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The Modern Assault on Eyesight

Mark Sisson
Marksdailyapple.com
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:57 UTC
Image
© Unknown
We in the Primal community talk a lot about the modern medical situation - the growing prevalence of lifestyle disease and the misguided, costly paths conventional health wisdom too often prescribes. Still, some conditions seem less - well, conditional - than others. Take eyesight, for example. If we wear glasses or contacts, we look to our families or age. While genetics and years certainly have their influence, is that the entire story for everyone? Is vision a wholly "closed" process - set in motion and then untouched by overall health and physiologic interaction, or is it more dynamic and systemic than that?

I get a fair number of emails from folks who wonder about their eye health in a Primal context. A while back I looked at the potential role of sunlight in preventing myopia, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. The post got people thinking. What are the other factors and theories behind the myopia surge? And as for readers' individual circumstances, were they really destined to wear glasses? Is there anything they can do once they're already living with a vision prescription? Glasses or no, what can we do to support the well-being of our eyes throughout our lifetimes?
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Bacon

5 Reasons Not to Worry About Your Cholesterol Numbers

Chris Kresser
Chris Kresser-Medicine for the 21st Century
Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00 UTC
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I do a lot of public speaking. As you might suspect, regardless of the specific topic I'm presenting the dietary recommendations I make are always essentially the same: high-fat, nutrient-dense and low in toxins. Since omega-6 vegetable oils are toxins, when I say high fat I'm talking about saturated and monounsaturated fat. You know this.

But a lot of people I speak to don't. They fully steeped in 50 years of mainstream propaganda perpetuating the idea that saturated fats cause heart disease - primarily by raising blood cholesterol. So, inevitably, when I stand up in front of a group of people and tell them all to eat lots of saturated fat, I get a question that goes something like this:
But won't that raise my cholesterol? And won't high cholesterol give me a heart attack?
I haven't yet perfected an answer that can dismantle a half century of cultural brainwashing about fat and cholesterol in less than 3 minutes. But I'm working on it.
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Red Flag

Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality in Hamsters

Dr. Jeffery Smith
Huffington Post
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:49 UTC
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© responsibletechnology.org
"This study was just routine," said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry.

After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups.

And if this isn't shocking enough, some in the third generation even had hair growing inside their mouths - a phenomenon rarely seen, but apparently more prevalent among hamsters eating GM soy.

Comment: For a more in depth look at the connection between GMO foods such as soy and corn, and sterility in animals and possibly even humans read the following article Children of the Corn: GMOs Don't Qualify As Food
Mr. Engdahl shows without question that the USDA, through genetic engineering, has turned "food" into a means of covert sterilization. Now, it doesn't need to be withheld and nations don't need to accept, under the threat of starvation, radical reductions in the birthrate to satisfy the demands of US policy makers. Instead, with GMOs, profits can be procured with GMOs at the same time sterilization of populations can occur.

GMOs, just like vaccines, can only cause "reduction of populations" if they are "approved" by governments. Is this why the US government and corporations are using the grandest of humanitarian pretexts (to feed the world's poor starving people, to protect the world from starvation from global warming, etc) to justify forcing them - unwanted, untested, and unlabeled - on millions?


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Attention

Tasers Could Cause Cardiac Arrest, Expert Says

Neal Hall
Vancouver Sun
Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00 UTC
The electrical shock from a Taser stun gun used by police could cause cardiac arrest, a Vancouver heart surgeon testified Tuesday at a Taser inquiry.

"One can conclude the risk of death from a Taser is small but not insignificant," Dr. Michael Janusz, a heart surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital, told inquiry commissioner Thomas Braidwood.

"Tasers must be regarded as being capable of causing cardiac arrest," he said.

"The device appears to be safer for all concerned, including bystanders, than guns and clubs, but its consequences are not trivial," he added. "Hearts don't simply stop," Janusz said there has to be underlying heart disease or other contributing factors such as lack of oxygen due to asphyxia or massive blood loss or severe metabolic abnormalities such as acidosis or abnormal potassium levels..

He said first responders should be thoroughly trained in providing first aid and use of a defibrillator.

Another expert, Vancouver cardiologist Dr. Charles Kerr, made a similar submission.

Janusz also questioned the credibility of Taser International, the manufacturer of the Taser, which maintains that the devices could not cause cardiac arrest.
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Question

How Far Wrong Can Cholesterol Be?

Dr. William Davis
trackyourplaque.com
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:25 UTC
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© blog.drsinatra.com
Conventional thinking is that high LDL cholesterol causes heart disease. In this line of thinking, reducing cholesterol by cutting fat and taking statin drugs thereby reduces or eliminates risk for heart disease.

Here's an (extreme) example of just how far wrong this simpleminded way of thinking can take you. At age 63, Michael had been told for the last 20 years that he was in great health, including "perfect" cholesterol values of LDL 73 mg/dl, HDL 61 mg/dl, triglycerides 102 mg/dl, total cholesterol 144 mg/dl. "Your [total] cholesterol is way below 200. You're in great shape!" his doctor told him.

Being skeptical because of the heart disease in his family, he had a CT heart scan. His coronary calcium score: 4390. Needless to say, this is high . . . extremely high.
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Attention

Myriad Chemicals Measured in Urban Children May Further Health Risks

Joe Braun
Environmental Health News
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:31 UTC
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© unknown
Compared to other U.S. children, those living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods are exposed to higher levels of a diverse mix of environmental chemicals that may add to their already greater risk for adverse, chronic health problems.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are exposed to higher levels of a slew of environmental chemicals - some currently used and some long banned - than U.S. children from other socioeconomic backgrounds, finds a study of elementary school children from urban Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The 7- to 12-year-olds had elevated concentrations of metals, industrial chemicals and markers for pesticides and tobacco smoke in their blood and urine. The results are published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.

These findings agree with other studies reporting higher concentrations of environmental chemicals in children. What is important about this study is that these children were from low-income households where they face additional hardships from poverty. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more vulnerable to health issues, such as asthma and behavioral problems. Exposure to these chemicals may increase this risk even more.

Comment: For more information about toxic chemicals and their effects on children's health read the following articles:

Study Found More than 200 Chemicals in Cord Blood of African American, Asian and Hispanic Newborns
Doctors Eye Chemicals for Rise in Child Cancers
Everyday Chemicals May Be Harming Kids
Children's Diseases Linked to Chemicals on Rise
Mind Games: How Toxic Chemicals are Impairing Children's Ability to Learn

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Info

Dogs Detect Early Lung Cancer Through Smell


redOrbit
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:12 UTC
Cancer Detector
© redOrbit

New research claims that dogs are able to reliably detect early lung cancer by sniffing samples of patients' breath.

The researchers found that trained animals correctly identified 71 percent of people who had the disease and correctly dismissed 93 percent of those who were healthy.

According to the study, the dogs were able to distinguish between people who had tumors and those who had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which is a separate condition also linked to smoking.

Scientists at Schillerhoehe Hospital in Germany say dogs are able to use their sensitive noses to detect chemicals known to volatile organic compounds that are present in cancer sufferers and exhaled in their breath.

Thorsten Walles, the study author, said in a press release: "In the breath of patients with lung cancer, there are likely to be different chemicals to normal breath samples and the dogs' keen sense of smell can detect this difference at an early stage of the disease. Our results confirm the presence of a stable marker for lung cancer.

"This is a big step forward in the diagnosis of lung cancer, but we still need to precisely identify the compounds observed in the exhaled breath of patients. It is unfortunate that dogs cannot communicate the biochemistry of the scent of cancer!"
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Attention

US, Virginia: 'Brain-Eating Amoeba' Claims Second Victim This Month

Mikaela Conley and Courtney Hutchison
ABC News
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC

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© ABC News
Christian Alexander Strickland, 9, died Aug. 5, 2011, from amoebic meningoencephalitis, a deadly parasitic infection that attacks the brain and spine, after attending a fishing camp.
A second child died this month from a deadly parasite that grows in stagnant waters, health officials confirmed Tuesday.

Bonnie Strickland, the aunt of 9-year-old Christian Alexander Strickland, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that her nephew died Aug. 5 from amoebic meningoencephalitis, a deadly parasitic infection that attacks the brain and spine, after attending a fishing camp.

"The doctor described it to us as such a slight chance that they didn't even think it would be possible," Strickland told the newspaper.

"Sadly, we have had a Naegleria infection in Virginia this summer," Dr. Keri Hall, state epidemiologist at the Virginia Department of Health, said in a statement. "It's important that people be aware of...safe swimming messages."

A week after Christian's fishing camp, he began experiencing the telltale symptoms of the parasitic infection-turned-meningitis: headache, stiffness, fever and nausea.
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Attention

Children of the Corn: GMOs Don't Qualify As Food

C. Stone
Salem-News.com
Sat, 28 May 2011 17:03 UTC
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© Salem-News.org
If GMOs are highly associated with infertility and spontaneous abortions in animals, is a similar rate of infertility (20%) occurring in people and are there increases in spontaneous abortion?
Antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility are used in the creation of GMO food

There has been a concerted national effort by citizens to have the US government label GMOs. Opposing it are government intent not only to keep them unlabeled in the US but efforts at the international level by the US government to remove all labeling of GMOs through Codex. The problem is that Codex applies to food, and GMOs don't qualify.

William Engdahl wrote in March of 2010 about a USDA funded project to create a GM corn that sterilizes people.
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Alarm Clock

FDA Says You Have No Right to Real Food Unless They Give You Permission First


Dr. Mercola
Sat, 29 May 2010 19:54 UTC
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© drmercola.com
The FDA has finally made its food-rights policy crystal clear. Here's the agency's position, made evident in their response to a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund:
  • They believe you have no absolute right to any raw unprocessed food, unless the FDA says it's okay
  • They believe you have no right to good health, except as approved by the FDA
  • They believe that there is no right for citizens to contract privately for their food
The Complete Patient reports:
"More Americans appear to be getting the message ... Over the past six months, we've had the popular push in Wisconsin, a state where the regulators have gone bonkers to eliminate raw milk, to pressure legislators to approve making it available from the farm ... [and] a firestorm building in Massachusetts over a ... decision by a regulator to restrict consumer access to milk."
Source

The Complete Patient April 30, 2010
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