A lone doctor put the pieces of the leaky gut/autoimmunity story together almost 50 years ago. He saw the connections between intestinal permeability and diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. He published his findings, he helped the people in his care...and his amazing insights eventually died, were buried and nearly lost to time. Loren Cordain shot me the following two papers from Dr. R. Shatin. [...] Dr. Shatin had pieced together the connection between gut permeability, celiac disease rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

In the early 1960's.

Seven prisoners say it's happening to them - and their health is being damaged because of it.

The Weston A. Price Foundation is seeking an injunction against serving Illinois prisoners soy-laden meals as a source of cheap protein. And now a judge has ruled that the lawsuit will go forward.

Over the past two decades, soy has been widely promoted as a 'miracle' food that can prevent heart disease, fight cancer, fan away hot flashes and build strong bones and bodies in far more than 12 ways.

Sales of soy foods topped $4 billion in the USA for the first time in 2004, with most segments of the industry reporting double-digit growth.¹ Although such growth has mostly slowed, sales aren't reducing and the soy industry has been stepping up its marketing of products all over the world.

The marketing of soy as a 'health food' has been so successful that few people realize that respected scientists have warned that possible benefits should be weighed against proven risks. Even researchers working for the soy industry have admitted to each other at soy symposia that the 'marketing is way ahead of the science'.

A woman starved to death after embarking on a spiritual journey which involved giving up food and water and attempting to exist on nothing but sunlight.

The Swiss woman, who was in her fifties, apparently got the idea after watching the documentary film 'In the Beginning, There Was Light' which features an Indian guru who claims to not have eaten anything in 70 years.

The Zurich newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported Wednesday that the unnamed woman decided to follow the radical fast in 2010.

The paper claimed there have been similar cases of self-starvation in Germany, Britain and Australia.

The prosecutors' office in the Swiss canton of Aargau confirmed Wednesday that the woman died in January 2011 in the town of Wolfhalden in eastern Switzerland.

Promising tool in the battle between pathogen and host, Tel Aviv University research confirms

Once considered unimportant "junk DNA," scientists have learned that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) - RNA molecules that do not translate into proteins - play a crucial role in cellular function. Mutations in ncRNA are associated with a number of conditions, such as cancer, autism, and Alzheimer's disease.

Now, through the use of "deep sequencing," a technology used to sequence the genetic materials of the human genome, Dr. Noam Shomron of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine has discovered that when infected with a virus, ncRNA gives off biological signals that indicate the presence of an infectious agent, known as a pathogen. Not only does this finding give researchers a more complete picture of the interactions between pathogens and the body, but it provides scientists with a new avenue for fighting off infections.

His findings have been published in the journal Nucleic Acid Research.

Fertilisers used in growing feed crops for cattle produce the most potent of the greenhouse gases causing climate change

Meat eaters in developed countries will have to eat a lot less meat, cutting consumption by 50%, to avoid the worst consequences of future climate change, new research warns.

The fertilisers used in farming are responsible for a significant share of the warming that causes climate change.

A study published in Environmental Research Letters warns that drastic changes in food production and at the dinner table are needed by 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic global warming.

It's arguably the most difficult challenge in dealing with climate change: how to reduce emissions from food production while still producing enough to feed a global population projected to reach 9 billion by the middle of this century.

The findings, by Eric Davidson, director of the Woods Hole Research Centre in Massachusetts, say the developed world will have to cut fertiliser use by 50% and persuade consumers in the developed world to stop eating so much meat.

Pediatricians in Canada are starting to discharge children whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated.

More and more, doctors are taking a stand when their medical advice is being ignored, said Dr. Hirotaka Yamashiro, chair of the pediatrics section for the Ontario Medical Association and president of the Pediatricians Alliance of Ontario.

"There have been some pediatricians who are very concerned about that, and may not take on the patient in the beginning," Yamashiro said. "If you are going to fundamentally disagree with one of the things I think is good for your child, what else are we going to have a problem with?"

Dr. Fatima Kamalia, a Thornhill-based pediatrician, says she discharges patients whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated.

For the first time since 2006, it has been announced that an American dairy cow in California has been found to be infected with mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The form of BSE found was a 'rare variant' which The Washington Post reports is "not generally associated with an animal consuming infected feed." While unrelated to mad cow disease, there have been a number of mysterious viruses which have emerged this year including an incurable hand, foot and mouth disease strain (HFMD) in Vietnam which has already killed 19 children and a new mystery virus has resulted in the deaths of thousands of heads of livestock in Europe.

Similarly, an unidentified disease has killed over 20,000 chickens in Nepal and horses and cattle are dying in Maury County, Tennessee due to causes of death which "cannot be determined at this time."

Detective Terry Chandler of the Maury County Sheriff's Department said, "It is a mystery. We don't know what happened."

As previously mentioned these cases are not cases of BSE or linked in any way to the aforementioned California case as far as we know, however the sheer number of cases of mysterious diseases across the world over the past few months is odd indeed.

Please understand, I am not intending to draw spurious links for no reason, I am just pointing out that we are seeing a great deal of these strange deadly diseases spring up seemingly out of nowhere in locales across the globe.

There is an established misconception among consumers that natural or even organic labeling means more nutritious and less toxic ingredients. This is not always the case and breakfast cereals are no exception. The Kashi brand is owned by Kellogg Company, one of the largest breakfast cereal makers in the world.

The ownership base of Kashi is still not widely recognized or common knowledge, especially since the Kashi website continues to paint a picture of being a small company. Investigations into Kashi cereals show deceiving claims after their breakfast products were found to be riddled with genetically modified (GM) and pesticide loaded ingredients.

The deception at Kashi runs deep, especially when it comes to its association with Kellogg which is kept very discreet from the public.

"We are a small (after 25 years, still fewer than 70 of us) band of passionate people," it says, despite being owned by the nation's largest cereal manufacturer. Kellogg does not include its name on Kashi packaging.

The Cornucopia Institute's "Cereal Crimes" investigation uncovered some disturbing facts about this supposed natural breakfast cereal. The investigations found that Kashi brand cereals contain "high levels" of genetically engineered ingredients. These include soy and corn based ingredients.

For non-organic "natural" products making "non-GMO" claims, results showed that these claims cannot always be trusted.

Most companies do not share detailed standards for "natural" foods with the public. Kashi would likely be uncomfortable sharing with theircustomers that their "natural" foods contain hexane-extracted and genetically engineered soy ingredients.

On August 31, 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed against Kashi for allegedly misleading consumers with its "natural" claims. One Kashiproduct in particular, GoLean Shakes, is composed almost entirely of synthetic and unnaturally processed ingredients, according to the plaintiff.

Common anti-depressants could be doing patients more harm than good, according to researchers examined the impact of the medications on the whole body.

A team from McMaster University examined previous patient studies into the effects of anti-depressants and determined that the benefits of most anti-depressants compare poorly to the risks, which include premature death in elderly patients.

'We need to be much more cautious about the widespread use of these drugs,' said study leader and evolutionary biologist Paul Andrews.

'It's important because millions of people are prescribed anti-depressants each year, and the conventional wisdom about these drugs is that they're safe and effective.'