In the United States everything is polluted.

Democracy is polluted with special interests and corrupt politicians.

Accountability is polluted with executive branch exemptions from law and the Constitution and with special legal privileges for corporations, such as the Supreme Court given right to corporations to purchase American elections.

The Constitution is polluted with corrupt legal interpretations from the Bush and Obama regimes that have turned constitutional prohibitions into executive branch rights, transforming law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of government.

Waters are polluted with toxic waste spills, oil spills, chemical fertilizer run-off with resulting red tides and dead zones, acid discharges from mining with resulting destructive algae such as prymnesium parvum, from toxic chemicals used in fracking and with methane that fracking releases into wells and aquifers, resulting in warnings to homeowners near to fracking operations to open their windows when showering.

© Arab Fancy

The FDA has taken a freely-available herbal product, sap of the dragon's blood tree, defined it as the drug Fulyzac, & handed it to Big Pharma. Nature's gift is being polluted. What you get after Big Pharma and & the FDA get their hands on it has lost much of its value and often been rendered into a poison, the very nature of a drug.

An extract from a South American tree known as dragon's blood is now classed as a drug and the FDA has handed sole rights to a single pharmaceutical corporation. The drug, which is made by Salix Pharmaceuticals, will be sold by Napo Pharmaceuticals of San Francisco under the brand name of Fulyzac. The generic term for it is crofelemer. It will be sold as a treatment for the diarrhea that's a common adverse effect of harsh HIV drugs.

The tree is botanically named Croton lechleri and called sangre de grado in Spanish and Portuguese, long known to have several health benefits, extract from the tree is commonly available in health food stores around the world. This, though, is likely to change in the face of the FDA's action. It signals their role in facilitating Big Pharma's takeover of the natural world's largesse. Piece by piece, anything that holds any health value is being declared a drug. Exclusive rights to that drug are then handed over to a private corporation.

Washington University engineering researchers have created a new type of air-cleaning technology that could better protect human lungs from allergens, airborne viruses and ultrafine particles in the air.

The device, known as the SXC ESP, was created by a team led by Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

A recent study of the device, published inApplied and Environmental Microbiology, found that it could help to prevent respiratory and viral infections and inhalation-induced allergic reactions more efficiently than existing filter-based systems.

Asthma, a chronic respiratory disease that can be triggered by inhaling allergens, pollen, pet dander and other particles, is one of the most costly health-care expenses in the United States at more than $50 billion.

"Because many people in developed countries spend the majority of time indoors, properly maintaining indoor air quality is an absolute necessity to protect public health," Biswas says.

Health officials and rescue mission leaders are trying to stop a unique type of tuberculosis that has infected 78 people and killed 11.

Public health officials have launched a new, coordinated attack to contain a persistent outbreak of tuberculosis on downtown Los Angeles' skid row, including a search for more than 4,500 people who may have been exposed to the disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dispatched scientists to Los Angeles to help local health officials determine why the disease is spreading and how to stop it.

Officials say 11 have died since 2007. Sixty of the 78 cases were among homeless people who live on and around skid row.

Scientists have recently linked the outbreak to a tuberculosis strain that is unique to Los Angeles, with a few isolated cases outside the area.

"This is the largest outbreak in a decade," said Jonathan Fielding, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. "We are really putting all of our resources into this."

Ketogenic diets have been prescribed for seizures for a long time. The actual research diets used in the past were pretty dismal and seemed to involve drinking a lot of cream and eating a lot of mayonnaise. At Johns Hopkins, pediatric patients were admitted to the hospital for a 48 hour fast and then given eggnog (minus the rum and sugar, I'm guessing) until ketosis was achieved (usually took about 4 days). In addition, ketogenic diets were calorie restricted to just 75-90% of what would be considered a child's usual calorie intake, and often they were fluid-restricted too (1)! If we're talking soybean oil mayonnaise, you could see how someone could get into trouble with mineral deficiencies and liver problems pretty quickly

To understand "dismal," some of the latest research showed that a "modified Atkins protocol" was just as good as the classic ketogenic diet, and so much more liberating, as the patients were allowed up to 10 grams of carbohydrates daily, and they didn't begin with the fast, and they weren't calorie restricted (2)(3). While the classic ketogenic diet was 4:1:1 fat to carbs to protein. If you use MCT oil for 50% of your calories (have to add it in slowly though to prevent vomiting, diarrhea, and cramping!), you could increase the carbohydrates and proteins to a 1.2:1:1 fat:carb:protein and still get the same numbers of magical ketones circulating. And while "MCT oil" sounds nice and yummy when it is gorgeous coconut milk, this MCT Oil 100% Pure 32 fl.oz doesn't look quite as appetizing, especially when that is going the be half of what you eat for the foreseeable future (4). You can see why researchers consider ketogenic diets (especially the original versions) to be extremely difficult and unappetizing (they were), whereas seasoned low-carbers (who have a bit of a different idea what a ketogenic diet is) will find that attitude ridiculous, especially when you compare a ketogenic diet to the side effects of some anti-epileptic medications.

So it looks like modified Atkins (very very low carb, but not zero carb) and a preponderance of MCT is the same, ketone-wise, for the brain as the classic cream-heavy ketogenic diet. And what does it mean to have a ketogenic brain? Before, we talked about protons, but now I'm going to examine neurotransmitters and brain energy more closely. Specifically, glutamate and GABA (5).

If you recall, GABA is the major inhibitory neurotransmitter in the mammalian nervous system. Turns out, GABA is made from glutamate, which just happens to be the major excitatory neurotransmitter. You need them both, but we seem to get into trouble when have too much glutamate. Too much excitement in the brain means neurotoxicity, the extreme manifestation of which is seizures. But neurological diseases as varied as depression, bipolar disorder, migraines, ALS, and dementia have all been linked in some way to neurotoxicity.

The other day I received a message from a high school friend whom I remember to be brilliant, inspiring and creative. She was just a genius. Recently I learned that she also became a medical doctor and has worked in a public health care system treating elderly people ever since. She sent me a message over facebook frustrated because she found herself in the ridiculous situation of pointing out the obvious to Big Pharma reps and colleagues in a heated argument. Statin drugs - which are used to lower cholesterol - were killing old folks. The elderly are falling and getting some serious fractures at the very best and she was certain it was due to the statin drugs. Here is just SOME relevant information for what is worth, in addition to a 101 as to why cholesterol and its quality is so important for our health. May not doctor find him or herself in the situation of having to argue with a pharmaceutical rep or colleague about his or better judgement of eliminating statin drugs and/or advising high quality fat from animal products which saw us thrive for millennia.

The stuff of life

Cholesterol is the one unjustly vilified substance which our bodies can naturally make since it is absolutely essential to our functioning. Cholesterol is so crucial, the liver is careful to produce some 1000-1400 milligrams of it each day. We are told by the "Official Thought-Control Institutions" to eat up to 300 milligrams of cholesterol from our diets. But our liver production of cholesterol is controlled by feedback mechanisms depending on how much we eat. If we eat too much we produce less, leaving much needed liver energy for other important tasks such as detoxification from this most polluted modern world.

So when we eat more fat, our liver makes less, and vice-versa. But if we are hardly eating any cholesterol and we block its production with drugs, then we are literally screwed. That is the real meaning behind the most profitable drugs in the history of the world - statin medications to lower cholesterol blood.

Restricting or eliminating cholesterol overburdens the liver who now has to overproduce it through its enzyme - HMG-CoA reductase from carbohydrates in our diet to make up for the deficit. It is this enzyme the one that is blocked by statins drugs at the expense of depleting our bodies from the so much needed coenzyme CoQ10 - a key nutrient to our heart and overall health. Furthermore, producing cholesterol from carbs yields a bad quality cholesterol profile.

Colorado lawmakers Thursday rejected a proposal that would have required genetically engineered food to be labeled, amid fears that the mandate would burden farmers and raise food prices.

A Democratic House committee voted 7-2 against the bill after more than five hours of emotional testimony from mothers seeking labels and farmers saying the requirement would hurt them. The lawmakers ultimately sided with farm groups that said the change would need to be done on a federal level and not by an individual state.

"That's a price Washington should not ask one state's citizens to bear," concluded Rep. Kathleen Conti, R-Littleton.

More than 60 countries require genetically modified foods to be labeled, but the U.S. isn't one of them. Only Alaska has enacted legislation requiring the labeling of genetically engineered fish and shellfish products.

The federal government and dozens more states are considering similar label requirements amid complaints from consumers that genetically engineered foods may be unsafe.

Have you had your minimum daily requirement of "nanos" today?

Nanomaterials, that is - manufactured or natural substances that are broken down in high-tech facilities to be teensie-tiny, molecule-sized particles. Don't look for them on the ingredient list of food packages, because the big corporate processors of our edibles don't want us to know that their goodies include these miniscule, mysterious "things" that, when ingested, go to places in the body that regular foodstuffs don't directly enter - such as straight into your cells.

There has been precious little research on the human health impacts of nanos - though studies have shown them having unpleasant effects on mice. Also, our food regulators have flatly (and ominously) said they don't have enough information even to evaluate the safety of nanomaterials.

So why are they popping up in processed foodstuffs? No one is talking - except a few anonymous food manufacturers who express enthusiasm for the ability for the whatever-they-are to make processed foods seem "creamier" and to "brighten" food colors.

Would you put your baby or toddler outside in the freezing cold for their lunchtime nap? Most Nordic parents wouldn't give it a second thought. For them it's part of their daily routine.

Daytime temperatures this winter in Stockholm have regularly dropped to -5C (23F) but it's still common to see children left outside by their parents for a sleep in the pram.

Wander through the snowy city and you'll see buggies lined up outside coffee shops while parents sip on lattes inside.

And if you are visiting friends and your child needs a nap, you may be offered the garden or balcony instead of a bedroom.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University recently found that disruptions in the body's circadian rhythm are associated with increased risks of developing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Past studies have looked at the relationship between the body's metabolism and the operation of the body's biological clock. This study is the first to definitively prove that the body's circadian biological clock controls insulin activity.

A hormone produced in the body's pancreas, insulin helps in controlling the body's fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Carbohydrates are broken down during the digestive process into simple sugars called glucose; the glucose is then absorbed into the bloodstream. Insulin also works on transferring glucose into the body's cells, allowing excess glucose to be removed from the blood. When insulin's ability in removing glucose from the blood is diminished, it is known as insulin resistance. Researchers found that, during inactive phases, the body is more sensitive to insulin than high activity periods. As such, glucose is changed into fat during inactive phases and engaged in tissue building or other forms of energy during active phases.

"That is why it is good to fast every day...not eat anything between dinner and breakfast," commented Carl Johnson, a professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, in a statement.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, the circadian rhythm, otherwise known as the "internal body clock," manages the body's 24-hour cycle of biological processes and is found in both plants and animals.