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Gluten-Free, low-carb paleo diet hits the mainstream

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:50 UTC
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© amazon.com
My book, The No Grain Diet, was published in 2003 and my clinical recommendation included eliminating gluten as a first line intervention before I would fine tune a patient's diet.

It's taken well over a decade, but the Gluten-Free, Low-Carb Paleo (GFLCP), which is essentially the same kind of high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diet I've been promoting, is now hitting the mainstream. Gluten-free diets are also becoming widely recognized.

For those with celiac disease, avoiding gluten is vital, but physicians are also starting to recognize that many have some sort of gluten intolerance, and fare better on a gluten-free diet.

Now, the US Food Administration (FDA) will start to crack down on food manufacturers misusing the gluten-free label, which is good news for those trying to avoid gluten.

Four years ago, I warned that many food products bearing the gluten-free label were in fact contaminated with sometimes high amounts of gluten. In one study, even naturally gluten-free products tested positive to gluten, courtesy of cross-contamination during processing.
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Pills

Witness to corruption: The merchants of speed, a modern-day ADHD medicine show

Lawrence Diller, M.D.
Huffington Post
Thu, 07 Aug 2014 16:53 UTC
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© Getty images
During my entire 30-plus-year career as a behavioral/developmental pediatrician in private practice, I have attended only one drug company-sponsored dinner where I was paid for just showing up.

In 2003, I received a letter from Eli Lilly and Company, inviting me to hear a former Columbia Medical School classmate - what an amazing coincidence - talk about Strattera (atomoxetine), Lilly's new drug for the treatment of ADHD/ADD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and non-hyperactive inattention). The dinner would be at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, one of the city's fanciest venues. As an additional inducement, I was offered a $500 "consulting fee" and a continuing medical education (CME) credit in return for listening to this one-hour presentation.

I had been to enough industry-sponsored CME lectures to know that the session would have a biological/medication slant that I don't share. Plus, the presentations were often insultingly simplistic and capped off by an obvious sales pitch. Still, I was intrigued; what would I have to do for my $500? After a bit of a struggle, I arranged to have the money donated to the Omega Boys Club of San Francisco. Then I went to the dinner.

Comment: According to research Drugs for ADHD 'is not the answer'. For more information about how the use of hyperactivity drugs has soared and the serious health effects associated with treating children with amphetamine drugs such as Adderall (dextroamphetamine) and Ritalin (methylphenidate) read the following articles:
Spending on ADHD drugs soared from $759 million in 2000 to $3.1 billion in 2004, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting firm. The United States uses approximately 90% of the world's Ritalin. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an agency of the World Health Organization, deplored that "10 to 12 percent of all boys between the ages 6 and 14 in the United States have been diagnosed as having ADD and are being treated with Ritalin." With 53 million children enrolled in school, probably more than 5 million are now taking stimulant drugs. The number of children on these drugs has continued to escalate. A recent study in Virginia indicated that up to 20% of white boys in the fifth grade were receiving stimulant drugs.
While the author focuses on information about the 'new' ADD/ADHD drug Strattera (atomoxetine) he makes no mention of the alternatives to drugging children. For more information about how diet can be an effective alternative to drug therapy read the following articles:

How to Stop the Epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder
There is an effective alternative to drug therapy: Nutrition.
A body of scientific research supports the importance of nutritional factors in ADHD. I have treated hundreds of children with ADHD over the past thirty years. Almost all have improved without the need for drug therapy.
Over 50% of children with ADHD crave sweets, often at the expense of nutritious food. About 70 percent of children who crave sweets have much more control over their behavior when their food is low in added sugar.
A Better Prescription for Generation Rx

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Syringe

Senior government scientist breaks 13 years of silence on CDC's vaccine-autism fraud

AutismMediaChannel
Youtube
Fri, 22 Aug 2014 11:52 UTC
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CDC whistleblower confesses to vaccine-autism fraud.


"He knows that he is culpable of permanent damage for a large significant portion of the population in the United States."

"They knew, they let it happened and they could have stopped it."

Comment: If you have heard about the controversy, then you have heard about Andrew Wakefield who has been the most blamed doctor for any mistrust in the MMR vaccine. He published a study linking MMR with autism and bowel disease. His reputation was basically destroyed for daring to speak out the truth with what amounts to bullying. He was accused of the very things the Establishment was doing (conflict of interest, "crimes against humanity") instead of any real science at all. All at the expense of our children.

For more information, see:

- Courts quietly confirm MMR Vaccine causes Autism
- Doctor who exposed MMR-autism link defends himself at General Medical Council
- Dr. Andrew Wakefield on The Poisoning of Young Minds
- Study Linking Autism, Child Vaccine Retracted

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No Entry

Making a choice and sending a message to the Universe: GMO production in China halted


RT
Thu, 21 Aug 2014 06:39 UTC
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© Reuters / Stringer
In a surprise U-turn, China's Ministry of Agriculture has decided not to continue with a program which developed genetically-modified rice and corn. Some environmentalists say public concerns about GM crops played a key role in the decision.

On August 17, when these permits were up for renewal, the Ministry of Agriculture decided not to extend them. In 2009, the ministry's Biosafety Committee issued approval certificates to develop the two crops, rice and corn.

Developed by the Huazhong Agricultural University, near Wuhan, it was hoped that the GMO strains would help to reduce pesticide use by 80 percent, while raising yields by as much as 8 percent, said Huang Jikun, the chief scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Reuters in 2009. It is illegal to sell genetically-modified rice on the open market in China.
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Attention

Illness with Ebola-like symptoms kills at least 70 in Congo


Fox News
Fri, 22 Aug 2014 05:32 UTC
congolese
© Reuters/Finbarr O`ReillyCongolese travel by canoe on the Congo River in the northern province of Equateur, where a rash of Ebola-like deaths has prompted Health Minister Dr. Félix Kabange Numbi Mukwampa to investigate
At least 70 people have died in northern Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, denying that the illness was Ebola.

A WHO report dated Thursday and seen by Reuters said that 592 people had contracted the disease, of whom 70 died. Five health care workers, including one doctor, are among the dead.

"This is not Ebola," a WHO spokesman said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.

A local priest who asked not to be named said that the illness had affected several villages and estimated that the death toll was over 100 people.

Comment: Notice these two facts

1. the symptoms are very much like those of Ebola
2. the fatality rate is lower in the remote jungle province where this illness is currently taking people's lives

We can't know for sure, but the above causes us to wonder whether it is indeed the Ebola virus and whether the conditions of living of the Congolese in the remote jungles is what causes the lower rates of fatality. If this is the case, the WHO should be paying strict attention.

Consider also these items from the not so distant past:

Dec 2008: Two more dead from Ebola outbreak in DR Congo

Sept 2007: Congo Ebola death toll hits 172

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Gold Bar

Butter makes your pants fall off

Bob Briggs
YouTube
Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:15 UTC

This video is family friendly. The title is referring to a high fat diet making your big pants baggy, as you lose weight.

How I lost 145 lbs in 14 months, cured my acid reflux, lost my joint pain, and lowered my triglycerides, by eating butter and other healthy fats.
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Beaker

More pesticides coming to our food

Dr. Mercola
Mercola.com
Tue, 19 Aug 2014 18:24 UTC
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© waggonerhealth.com
One of the "benefits" of genetically modified (GM) crops is supposed to be a significant reduction in the use of chemicals, such as highly toxic herbicides and pesticides.

The idea, theoretically anyhow, was that herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant plants, which make up the majority of GM crops, would make it easier to kill weeds and diminish crop loss to harmful pests.

They would require farmers to use far less chemicals to control weeds and pests, so the pesticide companies, like Monsanto, assured us. In practice, however, this "promise" has been consistently broken.

In 2012, research showed that GM crops have led to a 404-million pound increase in overall pesticide use from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011. This equates to an increase of about 7 percent per year.

The excessive use of agrichemicals by farmers has now, in turn, led to herbicide resistance, both in weeds and pests, leaving farmers to struggle with an increasingly difficult situation. More than two dozen weed species are now resistant to glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto's broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup.

But instead of getting to the bottom of the weed-resistance problem, which is the GM crops at its foundation, US regulators are adding fuel to the fire and getting ready to approve more GM crops that, ironically, call for even more use of herbicides...
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Ambulance

Ebola death toll hits 1350; CDC says there have been 68 scares in US in past three weeks


The Extinction Protocol
Thu, 21 Aug 2014 00:00 UTC
ebola testing
The World Health Organization says the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is now at least 1,350 people. The latest figures Wednesday show that the deaths are mounting fastest in Liberia, which now accounts for at least 576 of the deaths. The U.N. health agency also warned in its announcement that "countries are beginning to experience supply shortages, including fuel, food, and basic supplies." This comes after a number of airlines and shipping services have halted transport to the worst affected capitals of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

In a desperate bid to halt the disease's spread, authorities in Liberia have quarantined off a huge slum that is home to 50,000 people. Protests erupted in West Point on Wednesday, where residents threw rocks at police. At least four people were injured in clashes with Liberian soldiers and police after the government laid barbed wire barricades around a densely populated slum in an attempt to contain the spread of Ebola. Young men surged towards the barricades and hurled stones at troops, who responded by firing live rounds of ammunition, the New York Times reports. Agence France-Presse reports that at least four people were injured in the skirmish. - Time
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Heart

"Immune cytokine model of depression" suggests chronic inflammation as root cause

Chris Kresser
ChrisKresser.com
Thu, 21 Aug 2014 08:38 UTC
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© UnknownMore than 350 million people are suffering from depression world-wide
The idea that depression and other mental health conditions are caused by an imbalance of chemicals (particularly serotonin and norepinephrine) in the brain is so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that it seems almost sacrilegious to question it.

Of course Big Pharma has played a role in perpetuating this idea. Antidepressant drugs, which are based on the chemical imbalance theory, represent a $10 billion dollar market in the U.S. alone. According to the CDC, 11 percent of Americans over 12 years old take antidepressants, and they are the second-most prescribed medications (after cholesterol-lowering drugs). Doctors wrote a staggering 254 million prescriptions for antidepressants in 2010. (1)

Yet as popular as this theory has become, it is riddled with problems. For example:
  • Reducing levels of norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine does not produce depression in humans, even though it appears to do so in animals.
  • Although some depressed patients have low levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, the majority do not. Several studies indicate that only 25 percent of depressed patients have low levels of these neurotransmitters.
  • Some depressed patients have abnormally high levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, and some patients with no history of depression have low levels of them. (2)
What if depression isn't caused by a "chemical imbalance" after all? More specifically, what if depression itself is not a disease, but a symptom of an underlying problem?

That is exactly what the most recent research on depression is telling us. A new theory called the "Immune Cytokine Model of Depression" holds that depression is not a disease itself, but instead a "multifaceted sign of chronic immune system activation." (3)

To put it plainly: depression may be a symptom of chronic inflammation.
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Health

Ebola West Africa: Deathtoll soars above 1,200

Simon Tomlison and Amanda Williams
MailOnline
Tue, 19 Aug 2014 05:28 UTC
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© Getty ImagesDumped in the street: No health-care for this very sick young boy
The Ebola virus killed 84 people in just three days last week, bringing the global death toll to 1,229, the World Health Organisation revealed today.

It comes as 17 patients suspected of having Ebola who disappeared after a health centre in Liberia was attacked by a mob have been traced.

But local clinics are refusing help to those who have been found, including a 10-year-old boy, for fear they will be infected with the deadly virus.
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