Health & WellnessS


Attention

Most Nations in the World Have No GMO-Free Platform To Protect Their Citizens

GMO Free Areas
© Prevent Disease.comNations with no formal GMO-Free platform (in red). Nations with laws restricting GMO in most areas (in yellow), and nations who are either GMO-free or have declared national bans (green).
Unless you live in the dozen or so nations in the world who have declared GMO (genetically modified organism) bans, then you're likely eating GMO. Eating organic is your best chance of avoiding GM foods, but it's almost impossible to avoid them entirely, especially if you're living in a country that doesn't restrict their cultivation, import or export.

The United States, Canada, China, UK, Australia, Mexico, and most of South America, Asia and Africa have no formal GMO-free platforms and their use is typically unrestricted and widespread.

The image above is a shocking reminder of how we have allowed biotech industries to take over our planet. It is my dream to one day see this image turn from the majority red to green. Countries represented in red have no enforced national laws banning GMOs, their import, export or cultivation. Most of these nations have a very large percentage of their citizens eating GM foods.

If you're new to the dangers of GM foods, here are the 7 biggest reasons to avoid them.

Magnify

The Secret Source of Antibiotics in Your Food

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© rodale.comEthanol byproducts serve as another source of antibiotics in livestock feed.
A report calls out a dangerous habit used in farming and energy industries.

For the last several decades, doctors have been warning about the dangerous practice of routinely feeding antibiotics to healthy animals. Many farmers do this in an attempt to ward off disease in crowded conditions and to speed growth, but public-health researchers have linked the overuse of antibiotics in farming to the sharp rise in hard-to-kill - and sometimes fatal - superbugs in people.

While the use of antibiotics in readying farm animals for consumption is no secret to most Americans, another source of antibiotics likely is. A new report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy calls out a surprising way the drugs wind up in the livestock many Americans eat: the process of producing ethanol.

Health

Low IQ? ...Its The Fluoride Stupid

Drinking Tap Water
© GreenMedInfo
If those who believe that fluoride doesn't "make you stupid" (i.e. lower IQ) let themselves be exposed to it, or willfully consume it for its purported "health benefits," doesn't that prove the point?

Could their fluoride-exposed brains and bodies lack the discernment (or IQ) needed to ascertain the obvious dangers of such exposure?

After all, how can one intelligently ignore the evidence supporting a hard and fast connection between increased fluoride exposure and lower IQ? For example....

The study, titled "Fluoride and children's intelligence: a meta-analysis," published in the journal Biological Trace Element Research in 2008, set out to determine" ...whether fluoride exposure increases the risk of low intelligence quotient (IQ) in China over the past 20 years." They reported:
Sixteen case-control studies that assessed the development of low IQ in children who had been exposed to fluoride earlier in their life were included in this review. A qualitative review of the studies found a consistent and strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low IQ. The meta-analyses of the case-control studies estimated that the odds ratio of IQ in endemic fluoride areas compared with nonfluoride areas or slight fluoride areas. The summarized weighted mean difference is -4.97 (95%confidence interval [CI] = -5.58 to -4.36; p<0.01) using a fixed-effect model and -5.03 (95%CI = -6.51 to 3.55; p<0.01) using a random-effect model, which means that children who live in a fluorosis area have five times higher odds of developing low IQ than those who live in a nonfluorosis area or a slight fluorosis area.[1]
Again, areas with the highest levels of fluoride exposure resulted in children with 5 times higher odds of developing low IQ than those in non- or low fluoride areas.

Don't trust the Chinese meta-analysis? How about this Mexican study titled, "Decreased intelligence in children and exposure to fluoride and arsenic in drinking water," published in 2007 in the journal Cadernos de saúde pública, which found even more dramatic drops in children's IQ associated with higher urine concentrations of fluoride. [2]

Attention

Overdosed: Over 25% of Kids on Prescription Drugs

Prescription Drugs
© Natural Society
A report released by Medco Health Solutions Inc., the biggest U.S. pharmacy-benefit manager, shows that over 25% of children and teens are involved with taking prescription medications - although that number may have risen over the past couple years. Based on the company's data from 2009, 7% of U.S. children are on a shocking two or more drugs.

Despite the alarming amount of children being fed prescription medication, many of these drugs were intended or tested for only adult use. Research on the drugs' effects in kids is dismal, and consequences of giving these drugs to children without proper research could result in far more problems than the one meant to be treated. Although popping pills to alleviate pain or fix health issues shouldn't be the answer for anyone, it is especially dangerous for younger bodies that are given doses which aren't even tested for.
"We know we're making errors in dosing and safety," says Dr. Benjamin, who is leading a new National Institutes of Health initiative to study drugs in children.
As time goes on, it seems that more pharmaceutical pills are taken on a grand scale. Not only are adults and even pets being fed prescription drugs, but now children are also becoming reliant on such medications. Many of the prescription pills are statins, ADHD pills, antipsychotics, and sleeping pills. All of which have been shown to cause considerable harm.

Health

MSG: Delicious Seasoning Or Drug And Poison?

MSG
© GreenMedInfo
Poor food quality is a growing problem in industrialized countries increasingly focused on the quantitative dimension of food production, both in terms of the sheer volume of food produced, as well as the revenue and profit generated. In the United States, for instance, consumers do not even have the right to know what is in their food, e.g. genetically modified ingredients are not labeled by default; the use of paint pigment (titanium dioxide) as a "manufacturing aid" in milk, not required to be listed as an ingredient on the label, etc, and raw human sewage and factory-farmed animal waste, as well as petroleum and coal byproducts, are all considered fair game as a growing medium in USDA-approved conventional farming practices.

Given these deteriorating market conditions, our bodies, which spent eons evolving complex sensorial and cognitive pathways to determine whether something was good, or bad, based on appearance, taste, smell, etc., are increasingly being chemically manipulated through food science trickery. And as the food in its unadulterated state becomes more and more unappetizing, if not clearly disgusting, the slick marketing and associated nutritional disinformation becomes less and less effective on the consumer. Enter MSG, a virtual miracle worker when it comes to turning disgusting into delicious....

Turning Yucky To Yummy With The MSG Sleight of Hand

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is a commonly used "flavor enhancer," and so powerfully so that (hyperbole permitting) you could spray it on roadkill and it would taste good. This omnipresent ingredient in modern mass market food takes advantage of our biologically hard-wired taste receptors, and makes it very hard to stop eating the foods "seasoned" with this ingredient. In fact, it is doubtful that without the MSG trick many of these mass market processed foods would be palatable enough to maintain their status as economically viable commodities. Here are some of its many disguises on food labels....

Health

PCB Exposure Linked to Increased Abdominal Fat, Increased Risk of Diabetes

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© thinkloud65.wordpress.com
There is a correlation between high levels of the environmental toxin PCB and the distribution of body fat to the abdomen. This is shown in a new study published May 29 in the scientific journal Obesity. Abdominal fat is already known to increase the risk of diabetes and high blood pressure, among other conditions.

Fat inside the abdomen (visceral fat) is considerably more dangerous that fat near the surface of the body (subcutaneous fat). For instance, fat in the abdomen has previously been linked to the development of diabetes. Monica Lind, associate professor in environmental medicine at the Section for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, together with Lars Lind, professor of medicine, has analysed data from the so-called PIVUS study, which comprises more than 1,000 70-year-olds in Uppsala.

From the same material they have previously shown that PCB can predict the development of diabetes. In the present study, these researchers measured levels in the blood of 23 persistent organic environmental toxins in the more than 1,000 70-year-old women and men. In nearly 300 of them, with the aid of magnetic imaging, they also investigated the amount of fat in various parts of the abdomen. Previous studies have used only BMI as a measure of fatness. They found that having high levels of the highly chlorinated and very persistent compound PCB189 was related to a high proportion of fat in the abdomen.

Sun

Vitamin D Supplementation Needed to Prevent Mobility Difficulties in Older Adults

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© healthylifestyleandspirit.com
Older adults who don't get enough vitamin D -- either from diet, supplements or sun exposure -- may be at increased risk of developing mobility limitations and disability, according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

"This is one of the first studies to look at the association of vitamin D and the onset of new mobility limitations or disability in older adults," said lead author Denise Houston, Ph.D., R.D., a nutrition epidemiologist in the Wake Forest Baptist Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Houston researches vitamin D and its effects on physical function.

The study, published online this month in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, analyzed the association between vitamin D and onset of mobility limitation and disability over six years of follow-up using data from the National Institute on Aging's Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) study. Mobility limitation and disability are defined as any difficulty or inability to walk several blocks or climb a flight of stairs, respectively.

Roses

Antioxidant Supplement Lowers Irritability, Repetitive Behaviors in Autistic Children in Pilot Trial

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© sciencedirect.comSignificant improvements with N-acetylcysteine (NAC) treatment for the primary outcome measures: Aberrant Behavior Checklist irritability subscale (ABC-Irritability; F = 6.80; p < .001; d = .96) with improvement being observed in week 4 and continuing through week 8 and week 12. Error bars denote standard deviations. For clarity, positive error bars are shown for the placebo group, and negative error bars are shown for the NAC group.
A specific antioxidant supplement may be an effective therapy for some features of autism, according to a pilot trial from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital that involved 31 children with the disorder

The antioxidant, called N-Acetylcysteine, or NAC, lowered irritability in children with autism as well as reducing the children's repetitive behaviors. The researchers emphasized that the findings must be confirmed in a larger trial before NAC can be recommended for children with autism.

Irritability affects 60 to 70 percent of children with autism. "We're not talking about mild things: This is throwing, kicking, hitting, the child needing to be restrained," said Antonio Hardan, MD, the primary author of the new study. "It can affect learning, vocational activities and the child's ability to participate in autism therapies."

Health

Chilling Statistics: What Are We Doing To Ourselves And Our Children?

Child and Mum
© Prevent Disease
In four words, "we are killing ourselves." Each successive generation is sicker and more diseased than its predecessor. Autism, learning disabilities, ADHD, asthma, diabetes and many other diseases continue to skyrocket.

No government agency has ever done, or will ever do anything about it except continue to compile statistics. You are our only hope, so here are the facts.

Think about how many government agencies we have that claim to strive for better health, food, safety, etc. We have the "National this", the "Federal that", the "Office of here", "Department of there" and the "Centers of Everywhere."

We have so many agencies overseeing every single aspect of our lives and yet people are no safer or healthier than they were at any point in our recent history.

On the contrary--they are in more danger and at a much greater risk of being in a prolonged state of illness.

The upper echelon and hierarchy that controls the most significant portions of our government wants us sick, and not just for a short period of time, but indefinitely. They want us addicted to pharmaceuticals as early as infancy and they want that dependence to last our entire lifetime. It's time to face the facts:

Arrow Up

Flawed Pharma Study Demonizing Vitamins and Minerals Debunked

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© hivehealthmedia.com
It seems that some people will do just about anything to get ahead, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when a mostly falsified study is released to put down what is primarily known as a fundamentally healthy and intelligent choice.

Unfortunately, people still will try to spread discord amongst their fellow man in an apparent attempt to get ahead; sacrificing the good of the people is unfortunately a small price to pay for an insurmountably large personal gain, in many cases.

This dishonest act can be seen in one such case of misinformation - a 'study' performed in order to bring the market for multivitamins and other very respectable health supplements down a notch.

In the article "Iowa Women's Health Study", much of the piece takes many things that are widely known as beneficial within a large number of vitamin supplements, and links some of these to various deaths in which people with diseases would essentially overdose themselves on vitamins in a desperate grab to fight off the disease.

The article then discounts the fact that many people do not even use vitamins except for when they are sick, wrongfully linking an absurd amount of deaths directly to the use of vitamins and other supplements.

Comment: No Deaths from Vitamins: America's Largest Database Confirms Supplement Safety
There was not even one death caused by a vitamin supplement in 2010, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System.

The new 203-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published online, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.

Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or dietary mineral supplement.
Pharma's Don't-Take-Vitamins Study Diametrically Opposed by Valid Study
Dr. Robert Verkerk, the Executive and Scientific Director of ANH-International went further, criticizing not only the study's methodology but the familiar commercial intent behind the study;
"This study is a classic example of scientific reductionism being used to fulfill a particular need. In this case, it's supplement bashing, a well-known preoccupation of Big Pharma - and an approach that appears to be central to the protection of Big Pharma's profit margins."