Just days ago over 100 protesters gathered outside of the Centers for Disease Control offices in Atlanta demanding transparency when it comes to vaccines.

So are these people conspiracy theorists, or did they have good reason to be there?

I promise, this is a Reality Check you won't get anywhere else.

It is an incredibly controversial subject, but these protesters outside the CDC here in Atlanta say that the information being provided to the public about vaccines isn't honest.

The latest superfood doesn't come from the Tibetan mountainside or Peruvian rainforest. You can even make it yourself, with a quick trip to a butcher.

The hottest trend in health circles right now? Boiling bones. Bone broth is everywhere, from healthy cookbooks to beauty blogs to a New York City restaurant that shills the soup in to-go cups. If you haven't seen it around, know this: bone broth is made by boiling animal bones, herbs, and vegetables into a flavorful, bone marrow-filled stock.

Devotees are drawn to the broth for its long list of nutritional benefits. Can't digest your food? Joints a little achy? Memory a little hazy? Skin looking a little sallow? Adding bone broth to your diet might do the trick.

Hospitals in 43 states will pay a combined $250 million to settle charges they violated Medicare requirements when implanting cardiac devices in patients.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday it had reached 70 settlements involving 457 hospitals accused of implanting cardioverter defibrillators in patients between 2003 and 2010, before Medicare coverage allowed.

Medicare will cover the devices, which cost around $25,000, but only if doctors wait the recommended 40 days after a patient has had a heart attack and 90 days after a patient has had bypass surgery to do the implant. The waiting periods are to give the heart an opportunity to improve function on its own to the point that an the defibrillator may not be necessary.

Thyroid disease has become very prevalent in today's world, courtesy of a number of different lifestyle factors. An estimated 1 in 8 women aged 35 to 65 has some form of thyroid disease¹ — underactive thyroid being the most common.

More than one-quarter of women in perimenopause are diagnosed with hypothyroidism, in which insufficient amounts of thyroid hormones are produced.

Thyroid hormones² are used by every cell of your body, which is why the symptoms can vary so widely. For example, thyroid hormones regulate metabolism and body weight by controlling the burning of fat for energy and heat.

Thyroid hormones are also required for growth and development in children. They signal the production of virtually all growth factors in your body, including:

• Somatomedins (skeletal tissue growth)
• Erythropoietin (involved in the development of red blood cells)
• Nerve growth factor
• Epidermal growth factor

In pregnant women, thyroid hormone is also involved in the production of prolactin, a hormone responsible for milk production.

Poor thyroid function has been linked to a wide array of serious health conditions,³ from fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome, to infertility, autoimmune diseases, and thyroid cancer.⁴

This is why it's so important to understand how your thyroid works and what can cause it to dysfunction.

The mainstream diet dictocrats are at it again, swearing up and down that meat is the equivalent of Satan himself on your dinner plate. This week, social media has been on fire with the latest WHO report that red meat is probably carcinogenic and processed meat is definitely carcinogenic. Smug vegans and "health" aficianados are crying "I told you so" while Paleo bloggers are crying foul. The real question is: Are red and processed meats actually harmful to our health?

Today on the SOTT Talk Radio Health and Wellness Show, we look into the subject of meat. Is your delicious steak harmful to your health? Is it beneficial? What about bacon? Does the WHO report have any merit? How can we make choices in our meat consumption that provide us our ideal nutrition?

All this will be explored and more as we explore the subject of meat here on the Health and Wellness Show. Join us every Friday at 10am EST.

Running Time: 02:05:00

Download: MP3

Low-fat diets do not lead to greater weight loss in the long term compared to higher-fat diets (eg, low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean diets) of similar intensity, according to a large meta-analysis involving more than 68000 adults, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

"There is no good evidence for recommending low-fat diets," says lead author Dr Deirdre Tobias from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. "Behind current dietary advice to cut out the fat, which contains more than twice the calories per gram of carbohydrates and protein, the thinking is that simply reducing fat intake will naturally lead to weight loss. But our robust evidence clearly suggests otherwise." [1]

Tobias and colleagues did a systematic review and meta-analysis of all randomised trials comparing the effectiveness of low-fat diets to other diets, including no diet, at improving long-term weight loss (at least 1 year) in non-pregnant adults up to the end of July 2014. They took into account the intensity of the diets which ranged from just pamphlets or instructions at the beginning of the programme to intensive multi-component programmes including counselling sessions, meetings with dieticians, food diaries, and cooking lessons.

Analysis of 53 studies involving 68128 adults showed no difference in the average weight loss between reduced-fat diets and higher-fat diets. Indeed, reduced-fat diets only led to greater weight loss when compared with no diet at all, and resulted in less weight loss compared with low-carbohydrate interventions, although differences in weight change were small (weighted mean difference 1.15 kg/2.5 lbs). Similarly, when just considering trials without a weight loss goal (eg, those assessing lipids or cancer endpoints), participants following a reduced-fat diet lost similar amounts of weight on average compared to those on other diets.

According to Dr Tobias, "The science does not support low-fat diets as the optimal long-term weight loss strategy. To effectively address the obesity epidemic, we will need more research to identify better approaches for long-term weight loss and weight maintenance, including the need to look beyond differences in macronutrient composition--the proportion of calories that come from fat, carbohydrate, and protein. Long-term adherence is critical for the success of any dietary intervention, and one should also take into account other long-term health effects of their dietary choices."[1]

On Friday, the Pepsi corporation admitted that its Aquafina bottled water is not purified water or spring water, but simply plain old tap water. The company will now be forced to change the labeling of the brand to reflect that it is just tap water.

Many informed customers choose bottled water because they are concerned about the quality of tap water, which is many times riddled with fluoride and pharmaceuticals. Sadly, we are now learning that in many cases, bottled water is actually not any better than tap water.

Over the years, an advocacy group called, "Corporate Accountability International" has been checking the contents of bottled water and pressuring companies to stop their false advertisement.

Reducing consumption of added sugar, even without reducing calories or losing weight, has the power to reverse a cluster of chronic metabolic diseases, including high cholesterol and blood pressure, in children in as little as 10 days, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and Touro University California.

"This study definitively shows that sugar is metabolically harmful not because of its calories or its effects on weight; rather sugar is metabolically harmful because it's sugar," said lead author Robert Lustig, M.D., MSL, pediatric endocrinologist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco. "This internally controlled intervention study is a solid indication that sugar contributes to metabolic syndrome, and is the strongest evidence to date that the negative effects of sugar are not because of calories or obesity."

A central Massachusetts boarding school is being sued by parents who claim their 12-year-old son has fallen ill due to the school's unusually strong Wi-Fi signal.

According to the parents, their son (referred to publicly as "G") has been diagnosed with Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome (EHS). He began suffering headaches, nausea and nosebleeds shortly after the Fay School in Southboro upgraded to a stronger Wi-Fi signal in 2013. They are now asking the court to compel the school to either turn down its wireless signal or switch to a completely wired (Ethernet cable) Internet system, in addition to $250,000 in damages.

It's becoming a well-known fact that processed food and agrichemical companies speciously hire front groups and disinformation "shills" to push the lie that chemicals are safe, organics are dangerous and GMOs are just fine for your children. To bring this dark reality further into the limelight, the group U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) has created a corporate "Hall of Shame" highlighting the worst of the worst when it comes to groups that are actively trying to hide the truth about food from you and your family.