Don't lay off the salt!

Dr. Joel Wallach, BS, DVM, ND, author of Immortality and Dead Doctors Don't Lie, talks about the many conditions that stem from low salt levels in the body. You might be surprised to find out what those are!

A man who suffered from a bloody cough that persisted for more than a year was surprised to find that the cause was a giant ball of fungus growing in his lung, according to a recent report of his case.

The man, a farmworker in Italy, may have contracted a fungal infection, called aspergilloma, while working in the fields. For a year, he struggled with not only the cough but also fever and weight loss. His symptoms hadn't improved despite several courses of antibiotics, according to the report published Oct. 24 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

Aspergilloma, a fungal infection that mainly infects the lungs, is relatively uncommon, and this particular clump of fungus was extremely large, at nearly 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) wide.

"My experience is very large, and it's the biggest I've ever seen," said study co-author Dr. Marcello Migliore, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Catania in Italy.

Aspergilloma enters the lungs through the respiratory tract. It creates a cavity inside the lungs, and then a ball of fungus grows inside that space. The fungus typically infects people with suppressed immune systems or lung problems such as tuberculosis. If left untreated, aspergillomas can cause pneumonia and death, Migliore said.

The asthma drug-like growth additive has enjoyed stealth use in the US food supply for a decade despite being widely banned overseas.

Have you ever heard of ractopamine? Neither have most US food consumers though it is used in 80 percent of US pig and cattle operations. The asthma drug-like growth additive, called a beta-agonist, has enjoyed stealth use in the US food supply for a decade despite being widely banned overseas. It is marketed as Paylean for pigs, Optaflexx for cattle and Topmax for turkeys.

This month, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) have sued the FDA for withholding records pertaining to ractopamine's safety. According to the lawsuit, in response to the groups' requests for information "documenting, analyzing, or otherwise discussing the physiological, psychological, and/or behavioral effects" of ractopamine, the FDA has only produced 464 pages out of 100,000 pages that exist. Worse, all 464 pages have already been released as part of a reporter's FOIA. Thanks for nothing.

New research from North Carolina State University and the University of Minnesota finds that people in the United States want labels on food products that use nanotechnology - whether the nanotechnology is in the food or is used in food packaging. The research also shows that many people are willing to pay more for the labeling.

"We wanted to know whether people want nanotechnology in food to be labeled, and the vast majority of the participants in our study do," says Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, senior author of a paper on the research and Goodnight-Glaxo Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at NC State.

"Our study is the first research in the U.S. to take an in-depth, focus group approach to understanding the public perception of nanotechnology in foods."

Narcolepsy is an under-recognized and underdiagnosed condition. Many patients say it takes years to get a proper diagnosis. Some cases are mistakenly labelled as ADHD or depression. Children struggle in school and can be placed in classes for the learning disabled. Yet many teachers, parents even doctors may not realize is that the symptoms are due to narcolepsy.

Some of the families we interviewed took us it took over a year to get properly diagnosed. Once diagnosed, patients often struggle to get the right mixture of medications, to help patient stay awake and sleep properly, while preventing the cataplexy attacks. Doctors are hoping to find better treatments.

The increase in cases of narcolepsy in various countries is leading to more research into the condition with the possible link to H1N1 -- the first time that a virus has been directly linked to Narcolepsy. We believe people should be aware of this research. The flu can cause a lot of nasty problems, some we still don't yet know about.

It also raises questions about the possible role of a vaccine used only for a short time during the 2009 pandemic.

The GMO wars escalated earlier this month when the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The choice of Fraley was widely protested, with eighty-one members of the prestigious World Future Council calling it "an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability."

Americans spend an estimated $5 billion a year on unproven herbal supplements that promise everything from fighting off colds to curbing hot flashes and boosting memory.But now there is a new reason for supplement buyers to beware: DNA tests show that many pills labeled as healing herbs are little more than powdered rice and weeds.

Using a test called DNA barcoding, a kind of genetic fingerprinting that has also been used to help uncover labeling fraud in the commercial seafood industry, Canadian researchers tested 44 bottles of popular supplements sold by 12 companies. They found that many were not what they claimed to be, and that pills labeled as popular herbs were often diluted - or replaced entirely - by cheap fillers like soybean, wheat and rice.

Consumer advocates and scientists say the research provides more evidence that the herbal supplement industry is riddled with questionable practices. Industry representatives argue that any problems are not widespread.

For the study, the researchers selected popular medicinal herbs, and then randomly bought different brands of those products from stores and outlets in Canada and the United States. To avoid singling out any company, they did not disclose any product names.

Among their findings were bottles of echinacea supplements, used by millions of Americans to prevent and treat colds, that contained ground up bitter weed, Parthenium hysterophorus, an invasive plant found in India and Australia that has been linked to rashes, nausea and flatulence.

It's possible to distinguish the clumps of proteins believed to cause the diseases from well-functioning proteins by using a laser imaging technique. If these clumps are removed, the disease is effectively cured. The laser technique could now offer a means of removing the lumps without surgery or the toxic chemicals currently used.

Lasers could be used to cure diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, a new study suggests.

Researchers say they have made a discovery that may allow them to eradicate Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease using light therapy.

Swedish and Polish scientists have discovered it is possible to distinguish clumps of the proteins believed to cause the diseases from the well-functioning proteins in the body by using a laser imaging technique.

Dr Piotr Hanczyc, of Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden, said: 'Nobody has talked about using only light to treat these diseases until now.

'This is a totally new approach and we believe that this might become a breakthrough in the research of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

'We have found a totally new way of discovering these structures using just laser light.'

If the protein clumps are removed, the disease is, in principle, cured. The problem until now has been detecting and removing the clumps.

The history of the national conviction that dietary fat is deadly, and its evolution from hypothesis to dogma, is one in which politicians, bureaucrats, the media, and the public have played as large a role as the scientists and the science.

~ Gary Taubes

Finally someone from the conventional world of nutrition has stepped forward to state the obvious: Swedish expert committee: A low-carb diet is most effective for weight loss. Mainstream guidelines can no longer ignore what the alternative media has been saying for years: animal fats are good for our health. Every single person in the world should take this opportunity to redeem our ancestral diet which saw us thrive as intelligent human beings. It is about time to hold accountable the aberration of a diet that has taken hold of our world today, with processed and high-carbohydrate foods that perpetuate the worst state of health human history has ever seen.

Big Agra, Big Pharma and the Food Industry reign over a population crippled with dementia, diabetes, obesity, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases, allergies, respiratory problems, digestive problems, and mood disorders which no mainstream guideline can heal or cure satisfactorily. If something is achieved, it is a very bad quality of life at best, requiring something between 4 and 12 pills per day to sustain, and which slowly poisons even the most resilient.

Nurses around the world train diabetic people on dietary guidelines which only perpetuate and worsens their disease. You might be familiar with the following argument: "When calculating your insulin requirements, ignore fats as they don't raise insulin." Right there you have a big clue to the cure! Yet the brainwashing and lack of critical thinking is such that health care providers can't recognize the solution right in front of them even if they spell it out themselves. Then a nonsensical protocol is advised where people have to eat up to 5 times a day, including a carbohydrate meal every single time, just so that prescribed insulin doesn't bring blood sugar levels to dangerously low levels. Most brochures and guidelines given to diabetic patients are written and published by pharmaceutical companies that are then selling the very same prescribed insulin. Imagine if people knew that they only need to drop the carbs in order to decrease their insulin needs. God forbid they should ever cure their diabetes with a low carb diet!

By Ask Umbra

Q. I've been trying to eliminate preservatives and other food additives from my diet. Upon becoming more label aware, I've been shocked to discover how many foods contain "natural flavor." Even butter contains it! I'm suspicious of how natural this flavor actually is! Do you have the scoop on natural flavor additives?

Yours truly,
Lindsay F.
Seattle, WA

A. Dearest Lindsay,

Your question reminds me of one of my favorite old love songs, the one that goes "A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh, and butter is just cream that's been whipped until the fat separates from the whey." Those were simpler times. The "natural flavor" that comes packaged with today's butters (and many other processed foods) may sound innocuous, but you're right to wonder about the stuff.

The FDA's thorough definition of natural flavor essentially boils down to this: It's a substance derived directly from a plant or animal or from the roasting, heating, or fermentation of said animal or plant. The source can be pretty much anything: fruits, veggies, herbs, spices, leaves, roots, bark, meat, eggs, and dairy products among them. Sounds OK so far, doesn't it?