vitamin D levels and dietary habits in 498 obese and non-obese children. The researchers checked for levels of abnormal glucose metabolism and blood pressure in the participants. Additionally, the scientists measured vitamin D levels, blood sugar levels, serum insulin and BMI. Study participants were also asked to provide dietary information including daily intake of soda, juice and milk, average daily fruit and vegetable intake, and whether or not they routinely skipped breakfast.

The study authors determined that 92% of the obese children tested had a vitamin D saturation (using the standard 25(OH)D test) below the ‘adequate’ level of 30 ng/mL. 50% of the participants were classified as ‘deficient’ with a level below 20 ng/mL. Dr. Olson commented: “Poor dietary habits such as skipping breakfast and increased soda and juice intake were associated with the lower vitamin D levels seen in obese children.” The study concluded that obese children with low serum blood levels of vitamin D had higher degrees of insulin resistance that played a significant role in the development of Type II diabetes.

New cases of diabetes and prediabetes are now found in young adults and even children at an alarming and increasing rate. This research highlights the connection between low vitamin D levels, excess body weight and diabetes risk, and it underscores the importance of vitamin D blood testing for all children and adults. Alternative health practitioners recommend maintaining a vitamin D level between 50 and 70 ng/mL using the 25(OH)D blood test.

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Stunning New Way to Flush Away Skin Cancer

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States.

In fact, the incidence of skin cancer cases each year is higher than all other cancer combined, and has risenmore than 300 percent since 1992.

There are now more than 3.5 million nonmelanoma skin cancer cases diagnosed every year in the United States, bringing numbers well into epidemic proportions.

Clearly Americans’ well-intentioned efforts to cover up with sunscreen are not doing the trick, and I’ll explain some of the reasons for this below, but first I want to share with you a ground-breaking, completely natural substance that research shows can cure non melanoma skin cancers.

It’s called Solasodine rhamnosyl glycosides (BEC), which is a fancy name for extracts from plants of the Solanaceae family, such as eggplant, tomato, potato, Bell peppers, and tobacco.

Eggplant and Similar Plant Extracts Used for Treating Cancer Since 1825

There are reports that extracts of plants from the Solanaceae family of vegetables are effective for treating cancer dating back nearly 200 years to 1825, according to natural health pioneer Dr. Jonathan Wright. However, it wasn’t until much later, after the 1950s, that they were formally studied.

The leading researcher in this area today is Dr. Bill E. Cham, who reported as early as 1991 in Cancer Letters that:

“A cream formulation containing high concentrations (10%) of a standard mixture of solasodine glycosides (BEC) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of malignant and benign human skin tumors.

We now report that a preparation … which contains very low concentrations of BEC (0.005%) is effective in the treatment of keratoses, basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) of the skin of humans. In an open study, clinical and histological observations indicated that all lesions (56 keratoses, 39 BCCs and 29 SCCs) treated with [the preparation] had regressed.”

A subsequent study by separate researchers also noted that a 0.005% mixture of solasodine glycosides called BEC5 is a “safe therapy for basal cell carcinoma, with a cure rate of 66% at 8 weeks and 78% at 1 year follow-up.”

The findings are exciting, to say the least, because while basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas — the two most common types of skin cancer — are highly curable even by conventional medical standards, there are serious disadvantages with the common treatments. As Dr. Cham reported, the treatment and management of nonmelanoma skin cancers cost more than $1.4 billion per year in the United States, a number that is increasing exponentially each year and quickly becoming unsustainable.

Further, the common treatments, surgery and radiation therapy, pose the following problems:

  • Surgery may not remove all cancerous cells
  • Painful with slow healing
  • Scarring often occurs, which can be cosmetically unappealing, especially if the cancer is on your face
  • Serious health risks of radiation therapy
  • High recurrence rates have been reported following conventional treatment

That affordable eggplant extract appears to rapidly cure cancerous lesions with absolutely no scarring and only minor itching and burning as side effects is impressive.

Two Skin Cancer Case Studies Show Amazing Results With Eggplant-Extract Cream

Dr. Cham’s latest study was published in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine this year. The paper includes two impressive case reports of 60-something men who were suffering from large basal cell carcinoma (BCC) or squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), which had plagued them for years.  The results upon treatment with a cream formulation of BEC (eggplant extract) twice a day are astounding, and you can view the pictures here:

  • In the first case, treatment with the eggplant-extract cream resulted in rapid break down of the tumor. After two weeks, the lesion was reduced to about half its original size, and after 14 weeks the cancer was clinically eliminated with no scar tissue formation. Even the hairs had regrown where the tumor was originally.
  • In the second case, after six weeks of treatment with eggplant-extract cream the large skin cancer lesion appeared “cleaner” and some of the cancerous tissue had been replaced with normal tissue. In another three weeks, the lesion was much smaller and more normal tissue was apparent. After a total of 14 weeks, the lesion was completely eliminated with no scar tissue present.

BEC5 Eggplant Extract Kills Only Cancerous Cells, Leaving Healthy Cells Alone

Interestingly, the BEC, and the specific formulation BEC5, which has been used successfully on more than 80,000 patients according to Dr. Cham, appears to impact only cancerous cells leaving normal cells alone. Dr. Cham explains:

The mode of action of SRGs [glycoalkaloids solasodine rhamnosy glycosides (BEC)] is unlike any current antineoplastic [anti-tumor] agent. Specific receptors for the SRGs present only on cancer cells but not normal cells are the first step of events that lead to apoptosis in cancer cells only, and this may explain why during treatment the cancer cells were being eliminated and normal cells were replacing the killed cancer cells with no scar tissue being formed.

The two cases presented here are large and anatomically difficult to treat lesions. There is little doubt that the cosmetic end result of this type of treatment is at least, or more likely, superior to other available treatments. At the completion of treatment, it could not be distinguished where the tumors once were!”

Unfortunately, simply eating eggplant, tomatoes, peppers or similar veggies, while beneficial for many reasons, will not induce this same effect because the active components are not able to effectively penetrate your cells. This requires the addition of glycosides, molecules with various simple sugars attached to them that can latch on to receptors found on skin cancer cells.

Dr. Wright explains:

“BEC5 is a name for a mixture of 1/3 solasonine and 1/3 solamargine in the “triglycoside” form, and 1/3 “diglycosides and monoglycosides” of these two basic molecules. Solasonine and solamargine themselves are actually very similar (but not identical to) human cholesterol and steroid molecules.

By themselves, solasonine and solamargine don’t have anticancer activity because they can’t penetrate into cells, cancerous or normal. That’s why just eating the foods that contain these compounds won’t eliminate your skin cancer or even reduce your risk of getting it. In order for them to be effective, they need to be able to get into the cells. That’s where the glycosides come in. Glycoside is a term used to describe molecules with various simple sugars attached to them.

One of these simple sugars, called rhamnose, selectively latches on to receptors present only in skin cancer cell membranes and in actinic keratosis. When you combine the solasonine and solamargine with rhamnose, they can get into the cells where they cause cancer cell death by destroying cell components called lysosomes. Normal cells escape any harm, since the BEC5 can’t get into them.”

Lack of Sunlight Increases Your Risk of Melanoma Skin Cancer

What’s even better than an inexpensive, safe and natural cure for skin cancer is, of course, preventing it in the first place. And to do that you’ve got to get your mind around this fact: In fact, doing this will actually increase your risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, because it will decimate your vitamin D levels.

Avoiding the sun and slathering on sunscreen is NOT the best way to prevent skin cancer!

Your organs convert the vitamin D in your bloodstream into calcitriol, which is the hormonal or activated version of vitamin D. Your organs then use it to repair damage, including damage from cancer cells and tumors. Exposure to sunlight is the optimal way to maintain therapeutic blood levels of vitamin D, so if you’ve been shunning the sun, or applying sunscreen, which blocks your body’s ability to produce vitamin D, you’re likely deficient and missing out on these anti-cancer benefits.

Vitamin D’s protective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, including:

  • Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
  • Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
  • Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
  • Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous

A study by Dr. William Grant, Ph.D., internationally recognized research scientist and vitamin D expert, found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths — which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States – could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D!

Several studies have also confirmed that appropriate sun exposure actually helps prevent skin cancer. In fact, melanoma occurrence has been found to decrease with greater sun exposure, and can be increased by sunscreens. One such study revealed that melanoma patients who had higher levels of sun exposure were less likely to die than other melanoma patients, and patients who already had melanoma and got a lot of sun exposure were prone to a less aggressive tumor type.

Another Italian study, published in the European Journal of Cancer, also confirmed and supported earlier studies showing improved survival rates in melanoma patients who were exposed to sunlight more frequently in the time before their melanoma was diagnosed.

Melanoma is actually more common in indoor workers than in outdoor workers, and is more common on regions of your body that are not exposed to the sun at all. UVB radiation has been found to delay the appearance of melanoma if you are genetically predisposed or prone to skin cancer.

Why Most Sunscreens Will Not Protect You Against Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer

Aside from their impact on your vitamin D levels, most sunscreens are worse than useless because they provide inadequate UVA protection. There are two primary types of UV rays from sunlight that you need to be concerned with, the vitamin-D-producing UVB rays and the skin-damaging UVA light.

Both UVA and UVB can cause tanning and burning, although UVB does so far more rapidly. UVA, however, penetrates your skin more deeply than UVB, and may be a much more important factor in photoaging, wrinkles and non-melanoma skin cancers.

However, if you think your sunscreen is protecting you from UVA, you’re likely being deceived, as a 2011 Environmental Working Group analysis found that more than 60 percent of sunscreen products reviewed provide inadequate UVA protection, and are actually so ineffective that they would not be approved in the European market.

Since UVA’s are inherently more damaging AND persistently high during all daylight hours, wearing a sunscreen that doesn’t protect you from UVA is going to give you virtually no benefit and be detrimental to your overall health. So it’s important to understand that if you’re using sunscreen, you need to be certain you are actually getting UVA protection.

Europe is taking a far more stringent stance to ensure that consumers are protected against the damaging UVA light when they use sunscreens, but in the United States sunscreen standards fall short.

As EWG reported:

” … Europe’s proposed standards for UVA protection are far more stringent than FDA’s. The agency has spent years finalizing a rule that would merely require disclosure of UVA protection levels, while Europe has proposed that sunscreens provide UVA protection at a level at least one-third as strong as the sunburn protection level (SPF).

This means the minimum UVA protection in Europe would be roughly equivalent to FDA’s proposed three-star protection level. Requiring balanced protection across the UVB and UVA spectrum has the secondary effect of limiting sky-high SPF values, ensuring that sunburn protection isn’t out of step with protection from other health problems, such as free radical damage and skin cancer.

Very few sunscreens on the U.S. market would meet the baseline UVA protection standards proposed in Europe.”

Using the Sun for Skin Cancer Prevention

The key to effectively using the sun for skin cancer protection is to find a healthy balance between getting enough natural sunlight to maximize your vitamin D production and maintain your optimal health, while at the same time protecting yourself from damage that occurs from overexposure to the sun.

A good rule of thumb to follow is once your skin turns the lightest shade of pink (if you’re Caucasian), it’s time to get out of the sun. Past this point of exposure your body will not produce any more vitamin D and you’ll begin to have sun damage — and sunburn anywhere on your body is not good for your health.

You should seek to use natural sunlight as your primary source of vitamin D, but during the winter a safe tanning bed (one that uses electronic, not magnetic, ballasts and has lower levels of UVA than even the sun does, as most non-safe beds have higher UVA levels than the sun) is the next best alternative.

If neither of these options are available to you then you can use an oral vitamin D3 supplement, but keep in mind you may miss out on all of the benefits, and researchers have found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 8,000 IU are needed so your blood levels are in the therapeutic range. You can find out more about how to use vitamin D therapeutically to protect your health here.

Your Diet Can Also Protect You from Skin Cancer

Consuming a healthy diet full of natural antioxidants is a useful strategy to ensure your body is primed to have the best defense against overexposure to the sun’s harmful UVA rays at all times.

Fresh, raw, unprocessed foods deliver the nutrients that your body needs to maintain a healthy balance of omega-6 and omega-3 oils in your skin, which is your first line of defense against sunburn. Fresh, raw vegetables also provide your body with an abundance of powerful antioxidants that will help you fight the free radicals caused by sun damage that can lead to burns and cancer. As Wright also recommends, some of the most important foods and nutrients to focus on for skin-cancer prevention include:

The recently appreciated highly beneficial carotenoid called astaxanthin has also piqued the interest of researchers due to its ability to reduce signs of aging by helping protect your skin from sun damage. Astaxanthin is extracted from marine algae in response to exposure to UV light. This is the way the algae protects itself from UVB damage, so it makes perfect sense that this deeply pigmented substance would have the capacity to “shield” you when it is taken in appropriate quantities for a sufficient time (usually several weeks) to saturate your body’s tissues.

Cyanotech Corporation funded a study through an independent consumer research laboratory to measure the skin’s resistance to both UVA and UVB light before and after astaxanthin supplementation. The result was that in only three weeks of taking 4 mg per day subjects showed a significant increase in the amount of time necessary for UV radiation to redden their skin. You can find more information on how to use astaxanthin to help protect your skin from sun damage here.

Your body is made to be in the sun, and, when done properly, sun exposure will be one of the best ways you can help reduce your risk of skin, and many other forms of, cancer. In the event you do develop non-melanoma skin cancer, talk to your holistic health care practitioner about all the treatment options available, including the potentially least expensive and least invasive ones, like eggplant extract.

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The Sun Is Important For Our Eye Health

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By Andreas Moritz

The human body was designed to absorb UV light for very good reasons; otherwise we would have been born with a natural absolute sunscreen for UV light on our skin and in our eyes. One of the most important reasons is that UV radiation is necessary for normal cell division. A lack of UV light disturbs normal cell growth, which can lead to cancer.

The use of sunglasses, including regular UV reflecting spectacles and contact lenses are co-responsible for certain degenerative eye diseases, such as macular degeneration. Most people who use sunglasses report continuously weakening eyesight. The solution is to this problem is simple: stop wearing them or begin to phase out your sunglasses. You will soon discover that your eyes are gradually getting used to sunlight again.

There are other ways to improve eyesight and reduce sensitivity to sunlight. These primarily include eye-exercises, good nutrition (consisting of mostly alkaline-forming foods), avoiding eyestrain and watching too many hours of television.

Our typical indoor lifestyle, coupled with excessive over-stimulation through highly acid-forming foods and beverages, the cholesterol-increasing and dehydrating effects of television, and various other stress factors are sufficient cause for damage to body cells, including those that make up the eyes.

The sun is important for our eye-health. Sunshine enables us to manufacture the Vitamin D that we need. Eyes that have been deprived of sunshine are pale and lifeless. Extreme sensitivity to sunshine is called photophobia. People who are sensitive to light and glare usually solve their problem by wearing sunglasses. But is that a solution or a stop-gap measure? Sunglasses prevent our eyes from getting adequate sunlight and causes even greater light sensitivity. The more we wear them, the more we are sensitive to light. Hence a vicious cycle develops!

By sunning our eyes, we can reduce our sensitivity to light and sharpen our eyesight. Many people have reported that their vision improved after sunning – a simple eye exercise. Sunning must be ideally done in the morning or evening and never during the hot afternoon sun. Do a moderate amount for each session. There is no need to sun your eyes until you are sun burnt. The procedure is simple. Close your eyes and face the sun directly. Slowly move your head to the left and then to the right to let the sunshine reach every part of your retina.

By regularly shutting out much-needed UV light (even children and some pets are given sunglasses to wear nowadays), the eyes are unable to properly repair themselves and replace worn out eye cells.

The increased incidence of blindness and eye diseases in the industrialized world may result, to a large extent, from the misinformation that the sun is dangerous. Please be aware that in sunny parts of the world, almost everyone wears sunglasses nowadays. This may very well account for the increase of cataracts in these places. There may also be other factors involved, such as malnutrition (diarrhea can lead to severe demineralization), smoking, pollution, and poor diet. It is known that disease is not caused by a single reason alone. It is the cumulative effect of morbid environmental agents and also our habits and practices – dietary, behavioral, etc. To keep your eyes healthy, be sure to allow enough direct or indirect sunlight to enter your eyes, ideally no less than one hour every day.

If you wear sunglasses, expose your eyes to natural light for as long as it is comfortable. Try to restrict your use to only when the glare is reflected off snow or the road. Gradually you will wean yourself from sunglasses and will no longer require them. To avoid dehydration of the skin, drink fresh water before and after exposure to the sun.

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This is an excerpt from my book HEAL YOURSELF WITH SUNLIGHT

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The Ancient Practice of Sun Gazing

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By Andreas Moritz

Sun energy is the source that powers the brain. It enters the body through the elements of air, water, fire, and earth. Sunlight enters and leaves the human body most easily and directly through the human eye, provided it isn’t filtered out by colored lenses. The eyes are the grand portals through which sunlight enters the body.

Sun gazing is an ancient practice that can induce healing of body and mind.

The eyes are very complex organs, consisting of 5 billion parts intricately designed and functioning in unity. The primary function of the eye is light-dark perception. Even the most basic, simplest ‘eyes’, such as those belonging to unicellular organisms have no other function but to detect whether the surroundings are light or dark in order to maintain the circadian rhythms.

Acting as a photo lens, the human eye is able to break down the entire spectrum of sunlight into the different color rays – a sort of ocular prism. In a camera, the various rays of light react with the chemicals of the film and encode the pictures you take accordingly. Likewise, upon entering the pineal gland in the brain, the different light rays are chemically encoded in the brain and passed on to the organs and systems in the body.

The vital organs of the body are dependent on specific colors of the light spectrum. For kidney cells to function properly, for example, they require red light. Heart cells need yellow light, and liver cells require green light. Light deficiencies in any of the organs and systems of the body can lead to disease. Regular sun gazing can help restore balance and efficiency to all cells in the body.

The pineal gland is one of the most researched glands of the body. Scientists have established that bright light stimulates the production of serotonin and melatonin in the pineal, but there are other neurochemicals produced by the pineal that have more profound and complex effects apart from regulation of moods, sleep, reproductive function and body temperature.

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, including Dr. George C. Brenarr, a leading authority on the pineal gland, observed the sun yogi HRM (Hira Ratan Manek) for 130 days in 2002. They found that his pineal exhibited growth and reactivation. The average size of the pineal is 6×6 mm, but in HRM’s case it was 8×11 mm.

Scientists refer to the pineal gland as the ‘atrophied third eye’. Indeed, it, along with the pituitary, is the third eye chakra or energy center, better referred to as dormant rather than atrophied. According to Max Heindel’s Rosicrucian writings, in the distant past, man was in touch with the inner worlds through an activated pineal and pituitary gland. Considered the most powerful and highest source of ethereal energy available to humans, the third eye has always been important in initiating psychic powers (clairvoyance and seeing auras etc).

To activate the ‘third eye’ and perceive higher dimensions, the pineal and the pituitary must vibrate in unison, which is achieved through meditation or sun gazing. When a correct relationship is established between the personality operating through the pituitary, and the soul operating through the pineal, a magnetic field is created. The pineal can generate its own magnetic field because it contains magnetite. This field can interact with the earth’s magnetic field. The solar wind at dawn, charging the earth’s magnetic field, stimulates the pineal gland. This is why many spiritual teachings claim that the period between 4 and 6 am is the best time to meditate and why sunrise is the best time to sun gaze. At these times, the pineal stimulates the pituitary to secrete Human Growth Hormone. That is why sun gazers often experience rapid nail and hair growth, restoration of hair color, and general rejuvenation. Cleopatra used to place a magnet on her forehead to stimulate the pituitary to restore her youth and good looks. She did not know she already had a magnet in her head.

The technique of sun gazing demands no more than time and attention, and is very simple. One should gaze at the sun only in the morning or evening hours, about one hour or less after sunrise or before sunset. Look at the rising or setting sun once a day. On the first day, look at the sun in a relaxed manner for a maximum of 10 seconds. On the second day, look at it for 20 seconds, adding about ten seconds every succeeding day. After ten continuous days of sun gazing you will be looking at the sun for about 100 seconds. The eyes can blink or flicker and don’t need to be steady. To receive the main benefits of sun gazing, you need to increase the duration in the above manner until you reach three months. This brings you up to the length of 15 minutes of gazing at a time.

At this stage, the sun energy of the sun’s rays passing through the human eye will be charging the hypothalamus tract – the pathway behind the retina leading to the human brain. As the brain increasingly receives extra power through this pathway, you will find a drastic reduction of mental tension and worries. With access to this additional source of energy, you are likely to develop a more positive mindset and increased self-confidence. If you suffer from anxieties and depression, you will find that these go away. Sadness and depression are known to increase with reduced or lack of exposure to sunlight. With fewer worries and fears, your brain may use the saved and additionally supplied energy for healing and improvement of mental and physical wellbeing.

One of the most frequently reported benefits of regular sun gazing is improvement of eyesight.

Life giving, golden rayed, the eternal watchful eye, called ‘the beginning’ and ‘the ultimate truth’ by wisdom, the Sun is also the earliest acknowledged doctor of mankind. We have turned to him for healing since ages – since our very beginnings.

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This is an excerpt from my book HEAL YOURSELF WITH SUNLIGHT

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The Unfolding Drama of the Diabetes Syndrome

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By Andreas Moritz

When sugar becomes trapped and begins to increase in the blood stream, eating sugar at this point can be life-threatening. Not having enough glucose reaching the cells and organs of the body can also be fatal. If the heart cells run out of glucose, heart failure occurs. If the kidney cells run out of glucose, kidney failure occurs. If the eyes don’t get their glucose, eyesight will fail. The same applies to a sugar-starved liver, pancreas, stomach, brain, muscle, and even bone cells. By not receiving enough glucose, the body begins craving food, especially sugars, sweets, starchy foods, sweet beverages, etc., which leads to overeating and further congestion, and possibly heart congestion or cancer.

Because type II diabetes affects the health of every single one of the 60 trillion cells in the body, diabetics are predisposed to developing virtually every type of disorder there is. This has been denied by medical science for many years, but has recently been verified through major medical research. The majority of the chronic disorders plaguing our modern world today, including heart disease, cancer, arthritis, MS, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc., may in actual fact not be separate diseases at all. While sharing the same cause or causes, they manifest themselves in different parts of the body as unique symptoms of disease. There will come a time when the practicing physician will recognize that diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and dementia, for example, share the same underlying causes, and therefore require the same treatment.

At the beginning stages of type II diabetes, the pancreas tries to respond to the increasing congestion of the blood vessel walls (with excessive proteins) and, possibly, to an excessive sugar or starch consumption, by secreting extra large amounts of insulin. By constantly producing disproportionate amounts of insulin, the cells become even further resistant to insulin. By blocking out insulin (along with vital nutrients) the cells try protecting themselves against the cell-damaging effects of too much insulin, or otherwise they would have to face cell mutation. Eventually, though, through intricate hormonal feedback mechanisms and enzyme signals, the pancreas recognizes both the increase in blood sugar levels and the shortage of cellular sugar, proteins and fatty acids. So the pancreas begins to deactivate, destroy or ‘put to sleep’ a large number of its insulin-producing cells. This practically sets the stage for non-insulin dependent diabetes to become insulin-dependent diabetes.

There are a number of other reasons that may lead to reduced insulin output by the pancreas. When the basal membranes of blood capillaries supplying the pancreas with nutrients become congested with protein fiber, insulin production and other important functions, such as production of digestive enzymes, become suppressed. The same occurs when stones in the bile ducts of the liver and gallbladder drastically reduce bile secretion. In an increasing number of individuals, bile sludge consisting of small cholesterol stones enters the common bile duct and gets caught up in the Ampulla of Vater (where the common bile duct and pancreatic duct meet). Bile activates pancreatic enzymes before they enter the small intestine to aid in the digestion of foods. If bile flow is restricted, not all of the enzymes dispatched by the pancreas are activated. Any of these unused enzymes remaining in the pancreas can damage or destroy pancreatic cells, which leads to pancreatitis – a common cause of diabetes and pancreatic cancer. In any case, the inability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin can be a lifesaver, at least temporarily.

It is obvious, though, that this act of cancer-preventive self-preservation also means that there is not enough insulin around to transport the sugar out of the blood stream. If type II diabetics become insulin-deficient, doctors often prescribe insulin in addition to blood sugar medication, while letting them continue eating protein foods. Thus, a previously non-insulin-dependent diabetic now needs insulin shots, which greatly increases his health risks. This is completely unnecessary. I have witnessed such insulin-dependent patients turn vegan, and within just six weeks become free of the main signs and symptoms of diabetes, for the first time in 20-30 years.

Chronic disease is only chronic for as long as its causes are still intact. Insulin injection is the very thing that keeps the patient from recovering. It continues to increase the cells’ resistance to insulin, and forces the pancreas to destroy an ever-increasing number of insulin-producing cells. There are plenty of natural things that can replace injection with insulin. Just one teaspoon of ground cinnamon per day can balance blood sugar. Turmeric is an amazing herb/spice with a similar effect. Broccoli and other vegetables, as well as regular full body exposure to sunlight (vitamin D-generating), have superior blood sugar-regulating effects than potentially dangerous insulin injections.

Researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Medicine (UCLA) found that compared to subjects with the highest vitamin D levels, those with the lowest levels had symptoms of type II diabetes, including weaker pancreatic function and greater insulin resistance. When the skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, the body responds by manufacturing vitamin D.

Abstaining from proteins foods, cleansing the liver of stones (gallstones are a leading cause of diabetes), eating a balanced diet and living a balanced lifestyle are much more effective means of restoring normal body functions than just trying to fix one symptom of disease. By taking responsibility for their own health, and therefore their life, the diabetic has the opportunity to put the sweetness back into his cells and, thus, into their life.

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This is an excerpt from my book DIABETES – NO MORE!

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What Really Burns and Damages the Skin?

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By Andreas Moritz

A person who consumes polyunsaturated fats in his diet and exposes his skin to ultraviolet light to the point of reddening produces hormone-like substances called prostaglandins from the linoleic acid contained in the fats. Prostaglandins suppress the immune system, thereby contributing to tumor growth. In addition, polyunsaturated fats are accompanied by free radical production, which can damage cells. If you add sunscreens to the skin, you have the right combination of chemicals to produce skin cancer, especially on areas that are more exposed to the sun than others.

In nature, oils never occur in large quantities. To obtain one tablespoon of corn oil in natural form you would have to eat 12-18 ears of corn. Since oil extraction from corn, grains, and seeds became possible 80-90 years ago, consumption of polyunsaturated and unsaturated fats (thicker oils) as salad and cooking oils has increased dramatically in the industrialized world. The average person today consumes 16 times more of these fats than a person did 90 years ago. (It easier for the digestive system to deal with oils that are expelled from foods with a higher concentration of oil, such as olives, coconuts, avocados etc., than from small nuts and seeds, such as almonds and linseeds)

That does not include all the other fats contained in today’s foods.The lack of exercise, fresh air, and foods rich in nutrients make it even less possible for a human being to cope with such large amounts of unnatural fats. They impair the digestive power and lead to a buildup of toxins and subsequent crises of toxicity. The presence of excessive amounts of free radicals indicates that the body is full of toxins. Once they enter the skin tissue, even short-term exposure to ultraviolet light can burn and damage skin cells.

If your eyes and skin are sensitive to sunlight, this indicates that your body is toxic. Your subsequent effort to avoid the sun may result in serious light deficiency, which can lead to serious health problems. The fact that cancer of all kinds increased when sunscreens were introduced is hardly surprising. The UV light entering through the eyes also stimulates the immune system. Today, more than 50 percent of the U.S. population wears prescription or sun-protective glasses, which are able to block out most UV light. The latest fashion is to wear plastic glasses, which also block out all UV light. The same holds true for plastic contact lenses. Indoor activities, sunscreens, clothing, UV-repelling windows, etc. make certain that we receive very little of it. Without regular exposure to sunlight, however, the immune system decreases its effectiveness with every year of age. With sunlight, the use of oxygen in the body tissues increases, but without it, our cells begin to starve for oxygen. This leads to cellular malfunction, premature aging, and even death.

Starved of a balanced sunlight diet, we tend to look for help elsewhere, even though nature is ready to cure us at any time. It is very unfortunate that sick people are mostly kept indoors, often with curtains drawn and windows closed. One of nature’s most potent preventive and curative powers is there for everyone to use.

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This is an excerpt from my book TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH & REJUVENATION

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Guidelines For Increasing Sun Exposure

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By Andreas Moritz

If you wish to benefit from the sun but cannot afford much time to be outdoors, there are several ways to increase your exposure to sunlight:

  • Windows should consist of glass that permits UV light to enter
  • Have as many such windows as possible
  • Keep your curtains pushed back so that you have maximum exposure
  • Depending on weather and the season, keep your windows open
  • Install as many full spectrum lights as possible (the best alternative to natural sunlight)

Those living in a moderate climate can sunbathe regularly. It is best to avoid the sun between 10.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. during summer, whereas during winter, spring, and fall, this time is okay, too. During winter you can sunbathe if you lie in a totally wind-protected place. You can build your own sunbathing area against a wall facing the sun. The sidewalls should be made of material that can serve as a good windbreak. The wall pointing toward the sun should be at an angle slanted toward the sun so that the low winter rays can shine into the sunbathing area. Lying on a blanket, you will be warmer than if you were indoors. Another, perhaps, more practical way is to open a window on a sunny day when there is no breeze. I have done this many times in my life, even in countries where winters can be very cold.

If for any reason you are going to be exposed to the sun for unduly long periods, you may apply Aloe Vera gel, coconut oil, or olive oil.

For maximum benefits, though, and to wash off any natural oiliness, it is best to take a shower before sunbathing. Start your sunlight treatment by exposing your entire body (if possible) for a few minutes, and then increase the time each day by a few more minutes until you reach 20-30 minutes. Alternatively, walking in the sun for 40-60 minutes several times per week minutes has similar benefits. This will give you enough sunlight to keep your body and mind healthy, provided you incorporate the basic measures of a balanced diet, lifestyle, and daily routine. Your body can store up a certain amount of vitamin D, which may last you through 4-6 weeks of wintry weather, but it is always good to recharge your ‘vitamin D battery’ whenever possible by exposing yourself to direct sunlight.

Note: Avoid sunlamps, tanning beds, and tanning booths. According to a study published in the International Journal of Cancer (Vol 120, No 5, March 1, 2007; 1116-1122), exposure to tanning beds before age 35 increases melanoma risk by 75 percent. Many young people now use tanning beds, which may be responsible for the recent sharp increase of melanomas in their age group. There is also a link between tanning bed use and squamous cell carcinoma, a less-deadly type of skin cancer. Conventional tanning equipment uses magnetic ballasts that emit powerful electromagnetic fields (EMFs) responsible for cancer growth. Their high concentration of UV-A may also play a role. Electronic ballasts are safer than magnetic ballasts, but very few parlors use these.

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This is an excerpt from my book TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH & REJUVENATION

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You may share or republish this article provided you clearly mention the name of Andreas Moritz and paste a hyper link back to the web page

Sunglasses and Sunscreens — A Major Cause of Cancer

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By Andreas Moritz 

Sunglasses and Sunscreens—A Major Cause of Cancer

Unfortunately, the ultraviolet portion of sunlight is the most easily eliminated by windows, houses, spectacles, sunglasses, sun lotions, and clothing. And why is that at a bad thing? Because ultraviolet light constitutes one of the most powerful natural medicines the world has ever seen. By the year 1933, researchers found there were over 165 different diseases for which sunlight proved to be a beneficial treatment, including tuberculosis, hypertension, diabetes, and almost every type of cancer. To this day, no other treatment has shown such a wide range of benefits as sunlight.

The miraculous complete cures of tuberculosis and many other diseases facilitated by doctors in the early twentieth century made headlines at the time. Remarkably, though, the sun’s healing rays remained ineffective if the patients wore sunglasses. Sunglasses block out important rays of the light spectrum which the body requires for essential biological functions. Today, for whatever sinister reasons, the population is being bombarded with warnings about sunbathing and the risks of skin cancer.

The sun is now considered the main culprit for causing skin cancer, certain cataracts leading to blindness, and aging of the skin. Only those who take the “risk” of exposing themselves to sunlight find that the sun actually makes them feel better, provided they don’t use sunglasses, sunscreens or burn their skin. The UV-rays in sunlight actually stimulate the thyroid gland to increase hormone production, which in turn increases the body’s basal metabolic rate. This assists both in weight loss and improved muscle development. Farm animals fatten much faster when kept indoors, and so do people who stay out of the sun. Therefore, if you want to lose weight or increase your muscle tone,expose your body to the sun on a regular basis. Remember, being overweight or obese is major risk factor for developing cancer.

Any person who misses out on sunlight becomes weak and suffers mental and physical problems as a result. His vital energy diminishes in due time, which is reflected in his quality of life. The populations in Northern European countries like Norway and Finland, which experience months of darkness every year, have a higher incidence of irritability, fatigue, illness, insomnia, depression, alcoholism, and suicide than those living in the sunny parts of the world. Their skin cancer rates are higher, too. For example, the incidence of melanoma (skin cancer) on the Orkney and Shetland Isles, north of Scotland, is 10 times that of Mediterranean islands.

UV light is known to activate an important skin hormone called solitrol. Solitrol influences our immune system and many of our body’s regulatory centers, and, in conjunction with the pineal hormone melatonin, causes changes in mood and daily biological rhythms. The hemoglobin in our red blood cells requires ultraviolet (UV) light to bind to the oxygen needed for all cellular functions. Lack of sunlight can, therefore, be held co-responsible for almost any kind of illness, including skin cancer and other forms of cancer. Using sun protection protects only the multi-billion dollar sunscreen and cancer industry but not your skin or your life. Consider these remarkable scientifically proven facts:

Ultraviolet light

  • improves electrocardiogram readings
  • lowers blood pressure and resting heart rate
  • improves cardiac output when needed (not contradictory to lower resting heart rate)
  • reduces cholesterol, if required
  • increases glycogen stores in the liver
  • balances blood sugar
  • enhances energy, endurance, and muscular strength
  • improves the body’s resistance to infections due to an increase of lymphocytes and phagocytic index (the average number of bacteria ingested per leukocyte of the patient’s blood)
  • enhances the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood
  • increases sex hormones
  • improves resistance of the skin to infections
  • raises one’s tolerance to stress and reduces depressionOn the other hand, there is not a single scientific study which can prove that sunlight itself is responsible for causing skin cancers or other illnesses. There are always other factors present, such as acidosis of the tissues (due to eating an overly acidifying diet consisting of animal proteins, trans fatty acids, and manufactured foods and beverages), most pharmaceutical drugs, an accumulation of heavy metals and harmful chemicals in the tissues, toxic blood, a severely congested liver, an unbalanced lifestyle, and foremost of all, sunglasses and sunscreens.The human body was designed to absorb UV light for very good reasons; otherwise we would have been born with a natural sunscreen for UV light on our skin and in our eyes. One of the most important reasons is that UV radiation is necessary for normal cell division. A lack of sunlight disrupts normal cell growth, which can lead to cancer. The wearing of sunglasses, including regular UV-reflecting spectacles and contact lenses, is largely responsible for certain degenerative eye diseases, such as macular degeneration. Most people who use sunglasses on a regular basis report continuously weakening eyesight.

Depriving your eyes of adequate exposure to ultraviolet light can have serious consequences for your skin and even risk you life. Normally, as soon as the optic nerves of your eyes sense sunlight, your pituitary gland produces hormones that act as boosters for your melanocytes. Melanocytes produce melanin, the pigment that gives skin its natural color and protection against sunburn. When skin is exposed to the sun, melanocytes produce more pigment, causing the skin to tan, or darken, and your melanocytes start producing melanin on overdrive. However, when you wear sunglasses, this process becomes disrupted. Instead of kick-starting the melanocyte production to protect your skin against sunburn, your pituitary glands thinks it is getting dark outside and, thus, it greatly reduces production of melanocyte-stimulating hormones. Subsequently, your skin produces less melanin, which causes it to less protected and thus become damaged.

The dramatically increased incidence of skin damage seemingly caused by the sun (but really by wearing sunglasses) is exploited by the sunscreen and cancer industry. The main reason the dermatology industry promotes sunscreen products is because it is heavily funded by sunscreen manufacturers. The pharmaceutical and medical industries never intended to cure diseases. Right from the beginning, it was their intention to make a lot of money by producing drugs and chemicals that would making up new diseases for which they would develop specific drugs and procedures to relieve symptoms but never really eliminate them. In the above example of sunlight, by advertising the dangers of sunlight and promoting the use of sunglasses and sunscreens, the pharma/medical industry made certain the number of skin cancers and numerous other health problems would increase. They then recommended the appropriate treatments to combat these diseases, which in turn will lead to further escalations of these same diseases. These principals of psychological deception are well known to the industry and are applied to almost every so-called disease. The result is that nearly every person in the United States already has or will develop one or several serious illnesses at some stage in their lives. Something as “harmless” as sunglasses or sunscreens has created a health disaster of unimaginable proportions.

As the health author web site NaturalNews reported recently, a CDC study shows that 97 percent of Americans are contaminated with an extremely toxic sunscreen chemical called oxybenzone. This chemical is found in nearly 600 sunscreen products, including children’s formulas. Most sun-blocking creams and lotions also contain avobenzone for broad-spectrum protection against short- and long-wave UVA rays which are falsely considered to be the main culprits responsible for long-term skin damage. (For details on how blocking out of some or all UV-rays leads to damage of deeper skin tissue, see “Heal Yourself with Sunlight” or Chapter 8 of “Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation.”) Most sunscreens also contain a cocktail of a dozen or more cancer- promoting fragrance chemicals and numerous petrochemical-derived synthetic substances. Many of these carcinogenic chemicals are readily absorbed through the skin, much to the annoyance of the consumer who has to keep reapplying the “protective”sunscreens. [Sunscreens come in the form pf lotion, cream, oil, ointment, stick, gel/jelly, spray, liquid, and pad.]

The producers of these products claim that most of the harmful chemicals becomes degraded in the presence of sunlight and must therefore be safe for the consumer, a claim that is outright false since almost every person in America is contaminated by sunscreen chemicals (according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Avobenzone [butyl-methyoxydibenzoylmethane and oxybenzone particualry penetrate the skin very quickly. Other chemicals found in sunscreens include dixoybenzone, PABA and PABA esters (ethyl dihydroxy propyl PAB, glyceryl PABA, p-aminobenzoic acid, padimate-O or octyl dimethyl PABA, Cinnamates (cinoxate, ethylhexyl p- methoxycinnamate, octocrylene, octyl methoxycinnamate), Salicylates (ethylhexyl salicylate, homosalate, octyl salicylate), Digalloyl trioleate and Menthyl anthranilate.

There is an almost complete lack of any adequate safety testing of these chemicals. Cosmetics contain them, too, and the body absorbs them like a sponge.

Many heavily-used chemical sunscreens have a strong free radical generating effect, which is the main reason behind skin cancer. Chemists use such chemicals to start free radical reactions during chemical synthesis. These chemicals are so dangerous that those who handle them in a laboratory must keep them away from their skin. When combined with other chemicals and exposed to ultraviolet light, they then generate the copious amounts of free radicals required to bring about the desired chemical reactions. On your skin, however, such chemical reactions, are everything but desirable.

Oxybenzone, for example, which is found in 97% of Americans, is activated by ultraviolet light that breaks its double bond to produce two free radical sites. These free radicals then oxidize and damage fats, proteins, and DNA of the cells—the types of damage that occur in skin aging and the development of skin cancers.

One major study looked at how sunscreens could increase melanoma risk. Its team of researchers, Garland, Cedric F., et al, found that worldwide, the greatest rise in melanoma has occurred in countries where chemical sunscreens has been heavily promoted by the medical establishment and pharma/chemical industry. Queensland now has more incidences of melanoma per capita than any other place on Earth. The study was published by American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 82, No. 4, April 1992, pp. 614-15.

The question why the incidence of skin cancer has increased so dramatically since the massive promotion of sunscreens should have raised a red flag among consumers, but, instead, it made them lather their skin with even more of these deadly chemicals. The mass media (financed largely by drug giants) made certain, the population would not hear about such important studies as the following ones:

Dr. Gordon Ainsleigh in California found that the 17% increase in breast cancer observed between 1981 and 1992 may be the result of the pervasive use of sunscreens over the past decade (Ainsleigh, H. Gordon. Beneficial effects of sun exposure on cancer mortality. Preventive Medicine, Vol. 22, February 1993, pp. 132-40).

According to several studies, men who regularly use sunscreens have a higher rate of melanoma, and woman using sunscreens have a higher rate of basal cell carcinoma. (Garland, Cedric F. et al. Effect of sunscreens on UV radiation-induced enhancement of melanoma growth. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 86, No. 10, May 18, 1994, pp. 798-801 :Larsen, H.R. prevent skin cancer because they prevent sunburn, implying that skin cancers are caused by sunburn. But this is more a correlation than a cause-effect relationship. More recent studies done in England and Australia actually found much higher skin cancer rates among people who live mostly indoors compared with those who spend most of their time outdoors.

As Drs. Cedric and Frank Garland of the University of California have pointed out, there is no scientific proof that sunscreens protect against melanoma or basal cell carcinoma in humans (Garland, C.F., et al. “Could sunscreens increase melanoma risk?” American Journal of Public Health, 1992; 82(4): 614-615.) According to the Garlands, the increased use of chemical sunscreens is the primary cause of the skin cancer epidemic. A study by Drs. Mike Brown (Kate Law of the Cancer Research Campaign) Philippe Autier (European Institute of Oncology in Milan) reported that children using sunscreen returned from holiday with more skin moles—a possible sign of increased cancer risk. Whether or not sunscreens increase the risk of developing skin cancer, at least there is overwhelming evidence that sunscreens don’t prevent skin cancer.

In February 1998, epidemiologist Marianne Berwick of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York presented a careful analysis of data on sunscreen use and skin cancer at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Sunscreens may not protect against skin cancer, including melanoma, she concluded. “We don’t really know whether sunscreens prevent skin cancer,” said Dr. Berwick. “After examining the available epidemiological data and conducting our own large case-control population-based study, we have found no relationship between sunscreen use at any age and the development of melanoma skin cancer,” said Dr. Berwick. Although sunscreens do prevent sunburn, Dr. Berwick concluded that sunburn itself is not the direct cause of cancer. She argued that if people develop melanoma, it may be because they are genetically susceptible and likely to develop skin cancer regardless of the amount of sunlight exposure or protection from sunscreen.1 Dr. Berwick objected to the universal blanket advice about using sunscreens during all time spent outdoors.

Dr. Berwick’s previously conducted research (1996) found no relationship between a history of sunburn and the development of melanoma.

The American Academy of Dermatology (ADA), which is largely funded through advertising sunscreen and skin care products, of course strongly condemned Dr. Berwick’s research and called her a “number crunching scientist.” I guess that’s what scientists do, crunch numbers.

Now back to what sunscreens can actually do to you. They may not only be responsible for melanomas, but for many other types of cancer and dysfunctions as well. What’s most disturbing is that many commonly used sunscreen chemicals have strong estrogenic actions which may seriously affect sexual development in children and sexual function in adults, and further increase cancer risks. Exposing your body to chemicals that can alter hormonal balance puts your health at great risk, to put it mildly.

Of course, the sunscreen industry neglects to inform you that there is not much difference between drinking your sunscreen lotion and lathering it on your skin, except ingesting it would actually cause you much less harm because your digestive system would filter out most of the poison. The skin has no other option than to dump this cocktail of carcinogens right into the circulatory system, and from there, into the liver, kidneys, heart and brain. I will leave it to your imagination what such a chemical assault means for these vital organs.

The Vitamin-D Factor

Sunglasses and sunscreen agents are among the most health-endangering products that exist because they block absorption of ultraviolet rays which your body needs to produce vitamin D. Besides hindering the essential exposure of your eyes and skin to the rays of the sun, the use of sunscreens and sunglasses is largely responsible for the chronic vitamin D deficiency that plagues 80% of the American population. Vitamin D– deficiency is associated with depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer, osteoporosis and almost every other degenerative disorder. “The elderly, who spend little time in the sun and use sunscreen agents frequently, may be at risk for vitamin D deficiency,” according to a statement made by the Mayo Clinic. Vitamin D deficiency is strongly associated with bone disease and fracture. Makes you wonder why so many elderly people suffer from bone disorders.

New research findings (published in the Archives of Internal Medicine June 9, 2008; 168(11):1174-1180) join a growing body of evidence indicating that an adequate level of vitamin D, which you can obtain by spending an average of 20 minutes in the sun each day (dark-skinned people may need an hour or more), is crucial to maintaining good health. Men who are deficient in vitamin D were found to have more than double the normal risk of suffering a heart attack or dying even after all other possible risk factors such as hypertension, obesity and high levels of blood fat were excluded. In addition, low levels of vitamin D showed an increased of developing diabetes and dying from breast cancer.

And yet another new study published by the Archives of Internal Medicine June 23, 2008;168(12):1340-1349, shows that sunshine can cut your risk in half. This is what USA Today reported on June 23, 2008:

Having low vitamin D levels has been linked with deaths from heart disease and other causes, adding to growing evidence about the “sunshine” vitamin’s role in good health.

People with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D were about two times more likely to die from any cause during an eight-year period than those with the highest levels. The link with heart-related deaths was particularly strong in those with low vitamin D levels.

The study involved over 3,000 men and women in southwest Germany. Participants were aged 62 on average, and their vitamin D levels were checked in weekly blood tests.

It’s estimated that at least 50 percent of older adults worldwide have low vitamin D levels, and a significant number of younger people may also be affected. Low vitamin D levels may result from spending less time outdoors, air pollution and a decline in your skin’s ability to produce vitamin D from the sun as you age, the researchers said.

You can’t be Happy and Healthy without It— The Serotonin Connection

Medical researchers are growing increasingly excited about a wonder drug that may significantly reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other diseases—sunshine. Amazingly, one of nature’s best medicines is right outside your doorstep, but many people choose to ignore it. We all know that plants and animals deprived of adequate sunlight become sick. Is it so surprising to find that humans could actually suffer the same fate? After all, the human body was genetically designed to be outdoors most of the time. By contrast, most people in the modernized world spend most of their time indoors.

Spending most of the time inside buildings—cut off from the UV light and other healing rays of the sun—creates an enormous challenge for the body, mind and emotions. Ultimately, all hormones in the body are regulated by the circadian rhythm (day and night cycle). The powerful neurotransmitter and intestinal hormone serotonin closely follows the “movement” of the sun in respect to the earth. Peak secretion occurs during noon time when the sun’s intensity is the strongest.

In the central nervous system, serotonin plays an important role as a neurotransmitter (hormone) in the modulation of anger, depression, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, sexuality, appetite, and metabolism. In the gastrointestinal tract, which contains about 90% of the body’s total serotonin, it is responsible for balanced digestive functions. In the blood, the major storage site is platelets, which collect serotonin for use in mediating post-injury vasoconstriction. Recent research suggests that serotonin plays an important role in liver regeneration and acts as a mitogen (induces cell division) throughout the body (Wikipedia). Failed induction of cell division is a leading cause of cancer.

In addition, recent Italian research conducted at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Monterotondo found that defective signaling of serotonin in the brain may be at the root cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). This makes a lot of sense. Newly born babies who are being kept in dark rooms and rarely get out into the sun are deprived of vitamin D (purposefully not supplied by mother’s milk) and produce little or no serotonin. Worldwide, many more babies die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in one year than who die of cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, child abuse, Cystic Fibrosis and Muscular Dystrophy combined. The Italian research shows that the tested mice suffered drops in heart rate and other symptoms of SIDS, and many of the animals died at an early age. Low levels of serotonin in the animals’ brainstems, which control heartbeat and breathing, may have caused sudden death, researchers said in the July 4, 2008 issue of Science. Since serotonin in humans controls about the same functions as in mice, researchers believe that the same phenomenon occurs in human infants.

The implications of all the existing research conducted on serotonin are wide-reaching. Any prolonged imbalance of serotonin levels in the body affects the most basic functions in the body. Although, fruits and vegetables contain serotonin, to digest these foods you require a healthy digestive system. The digestive system follows its own schedule, controlled by the serotonin cycle.(See more details in “The Wonders of Our Biological Rhythms,” Chapter 5 of Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation.)

The serotonin cycle, in turn, follows the circadian rhythm. This makes sunlight to be the most powerful and natural sustainer of life and health. Sunlight is pure medicine, and it’s free.

More points to consider:

Plan to avoid unnecessary or prolonged exposure to sunlight, especially during the midday period, but avoid protective clothing, sunglasses, and sunscreen. Many drugs, such as LIPITOR/Atorvastatin, belladonna, furosemide, quinine, tetracycline, and doxycycline may make your eyes and skin sensitive to sunlight. Medication, stimulants such as caffeine, nicotine, and adrenaline, and illegal drugs can dilate the pupil, thereby allowing an excessive amount of light to enter the eye. This side effect may lead to the inappropriate use of sunglasses.

Highly acid-forming foods, including meat, eggs, cheese, fried foods, and sugar, may also make your eyes and skin prone to sun damage. Accordingly, you may find you can never leave the house without sunglasses. It is a pretty serious condition when the sun becomes so dangerous that you have to hide from it. The net result is, that not getting enough sunlight lowers your vitamin D and serotonin levels and thereby increases your risk of cancer and many other illnesses.

Also be aware that most cosmetics now contain UV-blocking chemicals. These include face creams, makeup products, moisturizers, lotions and anti-wrinkle creams.

If you feel you absolutely need a sunscreen product because you are unable to avoid the direct midday sun, make sure it has mostly natural ingredients in them, such as Aubrey Organics Active Full Spectrum Sunblock SPF 25. Still, it contains PAPA Ester.

Other ingredients include: Titanium Dioxide, Coconut Fatty Acid Cream Base, Jojoba Butter, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Sunflower Oil, Organic Shea Butter, Organic Aloe Vera, White Camellia Oil, Lecithin, Canadian Willow herb Extract, Aubrey’s Preservative (Citrus Seed Extract, Vitamins A, C and E), Silica, Jasmine Oil.

Coconut oil, shea butter or aloe vera, may be sufficient for protection (see also African Black Soap, an African Shea Butter under New Health Products..

If you believe you have already been contaminated with harmful chemicals and heavy metals (from tooth fillings, water and food sources, such as fish), you may benefit greatly from purifying your blood and tissues with MMS, Natural Cellular Defense (www.mywaiora.com/500062) and Marine Phytoplankton (www.ener-chi.com).

My warmest regards, Andreas

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The Surprising Cause of Melanoma (And No, it’s Not Too Much Sun)

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Rates of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, have been rising for at least the last three decades, and this increase has been largely blamed on exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light from the sun.

However, research published in the British Journal of Dermatology shows that the sun is likely nothing more than a scapegoat in the development of melanoma, and the sharp increase may actually be “an artifact caused by diagnostic drift.”

Melanoma Increases Due to Benign Disease, Not Sunlight

Diagnostic drift, according to the study, refers to a hefty increase in disease that is being fueled by non-cancerous lesions.

In fact, during the study period from 1991 to 2004, there were nearly 4,000 cases of melanoma included in the report, with an annual increase of 9.39 to 13.91 cases per 100,000 per year.

The researchers revealed that, rather than being fueled by increasing exposure to sunlight as is commonly suggested, the increased incidence was almost entirely due to minimal, stage 1 disease.

They noted:

“There was no change in the combined incidence of the other stages of the disease, and the overall mortality only increased from 2.16 to 2.54 cases per 100,000 per year … We therefore conclude that the large increase in reported incidence is likely to be due to diagnostic drift, which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma.”

In other words, people are being diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer even when they have only a minimal, non-cancerous lesion, and these diagnoses appear to be skewing disease rates significantly. Further, adding even more credence to the growing body of evidence showing sun exposure is not the primary cause of melanoma, the researchers noted that the distribution of the lesions reported did not correspond to the sites of lesions caused by sun exposure.

They concluded:

“These findings should lead to a reconsideration of the treatment of ‘early’ lesions, a search for better diagnostic methods to distinguish them from truly malignant melanomas, re-evaluation of the role of ultraviolet radiation and recommendations for protection from it, as well as the need for a new direction in the search for the cause of melanoma.”

Is Lack of Sunlight a More Likely Culprit?

Despite all the bad press linking sun exposure to skin cancer, there’s almost no evidence at all to support it. There is, however, plenty of evidence to the contrary. Over the years, several studies have confirmed that appropriate sun exposure actually helps prevent skin cancer. In fact, melanoma occurrence has been found to decrease with greater sun exposure, and can be increased by sunscreens.

One of the most important facts you should know is that an epidemic of the disease has in fact broken out among indoor workers. These workers get three to nine times LESS solar UV exposure than outdoor workers get, yet only indoor workers have increasing rates of melanoma — and the rates have been increasing since before 1940.

There are two major factors that help explain this, and the first has to do with the type of UV exposure.

There are two primary types of UV rays from sunlight, the vitamin-D-producing UVB rays and the skin-damaging UVA light. Both UVA and UVB can cause tanning and burning, although UVB does so far more rapidly. UVA, however, penetrates your skin more deeply than UVB, and may be a much more important factor in photoaging, wrinkles and skin cancers.

A study in Medical Hypotheses suggested that indoor workers may have increased rates of melanoma because they’re exposed to sunlight through windows, and only UVA light, unlike UVB, can pass through window glass. At the same time, these indoor workers are missing out on exposure to the beneficial UVB rays, and have lower levels of vitamin D.

Researchers wrote:

“We hypothesize that one factor involves indoor exposures to UVA (321–400nm) passing through windows, which can cause mutations and can break down vitamin D3 formed after outdoor UVB (290–320nm) exposure, and the other factor involves low levels of cutaneous vitamin D3.

After vitamin D3 forms, melanoma cells can convert it to the hormone, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, or calcitriol, which causes growth inhibition and apoptotic cell death in vitro and in vivo. 

… We agree that intense, intermittent outdoor UV overexposures and sunburns initiate CMM [cutaneous malignant melanoma]; we now propose that increased UVA exposures and inadequately maintained cutaneous levels of vitamin D3 promotes CMM.”

To put it simply, UVB appears to be protective against melanoma — or rather, the vitamin D your body produces in response to UVB radiation is protective.

As written in The Lancet:

“Paradoxically, outdoor workers have a decreased risk of melanoma compared with indoor workers, suggesting that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect.”

Vitamin D Helps Protect You Against Cancer

Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that influences virtually every cell in your body, and is easily one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters. So I want to stress again that if you are shunning all sun exposure, you are missing out on this natural cancer protection.

Your organs can convert the vitamin D in your bloodstream into calcitriol, which is the hormonal or activated version of vitamin D. Your organs then use it to repair damage, including damage from cancer cells and tumors. Vitamin D’s protective effect against cancer works in multiple ways, including:

  • Increasing the self-destruction of mutated cells (which, if allowed to replicate, could lead to cancer)
  • Reducing the spread and reproduction of cancer cells
  • Causing cells to become differentiated (cancer cells often lack differentiation)
  • Reducing the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, which is a step in the transition of dormant tumors turning cancerous

This applies not only to skin cancer but other types of cancer as well. Theories linking vitamin D to certain cancers have been tested and confirmed in more than 200 epidemiological studies, and understanding of its physiological basis stems from more than 2,500 laboratory studies, according to epidemiologist Cedric Garland, DrPH, professor of family and preventive medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Here are just a few highlights into some of the most noteworthy findings:

  • Some 600,000 cases of breast and colorectal cancers could be prevented each year if vitamin D levels among populations worldwide were increased, according to previous research by Dr. Garland and colleagues.
  • Optimizing your vitamin D levels could help you to prevent at least 16 different types of cancer including pancreatic, lung, ovarian, prostate, and skin cancers.
  • A large-scale, randomized, placebo-controlled study on vitamin D and cancer showed that vitamin D can cut overall cancer risk by as much as 60 percent. This was such groundbreaking news that the Canadian Cancer Society has actually begun endorsing the vitamin as a cancer-prevention therapy.
  • Light-skinned women who had high amounts of long-term sun exposure had half the risk of developing advanced breast cancer (cancer that spreads beyond your breast) as women with lower amounts of regular sun exposure, according to a study in theAmerican Journal of Epidemiology.
  • A study by Dr. William Grant, Ph.D., internationally recognized research scientist and vitamin D expert, found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths – which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States — could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D.

When Using the Sun to Fight Cancer, the Dose is What Matters

When I recommend using the sun therapeutically, this means getting the proper dosage to optimize your vitamin D levels. This typically means exposing enough of your unclothed skin surface to get a slight pink color on your skin. Your exact time will vary radically depending on many variables, such as you skin color, time of day, season, clouds, altitude and age.  The key principle is to never get burned, while still spending as much time as you can in the sun during the peak hours, as it is virtually impossible to overdose as long as you don’t get burned.

A common myth is that occasional exposure of your face and hands to sunlight is “sufficient” for vitamin D nutrition. For most of us, this is an absolutely inadequate exposure to move vitamin D levels to the healthy range. Further, if you use sunscreen, you will block your body’s ability to produce vitamin D!

And, contrary to popular belief, the best time to be in the sun for vitamin D production is actually as near to solar noon as possible which is 1 PM in the summer for most (due to Daylight Saving Time).. The more damaging UVA rays are quite constant during ALL hours of daylight, throughout the entire year — unlike UVB, which are low in morning and evening and high at midday.

When using the sun to maximize your vitamin D production and minimize your risk of malignant melanoma, the middle of the day (roughly between 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.) is the best and safest time. During this time you need the shortest exposure time to produce vitamin D because UVB rays are most intense at this time. Plus, when the sun goes down toward the horizon, the UVB is filtered out much more than the dangerous UVA.

Once you reach this point your body will  peak at about 10,000-40,000 units of vitamin D. Any additional exposure will only cause harm and damage to your skin. Most people with fair skin will max out their vitamin D production in just 10-20 minutes, or, again, when your skin starts turning the lightest shade of pink. Some will need less, others more. The darker your skin, the longer exposure you will need to optimize your vitamin D production.

Why Not Just Take Vitamin D from a Supplement?

You can get vitamin D3 in supplement form, and if sunlight or a safe tanning bed is not an option, this is a better choice than getting no vitamin D at all. If you do use a supplement, it now appears as though most adults need about 8,000 IU’s of vitamin D a day in order to get their serum levels above 40 ng/ml.

However, sunlight is really the superior source for vitamin D, as when you expose your skin to sunshine, your skin synthesizes vitamin D3 sulfate. This form of vitamin D is water soluble, unlike oral vitamin D3 supplements, which is unsulfated. The water-soluble form can travel freely in your bloodstream, whereas the unsulfated form needs LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) as a vehicle of transport.

The oral non-sulfated form of vitamin D may not provide all of the same benefits as the vitamin D created in your skin from sun exposure, because it cannot be converted to vitamin D sulfate.

I believe this is a very compelling reason to really make a concerted effort to get your vitamin D requirements from exposure to sunshine, or by using a safe tanning bed (one with electronic ballasts rather than magnetic ballasts, to avoid unnecessary exposure to EMF fields). Safe tanning beds also have less of the dangerous UVA than sunlight, while unsafe ones have more UVA than sunlight. If neither of these are feasible options, then you should take an oral vitamin D3 supplement.

What Should Your Vitamin D Levels be for Cancer Protection?

In 2007 the recommended level was between 40 to 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). Since then, the optimal vitamin D level has been raised to 50-70 ng/ml, and when treating cancer or heart disease, as high as 70-100 ng/ml.

I recommend you have your levels tested and regularly monitored to make sure they are in the therapeutic range. Your physician can do this for you, or another alternative is to join the D*Action study. D*Action is a worldwide public health campaign aiming to solve the vitamin D deficiency epidemic through focus on testing, education, and grassroots word of mouth.

When you join D*action, you agree to test your vitamin D levels twice a year during a five-year program, and share your health status to demonstrate the public health impact of this nutrient. There is a $60 fee each 6 months ($120/year) for your sponsorship of the project, which includes a complete new test kit to be used at home, and electronic reports on your ongoing progress.

You will get a follow up email every six months reminding you “it’s time for your next test and health survey.” To join now, please follow this link to the sign up form.

Natural Treatment for Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer

Melanoma skin cancer is the deadliest form, but far more common are non-melanoma skin cancers, which impact millions of Americans every year.

If you or someone you love is affected, a cream containing eggplant extract, known as BEC and BEC5, appears to cure and eliminate most non-melanoma skin cancers in several weeks time. Unlike conventional skin-cancer treatment, which is often surgery, the eggplant-extract cream leaves no scarring and no visible sign a tumor or lesion was ever present. The eggplant extract appears to be exceptionally safe and only kills cancerous cells, leaving healthy cells untouched, and causes only minor side effects, such as itching and burning.

The leading researcher in this area today is Dr. Bill E. Cham, who reported as early as 1991 in Cancer Letters that:

“A cream formulation containing high concentrations (10%) of a standard mixture of solasodine glycosides (BEC) has been shown to be effective in the treatment of malignant and benign human skin tumors.

We now report that a preparation … which contains very low concentrations of BEC (0.005%) is effective in the treatment of keratoses, basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) of the skin of humans. In an open study, clinical and histological observations indicated that all lesions (56 keratoses, 39 BCCs and 29 SCCs) treated with [the preparation] had regressed.”

Dr. Cham’s latest study was published in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine this year. The paper includes two impressive case reports of 60-something men who were suffering from large basal cell carcinoma (BCC) or squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), which had plagued them for years.  The results upon treatment with a cream formulation of BEC (eggplant extract) twice a day are astounding, and you can view the pictures here.

Unfortunately, simply eating eggplant, tomatoes, peppers or similar veggies, while beneficial for many reasons, will not induce this same effect because the active components are not able to effectively penetrate your cells. This requires the addition of glycosides, molecules with various simple sugars attached to them that can latch on to receptors found on skin cancer cells.

Simple Skin Cancer Prevention Strategies

What’s even better than an inexpensive, safe and natural cure for skin cancer is, of course, preventing it in the first place. Your body is made to be in the sun, and, when done properly, sun exposure will be one of the best ways you can help reduce your risk of skin, and many other forms of, cancer. Along with optimizing your vitamin D levels, the carotenoid astaxanthin has also piqued the interest of researchers due to its ability to reduce signs of aging by helping protect your skin from sun damage. I personally take 8 mg every day to help limit any potential damage from sun exposure as most of the year I am able to spend one to two hours a day in the sun.

Consuming a healthy diet full of natural antioxidants is another useful strategy to avoid sun damage to your skin, as fresh, raw, unprocessed foods deliver the nutrients that your body needs to maintain a healthy balance of omega-6 and omega-3 oils in your skin, which is your first line of defense against sunburn.

Fresh, raw vegetables also provide your body with an abundance of powerful antioxidants that will help you fight the free radicals caused by sun damage that can lead to burns and cancer.

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Vitamin Euphoria – A Shot in the Dark

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By Andreas Moritz

Do we need to pop those vitamin pills?

Vitamins seem to be so good for everything. The newly born needs them to grow properly; women take them to be happy; men use them to maintain or increase potency; athletes ingest them to stay fit; and older people take them to become younger or to avoid the flu. Even foods are categorized into good and bad, depending on how many or few many vitamins they contain. Ever since vitamins were produced synthetically they were made available in every drugstore or health shop around the world. Now you don’t have to eat all that vitamin-rich food anymore to stay healthy, all you need is to pop in a couple of those essential vitamin pills a day, or so the advertisements tell you. But if you don’t pay heed to this advice, you are told that you may become vitamin deficient and put your health at risk.

And so we act obediently, out of fear of risking our lives. If you feel tired or suffer from lack of concentration (which could be due to lack of sleep or overeating), you may be prescribed vitamin B pills. Then there is vitamin C if you catch a cold (which could result from stress, working too hard or eating too much junk food). Vitamin E, you are told, helps you prevent a heart attack (so you may no longer need to watch out for the true risk factors of heart disease). Accordingly, we spend billions of dollars on vitamin pills each year to fight off every kind of ill from the common cold to cancer.

Nowadays, artificial vitamins are added to almost every processed food – not because they are so good for you, but because foods that are “enriched” sell better. Cereals, bread, milk, yoghurt, boiled sweets, even dog food with added vitamins leave the supermarket shelves much faster than do those without them. Smokers, meat eaters, sugar addicts, or people who drink too much alcohol can now continue enjoying their self-destructing habits without having to fear the dreaded vitamin deficiency, thanks to the blessed food industry. The magic food supplements have become an insurance policy against poor diet, and nobody has to feel guilty anymore over eating junk food. And on top of that, scientific research suggests that taking large doses of supplements may protect you against disease, even though there is no real evidence to support that claim. As seen in the sales figures, the public believes that the more vitamins you take, the healthier you get.

But are vitamins really so good for your health? Despite the massive amounts of vitamins consumed in modern societies, general health is declining everywhere, except in those countries that still rely mostly on fresh farmed foods. Could the mass consumption of vitamins be even co-responsible for this trend?

Sodium and water are essential to maintain sodium levels and hydrate the body, but too much of either can seriously upset the body’s electrolyte balance. Overconsumption of vitamin A, for example, can cause loss of hair, double vision, headaches, and vomiting in women, all indications of vitamin poisoning. If a woman is pregnant, the supplement can even harm her unborn baby. As we will see, vitamins can even endanger a person’s life.

Vitamin Deficiency – Or Something Else?

In the beginning of the 17th century, Japan was afflicted with a disease, called beriberi, which killed many people. By the year 1860, over one third of Japan’s marines had fallen ill with symptoms of weight loss, frequent heart complaints, loss of appetite, irritability, burning sensations in the feet, lack of concentration, and depression. The symptoms quickly disappeared whenever rice, Japan’s most important staple food, was replaced with other foods.

Thirty years later the Dutch physician Christiaan Eijkman conducted an experiment feeding chicken with white rice. The chicken developed symptoms such as loss of weight, weakness, and signs of nerve infection, which Eijkman interpreted as being beriberi. The symptoms disappeared again when the chicken were fed with brown rice. Soon later Eijkman discovered a few, previously unknown substances within the bran of the whole rice; one of them was named B1. This initiated the era of vitamins.

But, as it turned out, beriberi wasn’t caused by vitamin B1 deficiency. People no longer suffered from beriberi once they discontinued eating rice altogether. It should have been noticed from the beginning that, with “no rice – no vitamin B1 – no beriberi,” the disease must have had other causes than vitamin deficiency. Japanese marine soldiers died within three days after consuming white rice, yet it takes much longer than that to get a B1 deficiency. The origin of this mysterious disease was revealed when in 1891 a Japanese researcher discovered that beriberi is caused by the poison citreoviridine. Citreoviridine is produced by mold in white rice that is stored in filthy and humid environments.

Yet until today, the vitamin B1-beriberi hypothesis is still maintained in medical text books around the world. Although it has never been proved that a B1 deficiency causes such symptoms as fatigue, loss of appetite, exhaustion, depression, irritability, and nerve damage, many patients having these symptoms are told that they have a vitamin-B deficiency. During vitamin B1 trial studies, all the participants complained about the highly monotonous diet they were given; they suffered fatigue and loss of appetite, regardless of whether they received B1 in their diet or not. As soon as they returned to their normal diet, even without B1, the symptoms spontaneously disappeared.

Another B-vitamin is nicotinic acid or also known as niacin. It has become very popular and is now routinely added to many foods. Niacin is supposed to safeguard us against diarrhea, dementia, and the skin disease pellagra. Pellagra is more widespread among people who eat maize, though not everyone who eats maize gets pellagra. Pellagra was found to be caused by food poisoning through spoiled maize. The poison involved has been identified as T2-toxine and is known to disturb niacin metabolism, thus producing pellagra. Besides the great importance given to taking extra niacin today this substance is not really a vitamin at all since it can be produced by the body itself.

Nobody Knows How Much You Need

Governments and international organizations such as the WHO frequently release figures that propose a Daily Ratio of Allowance (DRA) for every vitamin that you supposedly need to stay healthy. The nutritional experts in different countries however, have different opinions about how much of each vitamin your body must have. An American, for example, is supposed to take at least 60mg of vitamin C, whereas a British citizen is considered better off taking only 30mg. A Frenchman can only remain healthy if he consumes 80mg of this vitamin whereas Italians are told they need 45mg. These figures are “adjusted” every few years, although our bodies’ basic nutritional requirements have not changed over the past several thousand years.

Nobody really knows how many vitamins are good for us because the requirements, constitutions, and absorption rates for vitamins differ from person to person. Vitamins need to be digested before they can be made available to the cells and tissues. Once a person’s the digestive ability (AGNI) has diminished due to congestion of liver bile ducts with intrahepatic stones, for example, foods and even vitamins can no longer be digested properly.

When scientists calculate our vitamin requirements, they usually add a 50 percent “safety factor” to the original figures to make certain that we eat enough of them. And because vitamin extraction from food during the digestive process is so much less than 100 percent, these figures are increased one more time. The official methods of analyzing the amount of vitamins we require are inadequate because we simply do not know how much of each vitamin the human physiology needs. The thin, hyper-metabolic Vata body type, for example, may have a far greater need for vitamin B-6 than the heavier-set, hypo-metabolic Kapha type who can never really run out of it.

It is also not known how much of each vitamin is contained in a banana, an apple or a junk of cauliflower. Vitamin contents fluctuate greatly with the size of the fruits, their maturity, the condition of the soil, country of origin, time of harvesting, and the use of pesticides. How many of the vitamins contained in these foods actually end up being utilized by the body depends on the digestive capacity and body-type. All this makes official nutritional figures highly unreliable and speculative.

The vitamin theories originate in the assumption that the human physiology has stores for vitamins that always must be full up in order to saturate the tissues of the body. This assumption, however, has never been proven by scientific research. While calculating human vitamin requirements, nutritional science assumes that the body’s metabolic processes take place at a top speed, which would require plenty of vitamins. Our bodies, however, are not machines that run at top capacity day and night. Most of us are not marathon runners, and even they don’t run for 24 hour’s day after day, month after month, and year after year.

It is very questionable whether the saturation of our body tissues with vitamins is even desirable. We need a certain amount of fatty tissue in our body, but this does not mean we should all be excessively filled with fat. Oxygen, too, is considered vital for all our body’s functioning, yet if its concentration in the air is consistently too high it can cause serious bodily harm. Why should vitamins be an exception? And anyway, vitamin deficiency is…

Rarely Caused by Lack of Vitamins

In the majority of cases, a vitamin deficiency does not occur because of insufficient vitamin intake in the diet. A vitamin deficiency is rather caused by a congested capillary network that is unable to diffuse sufficient amounts of the vitamins into the intercellular fluids. This can have a number of reasons, overeating protein foods being one of the major ones.

A diet rich in protein foods, such as meat, fish, pork, cheese, milk, etc., will eventually block the basal membrane (BM) of the small and large blood vessels in the body (see The Key to Health and Rejuvenation, chapter 9 on heart disease). Stress, over-stimulation, and dehydration can have a similar effect. The subsequent thickening of the BM and connective tissues makes it increasingly difficult for the basic nutrients, including vitamins, to reach the cells. If trans-fatty acids are consumed, as contained in most processed and refined fats, oils and fast foods, cell membranes become thick and congested, thereby preventing nutrients from reaching the cell interior. All this greatly increases the amount of metabolic waste and toxins in the body, overtaxes the liver, and causes the growth of gallstones. The gallstones inhibit the flow of bile, which subdues AGNI, the digestive power and increasingly hinders the assimilation of nutrients, including fats. When fats are no longer properly digested, the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, K, which are normally stored in the liver, become deficient. This problem becomes exacerbated by eating low fat foods (see The Key to Health and Rejuvenation, chapter 14).

If vitamin A becomes deficient, for example, the epithelial cells, which form an essential part of all the organs, blood vessels, lymph vessels, etc., in the body, become damaged. This can literally cause any kind of disease. Vitamin A is also necessary to maintain the cornea of the eye, allow for eyesight in dim light, and reduce the severity of microbial infection. Vitamin A is only absorbed from the small intestines properly when fat absorption is normal. Fat absorption cannot be normal as long as gallstones obstruct the bile flow in the liver and gallbladder. It is, therefore, very sensible to remove the gallstones and cleanse the digestive system so that the vitamins contained in food you eat can actually reach the cells in your body.

Taking extra vitamins can be harmful if the body is unable to make use of them and is given the additional burden of having to break them down or try eliminating them from the system. Because vitamins are strong acids, an overload can lead to vitamin poisoning (vitaminosis) and thus damage the kidneys, and actually cause the same symptoms that accompany a vitamin deficiency. Instead of filling the body up with large doses of vitamins it cannot even process properly, it would be more healthful and efficient to cleanse the body from accumulated toxins, stored proteins in the blood vessel walls, and impeding gallstones from the liver. Although taking mega doses of vitamins may temporarily increase the pressure of diffusion of these nutrients for a short time and quickly relieve symptoms, the “benefits” are often short-lived. If digestive functions are impaired, taking extra vitamins may actually endanger your health.

Team work

Contrary to popular belief, vitamins do not have isolated functions, but are work as a “team” in the body. If taken in supplemental form, versus from food, may be counter productive as excess of one vitamin can have a suppressing effect on another. When isolated and extracted from foods, vitamins arouse your nervous system should you take them. Feeling stimulated, and therefore energized, you naturally assume these vitamins must be doing you good. But stimulants never give you extra energy, they force the body to spend and give up energy.

The best source of healthy vitamins is fresh fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, etc. Fruits and vegetables also contain important health-essential nutrients known as phytochemicals -nature’s food coloring agents. They are what gives them their color. To obtain vitamin D, the best and cheapest source is sunlight. B12 is produced from microbes living in your mouth and gut.

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This is an excerpt from my book TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH & REJUVENATION

 

 

 

 

 

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The Simple Test Which May Help Prevent Autism

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

A review of genetic and biochemical abnormalities has revealed a possible link between autism and type 2 diabetes.

It’s still only a hypothesis, but according to Rice University biochemist Michael Stern, author of the opinion paper, these two conditions may have a common underlying mechanism: impaired glucose tolerance and hyperinsulinemia.

Hyperinsulinemia, a common precursor to insulin resistance, is characterized by excess levels of insulin in your bloodstream.

Insulin resistance, in turn, is associated with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and many other chronic diseases.

Could it also be associated with autism?

According to Stern:

“It will be very easy for clinicians to test my hypothesis.

They could do this by putting autistic children on low-carbohydrate diets that minimize insulin secretion and see if their symptoms improve.”

Sterns hypothesis also suggests that glucose tolerance in pregnant women may need to be addressed more seriously than it is now, in order to decrease the child’s risk of autism.

As reported by Science Daily:

“… [A]t least four genes associated with increased frequency in autism are known to produce proteins that play key roles in a biochemical pathway known as PI3K/Tor …  PI3K/Tor [is] the major pathway for insulin signals within cells, and insulin [can] affect synapses in a remarkably similar way to the mGluR defects associated with autism.

… “I discovered that gestational diabetes was the most important identified maternal risk factor for autism, but that ‘no known mechanism could account for this,’” Stern recalled. “When I read this, I was speechless. That’s when I realized that this was not obvious to others in the field, so I decided to write this up with the hope that clinicians might become aware of this and treat their patients accordingly.”

In writing the article, Stern said he learned that the role of insulin in cognitive function is becoming more widely accepted…  Stern said he also found preliminary studies that indicated that low-carb diets were therapeutic for some individuals with autism and ASD.

“Based on what’s already in the literature, insulin needs to be taken seriously as a causative element in autism,” Stern said.”

Diabetes, Autism and… Gut Flora: A Hidden Connection?

Sterns hypothesis linking autism and type 2 diabetes is an interesting one, and although it may initially sound far-fetched, other research suggests he may very well be onto something, especially if we consider the emerging research linking gut flora to both diabetes and autism.  Could it be that it’s actually the gut microflora that is an underlying link between diabetes and autism?

There’s no definitive evidence of this at the moment, but there appear to be some rather compelling “circumstantial evidence” leaning in that direction.

For example, researchers have found that bacterial populations in the gut of diabetics differ from non-diabetics, and imbalanced gut flora has also been linked to obesity and various brain – and mental disorders – from depression to autism.

Interestingly, obesity and diabetes appear to be associated with different bacterial populations according to one 2010 study. While the researchers found a positive correlation between ratios of Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes and BMI, the reverse tendency was observed in those with diabetes, indicating that obesity and diabetes are associated with different groups of intestinal microbiota. They also found a positive correlation for the ratios of Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes and reduced glucose tolerance.

The Gut-Brain Connection—A Hidden Key to Solving Autism Mystery?

In terms of treatment, Sterns hypothesis ends up coinciding quite nicely with the GAPS theory put forth by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. The low-carbohydrate diet he recommends will automatically help rebalance your child’s gut flora, and Dr. Campbell-McBride’s nutritional program has the identical focus.

Dr. Campbell-McBride has a full-time medical practice in the United Kingdom where she treats children and adults with autism and other neurological disorders, immune disorders, and digestive problems. Her groundbreaking research led her to create the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional Program, which can help those with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, depression and schizophrenia.

What is GAPS?

GAPS is the result of poorly developed or imbalanced gut flora, which can have a disastrous effect on mental health and brain development and function.

Interestingly, children who do not develop normal gut flora from birth also appear to be particularly prone to vaccine damage, and this may be a MAJOR key for reducing vaccine injuries. Dr. Campbell is actually convinced that autistic children are born with perfectly normal brains and sensory organs, but once their digestive system becomes a major source of toxicity instead of being a source of nourishment, they start to develop autistic symptoms. A vaccine may simply “push them over the edge.”

Another group of children that may also over-react to vaccinations are siblings of children with autism, severe hyperactivity, obsessive compulsive disorder, mental conditions, and—again—type 1diabetes.

How Gut and Brain Toxicity Can Lead to Symptoms of Autism

Children use all of their sensory organs to collect information from their environment, which is then passed to the brain for processing. This is a fundamental part of learning. However, in children with Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS), the toxicity flowing from their gut throughout their bodies and into their brains, clogs the brain with toxicity, preventing it from performing its normal function and process sensory information.

Dr. Campbell-McBride explains:

“Sensory information turns into this mush; into a noise in the child’s brain, and from this noise the child cannot learn. They cannot decipher anything useful. That’s why they don’t learn how to communicate. They don’t learn how to understand language, how to use language, how to develop all the natural instinctive behaviors and coping behaviors that normal children develop.

The second year of life is crucial in the maturation of the brain of the baby… If the child’s brain is clogged with toxicity, the child misses that window of opportunity of learning and starts developing autism depending on the mixture of toxins, depending on how severe the whole condition is, and how severely abnormal the gut flora is in the child.”

GAPS may manifest as a conglomerate of symptoms that can fit the diagnosis of either autism, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD) without hyperactivity, dyslexia, dyspraxia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, just to name a few possibilities.

How to Identify GAPS

Fortunately, it is possible to identify GAPS within the first weeks of your baby’s life, which can help you make better informed decisions about vaccinations, and about how to proceed to set your child on the path to a healthy life. This is done by analyzing your child’s stool to determine the state of her gut flora, followed by a urine test to check for metabolites, which can give you a picture of the state of your child’s immune system.

If your child turns out to have abnormal gut flora, Dr. Campbell-McBride strongly advises against vaccinating with the standard vaccination protocol until or unless the metabolic characteristics of GAPS have been reversed, in order to prevent vaccine damage.

The non-invasive tests described in her book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, are now available in most laboratories around the world, and typically run around $80-100 each in the US. This is peanuts compared to the incredible expense of treating an autistic child once the damage is done.

Strategies to Restore Health to Children with GAPS and Autism

All in all, there is a growing wealth of evidence demonstrating that the nutritional cause of many diseases is related to an imbalance of bacteria in your gut, a problem easily rectified by eating a diet consisting of high quality, minimally processed, and preferably organic, foods.

In addition, there’s plenty of evidence showing the harm being done by the over-prescribing of antibiotics as they are indiscriminate killers, eradicating all the beneficial bacteria in your gut along with the bad ones.

Pregnant mothers need not only be more vigilant about their glucose tolerance, as Stern suggests, they also need to pay close attention to their gut health, and avoid antibiotics as much as possible. The reason why this is so important is because the baby actually acquires its gut flora when he goes through the birth canal. Whatever lives in the mother’s birth canal becomes the baby’s gut flora. If your gut flora is imbalanced due to improper diet or use of antibiotics (which effectively destroys both good and bad bacteria), this imbalance is automatically transferred to your child at birth.

And as described above, your child’s gut flora may be crucially important for his health and development.

Dr. Campbell has developed a very effective treatment for GAPS children, called the GAPS Nutritional Protocol. It is described in great detail in her book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome, which is designed to be a self-help book. In summary, the protocol consists of three elements:

  1. Diet—the GAPS diet consists of easily-digestible foods that are dense in nutrition, including fermented foods.In general, avoiding processed foods and foods high in sugar/fructose is an essential component of a gut-healthy diet, as sugar feeds harmful bacteria and throws your microflora off kilter. It also promotes insulin resistance, and ultimately type 2 diabetes, so it’s easy to see how the dietary component can contribute to all of the problems discussed here: type 2 diabetes, imbalanced gut flora, and brain/learning/developmental disorders.
  2. Food supplements, including: probiotics and vitamins D and A in the form of cod liver oil, although sun exposure is also an important part for GAPS patients, for proper vitamin D production.
  3. Detoxification—The GAPS nutritional protocol will naturally clear out most toxins. Dr. Campbell does not use any kind of drugs or chemicals to remove toxins as it can be too drastic for some, and can produce damaging side effects. Instead she recommendsjuicing as a gentle but effective way of removing toxic build-up, as well as baths with Epsom salt, sea salt, seaweed powder, apple cider vinegar, and baking soda.

In the video embedded above, Dr. Campbell discusses many additional and priceless details relating to this protocol, so please, set aside some time to listen to the interview in its entirety, or read through the transcript. There’s no doubt that the avalanche of autism must be curbed—and quickly! And for now the burden rests on you, the parent, to take control of your and your child’s health, and to arm yourself with information that can have life-altering ramifications.

If you’re pregnant, planning a pregnancy, or know someone who is, I can’t recommend Dr. Campbell’s book enough. Buy it for yourself, or as a gift. You can also find more information on Dr. Campbell’s website: www.GAPS.me, and on her blog at www.doctor-natasha.com.

The Importance of Vitamin D and Cholesterol During Pregnancy

Last but not least, I also want to mention the importance of vitamin D and cholesterol during pregnancy, to help protect your child from autism. The most crucial role for both vitamin D and cholesterol in the embryo is in the development of the brain and central nervous system.  Not only is cholesterol a core building block of the brain, but vitamin D also plays a critical although not well-understood role in brain development. Deficiency in either cholesterol and/or vitamin D may affect your child’s autism risk.

For example, one previous study measuring cholesterol levels in children with autism found a striking correlation between low cholesterol and symptoms of either autism or Aspberger’s syndrome. And according to Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council, several research findings suggest that low vitamin D levels during pregnancy, and during infancy, may raise the risk of autistic symptoms.

Vitamin D is manufactured in your body from cholesterol, again showing the interconnected importance of maintaining optimal levels of both—especially during pregnancy. This happens in your skin as a result of sun exposure. Keep in mind that if you’re wearing a sunscreen, then you’re pretty much guaranteeing that you won’t generate any vitamin D.

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The Most Dangerous Politician in the Country?

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

California Governor Jerry Brown has been on a rampage this month passing controversial bills that on the surface may seem to be about protecting public health, but in reality are chipping away at Californians’ health freedoms.

It appears he is trying to earn the award for “Most Dangerous Politician in the Country.”

The three bills Governor Brown has signed (or vetoed) are the following:

  1. A bill banning anyone under age 18 from using tanning beds (SB 746). The legislation is designed to “improve the health and well-being of Californians,” but this statement is based on the seriously flawed assumption that tanning beds are contributing to the rising epidemic of skin cancer.
  2. A bill that will permit children as young as 12 years to be vaccinated with sexually transmitted disease vaccines like Gardasil, without parental knowledge or parental consent (AB 499). If you live in California, school or medical personnel will be allowed to vaccinate your child against an STD without your ever knowing it.
  3. Governor Brown vetoed a bill that would have required California physicians to inform you when a mammography revealed you have dense breast tissue (SB 791). Women with dense breast tissue have a higher risk of breast cancer, including the most aggressive kind.

All three of these decisions reflect, unfortunately, the Governor’s dangerous and misguided stance on health issues, to say nothing of his lack of respect for Californians’ freedom of choice about their healthcare. Let’s take a look at each of these controversial bills, one at a time.

The Truth about Tanning and Skin Cancer

Wrapping your mind around the fact that safe sun exposure is your friend – not your enemy — may take a little doing because public health agencies have been scaring Americans out of the sun for decades now.

But the truth of the matter is, lack of exposure to ultraviolet light (i.e. sunlight) is a major risk factor for skin cancer, and using a safe tanning bed is a desirable and completely appropriate alternative when sun exposure is not an option. Unfortunately, minors in California will no longer have this option, unless their parents have a safe tanning bed at home.

But as generations of people have been shunning the sun and slathering every inch of exposed skin with sunscreen when they do go outdoors, the incidence of skin cancer has been on the rise. This is a red flag that something is amiss with what public health agencies have been advising, because after all those sun warnings, skin cancer is now at epidemic levels.

The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer in the United States each year is higher than all other cancers combined, having risen more than 300 percent since 1992. However, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma, may NOT be on the rise, contrary to what you’ve heard.

A 2009 study by a group of British dermatologists found that the incidence of stage two, stage three, and stage four melanoma has not increased over the last couple of decades. Only stage one melanoma cases have “increased,” not because there is more melanoma showing up, but simply because what pathologists used to label as benign skin lesions are now being called “stage one melanoma” as a toosh-covering maneuver by the medical industry, in an effort to prevent lawsuits.

So, the number of melanoma cases has not increased—but the number of diagnoses has.

Melanoma accounts for only 5 percent of newly diagnosed skin cancers each year. Melanoma is actually more common in people who work indoors than in those who work outdoors. And melanoma most commonly appears on parts of the body that are not regularly exposed to the sun—it rarely occurs on your head or face. People who receive regular exposure to outdoor sunlight get fewer melanomas, so it makes no sense to say that ultraviolet light causes melanoma.

Widespread Vitamin D Deficiency May Help Explain the Cancer Epidemic

What’s really going on in is that, largely due to shunning the sun, the vast majority of Americans are now vitamin D deficient, which means they are missing out on this vitamin’s cancer-preventive properties and increasing their risk of cancer, including skin cancer.

Even sunny Californians are suffering from vitamin D deficiency. The University of California Davis discovered that more than 67 percent of Northern Californians have insufficient levels of vitamin D. In reality, the problem is far worse because they used outdated criteria to define vitamin D “deficiency.”

According to the Vitamin D Council, vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a large number of diseases, including:

  • Many cancers, including skin cancer
  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Diabetes
  • Asthma (especially in children)
  • Psychiatric and neurological diseases

A study by Dr. William Grant, Ph.D., internationally recognized research scientist and vitamin D expert, found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths — which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States – could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D.

Exposure to sunlight is the optimal way to maintain therapeutic blood levels of vitamin D. So while it is true that excessive UVB and UVA exposure will increase your risk of skin cancer and result in some loss of lives, it is even more relevant for health and longevity to understand that inappropriate avoidance of the sun will result in diminished vitamin D levels, which will result in HUNDREDS of times more deaths.

For every person that dies from sun exposure there are hundreds more that die from cancer and heart disease from not getting enough sun exposure and vitamin D.

Several studies have confirmed that appropriate sun exposure actually helps prevent skin cancer, and there are over 800 references supporting vitamin D’s effectiveness in lowering your overall cancer risk.

You should stay out in the sun just long enough that your skin turns the very lightest shade of pink. The length of time this takes depends on your skin type, of course, and you never want to let yourself burn. It is the burning of your skin and chronic excessive exposures — not the limited, sensible exposure to ultraviolet light or sunlight — that increases your risk for skin cancer. For optimal benefit, strive to have at least 40 percent of your skin uncovered. And for an extra measure of protection from sunburn, consider taking astaxanthin, which is a natural “internal sunscreen.” If you can’t get natural sun exposure, then a SAFE tanning bed is the next best option. But how do you know if your tanning bed is safe?

The Type of Tanning Bed Matters

You can use a tanning bed to stimulate your skin to make vitamin D, but you should only use certain types of tanning beds. Here are a couple of factors to keep in mind:

  1. The Tanning Device Should Have Electronic BallastsMany commercial tanning beds use magnetic ballasts to generate the light, and these create significant electromagnetic fields (EMFs). EMF exposure is linked to cancer, so it’s important to keep your exposures as low as possible. If you hear a loud buzzing noise while in a tanning bed, it has a magnetic ballast system. Newer tanning beds will use electronic ballasts instead of the older magnetic ones, and this change will virtually eliminate the EMF risk.
  2. UVA Bulb PercentageNormal sunshine has about 95 percent UVA and five percent UVB. Safe tanning bed bulbs produce less of the cancer causing and damaging UVA as they output less than the sun at 90 percent UVA and ten percent UVB, or double the beneficial rays that your body uses to produce vitamin D and vitamin D sulfate.

Contrary to popular belief, calling a tan “skin damage” is misleading, because tanning is your body’s natural protection against sunburn; it’s what your body was created to do. Tanning devices can be used safely and effectively, provided you adhere to the basic safety guidelines.

Make Sure Your Vitamin D Levels are Optimized to Prevent Skin Cancer

If regular sun exposure is not available and you don’t have access to a safe indoor tanning device, then your next option is taking an oral vitamin D3 supplement. Researchers have found adults need daily vitamin D intakes in the neighborhood of 8,000 IU to achievetherapeutic blood levels.

 

California Deals a MAJOR Blow to Parental Freedom

It’s ironic that California teens will no longer have access to safe tanning beds, even with their parents’ permission, but they will be able to get vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease, even if they’re only 12 years old. And they won’t need their parents’ consent to do it.

Thanks once again to Governor Jerry Brown, who bowed to pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby, the state of California passed AB 499, which will permit school or medical personnel to vaccinate your child against an STD without your ever knowing it!

As Dawn Richardson, director of advocacy for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), stated:

“Governor Brown’s signing of this legislation signals a negative trend in state public health policy making. Big Pharma has been working behind the scenes in California, Washington and other states to take away parental rights and vaccine exemptions … Under federal law, parents are supposed to get vaccine information before their children are vaccinated to help minimize risks and this new California law raises, rather than reduces, vaccine risks for children.”

Pharmaceutical and medical lobbyists were heavily involved in pushing AB 499 through the state legislature. After all, by stripping parents of their right to make informed decisions about medical procedures that could harm their children, they have tapped a new market for their Gardasil vaccine.

At a cost to the government of $108 per dose, Merck, the vaccine’s manufacturer, stands to profit handsomely.

Meanwhile, California taxpayers will likely foot the bill for the multi-millions of dollars this law will cost to implement. Parents are NOT responsible for the costs (how could they be if they’re not even informed that a vaccine was given?), so the bulk will come from the government (which means YOU, the taxpayer).

But even more importantly, AB 499 removes your right to informed consent for a medical procedure involving your child. If you are not even informed your child has HAD a vaccine, you won’t know when to be on the lookout for dangerous reactions. Gardasil has had thousands of reported adverse effects, ranging from blood clots to cardiac arrests and strokes, sometimes resulting in permanent disability or death.

Governor Brown has now taken this right away from Californians. As Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has said, informed consent is a human right:

“The right to voluntary, informed consent to a medical intervention, including use of a pharmaceutical product such as a vaccine that can injure or kill you or your child, is a human right. While the State may have the legal authority to mandate use of vaccines, nobody has the moral authority to FORCE you to get vaccinated or vaccinate your child without your voluntary, informed consent.”

Get a Vaccine… Win a Laptop!

Californians aren’t the only victims of a corrupt vaccine agenda.

The state of Illinois has declared each school’s funding contingent upon the number of students it gets vaccinated. According to the Illinois Health Examinations and Immunizations statutes (Section 27-8.1.7), if a school’s vaccination rate drops below 90 percent, state funding to that school will be cut by 10 percent, which may add up to millions of dollars per year.

If you’ve ever wondered why school administrators push vaccines so feverishly, it might just be because their very salaries are on the line if they don’t meet these vaccine quotas.

This financial pressure has resulted in one school district’s resorting to bribing its students to get vaccinated by making them eligible to win a laptop or iPod if they present evidence of their vaccination. Such campaigns are irresponsible, immoral and a direct assault to the health of the children they say they are trying to protect.

Why Did Governor Brown Veto a Bill to Inform Patients They Have Dense Breast Tissue?

While passing the above two California bills removes basic freedoms, Governor Brown vetoed a third bill that would have expanded those freedoms. The vetoed bill would have required California physicians to tell their patients when a mammography revealed dense breast tissue. The bill would have mandated disclosure to a woman that her dense breast tissue can “hide” small abnormalities on a mammogram.

Why is this significant?

Women with dense breast tissue have an increased risk for breast cancer, including aggressive breast cancer, because they have more glandular tissue and less fatty tissue in their breasts. Because dense breast tissue and cancerous tissue can appear similar on mammograms, reading the mammograms of dense-breasted women can be more difficult. Tumors are more likely to be missed and false negatives are more common in the mammograms of women with this type of tissue.

In fact, according to Santa Barbara Radiologist Judy Dean, research shows that dense breast tissue is the most frequent reason cancer is missed on mammography, stating this fact alone is enough to justify warning a patient.

By vetoing SB 791, Governor Brown will keep women in the dark about their breast cancer risk, as well as give them false confidence in mammography as the end-all, be-all screening tool. Women with dense breast tissue especially need to be advised about effective breast screening alternatives that can help them better evaluate their breast cancer risk.

I don’t recommend mammograms for a number of reasons, but if you have already received one, make it a point to directly ask your physician about the density of your breast tissue, as this information may not be volunteered without your prompting. If you have dense breast tissue, be sure to seek other screening options to mammography.

Urgent Call to Action for California Residents

For those of you who live in California, it is imperative that you let Governor Brown know your opinions on these issues. Please take just 5 minutes to let your voice be heard by contacting Governor Jerry Brown and asking him to repeal AB 499 and SB 746. You can also voice your opinion about his veto of SB 791.

Again, the three bills of concern are the following:

  1. Access to safe tanning beds for teens (SB 746)
  2. A parent’s right to provide informed consent for medical procedures being carried out on their children (AB 499)
  3. Allowing physicians to withhold information about a woman’s breast density, which could influence her breast cancer risk and screening choices (veto of California SB 791)

The most effective way is to call the Governor’s office:

  • Call: (916) 445-2841
  • Fax: (916) 558-3160
  • Email Web Form: http://govnews.ca.gov/gov39mail/mail.php

The more people who get involved, the better chance there is that California will get the message that its residents will not lie down while their rights are stripped away. Together we can reverse these legislations, while also helping to prevent similar legislation in other parts of the United States.

Let’s stand with the people of California in sending our entire country a clear message: Keep your hands off our health freedom!

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Study Confirms Benefits of Tanning, Sun Exposure for the Production of Vitamin D

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By: Ethan A. Huff
Source: NaturalNews.com

Exposing your unprotected skin to natural sunlight and even using a tanning bed are not necessarily the highly dangerous, cancer promoting activities that many in the government and media would have you believe they are.

A new study out of Oslo University Hospital (OUH) in Norway confirms what we here at NaturalNews have been saying for a long time — regular exposure to moderate levels of sunlight promotes good health through the healthy production of vitamin D in the body.

Johan Moan, a scientist and researcher from the Department of Radiation Biology at OUH’s Institute for Cancer Research found that the benefits derived from exposure to vitamin D-producing UV rays far outweigh the miniscule risk of developing cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM). In fact, it is primarily overexposure in the form of sunburns that is responsible for UV-related cancer risk.

“Sun exposure is commonly supposed to be the main cause of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) in most populations. However, the matter is disputed,” said Moan and his research team in conjunction with their findings.

“It can be estimated that increased sun exposure to the Norwegian population might at worst result in 200-300 more CMM deaths per year, but it would elevate the vitamin D status by about 25 nmol/l (nanomoles per liter) and might result in 4,000 fewer internal cancers and about 3,000 fewer cancer deaths overall.”

But the risk of getting skin cancer from exposing skin to natural sunlight or a tanning bed, might even be less than that. Ivan Oransky, editor of Reuters Health and treasurer of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), wrote last year in a blog that the actual risk of getting skin cancer from using a tanning bed is about 0.2 percent, and this risk likely only includes those that overexpose themselves

Russian health authorities also recognize the benefits of tanning beds, as they last year installed tanning beds in Russian prisons to help improve inmate health

Vitamin D deficiency is linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, endocrine dysfunction, infections, autoimmune disorders, kidney problems, neurological disease, respiratory illness, skin problems, and cancer, among other things.

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The Hidden Risks in This Heavily Promoted Seasonal Routine…

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By: Dr. Mercola
Source: Mercola.com

Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS) is not contagious.

It is an autoimmune disorder that develops when a person’s own immune system attacks and damages the myelin sheath of the body’s nerves, causing muscle weakeness and paralysis.

GBS symptoms can last for a few weeks or months or can become permanent.

In rare cases, people die from GBS, usually because they cannot breathe.

In the U.S., an estimated 3,000 to 6,000 people develop GBS annually.

Some healthy people, who develop GBS, have recently recovered from a viral or bacterial infection within the previous 4-8 weeks but others have recently been vaccinated.

The inactivated influenza vaccine has been associated with development of GBS since 1976, when an inactivated “swine flu” shot given to millions of healthy Americans caused GBS in several hundred previously healthy Americans and there were 30 deaths.

The CDC says: ”In 1976 there was a small increased risk of GBS following vaccination with an influenza vaccine made to protect against a swine flu virus. The increased risk was approximately 1 additional case of GBS per 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a thorough scientific review of this issue in 2003 and concluded that people who received the 1976 swine influenza vaccine had an increased risk for developing GBS.

Scientists have multiple theories on why this increased risk may have occurred, but the exact reason for this association remains unknown.”

Early symptoms of GBS include sudden muscle weakness, fatigue and tingling sensations in the legs that can take days or weeks to spread to the arms and upper body and can become painful, eventually ending with either partial or total paralysis.

When there is total paralysis, GBS becomes life-threatening because it can impair breathing and interfere with the heart rate and cause high or low blood pressure that can lead to serious complications, such as heart attack and stroke.

It is important to recognize the early symptoms of GBS, whether you have been vaccinated or not, and seek immediate medical care.

Powerful Profile of a Vaccine Victim

While infants and young children are at greatest risk, NO ONE is exempt from the potential serious complications of vaccination, one of which is GBS.

In the video profile of vaccine injury above, Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the non-profit National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), interviews a Connecticut artist and her mother, a former professor of nursing, who developed Guillaine-Barre syndrome after getting a seasonal flu shot in 2008 and today is permanently disabled with total body paralysis. This family has chosen to share their heartbreaking story to help those, who have had the same experience, feel less alone, and to educate others about what it means to be vaccine injured. What happened to this family is a potent reminder of just how important it is to make well-informed decisions about vaccinations.

Getting Flu Shot at Pharmacy is a Risky Proposition

While many have become used to vaccines being considered “routine,” there’s really nothing routine about them. Each and every vaccine carries an inherent risk of causing a reaction, injury or death that can be greater for some individuals than others. The seasonal flu vaccine is no exception when it comes to serious health risks, both short- and long-term, for some people.   This is why the trend of getting your flu shot at the local drugstore, grocery store or other non-medical setting is so troubling.

According to a recent article in NPR:

“In 2010, 18.4 percent of adults who were immunized received the flu vaccine at a supermarket or drugstore, just edging out workplace vaccinations for the second most popular venue, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

… [W]hile more people are going to the pharmacy, the number of Americans who get the flu vaccine each year has remained fairly constant at about 40 percent of all adults. Drugstores and supermarket pharmacies are eager to stake out a bigger piece of that market. Nationwide, the number of pharmacists trained to deliver vaccines has nearly quadrupled since 2007, from 40,000 to 150,000.”

While pharmacists are trained to administer the vaccine, they’re not necessarily trained to address a sudden and life threatening health emergency that may arise after the shot is given. It’s important to understand that ALL vaccines carry a risk for provoking an acute adverse reaction, such as fainting or having a seizure, which could be truly life threatening if you’re driving a car or crossing a street after you have left the store, for example.

All Vaccines Suppress Your Immune System

Vaccines can also be immune suppressive—that is, they can suppress your immune system, which may not return to normal for weeks to months. Here are just some of the ways vaccines can impair and alter your immune response:

  • Some components in vaccines are neurotoxic and may depress your immune response or cause brain and immune dysfunction, particularly heavy metals such as mercury preservatives and aluminum adjuvants
  • The lab altered vaccine viruses themselves may also affect your immune response in a negative way
  • Vaccines may alter your t-cell function and lead you to become chronically ill
  • Vaccines can trigger allergies or autoimmune disorders. Vaccines introduce large foreign protein molecules into your body. Your body can respond to these foreign particles in a way that causes an allergic reaction or triggers autoimmunty, especially in persons genetically or biologically vulnerable to allergy and autoimmunity

The flu vaccine may also pose an immediate risk to your cardiovascular system due to the fact that they elicit an inflammatory response. One 2007 study published in the Annals of Medicine concluded that:

“Abnormalities in arterial function and LDL oxidation may persist for at least two weeks after a slight inflammatory reaction induced by influenza vaccination. These could explain in part the earlier reported increase in cardiovascular risk during the first weeks after an acute inflammatory disorder.”

Mercury is a Well-Known Neurotoxin

Thimerosal, which is 49 percent mercury by volume, is a widely used vaccine preservative.

It is present in many different vaccines used in the U.S., including the majority of seasonal flu vaccines, although there are a few million doses of thimerosal-free single dose vials of influenza vaccine manufactured by drug companies that are supposed to be reserved for infants and pregnant women.

However if you are pregnant or have an infant and want to get a flu shot, be aware that you may have to specifically insist on getting the thimerosal-free single vial version as many health practitioners and pharmacists are still clueless about the health risks associated with thimerosal.

Some don’t even know that thimerosal is a mercury derivative!

A typical dose of thimerosal-containing flu vaccine contains 25 micrograms thimerosal. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the safe limit for human exposure to mercury is 0.1 mcg per kilo of weight per day.

Since almost half of the thimerosal is mercury, this means that each flu shot contains just over 12 mcg’s of mercury, which would be considered unsafe for anyone weighing less than 120 kilos, or just under 265 pounds.

There’s really no debate about whether or not mercury is a neurotoxin. It’s a well-established fact that it is. It’s also well understood that mercury is particularly damaging to young, developing brains, and this is one of the core concerns about vaccines. If it’s unsafe to breathe or ingest mercury, why would it suddenly become harmless when injected directly into your body, bypassing all of your body’s natural detoxification pathways?

If anything, the damage is likely to be far more profound!  The following video offers a powerful illustration of how mercury literally destroys brain neurons.


Why Did Vaccine Maker Fail to Reveal Massive Increase in Reactions?

On October 18, The Australian published an article questioning the omission of research showing a dramatic uptick in side effects from the flu vaccine in 2006. As you may recall, last year, Australia temporarily suspended all seasonal flu vaccinations for children under the age of five after noticing a 200 percent increase in unusual fevers and convulsions. At that time, CSL submitted updated research from 2006 showing a sharp rise in fevers linked to its vaccine, which they had omitted from the legally required product information sheets given to doctors.

The product sheets instead listed figures from 2005.

The 2005 information showed 22.5 per cent of children under three, and nearly 16 percent of children aged three to nine experienced fever as a side effect. Meanwhile the updated figures for 2006 showed the rate of unusual fevers had nearly DOUBLED, to 39.5 percent in children up to three, and 27 percent for three to nine-year olds.

According to The Australian:

“Both sets of results were published in 2009, but CSL has still not included the more alarming set of figures in the product information. The Medical Journal of Australia reported… that CSL did not give this information to Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, until last year when the spate of serious febrile convulsions in young children given the annual flu jab triggered a suspension on the use of such vaccines for children under five.”

The CSL’s explanation for the omission is that they didn’t think the 2006 figures were “clinically substantially different” to the 2005 figures.  Really? If a doubling of side effects is not substantially and clinically different, then what is?

Was Blend of Flu Viruses to Blame for Increase in Adverse Effects?

CSL now claims to have pinpointed the potential problem causing their H1N1 vaccine (Fluvax) to be so much more reactive than seasonal flu vaccines of the past. According to a September 3 article in The Australian:

“CSL followed World Health Organisation recommendations when it concocted its controversial Fluvax vaccine, which combined swine flu with two seasonal strains of influenza for the first time… CSL yesterday revealed a breakthrough in its 18-month scientific investigation…  It said the interim findings pointed to a problem with how the three virus strains interacted.

“Our scientific studies indicate that the interaction between the particular virus strains used in the 2010 . . . vaccine contributed to the reactions, but we are still working to understand the how and why,” a CSL spokeswoman told The Weekend Australian. “We have completed comprehensive investigations into our manufacturing operations (which) have not identified any change or deviation in our standard registered manufacturing process that could have contributed to the increased reactions.”"

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has rebutted CSL’s conclusions stating that:

“None of the other manufacturers have seen the same sort of effects with these strains,” Dr [Ian] Barr [deputy director of the WHO's influenza research laboratory in Melbourne] said. He ruled out testing the WHO’s flu-shot recipe — which tends to change each year — before new vaccines were used on people. “It’s just not possible because this is more or less a just-in-time vaccine,” he said.”

Both the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Australian counterpart, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), have blamed the problem on manufacturing deficiencies, poor management, and inadequate cleaning and testing at the CSL facility.According to The Australian:

“The TGA said yesterday different manufacturing processes could explain why only CSL’s vaccine caused such widespread side-effects in children last year.”While the different brands of seasonal influenza vaccines use the same strains of virus, there are differences in manufacturing processes that may result in differences in the biology of the vaccines,” an administration spokeswoman said.

Finland Vows to Pay for Lifetime Medical Care for Kids Harmed by H1N1 Vaccine

The 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu vaccine wreaked uncommon havoc in many countries. For example, several European countries noticed a staggering uptick in narcolepsy —a rare and devastating sleeping disorder.  Unfortunately, vaccine makers are completely shielded from liability for any harm caused by a pandemic vaccine, which is what the H1N1 flu vaccine was, so the fact that this vaccine turned out to be so harmful is a red flag for everyone to carefully weigh potential benefits and risks, and not trust blindly when health officials and doctors give standard assurances of vaccine safety and effectiveness.

In a rare and welcome demonstration of compassion and respect for the vaccine injured, the Finnish government and major health insurance companies recently announced they will pay for lifetime medical care for all the children diagnosed with narcolepsy after receiving the swine flu vaccine.

As reported by Yahoo News:

“Finnish and international researchers recently found a conclusive link between the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine and new cases of narcolepsy… The Finnish Pharmaceutical Insurance Pool (LVP), which represents insurance companies, said… it would honor all insurance claims in this category… The Finnish government meanwhile agreed to cover any medical costs exceeding the insurance claims.

In Finland, 79 children between the ages of four and 19 developed narcolepsy after receiving the Pandemrix vaccine in 2009 and 2010. Of these cases, an unusually high number, 76, also suffered from bouts of cataplexy, suffering hallucinations or paralysing physical collapses, according to Finnish research.”

Flu Vaccine for Pregnant Women Now Called into Question

In the U.S., trivalent influenza vaccination is universally recommended for all pregnant women, but a new study now calls this practice into question. The study examined “the magnitude, time course, and variance in inflammatory responses following seasonal influenza virus vaccination among pregnant women.”  The women were assessed prior to, and at one day, two days, and one week following vaccination..

The analysis showed significant increases in C-reactive protein (CRP) and other markers of inflammation following the vaccinations.According to the authors:

“Trivalent influenza virus vaccination elicits a measurable inflammatory response among pregnant women … There was considerable variability in magnitude of response; coefficients of variation for change at two days post-vaccination ranged from 122 percent to 728 percent, with the greatest variability in IL-6 responses at this timepoint.

… As adverse perinatal health outcomes including preeclampsia and preterm birth have an inflammatory component, a tendency toward greater inflammatory responding to immune triggers may predict risk of adverse outcomes, providing insight into biological mechanisms underlying risk… further research is needed to confirm that the mild inflammatory response elicited by vaccination is benign in pregnancy.”

Are Flu Vaccines Increasing Inflammation in Pregnant Women to Dangerous Levels?

The issue of inflammation is very important, and may be a crucial concern for pregnant women and infants. Pregnant women experiencing acute inflammation, whether from natural infection or from a vaccination, may well suffer an increased risk of their unborn child suffering health damage as a result.

It has always been a principle in medicine that one should not expose pregnant women to unnecessary risks from smoking or ingesting drugs or alcohol or other toxins because the risk to the unborn child is too great. Until a decade ago, most women were not routinely advised by doctors to get vaccinated during pregnancy but, today, there is a big push by the CDC and medical trade organizations to vaccinate all pregnant women in any trimester. The really big push began in earnest during the much-hyped pandemic “swine flu” influenza scare of 2009, a flu that turned out to be less severe than most annual “flu seasons.”

Researchers are now questioning the assumed safety of giving flu shots to pregnant women because stimulating a woman’s immune system during midterm and later term pregnancy may significantly increase the risk that her baby will develop autism during childhood and schizophrenia sometime during the teenage years and afterward. This risk is not minor. According to Dr. Blaylock, it’s a well-accepted fact within neuroscience that eliciting an immune response during pregnancy increases the risk of autism and schizophrenia in her offspring seven- to 14-fold!

In fact, a number of neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems can occur in babies born to women immunologically stimulatedduring pregnancy. For example, in one study done by Dr. Laura Hewitson, a professor of obstetrics at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center, found that a single vaccine used in human babies, when used in newborn monkeys, caused significant abnormalities in brainstem development.

It’s true that serious flu infections or E. coli infections during pregnancy are a major risk for all these complications, but a woman’s risk of actually becoming infected is quite small.

Two years ago, I interviewed Dr. Blaylock, a board certified neurosurgeon and author of Excitotoxins: the Taste that Kills, on this topic. At the time, we were discussing the swine flu and H1N1 vaccine, but one particular segment relates to the issue of vaccinations during pregnancy in general. As stated above, vaccines elicit an inflammatory response, and according to Dr. Blaylock, this is of considerableconcern for pregnant women.

Based on the data Dr. Blaylock shared in that interview, pregnant women had about a 99.97 percent chance of NOT becoming so ill from the swine flu that they would require any type of hospital care. Put another way, a pregnant woman only had a 0.03 percent chance of contracting a life-threatening case of influenza. These statistics would likely be applicable for most “regular” flu seasons as well. With the risk of suffering complications from naturally-acquired influenza being so low, why is the US government insisting on vaccinating ALL pregnant women; thereby significantly increasing the risk to ALL unborn infants?

What Your Obstetrician Doesn’t Know about Vaccines Can Jeopardize Your Baby

Each year, the CDC and medical trade associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urge pregnant women and young children to get a flu shot because, they say, pregnant women and young children are “particularly at risk” for flu complications and death. However, the statistics simply do not support this recommendation.

Neither does the science…

Unfortunately, many obstetricians and pediatricians strongly recommend the flu vaccine to their pregnant patients because they simply don’t know any better.

Doctors typically do not read neuroscience journals, perhaps because they don’t have the time or because it is a lot easier to just blindly trust and follow the CDC or AAP “recommendations” without every checking them out.  But the link between inflammatory cytokine production during pregnancy and subsequent health problems in infants and young children is well explained in the medical literature; it’s been published in well-respected journals and is already accepted within the field of neuroscience.

How to Protect Yourself Against the Flu Without Vaccination

Fortunately, avoiding a serious case of the flu doesn’t require a flu vaccine. By following these simple guidelines, you can keep your immune system in optimal working order so that you’re far less likely to acquire the infection to begin with or, if you do get sick with the flu, you are better prepared to move through it without complications and soon return to good health.

  • Optimize your vitamin D levels. As I’ve previously reported, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best strategies for avoiding infections of ALL kinds, and vitamin D deficiency is likely the TRUE culprit behind the seasonality of the flu– not the flu virus itself. This is probably the single most important and least expensive action you can take. Regularly monitor your vitamin D levels to confirm your levels are within the therapeutic range of 50-70 ng/ml.

         Ideally, you’ll want to get all your vitamin D from sun exposure or a safe tanning                    bed, but as a last resort you can take an oral vitamin D3 supplement.                                    According to the latest review by Carole Baggerly (Grassrootshealth.org),                            adults need about 8,000 IU’s a day.

  • Avoid Sugar and Processed Foods. Sugar impairs the function of your immune system almost immediately, and as you likely know, a healthy immune system is one of the most important keys to fighting off viruses and other illness. Be aware that sugar is present in foods you may not suspect, like ketchup and fruit juice.
  • Get Enough Rest. Just like it becomes harder for you to get your daily tasks done if you’re tired, if your body is overly fatigued it will be harder for it to fight the flu. Be sure to check out my article Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep for some great tips to help you get quality rest.
  • Have Effective Tools to Address Stress . We all face some stress every day, but if stress becomes overwhelming then your body will be less able to fight off the flu and other illness. If you feel that stress is taking a toll on your health, consider using an energy psychology tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is remarkably effective in relieving stress associated with all kinds of events, from work to family to trauma.
  • Exercise. When you exercise, you increase your circulation and your blood flow throughout your body. The components of your immune system are also better circulated, which means your immune system has a better chance of finding an illness before it spreads.
  • Take a Good Source of Animal-Based Omega-3 Fats. Increase your intake of healthy and essential fats like the omega-3 found in krill oil, which is crucial for maintaining health. It is also vitally important to avoid damaged omega-6 oils that are trans fats and in processed foods as it will seriously damage your immune response.
  • Wash Your Hands. Washing your hands will decrease your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don’t use antibacterial soap for this — antibacterial soaps are completely unnecessary, and they cause far more harm than good. Instead, identify a simple chemical-free soap that you can switch your family to.
  • Use Natural Antibiotics. Examples include colloidal silver, oil of oregano, and garlic. These work like broad-spectrum antibiotics against bacteria, viruses, and protozoa in your body. And unlike pharmaceutical antibiotics, they do not appear to lead to resistance.
  • Avoid Hospitals.  I’d recommend you stay away from hospitals unless you’re having an emergency and need expert medical care, as hospitals are prime breeding grounds for infections of all kinds. The best place to get plenty of rest and recover from illness that is not life-threatening is usually in the comfort of your own home.

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Vitamin D Triggers Natural Immune Response Against Tuberculosis, Study Finds

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By: Jonathan Benson
Source: NaturalNews.com

There is no need to get vaccinated against tuberculosis if you maintain high enough levels of vitamin D, suggests a new study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Researchers found that, in the presence of even minimally adequate levels of vitamin D, the body’s own immune system will naturally trigger an immune response against the disease and many others without the need for drug or chemical interventions.

Mario Fabri, who currently works in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Cologne in Germany, examined the effects of vitamin D on immunity during his time at the University of California, Los Angeles. He discovered that the vitamin D hormone is crucial for T-cells, which are the first responders to immune invaders, to produce a protein called interferon. And interferon has been shown to directly attack tuberculosis bacteria and prevent it from taking hold.

“Over the centuries, vitamin D has intrinsically been used to treat tuberculosis,” said Fabri, referencing the age-old practice of putting tuberculosis patients in areas of high sun exposure as part of their treatment. “Our findings suggest that increasing vitamin D levels through supplementation may improve the immune response to infections such as tuberculosis.”

Fabri’s previous studies also found that vitamin D is necessary for the immune system to produce cathelicidin, an antimicrobial peptide that, like interferons, provides humans and other mammals with protection against bacterial infections. In other words, vitamin D equips the body with the tools it needs to prevent infection without the need for drug-based antibiotics.

“At a time when drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis are emerging, understanding how to enhance natural innate and acquired immunity through vitamin D may be very helpful,” added Barry Bloom, co-author of the study and former dean of faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health.

What is even better is that interferons fight more than just tuberculosis. These powerful pathways of cell communication are known to exhibit an immune response to all sorts of viruses, bacteria, parasites, and even tumor cells, which means they can help prevent a host of other diseases besides just tuberculosis.

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Shock Vaccine Study Reveals Influenza Vaccines only Prevent the Flu in 1.5 out of 100 Adults (Not 60% As You’ve Been Told)

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By: Mike Adams
Source: NaturalNews.com

A new scientific study published in The Lancet reveals that influenza vaccines only prevent influenza in 1.5 out of every 100 adults who are injected with the flu vaccine. Yet, predictably, this report is being touted by the quack science community, the vaccine-pushing CDC and the scientifically-inept mainstream media as proof that “flu vaccines are 60% effective!”

This absurd claim was repeated across the mainstream media over the past few days, with all sorts of sloppy reporting that didn’t even bother to read the study itself (as usual).

NaturalNews continues to earn a reputation for actually READING these “scientific” studies and then reporting what they really reveal, not what some vaccine-pushing CDC bureaucrat wants them to say. So we purchased the PDF file from The Lancet and read this study to get the real story.

The “60% effectiveness” claim is a total lie – here’s why

What we found is that the “60% effectiveness” claim is utterly absurd and highly misleading. For starters, most people think that “60% effectiveness” means that for every 100 people injected with the flu shot, 60 of them won’t get the flu!

Thus, the “60% effectiveness” claim implies that getting a flu shot has about a 6 in 10 chance of preventing you from getting the flu.

This is utterly false.

In reality — and this is spelled out right in Figure 2 of the study itself, which is entitled, “Efficacy and effectiveness of influenza vaccines: a systematic review and meta-analysis” — only about 2.7 in 100 adults get the flu in the first place!

Flu vaccine stops influenza in only 1.5 out of 100 adults who get the shots

Let’s start with the actual numbers from the study.

The “control group” of adults consisted of 13,095 non-vaccinated adults who were monitored to see if they caught influenza. Over 97% of them did not. Only 357 of them caught influenza, which means only 2.7% of these adults caught the flu in the first place.

The “treatment group” consisted of adults who were vaccinated with a trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine. Out of this group, according to the study, only 1.2% did not catch the flu.

The difference between these two groups is 1.5 people out of 100.

So even if you believe this study, and even if you believe all the pro-vaccine hype behind it, the truly “scientific” conclusion from this is rather astonishing:

Flu vaccines only prevent the flu in 1.5 out of every 100 adults injected with the vaccine!

Note that this is very, very close to my own analysis of the effectiveness vaccines as I wrote back in September of 2010 in an article entitled, Evidence-based vaccinations: A scientific look at the missing science behind flu season vaccines

In that article, I proclaimed that flu vaccines “don’t work on 99 out of 100 people.” Apparently, if you believe the new study, I was off by 0.5 people out of 100 (at least in adults, see below for more discussion of effectiveness on children).

So where does the media get “60% effective?”

This is called “massaging the numbers,” and it’s an old statistical trick that the vaccine industry (and the pharmaceutical industry) uses over and over again to trick people into thinking their useless drugs actually work.

First, you take the 2.73% in the control group who got the flu, and you divide that into the 1.18% in the treatment group who got the flu. This gives you 0.43.

You can then say that 0.43 is “43% of 2.73,” and claim that the vaccine therefore results in a “57% decrease” in influenza infections. This then becomes a “57% effectiveness rate” claim.

The overall “60% effectiveness” being claimed from this study comes from adding additional data about vaccine efficacy for children, which returned higher numbers than adults (see below). There were other problems with the data for children, however, including one study that showed an increase in influenza rates in the second year after the flu shot.

So when the media (or your doctor, or pharmacist, or CDC official) says these vaccines are “60% effective,” what they really mean is that you would have to inject 100 adults to avoid the flu in just 1.5 of them.

Or, put another way, flu vaccines do nothing in 98.5% of adults.

But you’ve probably already noticed that the mainstream media won’t dare print this statistical revelation. They would much rather mislead everybody into the utterly false and ridiculous belief that flu vaccines are “60% effective,” whatever that means.

How to lie with statistics

This little statistical lying technique is very popular in the cancer industry, too, where these “relative numbers” are used to lie about all sorts of drugs.

You may have heard, for example, that a breast cancer drug is “50% effective at preventing breast cancer!”

But what does that really mean? It could mean that 2 women out of 100 got breast cancer in the control group, and only 1 woman out of 100 got it in the treatment group. Thus, the drug is only shown to work on 1 out of 100 women.

But since 1 is 50% of 2, they will spin the store and claim a “50% breast cancer prevention rate!” And most consumers will buy into this because they don’t understand how the medical industry lies with these statistics. So they will think to themselves, “Wow, if I take this medication, there is a 50% chance this will prevent breast cancer for me!”

And yet that’s utterly false. In fact, there is only a 1% chance it will prevent breast cancer for you, according to the study.

Minimizing side effects with yet more statistical lies

At the same time the vaccine and drug industries are lying with relative statistics to make you think their drugs really work (even when they don’t), they will also use absolute statistics to try to minimize any perception of side effects.

In the fictional example given above for a breast cancer drug, let’s suppose the drug prevented breast cancer in 1 out of 100 women, but while doing that, it caused kidney failure in 4 out of 100 women who take it. The manufacturer of the drug would spin all this and say something like the following:

“This amazing new drug has a 50% efficacy rate! But it only causes side effects in 4%!”

You see how this game is played? So they make the benefits look huge and the side effects look small. But in reality — scientifically speaking — you are 400% more likely to be injured by the drug than helped by it! (Or 4 times more likely, which is the same thing stated differently.)

How many people are harmed by influenza vaccines?

Much the same is true with vaccines. In this influenza vaccine study just published in The Lancet, it shows that you have to inject 100 adults to avoid influenza in just 1.5 adults. But what they don’t tell you is the side effect rate in all 100 adults!

It’s very likely that upon injecting 100 adults with vaccines containing chemical adjuvants (inflammatory chemicals used to make flu vaccines “work” better), you might get 7.5 cases of long-term neurological side effects such as dementia or Alzheimer’s. This is an estimate, by the way, used here to illustrate the statistics involved.

So for every 100 adults you injected with this flu vaccine, you prevent the flu in 1.5 of them, but you cause a neurological disorder in 7.5 of them! This means you are 500% more likely to be harmed by the flu vaccine than helped by it. (A theoretical example only. This study did not contain statistics on the harm of vaccines.)

Much the same is true with mammograms, by the way, which harm 10 women for every 1 woman they actually help

Chemotherapy is also a similar story. Sure, chemotherapy may “shrink tumors” in 80% of those who receive it, but shrinking tumors does not prevent death. And in reality, chemotherapy eventually kills most of those who receive it. Many of those people who describe themselves as “cancer survivors” are, for the most part, actually “chemo survivors.”

Good news for children?

If there’s any “good news” in this study, it’s that the data show vaccines to be considerably more effective on children than on adults. According to the actual data (from Figure 2 of the study itself), influenza vaccines are effective at preventing influenza infections in 12 out of 100 children.

So the best result of the study (which still has many problems, see below) is that the vaccines work on 12% of children who are injected. But again, this data is almost certainly largely falsified in favor of the vaccine industry, as explained below. It also completely ignores the vaccine / autism link, which is provably quite real and yet has been politically and financially swept under the rug by the criminal vaccine industry (which relies on scientific lies to stay in business).

Guess who funded this study?

This study was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the very same non-profit that gives grant money to Wikipedia (which has an obvious pro-vaccine slant), and is staffed by pharma loyalists.

For example, the Vice President for Human Resources and Program Management at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is none other than Gail Pesyna, a former DuPont executive (DuPont is second in the world in GMO biotech activities, just behind Monsanto) with special expertise in pharmaceuticals and medical diagnostics.

The Alred P. Sloan Foundation also gave a $650,000 grant to fund the creation of a film called “Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine,” which features a pro-vaccine slant that focuses on the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, an AIDS-centric front group for Big Pharma which was founded by none other than the Rockefeller Foundation.

Seven significant credibility problems with this Lancet study

Beyond all the points already mentioned above, this study suffers from at least seven significant problems that any honest journalist should have pointed out:

Problem #1) The “control” group was often given a vaccine, too

In many of the studies used in this meta analysis, the “control” groups were given so-called “insert” vaccines which may have contained chemical adjuvants and other additives but not attenuated viruses. Why does this matter? Because the adjuvants can cause immune system disorders, thereby making the control group more susceptible to influenza infections and distorting the data in favor of vaccines. The “control” group, in other words, wasn’t really a proper control group in many studies.

Problem #2) Flu vaccines are NEVER tested against non-vaccinated healthy children

It’s the most horrifying thought of all for the vaccine industry: Testing healthy, non-vaccinated children against vaccinated children. It’s no surprise, therefore, that flu shots were simply not tested against “never vaccinated” children who have avoided flu shots for their entire lives. That would be a real test, huh? But of course you will never see that test conducted because it would make flu shots look laughably useless by comparison.

Problem #3) Influenza vaccines were not tested against vitamin D

Vitamin D prevents influenza at a rate that is 8 times more effective than flu shots. Read the article to see the actual “absolute” numbers in this study.

Problem #4) There is no observation of long-term health effects of vaccines

Vaccines are considered “effective” if they merely prevent the flu. But what if they also cause a 50% increase in Alzheimer’s two decades later? Is that still a “success?” If you’re a drug manufacturer it is, because you can make money on the vaccine and then later on the Alzheimer’s pills, too. That’s probably why neither the CDC nor the FDA ever conducts long-term testing of influenza vaccines. They simply have no willingness whatsoever to observe and record the actual long-term results of vaccines.

Problem #5) 99.5% of eligible studies were excluded from this meta-analysis

There were 5,707 potentially eligible studied identified for this meta-analysis study. A whopping 99.5% of those studies were excluded for one reason or another, leaving only 28 studies that were “selected” for inclusion. Give that this study was published in a pro-vaccine medical journal, and authored by researchers who likely have financial ties to the vaccine industry, it is very difficult to imagine that this selection of 28 studies was not in some way slanted to favor vaccine efficacy.

Remember: Scientific fraud isn’t the exception in modern medicine; it is the rule. Most of the “science” you read in today’s medical journals is really just corporate-funded quackery dressed up in the language of science.

Problem #6) Authors of the studies included in this meta-analysis almost certainly have financial ties to vaccine manufacturers

I haven’t had time to follow the money ties for each individual study and author included in this meta analysis, but I’m willing to publicly and openly bet you large sums of money that at least some of these study authors have financial ties to the vaccine industry (drug makers). The corruption, financial influence and outright bribery is so pervasive in “scientific” circles today that you can hardly find a published author writing about vaccines who hasn’t been in some way financially influenced (or outright bought out) by the vaccine industry itself. It would be a fascinating follow-up study to explore and reveal all these financial ties. But don’t expect the medical journals to print that article, of course. They’d rather not reveal what happens when you follow the money.

Problem #7) The Lancet is, itself, a pro-vaccine propaganda mouthpiece funded by the vaccine industry!

Need we point out the obvious? Trusting The Lancet to report on the effectiveness of vaccines is sort of like asking the Pentagon to report on the effectiveness of cruise missiles. Does anyone really think we’re going to get a truthful report from a medical journal that depends on vaccine company revenues for its very existence?

That’s a lot like listening to big government tell you how great government is for protecting your rights. Or listening to the Federal Reserve tell you why the Fed is so good for the U.S. economy. You might as well just ask the Devil whether you should be good or evil, eh?

Just for fun, let’s conduct a thought experiment and suppose that The Lancet actually reported the truth, and that this study was conducted with total honesty and perfect scientific integrity. Do you realize that even if you believe all this, the study concludes that flu vaccines only prevent the flu in 1.5 out of 100 adults?

Or to put it another way, even when pro-vaccine medical journals publish pro-vaccine studies paid for by pro-vaccine non-profit groups, the very best data they can manage to contort into existence only shows flu vaccines preventing influenza in 1.5 out of 100 adults.

Gee, imagine the results if all these studies were independent reviews with no financial ties to Big Pharma! Do you think the results would be even worse? You bet they would. They would probably show a negative efficacy rate, meaning that flu shots actually cause more cases of influenza to appear. That’s the far more likely reality of the situation.

Flu shots, you see, actually cause the flu in some people. That’s why the people who get sick with the flu every winter are largely the very same people who got flu shots! (Just ask ‘em yourself this coming winter, and you’ll see.)

What the public believes

Thanks to the outright lies of the CDC, the flu shot propaganda of retail pharmacies, and the quack science published in conventional medical journals, most people today falsely believe that flu shots are “70 to 90 percent effective.” This is the official propaganda on the effectiveness of vaccines.

It is so pervasive that when this new study came out reporting vaccines to be “only” 60% effective, some mainstream media outlets actually published articles with headlines like, “Vaccines don’t work as well as you might have thought.” These headlines were followed up with explanations like “Even though we all thought vaccines were up to 90% effective, it turns out they are only 60% effective!”

I hate to break it to ‘em all, but the truth is that flu shots, even in the best case the industry can come up with, really only prevent the flu in 1.5 out of 100 adults.

Or, put another way, when you see 100 adults lined up at a pharmacy waiting to receive their coveted flu shots, nearly 99 out of those 100 are not only wasting their time (and money), but may actually be subjecting themselves to long-term neurological damage as a result of being injected with flu shot chemical adjuvants.

Outright fraudulent marketing

Given their 1.5% effectiveness among adults, the marketing of flu shots is one of the most outrageous examples of fraudulent marketing ever witnessed in modern society. Can you imagine a car company selling a car that only worked 1.5% of the time? Or a computer company selling a computer that only worked 1.5% of the time? They would be indicted for fraud by the FTC!

So why does the vaccine industry get away with marketing its flu shots that even the most desperately pro-vaccine statistical analysis reveals only works on 1.5 out of 100 adults?

It’s truly astonishing. This puts flu shots in roughly the same efficacy category as rubbing a rabbit’s foot or wishing really hard. That this is what passes as “science” today is so snortingly laughable that it makes your ribs hurt.

That so many adults today buy into this total marketing fraud is a powerful commentary on the gullibility of the population and the power of TV-driven news propaganda. Apparently, actually getting people to buy something totally useless that might actually harm them (or kill them) isn’t difficult these days. Just shroud it all under “science” jargon and offer prizes to the pharmacy workers who strong-arm the most customers to get injected. And it works!

The real story on flu shots that you probably don’t want to know

Want to know the real story on what flu shots are for? They aren’t for halting the flu. We’ve already established that. They hardly work at all, even if you believe the “science” on that.

So what are flu shots really for?

You won’t like this answer, but I’ll tell you what I now believe to be true: The purpose of flu shots is to “soft kill” the global population. Vaccines are population control technologies, as openly admitted by Bill Gates and they are so cleverly packaged under the fabricated “public health” message that even those who administer vaccines have no idea they are actually engaged in the reduction of human population through vaccine-induced infertility and genetic mutations.

Vaccines ultimately have but one purpose: To permanently alter the human gene pool and “weed out” those humans who are stupid enough to fall for vaccine propaganda.

And for that nefarious purpose, they probably are 60% effective after all.

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Healing Lyme Disease

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Healing Lyme Disease

Hi, this is a question from Mary and she is concerned about Lyme disease and she is wondering how I explain Lyme disease.

This is a very complex question even though it sounds very simple because it involves many, many factors that influence the body’s immune system. Lyme disease in my opinion is not necessarily due to the tick bite, that the parasite that is transferred by ticks into the human body, but it is rather a response by the body to a host of different influences that are of a toxic nature. An immune system that is already burdened by toxins and environmental factors as well as thoughts, feeling, emotions that inhibit the immune system. There could be things like lack of vitamin D which is again associated with Lyme disease, not being exposed on a regular basis to sunshine, ultra violet light, that diminished the vitamin D content in the body. Many people blame the tick for causing the Lyme disease and most doctors would, but you can have the symptom of Lyme disease in people who were never exposed to tick bites. So there is a lot of misconception in this field. And destroying the bacterium with antibiotics is in most cases not sufficient, it may lead to flare up very shortly after, because the underlying weakness of the immune system is still prevailing.

I have a different approach to that.  I would suggest cleaning out the liver so that the immune system can pick up again. The liver and gall bladder cleanse is very important in restoring the digestive functions and to allow the body to eliminate and break down any pathogenic invaders that may be causing the direct sickness or the feeling ill and weak because of so called Lyme disease. So, I would prefer to deal with the underlying causes rather than simply the effect of that particular infection and once again looking at the body in a holistic way that, infection is a reaction to something that the body is incapable of clearing up silently without much fuss, It has to use inflammation in order to deal with it because the body is incapable of removing any invading organism in the natural way.

So, the best approach in my opinion is getting vitamin D back up, regular sun exposure, drinking a good water, I would suggest adya clarity, using that water to remove any contaminants in that water which happens when you add a  couple of drops of adya clarity to your drinking water, like eight ounces of drinking water, you will see sediments at the bottom of a glass, even filtered water has these kinds of sediments that includes heavy metals and other contaminants which are important to remove and it also minimalizes the waters so, it enhances the immune system while allowing the body to get rid of existing toxins, chemicals and heavy metals which always seem to play a major role in Lyme disease. You can find adya clarity on the internet. It spells A-D-Y-A and then clarity, as in clarity of mind. It has many, many benefits, but combined with liver cleansing, this would be the best strategy. I would suggest also changing the diet to a vegetarian diet. Avoiding any kind of meat, chicken, fish, anything that can recontaminate the body and burden the immune system. Sugar as well, sugar should be avoided, because, with Lyme disease there is also a large flare up of Candida growth involved which you do not want to feed by adding more sugar to your diet.

Hope this might be helpful to you, and once again if you need more information “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION” is a book that contains everything that you need to know in order to restore your health from ground up rather than targeting symptoms such as Lyme disease which is merely a symptom of an underlying issue that has not emerged, that has not shown up before, but a trigger like a tick bite might just bring them to surface and allow the body to deal with it more effectively. But it is always important to support the body through it rather than stop the body at its trying.

Thank you

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Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation (Greg Voisen interviews Andreas Moritz)

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Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation
(Greg Voisen interviews Andreas Moritz)

Greg Voisen: Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, host of Inside Personal Growth and I want to thank all of our listeners who join us from around the world to listen to the words of wisdom  from our authors. And today on the air, I have Andreas Moritz, who is joining us from South Carolina and Andreas is a health expert in his field and he has a book called “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION” and I have to admit that this is, you want to talk about breakthrough medicine for the twenty-first century. This is a wonderful book. Good day to you Andreas. How are you?

Andreas Moritz: Thank you. I am absolutely good today.

Greg Voisen: Well, we appreciate having you on and I am going to let our listeners know a little bit about you, Andreas, and then we are going to get into a series of questions here. Andreas is the author of many books but he lectures and he is a practitioner in the field of alternative and integrative medicine. He is also the author of over a dozen books on various subjects pertaining to holistic health and is most well-known for his books “THE AMAZING LIVER AND GALLBLADDER FLUSH“, “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION” and “CANCER IS NOT A DISEASE“. His ideas have appeared in USA Today and in the 90s he began self-publishing self-help books on alternative medicine in mind-body-spirit integration. Andreas has had medical challenges himself from the early age of six dealing with arrhythmia, anemia, abnormally low blood pressure, frequent fainting and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Although he had challenges with this, he then went on to and went into the practice of iridology and trained under his uncle Dr. Harry Kirchofer… how do you pronounce his last name?

Andreas Moritz: Kirchofer

Greg Voisen: Kirchofer

Andreas Moritz: Kirchofer

Greg Voisen: yup, in Switzerland, and you know his background is in Ayurvedic medicine and we are going to be speaking about that. And he has travelled the world and he has just amazing credentials and if you want to look for more of his credentials, I would recommend that you go to his website as well but I would really like to get into the heart of the matter because there is just in this book, for my listeners it is in excess of five hundred pages long now, I was looking at it as more of a reference book as well, but if you wanted to go into any area that just by taking the index and going through it you can do it and it is amazingly well done and an exceptional read. So Andreas, you mentioned that the state of health is a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and our world. Can you comment because I think this is the basis… foundation,,, that you wrote in the introduction to your book for our listeners… why you follow this path and why our listeners would want to know more about that.

Andreas Moritz: Basically perception creates a reaction, a response inside of us and how we respond to any given situation, whether it is a traumatic situation like the loss of money, job, or a loved one or whether it is a disease that is afflicting us, how we respond to it is determining, literally, determining whether we recover and benefit from that incident or whether we go down with it. And so, our response is the most important in all of that. Unfortunately in the medicine system that we have today, we are being presented with like cut realities, these are like written in stone, realities where you have cancer and this is how much you have to live unless you take these treatments. We do not even given a choice how to respond to it and however, we do have that choice. And as I found in all the thirty-seven years of practicing in this field, that the choices that we can make are fantastically successful if we dare step into that and take self-responsibility for what is happening to us. We may not be able to change what happened to us but we certainly can change our response to it.

Greg Voisen: And I think that western medicine has a tendency to engulf people with kind of this fear of taking that alternative path, don’t you think so, that happens sometimes? You know if someone gets cancer, I will just use an example, my son got chronic myelogenous leukemia at twenty-one and at the time there was a drug called Gleevec and that was the only treatment, but it was the only treatment from western medicine. What he did do though is, he got heavily involved in Zen and meditation practice he went into a vegan diet and I actually believe it was those things that cured him, not so much the Gleevec.

Andreas Moritz: Oh, you are absolutely right. There is a actually a huge amount of research being done that the things that make us better are far more successful than the things that we suppress, or try to correct with medication or with any other therapies. So by focusing on the things that really work there is everyday almost  a new study coming out on vitamin D alone and how vitamin D, which is induced or produced by our body in response to sun exposure, we literally have an ability to reverse cancers by up to seventy percent. Now imagine that, if any other therapy would have that kind of success rate or any drug would have that kind of success rate it would be the best-selling drug for ever. And so we somehow forget that we have these healing gifts already build into our system but we hardly ever use them. So vitamin D which controls or turns on two and a half thousand genes in our body and turn them off when needed, we have vitamin D as a cardiovascular protection, we use vitamin D to allow our brain to function properly, it literally can prevent almost every kind of illness and it can also helps to reverse or correct any kind of imbalance in the body and there are thousands of studies now to prove it, however, it is not being reported, it is not being… doctors do not tell the patients to go out in the sun because they have been told that the sun is dangerous, we have to stay away from it. But now we have eighty-five percent of the population being vitamin D deficient. People, when they are vitamin D deficient, they have a fifty-five percent higher risk of obesity, they have a huge risk of developing cancers, all kinds of cancers. We now know that just having normal vitamin D levels goes along with a four hundred percent lower risk of developing colon cancers which is one of the leading cancers. So again, a simple thing like vitamin Diet, is such a fantastic thing to prevent illness, a good diet, we now know that eating meat on a regular basis increases the risk of dying by twenty percent from  all illnesses that includes diabetes, osteoporosis, heart attacks, cancers and so on. But you have again a very, very simple way just by correcting one’s diet and eating more sensibly and from more good sources such as organic vegetables and foods and grains and legumes and nuts and seeds and things like that which is ideal for the human body because that is how we were meant to eat because our digestive system is not capable of digesting such heavy foods as meat because our hydrochloric acid is only one tenth of that of a carnivorous animals. So we only digest ten percent of it, the rest of it will decay or be rotting in the intestines which then becomes obviously a source of illness.

Greg Voisen: Yeah, I have been a vegetarian for twenty plus years and I just, you know, the diet to me again, it is my preference, like you said we have choices, it has always been my diet preference and your book deals with this down-to-earth issues of health such as lifestyle, diet, nutrition, exercise, daily routines as you have mentioned, exposure to sun rays, sunlight but it is kind of based on ayurvedic medicine and I think some of our listeners out there, even though Deepak Chopra is somebody who has, kind of. maybe has exposed the world even a little more to that, explained the types, because I know I have read some about ayurvedic medicine and this is, isn’t  this one of your fundamental areas that you work with people on?

Andreas Moritz:  Yes certainly, because we are not all made in the same way. By even just going on the street you see thin people who walk very quickly, they talk very quickly, you hear them constantly saying something and so they are, sort of, the more agile people, and then you have the ones that are very slow, methodical and they’re more well built, sort of, have heavier bones, they have more body mass to them and the skin when you look at the back of their hands, you are not able to see the veins and bones, they are well covered. So obviously there are different body types and there is one that is standing out, you can see them from far away they have red hair, bright red hair, they are the so called pitta body types, PITTA and they have a lot of fire, a lot of heat in their body, so they do not get cold easily, they complain about wherever they go, it is, “I need to take something off because I am too hot”, so there is a vatta, the slim body type, that moves very quickly that talks very quickly but if he eats very congesting foods, like heavy foods like meat or potatoes, dry foods, then that person will get constipated, whereas the pitta body type if he eats the same kind of food, he wont get constipated at all. So there are certain foods that are useful for one body type and not useful for another. Likewise there is certain climates which are more beneficial for one person than for another and we have to sort of find out what we are and the book gives you hints in finding out your  body types  and what kind of foods are more conducive to the functioning and the metabolism in your body.

Greg Voisen: And so to assist on this path where you will take them through an assessment to determine body type ?

Andreas Moritz: Exactly.

Greg Voisen: Yeah!

Andreas Moritz: The book has actually a questionnaire where you can put in all the qualities, the  characteristics that you experience, then just simply by answering some questions and then you count the points and you will find out which body type you are. But simply by looking at the descriptions of the body type you will already know ‘that is me, that is me, that is me’, and you are very clear about why you are in a certain way, why you respond to stress in a given way, why do you look in a certain way. And so that makes you feel there is nothing wrong with you that is just how your body type is and each body type has of course psychological characteristics as well and if you know more about yourself you can use that more easily to determine how you want to live your life, and how and what you need from the environment. We now know that that sunlight is such an important factor for all body types. We are not born with sun shades in front of our eyes, we are supposed to receive all the rays that come from the sun in order to produce specific hormones in the brain and those hormones regulate the production of melanin in the skin which protects the skin against damage. You put sun shades on, then that protective matter is basically lost, you become susceptible to injury and then you have the self-fulfilling prophecy that the medicine system is putting out, that sunshine is dangerous. But what they do not tell you is that sunshade is actually, is one of the leading causes of skin cancer because it removes the protection, the melanin protection, in the skin. These are simple things that we ought to know in order to stay healthy, there is not really much one has to do. There is hydration, obviously, many people getting dehydrated because they are not drinking water which is the natural thing to drink where as they drink other things like coffee, too much coffees or teas or artificial drinks which are removing fluid from the body rather than putting fluid in the body, they are quite diuretic. And so again, once we have knowledge that hydration is so essential to produce digestive secretions to allow the blood to remain fluid enough and not get too thick for delivering nutrients to the cells in our body to take up oxygen and allow the oxygenation to occur properly for the metabolism to be proper, so once we know all of that, then we have the power to make choices and it is again all about self empowerment. Once we know that, we can handle any given situation and any disease that might pop up, since I was restoring health by going back to like, let’s say, healthy sleeping habits which we now know is responsible for numerous events like for low immunity, for example. You can restore the immune system by simply sleeping for eight and a half or eight to nine hours a night and people who are overweight, there is a new study that just came out it was done at the University of Chicago, and the study was released at the annals of internal medicine on the 4th of October and it basically tells people if you sleep eight and a half hours and you are overweight you lose fifty-five percent more body fat than a person who does not sleep enough hours.

Greg Voisen: That is a huge finding, so getting more rest…

Andreas Moritz: Exactly! Instead of trying to go on severe diets and exercise programs, just sleep the right amount of time at the right time of the night which is between ten and six, that is the best time to sleep, you automatically speed up your metabolism you balance the hormones in the body that regulate hunger and thirst and so you have no more cravings that make you overeat and that sort of thing. And these are studies that are showing… they are coming out now in frequency right now that tell people, the power is in your hands to make yourself healthy if you are not, and to stay healthy if you want to, and live a long healthy life.

Greg Voisen: Well, one of the things some of the people are dealing with more and more today and have been as society speeds up, is stress, and it is a big issue for people today and we know that cortisol levels, because  this is being reported everywhere, are going to increase with the higher levels of this continual stress, it is almost like the ‘fight or flight’ syndrome. What recommendations do you have for our listeners who, in these economic times, these challenged times, with high unemployment and all of the things that are going on, we know that it is the mental state, and they know they need to meditate and shift the way that they think about what it is, but what additionally can they do from a physical standpoint and a mental standpoint and a spiritual standpoint to get beyond that stress?

Andreas Moritz: Well, if you fight the stress or you try to solve the problem, you are stuck with the idea that there is something wrong. On the other hand, you can have a more accepting mode because negative things actually are propelled into our direction by positive reasons and that is sometimes very hard to grasp, but in my life I found… I discovered… that every negative thing that ever happened to me turned out to be a blessing,  it was something that I needed to experience so that I would discover something else that then would help hundreds and thousands of people. So I discovered that for myself and I have written a book about it – “LIFTING THE VEIL OF DUALITY” – where for every negative there is a positive reason behind it and, Jesus Christ said “Love your enemies”, love your adversities, love the things you do not like because when you do, when you accept them  into your life, then they transform into useful counterparts. And so that is something people might want to consider when dealing with stress because stress is not something that impacts us, it is our response to it that does. And so, when we all of us have the option to take a couple of deep breaths and say “I am not going to react right away, I am going to react in two minutes”, that means you put the power back into your court, you are now in charge, how you are going to respond to it and that will determine whether you come up with a good solution to this issue or not, whereas when you are stressed over something and you stay in your fear mode and you try to push away something you do not like, that moment you are stuck with it. Instead of doing that, you can just as well focus, just like if you do not like darkness you go to the light switch and turn on the light, you do not have to fight the darkness, you just put the thing under a different element. So if you are stressed, maybe all you need is a good night’s rest, because when you, let’s say, you stay up until midnight and you are trying to figure things out and then you cannot sleep properly, the next day you are not clear, you have brain issues, the blood circulation into the brain has diminished so incredibly that more toxins moving around the system, the stress hormones go up in order to cope with the lack of sleep and the deprivation of energy that has occurred because of that. So there are simple things you can do…  get a good meal that is satisfying you, do the things that make you joyful like just taking off and doing something for yourself, just for yourself, not for someone else, then this can recharge your batteries and you feel so much better shortly afterwards.

Greg Voisen: That is great advice, and one of the other things that you speak about and I think that many of our listeners might know this, but we do not pay attention much like you do, and I think the book articulates it well, you mention that the cells in our body are regenerating about every two to ten days. What are these built-in mechanisms that can help us from stopping this aging process because everyone today is talking about anti aging this and anti aging that, and truly we are like a copy machine aren’t we, and one of those cells mutates that is where the actually begins, isn’t it?

Andreas Moritz: Yes absolutely  true, because when we accumulated toxins over a number of years, and toxins… we have a lot of environment toxins,  just look at the chem trails that are a spewing huge amount of aluminum and other chemicals into our drinking water that just… there are new studies coming out that show that we have fifty thousand times more aluminum in our drinking water that is dumped from the sky and that is very, very toxic and that is just one of the toxins, there are so many food toxins added to our processed food, so people are getting poisoned by the drugs that they are taking,  medicines that they take, because these are chemicals the body has very great difficulty eliminating. So I typically tell people “clean out your liver” and that is why I have written the book “THE AMAZING LIVER AND GALL BLADDER FLUSH“, make sure you do not keep gathering and collecting toxins in the body and dumping them into the connective tissues and then make the organs weaker and weaker and suffocate the cells, but to allow the natural turnover of cells every two to ten days or six weeks for muscle cells for example, and once a month for every skin cell, but in order for those cells to be vital and to remain that way, we need to make sure the body is cleansed from time to time and cleaning out the liver is obviously one of the most important ways to make sure that the rest of the body stays neat and clean because the liver is the blood cleansing organ number one, and it retrieves and takes out these toxins, passes them into the bile duct, unfortunately that causes the coagulation of the bile, the bile becomes thick and hardens into little pebbles and stones and these are called intra-hepatic gallstones by the John Hopkins University,  when they are  clogging  the bile flow than we do not digest the food well any more, once the food digestion is interfered with, then the nutrients will not get to the cells, the cells will become weaker and age. So then we have the fast process of aging. People who have a clean liver, you can tell from their skin, from their appearance, from the muscle tone, the lack of excessive fat in the body where the metabolism, the digestion, is sufficient and the detoxification system is very effective too. So, I have found that people who do liver flushes on a regular basis or clean out their liver between like, two, three, a couple of series of liver flushes, then they will have a completely different energy to them they look radiant, their eyes look radiant, the skin is without any blemishes and age spots and things like that, so that is a way to keep your body healthy.

Greg Voisen: Well, that is one of those organs that I do not think many people out there think much of, they just take it for granted, yet it is the house of cards that operates everything within our body and that liver flush I think is important. You say that if we produce enough endorphins, serotonin and interleukin too, that we are able to arrest this aging process. I know that serotonin is a chemical that is released and endorphins through exercise. People that have low serotonin levels get depressed and some of them end up committing suicide, I actually know a friend whose daughter committed suicide and when they did her serotonin levels, there just wasn’t any, they could not find any. So how is that you can help people improve these through natural foods and processes d you give people, exercise programs and so on, to improve it so that it reduces this or arrests it, as you said, the aging process.

Andreas Moritz: The brain hormones are very, very people powerful and they are interlinked with the biological workings in our body and the largest rhythm that we know of is the circadian rhythm. It is the sunrise-sunset and the cycles that they involve. In the morning, when the sun is rising you naturally start producing serotonin, and serotonin even though it is called a brain hormone, in fact ninety percent of it is produced in the digestive system and five percent in the brain and only five percent in the blood. So most of the serotonin is created in the digestive tract which shows that eating the biggest meal of the day at midday serves you best because that is when your digestive system makes the most serotonin, and once you make a lot of serotonin which is at midday when you make the most, then you digest your meal most efficiently and then you have the best nutrients going to the cells in your body including the brain cells. So when you eat the biggest meal, the heaviest meal in the evening, you naturally only digest only ten to fifteen percent of that food because serotonin levels are that low. And so when you have inadequate digestion and lot of indigestive food piling up in the gastrointestinal tract which decomposes and produces toxins and it interferes with your sleep as well, as these toxins that are circulating around the system during the night time, then you have a problem with the psychological aspect as well because you wake up in the morning and you are feeling… not good, you feel low in energy, you feel sluggish, depressed,  you do not have the energy. Once the energy levels are dropping, you cannot be happy. So for the body,  for you to be happy, you have to have a good amount of energy, and serotonin is linked with another hormone that is called melatonin. So when you are sleeping well during the night, and you have a long night’s rest between eight to nine hours and you sleep between ten and six which is the time when you make the most melatonin, the next day, your serotonin levels will be higher because melatonin is the breakdown product of serotonin and serotonin is the breakdown product of melatonin, so they feed one another. So if you have a good amount of melatonin in the night, you will make a lot  more serotonin during the day, if you are eating your main meal at lunch time you will not suppress serotonin levels, you will actually increase them and you will have more melatonin to play with during the night time. So again, simple things like that were the secret of happy people in the olden days. So they knew how to stay healthy, happy and strong by following the circadian rhythms.

Greg Voisen: Well, so much of your advice in the book  “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION” it’s practical advice, it is something anybody can do, they can go anywhere and get these supplements, they can take the ayurvedic quiz which is inside the book, I mean, it really is an amazing book, I just again want to acknowledge you. But you state that disease, and this is my kind of closing question, is the occurrence of toxicity crisis which you call it, which is the body’s attempt, as you’ve been saying all along, to balance this condition called homeostasis, and for some of our listeners, they are going to know what homeostasis is, it is bacterial level balance, how is it that we can bring our body back to this balance and harmony? What will be some of the parting words that you will give about hydration, the kind of foods we should eat, how we should treat ourselves, mediation, the whole mind-body principle to actually get to this state of homeostasis?

Andreas Moritz: Well, it is actually not difficult because the body is doing that naturally and when you have a disease, that is the body’s way of returning to that state of balance. So the disease itself is part of the healing mechanism and trying to remove toxins. An infection is not a disease, an infection is the invitation of the body, the body inviting bacteria, germs, to come in to the system to dissolve, to breakdown and to decompose the cells that have are already been damaged or dead and so the body will never allow anything to attack healthy cells. The body only allows bacteria to attack unhealthy cells. So the disease itself is already the healing response that the body is allowing or supporting. We do not have to prevent that, we do not have to fight it. What we can focus on is, eating food, the main meal at lunch time which will allow you to digest it more successfully, have a lighter evening meal, go to bed before ten so that the body can cleanse the blood stream, the liver works between ten and two more effectively then at any other time and it needs all the blood from the back of the brain and from the digestive system and the muscles in order to cleanse the blood stream and not sleeping around that time obviously does not allow you to do that, so then the body accumulates toxins. If the toxins cannot be broken down because you are not sleeping well, and hydration methods and eating habits are contrary to what the body really wants, then we need disease in order to take care of that. And we blame the disease for making us unwell, but the disease itself is the way to get us back to homeostasis, to balance. So in either way, whichever way we live, we are being corrected one way or another. But we should not fight that, we should support the body, we should allow the body to do the job effectively and not hold it up or suppress it when it is getting sick.

Greg Voisen: Well Andreas, you definitely are a wealth of knowledge and I think what I would like to do is, I would like to invite you back to do another program because I believe that for our listeners, I am fascinated by what you are saying and I believe that it is kind of hard to cover all of these topics and I probably had about six more questions that I did not have the time to actually ask you today, but I would like to invite you back and I’d like you to let our listeners know, where they can go to get “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION” I know that I received it as an e-book, I think they can order it from your website as well. Where can they go to get more information about your books and your programs?

Andreas Moritz: The best source of information is from my website which is “ENER-CHI.COM”  or the books are available through Amazon or any other online bookstore. But on my website you find all the information about other products as well that I created myself that have incredibly supportive benefits for the body to heal and to return to balance.

Greg Voisen: Well, that is great,  so it is ENER-CHI, is that right?

Andreas Moritz: Yes, that is correct.

Greg Voisen: Ok,  ENER-CHI.com is where my listeners will go, and again Andreas, thanks so much, it has been really a pleasure having you on, and really learning more about how our body wants to naturally heal itself but also some of the things that we can do to assist in keeping it healthy along the way. So you have, really, you have given me a lot of insight and I do have some more questions I want to ask you so I want to invite you back again. Thank you so much for being on with us today and enlightening our listeners to the “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION“. Thanks, and have a great day!

Andreas Moritz: Thank you Greg.

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Wearing Sunglasses is Not a Good Idea

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Wearing sunglasses is not a good idea

Wearing sunglasses is not a good idea if you want to make sure your body is optimally supplied with vitamin D and the vital UV radiation which we do need in order to sustain our health.

Many people wear sunshades, sunglasses, but they do not realize that this inhibits the production of a very important hormone in the brain that is in control or in charge of regulating the melanin production in the skin. And the melanin in the skin is responsible to protect the skin against sun damage.

Now when  you are wearing sunglasses, you are suppressing, you are basically telling the brain, telling the body that  it is getting darker outside and that it no longer needs to produce melanin, and the lack of melanin during daylight and when you are exposed to the sun while wearing these sunshades, will cause the UV-A portion of the UV light to enter the skin much more deeply than it otherwise would be able to, because with the lack of melanin, UV-A can penetrate very deeply and this can cause a higher concentration of UV-A  in the deeper parts of the skin and cause cell mutation which then can lead to the appearance of damage in those parts of the skin and in areas where there is an accumulation of toxins and acids, trans fatty acids for example,  that is an area where you can develop skin cancer.

However we cannot blame the sun for that, but our behavior, our lifestyle, the eating habits and of course the use of sunglasses. So I advise anyone who is used to wearing sunglasses, to infrequently use them, only use them when it is absolutely necessary, and after a while you would realize that you do not actually need them anymore. We were not born with sunshades on our eyes. Our eyes are perfectly capable of dealing with sun exposure.

I used to wear sunglasses because I could not even look outside, outside a window without tearing up and later on I lived in very, very sunny places like Cyprus or in Africa or in India where sun exposure was very intense, and I no longer needed to wear sunshades, sunglasses ever. and it would never ever bother my eyes again. I also cleaned out my liver and found that it helped a great deal making my eyes much less sensitive.

So, I hope that this simple message on vitamin D and sunshine and the necessity of having regular exposure to sunshine for a white Caucasian person, at least twenty minutes a day, will give you… restore your vitamin D levels,  if you are dark-skinned or black or brown, you would basically need a lot more sun exposure in order to produce the same amount of vitamin D because the melanin concentration in the darker skin people is much higher and therefore the UV-B penetration is lower, that means you produce a lot less vitamin D. This leads to… increases the risk of course among darker- skinned people for diabetes, heart disease and cancers because of the low vitamin D levels. We know now that vitamin D plays a leading role in protecting it against such illness.

So, hope you have benefited from this brief review about vitamin D, if you want to know more about it, I have written a book called “HEAL YOURSELF WITH SUNLIGHT” which covers the healing properties of sunlight to a great extent. And I hope if you are more interested in the subject, you dig into that, it is a beautiful two hundred page book that offers you incredible insights into why the sun has such great healing properties and we need to make use of these incredible healing properties in order to stay healthy, just like a plant in nature requires sun light, we need sun light just as much, we cannot really live without it, without becoming ill.

Thank you and have a beautiful sun-filled day.

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Vitamin D and Sunlight Exposure are Important for Good Health

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Vitamin D and sunlight exposure are important for good health

Vitamin D is a very powerful steroid hormone that our body produces in response to sun exposure. So the sunlight that is touching our skin, that is entering our skin, in the form of UV radiation, that means UV-B and UV-A primarily… the UV-B rays stimulate the production of vitamin D and the UV-A rays make sure that we do not produce too much of it and so UV-A’s primarily in charge of removing any excess vitamin D in the body.

Vitamin D is, if it is ingested, can be very toxic, in fact if you ingest too much of it, it can cause damage to the liver and it can actually kill you. So it is important to make a differentiation between supplemental vitamin D and the vitamin D that is produced in response to sunlight and, I always prefer the second option because, you are assured by the sun exposure that you will never ever overdose on vitamin D.

And the importance here is that vitamin D is produced to a point that it can keep your immune system in check , it keeps it balanced, that means it is not aggressive, it is not over reactive and it is not under reactive. That means you will always be in a place where the body is capable of purifying itself, cleansing itself, without the requirement for external stimulation such as viral material that could also lead to an internal purification. If vitamin D levels are in fact low, which typically happens during the winter months when people do not get enough sun exposure, also who have not received enough vitamin D, or have not recharged vitamin D batteries, so to say, during the summer months, they are particularly prone to develop things like the flu or colds or other viral or bacterial infections.

Vitamin D controls about twenty thousand genes in the body and especially those that are responsible for keeping our body free of infection and free of any harm or contamination. So vitamin D is such a powerful hormone that unfortunately, it is not given the credence and the importance, the value, that it has in our physiology, in our body, in our functions, in the functions of all the different organs and systems that are supposed to keep us balanced and healthy.

Now when vitamin D levels drop, you can gradually, as this happens from year to year, increase the risk of developing cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and many other ailments such as multiple sclerosis which are very, very high comparatively, relatively, to in northern states or colder countries compared with the States or countries nearer to the Equator. So that is where people would have more sun exposure and the incidence of multiple sclerosis and cancer and heart disease and all these other chronic illnesses are much lower in those countries that have a higher sun exposure or where people are more outdoors, living more outdoors than they live indoors.

So, we have a direct connection between vitamin D levels and many of the ailments that people suffer from and it is particularly important for people living in the northern states to find ways to replenish their vitamin D. Now if sun exposure is not sufficient during the winter months then I suggest either to travel to a warmer country if you can, at least to break up the winter, go to Florida or Costa Rica or some other places that have plenty of sunshine during our winter months, or if that is not possible for you, to acquire then a vitamin D lamp or UV lamp, that would help you to keep your vitamin D levels at the level that is required for the body to have a strong healthy immune system and to prevent any infectious illnesses to occur.

Having said that, not even in places where the sun shines in the northern hemisphere, you will not necessarily get enough vitamin D from that during the winter months. You can verify whether you are getting enough or not by standing in the sunlight and if the shadow of your body is longer than the body height, so, in other words if you look down and the shadow has a greater length than your body height then you are not getting vitamin D. If you are, during the midday period, seeing that you shadow is longer than your body’s height then you do not make vitamin D. in that case it would be best to use vitamin D lamp or UV lamp. Dr. Mercola has some standing lamps which are pretty much effective in restoring vitamin D levels. There are smaller lights that you just look at, make sure that you expose at least the upper part of the body or large part of the body to theses UV rays so that you do produce enough vitamin D.

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Dealing with Frequent Urination and Prostate Issues

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Dealing with frequent urination and prostate issues

Hi, this is a question from a person in Ireland who wishes help his / her friend who is seventy-four years old, he is suffering from diabetes, is on medication and he has constant back pain, difficulties with bending, quite frequent urination that also prevents him from longer trips. He likes travelling but he is restricted in doing so. He has a diet that is typical for an average person – very, very high in dairy products, yogurt, milk, red meat, potatoes – typical diet of an Irish farmer and he may not be able to or have the energy or the enthusiasm to make changes to his diet.

Unfortunately that is going to be very difficult because diet has a lot to do with how the kidneys and the prostate work, for example, we know that a diet high in dairy products is responsible for many prostate issues and to help elevate the situation, I strongly recommend to desist eating any dairy products except unsalted butter to small amounts, because the dairy proteins, and particularly the lactose in the protein, can lead to major constrictive occurrences in the prostate and also in the kidneys.

Much of the lower back pain is actually caused by crystals, stones leaving the kidneys and passing through the ureters and particularly in the area where the ureters converge and combine, that is where the lower back pain occurs, and the reason for that is these crystals have very, very sharp edges to them and they are like… very, very sharp surfaces that cut into the ureter lining just like knives or razor blades would cut into it and that can cause an enormous amount of pain, dull pain and sharp pain which restricts the moving ability of that part of the body so bending would definitely become an issue.

But also, these crystals enter the bladder, the urinary bladder, and because of the urinary difficulties there will be retention of urine which will start backwashing into the prostate gland and the prostrate will accumulate those crystals and embed them in the tissues which can cause an enlargement of the prostate and lead to further urinary, frequent urination problems. So, I would suggest that that if he really is serious about improving his quality of life, that he does make changes to his lifelong dietary habits and perhaps make some lifestyle changes which I have discussed in my book “TIMELESS SECRETS OF HEALTH AND REJUVENATION“

The bottom line is how much does he love and accept himself, how much does he value himself and his health, over some dietary habits that he may have become so used to, that it may be difficult to give up, but it will be in his best interest to at least give himself the opportunity to improve the condition, because it is not fun to be so limited in your lifestyle that it will actually deprive the person of even more of joy than having the pleasure of eating some of the things, some yogurt or cheese or red meat which otherwise can create many, many problems to the kidneys, to the digestive system, to the rest of the body.

Diabetes, by the way, can easily be caused by eating animal proteins and dairy products. So the amount of protein that is contained in meat is fairly concentrated, is fairly high, and in order to synthesis the amino acids that are broken down through during the digestive process from eating those foods will require an enormous amount of insulin and so many of the people that are suffering from diabetes now actually do not have diabetes because they have eaten too much sugar or starch foods, but, they are mostly diabetic because their body is forced to produce an enormous amount of insulin in response to eating concentrated protein foods such as dairy food or meat and once again, to synthesize the amino acids that are generated, when you digest meat for example, requires up to ten or sometimes twenty times the amount of insulin that would be required for eating a couple of tablespoons of, or even more, of white sugar.

So there is just no comparison, that is why there is a new study, a fairy new study that came out and was released by the National Institute of Cancer, studying five hundred fifty thousand Americans and they discovered that eating meat on a regular basis increased the risk of dying in these individuals, to the amount of twenty percent, that means, that the chance of dying increasing will also mean that the risk of developing other diseases will be the higher just as much or even more so. And the risk from dying from diabetes is very, very high when you eat meat according to the study.

So once again, you do not have… a person does not have to continue having diabetes and being on medication which has side effects of course, but that diabetes is reversible and so is urinary tract congestion, kidney congestion. I would make sure to drink the kidney tea so that these crystals are broken down and they do not accumulate in the bladder area, in the bladder walls, where they can backwash into the prostate gland, and also making sure that not any new crystals like uric acid are formed from overeating products like meat. Having said that, I wish that this beautiful, wonderful gentleman will recover from this ordeal and taking self responsibilities is one if the best and first steps to recovery.

Having a good life and making sure that during the summer period he is exposing his skin, his entire body to the sun, to at least get some amount of vitamin D generated in his body which will also be incredibly helpful for prostate issues as we now know. Prostate issues respond very, very well to increased amounts of vitamin D in the blood stream and in the tissues of course, and so this would be very beneficial for recovering from the prostate conditions.

Thank you.

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Disorders of the Bones

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By Andreas Moritz 

Although bone is the hardest tissue in the body, it is, nevertheless, very much alive. Human bone consists of 20% water, 30-40% organic material, such as living cells, and 40-50% inorganic material, such as calcium. Bone tissue harbors many blood and lymph vessels, and nerves. The cells responsible for balanced bone growth are the osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts are the bone-forming cells, whereas osteoclasts are responsible for resorption of bone to maintain optimum shape. A third group of cells, known as chondrocytes, are in charge of forming cartilage. Red bone marrow, which produces red and white blood cells, is located in the less dense parts of the bone, called cancellous bone.

Most bone diseases occur when bone cells no longer receive enough nourishment. Gallstones in the liver always lead to lymph congestion in the intestinal tract and, consequently, in other parts of the body (see Disorders of the Circulatory System). Good bone health results from the sustained balance between the functions of osteoblast and osteoblast cells. This delicate balance becomes disturbed when deficient nutrient supply slows the production of new bone tissue by osteoblasts. Osteoporosis results when the amount of bone tissue is reduced because growth of new bone does not keep pace with destruction of old bone. Cancellous bone is usually affected before compact bone is. Compact bone makes up the outer layer of the bone.

In generalized osteoporosis, excess calcium is reabsorbed from bone, thereby raising the calcium levels of blood and urine. This may predispose a person to form stones in the kidneys and, eventually, suffer renal failure. Gallstones in the liver substantially reduce bile production. Bile is essential for the absorption of calcium from the small intestines. Even if there were plenty of calcium made available from one’s food or through food supplements, shortage of bile renders much of the ingested calcium useless for bone formation and other important metabolic processes. In addition, the presence of gallstones in the liver raises the level of harmful acids in the blood, some of which are neutralized by calcium released from the bones and teeth. Eventually, these calcium reserves become depleted, diminishing bone density or bone mass. This may lead to bone and hip fractures, and even death. With over half of all women over age 50 already affected by osteoporosis (albeit only in industrialized nations), it is obvious that the current approach of taking hormones or calcium supplements is a shot in the dark; it does in no way address the causal imbalance in the liver and gallbladder.

Rickets and osteomalacia are diseases that affect the calcification process of bones. In either case, the bones become soft, especially those of the lower limbs, which become bowed by the weight of the body. The fat-soluble Vitamin D, calciferol, is essential for balanced calcium and phosphorus metabolism and, therefore, healthy bone structures. Insufficient bile secretion and disturbance of the cholesterol metabolism, both of which are caused by gallstones in the liver, lead to Vitamin D deficiency. Lack of exposure to ultraviolet light further aggravates the situation.

Infection of bones, or osteomyelitis, may result when there has been a prolonged lymphatic obstruction in the body, especially in or around bone tissues. Consequently, blood-borne microbes gain unhindered access to bones. The microbes may originate from gallstones, a tooth abscess or a boil.

Malignant tumors of the bone can occur when lymphatic congestion in the body and the bones, especially, has reached extreme proportions. The immune system is depressed and malignant tumor particles from the breasts, lungs or prostate gland can spread to those bones that have the best blood supply, i.e., the cancellous bone. Bone cancer and all other diseases of the bone signify lack of nourishment of bone tissue. They usually defy treatment unless all gallstones in the liver are removed and all other organs and systems of elimination are cleared from any existing obstruction as well.

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